Thursday, September 13, 2012

Easiest Way To Live Longer

The Easiest Way To Live Longer

By Lisa Collier Cool
Sep 11, 2012

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Day in Health

by Lisa Collier Cool

Walking Increases Your Lifespan

Walking more than an hour a day improves life expectancy significantly, a 2011 study showed. The researchers looked at 27,738 participants between the ages of 40 and 79 over a 13-year period. Surprisingly, their lifetime medical costs did not increase—even though they lived longer.
“An increase in walking time at the population level would bring about a tremendous change in people’s health and medical cost,” the study authors wrote.

Walking Wards Off Diabetes

Just thirty minutes of walking a day can prevent diseases such as type 2 diabetes, a 2002 study looking at both overweight and average weight men and women in a population at high risk for the disease showed.
If you already have diabetes, walking is helpful for you, too. A mile or more daily cuts your risk of death from all causes in half, according to a 2007 study.

Walking Keeps Your Mind Sharp

Walking 72 blocks a week (around six to nine miles) helps increase grey matter, which in turn lowers the risk of suffering from cognitive impairment—or trouble with concentration, memory and thought, according to a study which looked at 299 seniors over a nine-year period.
Furthermore, walking five miles per week can provide some protection to the memory and learning areas of the brains of those already suffering from Alzheimer’s disease or mild cognitive impairment, and lead to a slower decline in memory loss.
Common Symptoms of Alzheimer's Disease

Walking Helps Lower Blood Pressure

Walking just 30 minutes a day, three to five days a week—even when the 30 minutes are broken into three ten-minute increments—has been found to significantly lower blood pressure.

Walking is Great for Bone Health

Putting one foot in front of the other for about a mile a day led to improved bone density in post-menopausal women, and slowed the rate of bone loss from the legs, according to a 1994 study. “It takes walkers four to seven years longer to reach the point of very low bone density, study leader Dr. Krall told the New York Times.

Walking Cuts the Risk of Stroke

Walking about 12.5 miles a week or more cut the risk of stroke in half, according to a study looking at over 11,000 Harvard University alumni with an average age of 58.

Walking Improves Your Mood

If you’re feeling down in the dumps, walking is a quick and easy solution. Just thirty minutes on a treadmill reduces feelings of tension and depression, according to research published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. In fact, the study found that walking lifted moods more quickly than anti-depressants did (and with fewer side effects).
And the more people walk, the better their mood and energy, says California State University Long Beach professor Robert Thayer, based on a study looking at 37 study participants over a 20-day period.

Walking Torches Calories

Just 20 minutes of walking a day will burn 7 pounds a year. The effects are even more dramatic when you add in some dietary changes as well.
23 Diet Plans Reviewed: Do They Work?

Walking Improves Insomnia

Having trouble sleeping at night? Try taking a brisk 45-minute walk in the morning five days a week, and your sleep may improve significantly, according to research from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, which looked at women from the age of 50-74. (Walking in the evening, however, sometimes has the opposite effect—so keep an eye on when you’re exercising and what your sleep patterns are.)

Walking is Good for the Heart

Women who took brisk walks for three or more hours per week reduced their risk of heart disease by 30-40 percent, according to an analysis of over 72,000 women aged 40-65, who were enrolled in the prospective Nurses’ Health Study. As I reported recently, heart attacks kill more US women than men annually. However, the benefits of walking aren’t limited to one gender. A different study showed that walking can cut the risk of coronary heart disease in half for men between the ages of 71 and 93.
Exercise and Fitness in the First Trimester
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Get the information you need to improve your health and wellness on Healthline.com.

Monday, September 10, 2012

NYT: More Choice, and More Confusion, in Quest for Healthy Eating

September 8, 2012

By KIM SEVERSON

ATLANTA — Lisa Todd’s grocery cart reflects the ambivalence of many American shoppers.

Ms. Todd, 31, prowled the aisles of a busy Kroger store here last week. Her cart was a tumble of contradictions: organic cabbage and jar of Skippy peanut butter. A bag of kale and a four-pack of inexpensive white wine. Pineapples for juicing and processed deli meat.

The chicken, perhaps, summed it up best. A package of fryer parts from Tyson, the world’s largest poultry producer, sat next to a foam tray of organic chicken legs.

The conventional food was for her boyfriend, the more natural ingredients for her.

“We’re not 100 percent organic, obviously, but I try to be,” she said. “He doesn’t care, so I’m trying to maintain happiness in the relationship.”

Like many people who are seeking better-tasting, healthier food, Ms. Todd had heard about a recent study on organic food from Stanford University’s Center for Health Policy.

Based on data from 237 previously conducted studies, the Stanford report concluded that when it comes to certain nutrients, there is not much difference between organic and conventionally grown food.

But it also found that organic foods have 31 percent lower levels of pesticides, fewer food-borne pathogens and more phenols, a substance believed to help fight cancer.

For Ms. Todd and countless other shoppers, the study just added to the stress of figuring out what to eat. And it underscored the deep divisions at the nation’s dinner table, along with concerns among even food purists about the importance of federal organic standards.

“There’s complete confusion,” said Marcia Mogelonsky, a senior food analyst for Mintel, a global marketing firm. “Most people have a randomly arranged set of diet principles. They buy organics sometimes. They buy based on price sometimes. Very few people are completely committed to any one cause.”

For some, the report gave credence to what many already believe: that organic food is not worth the price. Only 26 percent of Americans regularly buy organic food, according to a 2011 Pew Research Center poll. Price is usually why they do not. But it is a difficult choice for people who are trying to eat better.

JoAnne Grossman, 66, lives in Columbus, Ohio, where she spent a day last week working to turn a bumper crop of garden squash into zucchini bread. She and her husband, Steven, have been eating more organic food over the last year.

Her son has something to do with it. He is a high school teacher in the Washington area who also runs an organic farm. Still, the Stanford study made Ms. Grossman feel a bit better about not always going organic.

“It’s not cheap,” she said. “But the big thing for me is that I don’t like the pesticides and the chemicals they use to grow things like those monster red peppers. They’re too perfect.”

For the crowd that spends weekends at the farmers’ market and knows that Humboldt Fog is a type of cheese, the study was, at best, misunderstood and misinterpreted and, at worst, an indication of a conspiracy driven by large-scale, conventional agriculture.

“I was like, ‘Are you absolutely joking?’ ” asked Jeremy Bethel, 30, an owner of the Capra Gia Cheese Company. A constant at more than a dozen farmers’ markets in the Atlanta area, his company sells milk and cheese from 350 goats raised in Carrollton, Ga., and eggs from 400 chickens in Rome, Ga.

“They want to make organics sound bad because they see such a movement of people moving away from big agriculture,” Mr. Bethel said.

Yet among some farmers who reject conventional growing methods and customers who seek out their products, organic food — at least as it is defined by federal legislation signed in 2002 — is losing its luster even as the interest in healthier, more natural food continues to rise.

“You’re just paying $3,000 to the government to use the name organic,” said Mr. Bethel, citing what it might cost to certify an operation of his scale.

People have moved beyond organics, those on the forefront of the local food movement say. Over the last couple of decades, food has become a platform for social issues and environmental causes, a rallying point for improving schools and a marker of cultural status. Farmers’ markets are seen as an indicator of community revitalization, and visiting them is a regular weekend activity for families. The Department of Agriculture has counted 7,864 of them this year, an increase of 174 percent from 2000.

But organic food, especially products processed by large corporations, has become less a player in the front lines of the movement.

Though organic food has long been a rising star in the food industry, growing by almost 8 percent from 2009 to 2010, certified organic food still makes up less than 4 percent of overall food and beverage sales, according to the Organic Trade Association.

Farmland certified organic under the federal guidelines makes up less than 1 percent of all land used for crops and livestock, according to the Agriculture Department.

And increasingly, small-scale farmers like Greg Brown, who for six years has been growing okra, green beans and other vegetables on a few acres in Barnesville, Ga., are opting not to apply for federal organic certification.

He thought about going for an organic label, but the packet of requirements was more than an inch thick and the cost to get certified too high in proportion to his profit. Instead he farms under the less expensive certified naturally grown label, a national program that has sprung up as an alternative to the federal organic program and that has nearly 800 farms as members.

The program, which relies on farmers to inspect one another’s farms, does not certify processed foods like cereal. It requires that farmers use most of the same techniques as the federal organic program, but without the paperwork.

Customers seeking out Mr. Brown’s Greenleaf Farms okra and green beans are not really looking for a label, anyway, he said.

“They want food from healthy soil, and they want a direct line between the grower and their food,” he said. “Taste is up there, too.”

That, in many ways, was the idea behind the organic movement, which began as a postwar response to the effects of chemical fertilizer and the rise of industrial-scale farming. In the 1970s, Alice Waters and some other West Coast cooks started looking for produce that tasted better than what most restaurant supply companies were offering.

They found a small community of environmentally minded organic farmers who were picking their fruits and vegetables when they were ripe and were growing varieties designed for flavor, not shipping and storage.

From that relationship came California’s organic laws, which in turn became the basis for the national organic standards.

“I didn’t intend to seek out organic local food, said Ms. Waters said in an interview. “I was looking for taste.”

Like others, she thought the Stanford study was too narrowly focused on nutrients and had been largely misinterpreted.

“Taste is what’s going to get us to eat seven portions of fruits and vegetables a day,” she said. “To not consider taste and quality in this whole discussion is to completely miss the point about food.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/us/would-be-healthy-eaters-face-confusion-of-choices.html?_r=1&partner=MYWAY&ei=5065

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

NYT: Postponing Retirement Indefinitely

August 29, 2012, 11:07 am48 Comments

Postponing Retirement Indefinitely

By ANN CARRNS

More than a third of adults near retirement age — 35 percent — said last year that they simply don’t expect to retire. That was up from just 29 percent two years earlier.
More than four in 10 of these “pre-retirees” who don’t expect to retire say it is because they are financially unable to do so. They cite the need for extra income and the maintenance of employer benefits as the main reasons for continuing to work.
That was among the findings in the “2011 Risks and Process of Retirement Survey Report” from the Society of Actuaries.

“There is a core group of people earning a paycheck who feel, for whatever reason, they aren’t going to be able to support themselves in their retirement years,” said Carol Bogosian, an actuary and retirement expert.

The survey was conducted for the society by Mathew Greenwald and Associates and the Employee Benefit Research Institute in July 2011, using telephone interviews of 1,600 adults ages 45 to 80. Half were retirees and half were pre-retirees, who were still working. The margin of sampling error for the survey was plus or minus 4 percentage points.
The findings suggest that Americans need to recalibrate their expectations about how long they can actually work, she said. While many pre-retirees say they expect to continue to work well past traditional retirement age, that may be “wishful thinking” — or an excuse for not saving and preparing, the report says. The reality is that many people actually retire earlier than they expect, whether because they lose their jobs and can’t find new ones, or because of failing health.

Half of retirees (51 percent) report that they retired before age 60. But just one in 10 pre-retirees (12 percent) think they will retire that early. Instead, half of pre-retirees who expect to retire say they will wait at least until age 65.

That gap, combined with the failure of many people to plan for a long enough retirement period, may indicate significant future financial problems for many, Ms. Bogosian notes.
A more realistic plan might be to work two or three years longer than you may originally have expected, to earn additional income and maximize your Social Security income, she said. And workers in their 50s need to think strategically about what skills they need to acquire to keep working longer, whether in their current career or a new line of work.

Are you planning on working longer in retirement? What sort of work do you expect to be doing?

jfn organic project