Diet and Nutrition. Natural Health, and Healthy Living

Are we finally ready to close the door on the much-disputed link between the MMR vaccine and autism?

On January 30, Britain’s General Medical Council ruled that Andrew Wakefield, a gastroenterologist, had acted “dishonestly and irresponsibly” in conducting his research that established a link between autism and the MMR vaccine. And yesterday, the British medical journal Lancet finally retracted the resulting 1998 study authored by Wakefield that helped drive MMR vaccination rates in the U.K. down to the point where in 2008, measles was officially declared “endemic” in the country.
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Over the past century, the burden of disease among Americans has shifted from acute and infectious illness to chronic disease. With more than 75 cents of every dollar in this nation spent on patients with chronic disease, prevention offers the opportunity not to spend more money -- but spend smarter. By embracing prevention, we can help more Americans lead healthier, active lives free from disease, so that they can avoid costly complications and hospitalizations, and remain productive in their communities and workplaces.

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Health 2.0 is a trend accompanied by both buzz and buzzwords. That worries some advocates for the poor, underserved and just plain old and sick. Will those groups be left behind in the latest information revolution?

The potential positives of the Web-as-health-care platform for interactive health care services could be seen in two full days of presentations and discussions at a recent meeting in San Francisco, called the Health 2.0 Conference. Still, a certain Silicon Valley sensibility remained: widgets for weight control were much more likely to target the calorie count of cappuccinos than corn dogs.
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In 1999 Caresoft developed a consumer web portal called the Daily Apple. The Daily Apple wasn’t all that unique or different than other health portals, until in May of 2000 they began helping consumers download their lab test results from Quest Diagnostics. Now THAT was different!A portal aggregating real clinical data on behalf of consumers, with the potential to drive personalized health information, recommendations, and alerts to the individual. “Looks like your exercise and your diet are keeping your blood sugar under good control.Great Job!”and “Your liver enzymes are elevated, which might be due to your Lipitor.You should talk with your doctor.”Now that’s information a person can use!But sometimes even the best ideas suffer from poor market timing.It was only 19 months later, in December, 2001, that the service was discontinued.Many of us on the outside wondered why such a seemingly unique and valuable service would be disabled. But whether it was the lawyers, the doctors, or the business model, timing wasn’t right.

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As we work to change health care in America, we must recognize the need to dramatically change diabetes.

Twenty-four million Americans have diabetes at a cost to our nation of an estimated $218 billion for diabetes and pre-diabetes, according to a series of studies recently published in Population Health Management. Imagine the effects diabetes will have on our health and economy in the future if we don’t take action now.

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Ariana Huffington recently anointed diet-and-exercise guru Dean Ornish as her chief medical correspondent. With all the guff her site had taken from the science-based medicine crowd for giving free rein to anti-vaccinists, faith healers and the no-evidence-needed alternative medicine freaks, I thought it was a smart move -- a tack toward the responsible center, if you will.

But in a post this week, Ornish recounted his 14-year-battle to get Medicare to pay for a pilot project to test lifestyle intervention as a cure for heart disease (which wouldn't save Medicare money, but would save more lives for the same money expended as, say, giving those people cholesterol-lowering medication). What he drew from his saga was that the government can't be trusted to run health care, and that health care reformers needed to rise above the right-left divide and unite around reimbursing physicians for keeping people well.
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While Congress is debating health reform and struggling to accomplish the apparently competing goals of reducing costs while improving quality, I am part of a program that does both. As co-director of the Washington Hospital Center’s Medical House Call Program, I visit the sickest, frailest Medicare patients who consume a wildly disproportionate amount of Medicare dollars. Not only am I providing better care for my patients, I’m doing it where they want it — at home. House calls allow me to better manage their chronic conditions by seeing their medications, diet and home life and enabling me to better support their caregivers and coordinate their medical care. The math is simple: the better I do, the happier they are and the fewer times they need to visit an expensive hospital or nursing home. Shockingly, this proven approach that reduces unnecessary spending is being overlooked in the current reform debate.

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As a rule, any diets, except, perhaps, wine, provide a complete rejection of alcohol. On the other hand - folk wisdom says that alcohol is useful for digestion. Alcohol is a slow motion caloric bomb…

Alcohol really affects digestion - but only not the way we would wish. Very high-calorie beverages, such as beer and vodka, slow digestion. At the same time alcohol affects our perception, slowing it down.

Red wine is good for heart - this truism even has a medical justification. Indeed, polyphenols, which are antioxidants, are available in red wine. Another point is that no fewer antioxidants are found in grape juice or black tea. If you drink more than one - two glasses of wine a day, then you can be forget about promised benefits - high blood pressure is waiting for you.

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German supermodel is now pregnant with fourth child, but does not even think to panic about rounded tummy and inevitable weight gain. Heidi is strongly sure - she will be able to regain slenderness after childbirth.

Once she already had to astound the audience by participating in Victoria’s Secret show only after 3 weeks after birth. David Kirsch - Hollywood fitness guru - worked out model’s figure at that time.

Now a 36-year-old model is confident, children are the best alternative to a diet, they are (not counting David Kirsch, of course) help mum being in excellent shape. The mystery of model’s gorgeous figure «is» in constant motion. Prior to the fourth pregnancy, Heidi played with children in the garden, jumped on trampoline, went to to the park to feed the ducks, played tennis with her husband and even climbed trees.

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Keep in mind reducing centimeters in the abdomen and waist is not easy. Diet, exercise, special creams for «problem» areas and … absence of stress will help you.

Why am I seeing «belly»

Recent studies have shown that stress is the main culprit of fat in abdominal cavity.

Constant stress promotes production of hormone cortisol, which helps fat accumulating in the body. Abdomen cavity has a lot of receptors, it is increasingly supplied with blood, that is why fat deposits “settle” on belly and waist. There is only one way out - want to become a leaner, stop being nervous on trifles.

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