alcohol

I once ran a 10K on St. Patrick’s day. At the finish line, rather than bagels and bananas and bottled water, we were greeted with a beer tent and each given three tickets for big plastic cups of Guinness. I’ve heard of carb loading before and after a race, but never thought about beer as being part of that concept. Maybe I should change my mind?

A recently released study proves that moderate female drinkers, those who imbibe more than 45 drinks a month (which seems like a lot of drinking, although it really only averages out to just shy of 1.5 glasses of wine a night) exercised 14 more minutes per week on average than those light drinkers who drank one to 14 drinks in the month. These women also reported exercising on average 20 minutes more than those who abstained from alcohol altogether. Also, drinkers of both sexes were 10 percent more likely than their sober peers to exercise vigorously in any given week.

A new study has found that obesity, depression and alcohol are an unhappy trifecta for many unhealthy women.

Dr. Carolyn A. McCarty of Seattle Children’s Research Institute and her colleagues conducted the first study to look at how theses three problems relate to each other over years in the life of young adults.

They also found that almost half of the women and the men suffered from at least one of the problems between the ages of 21 and 30. The study was very extensive, as it has been following its subjects since 1985 (they were in the fifth grade at the time).

Looking at men compared to women, at 21-years old, eight percent of women and 12 percent of men had at least two of the three problems. As they got older, having multiple problems became more common, but less so for the men.

If you are like most people out there trying to lose weight, chances are you aren’t doing at least a few of these five weight loss strategies on a regular basis. Check your behaviors against this list and let me know how you measure up!

1. Dieting at Night – The key to weight loss is eating, believe it or not. You need to fuel your body with healthy food during the day, starting with breakfast and have a lighter dinner; then let the dieting begin right when you are winding down. I usually tell my clients to focus on “protein and produce” at dinner. Swap your salad at lunch for a tuna wrap (choose either light mayo or cheese not both) and have an entree salad at dinner.

2. Controlling Alcohol Intake – This is probably the #1 behavior I see with clients who are trying to lose weight when they first come in. They say they drink 1-2 times a week, but then their food journal shows 2 glasses of wine.

Your liver is very important and to put it simply, without it you won’t live. Your liver is responsible for digesting food, absorbing nutrients, and ridding toxins and toxic substances from your body. So it’s very important that you keep your liver healthy in order for your body to function properly and efficiently.

So what can you eat to help your liver?

• Avoid or limit the amount of alcohol you consume. Over-consumption of alcohol can lead to life-ending liver disease.
  

Wine, how I love thee. It’s not like I needed more good news to drink it in moderation. But here we are with news that it may help protect you against cancer.

Researchers at the Yale School of Public Health presented their compelling findings at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research. They studied more than 500 women with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. And what they found was astounding.

“We found that wine had a protective effect,” says Xuesong Han, a doctoral candidate in cancer epidemiology. More encouraging was that the protective effects were strongest with the most common of type of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.