Health

According to a survey by Gardeners’ World magazine, 80 percent of gardeners reported being happy and satisfied with their lives, compared to 67 percent of non-gardeners. This feeling of well being can have other more-far reaching implications for your physical health as well. According to research from Johns Hopkins, having a cheerful temperament can significantly reduce your odds of suffering a heart attack or sudden cardiac death.

Water is essential for life, and we typically assume that water is “clean” or “good” provided you’re not getting your water from a contaminated source. But can water ever “go bad”?

If you have a water filtration system in your home, it may not occur to you that your water could become contaminated after a while—until you go to clean out the holding tank, that is…

Aging

I personally don’t drink coffee as I don’t like the taste and have only used a few cups in my life to treat jet lag. However, there are ways to include coffee in a healthy lifestyle, provided you’re not using it as a crutch to mask symptoms of a poor diet, like low energy levels—and provided you’re not pregnant.

The coffee plant and its seeds (coffee beans) contain a natural blend of polyphenol antioxidants (including chlorogenic acids), bioflavonoids, vitamins, and minerals that all work together to offer some…

The pesticide and junk food industries continue to cause harm, even deaths, while destroying our rights and indemnifying themselves from liability.

That’s the take-home message from the September 8 article in The Progressive,1 which recounts the travails of residents in Cedar Valley, Oregon. It’s also the take-home message of other related news. And yet there’s hope…

From a regulatory perspective, GM crops are considered to be “substantially equivalent” to their non-GM counterparts. This means, that they are essentially the same, with no meaningful differences for your health or the environment.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has (so far) not required labeling of GM foods because they are deemed to be “substantially equivalent” to non-GM foods. It is also due to substantial equivalence that no oversight or long-term safety testing has been required of GM crops.

If you have planted tomatoes in your garden this year, you may have realized, too late, that you planted more than you need. Late summer is also a perfect time to snag great deals on tomatoes at farmer’s markets, where you may be able to pick up a half-bushel of freshly grown tomatoes for a fraction of the cost at your supermarket.

The question then is, what should you do with all of these tomatoes? If you’ve grown tired of eating them in salads or whole, like an apple, as a snack, making homemade tomato sauce is one of the best uses of large amounts of tomatoes…

Earlier this year, one of the largest and longest studies of mammography to date — involving 90,000 women followed for 25 years — found that mammograms have no impact on breast cancer mortality.

Over the course of the study, the death rate from breast cancer was virtually identical between those who received an annual mammogram and those who did not, while 22 percent of screen-detected invasive breast cancers were over-diagnosed, leading to unnecessary treatment. The researchers concluded “the data suggest that the value of mammography screening should be reassessed.”

The soda industry is a $75-billion market,1 an industry that reached its greatest heights in the US during the 1980s and 1990s, when Coca-Cola began pushing larger drink sizes and “upsizing.” Fountain drink sizes grew more than 50 percent by 1990, and in 1994, the 20-ounce plastic bottle was introduced in the US.

As people drank more and more soda, rates of obesity and diabetes soared, and while the soda industry still denies to this day any connection, research suggests otherwise.

Are forgetfulness and “senior moments” inevitable parts of aging? Many medical professionals (including the doctor in CNN’s news brief above) say it’s perfectly normal to start having memory lapses by the time you reach middle age.

I disagree. In fact, if you notice memory lapses, you may want to seriously consider making some immediate lifestyle changes to help reverse, or at least minimize further damage that might lead to dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.

Experiencing the loss of a loved one takes a heavy toll on your emotional health, but it doesn’t stop there. The extreme stress that results during bereavement affects you physically, too, and can manifest as both chronic disease and acute illness.

Stress plays a major role in your immune system, and can impact your blood pressure, cholesterol levels, brain chemistry, blood sugar levels, and hormonal balance…