From the monthly archives:
April 2006
The Mediterranean Diet
Everything I’ve been reading lately has me wonderiing if we shouldn’t all base our diets on The Meditarranean Diet. I’ll be the first to admit that structured eating isn’t something I’m into. I inherited from my dad a great passion for food and cooking - and the thought of telling certain foods that they aren’t welcome in my sanctum sanctorum (a.k.a. my kitchen) is a foreign policy.
All I’m suggesting is that per chance we should incorporate some of the foundations of The Meditarranean Diet into our lives - for the sake of our lives.
Here, I’ll let you in on the great things I’ve been reading about this Diet:
- A recent study followed more than 2,300 healthy elderly men and women from eleven different European countries for ten years. Those people with eating habits that met at least half the criteria of a Mediterranean diet suffered at least 25 percent fewer deaths during that period. In fact, people who ate a mostly Mediterranean diet, exercised moderately, drank little to moderate amounts of alcohol, and didn’t smoke had 65 percent fewer deaths than those who followed none or only one of these healthy habits. Avoidance of these healthy habits was strongly linked to death from cancer or heart disease.
- A recent review found that the risk of heart disease can drop from 8 to 45 percent if people follow this diet. More surprisingly, a recent study found that those who met most of the criteria for a Mediterranean diet lowered their risk of heart attack by more than 80 percent compared to those who met only one or two criteria.
- In addition to better health, The Mediterranean diet helps to control weight, as well. Studies show that people on a Mediterranean diet lose more weight than those on a low fat diet.
- New research suggests this type of eating plan may reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. A new study showed that people who ate such a diet had a 40 percent lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s than those who ate the conventional American diet. 40 percent! A 10 percent lower risk would have gotten my attention, but 40 - wow.
So how do you create a healthy Mediterranean-Style diet for yourself?
- Add more vegetables to your daily diet.
- Add more fruit.
- Eat more dried beans, nuts, and seeds.
- Cut back on red meat - you don’t have to cut it OUT, just BACK. I mean, it’s grilling season, there’s no way I could cut it out!
- Olive Oil should be your main source of fat.
- Eat more fish!!!
- Cut back on high fat/high sugar desserts.
Better health, trimmer waist, stronger mind - I’m hitting the produce aisle pretty hard today.
-Joi
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Friday’s Quote of the Day
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Meditation
I just published a post about meditation on Out of Bounds. Its benefits grow daily - from reducing stress to strengthening immunity - when it comes to meditation, it’s all good.
Check it out, the key to feeling better might just lie on the other side of a few deep breaths.
-Joi
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Wednesday’s Quote of the Day
“I am a slow walker, but I never walk backwards.” ~Abraham Lincoln
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Tuesday’s Quote of the Day
“The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph!” ~Thomas Paine
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In Praise of WordPress and FeedBurner
About 7 years ago, our family started a Web Design and Publishing business (Hightide Web). When blogging caught fire, we launched 14 blogs and recently added Blog Configuration and Hosting to our Hightide services.
Blogging is a whole different ballgame from web design/web publishing. Just when we reached ownership status with html, php shows up at the door. Along with it, comes all sorts of headaches like rss (migraine), content management, databases, etc.
To get my mind around blogs, I put my first one on Blogger. I didn’t have any bad experiences with them - aside from the fact that I didn’t have my own domain name, and the strip at the top annoyed me. But the rest of the experience was a breeze.
When I felt like I could take the training wheels off, I researched the heck out of TypePad and WordPress. I went with WordPress and have never, ever regretted it. All of our blogs are WordPress blogs, and we’ve never encountered any reason(s) to change that status. WordPress is even more of a breeze than Blogger, and it’s 100% easier for readers to leave comments on than the others.
My favorite part is all the great plug-ins you have at your disposal with WordPress blogs - they’re really amazing! The techlicious brainpower that goes behind developing these themes makes my jaw hit the carpet. (If you’re a plugin developer, you pretty much rock!)
FeedBurner is another gift from the blogging gods - if not for them, I’d be decked out in a white jacket today - the one that ties in the back. And I haven’t nearly enough of a tan to pull white off yet. Like WordPress, FeedBurner has a style and approach that is impossible not to catch. IF you read their site thoroughly and ask questions when they arise, you’re home free.
If you currently use WordPress, I wanted to throw you a few links you may or may not be aware of. There’s a wealth of information here and is more than worthy of printing out and reading through:
Blogging isn’t going anywhere - in fact it’s just getting hotter and hotter. Companies aren’t ditching their websites (as a web designer I breath a huge sigh right about here), but they are adding blogs to their sites. It’s getting to where Blog is one of the first things I look for on a website - and if I don’t see it in the navigational column or tabbed menu, I kind of wonder why they’re out of step!
If you have any questions about blogs or blogging that I could answer, feel free to shoot me an e-mail - joi@selfhelpdaily.com.
Have a wonderful day,
Joi
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Monday’s Quote of the Day
“Life is a verb, not a noun.” ~Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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The Problem with Young People Drinking Energy Drinks
Within the past week, one of my daughters has told me a few things about one of her friends. At the time, I didn’t make any sort of conncetion - then I got to thinking about it and did a little reading up on the subject.
Her friend, we’ll call Jennifer, drinks Energy Drinks and had even recommended a few to my daughter. Jennifer, my daughter tells me, rarely ever sleeps - and when she does, it’s usually for only a couple of hours. Sounds pretty healthy, doesn’t it? For some reason kids seem to think this is a cool thing. I’m afraid that one day they’ll realize it’s anything but.
Another interesting thing going on in Jennifer’s life is that her grades have started falling off. Normally an A student, she’s lucky to get a C now.
Have you noticed how terrible cool and sexy the manufacturers are making the energy drinks? And the names: Red Bull, Monster, Venom…. Why drink bottled water when you can swill a Monster? I noticed the other day there’s one called Rock Star now. It’s pretty obvious who they’re targeting.
All parents know they have to carefully pick their battles - after all, a young person has little tolerance for what they consider nagging. And I’m sure that a lot of parents wish that energy drinks were all they had to worry about their kid drinking.
So are they worth suiting up for? Should we bother hauling out the parental battle fatigues or leave them hanging for something else? To further complicate matters, will making them seem somewhat forbidden make them all the more appealing?
The facts:
- They’re loaded with sugar and caffeine, plus a variety of herbs that aren’t always known to be safe. We all know what it takes to prove that something is in fact unsafe. None of us are willing for our child to be a cited case.
- The amount of caffeine in these drinks is equivalent to a cup of coffee. For most adults this isn’t too big a deal (For me? Drop in the bucket.), but for kids this can lead to insomnia as well as anxiety.
- The Director of Sports Nutrition at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Leslie Bonci, RD, issued the following statement: “Kids like the revved-up feeling they get from these drinks, but they’re not thinking about the consequences, such as poor school performance and a lack of sleep.”
She suggested making it clear to young people that a healthy diet, vitamins, and exercise will provide them with sustained energy - and in a healthy way. For kids performing heavy activities, she advised using Gatorade or Powerade.
Just something to watch out for and to think about. Our kids are worth it.
Have an amazing week,
- Joi
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Sunday’s Quote of the Day
“Live your life and forget your age” ~Norman Vincent Peale
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Quote About Easter by C. S. Lewis
“There is a stage in a child’s life at which it cannot separate the religious from the merely festal character of Christmas or Easter. I have been told of a very small and very devout boy who was heard murmuring to himself on Easter morning a poem of his own composition which began ‘Chocolate eggs and Jesus risen.’ This seems to me, for his age, both admirable poetry and admirable piety. But of course the time will soon come when such a child can no longer effortlessly and spontaneously enjoy that unity. He will become able to distinguish the spiritual from the ritual and festal aspect of Easter; chocolate eggs will no longer seem sacramental. And once he has distinguished he must put one or the other first. If he puts the spiritual first he can still taste something of Easter in the chocolate eggs; if he puts the eggs first they will soon be no more than any other sweetmeat. They will have taken on an independent, and therefore a soon withering, life.” ~C. S. Lewis
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