Preventative Care. Dr. David Samadi will explore the new and often debated areas of preventative care. Prevent cancer, check your blood pressure, eat the right foods and other prevention tips. Get a medical doctor's take on herbal treatments, yoga, homeopathy, acupuncture, vitamins, supplements, massage therapy, spiritual treatment and other forms of alternative therapy for prevention.
A cold is a type of viral infection that occurs in the upper respiratory tract in the nose and throat. It is also known as the common cold. There are more than 100 different types of cold viruses. For this reason, the signs and symptoms can vary significantly. While there are more than 100 viruses that can cause a cold, the rhinovirus is the most common cause of the common cold. It is highly contagious.
Read MoreEveryone wants to keep their kids healthy this Halloween, but with all the candy that available it can definitely be hard. Halloween tends to be the biggest and most exciting holiday for kids (and adults), especially since they get to dress up in a crazy costume and get an extra helping of sweet treats. As a parent, you want to instill good habits into your children, and although it is a holiday, you definitely do not want to make it an exception to the rule. It can be frustrating to encourage kids to eat healthy and limit the amount of sweets they have day to day, only to have Halloween ruin all the hard work.
Read MoreWe all know how annoying getting sick can be, and if you avoided the snot, sniffles and coughs well into the fall season you may think you are in the clear. But cold and flu season is just around the corner, so here are some tips on how to avoid getting sick this upcoming season:
Increase your zinc intake:The mineral, zinc, works to help to strengthen the immune system. In fact, immune cells like white blood cells need this mineral to function. The most well-known place to get zinc is unquestionably oysters, which are rich in the mineral. However, meats like calf’s liver, beef and lamb, are also abundant in zinc.
Eat more yogurt:Probiotics found in yogurt, are good bacteria that keep the gut and intestines healthy. Research has found that yogurt, owing to these probiotic properties, stimulates the production of white blood cells, fending off colds.
Remember to wash your hands and avoid touching your face: We touch everything around us with our hands, and a side effect of this is carrying around germs and bacteria that can get us sick. According to some studies, people touch their eyes and nose are more likely to get sick than those that don’t. Take the time – at least 20 seconds of scrubbing – to wash your hands with soap and water. It takes almost half a minute to scrub away viruses that can cause the flu.
Avoid excessive drinking: Alcohol suppresses your immune system at a rate that is proportional to the amount you consume. This means the more drinks you have, the bigger blow to your immune system. Alcohol triggers a flood of cytokine proteins that induce fever and inflammation. Alcohol also suppresses the ability for white blood cells to multiply and subsequently fend off a cold.
Get more Sleep: Lack of sleep can increase inflammation and inhibit the immune response by altering the way your genes function. Not getting enough sleep increases your chances of catching colds and the flu. Sleep also helps the body induce a better fever response to kill infection, when we don’t sleep the body has a hard time fighting infection this way.
Quit smoking: According to scientific studies, smoking cigarettes makes you more than five times more vulnerable to different strains of the flu. The chemicals, additives and carcinogens that are contained in cigarettes decrease the ability of the immune system to do its job. Even if you don’t smoke, you should also avoid people who do or areas where you can easily inhale cigarette smoke. The small hairs in the nose, called cilia, which work to block out harmful particles from the lungs are forced to work in overdrive to clear harmful particles. This increases the chances of respiratory infections.
Add Cinnamon: This spice is a known antiviral, antifungal and antibacterial powerhouse. This great addition to you coffee, oatmeal and dessert, has the ability to strengthen the immune system and fight off pathogens that cause illness.
Tips for Boosting your Immune System:
Read MorePrediabetes means an indication that you are on the path to developing diabetes. Having prediabetes means that your blood sugar level is higher than normal, but still below the threshold for having full blown type 2 diabetes.
Read MoreVitamin D is arguably the most important vitamin you could take. Vitamin D is actually a hormone; it's not even a vitamin and it affects our entire body. Whenever, you feel fatigued or little energy - it's quite possible you're Vitamin D levels are low. A vitamin D deficiency occurs when the level of vitamin D in your body is too low.
Read MoreTriglycerides are compounds that provide our bodies with energy for metabolism. Triglycerides are the main type of fat in the body. They are also the most common that we eat. Triglycerides are the compounds that develop and are stored as fat in the body. A triglyceride contains three fatty acids, which are broken down in the small intestine in order to be absorbed.
Read MoreHigh blood pressure is also known as hypertension. It is a condition that causes high pressure within the arteries of the body. The arteries are responsible for carrying blood from the heart to the rest of the body. Our blood pressure is measured by two numbers: systolic pressure and diastolic pressure. The systolic pressure is the top number which measures the pressure when the heart beats. The diastolic pressure is the bottom number and measures the pressure when the heart is at rest in between beats. A normal blood pressure is 120/80, while 139/89 is considered pre-hypertension, and 140/90 or above is considered high blood pressure.
Read MoreVitamin B6
Offers hope to patients with diabetes that keeping glucose levels in check might reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease and other types of cognitive impairments.
Presented at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes conference in Stockholm
Researchers at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden studied 350,000 patients with Type 2 diabetes.
A new study suggests that it may be best to treat patients that are considered prehypertension (which means between the range of 120 to 140) in order to bring their systolic blood pressure down to 120. The findings come from a large study conducted by the National Institutes of Health. In the past, doctors have often only treated patients whose systolic blood pressure was about 140. 140 is the number that officially declares a person having high blood pressure. The reason the systolic number is of importance is because it is a better indicator of a stroke or heart attack.
Read MoreWhat do you know about prediabetes? If you or a loved one is diagnosed with this, you want to be as educated as you can so as to prevent type 2 diabetes. Prediabetes is a condition in which the blood glucose levels are higher than normal but not high enough to be classified as full-blown type 2 diabetes. It’s estimated 79 million Americans have prediabetes and it is often underdiagnosed and undertreated. If it is not diagnosed it most likely will go on to develop into type 2 diabetes. Currently, about half of all American adults have prediabetes or type 2 diabetes.
Read More1. Turmeric
Everything is arguably related to inflammation. It can cause cancer, skin conditions, allergies, muscle pain, joint pain, headaches and painful menstruation. So what exactly is inflammation? It's a combination of heat, pain, redness and swelling that happens externally or inside the body. Childhood obesity, diabetes, rate of cancer is on the rise. Without taking care of diabetes, billions and dollars goes into it, and without fixing our diet lifestyle, behavioral changes, nothing will improve.
Read MoreEveryone experiences anxiety from time to time – it is a normal human emotion, after all. We feel nervous or anxious at work, before a big exam or when making crucial decisions in our life. For some, however, anxiety goes beyond being just a passing feeling. Instead, it causes such great distress that affects their ability to live a normal life. This is when anxiety becomes a disorder. Anxiety disorders affect about 18 percent of the American population, making them the most common mental illnesses in the country. That means that at any given time, about 40 million are suffering from some sort of anxiety disorder.
Read MoreWhen we're in our twenties, hangovers tend to not be as big of a deal. Two martinis, glass of champagne and a beer to wash it down, sure we can handle that and not be out of commission the next day. Move into your thirties and maybe we start to skip the martinis but then we hit our forties and alcohol might be gone from your life because of its after effects. If this is the case, what can you do to beat that feeling? The good news is the side effects the next day are the result of an accumulation of toxins that occur when we get older, making it more challenging to process and eliminate alcohol. The result-the more toxic we are, the more intense the hangover.
Read MoreVitamin K, a fat soluble vitamin discovered in the 1930’s, is best known for its role in blood coagulation or blood clotting. This form is also known as vitamin K1 or phylloquinone. However there is another form of vitamin K that hasn’t received as much attention until the 21st century – vitamin K2. Vitamin K2, also known as menaquinone, is made by our intestinal bacteria and also is found in certain food sources. Deficiencies of vitamin K1 are rare but deficiencies of vitamin K2 are more common. It is the vitamin K2 form that seems to have far-reaching roles that appear to make a meaningful difference in the health of our hearts, bones and of prostate cancer.
Read MoreWe all get in bad moods. The key is knowing how to beat it. A long-term bad mood can have significant repercussions especially on our energy levels. Although it's not always easy to snap out of it. Here's how to beat it and minimize the impact of the inevitable bad mood.
Read MoreAccording to the National Sleep Foundation, the average adult needs about 7 to 9 hours of sleep at night in order to function and feel good throughout the day. Admit it, there's some night's you don't even get close to that. It happens to all of us but there are health issues that can arise from continually not sleeping. Whether sleep deprivation comes from job related stress, long work hours, or just trying to keep up with busy social schedules, sleep aids like Lunesta have become popular. As with any prescription drug, many people cling to the easy fix of a pill. Interestingly, this may no longer be an option for many seeking sleep aids as FDA guidelines change and become stricter. Those seeking prescription sleep medications will be getting lower doses or natural alternatives (such as melatonin supplements). For this reason, everyone should know why getting enough sleep is important and how they can practice good sleep hygiene.
Read MoreHigh blood pressure is a very common condition and affects millions of people within the United States. High blood pressure is also known as hypertension and is a condition in which a person’s blood pressure is greater than a healthy level and puts too much force on the artery walls. About one-third of adults in the United States have high blood pressure.
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