Best And Worst Pre-Run Food

I have heard from many people, that they have had stomach issues while running or just after working out.... I didn't have a clue, until after I read this article from About.com.....

"If you have had issues with gastrointestinal distress during or after your runs, the foods you're eating in the 24 hours before your runs may be the culprit. Here's a guide to what you should and shouldn't eat before your runs.
FOODS TO AVOID
Try limiting or eliminating some of these foods before running to see if it makes a difference:

High-fiber foods: Whole-grain foods, vegetables, legumes, and fruits that are high in fiber can cause gastrointestinal distress or diarrhea.

High-fat foods: Foods with a lot of fat -- such as fried foods, cheese, hamburgers, or bacon -- digest slowly and will feel like they're sitting in your stomach.

Caffeine: Coffee or other caffeinated beverages can cause stomach issues or diarrhea.

SAFE FOODS
These are the best types of pre-run foods to help avoid gastrointestinal distress during or after running:

Low-Fiber Fruits and Veggies: If you really want to eat fruits or vegetables before runs, zucchini, tomatoes, olives, grapes, and grapefruit are all low in fiber.

Safe Dairy: Some people have issues when they consume dairy products before runs. Soy, rice, and almond milks generally don't contain the sugar lactose, which can be tough to digest. You can also try acidophilus milk and yogurts with live cultures, which contain bacteria that help with digestion.

Refined Carbs: Processed white foods, like regular pasta, white rice, and plain bagels are good choices. Although they're not as nutritious as whole grain and unprocessed foods, they're easier on your stomach because the whole grain is already broken down" (About.com)

Children of Older Fathers May Have Subtle Neurocognitive Impairments

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Until now We were knewthat advanced age of the mother is linked to Down syndrome but now there are research to prove that even father’s advance age might also cause reduced intelligence and other neurodevelopmental disorder.
This is something which we can avoid.

Medscape News reports,
"The offspring of older fathers show subtle impairments on tests of neurocognitive ability during infancy and childhood, according to the results of a study reported in the March 10 issue of PLoS Medicine.

"Advanced paternal age (APA) is associated with an increased risk of neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and schizophrenia, as well as with dyslexia and reduced intelligence," write Sukanta Saha, from Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research, The Park Centre for Mental Health, in Richlands, Australia, and colleagues. "The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between paternal age and performance on neurocognitive measures during infancy and childhood."

Limitations of this study include nonrandom sample attrition and missing data that could affect the generalizability of the results"

Read full article here

Can I shrink my stomach without being hungry?

Some people have bigger stomach than others. They end up eating more calories than others before satiety center in brain stop them to munch more.......

How about if you feel full after eating some salad and a bread. Loosing weight is directly correlated to eating less calories. But again how to kill my voracious appetite....

Here are some ways to trick our stomach.

1. Shrink the stomach: The stretch receptors in the stomach can be “reset” over time to be accustomed to less food. Start by eating five or six mini-meals every three hours instead of three meals a day.

2. Eat protein: protein reduces hunger for reasons that are not well understood.

3. Eat low calorie, high fiber foods, like vegetables, fruits and whole grains, because they stay in the stomach longer to keep you satisfied. Vegetables and Fruits a lot of water and fiber, which can quickly fill you up.

4. Learn portion control:

5. Eat slowly: newer research published in Nature showed that changes in the human brain begin 10 minutes after eating and peak for about 2 minutes. The changes correspond directly to increases in blood sugar and insulin levels. By eating more slowly, you can give yourself time to feel your fullness signals. You can take a 2-minute break midway through your meal if you'd like or you can simply eat more slowly. To slow down naturally, choose foods that require work, such as shelled nuts, soybeans in the pod, lobster and mussels in the shell, fresh artichokes, and oranges in the peel.

6. Limit fatty foods, can the soda

7. Snack "smart" A little snacking may not only keep your hunger in-check between meals, but may also leave you less tempted to overeat at dinner.

8. Sibutramine (Meridia), a prescription drug also makes you feel full quickly, but it is reserved for people who are quite overweight.

Referance:

Mary Hartley, RD Calorie Count.

Eric Sabo, Cool Nurse.com.

Drink Water Before Breakfast to Lose Weight

Image by Cesar R. via Flickr

"Study shows water accelerates the metabolism and encourages weight loss Losing a few pounds or simply keeping in shape is often not only a question of strict dieting and working out as often as we can find the time for it. A healthy attitude towards food, moderation and a few easy tricks that all of us can do also come extremely in handy in our never-ending struggle against the extra pounds. Drinking a glass of water before breakfast is one of those tricks, experts tell us.

The importance and many benefits water has on our body can truly never be stressed enough. Hydration is key both in terms of our health and the appearance of our skin, so we should all start drinking more water throughout the day. Yet it can also help us lose weight, a new study comes to show, by accelerating the metabolism and helping our body “wash” the fat away more easily.

The study included premenopausal overweight women who started drinking water before breakfast in increasing quantities. The more water they drank, the more their weight loss efforts were sustained, results have shown. The conclusion can only be one: a glass of water (approximately eight ounces) in the morning before breakfast, coffee or tea is just what the doctor recommends for excellent health and a slim figure.

“After sleeping for seven to eight hours your body needs water as well as food – being slightly dehydrated can actually slow down your metabolism. Before downing your latte, green tea, or juice, have a glass of water because […] well-hydrated cells not only work better, but they help you flush out fat.” FitSugar also recommends, based on the findings of the latest study.

Nevertheless, if losing weight is not on our radar right now, water also has countless other benefits. For starters, it keeps the skin on the face well hydrated, thus protecting it from the winter cold and the harsh spring winds. Since the skin is made of 70% water, beauticians recommend about 8 glasses a day for a glowing, healthy and irresistible countenance, the kind no cream – no matter how expensive – can get." (Softpedia News)

People Drink More Alcohol When They See It On TV

"A new Dutch and Canadian study of young men's drinking behaviour while watching an hour of TV (a movie clip with advert breaks) found that, compared to those who did not see much alcohol portrayed on screen, those who saw alcohol portrayed frequently, on average consumed 1.5 more 200 ml bottles of alcoholic beverage.

"This is the first experimental study to show a direct effect of exposure to alcohol portrayals on TV on viewers' immediate drinking behaviour."

In their background information the researchers described how movies and adverts generally put alcohol in a positive light and the assumption is that this encourages young people to drink it. So they decided to set up an experiment to test it."(Medical News Today)
Read Full article here

10 Surprising Health Benefits of Sex

Parents always told me that sex is an evil, It will come in the way of your success, will waste your time, blah...blah...blah.......But they were partially true.

WebMD reports, "The health benefits of sex extend well beyond the bedroom. Turns out sex is good for you in ways you may never have imagined."

"When you're in the mood, it's a sure bet that the last thing on your mind is boosting your immune system or maintaining a healthy weight.
Yet good sex offers those health benefits and more.That's a surprise to many people, says Joy Davidson, PhD, a New York psychologist and sex therapist. "Of course, sex is everywhere in the media," she says. "But the idea that we are vital, sexual creatures is still looked at in some cases with disgust or in other cases a bit of embarrassment. So to really take a look at how our sexuality adds to our life and enhances our life and our health, both physical and psychological, is eye-opening for many people."Sex does a body good in a number of ways, according to Davidson and other experts. The benefits aren't just anecdotal or hearsay -- each of these 10 health benefits of sex is backed by scientific scrutiny.Among the benefits of healthy loving in a relationship:

1. Relieves Stress:A big health benefit of sex is lower blood pressure and overall stress reduction, according to researchers from Scotland.

2. Boosts Immunity: Having sex once or twice a week has been linked with higher levels of an antibody called immunoglobulin A or IgA, which can protect you from getting colds and other infections.

3. Burn calories: 5-6 calories per minute. (can alone burn 1 pound fat in a month)

4. Improves Cardiovascular Health: And the heart health benefits of sex don't end there. The researchers also found that having sex twice or more a week reduced the risk of fatal heart attack by half for the men, compared with those who had sex less than once a month.

5. Boosts Self-Esteem: Boosting self-esteem was one of 237 reasons people have sex, collected by University of Texas researchers and published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior.

6. Improves Intimacy: Having sex and orgasms increases levels of the hormone oxytocin, the so-called love hormone, which helps us bond and build trust

7. Reduces Pain: As the hormone oxytocin surges, endorphins increase, and pain declines. So if your headache, arthritis pain, or PMS symptoms seem to improve after sex, you can thank those higher oxytocin levels.

8. Reduces Prostate Cancer Risk: Frequent ejaculations, especially in 20-something men, may reduce the risk of prostate cancer later in life, Australian researchers reported in the British Journal of Urology International.

9. Strengthens Pelvic Floor Muscles: For women, doing a few pelvic floor muscle exercises known as Kegels during sex offers a couple of benefits. You will enjoy more pleasure, and you'll also strengthen the area and help to minimize the risk of incontinence later in life. To do a basic Kegel exercise, tighten the muscles of your pelvic floor, as if you're trying to stop the flow of urine. Count to three, then release.

10. Helps You Sleep Better: The oxytocin released during orgasm also promotes sleep, according to research. "(WebMD)weight and blood pressure. Something to think about, especially if you've been wondering why your guy can be active one minute and snoring the next."(WebMD)

Being fat is as bad as smoking

BBC Repots "Being overweight or seriously underweight as a teenager curbs life expectancy as much as smoking 10 cigarettes a day, a study suggests."

"Swedish researchers followed 46,000 men from the age of 18 for 38 years. Being obese or smoking more than 10 a day doubled the premature death risk, the British Medical Journal reported.

Being overweight, seriously underweight or smoking 10 or less raised it by 30% - and interestingly the fat non-smoker ran the same risk as the fat smoker.

Those who were underweight - with a Body Mass Index (BMI) of less than 18.5 - had no increased risk of dying early, regardless of whether they smoked or not.

But the team from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden found that those who were seriously underweight - with a BMI of 17 or less - ran the same risk as those who were overweight.

Read full article

Peanut Flour May Reduce Peanut Allergy In Children

WebMD reports

 "Eating a tiny bit of peanut flour every day may increase peanut tolerance in children who are allergic to peanuts, a new study shows.      

But the scientists who conducted the study aren't recommending their strategy as a do-it-yourself treatment for peanut allergy.

"However encouraging, these results are preliminary and [the technique] should not yet be attempted outside clinical trials," the researchers write online in the journal Allergy.

The study was very small -- it included only four children 9-13 with peanut allergies. But last year, other researchers reported success when they tried a similar approach with 20 U.S. children with peanut allergies.

In the new study, conducted in England, the children took allergy tests and the researchers gauged the maximum dose of peanuts that they could tolerate without having a severe reaction. That test showed that the children couldn't tolerate a single peanut without quickly having an allergic reaction; one child needed an adrenaline shot after developing anaphylaxis.

Each child went home with instructions to eat 5 milligrams of peanut flour mixed with yogurt each day, gradually adding more peanut flour over the next six weeks. The basic idea was to ramp up their tolerance, little by little.

After six weeks of eating the peanut flour-yogurt combination, which didn't prompt any major problems, the researchers retested the children's maximum tolerable peanut dose. All four children could tolerate at least 10 peanuts at that point.

That doesn't mean that their allergy is gone, but it does provide a bit of a margin in case they accidentally consume a few peanuts, note the researchers, who included Andy Clark, a doctor at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, England.

"We've got them to a point where they can safely eat at least 10 whole peanuts. It's not a permanent cure, but as long as they go on taking a daily dose they should maintain their tolerance," Clark says in a news release."