Blog entries

National Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Library — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 12:15:06 +0100

National Breast Cancer Awareness Month is an opportunity to promote screening and early detection of breast cancer.

Roughly 1 in 8 women in the United States will get breast cancer. Next to skin cancer, breast cancer is the most common kind of cancer in women.

Symptoms of breast cancer may include:

A lump in the breast
A change in size, shape, or feel of the breast
Fluid (called “discharge”) from a nipple

You have a better chance of surviving breast cancer if...

Laptop Lending Pilot Project @ Lake West Resource Center

Library — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 17:07:12 +0100

The Lake Health Resource Center/Library is proud to announce the start of the Laptop Lending program! The pilot project began at West Medical Center on Monday, September 12, 2011. Lake Health patients, families and visitors (18 years or older) may borrow a laptop for up to 4 hours while at West Medical Center from the Resource Center.

Patients and family members call the Resource Center at ext.33123 to request a laptop. If Resource Center Staff...

Fruit and Veggies – More Matters Month

Library — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 16:06:51 +0100

Every September, Fruit and Veggies – More Matters Month promotes the health benefits of eating fruit and vegetables.

Fruit and vegetables are an important part of a healthy diet that can help protect you from:

Heart disease
Bone loss
Type 2 diabetes
High blood pressure
Some cancers, such as colorectal cancer

Quick Guide to Healthy Living

Help Your Child Stay at a Healthy Weight
Watch Your Weight

Personal Health Tools

Analyze My Plate Tool
...

The Tag-a-Long Phenomenon: A Healthy Contagion

ALLISON.STOCKDALE — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 19:11:32 +0100

You may have read the headlines awhile back in your local newspaper. Obesity is contagious.

Based on data emerging from several large scale clinical studies, researchers announced that those of us who socialize with, or live with those who are obese have the tendency to "catch" it, making obesity into a sort of fatty measles.

This news made all the major papers and media outlets and of course led to the obvious and unfortunate conclusion that obese people were to be avoided j...

Release the Death Grip, Restore the Humor

Weight Management — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 14:40:01 +0100

Transformative Principle #4: Release the Death Grip, Restore the Humor

These Transformative Principles are part of a series on achieving permanent health change that began on March 21. The "principles" are not meant to be gospel. They are simply thoughts of mine that are based on observation of successful maintainers, personal experience and--to some degree-- my own conjecture. I hope they provide some food for thought as you continue your own quest for health transfo...

Populate Your World

Weight Management — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 13:40:28 +0100

Transformative Principle #3: Find Others Who Have Transf...

Returning to Your Body

Weight Management — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 12:25:21 +0100

Transformative Principle #2: Transformation requires re-...

It's Not About What You Want. It's About What You Don't Want.

Weight Management — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 13:41:57 +0100

Transformative Principle #1: Transformation is about belief. But belief can develop through habit.

To be transformed in your relationship to food and health, you must deeply believe that eating and living in a particular way are central to who you are. That is quite different from understanding intellectually that eating well is good for you. No one who begins the process of transformation has yet developed this connection. The journey toward developing it ...

A Season of Transformation Starts Now

Weight Management — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 12:13:36 +0100

Nothing in our lifetime reminds us as strongly about the forces of nature than recent events in Japan. Earthquakes, storms, and tsunamis make it abundantly clear that we humans do not control our world despite a strong desire to believe differently. The earth is constantly transforming itself. Some of this activity is chaotic and unpredictable (like the Japanese quakes) and some is cyclical and regular. March 20th marked the vernal equinox; the moment when the sun crosses th...

The Perfect Diet: Does It Exist?

Weight Management — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 13:50:18 +0100

Nathan Pritikin: 69. Robert Atkins: 72. Roy Walford: 79. Adelle Davis: 70. Aveline Kushi: 78. Marjorie Shostak: 51. Jack LaLanne: 96. Ancel Keys:100.

David Murdock is a billionaire who believes that he knows the formula for the perfect diet. Not only has he built his own research institute to refine his theories, but he is confident that his food choices will keep him alive to the age of 125. This would seem to be quite the claim since the long...

Making Primates Obese: Treat Them Like Humans

Weight Management — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 14:39:16 +0100

I was very disturbed today when I read of an Oregon study which is forcibly making monkeys fat. The study, which is being conducted at the Oregon National Primate Research Center, attempts to reproduce our obesogenic western lifestyle. In so doing, it encourages monkeys to eat as much as they want of high fat, high carbohydrate foods, and forces them to be sedentary. The description of these primates becoming obese, diabetic and atherosclerotic while being trapped in single ...

It's National Nutrition Month!

Library — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 18:12:28 +0100

Eat Right with Color during National Nutrition Month

March is National Nutrition Month. This year's theme is "Eat Right with Color," encouraging you to pack more nutrition into your day with colorful foods on your plate.

Research is uncovering the benefits of pigment-related phytonutrients - and the colorful fruits and vegetables that supply them. Different foods add a variety of...

How to Eat After Weight Loss

Weight Management — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 15:34:26 +0100

Being on a weight loss diet can be annoying. It's tough to have rules to follow, frustrating to face restrictions, and maddening to cheat when you promised yourself that you wouldn't. But as annoying as that diet can be, it can also provide an underlying sense of relief. Once you hit your stride, you are following a plan. The anxieties caused by an overwhelming number of food choices are tamped down. You've got a roadmap to follow.

In my medical ...

The 2010 Dietary Guidelines: Doesn't ANYONE Have A New Idea?

Weight Management — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 18:22:30 +0100

Since 1980, the US Department of Agriculture has been producing dietary guidelines for the American people. These guidelines and the infamous "Food Pyramid" which illustrates them serve as the backbone for our country's dietary advice, a kind of gospel of nutritional correctness. The guidelines are announced every five years with great fanfare (2010 Guidelines). The committee cites the latest research and announces its findings with great seriousness. This task has tak...

February is American Heart Month

Library — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 19:55:50 +0100

Sponsor: The American Heart Association

American Heart Month is a time to battle cardiovascular disease and educate Americans on what we can do to live heart-healthy lives.

Heart disease, including stroke, is the leading cause of death for men and women in the United States.

You are at higher risk of heart disease if you are:

A woman age 55 or older
A man age 45 or older
Or a ...

Losing Weight After Fifty: Menopause and Other Issues

Weight Management — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 15:51:58 +0100

Let's get the off-putting facts out of the way first. Metabolism slows down with age meaning that your body burns fewer calories each day. Prior to menopause, estrogen directs fat storage into the hips and thighs. Once estrogen is gone, storage can occur preferentially in the belly creating the famed "mena-pot".

While these things are true, they don't have to mean anything. Is it possible to lose weight and keep it off later in life? Absolutely.

Ove...

What Makes us Fat? Where I Stand in 2011

Weight Management — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 20:01:10 +0100

About ten years ago, on our annual family visit to the Bahamas, I had a sudden insight into what might be causing obesity. I had been treating obese patients for some years and had been watching them relapse. I also was watching the frustrating progress of my own weight. I had always been thin, but during my forties I had grown twenty pounds heavier despite my usual schedule of five-day-a-week high intensity aerobics. The annual diet that preceded our vacation was no l...

Gaining Weight? Maybe Your Fat's Gone Rogue

Weight Management — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 15:49:07 +0100

Imagine if you will, a world in which all of our current assumptions about what makes us fat are erased. It's hard to do, because we are all so certain that we get fat from eating too much. That little tune has been played for us every day of our lives in excruciating repetition. We are so brainwashed that we've never stopped to consider whether it's true.
Suppose what makes us fat is not what we are eating but something that gets disordered in our fat cells?

Supp...

Why We Get Fat

Weight Management — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 14:34:37 +0100

For most people, the prospect of meeting a favorite movie star or sports hero would set the heart aflutter. Call me a nutrition geek, but I get palpitations from meeting the researchers and authors whose work on obesity I revere.

Several years ago, a friend from residency, who is now chief of endocrinology at a major academic center, invited me to meet Gary Taubes; the author of "Good Calories, Bad Calories". Taubes is a science writer with a long track record of prod...

National Birth Defects Prevention Month

Library — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 20:05:21 +0100

National Birth Defects Prevention Month is a time to raise awareness of birth defects and promote healthy pregnancies.

A birth defect is a problem that happens while a baby is developing in the mother’s body. One out of every 33 babies in the United States is born with a birth defect.

A birth defect may affect how the body looks, works, or both. Some birth defects like clef...