Guidelines to Good Health, Survival, & Longevity-IX

Welcome to our health & self help blog.

In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.

Today's post: Thursday, 8-31-2006

Guidelines to Good Health, Survival, & Longevity-part IX

Following these guidelines helps you to have a good quality of life mostly unhampered by getting sick or disabled or spending a lot on drugs, doctors & hospitals.

And, it means you’ll have that quality of life for many years longer than many of the people who don’t follow these guidelines will live. (Your quality of life may be good into your nineties or beyond while people who follow none of these guidelines often die before age 80 – & many even earlier.)

In addition, as you get older, you’ll gradually find you look years younger than other people your age.

For the previous guidelines in this series, see the posts for Thursday, 8-17-2006; Friday, 8-18-2006; Monday, 8-21-2006; Tuesday, 8-22-2006; Wednesday, 8-23-2006; Thursday, 8-24-2006; Monday, 8-28-2006; & Wednesday, 8-30-2006.

7. Make a strong focused effort to learn & practice good social skills.

When I was in school, the teachers & administrators said that good social skills were important & that was why they declined to speed up the education of bright & gifted kids who already knew part of the material or could learn it faster.

(If you are interested, Julian Stanley, PhD did the research showing this to be untrue for most gifted kids who do get accelerated in school.

And, I later discovered that because of the way schools are funded, they lose money if they speed up the education for ANY student who is capable of it to any degree at all.)

However, I’ve since discovered that when these teachers & administrators said that good social skills were important, they were not only correct, they were quite literally SO correct, it’s astounding.

And, that’s particularly interesting considering that they made virtually no credible effort to teach these skills in the schools I attended.

Good social skills are the third major factor in Real World Intelligence & effectiveness.

And, to some degree, they are the MOST important one.

Here’s why:

a) Whether it’s money, specialized knowledge, or skills already developed to a high degree of proficiency, there are other people who have them.

And, other people literally have hundreds of hours a DAY to work on things that you don’t have.

Almost regardless of their own knowledge & skills or money, people with good social skills get more of this truly enormous resource that exists in other people.

And, the process tends to go better for people with good social skills besides.

Here are three books that have helped me in this area.

*Ask for the Moon & Get it by Percy Ross

It’s out of print, or was the last time I checked. But it is a superbly well done guide on exactly how to ask well for what you want other people to help you with.

**The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz

His book isn’t perfect. It’s slightly outdated now. And, it is aimed at people who are in sales or business. That said, however, it is one of the best guides I know to good social skills because he describes & gives real examples of how & why to, in his words, “Think right towards people.” & how to apply it in your life & how to use it to guide your thinking.

****Dig the Well Before you Thirst by Harvey McKay

This one is also a business related book. And, McKay tends to go to extremes at times. But he makes the underlying principles clear.

b) When you treat other people well & spend time with colleagues, friends, & family, your life is richer & more satisfying than it is doing almost anything else.

The process isn’t perfect even for people with very good social skills. But studies show that people who do these things are far happier & enjoy much better health than people who don’t.

c) It also helps enormously to know how to negotiate with people & deal with misunderstandings & disagreements without getting angry or depressed.

One of the key things to keep in mind is that all of the other people you meet have their own goals & needs. They have their own worries & disappointments. And, they often have very different knowledge & previous experience than you do.

When you honor & respect those things in others even if they differ from yours & even conflict with them; & you prefer if it all possible that things go well FOR THEM, it’s much more likely to be possible to work with them on getting what YOU want; & the process goes dramatically better.

Regardless of how it’s phrased, the “Golden Rule” works. When you sincerely want others to do well & forgive them their faults as best you can, YOUR life goes better.

And, the more skills you learn to make that process go well, the better that works & the better your life will be.

You may find you need more anger management skills than you now have to do well with this. Or you may need to learn how to safely be more assertive & stand up for yourself better.

Most people need to know more about how to ask effectively & safely for what they want. And, it virtually always pays to know how to set up win win results from a negotiation.

There are excellent books & courses on all these things. Make as much use of them as you can.

And, keep in touch with your family & friends.

Your life & health will be better.

Guidelines to Good Health, Survival, & Longevity-IX

Welcome to our health & self help blog.

In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.

Today's post: Thursday, 8-31-2006

Guidelines to Good Health, Survival, & Longevity-part IX

Following these guidelines helps you to have a good quality of life mostly unhampered by getting sick or disabled or spending a lot on drugs, doctors & hospitals.

And, it means you’ll have that quality of life for many years longer than many of the people who don’t follow these guidelines will live. (Your quality of life may be good into your nineties or beyond while people who follow none of these guidelines often die before age 80 – & many even earlier.)

In addition, as you get older, you’ll gradually find you look years younger than other people your age.

For the previous guidelines in this series, see the posts for Thursday, 8-17-2006; Friday, 8-18-2006; Monday, 8-21-2006; Tuesday, 8-22-2006; Wednesday, 8-23-2006; Thursday, 8-24-2006; Monday, 8-28-2006; & Wednesday, 8-30-2006.

7. Make a strong focused effort to learn & practice good social skills.

When I was in school, the teachers & administrators said that good social skills were important & that was why they declined to speed up the education of bright & gifted kids who already knew part of the material or could learn it faster.

(If you are interested, Julian Stanley, PhD did the research showing this to be untrue for most gifted kids who do get accelerated in school.

And, I later discovered that because of the way schools are funded, they lose money if they speed up the education for ANY student who is capable of it to any degree at all.)

However, I’ve since discovered that when these teachers & administrators said that good social skills were important, they were not only correct, they were quite literally SO correct, it’s astounding.

And, that’s particularly interesting considering that they made virtually no credible effort to teach these skills in the schools I attended.

Good social skills are the third major factor in Real World Intelligence & effectiveness.

And, to some degree, they are the MOST important one.

Here’s why:

a) Whether it’s money, specialized knowledge, or skills already developed to a high degree of proficiency, there are other people who have them.

And, other people literally have hundreds of hours a DAY to work on things that you don’t have.

Almost regardless of their own knowledge & skills or money, people with good social skills get more of this truly enormous resource that exists in other people.

And, the process tends to go better for people with good social skills besides.

Here are three books that have helped me in this area.

*Ask for the Moon & Get it by Percy Ross

It’s out of print, or was the last time I checked. But it is a superbly well done guide on exactly how to ask well for what you want other people to help you with.

**The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz

His book isn’t perfect. It’s slightly outdated now. And, it is aimed at people who are in sales or business. That said, however, it is one of the best guides I know to good social skills because he describes & gives real examples of how & why to, in his words, “Think right towards people.” & how to apply it in your life & how to use it to guide your thinking.

****Dig the Well Before you Thirst by Harvey McKay

This one is also a business related book. And, McKay tends to go to extremes at times. But he makes the underlying principles clear.

b) When you treat other people well & spend time with colleagues, friends, & family, your life is richer & more satisfying than it is doing almost anything else.

The process isn’t perfect even for people with very good social skills. But studies show that people who do these things are far happier & enjoy much better health than people who don’t.

c) It also helps enormously to know how to negotiate with people & deal with misunderstandings & disagreements without getting angry or depressed.

One of the key things to keep in mind is that all of the other people you meet have their own goals & needs. They have their own worries & disappointments. And, they often have very different knowledge & previous experience than you do.

When you honor & respect those things in others even if they differ from yours & even conflict with them; & you prefer if it all possible that things go well FOR THEM, it’s much more likely to be possible to work with them on getting what YOU want; & the process goes dramatically better.

Regardless of how it’s phrased, the “Golden Rule” works. When you sincerely want others to do well & forgive them their faults as best you can, YOUR life goes better.

And, the more skills you learn to make that process go well, the better that works & the better your life will be.

You may find you need more anger management skills than you now have to do well with this. Or you may need to learn how to safely be more assertive & stand up for yourself better.

Most people need to know more about how to ask effectively & safely for what they want. And, it virtually always pays to know how to set up win win results from a negotiation.

There are excellent books & courses on all these things. Make as much use of them as you can.

And, keep in touch with your family & friends.

Your life & health will be better.

Guidelines to Good Health, Survival, & Longevity-VIII

Welcome to our health & self help blog.

In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.

Today's post: Wednesday, 8-30-2006

Guidelines to Good Health, Survival, & Longevity-part VIII

Following these guidelines helps you to have a good quality of life mostly unhampered by getting sick or disabled or spending a lot on drugs, doctors & hospitals.

And, it means you’ll have that quality of life for many years longer than many of the people who don’t follow these guidelines will live. (Your quality of life may be good into your nineties or beyond while people who follow none of these guidelines often die before age 80 – & many even earlier.)

In addition, as you get older, you’ll gradually find you look years younger than other people your age.

For the previous guidelines in this series, see the posts for Thursday, 8-17-2006; Friday, 8-18-2006; Monday, 8-21-2006; Tuesday, 8-22-2006; Wednesday, 8-23-2006; Thursday, 8-24-2006; & Monday, 8-28-2006.

6. Make a strong & focused effort to become more able & competent in key areas; continuously learn useful & worthwhile knowledge & information; learn what skill & strengths you already have & be sure to use them; & know what your weaknesses are & either correct them or compensate for them.

This one is similar to the number 2. guideline we listed earlier to be sure to be economically competent.

To achieve the goals necessary to build a worthwhile life & solve the problems everyone encounters, the more able you are & the better you use your ability, the less stress you’ll be under & the better your life will go.

As one man described it, if your ability to solve a problem is an 8 or 9 or 10 & you have a size 6 problem, you’ll be a lot less stressed than if your ability is a 3 or 4.

One piece of good news, since you are reading this, you are literate & are demonstrating that you continuously learn useful & worthwhile knowledge & information.

And, you can read & read in English.

And, if you are comfortable reading this blog, you read well & are very likely very bright in IQ & academic skills.

That’s the first main factor in Real World Intelligence & effectiveness.

Of the three main areas of real world intelligence or ability, these next abilities are also critically important:

the ability to be resourceful & creative;

& the related abilities to be self disciplined & make an extra effort when it counts most; & to persist in your goals & efforts even if you have to experiment until you find a solution that works & repeat that several times if necessary;

& to do all these things even when stressed.

And, the people who are optimistic by the definition of Martin Seligman, PhD -- AND who are also responsible & prudent tend to get by far the best results.

Taken together, this set of abilities is what makes you effective.

And, when your effectiveness abilities are guided by wisdom, intelligence, & knowledge, you can be effective indeed.

Lastly, the physical energy & stamina & stress resistance you have as a result of exercise & following the other guidelines to good health, are the foundation that underlies these abilities in your life.

The third major factor in Real World Intelligence & effectiveness is so important, we list it as our 7th & last guideline.

We’ll post it next time.

Guidelines to Good Health, Survival, & Longevity-VII

Welcome to our health & self help blog.

In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.

Today's post: Monday, 8-28-2006

Guidelines to Good Health, Survival, & Longevity-part VII

Following these guidelines helps you to have a good quality of life mostly unhampered by getting sick or disabled or spending a lot on drugs, doctors & hospitals.

And, it means you’ll have that quality of life for many years longer than many of the people who don’t follow these guidelines will live. (Your quality of life may be good into your nineties or beyond while people who follow none of these guidelines often die before age 80 – & many even earlier.)

In addition, as you get older, you’ll gradually find you look years younger than other people your age.

For the previous guidelines in this series, see the posts for Thursday, 8-17-2006; Friday, 8-18-2006; Monday, 8-21-2006; Tuesday, 8-22-2006; Wednesday, 8-23-2006; & Thursday, 8-24-2006.

5. Follow these good health generating & health protecting guidelines.:

l) Get good medical care if at all possible:

Have a good deal of money for health care AND have health insurance;

get good medical care when needed for injury & illness;

have & use a book like Take Care of Yourself or Kaiser’s Healthwise Handbook that can tell you if you should see a doctor & how fast for many conditions &/or have a service like Kaiser’s “advice nurse” hotline to use for extra help;

& make an effort to see a “personal physician” at least once a year or so who has a background in Integrated or Preventive medicine; &/ or who is personally keeping up with the news on supplements & lifestyle upgrades in eating & exercise as a way to prevent & treat illnesses; &, who will work with you to get diagnostic tests like key blood tests to help you manage your health.

Many doctors today are much too busy to do this well. But if you can pay more, that may work to find such a doctor.

And, even within HMOs like Kaiser & in other insurance plans, there are some doctors who will at least partly fit the bill & make some extra effort when you ask.

For that, you may have to try more than one.

But the trend seems to be towards doctors at least being familiar with such subjects & to be at least somewhat knowledgeable, particularly about healthy eating & exercise.

At their best, doctors can save you from making a serious mistake in your care & really help you find out exactly what is causing your symptoms & to resolve the conditions or “germs” that are causing them. Or, at the very least, they can get you out of dangerous situations quickly & reliably in many cases.

Within what they have studied & had experience with doctors are incredibly knowledgeable.

The bad news is that their knowledge is often very narrow in scope -- although the best doctors are aware of what they tend to know best & what they don’t know.

This can lead them to miss or misdiagnose what you have if it’s rare or unexpected or has multiple causes. And, it can lead them to recommend against things that will actually benefit you that they don’t yet know well.

And, they can & often do prescribe drugs that do work but have unacceptable side effects in your particular case.

So, it will pay you to get the best doctor you can & learn to communicate well with him or her.

And, if what he or she prescribes or recommends doesn’t work or is unmanageable for you to do, you may well need to think for yourself; get other information on the subject; & make a second effort with your doctor.

And, in some cases, you may need a doctor you can work with better or one more specialized in what you need.

All this can be a bit challenging to do. But it can be well worth it. It can even save your life or the life of someone you care about to do it well.

You have my very best wishes that it works well for you.

**********

We’ll finish this series of guidelines in the next posts.

Guidelines to Good Health, Survival, & Longevity-VI

Welcome to our health & self help blog.

In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.

Today's post: Thursday, 8-24-2006

Guidelines to Good Health, Survival, & Longevity-part VI

Following these guidelines helps you to have a good quality of life mostly unhampered by getting sick or disabled or spending a lot on drugs, doctors & hospitals.

And, it means you’ll have that quality of life for many years longer than many of the people who don’t follow these guidelines will live. (Your quality of life may be good into your nineties or beyond while people who follow none of these guidelines often die before age 80 – & many even earlier.)

In addition, as you get older, you’ll gradually find you look years younger than other people your age.

For the previous guidelines in this series, see the posts for Thursday, 8-17-2006; Friday, 8-18-2006; Monday, 8-21-2006; Tuesday, 8-22-2006: & Wednesday, 8-23-2006

5. Follow these good health generating & health protecting guidelines.:

k) Take care of your teeth & gums & get regular dental care.

People who don’t get often get sick from doing so. It’s now even thought having gum disease can help cause heart disease. And, abscessed teeth are NOT fun.

Gum disease is preventable. And, getting it causes bad breath & tooth loss.

In addition, good care of your teeth & gums can cost you a LOT less money than fixing the problems not doing it will cost you later. Having teeth pulled; root canals & crowns; & false teeth are NOT fun to have. And, they are EXPENSIVE !!

Why go there when this is virtually 100 percent preventable?

I takes a bit of time each day; but it’s not hard once you get used to it.

*Brush & floss your teeth at least once each day. First thing in the morning or right after breakfast works & helps you start the day with fresh breath. Right after your last meal of the day also works.

(Brushing & flossing twice a day – once early & once late is only necessary if you are treating gum disease after you have it. You can do it once a day & prevent problems. But doing it twice a day has been shown to effectively help reverse gum disease if you do get it.)

**Rinse with water & floss top & bottom first.

Then, when you brush, do it systematically so you cover each part only once for each part which ensures everywhere gets brushed but also saves time.

After you apply toothpaste, brush your biting surfaces first.

Then brush AT YOUR GUMLINE – NOT just on your teeth.

Third, brush your gums above & below the gumline.

Why? Because keeping your gums healthy is the key to having decent breath, avoiding expense if they get diseased, & to staying healthy & keeping your teeth.

And, flossing; & brushing vigorously but gently with a soft toothbrush in this style will go a long way to keeping your teeth & gums healthy.

***go to a dentist & get your teeth cleaned & checked regularly.

The cleaning removes the gunk even great home care misses & keeps it from building up- which causes gum disease.

And, if you do get cavities or other problems, the regular check ups will catch them early which keeps you healthy & pain free & find the problems at a stage where fixing the problems costs a lot less than it will if the problems develop more.

Every six months is ideal. But make a very strong effort to go get your teeth cleaned & checked at least once a year.

****Eating lots of fruits & vegetables that are high in vitamin C & taking at least 500 mg of vitamin C & 60 mg of CoQ10 also help keep your gums healthy.

We’ll post the last parts of this series next week.

Guidelines to Good Health, Survival, & Longevity-V

Welcome to our health & self help blog.

In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.

Today's post: Wednesday, 8-23-2006

Guidelines to Good Health, Survival, & Longevity-part V

Following these guidelines helps you to have a good quality of life mostly unhampered by getting sick or disabled or spending a lot on drugs, doctors & hospitals.

And, it means you’ll have that quality of life for many years longer than many of the people who don’t follow these guidelines will live. (Your quality of life may be good into your nineties or beyond while people who follow none of these guidelines often die before age 80 – & many even earlier.)

In addition, as you get older, you’ll gradually find you look years younger than other people your age.

For the previous guidelines in this series, see the posts for Thursday, 8-17-2006; Friday, 8-18-2006; Monday, 8-21-2006; & Tuesday, 8-22-2006

5. Follow these good health generating & health protecting guidelines.:

j) Learn what vitamins, minerals, & other supplements fit your health needs & desires & take the ones you can afford.

It’s pretty basic, simple, & important to take a good multivitamin plus mineral supplement.

A surprising number of people are actually deficient in several vitamins or minerals. And, this tends to be even more the case in people older than 50 as they may eat less food or absorb fewer nutrients from the food they do eat.

Eating lots of the very nutritious superfoods helps. But even then, taking a good multivitamin plus mineral supplement ensures you get a minimum amount of ALL the nutrients most researched to be important to your health because you may eat LOTS of superfoods with vitamin C one week & be short of vitamin D or B12, for example.

If you can, add extra antioxidant vitamins. 500 mg extra a day of vitamin C; 200 iu of a natural vitamin E; 200 mcg of Selenium; & 200 mg of alpha lipoic acid are some of the ones I take.

Some of the others I take have antioxidant properties, 60 mg a day of CoQ10, for example. And 30 mg a day of lycopene is another.

They have antioxidant effects. But I take the CoQ10 for its benefits for my heart & energy level & the lycopene for reducing the chance I’ll get prostate cancer.

This is a very big subject. And, new information is being added virtually every day.

As we did with the recent post on boosting your HDL cholesterol, there are supplements that have different benefits that target specific health concerns.

And, one of the reasons to get the diagnostic health tests we spoke of in yesterday’s post, is to find the areas where you can benefit from the specific supplements that help in that area.

We’ll continue this series in our next post.

Guidelines to Good Health, Survival, & Longevity-IV

Welcome to our health & self help blog.

In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.

Today's post: Tuesday, 8-22-2006

Guidelines to Good Health, Survival, & Longevity-part IV

Following these guidelines helps you to have a good quality of life mostly unhampered by getting sick or disabled or spending a lot on drugs, doctors & hospitals.

And, it means you’ll have that quality of life for many years longer than many of the people who don’t follow these guidelines will live. (Your quality of life may be good into your nineties or beyond while people who follow none of these guidelines often die before age 80 – & many even earlier.)

In addition, as you get older, you’ll gradually find you look years younger than other people your age.

For the previous guidelines in this series, see the posts for Thursday, 8-17-2006; Friday, 8-18-2006; & Monday, 8-21-2006.

5. Follow these good health generating & health protecting guidelines.:

i) If you possibly can, get your key health indicators & blood tests done.

Then, if any are in the danger range or even if they are out of the desirable range, take appropriate action to move them to the desirable range or as close to it as you can.

Then get them redone to see how much progress you’ve made in about 2 or 3 months.

Once they are in the desirable range or as close to it as you can get them, get the tests every year if you can.

As you have seen if you’ve been reading our blog, almost all these guidelines & many of the posts here have actions you can take that move all these measures in the desirable direction.

So, even if you can’t get tested or do it as often as you like, you may well get most of the desirable effects by following the other guidelines.

However, it’s extremely desirable to get them done if you can.

To some extent taking control of your health without them is like driving without looking out the windshield.

And, you can drive off the road or into a post if you can’t tell it’s happening.

When you do get tested, you may well find some measures where you are well out of the desirable area & on the border of the dangerous area.

Some of you may even find you are already in the danger area on that measure.

If that happens, see a doctor to get treatment.

The right drugs do work. They usually work quite quickly.
And, they may well save your life while you are adding the other things you need to get out of danger.

Then, if you do enough for a long enough period of time, you’ll be able to stop the drugs or reduce the dose in many cases.

And, you & your doctor will be able to tell when & if that’s the case
once you are retested.

As you may have seen on our recent post on ways to raise your desirable & protective HDL cholesterol, there are things you can do with what you eat & don’t eat; the kind of exercise you get; & supplements you can take that do that.

This is true of each of these measures.

And, if you are in the danger zone in any, these actions are extremely important to add to the drugs your doctor will likely prescribe to move quickly & completely out of the danger zone. And, to keep you in the safe zone & protect your health the most, you should keep doing these things.

In addition, the experts in the related specialties & in preventive medicine are beginning to educate doctors that this is desirable.

And, that if one measure is in the danger zone, your patient’s health depends on making sure you test the others because previous bad life style choices tend to move several in the wrong direction at the same time.

This is a huge & rapidly developing subject as new research is done & new effective methods are found.

So, today, I’ll simply list some of the most important things to have tested.

In other posts, we’ll cover more in this area.

And, we plan to set up a paid service in this area later to help individual people & interested health professionals keep up with this field.

Here’s the list:

*Total cholesterol. And, of more importance, HDL cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, high sensitivity C Reactive protein, & homocysteine.

Taken together, these are a good initial reading on heart disease risk.

And, if you have heart related symptoms or are in the danger zone on these – or have more money to learn more, there’s another level or two of diagnostic & heart related measures.

Two other tests to consider are: Lp(a); & a treadmill test if your doctors think it safe for you to do.

(If you exercise regularly & have kept your basic measures listed above out of the danger zone, a treadmill test should be safe. And, there’s an excellent chance you’ll do well on it. And, if you do, that’s very predictive of few heart problems later or at least having any soon.)

Homocysteine is a heart & circulation risk when it’s high. AND, it tends to speed your rate of aging when it’s high.

Fasting blood glucose & HBA1C.

These test for type II diabetes or trends in that direction.

Here again, there are other tests; such as for insulin levels & to see how your body reacts in your blood glucose levels after a normal meal or after a measured dose of glucose.
But, the main two are a good place to start.

Blood pressure in both arms.

Unless it’s so high, it’s in danger of killing you that day, there are very few symptoms of high blood pressure.

So, you don’t know what it is unless you get it measured.

Having high blood pressure increases your risk of heart disease & stroke & kidney disease. And, it can be indicative of heart disease or type II diabetes as they can be part of the cause of high blood pressure.

Also, if your blood pressure is more than 10 percent different between your two arms, it can be indicative of problems.

*************

Also, you can add how well you are following or not following the previous list of guidelines to your test results to get a good picture of your future health.

For example: Someone who is a bit above the desirable zone on these tests & is somewhat fat will AND who exercises regularly, will often do better than a skinny or normal weight person with those measures now but who never exercises.

We’ll post more of these health guidelines in our next post.)

Guidelines to Good Health, Survival, & Longevity-- III

Welcome to our health & self help blog.

In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.

Today's post: Monday, 8-21-2006

Guidelines to Good Health, Survival, & Longevity-part III

Following these guidelines helps you to have a good quality of life mostly unhampered by getting sick or disabled or spending a lot on drugs, doctors & hospitals.

And, it means you’ll have that quality of life for many years longer than many of the people who don’t follow these guidelines will live. (Your quality of life may be good into your nineties or beyond while people who follow none of these guidelines often die before age 80 – & many even earlier.)

In addition, as you get older, you’ll gradually find you look years younger than other people your age.

For the previous guidelines in this series, see the posts for Thursday, 8-17-2006
& Friday, 8-18-2006.

5. Follow these good health generating & health protecting guidelines.:

g) Escape or physically relieve Excessive Stress:

In much the same way that exercising regularly improves your health & protects it in literally dozens of ways, excessive stress is that harmful.

A short & partial list of things that excessive stress tends to cause includes:

making it much harder to eat health enhancing food & easier to choose sugary or fatty comfort foods that can sabotage your health & keep you fat;
it can cause you to make mistakes by being distracted or making it hard to think well when you need to do so;
it can help cause heart attacks & often causes high blood pressure;
it can make it more likely you’ll get sick by suppressing your immune system;
it can damage your brain’s centers for emotions & memory;
it can cause excessive drinking of alcohol & can result in car accidents from doing so;
it can make you irritable or depressed & hard to be around for other people;
& it can depress or even shut down your sex drive.

The good news is that you can combat each of these effects of excessive stress without changing your level of stress & protect yourself that way.

However, if you can overcome or escape the cause of your excessive stress or relieve it physically, all or most of these effects vanish or dramatically improve.

Literally everything you can do to become more effective & take control of the situations that produce excessive stress can help.:
Making an extra focused, effort when it counts most to remove the cause of an excessive stress or escape it successfully;
Getting more money to use as a resource;
Getting significant help by knowing how to ask for it well & having or knowing how to find the right people to ask.
Learning enough more about the causes or cures of a bad situation to know what to try next.

However, some stressful things cannot be changed – or, even if they can, it may take quite a while, so it’s important to know ways that work that physically relieve it.

By far the most accessible of the ways to do that --&, the one that tends to work well for most people is regular aerobic or cardio exercise.

Yoga; tai chi; & meditation work for some people. They can be a bit slow & hard to learn & are often not a good fit for busy people as they tend to require classes & even more time than exercise. And, only some of the people who do them get enough of a stress relieving effect.

There is a new way to relax physically that solves those problems & which we will cover in future posts.

Until then, make a special effort to get regular aerobic exercise; do what you can to remove the causes of any excessive stress you are under; & do what you can to avoid or prevent the effects we listed in other ways

h) avoid or escape from tobacco smoke & use:

This one is as powerful as eating right; exercising; & avoiding or relieving excessive stress in protecting your health.

It’s still surprisingly little known by people who are not doctors; but occasional second hand smoke & even smoking a little bit each week harm your health substantially. And the health & longevity of average smokers & heavy smokers are really hit hard.

Most people know that smoking tends to cause lung cancer. But many, if not most smokers never get it.

And, since most people & most people who smoke still don’t know more than that, people still smoke & allow themselves to be exposed to second hand smoke.

The real health risks of smoking are MUCH worse; & EVERYONE who smokes is damaged by those risks, starting with their first cigarette.

Even the health of smokers who never get lung cancer & is hit & hit hard.

Most smokers who smoking kills or harms are done in or damaged by something OTHER than lung cancer.

Here’s why:

Every single exposure to tobacco smoke tends to increase your homocysteine levels; reduce your HDL levels & make the HDL you do have less protective to your heart & blood vessels; & it tends to use up your body’s supply of vitamin C.

Here’s a partial list of what THAT causes:

sharply increased rate of aging; highly wrinkled skin on the face;
heart disease & heart attacks;
& massively reduced blood flow –resulting in:
kidney disease, foot amputations; strokes; age onset dementia; & impotence;
& according to one Oncologist (doctor specializing in treating cancers) I spoke to in a cancer ward once, over half of ALL cancers are caused by smoking—not just lung cancer.

And, here’s important news, if you smoke or are exposed to second hand smoke, you no longer have to GUESS if it’s doing this to you --

Because, by having your HDL level & your homocysteine level tested, you’ll find these measures are NOT in the desirable range &, very likely you’ll find they ARE in the dangerous range.

So, avoiding or escaping from cigarette smoke is worth an enormous extra effort to protect your health.

And, one of the reasons to get good at escaping or physically relieving stress in other ways is to make it less likely you’ll rely on cigarettes to do so.

We’ll post more of these health guidelines in our next post.)

Guidelines to Good Health, Survival, & Longevity- II

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In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.

Today's post: Friday, 8-18-2006

Guidelines to Good Health, Survival, & Longevity-part II

Following these guidelines helps you to have a good quality of life mostly unhampered by getting sick or disabled or spending a lot on drugs, doctors & hospitals.

And, it means you’ll have that quality of life for many years longer than many of the people who don’t follow these guidelines will live. (Your quality of life may be good into your nineties or beyond while people who follow none of these guidelines often die before age 80 – & many even earlier.)

In addition, as you get older, you’ll gradually find you look years younger than other people your age.

For the first 4 guidelines, see yesterday’s post, Thursday, 8-17-2006

5. Follow these good health generating & health protecting guidelines.:

a) find as many foods that support & enhance your health as you can; find as many as you can that you like or can at least be OK with eating; & make eating a variety of these foods most of what you eat.

(On this blog, the Superfoods series we posted starting, 4-14-2006 is a good place to start if you are unfamiliar with the subject.)

b) find out what foods actively harm you & damage your health and make an enormous extra & focused effort to virtually never eat them no matter what.

(In our series on food that continues after our Superfood posts, we cover the two absolute worst foods to eat.

Unfortunately, at this time, they are in a LOT of the foods you’ll find in grocery stores & supermarkets. But these two foods are really so bad for you, it’s very much worth the effort to avoid them. One piece of good news is that if you have been eating a lot of them & stop, you’ll very likely lose quite bit of weight & virtually all of it will be fat.)

c) Find out which of the foods you like are a bit of a mixed review healthwise & be sure to only eat each one only occasionally. For the ones that are mostly OK this can be once or twice a week. For the ones that are mostly NOT OK, once or twice a year will serve your health better.

But by regularly including some of them, you have more freedom of choice; you’ll enjoy what you eat more; & you’ll find it much easier to sustain a health-enhancing style of eating. (It also makes it easier to go out to eat to have these extra choices that are OK occasionally.)

(In our posts on food we cover several such foods.

And, the more of the next set of guidelines you follow, the more you can get away with in eating such foods, since your body will process them better.)

d) Do some kind of moderately vigorous or vigorous aerobic (or cardio) exercise at least three non consecutive days a week. And, if you can, build on that until you do over 1200 calories a week of aerobic exercise.

e) Whether you do it at home or in a gym, each week, do at least two sessions of strength training (or lifting weights) with at least a day of rest in between for the muscles you exercise. Exercise most of the parts of your body. And, do it three times a week if you can.

f) Look for opportunities that fit your interests & lifestyle to be physically active in other ways in addition.

They can be fun like dancing. Or useful, like yardwork or running the vacuum cleaner or sweeping. Or simple, like just taking a few extra opportunities to walk a bit more. Or they can be mastering a physical skill or a stretching system like Tai Chi, Karate, or Yoga.

We’ll post more of these health guidelines in our next post.)

Guidelines to Good Health, Survival, & Longevity

Welcome to our health & self help blog.

In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.

Today's post: Thursday, 8-17-2006

Guidelines to Good Health, Survival, & Longevity

Following these guidelines helps you to have a good quality of life mostly unhampered by getting sick or disabled or spending a lot on drugs, doctors & hospitals.

And, it means you’ll have that quality of life for many years longer than many of the people who don’t follow these guidelines will live. (Your quality of life may be good into your nineties or beyond while people who follow none of these guidelines often die before age 80 – & many even earlier.)

In addition, as you get older, you’ll gradually find you look years younger than other people your age.

1. Build a worthwhile life. Find work you care about & do well. Find purposes you care about & make a contribution to them. Care about your friends & family; be good to them to the best of your ability; & enjoy their company regularly.

2. Make an intelligent, focused, & continuous effort to become & stay economically competent. Becoming rich & financially independent can help. But it is NOT essential. However, it is essential to avoid being too poor to lack medical care; decent food; & a safe place to live. And, it’s enormously helpful to get & maintain good credit & some savings.

3. Enjoy life. Do some things you enjoy every week. And, keep learning new things that interest you. Know & keep expanding the lists of things you like & appreciate. And enjoy as many as you can.

4. Stay safe. Follow safety precautions. Heed warnings. Avoid life-threatening risks that are not necessary to undergo. Learn how to handle dangerous situations well & master the necessary skills BEFORE you get into them. Life has risks; but you can cut the risks in YOUR case. Learn to jump into things feet first instead of head first.

a) In particular, it’s well worth remembering that more people are killed or badly injured in car accidents than in shooting wars; & this is often true even while wars are actively going on !!

* Avoid driving drunk or riding with someone who is drunk if you possibly can.

** Always, repeat ALWAYS, wear your seat belts when driving or riding in a car. You simply never know when you’ll be in an accident. And, if you simply ALWAYS wear your seat belt as a matter of habit & strong personal policy, you’ll have it on when you DO need it.

On the average, when you always wear your seat belt, you will walk away unhurt from about 2/3 of the accidents that would otherwise have injured you or killed you without one.

In addition, if you are hurt anyway & survive, insurance statistics show that your injuries & medical expenses are about a third as much as they would have been without a seat belt.

Several people I care about have walked away from accidents that would have injured them or killed them because they WERE wearing their seat belts when those accidents happened.

*** Practice fire safety.

In particular, use smoke detectors where you sleep. When fires happen, people who are awakened by smoke detectors usually survive. And people without smoke detectors very often to usually do not.

5. Follow these good health generating & health protecting guidelines.:

(This one is our specialty.)

We’ll post those in our next post.

Exercise cuts tummy fat, even in smaller amounts.

Welcome to our health & self help blog.

In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.

Today's post: Wednesday, 8-16-2006

Great news: Exercise cuts tummy fat, even in smaller amounts.

Research done at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and reported in the International Journal of Obesity, showed that when women cut calories enough to cause some fat loss,

*both the women who exercised more AND the women who walked at a moderate pace only 3 days a week, lost significant amounts of abdominal fat;

&, **the women who only cut calories lost virtually no abdominal fat, although they lost some fat elsewhere on their bodies.

This research was reported online just recently by Reuters. (I found it in Yahoo News under Reuters in Yahoo’s Health news section.)

That’s important for two reasons.

First, although more than 1200 calories of exercise a week & more than 1500 calories a week of aerobic, or cardio, exercise have already been shown to cut tummy fat by themselves, (& to boost your HDL levels),
it’s very encouraging to know that eating more vegetables & cutting out junk calories plus exercising as little as a walk three times a week can cut your tummy fat also.

So, if you haven’t yet started any exercise or you are horribly pressed for time, by all means try this out.

Second, abdominal or tummy fat is associated with increased risk of developing type II diabetes & heart disease.

So, whether exercise directly reduces these risks AND cuts tummy fat or it has these effects in part BECAUSE it cuts tummy fat, take heart.

When combined with eating right,
even taking a walk three times a week will help !!

Why get sick? Prevent it instead.

Welcome to our health & self help blog.

In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.

Today's post: Monday, 8-14-2006

Why get sick? Prevent it instead.

Doctors are just now beginning to get up to speed on effective ways to get people to exercise & to recommend other things that it’s now known actually work to keep you well.

In each of those areas, things are changing for the better.

But, did you know there is an area most doctors already know well that will keep you from getting sick?

If you have young children, you may already be familiar with this one.

Vaccines usually prevent you from getting the disease they immunize you against.

But there are new ones you might not yet have gotten. And, to keep up your protection, did you know, you have to renew the ones you’ve already gotten.

Diseases like tetanus, pneumonia, polio, & meningitis can & do kill people.

You can avoid them all with vaccines.

And, there are now some vaccines against some sexually transmitted diseases. The FDA recently approved one for the strains of HPV that are thought to trigger cervical cancer in women, for example.

Do you & your children all have the recommended vaccines? Do you have all the ones for other diseases you’d like to avoid as well?

And, if so, are the ones you HAVE had recent enough to still protect you?

The Kaiser health system is excellent about listing for you at every opportunity the vaccines they show that you’ve had; when you had the last one: & their recommendation as to when you should get your next one.

It can save your life or save you much suffering, time off work, & disability to get the vaccines you might need later & to be sure you renew them a bit BEFORE the recommended time to be sure you remember in time.

Have YOU done it?

It’s certainly worth it. Most vaccines are very well targeted & extremely effective.

Flu vaccines are a bit different. Flu vaccines are sometimes less effective because the strain that actually attacks you later in the flu season may not be covered or you may still get a milder case of a flu variant that year’s shot does cover but it may only give partial immunity to you.

However, if you possibly can, get one every year -- &, as early in the fall as you can manage.

You WILL get far fewer cases of the flu; & any flu you do get will very likely not hit you so hard.

Even better, you are less likely to GIVE the flu to your friends, family, & co-workers if you get the flu vaccine.

In addition, since each year’s flu shot targets different strains, I believe that if you get the flu vaccine every year, you gradually build up multiple immunities & are even less likely to get the flu or get a bad case of it.

Elementary school teachers & childcare workers often catch extra colds & get the flu from the children they work with when they are new to the profession.

But, after a few years, they hardly ever get the flu or get colds. This is precisely the effect I think you get if you get the flu shot every year.

Boost your HDL to protect your heart:

Boost your HDL to protect your heart:

Welcome to our health & self help blog.

In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.

Today's post: Friday, 8-11-2006

Boost your HDL to protect your heart:

Recently, researchers have found that having high levels of HDL cholesterol is MORE protective of your heart than having low LDL levels.

And, having low HDL levels is more predictive of heart problems etc than having high LDL levels.

Having HDL levels of 40 & under is now considered high risk.

Having HDL levels of 60 & over is considered desirable & protective.

And, having considerably higher HDL is better & has been found most often in people who are unusually long-lived.

In recent years, mine has always been over 70; & it was 95 I think when I had it tested last.

And, I considered simply listing the things I do that I believe produce this effect.

But, I decided to check online for sources.

I found wonderful stuff. It seems researchers have confirmed all the things you would have otherwise had to trust me on.

The things you are about to read are EXACTLY the things I’ve done to keep my own HDL levels high.

So, I confidently predict that if you do them all, you’ll see very positive increases your tested levels of HDL also.

(Important note.

If you have heart disease or think you might already have it, do the food & supplement steps first & use a very gradual & somewhat lower intensity exercise program until you’ve got your HDL over 60.

This is particularly important if you are over 50 & have not exercised much at all recently.

At that point, you can gradually be a bit more aggressive in your intensity on your exercise & it will probably be safe for you.

And, our next post will cover a way to do vigorous aerobic exercise that produces fitness faster than the way most people do it; & Dr Al Sears says it also is much, much safer than the way most people do it.)

Here are the two sources for effective ways to boost your HDL that I found online today & my comments.

By Gabe Mirkin, MD on www.drmirkin.com

"Avoid refined carbohydrates -- sugar, flour, white rice and milled corn. Foods that cause a spike in blood sugar drop your HDL cholesterol. You raise HDL by exercising and avoiding refined carbohydrates.

To raise HDL cholesterol, run at least seven miles a week or burn at least 1200 calories with exercise per week.

Lose weight. For every pound of fat lost, expect a one percent rise in HDL.

Don't smoke. A study at Vanderbilt University showed that within just one week of quitting smoking, HDL levels increased by seven points."

Our comments:

1. Avoid ANY food or drink that has high fructose corn syrup in it.

This stuff both tends to spike blood sugar - and, it tends to make you fat, since you do NOT feel less hungry after eating or drinking it.

So, avoiding it totally helps boost your HDL's by helping you eat & drink things that have less impact on spiking your blood sugar --
-- and, it helps you avoid gaining excess fat or to lose it & keep it off.

So, if Dr Mirkin is correct, avoiding high fructose corn syrup will increase your HDL levels & avoid having them go DOWN. And, it does so in TWO of the ways he recommends.

2. Burning at least 1200 calories in your exercise program each week has been proven to not just boost your HDL levels, it boosts the fraction that is most valuable & protects your heat best.

And, doing 1500 calories or more of relatively vigorous exercise each week is even better.

Dr Peter Wood at Stanford did this research many years ago. He & his staff at Stanford did sophisticated testing of HDL levels in this research.

In addition, doing 1500 calories or more of relatively vigorous exercise each week has recently been shown to reduce, or help you lose or not get, excess abdominal, or tummy, fat.

Since that's the kind of body fat that is most likely to induce heart disease, this strikes me as connected the effect on keeping your levels of the most health enhancing HDL fraction high.

Dr Wood studied runners; but Nordic Track, walking on an incline on a treadmill, using an elliptical trainer, or using a stepping exerciser will work just as well.

3. In addition to smoking lowering your HDL's significantly, I remember reading that separate research has been shown that the remaining HDL in smokers is less effective in keeping your blood vessels clean & smooth than the HDL in nonsmokers.

Few smokers know it, but smoking kills far more smokers each year with heart disease & stroke than cancer does.

And, of course, this suggests that making a very strong effort to avoid second hand smoke will help you keep your HDL levels up.

From www.loweringcholesterol.net,

"Raising HDL or "good" cholesterol was not a priority until a few years ago. Most studies have focused on how lowering LDL or "bad" cholesterol that can reduce the risk or coronary heart disease. But in the past few years, researchers have identified that HDL acted as an independent factor and was also critical in the overall health of your heart.

The National Cholesterol Education Program's new guidelines now recognize that low HDL levels as a strong independent risk factor for coronary artery disease.

From the research we know that HDL is a complex molecule made up of lipids, cholesterol, and protein. The way it works is that HDL acts as much like a bottom feeder of a fish tank. It cleans off the walls of blood vessels, thus removing excess cholesterol, LDL. The HDL then carries this cholesterol to the liver where it is processed.
Doctors still focus strongly on lowering LDL but are now including recommendations that raising HDL is another important factor to reduce risk of heart disease.

If you have had your cholesterol levels checked and your HDL is less than 40, you should discuss with your doctor ways in which to increase the HDL level. Again, HDL level above 60 is ideal."

"According to the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP), Niacin or vitamin B3 is the treatment of choice for normalizing the blood lipid levels. Several double-blind placebo-controlled studies have found that niacin increased HDL (good cholesterol) by 30% or more while reducing total cholesterol by 10-25% and triglycerides by as much as 50%.[1],[2],[3],[4],[5]

A common side effect of niacin is flushing which is the result of blood vessels opening wide.

However, another form of Niacin called Inositol Hexanicotinate (IH) or "No-Flush Niacin" is proven as an effective and safer alternative to niacin.[6]
In one study, Welsh and Eade reported that inositol hexanicotinate was more effective than niacin in regulating cholesterol levels."

"Ten human volunteers were given 500 mg of curcumin for seven days during a controlled trial at Amala Cancer Research Centre in India.
After seven days, they noted a 29% increase in good cholesterol (HDL) and a reduction of 11.6% total cholesterol. Lipid peroxidation was also reduced by 33%"

"Chromium (as Polynicotinate)

In a 2000 randomized controlled trial at King Abdulaziz University, 44 adults were given 200mg of chromium or a placebo was given in a double blind cross over study during 8 weeks resulted in decreasing triglycerides while increasing the mean high-density lipoprotein (HDL) significantly.[1] Another study conducted at Shaare Zedek Medical Center, Israel, published in Metabolism in July 1992 reported that 76 patients who had heart disease were treated with 250 mcg of chromium increased their HDL level greatly.[2] In a 1991 study, 63 men at University of North Carolina suffering from hypertension and taking beta-blockers were studied. (Beta blockers are known to lower HDL and raise LDL cholesterol levels.) Chromium supplements increased HDL cholesterol levels by an average of nearly 6 points, a 16 percent increase. No side effects were observed. According to Harvey Simon, MD of Harvard Medical School, a 6-point increase in HDL, which was achieved in the chromium trial, should reduce the risk of heart attack by about 20 percent.[3]"


"Exercise: Although not everyone can run, burning between 1,200 and 1,500 calories each week doing aerobic exercise can have dramatic results. Not only is exercising a wonderful way to keep your heart healthy, it also helps lose weight, which is an additional benefit. By losing 10 pounds of excess weight, according to Kokkinos, "That's where you see significant increases in your HDL cholesterol."


Avoid Trans Fatty Acids: Avoid trans fatty acid containing foods such as French fries, cookies, cakes and many of the fried fast foods.

Minimize Carbohydrates: Minimize carbohydrates by avoiding sugar, flour, potatoes and white rice. Studies prove that HDL level drops dramatically when blood sugar is spiked by carbohydrates."

"HDL or Good Cholesterol Foods

Red Wine: Drinking red wine is yet another option as long as it is consumed within reason. "There are antioxidants contained in red wines such as cabernet sauvignon, Merlot, and pinot noir, that help slow down the oxidation of HDL and LDL cholesterol", according to Vincent Rifici of the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. What was shown is not that the HDL was higher than those not drinking, but that the HDL contained higher levels of several types of blood fats, thus giving the positive result. There is still a lot more research required but this could prove to be a wonderful option.

Orange Juice: There was one specific study conducted at the University of Western Ontario in Canada where 25 students drank orange juice every day for four week. The results were amazing. HDL was raised an astounding 21%.

The individual leading this study, Elzbieta Kurowska, stated this increase might have been caused by the flavonoid in the orange juice.

Beans: Kidney and red beans are a wonderful choice for raising HDL. These foods are low-glycemic carbohydrates that during digestion do not cause insulin spikes. Studies conducted where people ate foods rich in low-glycemic carbohydrate measure with the highest level of HDL.

Fish: Fish eaten several times a week can also be beneficial in raising HDL since it contains omega-3 fatty acids. This fish would include sardines, salmon, sea bass, herring, etc. If you do not like to eat fish, fish oil can be used as a supplement although the benefit takes much longer.

Olive Oil: Use oils higher in mono-unsaturated fats, such as olive oil or canola oil. Including 1-2 teaspoons of olive or canola oil with each meal would be sufficient.

Oat bran: Lowers cholesterol and LDL and raises HDL. In one study, two ounces of oat bran per day was associated with a 16% lowering of LDL and, after 3 months, an increase in HDL of as much as 15% (JAMA. 1991. 285. 1833-1839).

Onions: Some research suggests that half of raw onion/day may raise HDL as much as 30%."

My comments:

This stuff works !! I do virtually everything on these two lists; & my HDL is over 90.

In the second source, I did some paragraphing to make it a bit easier to read; but the quotes are exact.

I’m very positively impressed with both these sources & recommend them for the information content.

The second one sells some of the supplements listed. I do not know how the ones they sell compare to those in health food stores or how good their delivery process is; but if their information quality is indicative, it probably is good.

Here’s my comments on the second source.

You can begin to get some serious side effects if you take 1,000 mg of niacin or more a day. And, with the time release form, this can happen at more than 500 mg a day.

For exactly that reason, I take 300 mg a day of niacin just after breakfast as I find this produces far less flush then on an empty stomach. And, I take 300 mg of inositol hexaniacinate at breakfast & just after dinner.

Also, one of the reasons taking chromium polynicotinate also helps is that has both chromium which helps prevent blood sugar spikes and a form of niacin that also is flush free. I take 200 mg of that with breakfast.

I’ve been taking 400 mg a day of curcumin also just after dinner. Each of the three lipid effects this source reports is heart protective by itself. That curcumin does all three is outstanding.

Interestingly, I got started taking it because separate research done on the population of India where curcumin is found in high amounts in the curries they eat, suggests very strongly that taking curcumin or eating that much of it in curry tends to be an effective way to prevent Alzheimer’s disease.

Most of the foods this source recommends are in our previous posts as Superfoods.

Olive oil has been found to raise HDL levels slightly or leave them alone & to lower LDL levels considerably.

It’s no accident that the populations that eat the most olive oil also have the least heart attacks.

Even more important is to eat ONLY olive oil. Oils like corn oil or safflower oil when used in cooking instead of butter or lard will lower LDL’s too. But, unlike olive oil, they also LOWER your HDL.

Also, canola oil is high in omega 6 oils compared to olive oil & I believe is much less desirable health wise & has less of a positive effect on HDL’s. So, I don’t recommend it. Although, it does have some omega 3 oils that are beneficial, I think that eating high omega 3 fish &/or taking omega 3 supplements is a better source of that.

And, eating walnuts also provides plant based omega 3’s & has other health benefits also.

Drinking red wine & dark beer does boost your HDL levels. And, drinking two seven drinks a week seems correlated with the best health results.

(And, you can drink grape juice & the resveratrol red wine has. Drinking green tea & eating lots of high oxidant fruits & vegetables & taking antioxidant vitamins & supplements also helps & is heart protective.)

(Drinking 10 to 13 drinks a week tends to produce some health problems. And, 14 or more tends to make you fat & tends to trigger diseases & can even damage your brain & lower your sex drive.)

Also, on inositol hexaniacinate, when I added 300 mg of it twice a day, my HDL went well above 90, which I had never been tested at before. So, between my own test results & the second source above, I can strongly recommend it for boosting your HDL.

Overall, this is a great list of effective ways to boost your HDL’s.

I hope these things work as well for you as they have for me.

Vitamin C may slow aging:

Welcome to our health & self help blog.

In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.

Today's post: Wednesday, 8-9-2006

Vitamin C may slow aging:

Researchers have found that, physically, aging is created at the most basic level by fraying at the ends of the DNA in human cells. These ends are called telomeres.

So, as they get shorter, the copies a person’s body makes become less of a correct copy.

And, at some point, either the copying process breaks down or the copies become too flawed to sustain life & death from aging results.

So, if you can keep your telomeres as long as possible, you’ll both age less & live longer. And, the less aging you experience, the better your health will be.

Therefore, anything that helps you keep your telomeres from shortening is well worth doing.

Earlier this morning, I read the health article in an online newsletter I get.

In it, Dr. Al Sears reports that in sufficient amounts, vitamin C has been proven to slow the process of telomere shortening by 62 percent.

Wow !!

That is a HUGE difference.

So, in addition to taking a good multivitamin plus mineral tablet & whatever other supplements you take now, you might want to consider taking an additional 500 mg of vitamin C twice a day. (I take 1,050 mg at breakfast. But, 500 mg of that is NatureMade’s time release supplement.)

Unless of course, you aren’t already doing that.

There’s more. I may have personally experienced this effect. Since I’ve been taking that much vitamin C for at least the second half of my life, I’ve gradually found I look a lot younger than many people my age.

At 62, my hair is still mostly its original color; & I have few if any wrinkles.

I’d presumed that it was the other vitamins I’ve taken or that I usually wear a hat when I’m outside in the sun or lucky heredity. And, I am certain NOT smoking helped.

And, of course, any or all of these things may be the case.

But the magnitude of this effect of vitamin C may well be enough to have done that all by itself.

Needless to say, I’ll never voluntarily quit taking it after learning this.

Also, though I’ve only recently adopted eating lots of fruit & vegetables every day, it’s worth knowing that I might have done even better had I started much earlier.

The best of the fruits & vegetables have many other antioxidants which may have given me quite a bit more protection from aging.

In addition, many of the sources of vitamin C for supplements are mixes of the left handed & right handed forms of vitamin C.

And, as far as I know, only the natural one, which I think is the left handed one, has these effects.

And, ALL of the vitamin C you get from eating lots of fruits & vegetables every day is in the natural form that’s most likely to have this effect.

Two ways Exercise Makes You Smarter:

Welcome to our health & self help blog.

In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.

Today's post: Tuesday, 8-8-2006

Two ways Exercise Makes You Smarter:

1. The first way is highlighted in this month’s (August 2006) Reader’s Digest in their article, “The #1 Secret To a Sharper Brain”

The author concludes that of all the ways to boost your brainpower, regular exercise is the most effective & essential.

(If staying sharp & thinking well is important to you, you might like the rest of his article & find it well worth reading as his other 10 strategies are sound also in my humble opinion.)

The researchers he quotes say that a combination of strength training & aerobics work best & that exercise prevents many kinds of brain decline as we get older.

In addition, “exercise increases capillary development the brain” which gives your brain more blood supply & the nutrients & oxygen it runs on.

The effect is like connecting a supercharger in an engine that is designed to run best when supercharged.

And, no surprise, fit people “have sharper brains” & think better & faster.

But, of most importance, “people who are out of shape, but then get into shape, sharpen up their brains.

The author also mentions that exercise helps prevent “heart disease, obesity, diabetes, “ & other diseases that harm the brain.

2. Excess stress tends to divert blood flow from the cerebral cortex, which is the part of your brain that thinks & can help you come up with creative solutions to problems.

And, as Kenneth Cooper found, regular aerobic exercise helps people have less of this reaction when they are stressed.

Your stress level is reduced while you exercise, much like meditation. And, as you become fit, your breathing & heart rate at rest slow but become more powerful. In addition, exercise teaches & trains your body to speed up on demand but to then relax quickly afterwards.

(In fact, one of the ways to measure fitness is to have people exercise enough to speed their heart rate; then have them stop; & measure how long it takes for their heart rate to return to normal. The less time it takes, the more fit the person is.)

This acts as a shock absorber for sudden stress as your heart is better rested when sudden stress starts & recovers more quickly when it stops.

In addition, the better blood supply to your brain when you are fit means that when some of it is diverted to your muscles in a fight or flight response, there’s likely to be more still available than it would be if you weren’t fit.

Conclusion: There are other ways to be mentally sharper. And, there are other ways to prevent or reduce excessive stress. (By all means uses as many as you can.)

But regular exercise is still the most effective & important strategy you can use to keep your brain sharp & effective.

Avoid type II Diabetes, part 6:

Welcome to our health & self help blog.

In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.

Today's post: Monday, 8-7-2006

Avoid type II Diabetes, part 6:

The previous five posts have things to do to protect you from getting type II diabetes.

Here’s a new incentive:

There’s increasing evidence that type II diabetes or a variant of it is one of the main causes of Alzheimer’s disease.

So, if you want to keep your life under your control & have a life worth living; & you want to spare the people who care for you grief & hardship later, you owe it to yourself to keep away from type II diabetes as well as you possibly can.

Are these things important to you?

If so, you owe it to yourself to do the things that keep you away from type two diabetes.

One of the best ways to do that is to exercise regularly -- as we’ve covered in the earlier posts in this series.

But, here’s some interesting news for you. >>>

It turns out that regular exercise also independently & directly protects you from mental decline in addition to protecting you from type II diabetes.

Even better, if you start exercising regularly, you begin to think better NOW as well.

Does that sound good to you?

Good. It certainly sounds good to me.

So, congratulations on any exercising you are already doing; & best wishes on beginning to exercise regularly if you aren’t already.

Also, be sure to see our next post as it has details on just that effect – that exercise makes you smarter virtually as soon as you do it; & why it’s thought to work.

Avoid type II Diabetes, part 5:

Welcome to our health & self help blog.

In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.

Today's post: Wednesday, 8-2-2006

Avoid type II Diabetes, part 5:

The previous four posts have things to do to protect you from getting type II diabetes.

Should you do them?

Probably. People who don’t do them often do develop type II diabetes. People who do none of them usually do. And, unfortunately, most Americans don’t yet do these things.

But, it may well be that it’s imperative, in your particular case, that you do all of them.

And, it’s easily possible that you might not know it. <<<

Imagine standing on the edge of a cliff in the dark. And, you don’t know the cliff is there. You could easily step off. Ouch !!

If you haven’t had your fasting blood glucose checked & had your HBA1C level checked, you are in the dark as to what your risk of type II diabetes is.

If you read my post yesterday, you saw that even though I was in reasonably good health & already doing some of the things on this list, without realizing it, I’d drifted into a high risk zone with the blood glucose level they found of 115.

Yours could easily be 124 or even 138, right on the edge of type II diabetes or slightly to well over it & you might well still feel healthy & have no symptoms yet.

So, one of the best ways to avoid type II diabetes is to have your fasting blood glucose & HBA1C tested regularly.

On HBA1C, desirable is 5.6 or less; 5.9 is beginning to be high risk; & 6.0 & up is early stage type II diabetes or worse.

And, if your fasting blood glucose is 90 or more or your HBA1C is about 5.8 or more, do your health a favor & take action to bring them down to 89 or less & 5.6 or less.

The desirable fasting blood glucose level is between about 63 to 89.

If yours is 90 to 99, try eliminating high fructose corn syrup; cut the amount of sugar you eat each week; & reduce the amount of refined grain foods & potatoes you eat or eliminate them & substitute whole grain foods for the refined grains & try sweet potatoes or a low starch vegetable like green beans to substitute for potatoes. And, if you don’t exercise regularly at all, add at least enough walking or strength training to total 500 calories each week. (Walking 5 miles total is about 500 calories.)

Then get re-tested to see how you did.

If you test at 100 to 124, try doing all the previous list; eat more low glycemic index foods; and be sure to do or begin doing both aerobic or cardio exercise at least 3 days a week & strength training at least twice a week

Then get re-tested to see how you did.

On HBA1C, desirable is 5.6 or less; 5.9 is beginning to be high risk; & 6.0 & up is early stage type II diabetes or worse.

What if you get 125 or more on the fasting blood glucose or 6.1 or higher on the HBA1C?

If it’s just a bit over 126 & 6.2 say, you’re just over the edge into early stage type II diabetes.

Try doing everything on this list & get retested. And, try doing more of each if you aren’t a lot closer to the desirable range then.

Why do that?

The side benefit is each of the actions in these last few posts will help you lose excess body fat.

But the most important reason is that failing to do these things usually results in your readings getting worse.

Then you have type II diabetes.

Why go there?

People who have type II diabetes suddenly can have (& sometimes do have) their vision impaired badly enough it isn’t safe for them to drive when they are driving or be unable to read a computer screen when they are at work doing an important project.

People who have type II diabetes can go blind from it in fact.

If you are a man & get type II diabetes, your risk of heart attack & stroke doubles; &, if you are a woman, your risk of heart attack & stroke quadruples to four times a much.

People who have type II can have their kidneys damaged enough to need kidney dialysis or even to have their kidneys replaced.

People with type II can have their circulation impaired enough to be impotent or even to cause their feet to be amputated.

People with type II have trouble recovering from being sick & are more likely to die from the flu since type II impairs their immune responses.

Mercifully, the doctors know that & for full blown type II they prescribe multiple finger sticks to help you manage your blood sugar multiple times a day; &, you virtually always have two or three drugs prescribed to control your blood sugar.

(If you use two drugs or more, it’s more likely that your blood sugar will come down to safe levels. And, often even if one drug does the job initially, if you don’t take a second kind of drug with it, the first one will stop working. But if you start with two or more, the combination tends to keep working.)

Of course, taking two or more drugs every day costs money. You have to take time to keep getting the prescriptions refilled. And, you have to worry about or put up with their side effects.

You also have to learn what drugs they interact with.

When you have type II diabetes, you can take the drugs & measure your blood sugar several times a day or you can get horribly sick & even die or get severely incapacitated.

That’s a nasty choice !!

Why go there?

Get your fasting blood sugar & your HBA1C measured regularly. And, if you see or start having results higher than the desirable range on either one, take action !!

The road to type II diabetes is a great road to stay off of !!

Avoid type II Diabetes, part 4:

Welcome to our health & self help blog.

In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.

Today's post: Tuesday, 8-1-2006

Avoid type II Diabetes, part 4:

In addition to regular exercise—both strength training & aerobic or cardio each week; & eliminating foods that contain high fructose corn syrup; & eating mostly low glycemic index foods that we discussed a couple of posts ago, sharply limit your intake of sugar.

That DOES have an effect on your blood sugar levels.

Despite my regular exercise & mostly eating low glycemic index foods, I once got a fasting blood glucose reading of 115. Mercifully, as I didn’t then know that was way too high & how dangerous it can be, my doctor let me know that it was too high.

I remembered that the applesauce I was then buying had sugar added. (Applesauce was & is a staple food in my diet.) And, I was adding quite a bit of brown sugar to my breakfast cereal three times a week.

So, I simply made it a policy to only get applesauce with no sugar added (or unsweetened.)

I cut the amount of brown sugar I used on the days I used it in half. And, I cut the number of days I add it from 3 to 2.

In addition, each of those two days that I still have brown sugar on my cereal, I add about a teaspoon of ground cinnamon as that has been shown to keep the sugar you eat it with from spiking your blood sugar.

That doesn’t sound like much of a change, does it?

When I was retested, my blood glucose dropped 30 points !! From 115 to 85.

115 is just 10 points away from the 125 that many doctors now label as early stage type II diabetes. And, 85 is low enough it’s at or close to the desirable range. So, that’s an enormous difference.

(Keep in mind I was exercising regularly the whole time & eating a health-enhancing diet otherwise which may have acted as an extra catalyst.)

So, if you are eating too much sugar, or you are eating too much & don’t want to give it up totally, try the steps I took -- along with adding the strategies in the previous 3 posts if you aren’t doing them already.