Water is good for you, and the more the merrier, right? Not exactly: it is possible to over-hydrate, as happens in more than 10 percent of marathon runners (the problem is that water and salts in the body need to be in balance).
I write about water from a personal health, earth health and even an economic standpoint in this article for HairLoss.com, a website where I contribute health and fitness articles on an ongoing basis.
Hair is sometimes a reflection of overall health, and in several situations – when a person suffers from anorexia nervosa, bulemia or if they are undergoing intentional rapid weight loss, such as with gastric bypass surgery – there is a clear connection as all such situations can lead to hair loss. This is because the body is perceiving a period of starvation. Its response is to shed what’s unnecessary, to use scarce nutrients for more essential body functions.
I always find life in the extremes to be instructive. Even if a person is not technically suffering from an eating disorder, it bears noting that nutritional deficiencies can affect seemingly unrelated parts of the body. The more I function as a nutrition and fitness writer, the more I am convinced it makes sense to find the natural balance: eat a balanced diet, live a physical life, get the right amount of sleep, make sure you have things in your life that make you smile and laugh and have things you look forward to in the future.
I have to admit it: When my editor asked me to write four articles on meditation – focus on how it works, plus the emotional, spiritual and health benefits – I was skeptical of what it can do. But when I began to interview experts (I guess the word guru legitimately applies here), I learned there is a physiological response to meditation that begins in the brain. In other words, it wasn’t just some mental exercise that was divorced from the physical body (duh - the brain is part of the body). I also learned that most people unconsciously meditate on some level, such as long-distance runners who fall into a stride-breath cadence. You might also meditate while walking, even doing housework; it doesn’t require sitting in a lotus position for hours on end. This is the introduction piece, which is a foundation for the three articles that follow.
The Gulf Oil Spill of 2010 is a tragedy of many origins and, as of this writing, a cataclysm with dismal prospects for solutions. Regardless of political stripe, almost everyone agrees that a reduced dependence on petroleum is an important step toward fixing many problems.
The bike-to-work option is increasingly embraced by people who “get it,” as an estimated one million people bike daily to their place of employment during warmer months. I do this myself, riding 14 miles round trip to the health club where I train my sole fitness client – up to six times a week, February through early December.
I write about how to creatively approach bicycle commuting, even if your workplace is beyond your current biking distance abilities. If this article gets just ten people to trade four wheels for two, the world is made a better place.
A fundamental aspect of fitness, in particular, strength training, is that you are asking your muscles, tendons, ligaments and bones to do something different and harder than before. So if your exercise routine is just that, routine, you are gaining little from the time you spend there other than to maintain what you’ve accomplished in the past.
I write about the way to change this, a practice known in the fitness training profession as “periodization,” in this article for HairLoss.com. This is a means for structuring your exercise program in blocks of time, anywhere from two weeks to four months, where the change will always do you good.
A smartly-packaged approach to fitness marketing, the P90X program, is getting lots of attention across a broad swath of people who want their exercise program to be effective. As a certified fitness trainer and writer, I find this fascinating because it’s really nothing new. It just takes a fundamental principle of training – surprise your body with activities that are hard to do and which you don’t do routinely – and turned it into a product. As consumers, we often respond to products better than basic advice.
The problem is that “shock the muscles” exercise necessarily means departing from the norm. Old-style health clubs are the antithesis of this, with single-track machines and a culture of people who allow those machines to lay down the rules on how to exercise. My article on this topic explores this disconnect, in addition to providing some sample exercises.
Federally-regulated “Nutrition Facts” and other healthy product claims on manufactured food products have been standardized in the past 20 years. It actually works for some people – those inclined to care, primarily – but that is not to say that the labels are too hard to read for people with a more casual interest in nutrition. As the writer of this nutrition article for HairLoss.com, I decided to break it into a three-step process:
I have a predisposition toward pre-20th century living. We avoid seasonal climate differences by heating and cooling our homes, cars and workplaces – and manage to complain about the weather in all four seasons. We don’t get enough exercise because we expect door-to-door motorized transport, spending ten minutes to search for the absolutely closest parking space when a spot just a 20-second walk more distant is readily available.
Our lifestyles, particularly since the middle of the 20th century, have removed us from the natural environment. This seems to be evident in the widespread deficiency in vitamin D, a.k.a. the “sunshine vitamin.” Dr. Michael Holick, M.D., Ph.D. and director of the Vitamin D, Skin and Bone Research Laboratory, and the Biologic Effects of LIght Research Center (both at Boston University Medical Center), is a leading researcher on this topic; he concurs with other researchers who find that Vitamin D deficiencies can affect a broad swath of health issues. Holick says obtaining vitamin D from dietary sources alone is difficult to do, but that 15 minutes of sun exposure three times a week can get you what you need. I cite his research and recommendations in this article for client HairLoss.com.
This is particularly important for persons with darker skin color in far northern and southern (e.g., Canada and southern Australia) latitudes, because darker skin pigment blocks vitamin D absorption. As a health and fitness writer with a bias toward holistic and natural living, I think this topic is significant – and reason to prioritize a little more outdoor time, such as noontime walks outdoors.
We live in a world of false choices, including the one where a person needs to decide between regular and low-sodium foods. True, food manufacturers and processors tend to use salt as a universal flavor enhancer and preservative, such that the straightforward solution is to eat (and prepare yourself) less-processed foods. But it need not boil down to an expected taste and something that is less appealing.
Just because a dish has less sodium in it doesn’t mean it has to taste bland. There are so many herbs, spices and juices that can create complex, appealing tastes. As a writer of health and fitness articles for HairLoss.com, I put this article together because some suggest that salt imbalances with copper and potassium might contribute to hair loss. Of certain concern is the fact that the typical American diet contains two times as much salt as should be consumed on a daily basis.
Billions of dollars are spent every year on pain relievers, diagnostics and surgery to reduce lower back pain. In many cases, these treatments are warranted, but quite often back pain can be alleviated by simple stretching exercises. This makes sense, as our desk-bound, sedentary lives promote muscle and tendon strain, particularly when we incorporate exercise in our schedules. Flexibility is beneficial for both the deconditioned (non-exercisers) and fit alike, and I write about simple exercises that can help here for HairLoss.com.
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