Harry Belafonte – Singer, Actor and Humanitarian
Harry Belafonte was a Jamaican-American singer, actor and activist who won three Grammy Awards, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, an Emmy Award, and a Tony Award and starred in several Hollywood films. Above all, he was a humanitarian who took the sides of the downtrodden and advocated the most good for the most people.
You Don’t Need a Lot of Exercise to Help Prevent a Heart Attack
Exercise has been shown to help prevent heart attacks, and a new study suggests that you can gain protection with as little as 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week, or 75 minutes per week of more vigorous activity. Pushing yourself to exercise at high intensity for many long hours did not appear to provide additional protection from heart attacks. The Master@Heart study found that middle-aged competitive endurance athletes had more plaques in their heart arteries than similarly fit and healthy exercisers with a healthy lifestyle who did not compete.
Both Honey and Table Sugar Raise Blood Sugar
A high rise in blood sugar after eating increases risk for obesity, diabetes and heart attacks. Glycemic index (GI), which measures how high blood sugar rises after you eat a food, is almost the same for honey and sugar: 55 for honey and 65 for table sugar, which is not a significant difference. Honey contains two sugars that are mostly-separated (glucose and fructose), while table sugar has the same two sugars but they are bound together to form a double sugar called sucrose. In your body, they end up being absorbed in exactly the same way.
Sugared Drinks Associated with Weight Gain
The largest and most thorough review to date of research on sweetened drinks found that “fruit” drinks and other sweetened drinks are strongly associated with overweight and obesity. The authors reviewed 85 studies, covering more than half a million participants, and found that each increase in servings-per-day of sweetened drinks is associated with a one pound increase per year in body weight in adults, and one half pound in children.
Barry Marshall, from Quack to Nobel Prize
I love stories about quacks who become prophets. Medical breakthroughs are often made by doctors who were first ridiculed by their peers. In 1983, Barry Marshall and John Warren presented a paper to the Australian Gastroenterological Society claiming that stomach ulcers are caused by infection. They never finished their paper because they were laughed off the stage. Barry Marshall became so upset that he swallowed a vial of the bacteria taken from a patient who had stomach ulcers, went into shock and almost died.
Thomas Edison: “Sleep is a Waste of Time”
Thomas Alva Edison invented the phonograph, a long-lasting incandescent light bulb, the kinetoscope, the dictaphone, an autographic printer and rechargeable batteries. He improved the telephone by inventing the carbon microphone. He was arguably the world’s greatest and most prolific inventor, with more than 1093 patents in the United States and 512 more patents in other countries.
Sleep Problems Can Be Harmful
It is common and normal for people to occasionally have difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep at night, but if this occurs on a regular basis and interferes with functioning during the daylight hours, you may need a medical evaluation to find the cause. Getting fewer than seven hours of sleep each night is associated with increased risk for heart attacks, depression, weight gain and diabetes.
Keep On Moving to Prolong Your Life
People who walked at least 8,000 steps per day just one or two days a week had a 15 percent lower death rate over the next 10 years, when compared to people who walked less than that. People who had 3-7 days with 8,000 steps or more had an additional reduction in death rate. This suggests that moving around helps to prolong your life, even if you don’t have an organized exercise program.
Time-Restricted Eating for Serious Exercisers
Several recent research papers have found that time-restricted eating can help to prevent diabetes and heart attacks and prolong life. However, some people express concern that athletes and regular exercisers may develop low blood sugar and lose muscle if they go on a schedule of not eating for intermittent periods such as 6PM to 6AM. An exciting study now shows that time-restricted eating can improve health in serious athletes and may even help them to improve running performance by helping them to lose excess body fat.
Statin Drugs Help to Prevent Heart Attacks
Doctors try to predict and prevent heart attacks by measuring blood levels of LDL cholesterol and treating you if they are too high. Statins and PSK9 inhibitors are among the most effective drugs used to lower high LDL cholesterol. Almost half of all North American adults will suffer heart and blood vessel disease , and statins can help to save your life by lowering LDL cholesterol and reducing inflammation.