Bringing wholesome healthy tips
During the last years of her life, my grandmother had to take blood thinners because she was at high risk for stroke. At the time, this meant taking her in regularly to have her levels checked via blood work. And it required closely watching her diet so that she didn’t eat too many vegetables rich in vitamin K, like asparagus and broccoli. She also had to avoid drinking cranberry juice…
In 2008, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended that doctors stop routine prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing for prostate cancer due to its high rate of false positives. But while the recommendation was meant to save men the stress, pain and potential long-term effects of an unnecessary biopsy, like urinary incontinence, the fallout has been a rise in metastatic prostate cancer. Unfortunately, it’s left men with few other options for…
I don’t know about you, but it seems like every time I turn around, I hear about another risk factor that could be putting my heart at risk. And it’s not just the usual health and lifestyle suspects anymore, like lack of exercise and carrying around too much weight we have to worry about. Instead, weird factors like air pollution and traffic noise are being shown to dramatically increase our…
Depression in older adults is common, but contrary to what many people think, it is not a normal part of aging. Illness, medications, loneliness and physical changes that limit mobility are some of the things that can cause depression. But one of the biggest contributors is poor nutrition. Surprised? We already know that the antioxidants found in certain fruits can protect the brain from age-related changes linked to Alzheimer’s and…
Atrial fibrillation, or AFib, is a rapid, irregular heartbeat that causes the blood to pool in your heart. This can allow clots to form that can travel to your brain and cause a stroke. There are a number of risk factors for AFib, including being over 60 years or age or having diabetes, high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure or prior heart attacks. But even seemingly unrelated…
According to Gallup, approximately 15 million U.S. adults now say they’ve used injectable prescription drugs to lose weight. Yet, while these GLP-1 drugs, better known by brand names like Ozempic and Wegovy, are having their moment in the sun, more and more reports of serious side effects are stacking up. Luckily, recent research has proved that you don’t have to risk the dangers of these drugs to lose weight. In…
Shakespeare once said that the eyes are the windows to the soul, expressing the belief that a person’s emotions can be read through their eyes. But that’s not all that the eyes can reveal… It turns out that our eyes can provide a glimpse into what else can be going on in the body, including hints about many health ailments — and not just those affecting the eyes. In some…
Carotenoids are the pigments responsible for the bright colors of fruits and vegetables. But they do a lot more than give foods like red peppers and orange carrots their bright colors… According to scholars, aging is defined as the progressive impairment of physiological integrity over time. The biggest contributors to that destruction are reactive oxygen species (ROS) — the catalysts at the core of the “Theory of Free Radical Aging.”…
Do you spend several hours a week at the gym, running the treadmill and lifting weights to reach a weight goal? Or maybe you work out at home, streaming fitness videos and hitting the pavement to get your steps in after lunch and supper. Maybe you’ve been at it for a while but not seeing the results you were hoping for in the mirror — and you’ve started to question…
We tend to think of depression as a mood disorder. As such, we expect it to manifest psychological feelings — like persistent sadness, anxiousness, hopelessness or pessimism. We might also feel irritable, worthless or helpless and lose interest in hobbies or activities we once enjoyed. Depression can even make a person have dark thoughts that include suicide. These feelings are associated with the mind. But depression isn’t just a disease…