I am not great about getting out of bed. Once I’m up it’s fine but the actual getting out of bed after the alarm has gone off isn’t easy. However, when it comes to other wake up calls I don’t waste any time. If I start to put on weight, I change what I’m eating until I’m back to my normal size. If my cholesterol is heading in the wrong direction I make adjustments to my diet until it’s back in a safe range. There are some wake up calls you simply don’t want to miss.

Don't miss that wake up call!

Yet a lot of people do just that. A recent study found that one year after suffering a heart attack, or undergoing heart bypass surgery or angioplasty, only around one third of people are still exercising regularly to reduce their risks of having a second attack.

The study was done by researchers at Case Western Reserve University. They followed 248 people who had just had a serious heart issue. All 248 of them took part in a 12 week course to help them make the lifestyle changes they needed to turn their health around. But one year later only 37 percent of the group were still exercising three times a week. And women were more likely than men to have dropped out.

Now, many of these people were seniors and retired so it wasn’t as if they didn’t have enough time to exercise regularly. And they weren’t being asked to do a triathlon or run a marathon. All they had to do was exercise regularly – something as simple as brisk walking, some light weight lifting etc. Yet despite having had one heart attack or heart bypass surgery they still couldn’t find the motivation to make a change that could prevent them having a second one.

The other day I met a man who had a similar wake up call. He’d taken a new test to predict his risk of developing diabetes. It’s a simple blood test but it looks at a number of other factors to make the assessment. It rates your risk on a scale of one to ten – with ten being the highest risk. This gentleman’s score was 8. He immediately signed up for an education class on how to make the changes he needed to make. The class was filled with other people in his shoes and the course instructors said one of the best things everyone could do was to join a gym and exercise regularly.

Three months later the man’s risk is down to a 5 and getting lower all the time. He recently returned to the class and was talking to some of the other participants. He said many of them say they are “considering” joining a gym but haven’t gotten around to it. Considering! What’s to consider. If your life is at risk, and in this case it is, what else do you need to help you make the changes you need.

Too often we get comfortable, even complacent, with our lifestyle even when we know it’s putting us at risk of heart attack or stroke or diabetes or all of them combined. Change isn’t easy, it requires a lot of effort to stop doing what we have always done and start doing what we have always avoided.

But the alternative isn’t much fun. If I hit the snooze button on my early morning wake up call, all I’m at risk of is sleeping late. If I get a test that says my lifestyle is slowly, or not so slowly, killing me and I ignore that wake up call, the consequences can be really unpleasant.

I remember when you used to just get water from a tap. Actually, I remember going to my uncle’s farm outside Dublin in Ireland when he still got his water from a well. Now it seems most people in the U.S. get their drinking water from a bottle, usually over priced, often packed with stuff that has nothing to do with thirst quenching and everything to do with marketing.

Even so, when I saw this article in Men’s Health magazine about how many calories some of these so-called health drinks, including water, are packed with, I did a double take. Scary stuff.

Check this out!  On the nutritional label for Vitamin Water the calories are listed as 50 calories per serving.   One bottle of Vitamin Water is 2.5 servings, therefore, so if you drink the entire bottle, (and who doesn’t) you will be drinking in 125 calories and 33 grams of sugar!  Yes! Right …don’t you think they should have the amount that is in the entire bottle?  Most people assume 1 bottle is a serving.

And in the Men’s Health article, one drink was even packed with enough junk that it pretty much filled up your calorie needs for an entire day. One drink. Astonishing.

Now when I’m on my 5th pint of Bodkin’s Old Ale I won’t feel quite so bad.

I had a wonderful time today.  I met with 3 of my friends from college, no, I met with one friend from college, one friend whom I have known since 8th grade, and one friend who introduced herself to me when we were in second grade and I was the “new” girl.  So we have all been friends for a heck of a long time.

Now, there have been some big chunks of time when we did not communicate very much.  Sue (second grade) got married in college and left to move with her husband who was in the Air Force.

Donna, who went to Puerto Vallarta with me on spring break in college then we lost touch for about 30 years because my name changed (got married and there was that whole thing with the Witness Protection program but I don’t want to go into that right now)

And Cindy, who has come in and out of my life just about 6 times a year, every year, all the time.

Staying in touch

We have shared some challenging times together, laughed a lot, cried some, had our own life experiences, and we met for lunch today and it was fun.

We’ve lost a parent or two, had children, taken care of our families and won and lost in life, but today we had lunch and conversation, and simple, comfortable, close feelings of belonging to each other.

Happiness is Contagious!

Harvard University and the University of California conducted a study of nearly 5,000 people over the span of 20 years that measured their happiness levels.  It turns out that happiness is infectious.  So when a person is happy it is contagious and spreads through thier network of friends and on to thier friends friends, in other words, happiness becomes viral the measurable effect can last for up to a year.

There are lots of studies and surveys that say staying healthy is exercise, eating right and being connected to people you love.  I believe it because today, I feel great!

Growing up in England school lunches were one of the low points of the day. The mashed potatoes were lumpy and cold; the meat greasy and often unidentifiable;  the vegetables boiled to within an inch of their life; and don’t even get me started on the desserts – anything with a name like Spotted Dick is to be avoided at all costs.

So when I saw an article touting not just the taste benefits of a new school lunch program in England, but also claiming it helped improve pupil’s test scores I had to take a second look.

The study was done by the Royal Economic Society and it showed that youngsters who were given healthy school meals did better in tests than a similar group of 11 year olds who ate the more traditional rubbish.

These were not just any ordinary school meals by the way. They were introduced by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver as part of his “Feed Me Better” campaign. Oliver – who became famous as the “Naked Chef” because of his love of simple, unadorned dishes -  worked hard to replace the usual heavily processed, high fat meals with food that was much more nutritious with an emphasis on items like fish and broccoli.

A number of schools introduced those meals in 2004. This study is the first to take a look at the impact of the better diet on children’s test results.

The Proof Is In The Pudding

The researchers found that schools that served the healthier meals showed a 3 to 6 percentage point improvement in the number of students who reached the required level in English tests, and a 3 to 8 percentage point improvement in children attaining a higher level science pass.

Even more impressive was the number of children who were marked down as having an unauthorized absence from school. That number fell 15 percent compared to the schools that served the usual muck.

It makes sense. If you like the food you are being served at school, and you are doing better in the classroom you are more likely to want to go every day, or at least less likely to “bunk off” as we used to call it.

A Taste Of Success

Now, you might think that 3 to 6 points isn’t that big a deal, but it is as big an improvement in test scores as was produced by adding a special “literacy hour” in the late 1990s to help students with their reading.

There have been many studies over the years showing that good nutrition is an essential part of building a healthy brain. You can’t hope to be able to feed your brain information if you are feeding your body junk. That’s why studies like this are so important, they highlight the impact that a change in diet can have on a child’s performance in the classroom, and that in turn can hugely influence what they do in life. Good exam results, even at age 11, lay the groundwork for everything that happens from that point on.

The better food may be doing more than just boosting children’s ability to pay attention in the classroom. There is anecdotal evidence from some of the schools that children with asthma used their inhalers less often after they started on the more nutritious diet.

Either way, anything has to be better than spam fritters. Ugh. Just thinking about it sends my brain into a coma.

There is nothing better, more refreshing than a cold drink on a hot day. For me, after a tough workout a glass of cool, clear water is perfect. But only because my gym doesn’t sell beer! Other people turn to other beverages. And one that I came across the other day is not just a drink, it’s a full meal in a cup.It’s 7-11’s Super Big Gulp.

The Super Big Gulp is 44 oz (64 oz  if you don’t add ice but virtually everyone does) of pure, sweet, sugary crap. Just one of those drinks and you will have consumed approximately 523 calories and the equivalent of 35 teaspoons of sugar. For the ordinary person that’s one quarter of your entire calorie intake for the day. In a cup.

Ask yourself a simple question. If someone put a glass of water and, say, 12 teaspoons (the amount you would get in an average can of soda) in front of you, would you eat the sugar along with the water? Of course not, it would make you feel sick. Yet when the sugar is dissolved in the liquid, as it is in a can of soda, you don’t think about it. But it’s just the same. Try that at home. Get a 12 oz glass of water and put 12 teaspoons of sugar in it. Does that taste good to you? No. Imagine adding another 23 teaspoons of sugar to get the same amount as in a Super BG! Then you have to wonder what other chemicals the manufacturer is putting in the soda to make it taste drinkable. And in the case of the Super Big Gulp whatever they are putting in it, they are putting a lot of it in it.

The behemoth beverage is not just way more sugar than you need at any given time – actually more sugar than you need on any given day – it’s also more fluid than your stomach can handle at any one time. Studies show that the average human stomach can handle 32 ounces of fluids at a time. The Super BG is almost 140 percent bigger than that. And if you are eating a MacWhopper Burger and fries at the same time then there’s even less room in your stomach for all that liquid.

The report Liquid Candy, by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, says the average teenage boy already drinks 32 oz of soda a day, the average girl 23 oz. The rising levels of obesity in American children shows that the last thing they need is to be tempted with an even larger drink.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention there are approximately 300 deaths caused by dehydration in the U.S. every year. Most of those are due to diarrhea-related illness in young children. To the best of our knowledge there is not a serious issue with dehydration in the average teenager, or the average adult for that matter. So why would they need to drink 44 oz of anything, ever?

Are you really that thirsty?

Now that our amazing grand daughter Emma Danger is in our lives we are discovering new routines and making changes to re-visit old routines too!  She may be only 1 year but she is an opinionated, self-regulated, young lady who absolutely knows what she wants….and it’s “That”!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KB6toE9jD-w

She loves the word “That” and she has found out that it can be used for almost anything.  She will point and say, “That” and if you give her any lip, like saying, “Do you want the banana?”  She will continue to point and say “That”  until you finally, select the wanted object.  This can be pretty challenging if she is pointing to a dinner table filled with salt shakers, silverware, plates of food, etc.  Yes, Emma has her routine and she is picking up our routines too.

Kevin and I have decided to make sure she knows the “routine” when she comes to our house.  For instance, we all sit down for breakfast when Emma visits.  Normally, Kevin and I eat while we are editing this blog, or listening to the radio, or getting dressed, but when Emma is here we sit down and eat together. It represents how important she is to us.

There have been lots of studies on the importance of sharing meals together. In fact, studies have found that having a regular dining experience with your family is so important that children who have infrequent dinners, (say less than 3 times a week), are  twice as likely to use tobacco or marijuana; and more than one and a half times likelier to use alcohol.   Sharing time at the dinner table, without cell phones,or text messages, game boys, or the TV honors the children by giving them undivided attention.  It makes them feel valued.

Think of it, just having a simple dinner  creates a safe place, a regular  schedule and a time for sharing food and conversation.  When my girls were little,  dinner was very important.  They would sit at the counter and do some homework while their Dad and I cooked.  It was a time where they could ask questions about the homework or just spend the time to work and chat.  We found out about what they were doing at school, who was new, what the teachers did, and what was going on with the other kids at school.  Then we sat down to eat,comfortable with each other, catching up without forcing it.

So turn off the cell phone and listen up, you might learn something and they will feel important.

My mum is a genius. She must have been. Years before anyone even talked about childhood obesity she had hit upon a foolproof method of helping me and my brothers and sisters avoid weight issues. She made us eat dinner together regularly, made sure we went to bed on time, and limited our television viewing.

Of course that last one wasn’t too hard because when I was growing up in Ireland and England there were only two or three TV stations you could watch and most of the time the shows that were on were rubbish.

However, on the other two points she was definitely ahead of her time. At least according to a new study in the March issue of the journal Pediatrics. Now, the new study doesn’t actually mention my mum by name (I checked, there’s no mention of Una in there at all) but it does say that preschool-aged children have a lower risk of obesity if they regularly engage in one or more of three specific behaviours. Those behaviours are:

1. Eating dinner as a family
2. Getting enough sleep
3. Limiting the amount of time kids watch television during the week

The nice thing is that each individual behaviour reduces kids risk of obesity, but when combined they have an even greater impact.

Now, this shouldn’t be a big surprise as many previous studies have shown that eating dinner together as a family, even just a couple of times a week – can have big health benefits. For instance:

• November 2004 issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health showed that adolescents were less likely to have unhealthy eating habits, to be binge-eaters or have eating disorders if they had dinner with their parents on a regular basis.
• May 2003 issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health, found that teenagers who eat dinner with their parents are more likely to eat more fruits and vegetables.
• 2007 study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse found that, compared to teens that have frequent family dinners, those who rarely have family dinners are three-and-a-half times more likely to have abused prescription drugs or an illegal drug other than marijuana.

So this new study simply adds yet another layer to the existing evidence, that eating dinner as a family can have a wonderful impact on the kids health. Not just physical but also mental. And it adds a couple more factors to boost the impact of family dinners.

Shirley thinks it’s because when you are having dinner together regularly you get to know what is happening in your child’s life, how they are doing at school, who their friends are, who’s a jerk etc. It’s a continuous conversation rather than something that only happens when there’s a problem. Of course, sitting at the table with them also means you get to control what they eat – to some extent – so you can teach them good eating habits as well as good communication skills.

Now, Shirley hasn’t done a scientific study to verify this. But some things you really don’t need to study. They just make sense.

Right mum!

You may have heard a fanfare of trumpets the other day when it was announced that obesity levels in the US have flattened. Not fattened. Flattened. That doesn’t mean obesity levels are going down, only that they are no longer going up. Two thirds of American adults and one third of American kids are still either overweight or obese but the fact that those numbers are holding steady is being seen in some quarters as a reason to celebrate. Celebrate! As John McEnroe would say “You cannot be serious!”

And if they are serious then perhaps a new study will make them think twice because it gives an even more bizarre twist to this whole story. The study says eight in ten people in this country say they are in control of their eating and have a healthy relationship with food.

What planet are we on folks? Millions of Americans are overweight or obese or even morbidly obese (and let’s face it, anytime you have to put an adjective in front of the word obese because by itself it doesn’t describe how fat you are, then you know you are trouble) and yet somehow  80% of people say they have a healthy relationship with food! Sure, just as millions of people have a healthy relationship with their spouse right up to the moment they divorce them.

But there’s a wrinkle to this. This latest study was done by the lovely people at GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare.  Anytime the makers of a weight-loss product (GlaxoSmithKline)  puts out a survey about people being overweight I am suspicious, might I even say a tad skeptical! But this was such an interesting piece of work I took a second look. The GlaxoSmithKline people did a telephone survey of more than 2,000 people over the age of 18. They found that:

• 79% of people say they are “satisfied with the state of their personal eating habits”
• But 67% admit to having poor eating habits at least every week, sometimes more often
• 73% said while they are happy with their eating habits they think most other Americans have bad eating habits.

So either the telephone surveyors phoned just people who were skinny..or they found many people who are in denial!  Either way it makes no sense!

Essentially people are saying “OK, I over eat once in a while, once a week perhaps, maybe more often, ok, maybe once a day; but I’m fine it’s everyone else you have to worry about.”

There is a real disconnect here. Part of the problem may be that when we look around and if everyone looks like us we assume that we are normal. But if everyone around us is fat, and we look like them, that does not mean we are normal. It means we are fat. We have lost sight of what is normal, we have lost sight of what is healthy.

Maybe that’s the real reason why the obesity rate is stuck at “Gross”. We think it’s normal.

Oh, and the people at GlaxoSmithKline would be quite happy if you would like to buy their weight loss drug too.

If your idea of a good workout is driving around a golf course in a cart and playing a round of golf, say bye bye to your brain! A new study says to help protect your mind against the ravages of dementia you need to up the ante a bit. But the good news is you don’t have to do too much more, just get out of the cart and walk!

In one study, done by the lovely people at the Mayo Clinic, researchers found that moderate physical activity performed in midlife or later can reduce the risk of memory loss or other mental problems. At the other end of the scale, in a study out of the University of Washington School of Medicine,  researchers found that people who already have those mild cognitive problems can reduce them or even reverse them, just with some vigorous exercise. Cool eh!

If you want to read the specific details of the studies the research is published in the January issue of Archives of Neurology.

What’s important is that both point to the role that exercise can play in reducing or even reversing memory problems as we get older.  In both cases the researchers were focusing on a condition called mild cognitive impairment, that’s a kind of interim stage where you have trouble remembering things, or learning new things, it’s not normal but it’s not completely losing your marbles. While you might think what’s the big deal, the big deal is that every year around 10-15 percent of people with mild cognitive impairment develop dementia, such as Alzheimer’s, compared to only one or two percent of the general population.

So if getting out of the golf cart and walking can help save your brain, what the heck are you doing sitting there! Get up and move it.

High Blood Pressure, Dementia and Older Women

And if you are looking for another way to reduce your risk of dementia, here’s one, lower your blood pressure. A new study found that older women with high blood pressure are at increased risk of developing brain lesions that can lead to dementia later in life. And while this study was just done in women there’s no reason to think the findings don’t also apply to men.

Researchers with the Women’s Health Initiative followed some 1,403 women over the age of 65 over the course of eight years. At the beginning of the study the women all had their blood pressure measured and underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). They underwent similar tests at the end of the eight years.

They found that women who had high blood pressure at the beginning of the study (140/90) had significantly higher amounts of what they called “white matter lesions” in their brain at the end of the study. Those lesions have been shown to interfere with the ability of nerve cells in the brain to communicate with each other. There is also evidence indicating that the greater the number of lesions in white matter, the bigger the risk of dementia.

So, want to keep your brain healthy? Then keep your body healthy. A great way to lower your blood pressure is a diet low in sodium, rich in fresh fruits and vegetables, and lots of exercise. Simple eh!

Growing up in Ireland kids used to give each other this nursery rhyme challenge; “What would you rather do, run a mile, suck a boil, drink a bowl of snot?” Quite frankly I didn’t fancy doing any of them. But I was reminded of them when I saw this ad from the New York City Health Department. It’s an effort to get people to cut back on drinking sugary sodas. If I drank them I certainly wouldn’t after watching this.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F4t8zL6F0c

The ad basically says if you drink too many calories in the form of sugary drinks then you are going to pack on more than ten pounds over the course of a year. At a time when so many people are worried about putting on weight or keen to lose weight, it’s a very powerful ad.

Not surprisingly the American Beverage Association, the trade group for drinks makers, is not thrilled with the ad and issued a statement attacking it. The news release says; “If the goal is to reduce obesity among New Yorkers, then this public education campaign should be based in fact, not simply sensationalized video that inaccurately portrays our industry’s products - products that are fat-free”.

It’s a lovely statement but rather misleading because nothing in the ad suggests that the drinks contain fat, it just shows that if you drink them they’ll make you fat. A subtle but important difference.

Nonetheless, is the claim -- that drinking just one soda a day for a year will add ten pounds to your frame -- true? Well, let’s do the math. On average a can of Pepsi, Coke, Dr. Pepper or 7Up have 100 calories per 8oz serving. Drinking one a day for 365 days amounts to 36,500 calories over the course of a year. Now according to scientific studies if you eat 3,500 calories more than you need your body will put on one pound of weight. So, do a little bit of long division and you find that 36,500 extra calories translates into ten extra pounds, with a little left over just for you!

So, much as the American Beverage Association would like to suggest otherwise, the ad is true. Drinking a soda a day can put ten pounds on you over the course of a year.

Which gives a whole different spin to the classic Pepsi ad: “Hip slacking, gut wrenching, diet wasting, blotivating, fool guzzling, drool making, high waddling, fat living, ever giving, stool stiffening, Pepsi (or the soda of your choice)

Drinking Fatdri