AOL Travel has an interesting short article about how tart cherries may help fight jet lag. The cherries contain small amounts of melatonin, a hormone that co-regulates sleep patterns.
Author Archives: health
Harvard’s Dreams
Is Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s book My Stroke of Insight Harvard’s new “Opiate of the Masses”? On her web page http://drjilltaylor.com/book.html, she says, “I believe the more time we spend running our deep inner peace circuitry, then the more peace we will project into the world, and ultimately the more peace we will have on the planet.”
But since when is the “here and now” fair? I imagine that many sociopaths live in the “present moment” and feel inner peace after a “kill.” And if everyone on Earth drank themselves into a very prolonged stupor, fewer endangered species would go extinct in the near future.
Quit Sit-on-your-bottom Activities
Quit spending money sitting down. Everybody wants your dollars and cents, and they want you to spend it in a chair–at concerts, movies, restaurants, ballets, musicals, coffee shops, meditation groups . . .
Stay on your feet. Go for a walk or a hike. Lift weights while you watch the news. Find a good deal at a gym (the best deals usually appear when a gym first opens for business and offers a contract that stipulates that they can only raise your fees by, lets say, 1 percent every 3 years).
Shoshone Point, Grand Canyon
Shoshone Point is a great spot for watching clouds and the way their shadows move across the canyon like wild beasts of prey.
Looking across the Grand Canyon from Shoshone Point
For more photos, see our Gallery
Talked to a ranger in the Shoshone Point parking lot. He said that he had met his wife at Indian Gardens (she was hiking through), that Indian Gardens was home (though he no longer lived and worked there).
I’m hiking in the Grand Canyon again this year, the third year in a row. The first time, I stayed in a motel in Williams, Arizona, and drove into the Grand Canyon National Park every morning for day hikes. Last year I stayed in the lodges on the South Rim, hiked to Phantom Ranch (which is located at the bottom of the Canyon), and then spent another three days hiking up and down primitive trails. This year I am hiking from the South Rim to the North Rim and then back to the South Rim.
A Fish and Vegetable Diet
We have heard about low-fat diets, gluten-free diets, vegetarian diets, and other approaches to healthy eating. Perhaps the best low-fat diet is not only gluten free, it’s grain free.
Grains tend to cause weight-gain problems, and grains can irritate your intestinal walls, resulting in inflammation and irritable bowels. (I have read that after 50, we all have abnormal bowels.) But fruits and vegetables contain more antioxidants than grains, and a diet rich in fruits and vegetables will provide enough fiber. If your digestive system is particularly irritable, then switch to frozen fruits and vegetables. Freezing kills some germs and partially breaks down abrasive fiber (and I have an easier time eating vegetables and fruits that I have thawed in the microwave or cooked from the frozen state). According to The National Center for Home Food Preservation, “Freezing does not kill all bacteria, yeasts and molds present in food, but it does prevent their multiplication if the food is held at 0°F or less. When thawed, the surviving organisms can multiply again.”
Hiking and Backpacking Gear
As I have said numerous times, I take supplements (see the disclaimers and warnings listed at the bottom of Spinach, Greens, and Eye Health). Rather than listing the supplements in my posts, I have listed them in the sidebar on the far right. I do not expect you to buy these items, but the Amazon links do provide handy summaries, price comparisons, and reviews.
I have also mentioned that walking, running, and hiking are very good for the health (including respiratory, cardiac, and digestive health), so in this post I am going to list some of the gear I use on hikes. I am listing the Amazon links. You can follow the links to detailed descriptions, prices, and reviews. I own all of the following gear:
Blood Tests Away From Home
If you must have blood tests every 4 to 8 weeks while you are away from home, then compare what the lab provides with what your doctor requires. Your doctor might ask for a series of individual tests, but the lab might include all those tests in one package. The package of tests is often cheaper than the total cost of the individual tests ordered separately. For example, the Hepatic Function Panel (which is a group of liver-related blood tests) is cheaper than the total
price of the separate tests ordered individually.
Joint Stress and Bone Bruising
I was telling my brother that when a joint starts clicking (when he feels the bones in the neck, spine, hip, or knee, etc., click on one another or clunk by one another), he should change his position in such a way that the “clicking” and “clunking” goes away. I’m not talking about an occasional clicking noise. In fact you probably won’t hear an actual noise. I’m saying that I don’t want to feel my bones clunking by one another. I don’t want to feel my joints clunk.
