Did you make New Year’s resolutions this year? Like most folks, will yours have one about losing weight?  Here are some tips for writing healthy new years’ resolutions that have a better likelihood of being achieved.  For starters, focus on the “Thou shalt” resolutions, rather than the “Thou shalt nots.”

Writing New Year’s resolutions is a time-honored American tradition. For many of us, these resolutions focus on what we want to improve in our health-related behaviors. We tend to focus on things we want to lose (generally weight), give up or cut down on(watching TV, drinking alcohol), or stop (smoking).  While many of us do say we want to start or increase our exercise time, we often view that as a punishment instead of as a gift.

This year let’s try a different approach.  Try writing 10 healthy resolutions that you can and will achieve; write resolutions that are not only specific and achievable, but which you can view as GIFTS to yourself and to your family. Too often we fail to focus on our own health because we feel a need to focus on other family members first. The best gift we can give to our loved ones is to take care of ourselves. 

I suggest starting the process with a positive and healthy attitude.  Make as many of the resolutions “Thou shalt” commitments, as opposed to “Thou shalt nots.”  The first priorities are to focus on overcoming dangerous behaviors.  If you smoke, drink too much alcohol, or practice reckless sexual behaviors (those that increase your risk of unwanted pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases), just stop.  If you need help, see your physician or a trained psychologist.  Enlist the support of your friends and family members.

If you need to lose weight, you know it and your body knows it. This year, try something new and leave off the “I will lose 15 pounds” resolution.  Instead, try positive and specific resolutions that will enable you to achieve the desired weight loss without focusing on the “losing” concept.  For example, try “I will eat 5 servings of fruits and vegetables per day” or “I will start each day with a healthy breakfast sitting down.”  No - coffee and a doughnut is not a healthy breakfast!  You don’t need to have a four-course meal, but ideally you should have 4 food groups represented, and protein should be one of them.

Increasing water consumption often helps dieters and most Americans are not getting enough water daily.  Do you really need 8 glasses per day?  At least.  To calculate exactly how much you should be drinking, divide your weight in pounds by 2.  This is how many ounces per day you need before exercising.  With exercise, add an additional 8 ounces per 20 minutes of aerobic exercise.

Go through each resolution and write a paragraph about it.  Add something about sleep. Add something about fun!

Suggested Healthy New Year’s Resolutions:

• I will give myself and my family the gift of a healthier lifestyle this year.
• I will give myself the gift of a healthy breakfast each day.
• I will give myself the gift of stopping my unhealthy behaviors (e.g. smoking, drinking too much alcohol, etc.).
• I will take my necessary vitamins and supplements.
• I will wear my seat belt religiously.
• I will increase my water intake.
• I will practice proper dental hygiene.
• I will get my annual physical exam(s).
• I will keep myself mentally and spiritually healthy.
• I will increase my daily activity and enjoy it!

This article comes with my best wishes to all for a happy and healthy New Year!

Original article by Donnica Moore, M.D.

I just finished reading a recently-released article on the “ineffectiveness” of dietary supplements. It is amazing to me that this subject and its exaggerated conclusions keeps coming up. The media is so quick to put out information that dietary supplements are not helping thousands - if not possibly millions - of people, and have a serious place in our daily lives supporting and protecting our health. Dietary supplements are an inexpensive, convenient, and reliable way to deliver specific quantities of particular nutrients to a person or an entire population. That is why so many people take multivitamins and other dietary supplements to improve or optimize their nutrient intake. That is also why dietary supplements are often used in clinical trials, to test whether certain nutrients or other substances can help fight against diseases such as cancer, heart disease and osteoporosis.

However, there are some common myths about dietary supplements that may keep some people from making supplements a part of their everyday routine. Let’s take a look at some of these common myths and consider whether they are true or false.

Using supplements may cause people to pay less attention to improving their diets. FALSE.

Many nutrition surveys show that people who use supplements also tend to pay attention to their diets, in fact supplement users have slightly better diets than other people — not perfect diets by any means, but still better. Dietary improvement and supplement use are complementary aspects of the effort to adopt a healthier lifestyle.

People who use supplements tend to go overboard, believing that if one is good, more is better. FALSE.

Most people use dietary supplements in a reasonable way. National surveys show that more than 80% of supplement users take only one to three products on a regular basis, and in most cases one of those is a multivitamin. But taking more than this is by no means unreasonable. Regardless of the number of supplements you are taking, always be sure to read and heed label directions.

Taking vitamins and minerals in quantities greater than the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) is unsafe. FALSE.

Most vitamins and some minerals are safe at levels many times greater than the RDA. The RDA is the level of intake recommended to maintain health, and is not in any way a safety limit. In fact, for many nutrients, for example vitamins D and E, scientific research suggests potential benefits can be gained by intakes beyond the RDA. The same experts that establish the RDA also set Upper Levels of Tolerable Intake (UL). The UL is also not a safety limit, but simply identifies a level of daily intake at which there is no known toxicity, and at which there is sufficient evidence of safety for the nutrient. The UL neither suggests that intakes above that level are unsafe, nor does it constitute a recommended intake. For some vitamins, like C and E, the UL is more than 10 times higher than the RDA. In some cases there is no UL as is the case for some B vitamins. This is because no study has ever identified an unsafe level, even when large amounts have been given.

Recent clinical studies show that supplements don’t work. FALSE.

Science moves in a stepwise fashion, and the steps are not always in a forward direction. Each new study adds to our total knowledge, even though it may sometimes seem that the results go back and forth, with positive news one week and negative news the next. What is important is the overall picture, and for dietary supplements the overall picture is pretty good. Calcium and vitamin D supplements help protect against osteoporosis, antioxidant supplements protect the eyes and the brain, omega-3 fatty acids are good for heart health, selenium may reduce the risk of getting prostate cancer, vitamin E and other vitamins reduce the risk of heart disease in some studies but not others and folic acid (a B vitamin) even helps protect against birth defects such as spinal bifida. Perhaps the strongest testimony to the fact that supplements work is the fact that the National Institutes of Health and other research organizations are pouring millions of dollars into more studies using various supplements for health promotion and disease prevention. The results are good enough to justify that kind of investment, and they are good enough to provide a reason for people to add supplements to their healthy lifestyle choices.

Clinical trials are the most reliable tool for evaluating the benefits of specific nutrients or dietary habits. NOT NECESSARILY.

Clinical trials are a valuable and reliable tool for assessing the effectiveness of pharmaceutical products (drugs). The drug can be given to one group of patients and not to another group, and the difference in response can be observed. The patients are not already being exposed to the drug from their diet or any other sources — they are getting it in the study or they are not getting it at all. Studying nutrients—both in nutritional supplements and food—is different. People are likely already getting these nutrients from their regular diets, and if participating in a nutritional study should not be asked to eliminate these foods—so it becomes very difficult to evaluate the effects of the added amounts. Additionally, the benefits of specific nutrients or dietary patterns are related to disease prevention, not disease treatment. Such benefits may take years to develop — much longer than most clinical trials. Finally, most clinical trials are conducted in people who already have a disease, or very high risk factors for the disease, so these trials are not really testing preventive effects, but are essentially testing treatment effects. When it comes to dietary patterns and nutrient intake, large observational studies should be strongly considered in identifying those factors that make people healthy. For example, everything we know about the benefits of diets high in fruits and vegetables is based on observing what people ordinarily eat and analyzing the health benefits of certain patterns of intake — it is not based on clinical trials showing those benefits. The same may apply to long term supplement use. If an observational study in tens of thousands of nurses shows that women who take vitamin E for at least 2 years have a 40% lower risk of heart disease, that is good information, even if it does not come from a controlled clinical trial. When it comes to diet and nutrition, the best advice is : Do what healthy people do and look at outcome based studies and Quality of Life Studies. Drug studies do not take into consideration the protection QOL of life that many supplements give people, they simply look at disease or no disease and the fact of the matter is that health does not work that simply.

I encourage you to spend some time doing your own research, whether it be online, talking to your practitioner, talking to family and friends, or through other resources. Above all else, making informed decisions is the best thing you can do for your and your loved ones’ health. Additionally, if you’d like to talk to one of our consultants about the benefits of any of the supplements AMARC provides, and how they can work synergystically to improve your health and well-being along with god lifestyle choices, please give us a call at 866-765-9682.

Daily assault is part of your liver’s job description. After all, it’s your personal purification system—responsible for removing harmful compounds from your blood, and for metabolizing critical hormones and drugs. But for all the abuse it’s built to take, it’s not invincible… and it’s not nearly as difficult as you might think to push this vital organ over the edge.

Toxic overload, an autoimmune misfire, or a common viral infection could be the cause of a variety of liver problems. Acute hepatitis can be caused by everything from a viral infection to certain types of drugs, alcohol or autoimmune conditions such as lupus. Viral infection of the liver is called infectious or viral hepatitis—that is, inflammation of the liver—and it’s serious business.

The good news? Acute hepatitis—unlike its more destructive chronic counterpart—usually resolves itself in a matter of months. The bad news is that there’s no treatment available in most of these cases… and while only a small number of acute infections will actually result in death, the risk is still very much there.

Of course, even without that risk, acute hepatitis is a hard pill to swallow. When you’re faced with symptoms like persistent fatigue, nausea, and headache—not to mention a few extras, including jaundice and anorexia—simply “waiting it out” is no walk in the park.

Luckily, a recently published clinical trial offers some compelling modern-day support for the historical use of milk thistle—and more specifically, its main constituent silymarin. The study enrolled 105 subjects, each with symptoms of acute hepatitis—including levels of the liver enzyme alanine aminotransferase (ALT) that were more than double the normal upper limits.

Participants were treated with either 140 mg of silymarin or placebo three times per day, for a period of four weeks—followed by an additional four-week follow up. Liver tests were run at regular intervals throughout the eight-week trial… with some very promising results.

Researchers found that subjects taking silymarin experienced a significantly quicker recovery from acute hepatitis symptoms—including jaundice, dark urine, and yellowing eyes—when compared to the placebo group. Liver function tests also revealed a decrease in this group’s levels of indirect bilirubin—a hemoglobin byproduct that’s excreted in bile, and which naturally rises in cases of hepatitis, cirrhosis, and other forms of liver disease. Even better, no adverse events were reported. (1)

You can find silymarin as a stand-alone supplement or as part of a comprehensive liver support formula. AMARC offers a superb liver support product which contains silymarin - read more here!

Reference:

1. El-Kamary SS, Shardell MD, Abdel-Hamid M, Ismail S, El-Ateek M, Metwally M, Mikhail N, Hashem M, Mousa A, Aboul-Fotouh A, El-Kassas M, Esmat G, Strickland GT. A randomized controlled trial to assess the safety and efficacy of silymarin on symptoms, signs and biomarkers of acute hepatitis. Phytomedicine. 2009 May;16(5):391-400.

Original source: Health News, VRP Staff