Good health habits start young and we all know that children watch adults very closely. Parents can hardly expect their children to live a healthy lifestyle if they themselves don’t. Yet, despite this, the message of healthy living starts early doesn’t seem to be getting out.
According to a study done by the Preventive Cardiovascular Nurses Association (PCNA),

The national survey revealed that more than three in five (61%) Americans incorrectly believe that the processes related to heart disease do not begin until adulthood.

Alarmingly, fewer than four in ten (38%) correctly surmise that people should be concerned about living a heart-healthy lifestyle to prevent a future heart attack beginning in childhood, and continuing throughout every life stage.

What more do healthcare professionals have to do to get the message across? Do we need Big Brother to start telling us what to do? There are already pushes to highly tax junk food and soda drinks. Some places are pushing the idea of tax breaks or financial health to promote physical activity. Will parents not do this unless there’s a financial incentive? Going for walks, playing in the park, using stairs instead of escalators or elevators are not cost-intensive.

Here is some of the information the research turned up:

•    Less than a third of Americans follow a heart-healthy diet
•    70% of parents say they wouldn’t want their children to copy their eating habits
•    26% of the time, parents feel they don’t make good food choices, setting a bad example
•    44% say that sometimes they don’t make healthy food choices, setting a bad example

To learn more about this study and its findings, check out this press release: Americans concerned about heart health, but not proactive enough to prevent it.

~~~

Image: Newscom.com

Post from: Healthbolt

Change your habits, change your life (A Proven Plan for Healthy Living) by Danna Demetre. In this book, Demetere, a lifestyle coach, provides a 40 day guide to how you can make dynamic and lasting changes to your life by taking an ‘inside-out’ approach. Along the way, you will learn how to turn unhealthy thoughts healthy, stay active and maximize your energy by eating right, achieve true rest and regeneration, and discover how a  writing a daily journal can help in the move towards permanent change.

70 Ways to Beat 70 (Keys to a Longer, Healthier Life). I’m nowhere near 70 but the tips in this book can be used at any age. In fact, the earlier you start using these tips the better. You already know all this, but sometimes it doesn’t hurt to take a refresher course on the keys to a longer, healthier lifestyle.

Creating Your Best Life (The Ultimate Life List Guide) by Caroline Adams Miller and Dr Michael B Frisch. Another book by life coaches aimed at helping you get the most from your life. Anyone who loves lists will love this book which looks into the latest scientific research into happiness and the role life lists have in attaining happiness.

So stop procrastinating and start reading. You too can start living healthier now.

Post from: Healthbolt

But after reading Beth Greer’s book Super Natural Home, I have to say, I’m starting to wonder exactly how safe my house really is. According to Beth Greer, probably not all that safe, especially if you start taking into account all the dangerous chemicals that we invite in and have around our house at all times.

Beth used to be just like you and me, living what she considered a healthy but busy lifestyle. But when a medical crisis (a 5-centimeter tumour in her chest) caused her to re-evaluate her lifestyle, she discovered that maybe her lifestyle wasn’t as healthy as she thought. In fact, she discovered instead of being healthy, it was downright toxic.

So she spent six months cleaning up ‘her act’, eating an all-organic diet, discovered raw food, and cleared out all the everyday chemicals (cleaners  and personal products) from her house. Along the way, her health improved and within the year, the tumor and related pain and never damage seemed to disappear.

Since then, Beth has become an advocate of living a healthy, toxic free life, taking all the research and information she has accumulated while changing her own lifestyle and transforming it into the book Super Natural Home: Improve Your Health, Home, and Planet – One Room at a Time.

This book provides a practical guide to discovering potential toxic hot zones in your house and offers a straightforward soultion-based approaches to dealing with them. Broken into three main categories – what goes in you, what goes on you, and what surrounds you – the book can be used as a road map on how to become an environmental savvy consumer.

Of course, you might think, like I did, that your home isn’t toxic. In that case, I’d suggest heading over to Beth’s webstie SuperNaturalMom and sign up to take the Super Natural Home Quiz.

If you’re results are anything like mine, you might want to run out and get a copy of Super Natural Home. It will definitely help you figure out how to  make things less toxic in your life.

Image: SuperNaturalMom.com

Post from: Healthbolt

I’ve just found my dream job – getting paid to live on an beautiful island in a luxurious villa for six months. The money’s really good, the climate is perfect, and all I’ll have to do is wander around the local area, exploring all it has to offer and report back weekly via blogs, photo diaries, video updates and media interviews. I’d also have to collect the mail, feed the fish, and clean the pool.

No, I’m not making this up. It’s ‘fair dinkum’ as the Aussies would say, aimed to promote Queensland, and in particular the Great Barrier Reef and Hamilton Island, to the world.

I could do that. I want to do that.

But there’s a small problem. It’s no secret and everyone, and I mean everyone, wants to get this job. Right now, you can’t even log onto the site. I should know. I’ve been trying for a while now.

Post from: Healthbolt

And that’s why, after years of failing to follow through with my New Year’s resolutions, I decided a few years ago to throw away the list and start looking at the concept in a different light.

What if, I thought, I created a list of evergreen resolutions that reflected not short term goals but a lifestyle philosophy? 

Last year I found my evergreen resolutions on some decorative tiles while at a garden center purchasing a lemon tree to replace the one I had killed (good news – one year later said lemon tree still alive and growing enough lemons to make lemonade).

And this year, my New Year’s evergreen resolutions were re-affirmed with this coffee mug I got as a Christmas present…

Inspiration, it seems, appears in the strangest places.

Dance like no one is watching

*

Love like you’ve never been hurt before

*

Sing like no one is listening

*

Live as though heaven is on earth

 *

But the coffee mug seems to be missing one very important fact…

Life is Really Too Short to Drink Bad Wine

Post from: Healthbolt

The lucky winner of this book is….

Sagan

Congratulations Sagan. You’ll be receiving an email shortly explaining how to claim your prize.

As for everyone else, head on over to Pat’s website to find out what she considers the ‘10 Steps to Loving Your Body’ .

Don’t forget that ‘every day is a give away’ this month at Healthbolt.

Post from: Healthbolt

Okay, all you pessimistic poops, now there’s a reason to take that oh-so-annoying Susie Sunshine a little more seriously. A recent study published in Psychosomatic Medicine reveals that people who choose to look at the glass as half full are 33% less likely to get sick when exposed to a virus. Why? Positive emotions prompt the release of chemicals that strengthen the immune system.

So the next time you have the urge to be a nay-sayer or ignore a cloud’s silver lining, think again.

This has been your Healthbolt Happy Living Tip of the day. Have a great weekend!

Post from: Healthbolt

So Healthbolt is going to talk green too. Green health that is.

Here’s our common sense tips to greener health…

Sleep more - not only is sleep good for your health, it’s also good for the environment. When you sleep, your energy consumption is significantly reduced.

Become a locavore – eating lots of fruit and vegetables will keep us healthy. Buying your fruit and vegetables locally will keep the planet healthy.

Cycle or walk to work – get fit and reduce vehicle emissions at the same time. Sounds like a win/win situation.

And here’s what others are saying about green health…

Treehugger suggests that you can Save Money – and Your Health – by Going Green.

Livesmarter offers 30 Environmentally Friendly (and effective) Alternatives to Traditional Medicines and Procedures.

And to add a little spice to your green reading, here’s a MSNBC report that looks at When sex toys turn green – for health, that is.

Got any green health tips to share?

Post from: Healthbolt

February 1st is National Wear Red Day throughout America. Forget your usual working suit and dig out that red dress, shirt or tie and put it on.  Wear red to indicate your awareness that heart disease is the number one killer of women. And I’m not talking broken heart here. Believe it or not, you can recover from a broken heart (How to Get Over a Broken Heart).

I’m talking about coronary heart disease which usually develops over many years causing narrowing and blocking of the arteries. If undetected and untreated it can easily result in heart attack and death. 

Here’s some scary statistics:

• Heart disease is the #1 killer of American women.
• One in every three women dies of heart disease. One in 30 dies of breast cancer.
• Women’s heart disease risk starts to rise in middle age.
• About 3 million American women have had a heart attack.
• Two-thirds of American women who have had a heart attack don’t make a full recovery.
• Nearly two-thirds of American women who die suddenly of a heart attack had no prior symptoms.
• Americans can lower their risk of heart disease by as much as 82 percent just by leading a healthy lifestyle.
• Awareness of heart disease as the leading cause of death has increased from 30 percent in 1997 to 46 percent in 2003.
• Only 20 percent of women consider heart disease to be their own greatest health risk.

Risk factors for heart disease are:

• Smoking
• High blood pressure
• High blood cholesterol
• Overweight/obesity
• Physical inactivity
• Diabetes
• Family history of early coronary heart disease
• Age (for women, 55 and older)

What you can do now to reduce the risk…

• stop smoking
• eat healthy
• exercise
• yearly checkups for women (and men) over the age of 40.

(source of photos and facts)

Post from: Healthbolt