Oops Change of Challenge Week #3

OK ladies here's the new challenge!

FOR EVERY DAY THAT YOU FLOSS YOUR TEETH THIS WEEK YOU EARN YOUR 5 CHALLENGE POINTS. (Note if it is a day or two before you read this e-mail and you have been going outside every day for 15 minutes and not flossing your teeth go ahead and take the challenge points! But for heavens sake start flossing NOW)

I won't require it to earn the bonus points but if you have not been to the Dentist in over 6 months make an appointment. I know it's tough to keep up with these kind of things in our hard economic times. But I can honestly say that regular dental care and sporadic dental care end up costing exactly the same. Because if you go regularly you can best avoid expensive treatments like crowns, bridges and root canals. And better yet you get to enjoy a healthy smile, fresh breath and overall better health.

OK enough of my soapbox (for those of you that don't know my husband is the most gentle dentist in Central Florida). Please read the entire article below.

Sandee

Healthy Teeth, Healthy Heart

Most everyone knows that a daily flossing helps promote healthy teeth and gums, but that may be just the tip of the iceberg. Research suggests flossing may protect a lot more than your pearly whites.

Let's Start with Your Smile

Without regular flossing, your whole mouth can really suffer. A soft, sticky bacterial film (plaque) begins to accumulate on neglected teeth, especially below the gum line. Eventually, the acids in this plaque begin to destroy the outer enamel of teeth. Gums may become irritated and bleed. Breath may start to smell bad. And after a while, the plaque hardens into crusty yellow or brown deposits -- called tartar -- that make it even easier for more plaque to build up. Eventually, lack of flossing can lead to gingivitis, periodontal disease, and tooth loss.

As if that weren't reason enough to floss, now research suggests that regular flossing may affect more than the health of your mouth.

• Flossing may protect your heart. Research has shown a connection betweenperiodontitis and cardiovascular disease. Researchers are not sure what is behind the connection, but it makes the simple task of flossing a no-brainer for optimal health. (Discover more ways to side-step heart disease and help prevent a heart attack down the road.)
• Flossing may protect your arteries. Flossing and clogged arteries also may be related. Inflammation is a crucial link in the causal chain that leads to arterial plaque and obstruction. Researchers also speculate that bacteria from the mouth may enter the bloodstream and contribute to inflammation and artery clogging.
• Flossing may reduce your risk of diabetes and its complications. If you already have certain health concerns, flossing may help protect you from any further health complications. For example, periodontal disease appears to make insulin resistance worse. When cells require more insulin to take up blood sugar from the bloodstream, blood insulin and, eventually, blood sugar levels will rise. Increases in blood insulin and blood sugar levels both have undesirable effects, such as the development of type 2 diabetes.

To the extent that good oral hygiene reduces plaque, gingivitis, periodontal disease, and the accompanying inflammatory processes, proper oral hygiene may in turn improve insulin sensitivity of liver and muscle cells and reduce blood sugar levels and the need for insulin.

Let the String Lead the Way

More and more research is pointing to ties between oral health and overall health. Even when taking into consideration other bad health habits, such as smoking or excessive drinking, studies have still shown a strong link between periodontal disease and other diseases. Short of a visit to the dentist, no other oral healthcare habit alone has the same ability to remove plaque between teeth and below your gum line. Being aware of the connection between poor oral health and disease gives you one more opportunity to achieve premium wellness.

The next time you floss, use these tips to get the most out of that little white string:

• Be sure to slide the floss under your gum line and to gently curl it around each tooth as you floss.
• Floss gently, but don't quit because your gums bleed. Eventually, they will become stronger and bleed less with regular flossing.
• Use fresh floss for each tooth juncture.
• If you find it difficult to manipulate floss with your fingers, purchase dental-floss picks or holders that anchor sections of floss for you in a small, U-shaped plastic device.

Challenge for Week #3

Our Challenge for the week is to get yourself outside in the sunshine. You can exercise in the sunshine if you'd like or you can grab a book and a lawn chair and just bask in the yard but in order to get your daily 5 bonus challenge points you need to partake in sunshine for at least 15 minutes per day.

And why?

What are the Benefits of Vitamin D?

Up until recently, vitamin D’s big claim to fame was that it prevented rickets, a serious bone deformity that can affect kids and babies. Because vitamin D is not widespread in the food supply, health authorities in the U.S. decided back in 1932 that all milk should be fortified with vitamin D in order to prevent rickets. And that’s pretty much the last anyone thought about it.

But we may have underestimated the importance of this vitamin. Over the last few years, researchers have noticed two things. One, people who have heart disease, diabetes, depression, various auto-immune diseases, osteoporosis, several types of cancer, and even obesity also seem to be low in vitamin D.

The second big news flash is that lots of us are deficient in the vitamin. Just last month, a new report found that seven out of ten American children, for example, are low in vitamin D. Vitamin D deficiency is also a particular concern in the elderly and those with dark skin, and everyone is at greater risk during the winter months.

Where Do We Get Vitamin D?

As I said, vitamin D is not very common in foods. About the only foods that naturally contain a meaningful amount of D are oily fish like salmon and mackerel--and the dreaded cod liver oil. Many of us don’t eat fish that often and even fewer take cod liver oil. And now, we (and our kids) also drink less milk than we used to. So fortified milk isn’t picking up the slack it used to.

Seeing that vitamin D is an essential vitamin, isn’t it strange that it isn’t found in more foods? I mean, you can trundle on down to any grocery store in land-locked Kansas and pick up some fish for dinner. But what did people do in the days before we had such well-traveled food? What did everyone who didn’t live near the sea and know someone who fished do to get vitamin D? Seems like a pretty serious design flaw.

But here’s the thing that makes vitamin D a little different than any other nutrient I can think of: Food wasn’t really meant to be our primary source of this nutrient. Sunlight was. Human skin has a pretty nifty trick: it produces this vitamin when it is exposed to UV rays. No matter how far you live from the ocean, there’s going to be at least some sunlight.

The sun gets weaker the further you go from the equator, of course. And that’s why humans who originated from the northern and southern region of the globe have lighter skin than those who originated from closer to the equator.

Lighter skin allows more UV through, which ensures that people living further from the equator, where the sun’s rays are weaker, can make enough vitamin D to stay healthy. Dark skin acts as a sort of natural sunscreen, providing some protection against the stronger UV rays at the equator, but still allowing for sufficient vitamin D production.

D is for Deficiency

Pretty clever system, huh? But consider our current situation. First, we wear clothes. Second, we work and play inside. Third, lots of dark-skinned people now live far north or south of the equator where the UV rays are weak. Not surprisingly, dark-skinned people living in the U.S. are six times more likely to be deficient than light-skinned folks. And finally, light-skinned people are told never to step outdoors without slathering themselves in sunblock, whichprevents wrinkles and skin cancer but also blocks vitamin D production.

The end result? Rampant vitamin D deficiency. And now that low vitamin D levels are being linked to an ever-growing list of illnesses, researchers are wondering whether getting more vitamin D into people could make everyone a lot healthier. Many experts are arguing that the current recommended daily allowance for vitamin D is way too low and needs to be doubled or even tripled. And vitamin D supplements are flying off the shelves.

How Much Vitamin D Do You Need?

Rest assured that research is steaming along, full speed ahead. And, while vitamin D may not turn out to be the cure for all that ails us, all this press has been a good reminder that we need to pay attention to be sure that we’re getting enough of it.

The current recommended intake for vitamin D for adults is 200 to 400 IU. If you’re over 70, it goes up to 600 IU. Many recent studies suggest that for optimum health and disease fighting we may need up to 10X that much Vitamin D. For more information go to

http://www.naturalnews.com/031577_vitamin_D_scientific_research.html

How Much Sun Does it Take to Get Enough Vitamin D?

You can also meet your vitamin D needs by exposing your skin to the sun—without sunscreen. You may have read that 10 to 15 minutes of sun per day will do the job. But it’s a little more complicated than that. It all depends on where you are, how high you are, how much skin is exposed, how dark your skin is, the time of day, and the time of year.

I found a great little calculator developed by Norwegian scientists that can help you determine how much sun you need to meet your daily vitamin D requirement, taking all those factors into consideration. It’s very interesting to play around with. For example, I learned that here in Baltimore, in August, I’d need just 5 minutes of sun at midday to top off my vitamin D stores. If I were back home in Buffalo with Annie, I’d need an extra minute or so. If it were November in Buffalo, I’d need about 40 minutes. If it were November in Buffalo and I were black, I’d need two and a half hours.

Here's the link to the calculator so you can determine what you need

http://nadir.nilu.no/~olaeng/fastrt/VitD-ez_quartMED.html

For some reason, although it only takes a few hundred IU of vitamin D to maintain blood levels, it can take an enormous amount of supplemental vitamin D to restore them. If you’re deficient, you might need to take 10,000 to 50,000 IU a day for a few weeks to get your levels back up to normal.

Challenge for Week #2

Ladies the challenge for this week is to get more variety in your diet. For each day that you eat a fruit or vegetable that you have not eaten during the last month you earn the 5 daily bonus points.

Enjoy a Variety of Foods Do you find yourself eating the same thing day in and day out? Same breakfast, same lunch, same few dinner recipes. Furthermore do you find yourself always eating WHEAT bread, always eating white rice, always eating the same cereal or snack foods. Why Variety is Important? it increases your chances of getting all of the nutrients needed for good health, in the right amounts. it stacks your diet with protective factors that may disarm would-be cancer causing substances. Protective factors include both nutrients (vitamins and minerals) and non-nutritive substances present in food. it helps to keep your intake of substances like fat, salt and other negative ingredients at more moderate and healthy levels. I'd like to add another point to the above list. My middle son has had a lot of problems with food allergies. The doctor that I took him to when he was a young boy explained that food allergies can be caused by three big factors. 1. We eat too many refined and processed foods that don't contain enough roughage and thereby because of the lack of fiber the food can sit in our intestinal tract longer than it should until it putrefies and rots. 2. Our bodies can actually mistake this foreign matter that is not eliminated in a timely manner as a foreign substance which it needs to guard against. This can initiate allergic reactions. 3. Repeatedly eating the same foods over an over can exacerbate the above problem. How do you get more variety? Getting variety in your diet is really quite simple. The most basic way to ensure that you eat a variety of foods is to plan your day's meals around the major food groupings: Grain products; Vegetables and Fruit; Milk products; Meat and Alternatives. Take advantage of the marvelous range of foods available. Enjoy ethnic foods and cooking; try the different fruits, great variety of vegetables and many types of whole grains that you find in the ethnic markets and grocery stores.

Welcome Spring Skinnies

So how are you doing? Did you make it through day one without eating any sugar! Did you drink your water? Exercise an hour? Go to myfitnesspal.com and enter all of the food you ate?

There are so many things to keep track of it can feel a bit overwhelming at first but honestly these habits will become second nature to you if you persevere.

We will have a weekly challenge and for this first week it is:

1. Get an account on Myfitnesspal.com

2. Using the e-mail addresses of our group invite everyone in the group to be your friend or accept their invitation to you.

3. Make 12 comments to anyone in the group on the newsfeed.

Please let me know if this is too confusing. You can earn 35 points (23 for inviting the other 23 contestants to be your friend and 12 for comments) for the week for our challenge.

Oh and please read the Rules and Frequently Asked Questions portion of this site.

Remember your $5 per week for a total of $40 is due as soon as possible. My info is:

Sandee Spencer

1290 Northridge Drive

Longwood FL 32750

Ohhhmmmmmmmmmm!

Sorry I was pokey in getting out our next challenge but here it is:

If you meditate for at least 10 minutes a day you will earn the daily challenge points.

Many of us are stress eaters and one way to overcome our life time habits of over eating is to find alternatives to turn to during times of stress. Exercise is a great one and so is meditation.

So how do you meditate?

Simple Meditation in 5 Steps

When times are stressful everyone could stand to take a minute to stop and breathe. During meditation, you harness, calm, and essentially turn off the “thinking” portion of your mind so that you open yourself to a deeper state of relaxation and awareness. With regular practice, you become able to do this anywhere, anytime you feel the need to stop and breathe.

Simple meditation in 5 steps described in this post can help alleviate stress and countless ailments, including lowering high blood pressure, decreasing muscle tension and headaches, enhance the body’s immune system, easing symptoms of arthritis and allergies, and more. For those of us seeking calm from the storm of daily stress, meditation allows you to have greater control over not only your emotions but your reactions to occurrences (if you are quick to anger over small things, for example). With practice, you become more aware of your surroundings and what goes on in your mind, thereby preparing yourself and your body for a calmer, less reactive response.
Anyone can stand to gain from meditation, and better still, anyone can do it.

1. Make time to meditate daily.

As with most things, meditation mastery doesn’t happen overnight. Meditation is a lifelong endeavor and treatment, and its benefits are most noticeable with regular practice. You can meditate at any time of the day. Begin by setting aside 10 minutes for focused meditation.

2. Sit comfortably in a quiet, relaxing environment.

Avoid things that will distract you, like the TV, your cell phone, noisy appliances (like the refrigerator), kids, and the like. I love meditating while wearing my noise canceling headphones. I usually listen to meditations that I find at

http://www.mythoughtcoach.com/ There are several free ones on this site. Go and download one for your own use. They are wonderful! Stin (who provides the meditations) is a member of the church and I just love her voice. I actually have a membership to the site but it offers several free meditations too. If you don't listen to one of these prepared meditations you might want to play soft, repetitive music that won’t disrupt your concentration. Some people enjoy sitting in a grassy field or forest or even near a stream and letting the sounds of nature help to soothe them.

Make sure the place you are sitting or lying is comfortable. A cushion or yoga mat can help. If sitting you don’t need to cross your legs into the lotus position if this is painful; you only need to sit comfortably with your back straight so as to make it conducive to healthy breathing. You may at first need to concentrate on proper posture; try sitting on a the forward edge of a thick cushion or rolled up towel to tilt your pelvis naturally forward and imagine a thread pulling the top of your head up so your spine is straight. If lying position yourself so that your head is supported and your muscles are all in a position to relax.

Keep your hands and feet relaxed; don’t worry about position. Consider starting out with letting your hands lie on your thighs or hanging at your sides.

3. Relax.

Close your eyes and look for parts of your body that aren’t relaxed, like your neck, the muscles near your forehead or eyes, your knees, hands, spine, etc. Adjust your posture accordingly. Focus on them and imagine your blood running through that part of your body so it warms and relaxes.

4. Focus on your breathing.

With eyes still closed, focusing on your nostrils as you breathe. This sounds silly, but focusing on this single part of your body allows you to focus on how breathing feels and quiet the chattering of your mind. Imagine that with every exhalation, you’re breathing out negative emotions that are causing you pain, stress, and tension. Imagine you’re breathing in relaxing, positive air when inhaling. Preparing for meditation like this is part of the process and you’ll adjust more quickly with practice.

5. Focus on nothing.

Once you’re able to focus on your breathing alone, focus on nothing. Clear the mind by focusing on your breathing and then casting the thought of it from your mind. Enjoy the peace

What? A total of 9 servings of fruits and veggies every day?

Well ladies I'm afraid it's time to step up our efforts. To earn your 5 challenge points each day for the next week you need to eat additional servings of vegetables to bring you up to 7 servings of vegetables per day along with at least 2 servings of fruit. The US Government recommends a total of 5-9 servings of fruits and veggies so we have been doing the bare minimum. Lately I heard that a new study had been done at Harvard that said the optimal is 9-13 servings of fruits and veggies per day. Can you imagine how healthy we would be if we ate 13 servings of fruits and vegetables every every day? And goodness we would never eat any pie, ice-cream, candy or other goodies because we would be so stuffed with veggies! And don't forget although it's not the optimum choice, the US Gov says that you can count juice as one of your servings. It is clear, however, that fruit juice from concentrate is the least nutritious choice so if you opt for juice fresh is better.

Perfect Posture

Posture ranks right up at the top of the list when you are talking about good health. Our challenge for this week is to practice perfect posture for at least 10 minutes a day. You can practice perfect sitting posture for half the time and perfect standing for half the time! And for every day you remember to practice for 10 minutes you earn the 5 Weekly Challenge points. You will think this is an easy challenge- heck you can do it while grocery shopping. But I have tried to keep perfect posture for an entire grocery shopping trip and it is HARD!

Posture is as important as eating right, exercising, getting a good night's sleep and avoiding potentially harmful substances like alcohol, drugs and tobacco. Good posture means your bones are properly aligned and your muscles, joints and ligaments can work as nature intended. Not only that you can look pounds thinner just by improving your posture! (practice in front of the mirror and you will see that this is true!)

Good posture means your vital organs are in the right position and can function at peak efficiency. Posture also helps contribute to the normal functioning of the nervous system. Without good posture, you can't really be physically fit.

Surprised? Well, you're not alone. The importance of good posture in an overall fitness program is often overlooked by fitness advisers and fitness seekers alike. In fact, the benefits of good posture may be among the best kept secrets of the current fitness movement. The good news is that most everyone can avoid the problems caused by bad posture...and you can make improvements at any age.

Better Posture Made Simple

Follow these simple steps to quickly improve your posture.

1) Bring your feet parallel, not turned out, and about hip width apart. Bringing your feet parallel engages the muscles in the front of your thighs and keeps your hips, knees and ankles in proper alignment.

2) Reach up through the top of your head, feeling your spine lengthen, getting tall.

3) Bring your pelvis to a neutral position. To find this neutral position, place your hands around your hips, then tuck your tailbone slightly until your pelvis is directly over your thighs, so there is no bend in your hip joints, and there's less sway in your low back. As you tuck your tailbone, you should feel your abdominal muscles engage a bit.

4) Draw your shoulders back and relax them down, bringing your hands in line with the seams of your pants.

5) Level your chin, keeping your head directly over the spot between your shoulders, not forward or back.

Here are some easy ways to check your posture at home:

Stand facing a full length mirror and check the following:

1) Your shoulders are level

2) Your head is straight, not tilted to the side

3) The spaces between your arms and your sides seem equal on both sides

4) Your hips are level, not sloped to one side

5) Your ankles are straight and not turned in or out.

You can also have someone look at you from the side and check the following:

1) Your head is stacked over your body, not jutting forward or pulled back

2) Your chin is parallel to the floor, not tilting up or down

3) Shoulders are in line with ears, not drooping forward or pulled back too far

4) Your hands are in line with hips, not forward or back

5) Your knees are straight, not bent or hyper-extended

6) Your lower back is slightly curved forward, not too flat or curved too much, (creating a swayback)

To earn 5 Challenge points a day practice these points of posture for at least 10 minutes everyday. (Note: Yoga, Pilates and other core strengthening exercises can help you to improve your posture)