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Disordered Eating Is Widespread Among U.S. Women
75% say they behave abnormally around food, survey finds

Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of young American women report disordered eating behaviors, and 10 percent report symptoms of eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia nervosa or binge eating disorder, a new survey finds.

The findings — from an online poll of more than 4,000 women between the ages of 25 and 45 — found that 75 percent eat, think and behave abnormally around food. The survey was conducted by SELF magazine in partnership with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“Our survey found that these behaviors cut across racial and ethnic lines and are not limited to any one group. Women who identified their ethnic backgrounds as Hispanic or Latina, white, black or African American and Asian were all represented among the women who reported unhealthy eating behaviors,” Cynthia R. Bulik, a professor of eating disorders and director of the UNC Eating Disorders Program, said in a prepared statement.

“What we found most surprising was the unexpectedly high number of women who engage in unhealthy purging activities. More than 31 percent of women in the survey reported that in an attempt to lose weight, they had induced vomiting or had taken laxatives, diuretics or diet pills at some point in their lives. Among these women, more than 50 percent engaged in purging activities at least a few times a week, and many did so every day,” Bulik said.

Eating habits that some women think are normal — such as skipping meals, avoiding carbohydrates and, in some cases, extreme dieting — may actually be signs of disordered eating, which is often linked with emotional and physical distress.

While there’s a widespread belief that eating disorders affect mostly young women, the survey found that women in the 30s and 40s had about the same rates of disordered eating as younger women.

Among the other findings:

• 67 percent of the women (excluding those with actual eating disorders) are trying to lose weight.
• 53 percent of dieters are already at a healthy weight and are still trying to lose weight.
• 39 percent of the women said concerns about what they eat or weigh interfere with their happiness.
• 37 percent of respondents said they regularly skip meals to try to lose weight.
• 27 percent said they’d be “extremely upset” if they gained just five pounds.
• 26 percent have eliminated entire food groups from their diet.
• 16 percent have dieted on 1,000 or fewer calories a day.
• 13 percent smoke to lose weight.
• 12 percent often eat when they’re not hungry, and 49 percent sometimes do.

The survey was expected to be published in the May issue of SELF and to be presented May 17 at the Academy for Eating Disorders’ International Conference on Eating Disorders, in Seattle.

More information:
The U.S. National Institute of Mental Health has more about eating disorders.
– Robert Preidt.

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How Body pH Can Affect Your Energy Levels
By Andy Long

WHAT MOST PEOPLE DON’T REALIZE; WE ARE BIO ELECTRICAL ENGINES

In order to accomplish all the many millions of complex functions that occur over the course of the day, your body has to be able to communicate with itself… all the way down to the cellular level. And do you know how it does this? Through pulses of electricity. That’s right, electricity.

Your body operates on an electro magnetic current. Believe it or not, all of the organs in your body emit these fields of electrical current. In fact, nerve signals are nothing more than electrical charges.

What creates this electrical power in your body is a very fine balance that exists in your bio chemistry. And of all the systems in your body that depend on this delicate, bio chemical balance, one of the most important is your blood stream. This is where pH comes into play. But what is pH?

WHAT PH IS AND WHY IT IS IMPORTANT TO ALL YOUR BODY FUNCTIONS

PH is a scale that measures how acidic or alkaline a substance is. The scale ranges from 1 to 14 with 1 being very acid, 7 neutral and 14 very alkaline.

So what does pH have to do with you and your blood? Well, the pH of your blood is extremely important. The ideal pH level for your blood is right around 7.35 and your body goes to enormous lengths to maintain this level.

Why? Because if your blood pH were to vary 1 or 2 points in either direction, it would change the electrical chemistry in your body, there would be no electrical power and in short order you would drop dead. As you can see, maintaining the right pH level in your blood is pretty important!!

With this in mind a good way to avoid upsetting this delicate bio chemical balance would be to take a look at those things that can compromise the maintenance of the ideal pH level in your body. And what is the main culprit in this case? The answer is the creation of acid in your body.

Before we look at what causes acid, here’s a graphic example to give you an idea of what can happen in the blood when your pH drops to less than ideal. Red blood cells are how oxygen is transported to all the cells in your body.

As red blood cells move into the tiny, little, capillaries, the space they have to move through gets pretty small. In fact, the diameter of the capillaries gets so small that the red blood cells sometimes have to pass through these capillaries one red blood cell at a time!

Because of this, and because it’s important for the red blood cells to be able to flow easily and quickly through your body, they have a mechanism that allows them to remain separate from each other. This mechanism comes in the form of the outside of healthy red blood cells having a negative charge. This causes them to stay apart from each other, sort of like when you try to push the negative ends of two magnets together. They resist each other and stay apart.

Unfortunately, acid interferes with this very important mechanism in a pretty frightening way. Acid actually strips away the negative charge from red blood cells. The result is that your red blood cells then tend to clump together and not flow as easily. This makes it much more difficult for them to flow easily through the bloodstream.

But it also makes it harder for them to move freely through those small capillaries. This means less oxygen gets to your cells. Acid also weakens the red blood cells and they begin to die. And guess what they release into your system when they die? More acid.

I could describe a whole list of processes that occur when your system becomes and remains acid but I think you get the idea. The point is that aside from the acid that is secreted into your stomach to aid digestion, acid in your body is bad. Really bad.

In regard to producing energy in the body, here’s an easy question for you. What do you think happens to a person’s energy level if over time their system becomes more and more acid, their biochemical balance is disrupted and their red blood cells can’t deliver oxygen and nutrients as efficiently to all their cells? The answer is simple. Their energy level drops. Dramatically.

Are you beginning to get the picture here as to the importance of pH in your body? Good. Now let’s take a quick look at what causes acidity in your body and then look at steps you can take to get your body pH back to an ideal level.

WHAT CAUSES ACID IN THE BODY

The primary cause of an acidic condition in your body is from what you put in your mouth. In other words, what you eat and what you drink. And it isn’t how “acid” something may seem when you eat or drink it. It has to do with what is left over when you digest it.

Specifically, does eating or drinking something leave behind an acid or alkaline “ash”. For example, I don’t know about you but I love seafood. Scallops are one of my favorites. However, when your body digests scallops, it leaves an extremely acid ash. In fact, scallops are one of the most acid foods you can eat.

Unfortunately, a lot of the things most people put in their mouths create an acid ash. These include alcohol, coffee and a lot of flesh protein in your diet. Interestingly enough, stress also tends to create an acid condition in the body.

STEPS YOU CAN IMMEDIATELY TAKE TO IMPROVE YOUR PH

Fortunately, it is pretty easy to immediately change your pH for the better and make it more alkaline. The first step is to understand which of the foods you are eating and the drinks you are drinking are acid and which are alkaline. Then it’s simply a matter of eliminating some of the more acid foods you are eating and adding in more alkaline foods.

However, before you start, it’s important to get a baseline of what the pH is in your body so that you can see how you are improving or if you need to continue to eliminate more acid foods and add in more alkaline ones.

You can do this by testing the pH of your saliva on a regular basis. This is really simple to do. More details on how to do this are provided on some web pages I have created for you to help you out. A link to these pages is provided below.

In addition to decreasing the amount of acid foods you eat and increasing the amount of alkaline foods you eat, one of the best ways to immediately begin changing your pH is to drink “green drinks”. You can make these by simply adding a powder that is made up of a whole host of vegetables that are highly alkaline to a glass of water. Information on suggested green drink powders to use is included on pages that I have a link to below.

RESOURCES WHERE YOU CAN LEARN MORE

Clicking on the following link will take you to some pages I created that have more information on alkaline and acid foods, how to test your own pH and what to look for in green drinks.

http://www.ajpip.com/resources/site_map.htm

Start taking the steps described above and you may very well find your energy levels increasing over time. Mine certainly have.

- Andy Long

After years of extreme fatigue, severe digestion problems and frequent sickness, Andy Long now enjoys energy levels that allow him to windsurf in 30 mph winds for 3-4 hours at a time.

He now shares with others what he did to completely regain his health through his health related web sites and newsletter.

To see a list of the topics covered in Andy’s newsletter, click on the following link: http://www.ajpip.com/rbopi/ancrb.htm

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Smokers Sleep Less Soundly
They’re 4 times more likely than nonsmokers to report lack of restful slumber, study says

(HealthDay News) — Smokers are four times more likely to feel tired when they wake up and they spend less time in deep sleep than nonsmokers do, a new study finds.

This may be because smokers experience nicotine withdrawal each night, which may contribute to sleep disturbances, suggest the study authors, whose report appears in the February issue of Chest.

“It is possible that smoking has time-dependent effects across the sleep period. Smokers commonly experience difficulty falling asleep due to the stimulating effects of nicotine. As night evolves, withdrawal from nicotine may further contribute to sleep disturbance,” study author Dr. Naresh M. Punjabi, of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, said in a prepared statement.

Punjabi and colleagues studied the sleep patterns of 40 smokers and 40 nonsmokers. They found that 22.5 percent of smokers reported a lack of restful sleep, compared with only 5 percent of nonsmokers. Smokers also experienced a lower percentage of deep sleep and a higher percentage of light sleep.

The largest differences in sleep between the two groups occurred at the onset of sleep, which suggests the effects of nicotine are strongest in the early stages of sleep and decrease as the sleep cycle progresses, the researchers said.

These findings may help develop more effective ways to help people stop smoking.

“Many smokers have difficulty with smoking cessation partly because of the sleep disturbances as a result of nicotine withdrawal,” Punjabi said. “By understanding the temporal effects of nicotine on sleep, we may be able to better tailor nicotine replacement to minimize the withdrawal effects that smokers experience, particularly during sleep.”

More information

The American Academy of Family Physicians explains insomnia.
– Robert Preidt.

This is a story from HealthDay, a service of ScoutNews, LLC.
Copyright © 2008 ScoutNews LLC. All rights reserved.

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Are There Side Effects To the Flu Shot?
By Ashira R.

Signs are up everywhere advertising for flu shot clinics. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) recommends that you should get either a flue shot or use the flu vaccine nasal spray once a year. However lately there has also been a lot of controversy surrounding the shot. Professionals have differing opinions about the flu shot as to whether everyone should have one or not due to the side effects it may cause. In oder to make a personal decision for yourself here are the facts. The flu is a greater risk to those people who have a weakened immune system, this is includes very young children and the very elderly as well as anyone who has a compromised immune system. Therefore, there is no debate between the medical professionals that all in this group get the flu shot yearly. However; due to the side effects that are possible and the complications that can arise, it is not always right for everyone.

Typical side effects can include fever, body aches and soreness, swelling at the site of the shot. The nasal spray may cause a runny nose, headache, sore throat or cough. There have been recent studies that have shown a potential link between the flu shot and autism. Because of this study, many have opted out this year from getting the flu shot. The truth is that a preservative that is used to preserve the vaccine contains thimerosal. Thirmerosal is known to be a neurotoxin, simply this means that in large enough dosages (which are not even close in a single flu shot) could cause mercury contamination and severe illness. Most that offer the flu shots however, also offer a preservative free option but you may need to ask them if they can supply you with one.

Flu shots contain dead influenza for almost two weeks after receiving a flu shot, antibodies provide protection against some strains of the influenza virus develop in the body. Currently there is no flu shot available that provides protection from the avian influenza strains of the virus.

Since some people can develop severe side effects it is also recommended that you should consult with a physician first. An example of why a person should contact their physician is that not many know that the shot contains eggs, so if you are highly allergic, you should not take the shot as it can cause you to develop Guillain-Barre syndrome. This is a disease that which the body damages its own nerve cells that can result in permanent nerve damage. The best action is that of protecting yourself from the risk of contracting the flu and other viruses by practicing good health habits such as frequent hand washing, not touching mouth or nose after touching a public surface and avoiding those who have active colds or flu’s. Ensuring that every person has proper nutrition, getting rest and regular exercise will also strengthen a body and help it to ward off any bacterial virus.

Because of the number of side effects, the controversy surrounding the flu shot, the best advice to follow is talk to your health care provider before having the flu shot to determine if it is the right decision for you.

Bright blessings,
Ashira
http://www.ashira.ws
ashira@ashira.ws
Ashira is a Practicing Pagan for over 15 years. Currently she is a featured columnist at http://Asknow.com
The Witches’ Child Author
Bacon Bits Author
FFWA Member
Cassel Network of Writers Member.

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Study Links Western Diet to Heart, Health Risks
But it also found that diet soda doesn’t protect against metabolic syndrome

By Amanda Gardner
HealthDay Reporter

(HealthDay News) — A “Western” diet heavy in meat, fried foods and refined grains puts people at higher risk of developing metabolic syndrome, the collection of risk factors for heart problems, stroke and type 2 diabetes, a new study found.

The findings confirmed previous research with one interesting twist: Drinking diet soda won’t change the health-risk equation (surprisingly, it ups the risk, too), although consuming more dairy might protect you.

A whopping 60.5 percent of the study participants either had metabolic syndrome at the start of the study or developed it during nine years of follow-up.

“This is a red-alert wake-up call,” said Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum, director of Women and Heart Disease at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, who was not involved with the study. “I love that they call this a Western diet. It’s the perspective that we, as Americans, cannot eat any worse.”

The findings were published in the Jan. 22 issue of Circulation.

A person is thought to have metabolic syndrome if he or she has three or more of the following cardiovascular risk factors: large waist circumference, high blood pressure, high fasting glucose levels, low HDL (”good”) cholesterol levels and high triglycerides.

According to U.S. government data collected between 1988 and 1994, 24 percent of adult Americans (47 million people) had metabolic syndrome. That number is probably higher now, the study authors stated.

Although obesity and physical inactivity underlie most cases of metabolic syndrome, the role of diet is still not well understood.

The authors of the new study relied on “food frequency” questionnaires that had been filled out by almost 10,000 people participating in the government-sponsored Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study. The questionnaire included 66 items related to food consumption.

Participants’ dietary preferences were categorized as either “Western-pattern” or “prudent-pattern,” depending on the overall responses.

The Western diet consisted of more refined grains, processed meat, fried food, red meat, eggs and soda, and less fish, fruit, vegetables and whole grains.

The prudent diet was heavy on cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli and cabbage; carotenoid vegetables (carrots, pumpkins); fruit; fish and seafood; poultry; whole grains; and low-fat dairy.

The association involving metabolic syndrome with certain specific food items — such as fried foods, regular and diet soda, fruit drinks, nuts and coffee — was also explored.

People with the highest scores in the “Western-pattern” diet had an 18 percent increased risk of developing metabolic syndrome, compared with those with the lowest scores in this group.

Individuals with the highest consumption of meat had a 26 percent greater risk of developing metabolic syndrome, compared with those who ate the least amount of meat. Hamburgers, hot dogs and processed meats seemed to accelerate the effect.

On the other hand, eating dairy was found to be protective: Individuals consuming the most dairy had a 13 percent lower risk of developing metabolic syndrome, compared to those who consumed the least.

Fried foods — i.e., fast foods — and diet soda were also associated with metabolic syndrome, while sweetened beverages — soda and fruit drinks — as well as coffee and nuts were not.

The diet soda findings echo those from a previous trial, the study authors said.

“The first time this came up, we didn’t believe it,” Steinbaum said. “Take two, and it’s now part of another large study.”

“We did not expect to find that,” added study co-author Lyn Steffen, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. “I don’t know why that is, but I think there is some basic science under way now looking at diet soda and just what it does to promote these metabolic abnormalities.”

“The message hasn’t changed,” Steffen added. “People should eat according to the dietary guidelines for Americans, which is a diet rich in plant foods. I don’t oppose meat, but they should consume red and processed meat once or twice a week, not once or twice a day.”

More information

Read more about metabolic syndrome at the American Heart Association.
SOURCES: Lyn Steffen, Ph.D., R.D., associate professor, epidemiology, University of Minnesota School of Public Health, Minneapolis; Suzanne Steinbaum, M.D., director, Women and Heart Disease, Lenox Hill Hospital, New York City; Jan. 22, 2008, Circulation.

This is a story from HealthDay, a service of ScoutNews, LLC.
Copyright © 2008 ScoutNews LLC. All rights reserved.

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Most people would like to keep their digestive disorders secret as they find that having these conditions embarrassing. However, what they may not know that having a digestive disorder is in fact a very common problem. With so much secrecy and mystery, there are a lot of myths surrounding digestive disorders. To cope with the condition and improve on the quality of life, it is important that you find out the truth and dispel some of the common myths surrounding digestive disorders.

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There have been many myths written on losing weight that probably explains why some people are successful in losing weight and some not. Here are some common myths on weight loss.

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Health Articles, Weight Loss, Weight Loss Common Myths

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“I’m on a diet and I can’t eat this or that.” “I shouldn’t do this or that.”
How many times have you heard that from people who diet? Perhaps you have said it several times in the past or perhaps you are still saying that today. When it comes to weight loss, I encourage people to take a diet-free approach to it. What do I mean by diet-free?

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Health Articles, Weight Loss, Weight Loss With Words

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