Did you know that one in four Americans has high blood pressure? It is estimated that only 70 percent of these individuals know that they have high blood pressure. To help increase awareness and to aid those who are working to lower their blood pressure, Dr. Chad Rhoden of the University of Mississippi Medical Center and registered dietitian Sarah Wiley Schein have written a comprehensive yet practical book on this widespread condition.

Rhoden and Wiley offer straightforward plans for creating new habits regarding diet and nutrition; weight loss; exercise; binge eating; alcohol, tobacco and drug use; and stress management. To help develop some of these habits, Bringing Down High Blood Pressure also includes a guide for food selection as well as 70 delicious recipes for reducing blood pressure. Also included is a thorough discussion on the benefits and risks of various medications in addition to a discussion on alternative therapies.

The Anatomy of Stretching

by Brad Walker

North Atlantic Books (2007)

Stretching is the process of placing particular parts of the body into a position that will lengthen the muscles and associated soft tissues.

Over 20 years ago, during the first karate kid era, my son Austin wanted to take karate. As a Pop always looking for physical activities to enjoy with Austin, I signed up, too. My sensei, Don Byington, started and ended each class with body stretching aimed at relaxation. From Don, I learned how to stretch and still enjoy my stretch routine today, almost every morning.

Walker’s book covers the anatomy and physiology behind stretching and flexibility. Exercises are indexed according to the part of the body being stretched and information on the targeted muscles. As we age, muscles and joints become stiffer and tighter, and stretching is the most effective way of developing and retaining muscles and tendons.

Seeing illustrations of each stretch and effect is interesting, informative and helpful in figuring out your own individual needs. Stretching gently while slowly relaxing our muscles make stretching more pleasurable and beneficial.

Waking up every morning with a positive frame of mind can be difficult, especially during intense periods of work or the pressures of the holiday season.  I’ve found stretching is my best way to start and end my morning workout. It helps me cope with stress and physical exhaustion.

I can truly say that most days I look forward to my stretches and can always say that I feel better when I am finished. My thanks goes to Don who years ago taught me this lifestyle habit which is now an integral part of my life.

The China Study by T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D. and Thomas M. Campbell, II

You are what you eat. This is today’s topic. I am not a physician, not a nurse (even though I entered that course of study in trepidation and departed almost as quickly in greater trepidation. But I can practice what I preach and this is the sermon):

We Americans don’t eat right. We eat too many of the wrong kinds of calories. We eat too much meat. Meat is an acidic food. Too much acidic food creates a chain of events that looks a little like this: eat some part of a cow, say, while out to lunch with the kids at a burger joint, and during the course of its digestion (the cow), it is absorbed into the bloodstream which makes our blood and tissues more acidic. The body then attempts to neutralize the acid by pulling calcium from the bones, the bones have thus lost calcium. Over time, dem bones from head to (“the leg bone connected to the foot bone . . .Oh, hear the word of the Lord (you know the song)” to toe might just get weaker and weaker, leading to easier fracturing and osteopenia or osteoporosis.

Of course, if we exercise and eat right and have a positive outlook, then perhaps that won’t happen. Bear in mind that the bare bone facts about this weighty subject suggest that the exercise we do to strengthen our framework, must be weight bearing. That means you must do something standing up and moving forward (or backwards, if you prefer) on your weight bearing bones (all those that hold up something above them) while following your feet until they have moved you somewhere for an hour. Or you can garden on your knees and stand up to prune a tree then lean over to swat a mosquito while holding your gardening shears in your other hand and repeat these activities for an hour, at least. Swimming and biking are nice for your circulation and your muscles ( you probably won’t do either anyway, unless you look just fab in a bikini or biking shorts) but don’t count it as weight bearing.

If you eat right (and we haven’t gotten to RIGHT yet, but I’m saving that for another sermon. I’ll give a little hint: plant-based diet), you just may get to move forward into that most desired state of a happy, healthy life well into old age. Of course, remember the bare bones facts in paragraph 2–you must exercise. The China Study goes on to say that even though many of us may have genetic dispositions toward certain maladies, a plant based diet as opposed to a meat based diet can go a long way in preventing those genetic markers to materialize. And that’s great news for all of us. And if you have been confused about proper nutrition as we all have, then it is NOT TOO LATE. The body is a remarkable thing. Feed it right and it will give you high fives till those cows that we will no longer eat, come in.

To find out more about why this is true, read this book. Several smart, forward thinking, down to earth, bare bones doctors in metropolitan Jackson have been sending their patients into get this book, The China Study, from which this info was extrapolated and poured into this mustard seed blog. The exercise part (though covered in depth in the book, also) came from my longtime OB-GYN who has challenged me to reverse my lifelong bone loss through some vitamin D-3 supplementation while eating a spinach salad a day and walking for at least an hour while removing the gentle but sacred cow from my diet.

-Pat

Early this year I got a report in the mail stating that my cholesterol was high.  That was it. Just a piece of paper with a note telling me to come back in three months. It was kind of depressing. I am only 35-years-old.

So eventually I got over the depressing part and ran across a book in the bookstore. Cholesterol Down appealed to me because it is a plan for lowering cholesterol without using prescription drugs. It is also a healthy plan for people who already take statins to  help lower cholesterol. Also important to lowering cholesterol is simply understanding what your numbers mean–this books helps with that, too. What I like about this book the most is that while it targets certain foods that can help lower cholesterol, it also promotes overall healthy habits for a long life.

I have been working at incorporating the steps into my lifestyle one at a time, instead of trying to do them all at one time. Some of these foods you may have heard of as being heart healthy: oatmeal, garlic, flax seeds and beans. Each chapter is devoted to a food or supplement. The appendices include delicious recipes, a cholesterol progress chart, an exercise plan, and some ways to assess your risk for heart disease.

There are a lot of healthy heart resources not found in your doctor’s office. Some of the information you may already know while some may be new. The most important thing is to choose one that works for you because it can provide a lot of positive reinforcement.

I don’t when it happened, but a few years ago I noticed that the number of calories cited under the Nutrition Facts on food packaging had changed. I remembered it being this:

“Percentage Daily Values are based on a 1,500 [to 2,000] calorie diet. Your daily values may be higher or lower depending on your caloric needs.”

Now the calorie range is 2,000 to 2,500 calories per day. Who needs 2,500 calories? Knowing that a third of the American population is overweight, it seems that the 2,000-2,500 range covertly reinforces obesity. It makes it seem like eating 2,500 calories a day is normal.

In Eat, Drink and Be Healthy, Dr. Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health points out the educational opportunity the United States Department of Agriculture has missed regarding the redesign of the Food Pyramid found in the Nutrition Information required on all food packaging. When the Pyramid was redesigned in 2005, it became a multicolored pyramid which leaves the viewer confused as to what each color represents. If you were to research it at that time, the USDA pyramid was explained as such: “It included six food groups . . . At the foundation sat an admonition to load up on highly refined starches, while the top was was crowned with fats, oils, and sweets. In between were fruits, vegetables, protein and dairy.” (Willett)

Today, when I look on packaging, I don’t find any type of food pyramid but I do find the increased caloric guidelines.

Willett’s book was a match for me because it thoroughly explains nutrition and highlights many of the dietary myths circulating in our culture. He also presents his own food pyramid. Besides being a great instructional tool for children, it seems that seeing a pyramid like this on food packaging would be better than the 2005 USDA pyramid. Note that the foundation of a healthy eating pyramid is exercise. Wouldn’t exercise be much better to reinforce instead of a 2,500 daily calorie intake?

The Harvard Public School of Health website provides a wealth of solid nutritional information to help teach and reinforce a healthy lifestyle.

A Long Bright Future: The Very Good News about Living Longer by Laura L. Carstensen, Ph.D.

Broadway (August 2009)

Today there are about 50,000 100-year-old folks in the USA. By 2050, when I’m a hundred I will likely have a million peers. Can “old age”  be a long life? How many of us will grow old with physical fitness, mental sharpness, and financial independence? To grow older and make your own choices seems a good goal.

Long Bright Future is full of tips about how to make healthier lifestyle choices. It’s about consciously living a long life instead of being at the mercy of growing old and docile.

Defining our long life helps us to imagine what we want our wise years to be like: socially, financially, physically, and psychologically. Carstensen leads us to understand what might go wrong and what we can ensure by putting ourselves in the position to make informed choices. There is no reason for us to separate our life into artificial stages. Instead we can  put ourselves in the best position to enjoy life values throughout our entire lives.

Laura Carstensen (age 55) is the founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity. She has given the baby boomers this guidebook as an action plan for living life’s later years with more happiness, better health, financial security, and a stronger awareness about choice and destiny.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about becoming an old man. Just recently I turned sixty. I’ve outlived my dad by 15 years and for the most part have had a fulfilled life. However, now as older age approaches, I’m focusing on the last third of my life and consciously trying to influence now what my future needs might be. Long Bright Future has helped me to form a perspective.

The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande will finish off my trio of must-read medical books. A hospital, as the saying goes, is no place for sick people. It’s filled with potential disasters to your health, infections, missed diagnoses, dosage mistakes (think Dennis Quaid and the Heparin debacle with his newborn twins) and other complications that pop up from human error and in a hospital, human error seems a pretty sure bet.

But Dr. Peter Pronovost, a critical care specialist at the Johns Hopkins medical center in Baltimore, thought he knew how to minimize human error. The plan he put into effect was, as Dr. Atul Gawande describes in this book:

” . . . an idea so simple that it seemed downright loopy. In 2001 Dr. Pronovost borrowed a concept from the aviation industry: a checklist, the kind that pilots use to clear their planes for takeoff. In an experiment Dr. Pronovost used the checklist strategy to attack just one common problem in the I.C.U., infections in patients with central intravenous lines. Central lines can be breeding grounds for pathogens; in the Hopkins I.C.U. at the time, about one line in nine became infected, increasing the likelihood of prolonged illness, further surgery or death. He wrote down the five things that doctors needed to do when inserting central lines to avoid subsequent infection. Washing hands, wearing hospital gowns etc. but knew that about one-third of the time doctors were skipping at least one of these critical steps. What would happen if they never skipped any? He gave the five-point checklist to the nurses in the I.C.U. and, with the encouragement of hospital administrators, told them to check off each item when a doctor inserted a central line — and to call out any doctor who was cutting corners. The nurses were strict, the doctors toed the line, and within one year the central line infection rate in the Hopkins I.C.U. had dropped from 11 percent to zero.”

Dr. Atul Gawande, who in addition to practicing medicine, is also a popular writer for “The New Times,” heard about this study and wrote a series of articles on it and then decided to turn those into a book. As he states so elegantly,

“If something as simple as a list that reminds medical personnel to wash their hands and introduce themselves by name and job to everyone in the operating room can improve care, that’s reason enough to take the checklist concept seriously. What a powerful insight this is: In an age of unremitting technological complexity, where the most basic steps are too easy to overlook and where overlooking even one step can have irremediable consequences, something as primitive as writing down a to-do list to “get the stupid stuff right” can make a profound difference.”

-Norma

The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest

by Dan Buettner
National Geographic (2008)

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve enjoyed reading health books more and more.
The Blue Zones is one that’s a little different than the typical “how to”
suggestion books.  This one is much more fun.

Remarkable groups of people manage to achieve longevity, naturally, enjoying longer life spans while remaining active and vital well into their 80s, 90s and 100s.  These people can be found in the world’s “blue zones.”  Blue zones are extraordinarily long-lived communities where common elements of lifestyle, diet and outlook add to the quantity and quality of life.

Concentrating on the 4 blue zones of Sardinia, Okinawa, Loma Linda, California and Costa Rica.  Buettner goes to lengths to bring out the commonness and humanness of those he interviews.  He seems to capture the realness of everyday lives and offers insights into why these folks live longer and stay healthy.

Blue Zone is very pleasant reading, laid out well with photos and key fact boxes.  I like most of his examples of individuals, and I appreciated their excitement about life while getting older.

Your personal blue zone ends this story with lessons the author learned from his studies with practically  presented insights.  The book concludes with the message that the choice is ours whether or not to incorporate these proven lifestyles into our own lives.