Despite the soggy weather, my daffodils are beginning to bloom. These beacons of cheer brighten the dreary landscape. Read about how your gift of daffodils can help brighten other people’s lives.

#1 – Daffodil Days
Proceeds from the American Cancer Society’s Daffodil Days program not only raise funds, but give hope to people facing cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, Daffodil Days “is about more than just giving beautiful flowers: it is everyone’s opportunity to create a world with less cancer and more birthdays where cancer never steals another year from anyone’s life.” Please give a gift of hope by donating to this worthwhile event.

#2 – My Most Requested Recipe Update
This information just in from one of my co-workers! A few months before I posted My Most Requested Recipe in September, a co-worker asked me for it so she could prepare it for her husband. He’s been eating steel cut oatmeal for breakfast every morning since then. Says my co-worker of her husband, “He was waving his lab report around like it was a medal.” The eighteen point drop in his cholesterol was quite significant. His current cholesterol levels have gone back down to his 2006 levels!

#3 – A Produce Tip from Bob
When buying bananas, look for medium-sized ones without any bruises. Avoid those that have a greenish-purple tinge as those will never ripen to a golden yellow. The greenish-purple tinge indicates that they have been refrigerated at some point in time. They are okay to eat, but will not taste as good.

#4 – Recycling: By the Numbers
I read an article on the Planet Green site called Recycling: By the Numbers and was impressed with the information. Here are the numbers as stated in the article:

* 544,000: Trees saved if every household in the United States replaced just one roll of virgin fiber paper towels (70 sheets) with 100 percent recycled ones.

* 20 million: Tons of electronic waste thrown away each year. One ton of scrap from discarded computers contains more gold than can be produced from 17 tons of gold ore.

* 9 cubic yards: Amount of landfill space saved by recycling one ton of cardboard.

* $160 billion: Value of the global recycling industry that employs over 1.5 million people.

* 79 million tons: Amount of waste material diverted away from disposal in 2005 through recycling and composting.

* 5 percent: Fraction of the energy it takes to recycle aluminum versus mining and refining new aluminum.

* 315 kg: Amount of carbon dioxide not released into the atmosphere each time a metric ton of glass is used to create new glass products.

* 98 percent: Percentage of glass bottles in Denmark that are refillable. 98 percent of those are returned by consumers for reuse.

* 51.5 percent: Percentage of the paper consumed in the U.S. that was recovered for recycling in 2005.

#5 – A Quote on Hope
Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.
Lin Yutang

Bring cheer to someone’s life this weekend!

An observation to begin to address this question:

I don’t know anyone over 40 who doesn’t have to watch what they eat.  The fit people are fit because they work at it.  Period.

There was a study done a year or so ago that determined that people who were fit tended to be friends with people who were fit.  People who were overweight tended to have friends who were overweight.  The message here is that you and your friends create your own reality.  The conversations you have and they way people behave around one another sets up a standards of what’s normal.  We judge our own behavior relative to the behavior of those we associate with.

I live in a very small (49 homes), pretty close-knit neighborhood.  We have developed norms here–not by design, but by opportunity and example. The kids here are incredibly active and fit.  The women have built workout coalitions and routines. From meeting for walks and/or carpooling to the gym at 5:30am to simply sharing information on best practices, there is a strong sense that being healthy matters.  During the summer, the guys have “Basketball Night” every week.  As families we play football and kickball, and our block parties are almost dangerous as the kids zoom past on foot, skateboards, or bikes.  Additionally, many of us have rules on “screentime,” limiting our kids to an hour a day, for example, on their choice of screen:  tv, computer (except for homework), video games, etc.

We have defined a healthy, active lifestyle as “normal” and we reinforce it constantly for one another.  The support and examples we provide one another–intentionally or not–are a great impetus for good behavior.

What are the norms for you and your friends?  Can you begin to set the tone by example and, perhaps, initiate change?  Does it matter?  And if so, how serious should you be about changing your eating and making activity the norm?

As I said, I don’t know anyone over 40 who doesn’t have to work at being fit.  And I would argue that doing it right is NOT about moderation. It’s about rejecting ALL the stuff that doesn’t help by rethinking the purpose and essence of food, and by having an honest reflection on where you’ve set the bar for yourself and by whose standards.

This isn’t about “giving up” things you love to eat, it’s about recognizing that many of those foods are predisposing us and our kids not to like the stuff that’s really good. In turn, it hurts our ability to develop a taste for natural foods. The stuff that hurts the most is the highly processed, corn syrupy, prepackaged, perservatived (my word), super salty, sugary crap created by corporations. As Michael Pollan says, these things aren’t food, they’re “edible food-like substances.”

We were not designed to be stagnant.  We were not designed to eat the sugar and salt and fats that have found their way into the American diet.

I hear people say things like, “I cut out soda” or “I’m cutting back.”  And that’s terrific.  But are you serious or not?  Getting healthy is not about cutting something out, it’s about creating a new set of norms for you, your family, your friends.  I know what that looks like for me.  You can see what that is by looking at my “Sample Menus” post (http://healthyisnormal.wordpress.com/2010/01/30/sample-menus/).  What it will mean for you might be different.  But whatever it is, I urge you to set the bar well.

How far you decide to go will be determined by how urgent you think it is that you make a change.  If your cholesterol is through the roof, I hope this serves as a kick in the butt for you.  If you’re diabetic or almost diabetic, here’s your kick in the butt.  If you just want to enter your later years with a good, healthy head-start, my foot is on your caboose.

Watching my father-in-law struggle with a variety of illnesses of late has been a reminder about coming to a fight well-armed. Someday, lots of us will have to deal with illness or the inevitable ramifications of wear and tear.  It seems to me that if we’re strong going into those challenges, we’ll have a better shot at getting through them well.

Really, there’s no reason that I can think of not to be serious about reshaping, re-norming your life.  What have you got to lose?

In addition to cancer, heart disease kills more than 2,000 in daily life. Approximately 60 million Americans suffer from heart disease.

I. Causes of heart disease
There are many causes of heart disease. Most heart diseases are caused by high blood pressure contributes to hardening of the arteries. To build a high level of bad cholesterol (LDL), fat in the arteries as a result of uncontrolled diet with high levels of saturated fat and trans. All of this in the formationAtherosclerosis lesions and eventually arterial blockage or anything that serves the inner lining of blood vessels damage and hampered the transport of oxygen and nutrients to the heart can be defined as a risk for heart disease.

II symptoms of heart disease

Here are some early signs of heart disease symptoms are to:

1. Leg cramps while walking
Leg cramps during exercise may be caused by dehydration. It is important to drink plenty of fluids during exercise. LegCramps occur when the muscle suddenly and forcefully contracts. The most common muscles contract in this manner are muscles cross two joints. Leg cramps during walking might be causing an indication of heart disease by arteries in the leg as a result of cholesterol are not clogged enough oxygen delivered to the cells in your leg.

2. Chest pain
Chest pain is caused by blood vessels in the heart to temporarily blocked. It is also caused by insufficient oxygenSupply to the heart muscle or coronary. The persistence of chest pain would be an early sign of heart disease. Read more…

I have a good friend who is a cancer survivor. In the past few weeks, she blogged about her experience with her first mammogram. Those of us who are men can’t appreciate what women go through in the sometimes excruciating process of being administered a mammogram. But what’s worse is the waiting game that they must endure to get their results. My friend chronicled what thoughts go through the head of a cancer survivor, and my wife who has not had cancer confirmed what it’s like to wait and wonder for a week to ten days. 

Think about all of the other medical procedures that are performed as we grow older. When I had a garden hose shoved up my rear-end a few years ago (a procedure also known as a colonoscopy) the doctor told me immediately that I was clean as a whistle – literally and medically. I didn’t use an anesthetic so he was able to tell me during the procedure that he saw nothing. The same is true with an EKG.

What I don’t understand is why it takes so cotton-pickin’ long to be informed about certain types of medical results. Mammograms top the list. Blood work is right up there. If the quacks can look at an MRI image and tell me instantly where my rotator cuff is torn, why does it take them two weeks to tell me that my cholesterol has dropped 40 points (it hasn’t)? Yet, they can tell me before the pee in the cup I filled is cold, that the result is normal. I don’t understand.

I propose that medical professionals subscribe to Dr. Pistoph’s Patient’s Bill of Rights. Here it is:

1.     Never will a patient be left wondering about the results from any sort of test that could involve a life or death issue. Instead, the physician will provide the results before the patient leaves the office or clinic. This means the physician or clinic may need to purchase some additional equipment in order to meet this deadline. Yeah, it may be expensive so you’ll just have to wait to buy that third yacht.

2.     And while we’re at it, no patient will have to wait more than five minutes beyond his or her appointment time before being seen. Oh, and this doesn’t mean being stuck in an exam room in a backless paper gown for 30 minutes.

3.     Physicians will spend the money necessary to purchase newfangled scanning equipment that does not require crushing a woman’s boobs, shoving unmentionable things up a woman’s hoo-ha, or sticking a probing finger up a man’s bungus.

There, I’m glad that’s cleared up.

Most people don’t think too much about eggs. Sure, you probably have eggs in your refrigerator at home (the majority of people do), but seriously! When’s the last time you really gave them a second thought?

Truth be told, eggs often get taken for granted by most of us.

We might think about them a little when we crack a couple into a muffin or cake batter, or whisk a few to make scrambled eggs or an omelette, or drop one into simmering water to poach. But most of the time, we really don’t give them much thought.

Until, that is, perhaps something like one of the following happens……

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