By: Joseph Enna
A Presidential aspirant under the platform of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Dr Sule Lamido has described the All Progressive Congress (APC) as evil, visionless and a doping ground for thieves.
Continue reading “APC is evil, sanctuary for thieves, Lamido says”
By: Sam Nwaoko
Continue reading “Fayemi hires 35 lawyers against PDP’s petition, to call 1,009 witnesses”
Author: Guest Contributor
More and more research is showing that the key to lifelong good health is what experts call “lifestyle medicine” — making simple changes in diet, exercise, and stress management. To help you turn that knowledge into results, we’ve put together this manageable list of health and wellness suggestions.
We asked three experts — a naturopathic physician, a dietitian, and a personal trainer — to tell us the top five simple-but-significant lifestyle-medicine changes they recommend.
Besides giving you three different takes on how to pick your health battles, this list gives you choices you can make without being whisked off to a reality-show fat farm — or buying a second freezer for those calorie-controlled, pre-portioned frozen meals.
Research shows a healthy positive attitude helps build a healthier immune system and boosts overall health. Your body believes what you think, so focus on the positive.
Shoot for five servings of vegetables a day — raw, steamed, or stir-fried. A diet high in vegetables is associated with a reduced risk of developing cancers of the lung, colon, breast, cervix, esophagus, stomach, bladder, pancreas, and ovaries. And many of the most powerful phytonutrients are the ones with the boldest colors — such as broccoli, cabbage, carrots, tomatoes, grapes, and leafy greens.
What, when, and how much you eat can keep both your metabolism and your energy levels steadily elevated, so you’ll have more all-day energy. A “5 meal ideal” will help you manage your weight, keep your cool, maintain your focus, and avoid cravings.
Did you know that daily exercise can reduce all of the biomarkers of aging? This includes improving eyesight, normalizing blood pressure, improving lean muscle, lowering cholesterol, and improving bone density. If you want to live well and live longer, you must exercise! Studies show that even ten minutes of exercise makes a difference — so do something! Crank the stereo and dance in your living room. Sign up for swing dancing or ballroom dancing lessons. Walk to the park with your kids or a neighbor you’d like to catch up with. Jump rope or play hopscotch. Spin a hula hoop. Play water volleyball. Bike to work. Jump on a trampoline. Go for a hike.
If you have trouble sleeping, try relaxation techniques such as meditation and yoga. Or eat a small bedtime snack of foods shown to help shift the body and mind into sleep mode: whole grain cereal with milk, oatmeal, cherries, or chamomile tea. Darken your room more and turn your clock away from you. Write down worries or stressful thoughts to get them out of your head and onto the page. This will help you put them into perspective so you can quit worrying about them.
What we eat and how we feel are linked in very complex ways. A healthy approach to eating is centered on savoring flavor, eating to satisfaction, and increasing energy, rather than focusing on weight. Check your balance of low-calorie foods, nutrient-dense foods (providing many nutrients per calorie), and foods that are calorie dense but nutrient poor. Most Americans need to eat more fresh whole foods (in contrast to processed, highly refined foods). Try to add more whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, and legumes into your meals. Pair these carbohydrate-rich foods with a healthy fat or lean protein to extend satisfaction.
If adding more fruits and vegetables sounds ominous, look to “finger food” versions that preschool kids love — carrot and celery sticks, cherry tomatoes, broccoli florets, grapes, berries, and dried fruits. All are nutritional powerhouses packed with antioxidants.
Limit saturated fats and trans fats, and aim to eat more foods rich in anti-inflammatory omega-3 fatty acids to cut your risk of cardiovascular disease and maybe even improve depressed moods. The equivalent of just one gram of EPA/DHA (eicosapentaenoic acid/docosahexaenoic acid) daily is recommended. Eating cold-water oily fish (wild salmon, herring, sardines, trout) two to three times per week will provide both EPA and DHA. Adding up to two tablespoons of ground flaxseed and eating meat, milk, and cheese from grass-fed animals will provide you with a healthy dose of omega-3s.
Supplements are not a substitute for a good diet. Although many health experts recommend taking a multivitamin and mineral supplement that provides 100 to 200 percent of your recommended daily value, each and every supplement should be carefully evaluated for purity and safety. Specific supplements have been associated with toxicity, reactions with medications, competition with other nutrients, and even increased risk of diseases such as cancer, heart disease, and diabetes.
Both eating and physical activity are fun, sensory experiences! In both, aim for pleasure — not pain. Pay attention to the nutritional value of the foods you choose to eat, as well as your sense of satisfaction, relaxation, tension, exhilaration, and fatigue when you sit down to eat. Check in with yourself as you eat, rekindling your recognition of hunger, fullness, and satisfaction when considering when and how much to eat.
“I spend countless hours doing cardio and never seem to lose that last ten pounds!” is a common complaint I hear from clients. Give yourself permission to shorten your workout. Believe it or not, overtraining could be the problem. Your body can plateau if not given adequate rest to restore itself, ultimately leading to a decline in performance. Fatigue, moodiness, lack of enthusiasm, depression, and increased cortisol (the “stress” hormone) are some hallmarks of overtraining syndrome. Creating a periodization program — breaking up your routine into various training modes — can help prevent overtraining by building rest phases into your regimen. For example, you might weight train on Monday and Wednesday, cycle on Tuesday and Thursday, run on Friday and rest on Saturday and Sunday. You can also help balance your program by simply incorporating more variety.
Often the biggest deterrent to improving health is feeling overwhelmed by all the available advice and research. Try to focus first on one small, seemingly inconsequential, unhealthy habit and turn it into a healthy, positive habit. If you’re in the habit of eating as soon as you get home at night, instead, keep walking shoes in the garage or entryway and take a quick spin around the block before going inside. If you have a can of soda at lunchtime every day, have a glass of water two days a week instead. Starting with small, painless changes helps establish the mentality that healthy change is not necessarily painful change. It’s easy to build from here by adding more healthy substitutions.
You can do all the right things — but if you have personal relationships with people who have unhealthy habits, it is often an uphill battle. The healthiest people are those who have relationships with other healthy people. Get your family or friends involved with you when you walk or plan healthier meals. Making healthy changes with a loved one can bring you closer together as well as motivate you.
Take a few minutes and write down all the reasons you can’t begin an exercise program. Then look at the basis of each reason. For instance, if you wrote, “No time” as one of your reasons, then perhaps that’s based on a belief that an exercise program takes a lot of time. Starting with even five minutes a day will have a positive effect because you will have created a healthy habit where one didn’t exist before, and that’s a powerful mental adjustment. A closer look at your list will expose those false beliefs hiding behind each excuse.
Let’s face it, exercising just for the sake of exercising or losing weight can get boring. Spice things up by signing up for an event like a run/walk race or a cycling ride where you can be part of a team. Doing so gives your workouts a new purpose, and it’s fun to be around others who are exercising just like you — not to mention that most events benefit nonprofit organizations, which doubles your feel-good high.
By: Seyi Gesinde
THE governorship candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in Osun State, Senator Iyiola Omisore, and other leaders of the party received a rousing welcome from Iwo people, as the party held its Osun West campaign rally in the ancient town, on Monday.
Continue reading “Omisore hailed in Iwo, says ‘I’m not in PDP, it’s dead in Osun’”
By:Taiwo Adisa, Ayodele Adesanmi – Abuja
THE Joint Committee on Electoral Matters in the National assembly has voted to reject a proposal of N189 billion put forward by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the conduct of the 2019 election.
Continue reading “INEC budget: NASS committee rejects N189bn request, recommends N143bn”
Sometimes the hardest part is getting started. That’s where we come in—we can help.
We’ve compiled a few of our favorite quick and simple health tips to give you a jumpstart for the New Year. We’ve included quitting smoking and changing your diet, as those are two of the most frequent New Year’s resolutions we see.
Most of us are chronically dehydrated. We drink coffee, sports drinks, soda, and juice instead of plain old water. Those drinks are better than nothing, but they can’t beat water in terms of hydrating the body.
Filtered, pure water is best to rejuvenate the body and keep the organs, brain, and blood healthy.
Drinking eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day is fine for someone who weighs 125 pounds, but if you weigh more, you need to drink more. Divide your weight in half and drink that many ounces a day.
Some find it helpful to keep a large water bottle handy and refill it at lunch and after work. Keep it with you and set an alarm to drink, if you need to.
We have a love-hate relationship with sugar. We know it’s harmful to our health, but it’s so delicious. In fact, we love sugar so much that we eat over 150 pounds of it each year. That comes out to about 12.5 pounds a month.
When you consider that one soda pop has at least 10 teaspoons of sugar, it’s easy to see how it adds up.
If you need reasons to give up sugar, think about the specific ways sugar wrecks your health. It causes wild fluctuations in your blood sugar, causing you to overeat and gain weight.
Sugar spikes also cause your pancreas to work overtime pumping out insulin, which can lead to insulin resistance, polycystic ovarian syndrome, and type 2 diabetes. Sugar raises your triglyceride levels and causes widespread inflammation in your body, which leads to stress on the immune system and heart disease.
Stress can raise cortisol levels and blood pressure, and it keeps your body on high alert. A certain amount of stress is unavoidable in today’s society, but how you deal with it determines how negatively it affects your health.
A fast, easy way to calm down and relieve anxiety is to simply breathe deeply through the nose for four seconds, hold it for four seconds, and exhale through the mouth for four seconds. If you purse your lips when you exhale, you can easily exhale all the air from your lungs. Repeat 5–10 times.
Giving up cigarettes is one of the best things you can do to improve your health. It’s no picnic, but the benefits are great. As you can imagine, it’s a great feeling to no longer be a slave to cigarettes, and you can find plenty of ways to spend the money you used to spend on smoking.
If quitting smoking is on your healthy habits list, check out our blog for tips to prepare for your quit.
The flu shot isn’t the best way to avoid the flu, but washing your hands regularly is. You should wash your hands before you handle food, before and after changing a diaper or helping anyone to the bathroom, after going to the bathroom yourself, and after you’ve been to any public place.
We suggest using this process to wash your hands:
Not all of us can fit in 30 minutes of activity at once. Try moving in small increments, five or ten minutes at a time. Don’t think of it as exercise, think of it as moving.
Park the car farther away from the office than you normally do. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Walk the dog twice a day for at least 10 minutes. Shovel the snow yourself, or do more yard work yourself.
Be creative, and you’ll find several movement opportunities throughout your day.
Eating better is easier said than done. We have an abundance of food choices now that we didn’t ten or fifteen years ago. With that said, most of those new choices are not good ones. We eat out of bags and boxes instead of real, fresh food.
We go to drive-throughs and restaurants more often than not. We aren’t mindful of what we eat; all we know is that we’re hungry and the food is there.
Think about what you eat, and plan your meals. Shop the perimeter of the store, where you are likely to find whole, real foods. Choose lean meats, grass-fed or organic if possible. Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables of different colors.
If your sweet tooth is acting up, eat some berries or dark chocolate. Eat foods as close to their natural states as possible.
Meditation helps you relax, be aware of your body, and reduce stress. It can also lower blood pressure, reduce depression, and promote better sleep.
When you meditate, you train your mind to be in tune with your body, and you can learn to reduce your anxiety quickly. Some like to meditate while sitting or lying down, while others combine movement with meditation. Yoga and tai chi partner well with meditation.
One of the best ways to reduce stress and increase happiness is to simply stop what you’re doing and relax. Take a few moments to yourself and do what makes you happy.
Is it a quick nap? Is it watching your kids play sports, or taking the dog for a long walk? Maybe you like to bake, have a pedicure, or play a quiet game of chess.
Put your phone on vibrate and leave it in another room. Unplug for at least an hour a day.
You can’t be healthy if your sleep isn’t restful. Plan your sleep like you plan other areas of your life. Know how much sleep you need a night (it’s probably one or two more hours than you think), and plan your night so you begin winding down an hour or two before you need to go to bed.
Don’t drink caffeine or alcohol within a few hours of bedtime, and don’t expect to fall asleep with the television or computer on.
Keep the bedroom as dark as possible, and if you can adjust the temperature to be a couple of degrees cooler than the rest of the house, you’ll sleep better.
We hope these health tips will help create a healthier you. If you have questions, or if you would like our help, please let us know.
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Real Madrid stars, Marcelo and Karim Benzema have spoken about ex-teammate, Cristiano Ronaldo’s absence following their 4-1 victory over Girona in Sunday’s La Liga fixture.
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Ahead of the 2019 presidential election, the All Progressives Congress, APC, has declared that there will be no automatic ticket for President Muhammadu Buhari and other presidential aspirants in the party.
Continue reading “POLITICS2019: Why we won’t give Buhari automatic ticket – APC”
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Manchester United manager, Jose Mourinho has released his squad that will clash with Tottenham Hotspur in tonight’s Premier League match at Old Trafford.
Continue reading “EPL: Manchester United’s squad vs Tottenham revealed”
By Owei Lakemfa
SENATE President, Bukola Saraki, a light heavy weight politician has punched his way up the political ladder with memorable knockouts. His rise is so phenomenal that he has quickly moved to the heavy weight category. SarakiSaraki Today, he, not the people, our welfare or needs, are the issue.
Aeronewsc 