Archive for Healthy
The basics of healthy children: acknowledge that your children have their own tastes
Posted by: | CommentsThere are four Ps to learn and utilize in raising children, and they are especially useful in regard to pediatric nutrition: personality, patience, positivity, and persistence.
Let’s start with personality. Keep in mind that though she may be your child, your daughter will be her own woman one day; her personality, self-confidence, and tastes are evolving with each new daily experience. Rather than battling at the table over what foods she will eat, encourage her through creative but nonconfrontational techniques to explore her tastes. Here are three techniques that will encourage that kind of exploration while still acknowledging your child’s individual tastes:
- Use the one-bite rule to ensure that she is exposed to a variety of flavors and textures. Don’t expend too much energy preparing elaborate meals for her when she is young. That way you won’t be discouraged if she only nibbles at the food on her plate or plays with her food instead of eating it.
- Incorporate the color game into meals and snacks, so that she will have fun tasting small portions, even just nibbles, of as many naturally colored foods (no M&Ms!) as possible. Praise her for trying new foods and accept that she might not like the taste of them.
- As always, set the tone with your own good example.
If you or your spouse is a picky eater and refuses to eat vegetables, it’s time to grow up and show your children how to be a healthy eater.
Heaviness in children and adolescents is generally caused by lack of physical activity, unhealthy eating patterns, or a combination of the two.
Doctors and other health care professionals are the best people to determine whether your child’s or adolescent’s weight is healthy, and they can help rule out rare medical problems as the cause of unhealthy weight. Many overweight children who are still growing will not need to lose weight; if they can reduce their rate of weight gain, they can grow into their weight.
The important thing to remember is that dieting is not for kids. Don’t place your child on a restrictive diet without the supervision of your pediatrician. Your child’s diet should be safe and nutritious. It should include all of the recommended daily allowance for vitamins, minerals, and protein and foods from all the major food groups. Any weight-loss diet should be low in calories only, not in essential nutrients. Even with extremely overweight children, weight loss should be gradual.
Let your child know that he is loved and appreciated whatever his weight. An overweight child probably knows better than anyone else that he has a weight problem. Overweight children need support, acceptance, and encouragement from their parents, not ridicule or punishment. Finally, be a good role model for your child. If he sees you enjoying healthy foods and engaging in activities, he is more likely to do the same now and for the rest of his life.
The basics of healthy children: variety is the spice of life
Posted by: | CommentsMany weight-conscious people eat the same foods every day, day after day, week after week. Their typical menu is based on bagels, pasta, chicken, yogurt, and air-popped popcorn. Does eating low-calorie, low-fat foods all the time ensure that you are eating healthy? Probably not.
Eating a variety of foods helps your children consume a wider variety of nutrients. For example, if the only fruit you serve them is apples, they won’t get the folate that’s found in oranges. If they get all of their protein from turkey, they’ll miss out on the iron and zinc that’s more abundant in beef-Making sure that your child eats a varied diet can also reduce the chances that she will ingest the excessive amounts of harmful residues that might be more abundant on particular foods, such as strawberries and grapes. Don’t take too much solace in the fact that your kid eats energy bars all the time: she might be getting too much of some nutrients and not enough of others.
Studies suggest that people who eat from a wide variety of food groups tend to be healthier and to have a reduced risk of disease, including heart disease and diabetes. At each meal you should plan for your kids to eat from at least three of the five foods groups and challenge them to the Five-Plus Rule of eating five or more servings of fruits and vegetables a day. In addition to expanding their repertoire of foods, adding variety to a child’s diet reduces the need for supplements.
Even healthful foods can be unhealthy if they are not handled and prepared correctly. Most of us know that eggs and chicken can transmit salmonella and that beef can transmit E. coli, but people often forget that it is possible to contract the same bacterial infections from fresh produce. These bacteria get on our fruits and vegetables in a couple of ways. Sometimes the manure used as fertilizer is contaminated with bacteria that can adhere to the surfaces of the produce. Sometimes the bacteria find their way onto our foods from the hands of food handlers and grocers. In addition to ridding your food of bacteria, you should wash your fresh fruit and vegetables to get rid of pesticides that may still be clinging to them.
Here are some other tips for handling and preparing food properly:
- Bacteria on a steak will be killed if the surface is browned, but ground beef must be fully cooked throughout to be sterilized.
- Do not use the same utensils and plates for cooked food that you used to prepare and store it.
- Kitchen sponges should be disposed of after a few weeks, and kitchen rags washed regularly.
Use plastic and glass cutting boards rather than wooden cutting boards to decrease the transmission of bacteria to your foods.
Finally, wash your hands before, during, and after food preparation. This is not only protective but also instills hygienic habits in both you and your children.
The basics of healthy children: separate screen time from eating time
Posted by: | CommentsYou’ve probably heard it time and time again, but now it’s time to listen: don’t let your kids eat while they are watching TV. I’ve already talked about why mealtime should be family time, but just as important, snack times shouldn’t be couch potato time. Of course, regardless of where they are consumed, snacks should be nutritious. Snacks that come in wrappers or bags are usually not healthful but instead provide empty, non-nutritious calories that are converted to fat by our bodies.
The more fat, or non-lean body mass, your child has, the lower her metabolic rate becomes. This causes her to burn fewer calories at rest and leads to the efficient deposition of her extra unused calories as additional fat. It is not difficult to see that this generates a vicious cycle of weight gained as fat. Furthermore, the calories obtained while lounging around are not likely to be utilized, since the body burns very few calories while sitting. Consider this: your child can burn four calories per minute while running, and eight calories per minute while swimming, but will burn only about one calorie per minute while watching television. Even reading and thinking hard, however mentally exhausting they may be, bum only one to one and a half calories per minute. At that rate, it’s easy to see why couch potatoes have spare tires and love handles.
Do your kids a favor: separate TV time from eating time and encourage them to be active.
The basics of healthy children: limit eating to the table and high chair
Posted by: | CommentsOne of the most frequent statements I hear from mothers is, “My child doesn’t eat anything!” Yet a review of the child’s weight often reveals that the child is at an appropriate eight, or even overweight, despite “never” eating. Furthermore, and too often, the child’s face is smeared with crumbs from various chips, crackers, and cookies, and his tongue may range in color from green to purple after recently downing a juice-box. With a little further questioning, we get to the bottom of the real problem: the child doesn’t eat anything when the family sits at the table for a meal.
Eating small, frequent meals throughout the day is good advice for your kids if the foods they eat are nutritionally adequate. But a constant infusion of cream-filled chocolate cookies and juice is not the foundation of a healthy diet! Your children will become “full” from eating unhealthy but tasty snacks and have no interest in lunch or dinner if you’ve stocked the cabinets with this kind of food and given them unlimited access to it. You can’t expect your children o have the discipline to refrain from eating such foods if they are readily available.
Snacks that you provide are okay during the day, but sit your children down at the table to eat their snacks so that they develop the habit of doing their eating at the table, his can prevent your kids from getting into the habit of sitting in front of the TV with a bag of potato chips.
The basics of healthy children: be patient with your children
Posted by: | CommentsPatience, the second of the four Ps, is a virtue in all walks of life, but nowhere is it more important than with the ones you love. While at times it’s hard not to lose your cool when dealing with a small person who has the emotional development of a three-year-old, try to remember that the small person in your care is only three!
Getting kids to eat their food, let alone eat healthy food, is one of the challenges in parenting that requires your patience. Rather than flying off the handle because you have prepared an elaborate meal that your child does not appreciate, remind yourself that your child is rejecting the meal, not you. That is, don’t take the rejection of your food personally. Attaining this understanding will make your life less stressful and your relationship with your children more rewarding for the years to come.
The best way to remain patient with your child is to share the responsibility with others. A strong network of social support is critical for successful child rearing. If you have family or friends in the area, let them help you out now and then and take a night off from cooking for the kids.
Never shake, slap, smack, or throw your children when you lose your patience! Instead, when you find yourself losing your patience, defuse your anger or frustration by going into another room, turning down the lights, and taking a few quiet minutes to collect yourself. Call a friend immediately if you need help. If you can’t do that, or if you don’t have a social support network and you find that you cannot calm yourself, every emergency room has a social worker who can help you find resources.
The Basics of Perimenopause – Relationship Between Estrogen and the Healthy Heart
Posted by: | CommentsAmong the hundreds of beneficial effects that estrogen has in the body, this key hormone protects the heart by keeping the lining of the veins and arteries slippery and free of plaque buildup, so that blood can move freely through them. Plaque (like the plaque that builds up on teeth if we don’t brush them) takes the form of granular, sand like particles, and in our blood these particles can attach themselves to the sides of veins and arteries if those surfaces are rough.
Plaque-filled artery and vein walls are something like a plugged-up garden hose. If you ran chocolate syrup through your garden hose every day, the syrup would eventually stick to the sides and harden. After a while the opening in the hose would be too small to let anything through. In the bloodstream estrogen prevents plaque from getting a stronghold and sticking to vein and artery walls, which then could result in narrower openings that restrict blood flow.
Estrogen also impacts on cholesterol. We’ve heard the word cholesterol for years now, but what exactly is it? It’s a waxy, fatlike substance found in the blood. Not all cholesterol is the same, as you may know. “Good” cholesterol is called HDL, and it’s considered good because it transports cholesterol and other lipids (fatlike substances) from the body. The “bad” cholesterol is called LDL, and it has a negative impact because it delivers lipids to body tissues.
The ratio between HDL and LDL is extremely important. We want to have a high level of HDL in relation to LDL. A good HDL-to-LDL ratio is 3 to 1, according to Dr. Legato’s book, the female Heart. Estrogen helps keep the HDL high and the LDL low.
Your weight, family history, and ethnicity have some bearing on the health of your heart. For example, if your father had a heart attack before age 56 or your mother had a heart attack before age 60, your risk of heart disease increases. Carrying around extra pounds also places you in a higher risk category, particularly if your weight is 20 to 30 percent higher than the acceptable range for your height. If you have a history of heart disease in your family, you have more reason to be concerned about your heart than a friend who doesn’t have the same kind of family history.
Mary lost her father to heart disease fifteen years earlier, when he was only 55. A successful businesswoman, she attributes many of her achievements to the work ethic her father demonstrated and to the guidance he gave her when she was first starting out in the work world. Yet when perimenopausal mood changes and loss of libido started to interfere with her life at 42, she hadn’t stopped to consider that heart disease could potentially be another part of her father’s legacy, it simply hadn’t occurred to her.
Mary is certainly not in any immediate danger, her cholesterol, blood pressure, and triglyceride levels are all within normal ranges. But I felt it was essential that Mary take a proactive approach to minimize the possibility of an unwelcome inheritance of heart disease. I reassured her that history wouldn’t necessarily repeat itself, but I also reminded her that her choices today about what she ate, how she took care of her body’s fitness, and how much stress was a driving force in her life would have a lot to do with her health outcomes in the years ahead.
The Basics of Perimenopause – Planning Ahead for Healthy Heart, Bones, and Breasts
Posted by: | CommentsOnly recently has preparation become a watchword in women’s health. The generations of women who came before us didn’t start thinking about steps they could take toward having a healthy pregnancy until they became pregnant. Now, we advocate that women begin to prepare their bodies for pregnancy a full year before they would like to conceive by improving their diet, exercising, and taking essential vitamins. The same is true for perimenopause: whether you are at the beginning, middle, or end of your forties, the time is right to think about making your mature years healthy and enjoyable.
Most women are no strangers to planning ahead for milestones in our lives. We’ve picked out wedding and bridesmaids’ dresses in anticipation of getting married, polished our resumes before graduation, studied the want ads in anticipation of getting a new job, and decorated nurseries while waiting for babies to be born. Perimenopause is another time in our lives when preparation now pays big dividends later.
I’m going to review the healthy steps you can take to protect your heart, bones, and breasts during perimenopause. I’ll take you through a calm discussion of the risk factors for disease and what you can do to minimize them. Since women are living longer than ever now (our average life expectancy is nearly 80 years) and are in much better health than previous generations, you want to do everything possible to establish good health for yourself in the coming years, judge your risks, and make solid, carefully thought-out choices based on your individual needs.
Protecting Your Heart
I’m going to start with an overview of how estrogen impacts the heart. Up until the beginning of perimenopause, when our bodies start producing less estrogen, women have a distinct advantage over our male counterparts as far as the health of our hearts is concerned. Women have fewer cardiovascular problems early in life, probably because the “estrogen edge” helps keep our veins and arteries in better shape. But that changes as we get older, when heart disease becomes the leading cause of death among women.
In her book The Female Heart, Marianne J. Legato, M.D., observes that by age 60, women’s risk of heart disease is equal to men’s. After age 65, heart disease kills more women than men, nearly half a million each year. Research data show and I certainly observe this in my clinic that the majority of women mistakenly believe that cancer poses a greater threat to their health than heart disease. In reality, heart disease claims more women’s lives each year than any other disease, including breast, ovarian, and lung cancer combined. I cite this statistic not to sound an alarmist note but to focus on opportunities we have during perimenopause to pay equal attention to our cardiovascular health.