Health and Wellness Archives - Page 9 of 17

Goal-setting—How to set and reach your goals

A study in 2007 by Richard Wisemen from the University of Bristol showed that 78% of those who set New Year’s resolutions fail, and those who succeed have 5 traits in common.* Men achieved their goal 22% more often when they engaged in goal setting, while women succeeded 10% more when they made their goals public and got support from their friends.

Goals—specifics vs. generalities

Businesses set goals to achieve growth or profitability over time, and competitive athletes set training goals so they’re ready for important competitions. Individuals may have big picture goals, such as eating healthier or becoming more active, but how can you make sure you actually get there?

Setting goals that are specific gives you a long-term vision and short-term motivation. When you set goals that are clearly defined it lets you set milestones and see your progress, giving you the self-confidence to carry on and achieve your objectives.

How to set personal health goals

Think about what your end goal is, and then put it into specific terms. For example, if you want overall health, what does that mean to you? Does it mean you can run five kilometres non-stop, or does it mean you reach a particular measurement such as a lower BMI? Whatever your final goal is, write it down in a journal.

What is a reasonable amount of time to achieve this goal? For health goals, you should check with your doctor or London Drugs personal care pharmacist for guidance. Note in your journal the date by which you want to accomplish your goal.
Set milestones between today (or your start date) and the date you want to achieve the goal. For example, if running five kilometres is your goal, and you’ve given yourself two months to do it, break the five killometres into smaller increments over that time period. That may mean you want to run one kilometre after one and a half weeks, two after three weeks, etc.
There are certain things you know you’ll need to start doing to achieve your goals, and certain things you’ll need to stop doing to be successful. For example, to achieve your five kilometre goal you’ll need to start running on a regular basis. That may mean you’ll need to stop doing other things to make this happen, such as swapping TV watching time in the evening to run. You may also need to change what you’re eating to allow your body to literally fuel your goal. Break down the time between your milestones even further to create a step-by-step blueprint to reach your end goal.
Reward yourself along the way! When you reach milestones, celebrate them. You could buy yourself new running shoes after you run your first full mile, or treat yourself to a deep tissue massage.
Join social groups to help you stay motivated. You could download an app to track and share your results with others who have the same goals. Share your goals with your friends and family and let them know about your success and challenges along the way. Ask their help if you need it—like changing family pizza night to a family swimming night.
Be flexible. Sometimes life can get in the way of achieving your goals. Don’t give up—just re-work your plan to allow for a new schedule. Your goals are important, and worth pursuing. Stay strong and you’ll realize them!

* Blame It on the Brain: The latest neuroscience research suggests spreading resolutions out over time is the best approach, Wall Street Journal, December 26, 2009

Where to start with diet and exercise

When you decide you want to make changes in your lifestyle, it can be confusing to know where to start. Nutrition advice and opinions from friends, the news or the Internet can be confusing. And reading about the benefits of anaerobic vs. aerobic exercise, or strength training vs. cardio can seem overwhelming. The easiest place to start is with Canada’s Food and Physical Activity Guides.

Included in the package you receive when you take a London Drugs Nutrition Clinic are two simple guides to point you in the right direction. Canada’s Food Guide breaks down the quantities of different food groups you need in order to get the essential amount of vitamins, minerals and nutrients to help reduce your risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and other health conditions. It also addresses the specific food needs of children, women of childbearing age and individuals over 50. On the back you’ll find tips about reading nutrition labels and how to eat (not just what to eat.)

Canada’s Physical Activity Guide, published by the Public Health Agency of Canada, is an even simpler guide. It focuses on one thought—sit less, move more. It follows with suggestions for how to do this, breaking activities into endurance, flexibility and strength. Everyday activities such as strolling or dusting count, as do swimming or jogging at the other end of the exertion spectrum. Fun activities like dancing or playing hockey are also covered. The key is to start slowly and build from there. Try taking one flight of stairs at work instead of the elevator all the way, or walk to the corner store instead of driving.

Both guides are included in the package you receive when you register for a London Drugs Nutrition Clinic.

Where will YOU start?

You can get the best advice by making an appointment with your family doctor, or registering for a Nutrition Clinic at London Drugs. Download the schedule and store information at https://blog.londondrugs.com/2011/12/london-drugs-nutrition-clinics.html, and call to book your one-on-one consultation for a nominal fee.

Also, take part in our conversation by following us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/LondonDrugs. We have daily topics that we’d love your thoughts on.

Watch for next week’s article, “Goal-setting—How to set and reach your goals“

What is BMI and why is it important?

As mentioned in last week’s article, many people tie the number on a bathroom scale to what a healthy weight is. But that’s not the real story.

A standard bathroom scale weight reading doesn’t take into account your body composition, so determining your BMI (Body Mass Index) is an important measurement. It determines the amount of body fat as a percentage of total body mass (weight.) Excessive body fat can put you at a greater risk for health problems such as

high blood pressure
heart disease
High LDL counts (the “bad” cholesterol)
type 2 Diabetes
Osteoarthritis
Sleep apnea

BMI—Body Mass Index Calculation

Body mass index is calculated by dividing an individual’s weight in kilograms by his or her height in meters squared.

Example: If you convert a weight of 145lbs to kilograms (66) and height of 5’7″ to metres (1.7) the formula would be 66/(1.7×1.7)=20.8*. Then you would look at the standard BMI chart to see where that measurements falls:

<18.50 is considered underweight (risk of other clinical problems)
18.50-24.99 is considered average
25.00-29.99 is considered pre-obese (increased health risks)
30.00-34.99 is considered obese class I (moderate health risks)
35.00-39.99 is considered obese class II (severe health risks)
≥40.00 is considered obese class III (very severe health risks)

However, you can book a London Drugs Nutrition Clinic and get a much more accurate reading of your body composition, as well as important information on healthy eating and physical activity based on Health Canada and Public Health Agency of Canada guidelines.

Distribution of BMI Categories by Sex, Ages 18-79, 2007-2009

The Canadian Health Measures Survey from Statistics Canada looked at the average BMI distribution for the Canadian population back in 2007–2009 with the following findings.

What is YOUR BMI?

The most accurate way to determine your own BMI is to make an appointment with your family doctor, or register for a Nutrition Clinic at London Drugs. You can download the schedule and store information here, and call to book your one-on-one consultation for a nominal fee.

Also, take part in our conversation by following us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/LondonDrugs. We have daily topics that we’d love your thoughts on.

Watch for next week’s article, “Where to Start with Diet and Exercise“

* Because several factors can influence the above calculation, such as body proportion and composition, family health history, etc. it’s best to have a full analysis done by a professional, one part of which would include a BMI measurement.

Dr Art Hister – Memory Loss

No real need for midlifers to get alarmed about a recent study published in The British Medical Journal that concluded that those senior moments all us aging baby boomers now accept as a normal part of our latest transformation actually begin to happen to people much earlier in life.

In that study which looked at just under 8000 British civil servants three times over the course of a decade or so, the researchers concluded that our memories actually begin to fail in our forties, much earlier than most other studies have found.

The reason not to get too alarmed about this, though, if you just happen to be a 45-year-old who can’t suddenly find his car keys, is that the loss in memory was pretty slight in midlifers, although it did accelerate as people got older so that by the time the study subjects had reached their seventies, some of them had some pretty significant memory problems.

The other important thing to note about memory, though, before you panic, is that as the researchers for this study reminded everyone in their commentaries, there is increasing evidence that paying attention to the factors that raise the risk of heart disease and stroke – controlling cholesterol levels, for example, lowering blood pressure, doing regular exercise, not smoking, and so on – also help reduce the risk of cognitive function decline as we age, including even, if my memory serves me correctly, helping reduce the rate of memory decline.

What is a healthy weight?

Many people tie the number on a bathroom scale to how healthy they are, but gauging your health by this number alone would not give you the full picture.

Your body weight is a start, but you also have to factor in height, age, gender and, finally, analyze what percentage of your weight is fat. All those factors paint a picture of your overall health. It’s important to measure this, as an overweight reading has been tied to health risks such as type 2 diabetes, dyslipidemia, hypertension, coronary heart disease, gallbladder disease, obstructive sleep apnea and certain cancers*.

Some scales can give you a body fat percentage, but the most accurate reading will be done by your doctor or at a London Drugs Nutrition Clinic. The clinics are one-on-one, and completely confidential. Your measurements and results are for you only, and you’ll receive the latest information on healthy eating and exercise in accordance with Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada.

Once you have a credible starting point, using your weight to track your progress is a good way to proceed. You have to remember your weight as shown on a scale can fluctuate day-to-day for many reasons, so it’s best to weigh yourself once a week at the same time for consistency and to allow for those variations. Once you’ve established a baseline of weight, BMI and body fat percentage, you can use weight as a simple monitoring tool to chart your progress in any lifestyle changes you’ve made. If you took a London Drugs Nutrition Clinic, you can schedule a follow-up appointment six to eight weeks down the road to get another full reading.

Some statistics for Canada

– Overweight and obesity have increased in Canadians over the past two decades.

– Over 1 in 4 Canadian adults are obese; 8.6% of children aged 6 to 17 are obese†

– Underweight health problems include osteoporosis, infertility and impaired immunocompetence.

– Your scale weight is not a good enough indicator on its on of whether you are at a healthy weight or not.

What is YOUR healthy weight?

The very best way to determine your own healthy weight is to make an appointment with your family doctor, or register for a Nutrition Clinic at a London Drugs store close to you. Download the schedule of clinics and phone numbers here, and call to book your one-on-one consultation for a nominal fee.

NOTE: Each London Drugs store holds only one day of consultations between now and March 2. Please check the schedule here to find the day your closest store is offering the clinics.

Connect with others who are making lifestyle and health changes—take part in our conversation by following us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/LondonDrugs. We have daily topics that we’d love your thoughts on.

Watch for next week’s article, “What is BMI and why is it important?”

* From “Canadian Guidelines for Body Weight Classification in Adults,” Health Canada, 2003

† From “Obesity in Canada,” Public Health Agency of Canada, Canadian Institute for Health Information, 2011

Dr Art Hister – Young women and their risk of breast cancer

Very interesting results from a recent update of the ongoing and very long-term Nurses’ Health Study, which has in fact been going on for so long that it’s entered another stage in which the researchers are now evaluating the daughters and grand-daughters of the original study participants, so the study is now called Nurses’ Health Study II.

We’ve learned from several previous studies that the more alcohol a woman consumes over her lifetime, the higher her risk of breast cancer, but in this latest update the researchers were interested in the risk of benign breast disease (BBD) in the young women in the current study, and especially in the role that alcohol intake might play in developing BBD.

And what they concluded is that if a young woman (between age 18 and 27) has a mother or even an aunt who has had breast cancer, that young woman is more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with benign breast disease compared to a young woman without any family history of breast cancer.

As well, any young woman whose mother has been diagnosed with BBD is twice as likely to develop benign breast disease herself compared to a young woman with no BBD in the family.

But they also found that alcohol seems to play a significant role in determining a woman’s risk for BBD.

Thus, any young woman whose mother, grand-mother, or aunt had breast cancer was significantly more likely to develop BBD if she – the young woman – drank alcohol regularly, and the more alcohol that young woman consumed, the higher her risk for BBD.

On the all-present other hand, however, young women without any history of breast cancer in the family were at no raised risk of developing BBD linked to alcohol intake.

Bottom line: alcohol seems to play a significant role in many women’s risk for breast disease, both benign breast disease and breast cancer, so every woman should take that into consideration when she decides to drink – especially about how much she takes in.

Dr Art Hister – Your jaw is like the rest of you

Everyone over the age of 4 (perhaps even sooner in some of us) knows that all our tissues, every part of us, either dries out or falls or shrinks with age.

And I mean every part, without exception, which is why I was not at all surprised to learn that new research from Sweden has determined that even your jaw shrinks with age, and it shrinks in all plains, so that both the length and the width of your jaw goes progressively downwards after the age of 40 .

Yes, it only shrinks by a few millimetres, say these researchers, but that’s also enough shrinkage, they add, to lead to problems with your teeth because there’s just less room in your mouth for all those teeth you started out with to co-habit peacefully, which is yet another reason for many aging people to experience increasing problems with their bite.

And yes, according to these researchers, even people who’ve had their wisdom teeth extracted can experience teeth “crowding” as the jaw shrinks.

No wonder that Golda Meir said, “Growing old is not for sissies.”

Goal-setting—How to set and reach your goals

Goals—specifics vs. generalities

How to set personal health goals

Where to start with diet and exercise

Where will YOU start?

What is BMI and why is it important?

BMI—Body Mass Index Calculation

Distribution of BMI Categories by Sex, Ages 18-79, 2007-2009

What is YOUR BMI?

Dr Art Hister – Memory Loss

What is a healthy weight?

Some statistics for Canada

What is YOUR healthy weight?

Dr Art Hister – Young women and their risk of breast cancer

Dr Art Hister – Your jaw is like the rest of you

Archive

Categories

Pages

Newsletter

Goal-setting—How to set and reach your goals

Goals—specifics vs. generalities

How to set personal health goals

Where to start with diet and exercise

Where will YOU start?

What is BMI and why is it important?

BMI—Body Mass Index Calculation

Distribution of BMI Categories by Sex, Ages 18-79, 2007-2009

What is YOUR BMI?

Dr Art Hister – Memory Loss

What is a healthy weight?

Some statistics for Canada

What is YOUR healthy weight?

Dr Art Hister – Young women and their risk of breast cancer

Dr Art Hister – Your jaw is like the rest of you

Archive

Categories

Pages

Newsletter

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