Healthy World Digest, December, #9

Welcome to our 9th issue (December 2009) of Healthy World Digest. Subscribe to HWD by filling in email on upper left tab. In this issue...

* Magic beans

* Junk food in schools

* Eat your greens

* Egg yolks are good for you

* Potatoes as herbal remedies

* Lemons are healing herbs too

* Dieters, beware soymilk & artificial sweeteners

* New technology for dehydrating kids

* For a healthy heart, exercise, even a little

* Importance of vitamin A

* What could you do in one year

* Magic beans

"Beans, beans good for your heart. The more you eat"...Well, we all know the rest. If not, ask some kid.

Beans are very good for you. What's more, different types have different benefits.

Navy beans cut back on your risk of cerebrovascular accident & help you retain memory ability. Garbanzos lower chances of diabetes. Black beans are rich in antioxidants. Kidney beans are heart healthy. Pinto beans bring down cholesterol.

* Junk food in schools

For too many kids, a source of junk food is in the very schools we send them to learn. In the U.S., they learn alright. To like junk food.

In case you're wondering why your kids' school's vending machines sell crappy food, well, that's what brings in the most money. By the way, the National School Lunch Program may be a necessary evil but they too also feature lots of junk. Don't you think schools can do better for the same sum of money of money?

* Eat your leafy greens

Too bad that the most powerful anti-cancer herbs, you know those veggies most of us don't have enough of, are in all probability to be those most people avoid. Brussels sprouts, leeks, beets & kale. If you don?t like the taste of those vegetables, look for some recipes that will make them taste good. I don't much like kale but included in a macaroni and bean dish, kale tastes great.

Want to know what compliments leafy vegetables beautifully? The beans mentioned above. Just add a can of smooth tasting beans to tart greens and you'll have a healthy, yummy dish.

My parents used to make a macaroni soup with broccoli rabe or kale and add add a can of cannelini beans or garbanzo beans. A little salt and virgin olive oil and we had quite a healthy, yummy meal.

* Egg yolks are good for you

In the future, diet experts will reflect on the aversion to egg yolks on the part of many dieters and health enthusiasts and just laugh.

Egg yolks are blamed for all kinds of cardiovascular ills.

In truth, the yolks are so chock full of good stuff that tossing them is tantamount to a dietary tragedy. It's the whites that have nothing but cheap protein.

Researchers now find that including whole eggs for breakfast reduces total calories consumed throughout the day. The yolks also contain lecithin which actually breaks up fat and cholesterol.

Figures. If there's a rule of thumb when it comes to food, it's this. Eat what the Neanderthals ate and you'll be on the right track. I doubt they separated yolks from the rest of the egg.

But if you insist on separating yolk from white, here's my advice. Toss the white part and eat the yolks.

* Potatoes as herbal remedies

Sure, potatoes taste good but they're also good for you. And you don't even have to eat 'em to reap some of the benefits.

Rub a cut raw potato on warts

Make a quick facial with potato by mashing with lemon juice and a little bit of milk. Leave on your face for about 20 minutes and then rinse off to reveal soft skin

For more visit our page on potato home remedies

* Lemons are healing herbs too

Lemons are also great for you.

For example, lemon water is great for many common ailments. Sore throat. To purify your kidneys, liver and blood and even prevent cancer.

Click for more on lemons as herbal remedies

* I may have goofed. Diets, soymilk & artificial sweeteners

A few months ago, I touted my healthy coffee idea. Basically, I added low carb soymilk and a low carb sweetener, stevia or some artificial sweetener. Well, I screwed up.

I was reminded that soymilk is estrogenic. That is, it lends feminine hormones to consumers. Those same hormones also initiate or help maintain some fat around the middle, especially for men. That would be really counterproductive for dieters.

Add to this the possibility that artificial sweeteners make your body respond as if they were common sugars. They may fool your body into thinking you just consumed sugar and so your body releases insulin which helps the body retain fat.

So soymilk and artificial sweeteners may be a double no-no

I now, just never use artificial sweeteners and simply add some light cream to my coffee.

Hey, I still think there are good things about soy and I'm not so sure that artificial sweeteners harm every consumer, so if you have no real concerns about your gut, indulge to your content.

P.S. Oh, the soy problem extends to other soy products.

* New tech for dehydrating kids

Of course, I don't mean the tech dehydrates kids but rather that it is FOR kids suffering from dehydration.

Our Healthy Water site includes lots of stuff on the health effects of symptoms of dehydration and water contamination. But for once, we got to tell readers about a new way for hospitals to rehydrate kids who are dehydrated based on technology developed by Baxter International. We say 'good for them and good for our kids.'

Title, excerpt and link to article follows.

Baxter launches hydration option for children

Modern tech finds a way to reduce dehydration symptoms in young kids. Have to include any happy story on water in Water News, just to keep me going. Excerpt and link to entire article follows.

Baxter International Inc. has launched a new way to administer intravenous fluids to rehydrate children and infants more quickly and efficiently -- and without the tricky search for a tiny vein.

This week's launch of Hylenex comes as the cold and flu season approaches. More than 2 million children in the U.S. visit emergency rooms because of dehydration issues, which are common when children are sick, according to a study presented at the American College of Emergency Physicians meeting this week in Boston.

Click for entire article on kid dehydration

* For a healthy heart, even mild exercise helps

We love it when you exercise, a lot, intensely. But guess what? You don't have to exercise all that much to keep your heart healthy according to Department of Cardiology in New Orleans, as published in the American Journal of Medicine.

Only 30 minutes of moderate exercise like biking, walking or jogging, three times weekly, is needed for heart patients to significantly improve heart health or, we might assume, maintain heart health.

So, there's another excuse right out the window.

For more on this, click for our page on research on exercise for a healthy heart

* Importance of vitamin A

Healthy World just completed a section on vitamin A and we thought you should know more about this nutritional powerhouse.

Visit our section to better understand what is vitamin A, supplementation, deficiency, overdose, etc etc

* P.S. What can you do in one year

Could you believe that, for many of us worldwide, we are nearing a new year? A good time to start reflecting on what last year brought us. More importantly, what can we do to make next year a great year?

Think of what you can do in one year. Healthwise, socially, financially, on and on.

I recently thought of Isaac Newton.

During the plague, Newton was sent home from his college duties. In that first year back, he developed the ideas that led to his revolutionary theory of gravity, theory on optics and the calculus!

In just one year!

Yep, the years can seem to go so quickly and yet so much can be done in one year. Like, if you are severely overweight, you can take off excess fat at a safe, easy rate of a pound of fat a week and lose 50 pounds by 2011. Not as impressive as developing the calculus but still impressive.

Conversely, you can easily gain 2 pounds a week, a 100 pounds by years end! Imagine that?

It's up to you.

What do you want to accomplish next year?

See you next year but feel free to contact Healthy World if you have questions, concerns, advice.

Happy Holidays, & a very Happy New Year to you and loved ones.

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