Jay On The Go

Since I am fairly slim and towards the low end of the BMI in the healthy range , I read with a lot of interest the study by Katherine M. Flegal of the CDC that overweight and obese people lived longer than healthy people.  Ouch!  All the diet and exercise I did, I thought, for nothing.  Why bother if I am going to die sooner and not be able to enjoy a long life?  Not so fast, ladies and gentlemen, to start pigging out and sleeping on a couch your whole life.  The reality is that no one knows, yet, why is it that healthy weight people die somewhat earlier and fat people live longer.  There are hundreds of other reasons that determine how long we live, for example, our stress levels, or how hard we work, or how spiritual we are, or how strong our relationships are.  It is definitely documented that overweight people, while living longer, have lower quality of life because they are more likely to suffer from all kinds of illnesses.  So I would rath...

I am one of those individuals who has health insurance but I almost never go to the doctor.  I eat healthy, I exercise regularly, take a few multi-vitamins and supplements, sleep a solid 8-9 hours, and try to live spiritually.  That's it.  As a middle aged man, I am in excellent health.  So when I read that according to research from The Cochrane Collaboration the annual medical checkup that your family members and/or family doctor keeps nagging about our useless insofar as their impact on healthy life or living longer.  Apparently, the physicians bill hundreds of dollars each year to health insurers for your checkup and because most people have them without thinking too much, they provide a steady stream of revenue for the clinics and hospitals.  I have had just one during last twenty years and I am not going back any time soon.

My mother always told me to control my emotions, hide them, and to the extent possible, never get angry or upset.  These early childhood lessons have served me well and I am fairly calm person, but occasionally, I do get disturbed by something but unable to express it.  I swallow my anger and while I have developed coping mechanisms to deal with negative emotions like these, I have experienced anxiety as a result of this.  Not good, according to University of Jena scientists Marcus Mund and Kristin Mitte.  According to them when we hold off expressing our emotions, the body still is reacting to them and during the course of this experience, the heart rate goes up, eventually leading to high blood pressure.  We all know that over a long term it can cause serious health complications. "They avoid risks and always seek a high level of control over themselves and their surroundings," according to Mund, and he could very well describing me.  His advice is t...

If you don't like the idea of reading those articles about how not to gain weight during the holidays , then you just need to remember one simple thing: eat in moderation . It is OK to eat almost everything as long as you keep the overall calorie consumption during the day unchanged. If you still want to eat more calories, you can burn the extra calories by exercising more than usual. And as I said about Thanksgiving side dishes , here is a nice video to try a slightly different set of dessert recipes.

Despite the Hispanic paradox , most Hispanics eat those delicious but deadly Latin dishes . The result: obesity and diabetes are widespread among them. That is not the way things used to be. In fact, during my travels to small towns in Latin America , I found that the food was fresher, healthier, and delicious, without the calories. In other words, the Latin people are cooking the wrong way. Lorena and I have come up with healthier versions of almost all Latin dishes , but a group Latino Nutritional Coalition has put together not only a new Latin Diet Pyramid but has also produced an excellent guide to healthy eating . While sponsored by food companies, the guide also has some healthy recipes for traditional Latin dishes. Yes, you can go once in a while to Rosa Mexicano type restaurants, but if you are trying to eat right and be fit , then you will need to make significant changes in your diet . Please, if you are a Latin person, download the Camino Magico guide for yourself an...

As a followup to our article " How to be healthy ," we also wanted to share more tips that come from AP9 At Home Rewards. We follow all of them, except the one on eating garlic. While we love the flavor and occasionally use it for most of our Italian dishes, the flavor is a bit too much later on during the day/night. So our tip for garlic: avoid it on warm days and when you know you will be intimate . Use olive oil . An essential ingredient of Mediterranean cuisine, olive oil contains polyphenols, the potent antioxidants that have been shown to help reduce blood pressure and cholesterol levels. The extra-virgin is the best kind. Switch to brown rice . The taste is great, and it's a whole grain, which makes it an excellent source of fiber. Brown rice is also rich in vitamins, manganese, selenium and magnesium, elements that help produce energy, improve the health of the nervous system, and help reduce the risk of colon cancer. It's a little bit chewy but you wil...