Daily Health Tips: Trusted Medical Information, Health Tips and Advices

Want a guilt-free way to feast on holiday fare without loading up on all the button-popping, belly-bulging calories? No problem. Just use this 5-step holiday action plan. Replace temptations. Piling up holiday "goodies" (think pumpkin pie, cookies, and fudge) in plain sight can prompt you to eat twice as much, twice as fast. Instead, keep alternate goodies, such as walnuts, pistachios, cinnamon-spice tea, juicy oranges, and ruby-red pomegranates, within easy reach. For your holiday table, try tossing together this recipe from EatingWell: Winter Salad with Roasted Squash & Pomegranate Vinaigrette . Don't skip exercise. Just make it short and sweet. Sticking with your routine during the busy holidays can be tougher than finding a radio station not playing Jingle Bells. Go for three 10-minute walks each day for a total of 30 minutes, and you're good. Too cold out for a walk? Choose libations wisely. Beer and red wine both raise your appetite-

Could your morning cup of Joe beat back skin cancer? It might. And it seems you may get equal protection from your java whether you sip it or slather it. It's the caffeine in coffee that seems to do the trick. Numerous animal studies have already found that ingesting caffeine protects against certain types of skin cancer. Now, a new study suggests that caffeine-based lotions may prevent the sun's UV radiation from sparking skin cancer in humans, too. Cancer-Curbing Coffee? In the study, human skin cells were first bathed in caffeine in a lab dish and then exposed to UVB radiation. The caffeine not only blocked two key mechanisms that trigger the birth of skin tumors, it also caused the death of UVB-damaged skin cells that could otherwise turn cancerous. More research is needed to confirm whether caffeine in sunscreen will protect as well as it did in a petri dish, but it can't hurt to ask your dermatologist or pharmacist about available caffeine-containing

If tough economic times have turned zipping up your jeans into Mission Impossible , you're not alone. New data is more revealing than most celebs' Oscar-night outfits: Financial worries prompt 1 in 10 to snack more and have made 48% of women and 39% of men gain weight. Worse, that weight is in the wrong place: the waist. We're not talking 1 or 2 ounces: One-quarter of us packed on more than 10 pounds, and 1 in 16 gained more than 20 pounds. It gives the pain of tightening your belt a whole new meaning.    Sound familiar? If your waistline is enlarging faster than the latest unemployment statistics, do this before you grab the celery sticks: Head for a hot bubble bath . . . or a brisk walk . . . or a cup of coffee with a friend. Truth is, you need a crash course in cortisol reduction more urgently than you need a "diet" right now. The reason? Stressful events cause you to release cortisol, the "high anxiety hormone," and that triggers indus

  Teenage is the time one requires more nutrition as the body is subjected to a lot of changes. But are teens aware of this? Size zero, fad diets and food supplements are some of the terms frequented by most teens today. Teenage is the time one requires more nutrition as the body is subjected to a lot of changes. But are teens aware of this? Snacking on junk, skipping meals and ignoring exercise will not only let you lose your shape, but your health as well. Nutritionist Ashwini Sukumar, engages in a conversation with Vaishnavi Venkataraman, educating teens on tips to cut down those extra pounds with no crash diets. Why is a diet important? Teenage is a period when most of them would want to experiment. Be it clothes or food, teens prefer innovative stuff rather than the traditional ones. Adding to this, a nutritious diet is most essential during teenage. Can diet have an impact on students’ performance? Of course yes! Diet plays a vital role in any students’ academics

Remember how you resolved to make healthy habits a permanent part of your life on December 31 last year? It all went really well for the first week or so. You were a regular in the gym, desserts had simply vanished from your everyday meals, and you used to go to sleep and get up at appropriate times. But then, one fine day, your friend asked you to come over. And as soon as he popped open a beer can, you resolution went down the drain. Let us not kid ourselves. New Year resolutions are always easy to make but hard to stick to, mostly, because either they are way too unrealistic and people lack the required will. If you want to live a healthy life, there’s no need to wait for one long year to make a resolution. It’s never too late to start, provided you do make a start. Just as you didn’t develop you bad habits overnight, you won’t be able to kick them out on the New Year’s Day. Here are top 5 very manageable health resolutions all men must take: Less Stressing Out M

You know how you're always told to fill your plate with colorful fruits and vegetables? Count white as a color. It could cut your risk of stroke in half . When you think "white," think under the skin (e.g., apples and pears). Bananas, too. Also: cauliflower, onions, garlic, and cucumbers. In an impressive new stroke study, apples and pears were all-stars because they accounted for more than half of the white produce people ate, and the white stuff is what slashed stroke risk.    While eating lots of fruit and vegetables has long been linked to fewer strokes, this is the first effort to pinpoint which produce gets the credit. (Cut out this stroke-prevention list and stick it on your fridge.) An Apple a Day Keeps the Doc Away Keep that old rhyme in your head! The people in this big, long study (10 years, 20,000 men and women) cut their stroke risk 9% for every 25 grams of white produce they ate. Here's how apples size up (approximately) to some other

Grab a banana and say bye-bye to Parkinson's disease? Researchers say it could be so. Bananas are rich in vitamin B6 -- and very early research suggests that high levels of B6 may protect against Parkinson's. Still, the news is not something to go bananas over just yet. The benefit applied only to smokers in the most recent study. But bananas and B6 do your body good in many other ways. Vitamin B6 -- along with folate and B12 -- helps reduce levels of homocysteine, an amino acid. That's good for your ticker, because too much homocysteine in the blood appears to up heart disease risk. Homocysteine also appears to be toxic to nerve cells, and elevated levels have been linked to Parkinson's disease, a progressive neurological disorder that causes muscles to become rigid and shake uncontrollably. Could B vitamins be the answer? Among nearly 5,000 people studied recently, smokers whose B6 intake was highest were 50 percent less likely to develop the brain

Riddle: What could your credit card airline miles and your hard-earned vacation days possibly have in common with stopping a stroke? Answer: A strict "use it or lose it" policy applies to all three. Getting your brain cells into gear now can prevent a brain attack later. Strokes are so scary, most of us don't even want to think about them -- one big survey found you're three times more likely to worry about burglaries than this threat to your most important organ. (No, not that one. We mean your brain.) But a boatload of do-it-now recent research proves that knowledge = brain-saving power. Here's the stroke news YOU need to know: Little choices help you sidestep big brain trouble. Turns out that plenty of "no big deal" decisions are a big deal -- like moving your hand 2 inches to the left when picking out canned beans in the supermarket, so you grab the type not soaked in salt. Or ordering the broiled trout instead of the fried. Or hoppi

  Researchers Report Some Success Against Advanced Lung Cancer With Epigenetic Drugs A new approach to treating cancer appears to help certain patients with advanced lung cancer, and researchers say they think they may have a way of spotting those who will benefit. The small study is generating big excitement in the world of cancer treatment because it demonstrates that so-called epigenetic drugs may work when traditional chemotherapy has failed. Epigenetic drugs work by controlling gene expression -- the way information from genes is used to create products such as proteins. The study is published in Cancer Discovery . "This is a ... groundbreaking study, showing that by modifying the epigenetics of a cancer cell we can get real responses in lung cancer," said Jeffrey A. Engleman, MD, PhD, director of thoracic oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston, in a news briefing. "And getting real responses in lung cancer is actually quite dif

  Study Suggests Double Risk of Childhood Obesity for Kids With Fastest Weight Gain by Age 2 Babies who gain weight most quickly are at highest risk of obesity later in childhood, a Harvard study finds. Infants who gain the most weight at age 1-6 months are most likely to be obese at ages 5 and 10 years. The risk goes up with the child's starting weight-for-length percentile obtained from standard growth charts, find Elsie M. Taveras, MD, MPH, and colleagues. The researchers analyzed health records for 44,622 kids aged 1 month to 11 years from 1980 through 2008. They collected height and weight measurements made during the children's first 24 months, as well as their height and weight at ages 5 and 10. Pediatricians usually monitor a child's growth by measuring weight and length and comparing it to CDC normal growth charts. The child's weight for length will typically fall within percentile lines: 5, 10, 25, 50, 75, 90, 95. Especially in t