New U.S. Dietary Food Pyramids: Hit The Market

New U.S. Dietary Food Pyramids Aim to Foster Healthier Eating and Better Health.

Biggest change from old pyramid? Now there are 12 different pyramids, each targeting four overarching themes:

1. Variety: Eat foods from all food groups and subgroups.
   
2. Proportionality: Eat more of some foods (fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fat-free or low-fat milk products), and less of others (foods high in saturated or trans fats, added sugars, cholesterol salt, and alcohol.).
   
3. Moderation: Choose forms of foods that limit intake of saturated or trans fats, added sugars, cholesterol, salt, and alcohol.
   
4. Activity: Be physically active every day.
   

Background:
The 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans are the basis for new Federal nutrition policy. The MyPyramid Food Guidance System provides food-based guidance to help implement the recommendations of the new Guidelines. MyPyramid was based on both the Guidelines and the Dietary Reference Intakes from the National Academy of Sciences, while taking into account current consumption patterns of Americans.

MyPyramid translates the Guidelines into a total diet that meets nutrient needs from food sources and aims to moderate or limit dietary components often consumed in excess. An important complementary tool is the Nutrition Facts label on food products. And MyPyramid provides web-based interactive and print materials for consumers. In addition, materials have been developed for both consumers and professionals in the field. How MyPyramid Works

Overview of the New MyPyramid Food Guidance System:
The new pyramids works on the two key ideas. First, that one size does NOT fit everyone. And second, getting the bulk of your nutrients through food in-take is best. The MyPyramid Education Framework provides specific recommendations for making food choices that will improve the quality of an average American diet. These recommendations are interrelated and should be used together. Taken together, they would result in the following changes from a typical diet:

• Increased intake of vitamins, minerals, dietary fiber, and other essential nutrients, especially of those that are often low in typical diets.
  
• Lowered intake of saturated fats, trans fats, and cholesterol and increased intake of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains to decrease risk for some chronic diseases.
  
• Calorie intake balanced with energy needs to prevent weight gain and/or promote a healthy weight.
  

Take sometime to fully explore the new website: MyPyramid There's a lot of new information to digest; so plan to visit the site often. More about the new pyramids next time.

(Source: MyPyramid.gov)

Health Benefits of Physical Activity

A strong body makes the mind strong.
- Thomas Jefferson

Regular physical exercise is the best antidote to many of the effects of aging. Major benefits from regular exercise include the following:

• favorable effects on fats in the blood
  
• better handling of blood sugar
  
• improved breathing
  
• better endurance
  
• improved balance
  
• greater strength
  
• stronger bones
  
• improved sense of well-being
  
• clearer thinking
  
• better sleep
  

Studies are currently being done to show the benefits of exercise programs for increasing life expectancy and decreasing the risk of or delaying disability as long as possible. Virtually, all studies done to date have consistently and repeatedly shown strong evidence that excercise is a key component for a quality, healthier life. So it's really important to keep active and excercise -- regularly!

To Learn More visit:
Physical ActivityBenefits

Keep Your Mind Sharp -- Excercise Daily

As soils are depleted, human health, vitality and intelligence go with them.
- Louis Bromfield

Staying physically fit throughout your life is not only good for your body, its great for your mind too. Exercise every day, and you're more likely to keep your mind sharp well into old age.

Maintaining a healthy mind2body health connection is the ultimate paradigm for living a healthier, full and active, longer life. Researchers from the V.A. Medical Center in San Francisco found that adults who were the most fit at the start of a six-year study maintained their mental sharpness over time and did better in tests of their mental function conducted years later than did their less physically fit peers, reports Reuters.

Study author Dr. Deborah E. Barnes, told Reuters that "Physical activity appears to be good for the brain as well as the body. And, older adults with higher levels of cardiorespiratory fitness experience a slower rate of cognitive decline over time."

The benefits link between excercising and maintaining good health becomes even more important as we age. A person who has cardiorespiratory fitness may also be at a lower risk for cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes, all of which are known to be associated with poor mental function in older adults. Research findings suggest that cardiorespiratory fitness may be directly associated with blood flow to the brain. Reduced blood flow to the brain has been linked to lower mental function in both Alzheimer's disease patients and normal older adults.

Full study findings are published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. Also check out Health in Aging.

Meditate to Improve Your Health...

Ill-health, of body or of mind, is defeat... Health alone is victory. Let all men, if they can manage it, contrive to be healthy.
-- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Sir Walter Scott

Are YOU Meditating? Yes, it can improve your health.

Even if you don't have years and years of meditation skills and practice you too can benefit from meditation. (See previous article citing measurable results for Buddhist monk practitioners). Research results show that meditation stimulates Brain & Immune Functions for everyboy! These are the clear and conclusive findings of a research study conducted in 2003 at the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin. And many recent findings of other clinical studies, including trials at Harvard support these findings.

The 8-week clinical training program in mindfulness meditation was applied in a work environment with healthy employees. And study consisted of two groups, those who meditated and those who did not. Subjects in both groups were were also injected and vaccinated with an influenza vaccine.

Findings: Researchers reported for the first time significant increases in left-sided anterior activation, a pattern previously associated with positive affect, in the meditators compared with the nonmeditators. Also they found significant increases in antibody titers to influenza vaccine among subjects in the meditation compared with those in the non-meditation control group.

Read More: Mindful Meditation Improves Brain and Immune Functions

Bottom Line: The health benefits are real not just "all in your head". Meditate to improve your health! Could this be a "no brainer" way to also lower your chances of Alzheimer's?

Meditation Supports Healthy Minds & Emotions!

A quiet mind cureth all. -- Robert Burton

Maintaining your brain is crucial. As recent research findings clearly prove.

Practitioners of meditation have long used this brain work to achieve different levels of cognition and emotion. Recently, scientists at the University of Wisconsinwere able to detect positive mental changes associated with meditation -- through electrical imaging.

The Dalai Lama – the most well-known meditation practitioner – greatly supported the study by offering eight of his Buddhist monks, with 10,000 to 50,000 hours of lifetime meditation (15-40 years of practice), to undergo tests and brain scanning.

These eight “professional” meditators’ results were compared to an untrained control group of ten volunteers. Even before either group began meditation, scientists noticed that the monks’ brain waves had considerable more activity than the control group – indicating that meditation may have lasting effects on the brain.

As both groups began to meditate on unconditional compassion, the intensity of the monks’ gamma wave activity was the highest that the researchers had ever seen.

Fast Factoid: Gamma waves are high-frequency electrical brain impulses, which knit together disparate brain circuits that are required for high-level brain functions, such as learning and conscious perception.

The monks with the most practice meditating also had an exceptional amount of activity within the left prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain associated with happiness and positive thoughts and emotions!

Finally, the belief that connections among brain nerve cells are fixed early in life and do not change in adulthood, as it turns out, is passé! Today, scientists believe that the brain is actually quite plastic, enabling development to continue over a lifetime.

So, if you’ve been considering a meditation class (or any class that requires focused attention and learning), you will be doing a lot more than the activity itself. You’ll be developing valuable new brain circuits!

Article Source: Our Health Coop and Full Scientific Study

Acupuncture Wins Western Medical Approval

Our understandings are always liable to error. Nature and certainty are very hard to come at, and infallibility is mere vanity and pretense. -- Marcus Antoninus

This ancient Chinese technique of sticking needles into the skin to relieve pain, nausea, and many other ills has finally won the endorsement and approval of western medicine. Acupunture has long suffered keen skepticism from the traditional western medical profession.

But now there is a growing and strong body of scientific evidence -- brain scans, ultrasound, and other "scientific" techniques -- showing that acupuncture triggers direct, measurable effects on the body, including perhaps activation of precisely the regions of the brain that would be predicted by ancient Chinese theory.

Acupuncture, an extraordinarily safe technique, has been in used for centuries throughout Asia. And according to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, a government agency, some 8.2 million Americans now use acupunture on a regular basis. Even some insurers are now paying for acupuncture treatments.

And in light of the recent FDA recall of painkillers Vioxx and Celebrex, this news that acupunture works and is a viable treatment, is great news for millions of Americans now faced with finding new pain relief in the wake of the recall.

[Acupunture] "never fails to make me feel better -- more mellow and more energized. I used to think this lovely state was mostly due to the placebo effect." For decades western medicine has been sharply skeptical about acupunture and its benefits.

Researchers at the University of California at Irvine, have shown that when a needle is placed in a point on the side of the foot that Chinese theorists associate with vision, sure enough, the visual cortex in the brain ''lights up" on functional magnetic resonance imaging scans, though the cause and effect are not totally clear.

"Neuroscientist Seung-Schik Yoo of Brigham and Women's Hospital has shown that when a needle is placed in a point called pericardium 6 on the wrist, known in Chinese medicine as a sensitive point for nausea, the part of the brain that controls the vestibular system (which affects balance and nausea) lights up on scans."

"While much about acupuncture remains mysterious, at least to Westerners, a great deal is becoming clearer, thanks to an explosion of studies using Western scientific techniques." And in deed, it seems that ancient Chinese theory as practiced and predicted is for real! To read more about it: Medical Research Shows Acupunture Works