Of course, we all want to live long, productive, active, and interesting lives. We also want to give you good information about getting and staying healthy as a part of our blog postings.
Our friends at AARP Magazine have been counting the ways to extend our lives. Here is their list by the numbers. For more information about this article and AARP Magazine, click here.
Anything less and you risk infecting coworkers, a study finds. Sixty percent of workers go to the office when they’re sick.
Too much tube time increases the concentration of triglycerides in your blood and lowers HDL (“good”) cholesterol. That can harm your heart.
That’s more than the five a day you’re used to, but the extra amount can reduce your risk of early death by 42 percent, says a British study.
A gain of just 10 beats per minute over normal increases your risk of dying from heart disease by 10 to 18 percent, a new study finds.
In a study of more than 21,000 healthy adults, those who slept five hours or less per night were 50 percent more likely to become obese, compared with those who logged a full night’s rest.
Longer commutes are associated with higher blood pressure, more worrying and chronic stress, a study on commuting and health finds. (Did we really need a study?)
Three-quarters of the salt in your diet comes from processed foods, so sub in fresh whole foods to lower blood pressure.
A bigger waist increases your risk of developing metabolic syndrome (a cluster of factors including high blood pressure and cholesterol), which in turn raises the chance of heart disease and stroke.
Just one 12-ounce can a day raises your risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 18 percent, according to a recent study.
This stunning information about regular soft drinks immediately drove us to ask the question, “What about diet soft drinks. How bad are they?” The short answer is really bad. In the article, 10 Reasons to Give Up Diet Soda, by Mary Squillace in Health Magazine, Mary delivers information that’s downright scary. Here is a selection of the reasons to give up diet soda that really got our attention. For a complete list, click here.
Drinking one diet soda a day was associated with a 36% increased risk of metabolic syndrome and diabetes in a University of Minnesota study. Metabolic syndrome describes a cluster of conditions (including high blood pressure, elevated glucose levels, raised cholesterol, and large waist circumference) that put people at high risk for heart disease, stroke, and diabetes, Bjork explains.
Excessive soda drinking could leave you looking like a Breaking Bad extra, according to a case study published in the journal General Dentistry. The research compared the mouths of a cocaine-user, a methamphetamine-user, and a habitual diet-soda drinker, and found the same level of tooth erosion in each of them. The culprit here is citric acid, which weakens and destroys tooth enamel over time.
Women over 60 are already at a greater risk for osteoporosis than men, and Tufts University researchers found that drinking soda, including diet soda, compounds the problem. They discovered that female cola drinkers had nearly 4% lower bone mineral density in their hips than women who didn't drink soda. The research even controlled for the participants' calcium and vitamin D intake. Additionally, a 2006 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that cola intake (all kinds, not just diet) was associated with low bone-mineral density in women.
Just one diet soft drink a day could boost your risk of having a vascular event such as stroke, heart attack, or vascular death, according to researchers from the University of Miami and Columbia University. Their study found that diet soda devotees were 43% more likely to have experienced a vascular event than those who drank none. Regular soda drinkers did not appear to have an increased risk of vascular events.
Researchers say more studies need to be conducted before definitive conclusions can be made about diet soda's effects on health.
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