Category Archives: Health Tips

The Latest in Health Fashion

Alright ladies, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but purses are so out and bacteria is so in!

Fashion Credit: Fendi

While handbags were once fancied for their custom embroidery and their name-brand buckles, the newest purse-trend hitting the fashion world this season is bacteria, and one in five women are already rocking this new look on their fashionable shoulders. Along with wallets, keys, and compact mirrors, a new study conducted by the oh-so fashionable, Initial Washroom Hygiene, reveals that 20 percent of handbags also carry around more bacteria than a toilet seat, both inside and outside of the bag.

SEXY.

But don’t worry! We all know that fashion comes with a price tag, but this new trend is completely free, and, who knows, you may already be stuntin’ trendy bacteria because this new look is literally contagious, according to Peter Barratt, technical manager at Initial Hygiene (Trust him… Rumor has it, he’s Kim Kardashian’s stylist too 😉 ).

“Handbags come into regular contact with our hands and a variety of surfaces, so the risk of transferring different germs onto them is very high, especially as bags are rarely cleaned,” Barratt says to Medical News Today.

So where can you find this latest germ-trend?

How about placing your purse down on a pile of dried up gum on the floor while tying your shoe?

Or placing it on a public bench at a bus stop next to a homeless man?

 

A trashcan may do the trick.

 

Better yet, why not actually place the purse on a toilet to get that toilet-fashion look seen on the runways?

And don’t forget, basically anything you touch can be made into a fashion statement… just as long as you’re not using soap and water. If you simply don’t wash your hands after using the restroom, grabbing door handles or using public transportation, the little accessories in your bag (coin purses, lotions, etc.) can be just as high fashion as the actual bag itself, too!

Now, get your health fash on!

On a real note, it is suggested to use cleansing wipes to clean your purses daily to remove accumulated bacteria on the outside of the bags. It is also recommended to use hand wipes/sanitizers after grabbing items from inside of the purse to prevent spreading germs that are found inside of the bag. These statistics and sources are real, but the fashion trend isn’t. Stay germ free ladies!

Pounds Vs. Calories

We’ve all been guilty of it… I’ll just have one more bite. But next thing you know, that one extra bite has turned into 20, and suddenly the entire cookie is gone. So keep this chart in mind next time you convince yourself that a few extra bites are harmless, because having “one more” really does matter.

What vitamins should I take? Vitamin D

Fall has finally arrived and it’s time to store away the bikinis and bring out the winter coats. As lovely as it is to stay indoors on a rainy day and enjoy a steamy cup of hot cocoa, there’s just something about the summer sun that makes us all feel alive, literally.

The sun not only provides a backdrop to our endless summer memories, but it also triggers the body to produce vitamin D, which is arguably the most important vitamin for human beings because it keeps us alive. This is because it plays a vital role in cardiovascular, gastrointestinal and bone health, along with many other metabolic processes, such as calcium absorption and neurological functioning.

During the fall and winter seasons, there is no doubt that our exposure to sunlight is reduced because of weather conditions and warm wardrobe choices, and experts say that 90 percent of people’s vitamin D intake is from the sun, and only 10-20 percent is from their diets. This is dangerous because the lack of sun exposure during these hibernation months doubles a person’s likelihood of dying, according to a study published in The American Journal of Cardiology last year.

Experts say that if there’s one vitamin people should take, it is hands down vitamin D.

“The risk of dying in the study was significantly higher if [the participants] were vitamin D deficient,” says Dr. James Vacek, a lead researcher of the University of Kansas study and has been a cardiologist for 30 years in Kansas City, Kan. “But it was reduced when supplementation was provided.”

The large study included more than 10,000 participants and 70 percent of them were vitamin D deficient, but when treated with a vitamin D supplement, the risk of dying dramatically decreased by 60 percent, suggesting that treating the deficiency definitely improves many cardiovascular outcomes, as well overall mortality.

People who are lacking adequate amounts of vitamin D are more likely to develop all sorts of diseases, including but not limited to, high blood pressure, coronary artery disease and diabetes, and it affects mortality rates because “if you’re deficient, you’re more likely to have [these diseases],” says Vacek, but “vitamin D helps prevent all [of them].”

One way to obtain the vitamin is by eating food items such as milk, fish and eggs, but since vitamin D is only found in animal-based foods, vegetarians and vegans are highly at risk for vitamin D deficiency. Others who are prone to deficiency are individuals who are obese and those who work indoors during the day.

But the problem is, although sunlight is the main source of vitamin D, sun exposure can be extremely damaging to the skin and can cause melanoma, and most doctors recommend the use of sunscreen when outdoors, which not only shields harmful UV rays, but also the vitamin D we need.

Vitamin D can be found at various drug stores. It is important to note that there are several different types of vitamin D, and experts recommend buying vitamin D2 or D3, which can be found at places like Trader Joe’s for $4.99.

The solution, Vacek says, is taking a vitamin D supplement with 1,000 to 2,000 units a day to ensure an adequate amount of the vitamin in the blood system, which is 30 ng/ml. He also recommends consulting a doctor for a blood test because the symptoms of deficiency are subtle, and in most cases, “it’s nothing you can detect.”

So think about it this way… vitamin D can stand for “vitamin death” if you don’t have enough of it. So if you’re not in the sun, you should be stocking up on vitamin D supplements, and the earlier you start, the better your health will be in the future, preventing many health risks as an adult.

“You want to make sure you have a lot of vitamin D when you’re young,” says Vacek. “Low vitamin D is one of the factors that increases the risk of heart problems as you get older.”

Posture Part 2-C: Change the work station

C) Change the work station 

In today’s world, we are demanded to sit, I mean, it’s even hard to find a job that doesn’t require you to be seated. And even if you’re not at work, to be entertained also means sitting down some more.

“After we sit for long hours [at work], that turns out to be exhausting, partly because you’re not getting good oxygenation and you’re not digesting your food well because you’re not up right,” says Bond. “Then you come home from a day like that and your exhausted and most people are not motivated to go to the gym… to counter balance the effects of this, so they sit down some more and watch television.”

We do it all the time- sitting. So whether it’s your job or just for pleasure, if you’re working on a lap top or computer, change up your work station so you don’t slouch over.

Here’s how:

1) Adjust your keyboard level

  • “The perfect keyboard level for any given person is- if you let your arms hang by your side, your forearm is at a 90 degree angle with your upper arm,” says Novak. “Where your finger tips fall is exactly where your keyboard should be. For most people their keyboard is too high or too far away.”

2) Adjust your monitor

  • “You want your eyes to be level with the mid or upper part of your screen,” says Novak. “Most people have their monitor level way too low on their desks, so when they sit there, the neck has to crane forward.”
  • If you’re using a lap top, she suggests to place a pillow or shoe box underneath it so the monitor is raised up. She also says to buy a wireless keyboard for your lap top so your keyboard level well be at the proper level as well.
  • “Laptops are the worst for this,” she says. “You look down and your head cranes forward and your concentrating on what you’re doing.”

3) Adjust your seat

  • “The chair seat should be at a height so that the hip-joint is slightly higher than the knee when the feet are on the ground. That’s the best chair height.” says Bond. “What that does is that it encourages the pelvis to sit in a slightly forward tilt and that supports the normal curve of the spine. But what people tend to do is roll back so they’re sitting on their tail bone- that’s rolling the pelvis back.”

4) Be conscious of your surroundings

  • “When you’re on the computer, you’re not aware of what’s around you, and a lot of times you shut down on purpose- there might be noisy people around you- but when you shut them all out, your body becomes more compressed,” says Bond. “The body curls up in order to be by itself.”

So there you go! A couple of simple tips for improving your posture. You should try them out. After all, “all these little changes add up,” says Novak.

For more posture tips, continue scrolling or click on the following:

Posture Part 2-B: Strengthen the muscles that have gotten too weak

B) Strengthen the “good posture” muscles that are too weak and relax the “poor posture” muscles that work the most when slouching

When you have bad posture, your neck and immediate upper back are the muscles that gather all the tension and are working the most when sitting with poor posture. When you do this, you don’t use the mid-back muscles and they become weak, and you need these muscles in order to obtain good posture. So just do the reverse of what you’ve been doing- stop using the neck muscles and start using the mid-back ones, and you’ll weaken the “poor posture” muscles and strengthen the “good posture” ones.

Here’s how:

1) The Ribbon Trick

“Do this so when you’re sitting at the computer, you’ll know you’re slumping when you notice slack in that ribbon, and then you can immediately reposition your rib cage again,” says Novak. “People will be amazed that they’ll see slack in the ribbon a million times when they first try this because they don’t even realize they crane their heads forward.”

 

 

 

 

  • Grab a ribbon and cut it so it’s as long as your torso
  • When you’re siting at the computer shift your rib cage up. Imagine there is a string attached from the breast bone to the ceiling, and then the string tightens, so it brings the rib cage up an inch or two. (This, by the way, is where the rib cage should ALWAYS be).
  • Stay in that position and pin the ribbon about chest level to your shirt. Then pull the ribbon down tight and pin it to the bottom of your shirt.
  • Start working.
  • Try to stay in good posture for 5-10 minutes at a time.

Notice how much thinner I look with better posture. Slouching for too long can  train the body to stay in that position, making you look chubbier than you really are even when you’re standing. With good posture, “you immediately make your mid section an inch or two slimmer,” says Novak.

2) Contractions

  • Shift your rib cage up an inch or two.
  • Pull the shoulder back and then shift them down toward your lower back.
  • Hold the contraction for a slow count of ten.
  • Do this multiple times a day. You can be standing or sitting.

“When you do that, it takes the tension off your neck muscles, and those mid-back muscles contract and strengthen,” says Novak. “It makes a huge difference in ‘unrounding’ the shoulders and strengthen the mid-back.”

For more posture tips, continue scrolling or click on the following:

Posture Part 2-A:  The ABCs For A Healthier And More Attractive You 

Posture Part 2-C: Change the work station 

 

Posture Part 2-A: The ABCs For A Healthier And More Attractive You

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the most part, being in shape has lots to do with having healthy habits, such as eating right, exercising often and getting enough sleep. But many people tend to forget that having good posture is also an important healthy habit that plays a huge role in staying physically fit. Having a poor-posture habit can compromise your overall health, just like having a poor eating habit would. It can lead to arthritis, cause digestion problems, and obviously, back pain, but it also can really affect the way you look, such as making your waistline 2 inches wider, and of course, making you have a hunch back.

But a hunch back is inevitable when we’re older, right? No, absolutely not. The truth is, from skin care to weight-gain, most people wait until it’s too late to start improving themselves, and the answer to becoming the healthiest and best looking you in the future is having healthy habits now while your young.

So don’t wait until you’re permanently slouching over to start focusing on your posture… start now! You won’t regret it when you’re 40.

Posture experts and authors, Janice Novak and Mary Bond, gave us a few tips when it comes to sitting up straight.  For more tips, you can purchase Novak’s book, Posture, Get it Straight!, and Mary Bond’s, The New Rules of Posture: How to Sit, Stand and Move in the Modern World.

Novak and Bond’s Posture Tips

A) Be aware of alignment!

 

The body’s joints always need to be aligned, otherwise, the body cannot function properly, especially when it comes to movement and other things like digestion.

“How you assess good posture is that from a side view, your ear, your shoulder, your hip, your knee, and your ankle should line up vertically,” says Novak. “And for most people, if you look at them at a side view, everything is all over the place.”

Here’s how to be aware of your alignment:

1) Put the attention to the knees

  • “Make sure they are not locking back because when they are locked, you throw your lower back out,” says Novak. “You curve all your spinal curves out of alignment.”
  • Look at the “lumbar lordosis” picture above for an example.

 2) Take your hands off your hips

  • “It’s a way of sinking into yourself. That hand on the hip position has actually become fashionable, but it’s a lazy use of the structure,” says Bond. “What you’re doing is resting your shoulder girdle and your chest on your hip rather than allowing the spine to really rise up out of the pelvis and support your torso the way it should be doing.”
  • Also, standing with your arms crossed can be equally as damaging.

3) Get supportive shoes

  • “If the feet are too flat, then what tends to happen is that the knees start to assume the function to support the rest of the body,” says Bond. “So the knees will become hyper-extended or locked, and that causes bad posture.”

For more posture tips, continue scrolling or click on the following:

Posture Part 2-B: Strengthen the muscles that have gotten too weak

Posture Part 2-C: Change the work station 

 

Posture Part 1: Modern Day Posture

Technology has changed our lives in countless of ways.  It’s changed the way we communicate, transformed the way we work and it even exposed us to new forms of entertainment. From cell phones, to laptops, to driving cars, technology has revolutionized our modern-day lifestyle, and our posture is evolving right along with it.

Poor posture is the number one cause for back and neck problems and statistics show that 80 percent of Americans will suffer from back pain in their lifetime. Experts say a large part of today’s modern posture has to do with the evolution of technology and the inactivity that it demands. Before technology, sitting down wasn’t something people wanted to do or even could do often – work meant hunting, traveling meant walking and entertainment was an outdoor activity. But in today’s world, most of our daily duties, such as our jobs and transportation, require us to sit, which is damaging to our back bones.

“What’s happening is that computers, cell phones and all this technology that we have makes people sit abnormal and it makes people lose the curvature of the neck,” says Dr. Matthew DeMoss who has been a chiropractor for 15 years and is currently practicing at DeMoss Chiropractic in Orange, Calif.

Laptops, experts say, are the biggest posture destroyers because of the way they force the back and neck to curve.

“The first and foremost cause [of bad posture] in this day and age are laptops because people do use them for work and entertainment,” says Janice Novak, author of the 1999 book, Posture, Get it Straight!. “People constantly crane their heads forward so they get that kind of vulture posture, you know, when your head hangs really far from your shoulders.”

Having a hunch back isn’t so much an elderly problem anymore. Statistics show that kids as young as middle schoolers are now going to doctors for back, shoulder and neck pain associated with bad posture. It used to be that once people hit their 40s or 50s, they would start to round over, but unfortunately, kids who were born in the year 1990 and after are experiencing the old-grandma symptoms.

“I see young patients all the time,” says Dr. Demoss. “I see kids with the phones and the games, looking down with bad posture for hours. That’s typically why young people come in.”

According to Novak who also teaches posture workshops and seminars in Minneapolis, Minn., poor posture throws all your joints out of alignment, and is most dangerous among young children whose bones are still growing because it will result in back and neck problems as they get older.

“[Poor Posture] makes it so your joints no longer fit together the way they’re supposed to, and this is what causes some muscles to work really hard to stabilize the joints while other muscles just get weaker and weaker, ” she says.

For 24-year-old, Alisha Albinder, visiting a chiropractor has been the norm ever since she was 14.  At a young age, Albinder, 5’8, was always the tallest amongst her friends and often slouched to fit in. She admits, she was never really aware of her posture until her back pain became unbearable and was constantly hurting throughout the day.

“Basically I never had good posture,” says Albinder who is currently working as a produce buyer at Fresh Direct in New York City, a nine-to-five job that, ironically enough, requires her to sit and work on a computer all day . “I went to the chiropractor and what happened was that because of my bad posture, the bones in my neck started growing together, so I lost the curve in my neck and the curve in my back. Because of that, it was making my spine work hard to compensate the extra pressure.”

Experts say the head weighs 8-10 pounds, and for every inch a person’s head goes forward, 8-10 more pounds of pressure is being put on the spine, and this can affect the nervous system causing chronic pain, according to a new Jordan Valley Innovation Center study conducted earlier this year.

“The study showed that pain in  your head and neck muscles, because of poor posture, can actually cause sensitization of the nerves,” says Dr. Paul Durham, a researcher of the study and is also the director of the Center for Biomedical and Life Sciences at Missouri State University. “Those muscles in your head and neck – basically the nerve fibers for those actually project to the same place in the spinal cord that the nerves do that are involved with migraines.”

Poor posture can also make you look fatter than you really are.

“When you slump forward, you’re pressing on all of your organs in the body and they have no where to go but press down and out against your belly muscle, and that immediately makes your middle section a couple inches wider,” says Novak who adds that the organ compaction also causes digestion and circulation problems.

Along with migraines and unfavorable appearance, there are other disadvantages of bad posture when it comes to your overall health. It lowers breathing capacity as much as 30 percent and it also puts you more at risk for injury when you are active because the joints are not aligned. Studies have also shown that bad posture affects the way people perceive you, often judging you as weak or lacking confidence.

“Posture is way more important than people even realize,” says Novak.

Continually practicing bad posture becomes a “vicious cycle,” she says, because  the muscles needed for good posture continue to become weaker and the muscles used during bad posture become tighter, which gradually results in a more exaggerated hunch.

“The ones that get weaker are the muscles right across the mid-back and the muscles right across the back of the shoulders because [they] are in a stretched position,” says Novak. “If you think of somebody sitting at their computer, they’re craning their head forward and automatically their upper back curves forward too, so the neck muscles are the ones that are gathering the tension and causes pain. It’s the neck and immediate upper back that are working the most when sitting with poor posture.”

The solution to all of this is weakening the the neck and upper back muscles used during bad posture by not using them, and using the mid-back muscles instead to strengthen them and to keep you up straight. “The good news is, that’s why it’s easy to correct poor posture. Its just a matter of, you know, strengthening and putting your attention to some of those muscles that have gotten too weak.”

For tips to improving posture, tune in to next week’s Posture Part 2 post 😉

 

Shake The Salt Habit Off!

Today, Americans are consuming an excess amount of sodium, ingesting more than half of what is recommended by dietitians and nutritionists, and one fast-food joint is acknowledging it.

“Where’s the Salt Shaker? Salt shakers are available at the beverage station, their new home, as Boston Market focuses on reducing sodium while delivering the same great taste.”

Just a few weeks ago, Boston Market, a popular restaurant chain, removed all salt shakers off the tables of their 476 locations, to raise awareness of the dangers of consuming too much sodium. But the chain has not eliminated the shakers altogether- they are still available, just customers have to walk a few extra steps to retrieve them at the condiments counter. The restaurant’s officials and employees refuse to comment on their new salt plan, but Boston Market said in a public statement that their goal is to encourage their customers to try the food before adding mounds of salt on it.

According to the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the adequate intake of salt for an average person should be no more than 1,500 mg of sodium per day, and research shows that the average daily sodium intake for Americans ages 2 and up is 3,436 mg.  And this extra sodium, as reported by The Center for Disease Control and Prevention, is not coming from table salt, but mostly processed and fast foods.

“Most of the sodium in our diets are not coming from a salt shaker, it is coming from all the processed foods that we eat,” says Erin Macdonald who has been a nutritionist for 18 years and is currently a dietitian at Complete Wellness, NOW! in Rancho Santa Margarita,  Calif.  “Everything that comes in a can, a jar, a bag, a box, and fast foods, [have] a lot of sodium in it because sodium is a preservative.”

And Boston Market is well aware of this and has a plan to reduce 20 percent of the sodium in some of their most popular dishes such as the rotisserie chicken, macaroni and mashed potatoes. The chain’s CEO George Michel said in a public statement that they also have plans to have a 15 percent decrease in other items on the menu by 2014.

But MacDonald says that the high amounts of sodium is not just in unhealthy fast foods, but can be found in food items that we normally would consider healthy, such as wheat bread and lunch meats. “Every time someone has a sandwich, all of a sudden they’ve just gotten a big shot of sodium,” she says.

Since most of our food is already packed with lots of sodium, adding extra salt to foods can seriously harm the body and potentially destroy your health in the future, says Dr. James Brodsky, owner of Villa Park Pharmacy in Villa Park, Calif. and is a Clinical Pharmacist and a Nationally Board Certified Naturopathic Physician.

“Some people, when they’re older can’t process the salt very well and it causes high blood pressure,” he says. He adds that too much sodium can also increase the chances of heart disease and strokes, cause vasoconstriction and poor kidneys.

And depending on the amount consumed, an excess amount of salt causes the body to retain between 6-10 pounds of water, which not only makes you heavier, but can “raise up into your body until it gets to the lungs… and you can’t breathe and die from that.”

This is a blood vessel of a person with bad cholestrol. Plaque and cholesterol clogs the vessel, which is a problem because the canal where blood flows through becomes smaller. With high blood pressure, the blood puts pressure on the blood vessel walls when pumping blood and vasoconstriction makes the walls of the vessels stiff, making it not flexible enough to handle the high blood pressure. No matter what, the same blood has to pump through the same space and with not enough room to pump blood, and the walls of the vessels not flexible enough to handle the high blood pressure, a stroke will occur because the vessel is not pumping blood adequately.

People who normally have poor diets and already have previous health problems are most at risk because, “salt only makes your condition worse,”especially if you have high cholesterol, says Dr.Brodsky, who has treated patients with high blood pressure, heart disease and strokes for 45 years now.

Having no sodium in your diet is not healthy for you either because it is an electrolyte that the body needs to function. Without it, you can become fatigue and be at risk of heat stroke on days you are out in the sun. But Dr. Brodsky says that when it comes to table salt, there is “no medical need” for it because “we get a little over 1,000 mg of salt without even salting food.”

The only need for salt is taste, and Macdonald says it’s best to add natural herbs and spices such as pepper to your food instead of table salt. Even adding a squirt of lemon may do the trick.

But Dr. Brodsky has a different suggestion. He says that people should “cut back on the salt” and start using potassium chloride, a sodium chloride alternative that can be found at local supermarkets.

Choose No Salt over Morton’s traditional salt.

And if you really can’t stay away from salt, he says to split your salt shaker half and half; half sodium and half potassium chloride.  “It still tastes about the same,” he says, “but you’ll be better off.”

 

Fat Vs. Muscle

Most people determine how skinny they are by stepping on a scale, and if it’s a low number, that means they’re a super model. But to tell you the truth, that’s just an optical illusion. The number you see on the scale tells you jack squat, and to be frank, it doesn’t really matter. Believe it or not, it might be better to see a higher number on the scale than lower. This is because muscle is heavier than fat. Plus, fat takes up more than half the space than muscle does in the body.

Check it out for yourself:

5 pounds of fat Vs. 5 pounds of muscle

So step off the scale! And remember… being an extra few pounds can be a good thing 🙂

If my grandma can do it, you can do it…

Meet Tao Porchon-Lynch.

Okay… so she’s not really my grandma, but you get the point.

Usually, after a women turns 30, she hates to reveal her actual age and might even lie saying she’s 10 years younger than she really is, but for Tao Porchon-Lynch, she flaunts it. At 93-years-young, Lynch, who is originally from Pondicherry, a French colony in India on the Bay of Bengal, is proud to reveal her age and proves the cliche that age is really nothing but a number.

A couple months ago, Lynch was dubbed as the World’s Oldest Yoga Teacher by the Guiness World Records and has been practicing yoga for more than 70 years and teaching it for over 45.  She’s also has trained and certified  hundreds of yoga instructors since she founded the Westchester Institute of Yoga in Westchester, N.Y. in 1982.

She is currently teaching regular classes at various Westchester studios, across the country and even around the world, inspiring people not only to use yoga as an anti-aging regimen, but to help people tap into their human potential and appreciate life, just like she does.

“Feeling the energy of life within me opens the door to appreciate the life force behind everything in this universe,” she told me.

If this isn’t a perfect if-my-grandma-can-do-it-you-can-do-it example, then I don’t know what is. I caught her before jetting off to teach in Montana, and I was able to ask her a few questions that will help us on our journey to becoming healthy 93-year-olds one day. Hopefully you feel inspired to get up and start being healthy!

Q&A With Tao Porchon-Lynch: The World’s Oldest Yoga Teacher at 93

 

1) It seems that some people just can’t bring themselves to start exercising. As the oldest yoga teacher in world, what are your suggestions for people who are just not motivated to stay healthy? How have you stayed motivated all these years?

Motivation is inside of you. Learn to breathe and you will open up the door for what you want to do… Just get in tune with your inner self. If someone is too lazy to use the life force to activate the body, tune into the inner energy of the breath. Know that each action of your heart is the inner life force. No! I’m never thinking of being “motivated!” Since a child I wanted to live every moment of my life.

2) When did you start exercising?  

When I was young I watched some boys doing yoga and it interested me. I decided if they could do it, so could I.

3) How has exercise benefited your health over the years? What do your doctors say about your health? Are they impressed? 

I don’t believe in checkups!

4) Sometimes people do get motivated to exercise and go on a work-out spree for a good three months, but then they fall back into their same old lazy rituals and gradually fall back into the exercise-less lifestyle. What are some tips when people want to give up?

I don’t think of yoga as exercise, but feeling how wonderful it is to get new energy into my life.  It is the linking up of body, mind and spirit. Watching the dawn makes everything in nature pulsate with our life. Renewal of the life force makes us aware of it.

I start the day knowing there is no such word as “can’t do something,” only the verb “to be able.”  When you get up in the morning know this is going to be the best day in your life.

 5) Along with exercise, how healthy do you keep your diet? What does it consist of?

I don’t eat too much.  I eat slowly. I eat mostly fruit, fruit juice and green vegetables. I like cooked greens as well as salads.  I’ve never liked large portions of any food. I never eat meat because I can’t kill anything.

I think of the wonder of the earth and how it along with the sun and rain provide me with food. People say I eat like a bird. Well, that’s a good example how to feed the body. In the U.S. we eat too much which creates a heaviness in the body and stifles the energy.

6) As a yoga instructor, are you able to do all the yoga poses? Are you limited at all?

I have a hip replacement in one hip and a long pin in the other leg. The pin prevents me from doing some yoga poses.

Don’t spend your time thinking about what you can’t do. I don’t let pain take over me and I know if I keep using my limbs and let the power of the universe “breathing” be my guide, there isn’t anything I cannot do.

7) Everyone has a weakness when it comes to food. What’s your guilty pleasure?

 Ice cream, milk chocolate and wine.

8) What are your top 5-10 motivational tips for people to start getting healthy?

Don’t procrastinate.

Tomorrow never comes.

Look for the wonder of health being unnerved in our bodies and mind.

Know the secret of life dwells with every breath we take.

Live, live, live. Don’t waste your life restricting.

Look how dawn awakes nature and makes the darkness and ignorance of night fade away.

Let your body feel the  freshness of the energy of a new day.

Open up to help your body and mind become renewed.

Don’t allow it when you are so young to become stagnant. There are so many wonderful things to do and so little time to do them!!!

9) You are a perfect example of how people can exercise at all agesWhat would you tell a lazy 20-something-year old who doesn’t think exercising is important? And what would you tell a 50-year-old who says they just can’t push their body to do it?

It’s important to keep the body moving at any age. Stagnant muscles cause stagnant minds!!!!

*All photos were taken off Google Images