Six Essential Vitamins and Minerals AND a few Healthy Recipes!

Six Essential Vitamins and Minerals

Vitamins and minerals are essential to life—and we mean essential. Without them, we couldn't think or even breathe, much less digest food or walk the dog. But chances are you're not getting enough of the good stuff, and figuring out what you need is tricky business. We uncover the key nutrients women should consume, plus which you should get from food and what's OK to buy in a bottle.

Vitamin A
Talk about your overachiever: This antioxidant boosts immune systems, improves vision, cuts risk of heart disease, and may slow skin aging. But, warns Michael Holick, Ph.D., M.D., author of The Vitamin D Solution, it can be toxic in large doses, so stick with the right amount.
Recommended daily dosage: 2,300 international units (IU)
Need a supplement? It's best to get A from a beta-carotene source, such as a large carrot or a cup of sliced cantaloupe.

B Vitamins
The eight B vitamins help maintain metabolism, muscle tone, and a sharp mind, says Mary Ellen Camire, Ph.D., a nutrition professor at the University of Maine at Orono. Most important for young women is B9 (folic acid), which keeps red blood cells healthy and guards against cancer and birth defects.
Recommended daily folate dosage: 400 micrograms (mcg); 600 mcg if you're pregnant
Need a supplement? Probably not (unless you're pregnant or planning to become pregnant), particularly if you eat grains. Just one cup of most fortified breakfast cereals has all the daily B you need. Other options: whole-grain breads, asparagus, and beans.

Vitamin C
Despite its rep as a cold fighter, C has never been proven to prevent or cure the sniffles. But the antioxidant is believed to boost your immune system and help prevent heart disease, prenatal problems, and eye illnesses. It even helps wounds heal faster and fends off wrinkles.
Recommended daily dosage: 75 milligrams (mg)
Need a supplement? No, as long as you eat citrus fruits and vibrant veggies. A single orange is packed with nearly your entire daily C. So is one red pepper or a cup of broccoli.

Vitamin D
The vitamin du jour, D could be something of a wonder drug. Docs believe it can reduce your risk of breast cancer by as much as 50 percent, and it may offer protection from both ovarian cancer and diabetes. More happiness: D helps calcium absorption and plays a central role in muscle function.
Recommended daily dosage: 1,000 to 2,000 IU
Need a supplement? Most likely. Milk, orange juice, and salmon contain small amounts of D, but nowhere near enough.

Calcium
Two words: strong bones. "Women start losing bone density in their twenties," says Camire. "Calcium is your single best defense, and you should start taking it now." The mineral also helps build strong teeth and nourishes your nervous system.
Recommended daily dosage: 1,000 mg
Need a supplement? Yep. Yogurt, milk, and cheese do pack calcium, but not an ideal amount.

Iron
Too little of this mineral can spell anemia (a lack of red blood cells) and a weakened immune system. Iron is also "particularly important for women with heavy periods," says Carol Haggans, R.D., a consultant for the National Institutes of Health.
Recommended daily dosage: 18 mg
Need a supplement? Maybe. You can get your fill from one cup of some breakfast cereals. But if you don't frequently munch the crunchy stuff—or iron-rich foods like red meat—you might want to pop a pill. Just talk to your doc first; too much can be harmful.

Chicken Teriyaki

Ingredients

2 teaspoons olive oil (2 Healthy Fats)

2 teaspoons low sodium soy sauce (2 Condiments)

1/2 teaspoon onion powder (1 Condiment)

1/8 teaspoon garlic powder (1/2 Condiment)

 1/4 tsp ground ginger (1/2 Condiment)

18 oz chicken breasts, boneless and skinless - should yield 12 oz (2 Lean)

Directions:

Blend marinade. Tenderize chicken breasts until the breasts are of even thickness. Marinate with spices at least 4 hours or overnight.

Discard marinade. Grill chicken 4-5 minutes on each side or until cooked thoroughly.

2 Servings with 1 Lean, 2 Condiments and 1 Healthy Fat per Serving

Baked Kale Chips

Ingredients:

1 1/2 to 2 cups kale broken into pieces

or you a bunch of kale and measure out 1 1/2 cups when cooked (3 Greens)

Olive oil cooking spray (1 Healthy Fat)

sea salt

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Line a non-insulated cookie sheet with parchment paper. 

With a knife, remove the leaves from the stems and tear into bite size pieces.

Wash and thoroughly dry kale with a salad spinner.

Lay the kale on the prepared cookie sheet in single layers.

Spray lightly with olive oil cooking spray.

Lightly sprinkle sea salt on the leaves. A little goes a long way.I just sprinkled the salt on one side.
Halfway through, turn the chips over and lightly spray the leaves with cooking spray.

Bake until the edges are brown but not burnt, 10 to 15 min.

Watch closely so they don't burn! Try 10 min first and add more time if needed.

Zucchini and Yellow Squash Ribbons (Pasta)

Ingredients:

1 medium Zucchini, 1 medium Yellow Squash- should yield 1 1/2 cups (3 Greens)

1/8 cup Chicken Broth or water (1/8 Condiment)

2 wedges Light Garlic and Herb Laughing Cow Cheese (1 Healthy Fat)

Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions:

With a potato peeler, peel 1 medium sized zucchini and 1 yellow squash to the core (don't peel the center core with the seeds, that part gets mushy). In a non-stick frying pan add chicken broth, salt and pepper and laughing cow cheese. Throw the ribbons in with the broth/ cheese mixture lightly toss until the cheese melts and the zucchini and yellow squash starts to soften - about 3 minutes. The zucchini will cook quickly. Serve hot.

1 serving with 3 Greens, 1/8 Condiment (not including salt and pepper) and 1 Healthy Fat

 

Television and Your Quest for Health!

 

Believe it or not, we get an emotional reward from an activity as passive as watching television. Television could be a way to relieve stress, an escape from the chaos of the work week, a source of riveting entertainment, or even a bonding activity with a spouse or loved one. This should be clear: there is nothing wrong with needing or seeking out these emotional rewards. Relieving stress and finding enjoyment in our lives is important, but building those rewards around a sedentary behavior like television-viewing sets us up for a slew of health challenges.

Anecdotally, we have known for some time that television viewing is associated with unhealthy, but recent studies have verified our concerns. For example, the journal of Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism published a study in 2014 that evaluated young children in Canada and found a link between television-viewing and poor eating patterns. More recently, The International Journal of Communication and Health published a study that found that as time spent viewing television increased, so does the likelihood of having an unhealthy diet.

In the Habits of Health, we talk about being mindful because running on autopilot can easily get us into trouble. In the case of watching television, we can all too easily start with a bowl of chips and not stop until the entire bag is empty. When we become mindless, we let our habits take over. If we have taught ourselves to associate television and snacking with positive emotions like stress-relief and entertainment, we will reenter that habit loop each time we sit the couch. This is why you might experience a craving for a salty food when you sit down to watch your favorite show, even if you aren’t really hungry.

This new study, led by Prof. Temple Northup of the Jack J. Valenti School of Communication at the University of Houston, TX, uncovered a new wrinkle about television viewing that makes unweaving this particular Habit of Disease even more complicated. Northup and his team found that the content of television programming itself leads to misunderstanding about nutrition, which in turn makes viewers feel like trying to understand nutrition at all is in fact hopeless.
Understanding nutrition is, of course, not out of reach, but it’s not surprising that the torrent of conflicting news and information about nutrition frustrates many. That’s one of the reasons why I write these posts; I want health to be more accessible for everyone.
With this new insight, how can we conquer an emotional eating habit tied to television and how can we sift through a confusing stream of health advice?

• Record your favorite shows and watch them later. This has multiple benefits. Watching television this way eliminates commercials (a major source of misinformation and temptation), and it also helps you cut down on your total overall viewing time. If Habits of Sleep are a struggle for you, you can also use television recording to keep yourself from staring at a screen late into the night.
• If you look to television for stress relief, look to adopt a more engaging pastime. Reading books is great. Listening to audiobooks while you’re on a walk is better. Also, you could pick up a hobby like yoga or bike-riding to take a more stimulating and active route to relieving tension.
• Get your questions about health answered. You are the steward of your own health, and you have every right to understand how your body works and what is best for your health. If you see a report or hear a message that confuses you, talk to your health coach or doctor to alleviate your concerns. Additionally, you can always pose your questions to our community.
• Stock your home with healthy snacks. Making the right eating choices is easier if you think ahead and fill your kitchen with fresh vegetables and fruits instead of chips, cookies, and chocolates.
• Start small. Don’t expect yourself to instantly give up television or to always make the right choice. Learn from your experiences, even if you make mistakes, and try to make each day healthier than the last.

~Dr Wayne Scott Andersen 

Sleep Deprivation: The Surprising Causes and Solutions

Sleep deprivation is rampant in offices across America, according to three recent studies, and now new research points to the likely culprit: electronics usage.

More than one out of three adults get less than 7 hours of sleep a night, and 38% report unintentionally falling asleep during the day at least once in the past month, according to the Centers for Disease Control's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

The annual Sleep in America poll by the National Sleep Foundation, released today, suggests the cause is the widespread use of electronics at night.

·         About 95% of people use some type of electronics in the hour before bed, whether it's watching TV, surfing the internet, playing video games or texting.

·         The youngest generation of adults, Gen Y'ers (19 to 29 year olds), are the biggest users of interactive electronics, like cell phones and the internet. They are more than eight times as likely as baby boomers (46 to 64 year olds) to text in the hour before bedtime--52% of them texted compared to 5% of boomers.

·         About 19% of respondents sent or received work related emails before bed.

What do electronics have to do with sleep deprivation--and job performance? The National Sleep Foundation surveyed 1508 people and found:

·         People who text before bed were less likely to get a good night's sleep, more likely to wake up tired, to be characterized as sleepy, and more likely to drive while feeling drowsy.

·         Three quarters of those over 30 who reported not getting enough sleep said their sleepiness affected their work.

Gen Y'ers can also blame Facebook. About 63% of 20 something’s use a social networking site before bed, compared to 34% of gen X'ers (30 to 45 year olds) and only 18% of boomers. They're also twice as likely to play video games in that hour, and much more likely to Skype, watch videos on the computer or talk on their cell phone. Gen X'ers fall somewhere in between but their pre-bedtime behaviors are more similar to boomers than their younger colleagues.

It's not just the post grads who are losing sleep. A whopping 64% of all those who responded to the National Sleep Foundation survey said they woke up during the night and 61% said they woke up the next morning feeling un-refreshed at least a few days a week.

"Electronics are making it very enticing to stay up later," says Charles A. Czeisler, M.D., a co-author of the survey and the director of division of sleep medicine at Harvard's Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston. "You have 500 cable channels, 24/7 entertainment and technologies, video gaming available around the clock. How bad something is for you depends on the extent to which it is captivating you and tempting you not to sleep."

Passive technologies, like watching TV and listening to music may be more calming than interactive electronics like video games, cell phones and the internet because they tend to be less engaging. "The hypothesis is that the latter devices are more alerting and disrupt the sleep-onset process," says Michael Gradisar, Ph.D, a co-author of the study. But TV is more pervasive in bedrooms across the country, and can keep people up much longer than they normally would if they were just flipping through a magazine before bedtime.

Plus, artificial light--whether from a light bulb or your computer screen--suppresses the release of the sleep-promoting hormone melatonin, making it take longer to fall asleep.

Here are tips from sleep experts on how to have a better night's sleep so you can function better at work (and to avoid the myriad health problems that are associated with chronically being sleep deprived).

1.       Get off the grid. Set a "bedtime alarm" 45 to 60 minutes before your bedtime as a reminder to turn off all electronics and begin to wind down.

2.       If you can't bring yourself to do step 1, then try to watch TV, listen to music or use an E-reader rather than using your computer or cell phone. But set a specific time that you will turn those off as well.

3.       Keep your cell phone out of the bedroom. About 10 % of us are awakened from our sleep by the cell phone at least a few times a week (more often for younger people).

4.       Put all work related paraphernalia away in the hour before bed, so you're not thinking about work when trying to nod off.

5.       Start dimming your lights a couple of hours before bed. Avoid bright lights, and keep a dimmer in the bathroom, so you're not being exposed to bright lights while you're getting washed before bed.

6.       Don't drink caffeinated beverages for six to nine hours before you go to sleep.

Do you think you're sleep deprived, and what could help you get more sleep? 

~source CBS Money Mattes