If you take your tea cool in the summertime, you may be doing your throat a favor.
Research shows that temperature could matter when it comes to the health of your esophagus. Drinking piping hot beverages may increase the risk of esophageal cancer.
Putting the Chill on Cancer
In a study of an Iranian province that has one of the highest rates of esophageal cancer in the world, researchers found that subjects who regularly drank extremely hot tea had a higher risk of the cancer -- much higher than people who drank their tea just warm or lukewarm.
See You in 4
The theory is that regularly drinking very hot drinks could chronically irritate and inflame the esophagus, making it susceptible to carcinogens. To help reduce your risk, all you may need to do is wait a few minutes for your tea to cool. People in the study who drank their tea less than 2 minutes after it was poured from the piping-hot kettle had a greater risk of esophageal cancer than the people who waited 4 or more minutes (enough to get it below 149 degrees Fahrenheit).
Source RealAge.com
Recipe Idea:
Super Antioxidant Cranberry Iced Tea
Boil water for your favorite teapot.
Brew 1 or 2 bags Gano Excel SOD Tea in the hot water to your desired strength. Sweeten, if desired but not necessary. Chill.
Add one part 100% Cranberry Juice and two parts brewed chilled tea.
Serve over ice. Makes plenty to share!
Friday, June 5, 2009
Friday, May 15, 2009
Avoid Restaurant Catastrophes
(compliments of Dr Oz and Dr Roizen, www.realage.com)
To us, a restaurant catastrophe isn’t just when a waiter spills something on you or when you accidentally miscalculate the tip. When it comes to your health, a catastrophe is what can happen in the first and last 10 minutes of a meal. But it doesn’t have to. Here’s how to dine out, enjoy your meal, and be trim and healthy, too:
Before You Go
Don’t arrive starving! Eat a little healthy fat -- like about six walnut halves -- before a meal. The healthy fat in walnuts triggers a chain reaction that slows the rate at which your stomach empties, so you’ll feel fuller faster. But the chain reaction takes 30 minutes, so plan for it.
The First 10 Minutes
• Raise a glass. Of water. To your lips. This can fill you up, so you don’t overeat.
• Ask for cut-up veggies instead of bread. Most quality restaurants (including inexpensive ones) provide this option.
• Dip in olive oil. If the restaurant brings you whole-grain bread, dip it in olive oil. People who opt for this over butter eat less bread.
• Request the bottles. Order oil and vinegar on the side. Relying on the kitchen to dress your salad -- even with oil and vinegar -- can deliver as many as 450 extra calories!
The Last 10 Minutes
• Share. Get one dessert for every four or five people, and have just a few bites. If there are just two of you, take half of the dessert home, and freeze it for a special occasion.
• Savor your wine. Ending a meal with a glass of wine lets you avoid the cloying aftertaste of sweets . . . and helps you avoid calorie-bombs, too.
• Go European. Do what many Europeans do: Make salad the last thing you eat.
To us, a restaurant catastrophe isn’t just when a waiter spills something on you or when you accidentally miscalculate the tip. When it comes to your health, a catastrophe is what can happen in the first and last 10 minutes of a meal. But it doesn’t have to. Here’s how to dine out, enjoy your meal, and be trim and healthy, too:
Before You Go
Don’t arrive starving! Eat a little healthy fat -- like about six walnut halves -- before a meal. The healthy fat in walnuts triggers a chain reaction that slows the rate at which your stomach empties, so you’ll feel fuller faster. But the chain reaction takes 30 minutes, so plan for it.
The First 10 Minutes
• Raise a glass. Of water. To your lips. This can fill you up, so you don’t overeat.
• Ask for cut-up veggies instead of bread. Most quality restaurants (including inexpensive ones) provide this option.
• Dip in olive oil. If the restaurant brings you whole-grain bread, dip it in olive oil. People who opt for this over butter eat less bread.
• Request the bottles. Order oil and vinegar on the side. Relying on the kitchen to dress your salad -- even with oil and vinegar -- can deliver as many as 450 extra calories!
The Last 10 Minutes
• Share. Get one dessert for every four or five people, and have just a few bites. If there are just two of you, take half of the dessert home, and freeze it for a special occasion.
• Savor your wine. Ending a meal with a glass of wine lets you avoid the cloying aftertaste of sweets . . . and helps you avoid calorie-bombs, too.
• Go European. Do what many Europeans do: Make salad the last thing you eat.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Anatomy of a Step Class
Okay. So if you know me, you know I am so not a stepper. Sure I like to dance but I march to the beat of my own drum. I am the William Hung of dancing. I love it and I do it but I know I am not good at it. I just do it for the love...
Enter my step class* nightmare...
Don't get me wrong, I take exercise classes and they are choreographed but I take weight classes. We do low weights at high reps to music and stick to the beat. Yup, I can certainly stick to the beat if I am doing arm curls, squats, lunges, triceps extensions, etc. No problem, I can count to four.
But no one asks me to do over-the-top, around-the-world, shase (sp?), criss-cross, t-step, and on and on and on -- ALL IN ONE SONG!
First song ends, instructors says "Okay, that was easy, let's move on to the good stuff". Excuse me?? Pardon Moi?? WTF?? No really...I got how many more of these? Are there any slow songs?
By the third song, every muscle is tired, I have never sweat so much in my life, labour suddenly seems so easy, and the little line that was forming between my eyebrows (you know the one that you think maybe Botox is the only thing that will help) is now six millimeters deeper from concentrating so hard on the instructors steps.
Oh my, I just realized I have actually been staring at her butt for an hour....man, she has a nice a--, never mind, sorry....awkward...
I manage to get through many, many songs, I don't know how many, I don't even know what the songs were since I was concentrating so hard on the steps. I even managed to figure out some of the 8 beat combinations (okay, maybe only one).
I am sure that in the middle of the night I will wake up several times and find myself trying to figure out those steps. 1,2,3,4...and 5,6,7,8. Shase-over-the-top, mambo one time, shase, turn step right...and repeat on the other side. Around the world, triple knee repeater, other side.
Round out all that stepping and breathing and sweating with a little abdominal workout (7 freaking minutes long -- who writes songs that are THAT long anyways) just in case you weren't already tired enough. Don't laugh because then I might and I am afraid to. It may hurt.
Best part? Cool down. Yeah, I like that! 'Cuz dang-nabbit I am overheating and it ain't hot flashes (this time)!
One liter of water later, a bit of toweling down myself and the general area around me, and you may ask: Will you do it again?** You betcha! I am far too stubborn to let those 20-somethings out-do this 40-something.
Honestly though, the 20-somethings are really quite nice to their elders. They don't laugh at us every time.
I do ask one thing: please, please, please don't change anything....no new songs, okay?? Please...
The real reason I will return: I want my a-- to look like that! Maybe its just a dream but a girl has gotta have her dreams, baby.
Now...where did I put those Epsom salts.........
This William Hung of step class exits stage left.
* apparently no one told this newbie stepper that this was an intermediate-advanced step class until it was too late.
** I have returned and, yeah, still three left feet but I am consistent.
Enter my step class* nightmare...
Don't get me wrong, I take exercise classes and they are choreographed but I take weight classes. We do low weights at high reps to music and stick to the beat. Yup, I can certainly stick to the beat if I am doing arm curls, squats, lunges, triceps extensions, etc. No problem, I can count to four.
But no one asks me to do over-the-top, around-the-world, shase (sp?), criss-cross, t-step, and on and on and on -- ALL IN ONE SONG!
First song ends, instructors says "Okay, that was easy, let's move on to the good stuff". Excuse me?? Pardon Moi?? WTF?? No really...I got how many more of these? Are there any slow songs?
By the third song, every muscle is tired, I have never sweat so much in my life, labour suddenly seems so easy, and the little line that was forming between my eyebrows (you know the one that you think maybe Botox is the only thing that will help) is now six millimeters deeper from concentrating so hard on the instructors steps.
Oh my, I just realized I have actually been staring at her butt for an hour....man, she has a nice a--, never mind, sorry....awkward...
I manage to get through many, many songs, I don't know how many, I don't even know what the songs were since I was concentrating so hard on the steps. I even managed to figure out some of the 8 beat combinations (okay, maybe only one).
I am sure that in the middle of the night I will wake up several times and find myself trying to figure out those steps. 1,2,3,4...and 5,6,7,8. Shase-over-the-top, mambo one time, shase, turn step right...and repeat on the other side. Around the world, triple knee repeater, other side.
Round out all that stepping and breathing and sweating with a little abdominal workout (7 freaking minutes long -- who writes songs that are THAT long anyways) just in case you weren't already tired enough. Don't laugh because then I might and I am afraid to. It may hurt.
Best part? Cool down. Yeah, I like that! 'Cuz dang-nabbit I am overheating and it ain't hot flashes (this time)!
One liter of water later, a bit of toweling down myself and the general area around me, and you may ask: Will you do it again?** You betcha! I am far too stubborn to let those 20-somethings out-do this 40-something.
Honestly though, the 20-somethings are really quite nice to their elders. They don't laugh at us every time.
I do ask one thing: please, please, please don't change anything....no new songs, okay?? Please...
The real reason I will return: I want my a-- to look like that! Maybe its just a dream but a girl has gotta have her dreams, baby.
Now...where did I put those Epsom salts.........
This William Hung of step class exits stage left.
* apparently no one told this newbie stepper that this was an intermediate-advanced step class until it was too late.
** I have returned and, yeah, still three left feet but I am consistent.
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