This is the story of Amber, a woman who didn’t take care of herself until she had an awakening while taking care of others.

Amber’s struggles with her weight were spawned from a teenage fight with chronic asthma. Before then, she was at an average weight. But through a combination of medications that caused weight gain and a spiraling depression, she began to put on the pounds – 100 pounds throughout her high school years to be exact.

The depression worsened as she dealt with the senseless cruelty that teenagers are capable of inflicting on people who are different than the ideal. Amber’s asthma made any hopes of turning things around even more difficult since she couldn’t participate in school sports or other activities.

Unfortunately, activities could not be avoided during gym class, when Amber was forced to run the track. She struggled as kids teased her. She even felt little support from her gym teachers, who she thought looked down on her as lazy.

While Amber continued to struggle with her weight after high school, things did get a little better. She met and married a very supportive husband, and the couple had a daughter together.

But the respite was short-lived, as Amber gained more weight after having her daughter and she fell further into the depths of depression. What made matters worse is she picked up smoking, not caring whether she lived or died.

Then hope arrived unexpectedly in the form of a job as a nursing assistant for a hospice agency. Taking care of terminally ill patients gave new meaning to Amber’s life, as she began to realize a purpose.

“These people needed me and I was able to provide comfort and love to them and their family,” Amber told us. “It was a wonderfully rewarding feeling. The feeling of gratefulness that people had for me started to make me appreciate myself.”
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Good news for people who don’t naturally gravitate to doing exercise: less can sometimes mean more in the way of health benefits. A new study has found that just 30 minutes of weekly high-intensity exercise is enough to lower blood sugar levels for 24 hours and help prevent post-meal blood sugar spikes in people with type 2 diabetes.

“If people are pressed for time – and a lot of people say they don’t have enough time to exercise – our study shows that they can get away with a lower volume of exercise that includes short, intense bursts of activity,” said the study’s senior author, Martin Gibala, professor and chair of the department of kinesiology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, in Canada.

The current recommendations by the American Diabetes Association are in line with most fitness experts – people with diabetes should get a minimum of 150 minutes of at least moderate exercise each week or about 30 minutes most days of the week. Since people often complain of not having time, the researchers wanted to see if shorter more intense exercise would also do the trick of controlling blood sugar levels.
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What do you do when some of the healthiest foods on the planet, fish and shellfish, actually become dangerous to eat? Of course, the dangers of mercury exposure are much more extensive and complex than that, and for that reason the Obama Administration has announced its praise for new protective measures to reduce mercury and other toxic air emissions.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has finished our first national standards to reduce toxins. Power plants are the largest man-made source of toxic air emissions such as mercury, arsenic, acid gas, and cyanide in the United States.

When mercury is not emitted naturally from such sources as volcanoes, it comes from human activities like manufacturing or burning coal for fuel.

When mercury falls from the sky through precipitation (rain or snow) into bodies of water like lakes and streams. From here, it works its way up the food chain. Bacteria in soils and sediments convert mercury to methylmercury, at which point it is consumed by small aquatic plants and animals.
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This post was submitted on behalf of DoctorsofWeightLoss.com, a website that educates people on gastric bypass surgery, explanations of cutting-edge research, and profiles of the nation’s leading weight loss surgeons.

Losing weight is a difficult task as it is, you can use as much help as you can get. One of the ways you can help ensure weight loss success is finding a partner in your journey.

Whether you choose a branded diet or just look to improve your overall health choices, even those with the best intentions can use someone else’s support. Some even say it’s the difference between success and failure.

It’s not just about dieting support either. When you exercise, try to do it with a friend. A friend can not just hold you accountable, they may also rely on you just as much, making it much more difficult to blow off a workout session.
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I find Russell Simmons fascinating from the perspective that he is a maverick in every sense of the word. He’s not just a successful business man, but he’s a legendary figure in the notoriously macho male world of hip hop, yet he’s a vegan, animal rights activist, and avid practitioner of yoga and Transcendental Meditation (TM).

It’s the vegan and animal right part of his lifestyle that has earned him the honor of PETA 2011 Person of the Year. He’s in good company, since last year the honor went to former President Bill Clinton for raising awareness about the health benefits of a vegan diet.

In a written statement, PETA says that Simmons earned the honor because “he tirelessly advocates for animals and sets a positive example for others by promoting a vegan lifestyle.”

Simmons is known for spreading the word on how his philosophy of compassion and his vegan diet has made his life better for it. You can’t accuse him of mincing his words:

“The horrible abuse of animals is the worst karmic disaster in the history of human kind,” said Simmons. “The work that PETA does to combat this catastrophe is amazing. I’m truly humbled to be chosen as this year’s Person of the Year but the praise should go to the hundreds of thousands of volunteers that are on the ground doing the work. I accept this honor on their behalf.”
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