Skip to content

Full Descriptions, Sources

Jump to bottom Edit New page
Juhan Sonin edited this page Jun 29, 2016 · 5 revisions

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Michael Pollan got it right: real food is better for humans.

The outer aisles of the supermarket are where the healthiest foods are: greens, fruits, poultry, nuts, grains, and dairy. Fill up the cart.

Meals at home and a brownbag lunch at work are more nutritious than eating out.

Research shows that families who eat the evening meal together eat healthier.

Sources:

  • Michael Polan signed off on using that phrase.
  • USDA/Econ Research Services/Is Dietary Knowledge Enough
  • Harvard SPH/Nutrition Source

Drink Water

Water is actually a nutrient. Our bodies need it to replace the large amount lost each day to vital functions. Fluid needs, like energy needs, increase when we're active or outdoor temperatures are high. High-fructose and sugared drinks make us fat and thirsty. Water is the best quencher. An 8-ounce glass of water near your bed at night will remind you to start the day with what you cannot live without. Drink up.

Sources:

Move More

Our ancestors walked 10,000 steps a day. People who walk or run 30 minutes five times a week live longer. An increase in light activity increases fitness, says research, so fidget and putter and do housework. Friends who exercise together stick with it longer. Find an exercise buddy and then...run, bicycle, swim, row, hike, ski, or walk. Make walking a daily habit and get that step count going up.

Sources:

Exercise is Medicine

Exercise habits are as important a vital sign as a person's pulse, heart rate, and temperature. Doctors should ask about, and write down, their patients' activity level. 150 minutes per week of moderate activity should be recommended for baseline health benefits. Exercise can also be included in a treatment plan: for injury recovery, weight loss, and even some mood disorders.

Sources:

Quit Smoking

The health benefits of quitting smoking begin immediately, within 20 minutes, and continue through your life. The use of smoking cessation products and therapies could double or triple the chance of lasting change: try the patch, or a support group. When one spouse quits smoking, the other follows.

Sources:

Smile

In 1872, Charles Darwin suggested that “even the simulation of an emotion arouses it in our minds.” A century later, the facial feedback hypothesis asserted that muscle feedback from facial expressions helped regulate emotions. A change in the body’s expression of emotion might prompt genuine feeling.

Deliberately turning up the corners of your mouth — smiling — may “trick” the mind and body into a better mood.

If you’re tired or stressed, prompt yourself to smile. Your face will appear brighter, refreshed, and more approachable. Because of mirror neurons, people are likely to smile back and boost your mood.

Sit Less

It’s not a new idea: people have known since the 1950s that sitting for long periods of time is not good for your health. Prolonged sitting has been found to slow the body’s metabolism of glucose and significantly cuts the production of enzymes that break down fats in the blood.

But standing all day isn’t good for us, either. It burns a few more calories, but it strains the circulatory system, legs, and feet, and increases the risk of varicose veins.

How to find a happy medium at work? Try these tips:

  • Sit while writing or doing computer work
  • Stand while talking on the phone
  • Hold standing meetings—keep them short!
  • Visit a co-worker instead of sending a text or e-mail
  • Every 20–30 minutes, stand up and move for a couple of minutes

Speak Up

Physicians have an important role to play in health advocacy for patients and populations. Their voices are needed in the community: as community volunteers, public health and public policy experts, and in other roles that support human well-being. In fact some researchers believe that advocacy competencies should be introduced in medical schools.

Many doctors still feel there is too much risk in acting publicly. Some are overwhelmed by the administrative demands of healthcare reform. Others are simply burned out.

Just as patients must learn to advocate for themselves, so do medical practitioners.

Ask Questions

Being a strong self-advocate is important to your health, even when you aren’t sick. Here are some tips to remember:

  • Become an active participant in your own healthcare plan.
  • Know your rights.
  • Learn how to communicate clearly.
  • Identify your needs and wants.
  • Keep track of your health information.
  • Learn how to access your medical records.
  • Learn about your special needs or conditions.
  • Ask questions, before, during, and after an appointment.
  • Record what the doctor tells you.
  • Bring a trusted advisor along to your appointments.

You deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. If you aren’t comfortable talking with your healthcare provider or other members of your care team, seek help through counseling or patient advocacy resources.

Sugar Kills

Sucrose. Fructose. They’re not just about cavities and empty calories any more.

Research suggests that sugar’s negative impact on human health results not only from its caloric value—it’s in how our bodies process sugar, and that is the same whether one is lean or obese. High sugar consumption is closely linked to metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance, diabetes, and several other chronic disorders.

Added sugars are hard to avoid in the American diet. Reduced-fat products, “naturally sweetened” items, fruit and vegetable juices, and many low-fat, low-sodium “healthy” foods are loaded with sugar.

Talk to your care team. Learn to read food labels. Question information sources. Know your risks.

Slow Down

Rushing produces errors. Being distracted when you are with someone prevents deep connection. Hurrying through a meal diminishes your enjoyment of the food and may upset your digestion.

  • A human be-ing, not a human do-ing.
  • Let yourself have some silence.
  • Single-tasking--focus completely on one thing at a time.
  • Do less. Decide what is really important, and let the rest go.
  • Reduce your commitments.
  • Learn to be present, no matter what you are doing.
  • Disconnect from the electronic world.
  • Focus on the people, nature, food as you eat it.
  • Breathe

Shrink the Drink

If you drink alcohol, moderation is key. Alcohol overuse can increase your risk for cancer, pancreatitis, liver disease, high blood pressure, stroke, heart damage, accidental death, and suicide.

Try these tips to curb your alcohol intake: Use a smaller glass Substitute flavored seltzer or juice Check alcohol content and choose the lighter option Avoid drinks with ambiguous amounts of alcohol like punch and cocktails Choose activities that don’t involve drinking

Check (Manage?) Your Blood Sugar

If you are diabetic, keeping track of your blood glucose (blood “sugar”) level is an essential part of your care plan. Talk with your doctor about your target levels and what to do if your glucose level is too high or too low. A diabetes educator can explain the tools, techniques, recording methods, and how to interpret your numbers.

Blood glucose levels can be affected by food, medicine, and activity. In addition to following your regular tracking schedule, check your blood if you experience any of these symptoms of low blood sugar:

  • Hunger
  • Trembling
  • Sweating, light-headedness
  • Sleepiness
  • Anxiety or confusion

Keep a record of your blood glucose numbers, the time of day, and any other relevant information to share with your care team.

Know Your Diabetes Plan

Staying healthy with diabetes can mean lifestyle changes. Together with your care team, you can create a plan to actively manage your diabetes in the context of your overall health. A diabetes management plan helps remind you to:

  • Check blood sugars
  • Check feet
  • Eat healthy
  • Exercise regularly
  • Manage weight
  • Reduce salt
  • Take meds regularly
  • Manage stress
  • Get enough sleep
  • Quit smoking
  • Limit alcohol

You can live a healthy life with diabetes, and your care team is there to guide you.

Check Your Blood Pressure

Keeping a log of your blood pressure readings gives your care team an accurate view of how your treatment is working. It can also reduce the risk of false readings during visits.

When checking your blood pressure at home, keep these tips in mind:

  • Relax—no cigarettes, caffeine, or exercise 30 minutes before.
  • Sit with your back supported, arm flat on a surface, and feet on the floor.
  • Take multiple readings—two or three—with a minute in between.
  • Measure at the same time every day.
  • Record the reading, date, and time and share it with your doctor.
  • If your systolic pressure (top number) is 180+ or diastolic pressure (bottom number) is 110+, go to a hospital.

Manage Your Blood Pressure

High blood pressure is a chronic condition, but with lifestyle changes and, when necessary, medication, you can keep your heart healthy.

  • Limit sodium to 1,500 mg/day.
  • Eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables.
  • Avoid saturated fats.
  • Take a brisk 10-minute walk, 3 times a day, 5 days a week.
  • If you are overweight, losing even 3% to 5% of your weight can reduce the workload on your heart.
  • Don’t smoke!
  • Limit alcohol consumption.
  • Take time to relax and nurture relationships.

Skip the Salt

When you consume more salt than your body needs, sodium builds up in your blood. This causes your body to hold water, increasing your blood volume and pressure. Chronic high blood pressure can lead to heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, and congestive heart failure.

The recommended limit for sodium is less than 2,300 mg/day and 1,500 mg/day if you are over age 51. Certain genetically based characteristics can make some people especially sensitive to sodium, as well.

One teaspoon of table salt contains 2,325 mg of sodium! To avoid hidden salt in your diet, try these tips:

  • Buy fresh ingredients without added salt.
  • Avoid canned, frozen, and other processed foods.
  • Avoid spice blends, dressings, and sauces with added salt.
  • Look for “low sodium” or “no salt added” products.
  • Learn to read nutrition information labels on packaged foods.

Manage Your Weight

In addition to helping you feel your best, a healthy weight helps you to lower your risk for high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, and more.

Body Mass Index (BMI) is one measure that you and your medical practitioner can use to determine the healthiest weight range for you. It’s important to know both the top and bottom of your healthy range, since being underweight carries many risks as well, including anemia, fragile bones, and a weakened immune system.

Try these tips for getting to a healthier weight:

  • Know what goes into your food. Learn how to interpret nutrition information on package labels.
  • Use fresh ingredients rather than processed foods, and cook at home more often.
  • Take appropriate portions—don’t super-size!
  • Make every bite count—avoid empty calories.
  • Decrease your screen time and move more!

Control Your Cholesterol

High cholesterol increases your risk for heart disease, atherosclerosis, and stroke. Aim for these healthy cholesterol levels:

  • LDL below 130 mg/dL.
  • HDL above 35 mg/dL.
  • Combined cholesterol below 200 mg/dL.

Overweight? Losing even 5–10% of your weight can lower your cholesterol levels. Move! Regular exercise can increase HDL and reduce LDL. Avoid saturated and trans fats. Choose whole grains, veggies, fruit, foods high in omega-3s. Don’t smoke! You can inherit high cholesterol. Know your family history for high cholesterol, early heart disease, and high blood pressure.

Know Your Self-Care Plan

It’s important to establish, write down, and discuss your goals for good health.

Many different parts of your life affect your general health. To live your healthiest, work with your care team to set goals for exercise, nutrition, sleep, stress management, and other factors.

Once you’ve set your goals and know what steps to take, plan a review with your caregivers. Your unique care plan is a living document that should be evaluated and updated periodically.

Know Your Care Team

Illustration: https://www.flickr.com/photos/juhansonin/14540537960/

You have more than a primary doctor. There’s a team of people -- nurse practitioners, specialists, dieticians, and even hospitalists -- who occupy themselves around your care.

As patient, you are the most important member of the team: captain. Be active. Understand the role of the different team members. Know your health goals and convey them to the team. Share complete information about your health, medications, and behaviors. Ask questions to understand recommendations and treatments.

If you have a chronic condition or impairment, the size and diversity of your team may increase. Find out: how will the different members interact?

Clear communication and engagement with your care team will give you a sense of control over your health and your life.

Donate Your Data To Science

Illustration: https://www.flickr.com/photos/juhansonin/13891241732/

Did you know that you can contribute to scientific and medical research by swiping just a few cells from your mouth, skin, and gut? It's a painless little gift with big impact potential.

For insights into populations, scientists are collectively mapping the DNA (genetic code) and human microbiome (bacterial communities) from the bodies of thousands of living people to discover the origins of disease and health.

If you share your biological data from your saliva, skin, mucus, and, er, solid waste, it will be pooled with data from other human donors

To find a way to participate, contact the clinical trials and research program at your nearest hospital or search online for "human genome" or "microbiome" and "research."

Science, medicine, and the future of humanity will benefit. Your individual privacy will not be compromised. Give a few cells: it doesn't hurt.

Sources:

Avoid Sunburn

Illustration: https://www.flickr.com/photos/juhansonin/14083816513/

Your skin is the body's largest organ. It protects us, helps regulate body temperature, and permits senstation. Skin needs care through our lives, especially protection from the sun and ultraviolet (UV) radiation.

Sun's effects on the skin -- wrinkles, freckling, and especially skin cancers -- can be significantly lessened or prevented. Follow the ABC method, even on overcast days, when 40% of UV rays still get through clouds.

A is for avoiding the sun exposure at mid-day (10am to 4pm) when it's most intense. Play in the shade or enjoy the pool or beach under an umbrella.

B is for blocking the damaging UV rays by applying sunscreen with a sun protection factor (SPF) of 15 or higher for adults and 30 or higher for children. Reapply frequently.

C is for covering up with clothing, brimmed hats, and sunglasses with UV protection when heading outdoors for longer periods of recreation, exercise, and work.

And tanning -- whether in the sun or at a salon -- damages the skin over time, even if you wear sunscreen. The temporary "glow" of a tan masks the cumulative, long-term effects of UV exposure.

Protect the health of your skin every day of the year: avoid, block, and cover up.

Sources:

Food is Medicine

Illustration: https://www.flickr.com/photos/juhansonin/14406031184/

"Let food be thy medicine and medicine thy food." Hippocrates, a physician in Classical Greece, recommended this in 431 BC.

Physicians and nutritionists today are returning to his wisdom. While a medication or nutritional supplement typically isolates only a few beneficial chemicals, whole foods may contain thousands of phytonutrients that can enhance well being and illness resistance.

The food-as-medicine principles are worth studying and discussing with your doctor. Start here:

Eat the rainbow, or a meal with a large variety of color, to insure diverse nutrients including antioxidants.

Know how to combine foods -- like apples with blueberries, or carrots with avocado -- to increase the body's ability to absorb nutrients.

Reduce sugar consumption, whether in processed or "natural" foods, juices, or beverages, to reduce triglycerides, blood pressure, and the body's storage of fat.

Lower your dependence on meat, stick to lean cuts, and cook with methods, like broiling and poaching, that produce fewer carcinogens than high-flame methods.

Seek nutrition counseling for your body's particular needs to perform as an athlete, heal after an injury or acute illness, or improve health with chronic conditions like diabetes, asthma, and allergies.

Finally, address malnutrition in your community and help overcome hunger. For some families, getting access to enough food and the right food can be a major health boost.

Sources:

Meet Your Eats

Illustration: https://www.flickr.com/photos/juhansonin/13445887414/

Food grown or produced locally -- from lettuce to eggs to bread -- are often fresher, with fewer chemicals applied for preservation or ripening, than foods produced far away or by large agrocompanies.

Make it a practice to read labels and signage not just for nutrition data and price, but for the origin and producer of your food. In your favorite grocery store, encourage the store manager to offer even more foods produced in your region. Get your neighbors to do the same.

Seek out your local farmers' market, including ones that operate in winter, and do more than shop there: talk to farmers about their growing methods and about farming issues that concern them.

Having a connection to the source of your food may induce you and your child to choose these nutritious foods again and again and even expand your exploration of regional specialties, whether vegetable, fruit, grain, fish, meat, or dairy.

Your involvement in the local and regional food chain is also good for business, insuring that small farmers, producers, and markets flourish and continue to provide the foods you value.

Sources:

Get Your Flu Shot

Illustration: https://www.flickr.com/photos/juhansonin/15666378702/

Influenza (flu) is a highly contagious and serious respiratory disease that is caused by a virus and can lead to serious complications, like pneumonia. It's way more than a "bad cold."

Everyone 6 months or older should get a flu vaccine -- whether shot or nasal spray -- at the start of every flu season.

And, because flu viruses are constantly mutating or changing, and different flu viruses cause illneses each year, it's critical to get a flu vaccine annually. Scientists and public health researchers track the flu and select vaccines best matched to viruses in current circulation.

While other health practices, such as frequent hand sanitizing, can help you lessen your exposure to the flu, the best way to avoid the flu is the current vaccine. It's not enough to have gotten one last year.

Getting vaccinated also protects your community, providing "herd immunity," or an effect where enough people have been vaccinated that there is little opportunity for a local outbreak. By getting a flu shot, you help infants and pregnant women, for example, who cannot be immunized.

Vaccinate Your Child

Illustration: https://www.flickr.com/photos/juhansonin/15776667672/

Vaccines produce immunity from serious diseases. They are well designed and rigorously tested in scientific studies, and they protect the health of you, your child, and the community.

Follow the recommended schedule of vaccines, which starts for babies at 6 months old, and save your child from diseases that once injured or killed thousands of children. Polio, once the most feared disease in America, has been eliminated because of vaccines.

Vaccines, especially injected ones, may cause some discomfort and even pain at the site. Your child may fuss and complain. This is normal and can be soothed.

Discomfort from the vaccine is minimal compared to the pain, trauma, and even death that the disease itself could cause. Without the measles vaccine, one of the most effective available, your child has a 90% chance of contracting it from an infected person.

Talk to your trusted pediatrician or nurse practitioner and read valid information sources to understand vaccine technology and its place in human health.

Keep your child on schedule for the series of vaccines recommended from birth through the teenage years.

Sources:

Smile

Illustration: https://www.flickr.com/photos/juhansonin/13335169294/

Charles Darwin, writing in 1872, suggested that “even the simulation of an emotion arouses it in our minds.” A century later, the facial feedback hypothesis asserted that muscle feedback from facial expressions helped regulate emotions. A change in the body’s expression of emotion might prompt genuine feeling.

Deliberately turning up the corners of your mouth -- smiling -- may ‘trick’ the mind and body into a better mood.

A smile also draws people to you, which is good for social interactions.

If tired or stressed, prompt yourself to smile. Your face will appear brighter and more refreshed, improving your appearance and approachability. Because of mirror neurons, people will likely repay your smile with their own, and in turn boost your mood.

Even if you’re not in the mood, think “smile” and let it light up your face and trigger a moment of happiness, your own and others.

Sources:

Healthcare is a Human Right

Illustration: https://www.flickr.com/photos/juhansonin/16100751937/

The health of our communities depends on the health of individual members.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for all people and all nations, was proclaimed by the United Nations in 1948. Included as a fundamental right is a standard living that supports the health and well-being of one’s self and family.

World health leaders have asserted that governments must generate conditions in which every person can be as healthy as possible. The right to health does not mean a right to be healthy.

Because of insufficient access to health care and medical resources, 150 million people annually suffer financial catastrophe, and 100 million people pushed below the poverty line, because of personal expenditures related to health.

You can join workers’ campaigns, at your workplace or through a union, to advocate for universal healthcare. Politically, you can join a people’s movement, like one ongoing in Vermont, attend public forums, write letters to elected officials in your state, and vote for health care access.

Even if your own health care needs are covered, look for opportunities to insure access to health care for all.

Sources:

Sit Less

Illustration: https://www.flickr.com/photos/juhansonin/16106281210/in/photostream/

Sources:

Skip the Salt

Illustration: https://www.flickr.com/photos/juhansonin/15752128734/

When you consume more salt than your body needs, sodium builds up in your blood. This causes your body to hold water, increasing your blood volume and pressure. Chronic high blood pressure can lead to heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, and congestive heart failure.

The recommended limit for sodium is less than 2,300 mg/day and 1,500 mg/day if you are over age 51. Certain genetically based characteristics can make some people especially sensitive to sodium, as well.

One teaspoon of table salt contains 2,325 mg of sodium! To avoid hidden salt in your diet, try these tips: Buy fresh ingredients without added salt. Avoid canned, frozen, and other processed foods. Avoid spice blends, dressings, and sauces with added salt. Look for “low sodium” or “no salt added” products. Learn to read nutrition information labels on packaged foods.

Slow Down

Illustration: https://www.flickr.com/photos/juhansonin/16155448320/

Plan Your Death

Share Decisions

Should all major medical decisions be a SHARED DECISION? ...shared between the patient and a clinician? Could there be multiple clinicians on the careplan agreement?

Add a custom footer
Add a custom sidebar
Clone this wiki locally