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

Moderate Intake of Some Red Wines May Improve Health, Study Shows Drinking a daily glass of red wine not only tastes good to many people, but it's also good for the bacteria lining your large intestine. A new Spanish study suggests that sipping about 9 ounces of Merlot or a low-alcohol red wine changed the mix of good and bad bacteria typically found in the colon in ways that can benefit your health. Bacteria may sound like a bad thing to have in your intestinal tract, but having a balanced mix of them actually helps to digest food, regulate immune function, and produce vitamin K (which plays a key role in helping the blood clot). Since the study results showed that Merlot and low-alcohol red wine had similar positive effects on intestinal bacteria, researchers suspect it's not due to the alcohol but to the polyphenol compounds found in the wine. Polyphenols are helpful plant-based compounds found in a variety of foods and beverages. Besides red grapes, many other fruits

  Turn down the dial on inflammation with these anti-inflammatory foods and lifestyle changes. Chronic inflammation plays a significant role (as either a cause or effect) in many diseases, including type 2 diabetes, autoimmune diseases, such as Crohn’s disease, and the three top killers in the United States: heart disease, cancer and stroke. Emerging research is focusing on the link between inflammation and brain disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. The good news is that diet, exercise and lifestyle changes can be powerful tools against inflammation. Here are 10 ways you can help stave off—or tamp down—inflammation. Balance Your Omega Fats Americans are gorging on too many inflammation-promoting omega-6 fats (found in vegetable oils, such as sunflower and corn, and processed and fast food made with them) and not consuming nearly enough inflammation-soothing omega-3 fats (found in salmon, tuna, flaxseeds, walnuts, canola and olive oils). In short: a

Start your day with breakfast. Breakfast fills your "empty tank" to get you going after a long night without food. And it can help you do better in school. Easy to prepare breakfasts include cold cereal with fruit and low-fat milk, whole-wheat toast with peanut butter, yogurt with fruit, whole-grain waffles or even last night's pizza! Get Moving! It's easy to fit physical activities into your daily routine. Walk, bike or jog to see friends. Take a 10-minute activity break every hour while you read, do homework or watch TV. Climb stairs instead of taking an escalator or elevator. Try to do these things for a total of 30 minutes every day. Snack smart. Snacks are a great way to refuel. Choose snacks from different food groups - a glass of low-fat milk and a few graham crackers, an apple or celery sticks with peanut butter and raisins, or some dry cereal. If you eat smart at other meals, cookies, chips and candy are OK for occasional snacking. Work up a s

Starting a business can be hazardous to your health—staying healthy is often the first thing that goes. Who has the time to follow a comprehensive fitness and weight loss program? You do. Make a few simple changes to your day and you can create healthier habits that are easy to stick with. Incorporate one, incorporate all... because your business is only as healthy as you are. 1. Add protein to your breakfast. If you normally eat cereal, yogurt, or  that’s fine. Add 10 grams or so of protein. One easy way is to boil a carton of eggs on Sunday and have two egg whites every morning. You’ll add less than 40 calories to your breakfast, pick up 12 grams of protein, and reduce your level of hunger at lunch. 2. Get up and walk around every hour. Sitting for extended periods is hazardousto your health. Plus it makes you feel sluggish and inactive. At least once an hour get up and move around. Walk while you talk on the phone. Manage by walking around. Your heart will thank you, and so

Bones play many roles in the body — providing structure, protecting organs, anchoring muscles and storing calcium. While it's particularly important to take steps to build strong and healthy bones during childhood and adolescence, you can take steps during adulthood to protect bone health, too. Your bones are continuously changing — new bone is made and old bone is broken down. When you're young, your body makes new bone faster than it breaks down old bone and your bone mass increases. Most people reach their peak bone mass around age 30. After that, bone remodeling continues, but you lose slightly more than you gain. How likely you are to develop osteoporosis — a condition that causes bones to become weak and brittle — depends on how much bone mass you attain by the time you reach age 30 and how rapidly you lose it later. The higher your peak bone mass, the more bone you have "in the bank" and the less likely you are to develop osteoporosis as you age. A numb

In Small Study, Harvard Researchers Find Kudzu Extract Reduces Drinking  An extract from the Chinese herb kudzu may help drinkers cut down on drinking, according to a new pilot study. "It didn't stop the drinking," says researcher David M. Penetar, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School. "They still drank, but they drank less." He studied the extract puerarin. It is one of the substances known as isoflavones found in kudzu. The study is published in  Drug and Alcohol Dependence. Drinking Problems More remedies are needed to help drinkers who overdo it cut down, Penetar says. The medications approved for treating alcohol abuse and dependence don't work for everyone, he says. About 1 in 6 U.S. adults binge drinks, according to a CDC report. Experts disagree on the definition of binge drinking. According to the CDC, binge drinking is having four or more drinks on one occasion for a woman and five or more for a m

Carrying a few extra pounds? They could be making your cholesterol worse. Excess weight tends to increase your harmful LDL cholesterol levels, and one recent study linked a high ratio of body fat with higher levels of LDL. Three Key Measurements Do you use a bathroom scale to check your weight? Pounds aren't the only way to gauge health. Here are other, more accurate ways: BMI:  You can get an estimate of your body fat based on calculations of your height and weight. Waist circumference:  Anything more than 40 inches for men or 35 inches for women is considered a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. To measure your waist circumference, find the area between your lowest rib and the top of your hipbone. Place a measuring tape on bare skin and wrap it around the narrowest part. The tape should be snug, but not constricting. Waist-to-hip ratio:  This measurement takes into account the proportions of your body by comparing your waist and hip circumferences. The good news is l

You probably run across some of these studies, too; the major ones get a lot of media attention. That's why I actually prefer sifting through smaller, more obscure periodicals, hunting for research no one else is reporting . For example, over the past week I've learned: You can lose weight by paying for groceries with cash; turns out, you're more likely to buy unhealthy foods if you pay with a credit card. Taking a vitamin D supplement fortifies your muscles, making them less prone to injury. Flirting at work is a hidden sign that your job isn't right for you. Google is making us forgetful, because we're less likely to try to remember information that we know is readily accessible. Who knew, right? Here are nine more fascinating strange-but-true study findings we've run across over the past few years. Live Longer by Changing Your Name People with "positive" initials—ones that spell out things like J.O.Y. or W.O.W.—live nearly

Common Crop Pesticide Chlorpyrifos May Be Linked With Structural Changes in Developing Brain, Experts Find Prenatal exposure to a pesticide used on many crops may be linked with abnormal changes in a child's developing brain, scientists report. Compared to children with low prenatal exposure, those with high exposure to the pesticide chlorpyrifos had abnormalities in the cortex (the outer area of the brain), says Virginia Rauh, ScD, professor and deputy director of the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. The cortex helps govern intelligence, personality, muscle movement, and other tasks. "In areas of the cortex, we detected both enlarged and reduced volumes that were significantly different from the normal brain," she tells WebMD. "This suggests the process of normal brain development has been disturbed in some way." The study is published in  Proceedings of the National Ac