Secrets of Happy Eaters

For many of us, sumptuous meals translate to a guilt-ridden reach for the gym pass, a seven-day juice fast or panic about being able to zip up our jeans. Fully 75 percent of women eat, think and behave abnormally around food, according to a one-of-a-kind survey of 4,000 women SELF conducted with Cynthia M. Bulik, Ph.D., director of the eating disorders program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A minority has full-blown eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia. But most are disordered eaters with less severe—but definitely unhealthy—hang-ups. It's all an understandable reaction to our cult of thin and feast of fat. "Americans are bombarded by food cues. The profusion of cheap, high-calorie food is too often a prescription...

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Posted in: Diet,Fitness

No-Diet Ways to Lose Weight

If you shudder at any mention of the “D” word but still need to drop a few pounds, use these tricks to help you slim down sans calorie counters and detox drinksIf sifting through the Google results for “diets that work” makes your head spin, try this trick: Don’t call it a diet. “For most Americans, diet is a dirty word that evokes pain, frustration, and bad memories of diets that went belly up,” says Connie Bennett, a life and health coach and author of Sugar Shock: How Sweets and Simple Carbs Can Derail Your Life—and How You Can Get Back on Track. So forget trying to overhaul your eating with detox cleanses and flavorless microwave meals. Instead, focus on making small, manageable changes that fit into your life. The following 11 simple strategies will help you slim down without giving up...

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Top 5 Habits That Harm Your Heart

cording to a centuries-old story, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will announce the end of the world. According to hard data, five harmful habits herald the coming of heart disease. These five are:smokingbeing inactivecarrying too many poundseating poorlydrinking too much alcoholAlone and together, they set the stage for artery-damaging atherosclerosis and spur it onward. They do this by deranging metabolism and changing how cells and tissues work. They also disturb the markers of health we worry about so much: blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar. All too often, the end result of these five habits is a heart attack, stroke, peripheral artery disease, valve problem, aortic aneurysm, or heart failure. And the damage they cause isn't...

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Posted in: heart

Tiny breaks from sitting can whittle a tinier waist

Taking short breaks from sitting, even for only one minute, might whittle your waistline and improve your heart health, according to a new study. People in the study who took the most breaks from sitting — up to 1,258 short breaks in one week — were about two pant sizes smaller than those who took the fewest, as few as 99 breaks in one week, said study researcher Genevieve Healy, who studies population health at the University of Queensland in Australia. And a smaller waistline means less abdominal fat and better heart health, Healy said. "A high waist circumference is associated with an increased risk for type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease," she told MyHealthNewsDaily. When we stand, the large muscles in our legs and the back are continually contracting...

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Swine flu could mix with bird flu, expert warns

Bird flu kills more than 60 percent of its human victims, but doesn't easily pass from person to person. Swine flu can be spread with a sneeze or handshake, but kills only a small fraction of the people it infects.So what happens if they mix?This is the scenario that has some scientists worried: The two viruses meet — possibly in Asia, where bird flu is endemic — and combine into a new bug that is both highly contagious and lethal and can spread around the world.Scientists are unsure how likely this possibility is, but note that the new swine flu strain — a never-before-seen mixture of pig, human and bird viruses — has shown itself to be especially adept at snatching evolutionarily advantageous genetic material from other flu viruses."This particular virus seems to have this unique ability...

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Posted in: Bird Flu,Swine Flu

Pregnant women often deny smoking

Overall, about one in four women who smoke while pregnant deny it, a new study hints. The numbers could be even higher in certain groups of women, like those in their early 20s.In the United States, smoking by moms-to-be is one of the most common preventable causes of illness and death among infants, Dr. Patricia Dietz from the division of reproductive health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and colleagues note in their report.In their study, they estimated how many pregnant and nonpregnant smokers aged 20 to 44 years did not disclose their habit on a health questionnaire.How did they catch the deception? They took blood samples from the women to measure levels of cotinine -- a byproduct of nicotine that serves as a marker of exposure to tobacco smoke. Their analysis...

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Posted in: Pregnancy,Women's Issues