February 1-7, 2012 - Original Health Articles

These "super foods," as certain experts call them, are nutritionally dense and provide boatloads of vitamins and minerals along with excellent calorie and fat profiles. Make it a point to include at least a few of these in your diet every day: Salmon High in omega-3 fatty acids and a preventer of heart disease, salmon, and other fatty fish such as halibut and rainbow trout can also help lower blood pressure and enhance brain function.

The beauty of smoothies is that they can be customized and made out of almost anything you have in your produce bin. If you're watching your weight: Use in-season fruit. Whether fresh or frozen, fruit that's being grown tends to be sweeter than its out-of-season counterparts, meaning you don't need to add extra sugar or honey.

If you eat in response to stress, you are not responding to real hunger but instead to a coping mechanism—comfort food. A study reported in Physiology Behavior found that 73 percent of participants reported eating more sweets and fewer meal-type foods, such as meat, seafood, fruits, and vegetables, during periods of stress.

For some patients with serious heart conditions, a defibrillator (a device that helps the heart do its job) can be lifesaving. As with all medical interventions, however, there are benefits and risks. You may have heard about recent studies that report increased rates of infections in patients who've had one of these devices surgically implanted.

Often used in salad dressings, apple cider vinegar could also be of use to you as a natural remedy. It is reported to help ease a sore throat, relieve sinus congestion, calm intestinal troubles, and rid your scalp of dandruff. Also, if you have diabetes, apple cider vinegar could even help keep your blood sugar balanced.

Trying to make sense of cancer statistics can be overwhelming. Adding to the confusion, many media reports lack context, and even reputable journals can promote misleading and overblown claims about cancer treatment. Understanding statistics, however, can help you evaluate treatment options and assess the reliability of the information you obtain.

The basis of the blood-type diet, developed by the naturopathic physician Dr. Peter D'Adamo, is that blood delivers nutrients to every cell in the body. Because chemical reactions occur naturally between blood and food, blood types respond differently to certain types of diets.

Fresh, young, edible bamboo shoots are grown in some parts of the United States and are sold at local farmer's markets, specialty food stores, and in some restaurants. You can find canned bamboo shoots in the Asian food section of most supermarkets, but fresh shoots are a little more difficult to come by.

Preservatives keep food products fresh long enough for them to get from the factory to the supermarket and eventually find a place on your dining table. They do this by slowing down the natural breakdown of fats, delaying the ripening process of fresh foods, and destroying or slowing down the growth of bacteria and other microorganisms that would otherwise grow on food.

Fruits and vegetables provide some of the most important nutrients you can consume, namely, disease-fighting antioxidants in the form of vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals (substances found only in plants that are known to protect your cells from destruction).

Ever since 1990, tender point exams have been the gold standard for diagnosing fibromyalgia. In order to be diagnosed with fibromyalgia, most patients had to have experienced significant pain for three months or longer in at least 11 of 18 specific areas located throughout the body.

As any parent can attest, certain stages of children's developmental process include periods where they are especially difficult, such as the so-called terrible twos. However, sometimes children exhibit troubling behavior that's beyond what we'd normally expected at that age and stage of development.

Deciding if a person with diabetes is at risk while driving should be done on an individual basis, according to a new position statement from the American Diabetes Association. The statement, which appears in the magazine Diabetes Care and was reported by MSNBC, says assessing a driver's ability to drive safely should be "tied to concrete evidence of risk, rather than on a diagnosis of diabetes alone.

You may think a kiss is just a kiss, but in reality, it can be much more. Smooching can be romantic, but it can also transmit a variety of infections. "When I think of the infectious risk of kissing, what comes to mind are viral infections," says Bruce Hirsch, MD, attending physician in infectious diseases at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, New York.