Everyone wants to be happy, right?  Well, come to find out, your heart wants to be happy, too.  A happy heart is not only stronger overall, but happy people tend to be more likely to be active.  Happy people also generally have more self-esteem, which means they’re more likely to take good care of themselves. [...]

Eating out is a fairly American tradition.  It’s one of the most standard forms of celebration, whether it’s for your kid’s Little League win, your grandma’s birthday, your sister’s engagement, or the fact that you survived the work week.  We, as a nation, generally like to eat out.  This is one of the greatest traps [...]

Good Nutrition Shouldn’t Slow Down When Your Schedule Speeds Up Eating healthy can be hard.  I’ll be the first person to admit it.  The best way to ensure you’re eating the best is to cook for yourself, but that can be so time consuming.  Well, there are ways to prepare for those too-busy days, when [...]

The U.S. government spends a lot of time and money on researching health.  A lot of this goes on in the FDA, or in the ARS section of the USDA.  Besides that, there are always educational institutions and various other bodies constantly working on new projects to learn more about the human body and health. [...]

Helping Others Helps Yourself I’m a strong advocate of community service.  I do work with FFA, 4-H, the American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, and some other smaller, lesser-known groups.  I do it to help others, but also because of the feelings of fulfillment that I get from my work with these groups.  I also [...]

 The sun is shining, the temperatures are rising.  Summer’s almost here.  Even as I type this, I’m sitting outside in the sunshine.  One thing that automatically comes to mind when summer kicks up is barbecues.  People are going to cook out, and have fun doing it. I wanted to let you know, there are ways [...]

Complicated Diets Shackle You to Self-Defeating Mindsets If you’re like just about everyone else, you look at health like an all-or-nothing, gigantic goal that’s unattainable. It’s overwhelming so you don’t even start. I know because I feel that way a lot of times. It’s a self-defeating mindset though. Long-term health is negatively affected because it [...]

Know Your Blood-Flow Atherosclerosis can narrow arteries and decrease blood supply to just about any part of the body.  The plaque of atherosclerosis can also become unstable and burst, causing a complete loss of blood to an area.  A loss of blood to the area can cause major damage or even cell death.  While you really [...]

The Earlier You Start, the Better Atherosclerosis and the problems it causes get an early start in life.  Cholesterol starts depositing in the arteries of Americans at an early age.  A study in 2003 looked at the arteries of 17 and 18 year old being assessed for the Austrian army.  The signs of athereosclerosis were [...]

Get the Skinny on Fat Is fat good or is fat bad?  In America over the last 50 years this question has become more difficult to answer.  Part of the issue is that there is not one statement that can be made that would take into account the complexity of what fat is and what [...]