I’ve always counseled my patients about the need to keep a healthy weight. It not only makes you look and feel better but it decreases your risk for serious diseases. Many doctors, though, have shied away from telling their patients that they need to lose weight. Why? For one reason, patients tend to take comments about their weight very personally instead of seeing it as the health risk that it is. Many doctors don’t want to insult their patients and/or make them feel bad about themselves in any way. For another reason, some doctors feel that nutrition and weight loss counseling is […]
Like myself, and most of my patients, you probably have insurance policies on many things – your house, your car, your health, and, most importantly, your life. Why? Because they give you peace of mind. They cover, and perhaps even prevent, possible problems that might occur that could cost you a fortune to solve – even cause you to go bankrupt. In the same way, taking supplements – vitamins, minerals, certain herbs on occasion – are like taking out a nutritional insurance policy for yourself. Like all your other insurances, I feel that supplements offer additional peace of mind that […]
Here’s another reason to fret over a flabby stomach. A new study suggests that adults who aren’t technically overweight but have a lot of fat around their guts run a higher death risk than people who are obese. Conducted by researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., the study looked at people with normal body mass index scores who also fit the definition for “central obesity” — meaning they had a high waist-to-hip ratio. Normal-weight patients with a lot of belly fat, it turned out, had the highest death risks from cardiovascular disease and other causes, according to a […]
You likely know that you should get the health benefits of more fish in your diet. It’s a primary source of
John M. Kennedy, M.D., is on a mission to reduce cardiac conditions without invasive surgery or a daily regime of prescription drugs. As the leading cardiologist on the stress-heart disease connection, Dr. Kennedy’s first book divulges simple techniques to prevent and reverse the four major kinds of heart disease in just 15 minutes a day. The 15 Minute Heart Cure:The Natural Way to Release Stress and Heal your Heart in Just Minutes a Day teaches the BREATHE technique to help heal and protect your heart through specific stress-reducing breathing and guided imagery. A modern take on traditional meditation, this technique elicits […]
When it’s hot out, a cup of iced tea is very refreshing, and the benefits far outweigh so many other drinks on the market. The theaflavins in both green and black teas help improve blood flow, keeping your skin fresh and your brain young.
Let’s face it. When it comes to losing weight and which diet will help you successfully achieve that, there’s some pretty confusing information out there. You may have heard, or read somewhere, that “a calorie is a calorie”. That’s just not true. I’ve been telling my overweight patients for years that all calories are not equal. If that were true, you wouldn’t have to worry about eating a varied diet. You could just eat one food, say ice cream or pizza all day, and as long as it equaled the amount of calories you needed to either lose or maintain your weight, you’d […]
In the last several years, more information has surfaced about the safety of chemicals used to create Teflon (PTFE) and other non-stick surface coated pans. It was found that with use, scraping food with utensils could cause tiny flecks of these chemical-based surfaces to get into your food. Even though the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had deemed that ingesting small particles of these pan surfaces has not been shown to cause any real health problems, many of my patients decided to throw out their non-stick cookware and switch back to cast iron or aluminum. Cast iron cookware has been around […]
October ushers in pomegranate season in Lebanon, bringing this healthy and delicious fruit
Eating healthfully doesn’t always mean higher prices at the grocery store. In fact, some of the most nutritious foods can be found for pennies at local markets. “Super foods,” as they’re sometimes called, is the catch phrase used for nutrient-dense foods that sometimes have disease-fighting properties, such as antioxidants, said Jonathan Allen, coordinator of the interdepartmental nutrition program at N.C. State University’s Department of Food Bio-processing & Nutrition Sciences. And while these super foods aren’t the only foods you should eat as part of a well-balanced diet, their prices make them a bargain — especially when you consider the costs […]