I love chocolate...okay, it's more than that, I crave it daily. When I finish a meal, I want a bite of chocolate. And if I don't have any in the house I will scrounge around and try to come up with some suitable alternative. It used to take less chocolate to satisfy my cravings than it does now. The sad thing is is that the chocolate only helps for a little while and then I crash as my blood sugar levels drop. It makes me moody and irritable, but I keep eating it inspite of knowing how it is harming me because I crave it. Sounds like a person with an alcohol problem doesn't it?  Well, chocolate addiction is that much different. In fact, alcoholics have problems with sugar too (read Seven Weeks to Sobriety for more information on that.)

I am a member of Blubber Bloggers and on our yahoo list, someone else wrote about symptoms similar to mine and how hard it was making life for her. I had always thought it was a matter of self-control, and was going to answer her and tell her some short term helps that have helped, but Jaminacema shared some information first that has given me great hope.

Go google chocolate and Magnesium. You will be amazed at what you find! Apparently, chocolate fills a hole left by a diet deficient in Magnesium. And Magnesium can help cure those chocolate cravings (as well as help with blood pressure, fatigue and anxiety). I am starting on a 30 day course of a Calcium/Magnesium supplement starting today. I'll let you know how it goes! I am thrilled with the idea that this may alleviate these cravins. Interestingly, when I have had success getting away from them in the past it has been when I am eating a diet with lots of green veggies and taken the above mentioned supplements. I thought it was because I wasn't eating sugar at all, but it may have been the magnesium.

I am so excited!

National Geographic Reporting

Normal immune cells that were genetically altered to recognize and destroy cancer cells have succcessfully shrunk large tumors, scientist say. Two of 17 people with advanced melanoma - a deadly form of skin cancer - who underwent experimental treatment with the engineered immune cells saw their tumors shrivel.

They believe they know why the other patients didn't respond to the treatments. They beleive it is because they had relatively poor (cancer-detecting) receptors available when they started the trial compared to the ones we have available now.

This is great news and I look froward to seeing where it goes from here. Most of us know people whom have been affected by cancer, I think it is great they are coming up with less invasive ideas that cause cures.

Falling asleep in the middle of the afternoon? Get outside! Get some good old sunshine. We have gotten used to living in these artificially lit environments and they trigger sleepy responses in our human physiology. So get out of your chair, go take a short walk and you will be rejuvenated! More awake! Your heart will thank you!  You may lose weight! You may get stronger!  You will see more of the world around you! And you will soak in some Vitamin D...wow, did God give us a great gift when he made the sun or what? So get out there and take advantage of it!

As an aside, avoiding sweets early in the day and at lunch can also help with this. Sweets make sugar levels rise quickly, then they drop, leaving you feeling very tired. This actually led me to have an afternoon car accident (thankfully no human injuries) when I fell asleep at the wheel and ran into a guard rail about 15 years ago). Just an FYI.

Now get out in that sunshine!!!

I have rough feet. I am not sure why? Maybe it is because they carry too much weight around. Maybe it is because I don't wear socks often enough. Maybe it is because I have a disease called 'crusty foot'...well that's what my husband calls it!  At any rate, whatever it is, when I use foot lotion on my feet, I prefer the ones with a strong mint base to them. The cooling effect feels awesome. And it turns out that an ancient minty concoction is being revisited as a pain killer!  Those Greeks were pretty smart!  Here is the rest of the story about a new pain killer that will be used externally and works better than morphine without the side effects (for arthritis and diseases affecting nerve endings).

It would appear that we really do see the world around us the way we want to. In other words, if we want to believe that people like us, we are more likely to see strangers smiling at us instead of smirking at us. If we want to believe we are not that overweight, we will see a better vision of ourselves in the mirror, focusing on the good parts.

A study at Cornell of 412 people showed that these people who were motivated to get yummy fresh-squeezed orange juice saw the 'right' picture instead of the 'wrong' picture which would lead them to lumpy veggie smoothy (yuck).  As Spock would say...fascinating!

Okay, I enjoy reading science articles. I like keeping up with animal information, scientific discoveries, and news on health.  Today I read the above title and couldn't help but think 'duh!' I will link the article here.

But this is one of those that makes me wonder what scientists are doing. I have suffered bouts of depression in my life and they always accompany uncontrollable negative thoughts. What would be more helpful is to figure out how to stop these thoughts from coming.

Builds stronger bones. The antioxidents break down the oxidents.  An increase of oxidents leads to a decrease in bone density! For the complete article, click here.

Then be sure to get more oranges and grapefruits into your diet! 

My husband's grandmother is 94 years old. She is not going to be with us much longer as she slipped into a coma this past weekend after a 2 year fight with breast cancer, then bone cancer. This lovely lady ate 1/2 grapefruit everyday. And until the last 6 weeks, didn't slow down too much!  She was in Florida visiting her daughter 6 weeks ago. WOW!

We all hope and pray that another pandemic will not occur, but we also know that there is a good likelihood that it will. And while we may like to pretend that our government will take care of us and the situation, we need to stand up and take responsibility for ourselves and our family.  We have become a nation of people expecting others to take care of us (yes, this is a generalization, but I think an overall accurate one). 

It is hard for us to imagine how a pandemic would affect us. What services would be diminished, and how the world would work. Here is an article that gives some good ideas on how to prepare your family and some insights on the way a pandemic could affect the flow of the world around us. Be a good Boy Scout and be prepared!

Turns out that fat excretes dozens of substances into our body that can lead to diseases such as diabetes. It is not just the toll fat is taking on our hearts because of all the extra blood veins/vessels and it is not just the toll the 'bad' food we ate to get us fat that has taken on us (clogged arteries, bad complexions) and then there is the how we look and the energy we have factors. Doggone it! Fat is just not good no matter how you look at it!

Here is another reason to exercise! It turns out that several studies have shown that it can help reduce risk of cancer. This particular study showed a reduction in skin cancer in mice.

 Exercise enhances a process called UVB-induced apoptosis, which means programmed cell death. This is a good thing: It kills sun-damaged cells.

 

"While UVB is triggering the development of tumors, exercise is counteracting the effect by stimulating the death of the developing cancer cells," said study leader Allan Conney of Rutgers University.

 

So not only does exercise help us lose weight and help our hearts to work better and strengthen our bodies, but it can help defeat cancer! Very cool!

According to some very interesting recent studies, hamsters tend to eat more when stressed out and to gain weight. Unlike rats and mice, who went put in similar situations tend not to eat.

I have lived in a stressful life situation for many years..different stressors that I won't bore you or myself with, so now I have yet another excuse/reason why it has been easy for me to gain and hard to lose.

From the article:

Another line of inquiry would be to compare mice and rats to hamsters.

Humans and hamsters, which eat more under stress, share the same predominant stress hormone, cortisol, noted Bartness, Rats and mice, which eat less under stress, have a different primary stress hormone, corticosterone. This raises the question of whether stress-induced increases in cortisol play a more important role in the desire to eat and weight gain compared to corticosterone.

Researchers will also want to know if drugs can block stress-induced obesity, for example, by blocking the release of the stress hormone, corticotrophin releasing factor (CRF), or by blocking the body’s CRF receptors, Bartness said. CRF, also sometimes referred to as corticotrophin releasing hormone, produces the body’s “fight or flight” response under stress and helps kick off a cascade of physiological responses.

“There are a whole suite of physiological responses that occur as a result of stress,” Bartness said. It will take time to unravel all these physiological responses and to use that knowledge to block stress-induced obesity. It may even turn out that the reactions are too complex to easily block, he said. 

So this makes me wonder if Cortislim really may be affective in weight loss. So many drugs are not. But maybe, they have really hit on something and it might be worth a try to add that to my weight loss program.  If anyone has taken Cortislim, I would be interested in hearing your take on it. BTW, the site I am linking to for Cortislim appears to be their main site, but I have seen it in Walmart or Sam's recently, so you don't need to order it from there. Plus there were some other places offering it at good prices if you Google Cortislim.

I love sushi...or actually sushimi. I don't go much for the raw fish. I prefer the California roll, the terriaki steak, the terriaki chicken, the Philadelphia Roll... But I digress...here, let me stop and wipe the drool off the keyboard...

These things aren't on my diet much right now because they carry a lot of calories (mostly due to the rice).  However, I do eat a lot of fish...tuna fish, salmon, tilapia, and mahi mahi are on my diet often. And it turns out that they have a nifty chemical in them that helps make fat mice lose weight! Hooray! Now if I was only a fat mouse instead of a fat person and if I ate tons of fish everyday...

Oh well, it sounded good when I first started reading the article:) But seriously, when you look at cultures that rely heavily on fish as part of their diet, there appear to be less problems with obesity. Something to keep in mind when you are trying to lose weight.

And if you are trying to lose weight, be sure to check out BlubberBloggers! We have a great yahoo group too and there we find encouragement, accountability, and great ideas. We just got buddies today and I love mine already!  We are also going to be starting a walk across America challenge soon! So much fun! Come join us!

This probably isn't a news story for many of you. It wasn't for us (though it did make me feel less alone). We haven't had health insurance for about three years. With DH being self-employed, it is just too high for us to pay. When we last had insurance it was costing us 1200.00 a month. We couldn't keep up with that. 

This is a sad fact of life in our country that many of us aren't insured and because of that we don't get proper preventative care which leads to illness becoming severe before we seek attention and greater bills being created because of the delay.  Last year I had to have surgery on a suspicious lymph node. All of the appointments, surgery, tests cost over 10,000.00. The hospital ended up writing off most of it, but I am not unaware, that that cost has to be borne somewhere else.

We are fed a lot of information (or maybe misinformation) about countries that provide government run health care. There are pros and cons to it like there are to anything else. I have heard that we have the best medicine in the world because the researchers are funded by our private health care industry.  However, if more and more people are going bankrupt, or having their bills written off or are otherwise burdening the government with medical bills that can't be paid, doesn't it seem like universal health care could balance that cost out? Money spent on people being sick, could be spent on research instead, because if people could afford health care, then they would be more likely to get preventative care and not get as sick as a result.

We have had first hand experience with government run health care. We were in Canada four or five years ago visiting DH who was on a contract there. My son got his hand caught in a museum exhibit and I honestly thought his fingers were broken.  (We won't get into the museum negligence here who admitted the exhibit was broken and waiting repairs, but didn't offer to cover any medical expenses).

So we had to go to the hospital. We were with the family of one of DH's coworker's, so they took us to a children's hospital/emergency room.  We were there a total of 2 hours (the same amount of time or way better than emergency rooms here in the U.S.). During that time, we were seen, DS was x-rayed and bandaged (nothing was broken, thank God), and we were sent on our way. The doctor didn't give the impression of rushing from one patient to the next, there wasn't a long, long wait and my DS was taken care of in a wonderful manner. The cost of this adventure was 126.00! Yes, you heard me 126.00 and wouldn't have been that had I been a Canadian citizen. 

In March, my children got the flu. I had had it and I was soooo miserable, that I bit the bullet and took the kids to the doctor to get them Tamiflu. The cost of our doctor visit (charged for both children, even though they had the same thing and were seen at the same time) was 200.00!  Then the medicine was another 200.00 (two prescriptions for Tamiflu and some heavy duty cough medicine for all of us!  Talk about sticker shock!!!!! 

So that's my 2 cents! Feel free to share yours!

Well, here it is...the answer to bean induced flatulence! Wonder when it will be on the market? And how on earth will they advertise these gas free wonders???

I read this article with great interest. I have been there! It is amazing what stress and mental anxiety can do to the body.

I have been there, done this and it wasn't pretty. I was tired all the time, my memory still isn't great about some things. There were mood swings. I thought about eating all the time...whether to do it or not!  The thing that bothered me the most was the bursts of uncontrollable anger. At my spouse and my children mostly. 

When I went for my annual check up, I told my doctor about it. She prescribed Prozac for me and it made such a difference! I still take a low level dose. I tried stopping, but the anger came back (we seem to live a life of constant stress around here) so I am thankful for the modern chemisty that helps me to keep an even keel and my family is happy too!

Clinics to be opened next week in Iowa to provide immunizations targeting youth ages 18-22.

Emergency Rooms reported treating 80,000 lawn mower injuries in 2004. 

I have fought my weight since I was 6 years old. Since weight is a problem in my family, I believe some is genetics. I also have been classified as having big bones (which means, I can carry more weight before I start resembling Miss Piggy). And even now, I am in the midst of a weight loss journey (helped by my friends at Blubber Bloggers). I have 91 pounds to lose and have lost 41 since Thanksgiving.

But here is a person who has the exact opposite problem. He is 22 years old and has just hit the 100 pound mark!  And had to consume 6500 calories a day to do it! He is a medical mystery and  I can only begin to imagine the problems this has caused him!

Over 1000 people have been diagnosed as having mumps.  Keep a watch on this. And it is spreading. Of most concern would be people aged 35-45 just because the vaccine came out in 1967, so many people in that age range didn't get vaccinated and also managed not to get it.

It is more an annoying disease than anything else, but can have some unpleasant possible side effects such as:  hearing loss, meningitis and fertility-diminishing swollen testicles. The common side effects are: fever, headache and swollen salivary glands under the jaw.

As a Blubber Blogger, articles with the word 'Diet' in the title usually get my attention. BTW, if you are interested in joining Blubber Bloggers, we would love to have you. The group is very supportive, there are great ideas and we are currently putting together teams for a Walk Across America Challenge! So come join us!

Another word that get's my attention is Alzheimer's.We all have ways that we don't want to check out. I worry about two. Deep Vein Thrombosis which killed a couple of my relatives when they were sleeping(and I have spent sleepless nights because somehow I feel like if I stay awake, it won't happen) and Alzheimer's. I don't want to forget everyone and everything I knew. This horrible illness is affecting a lady I love dearly and has been devastating for her family. And whatever your political affiliations, watching the disease destroy Ronald Reagan was incredibly sad.

So here is an article that may be of interest to you. A way to eat healthy and possibly prevent Alzheimers. That's definitely a 'twofer!'