School of Being Healthy

There just could not be anything better than inspiration when it comes to health, fitness, and lifestyle.

You can either hold yourself up to the unrealistic standards of others, or ignore them and concentrate on being happy with yourself as you are. – Jeph Jacques, Questionable Content webcomic, #352, 05-04-05

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.  – Mark Twain (1835 – 1910)

When I walk into my kitchen today, I am not alone. Whether we know it or not, none of us is. We bring fathers and mothers and kitchen tables, and every meal we have ever eaten. Food is never just food. It’s also a way of getting at something else: who we are, who we have been, and who we want to be. -  Molly Wizenberg, A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table, 2009

Health is not valued till sickness comes. – Dr. Thomas Fuller (1654 – 1734), Gnomologia, 1732

Be not slow to visit the sick. – Ecclesiastes

I have never cared much for fish – it floats in the belly as much as in the pond.  – Erica Eisdorfer, The Wet Nurse’s Tale, 2009

Preserving health by too severe a rule is a worrisome malady. – Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613 – 1680)

It is amazing how much crisper the general experience of life becomes when your body is given a chance to develop a little strength. – Frank Duff, A Coder in Courierland, 03-20-05

What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn’t much better than tedious disease. – George Dennison Prentice

Appropriate action is finally being taken after damning remarks by Judith Hackitt, Head of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), over the health and safety laws being operationalized in a large number of schools and councils.

The Department for Education in collaboration with the HSE is now planning to draft fresh guidelines both for the parents and school teachers in England.

From Newstonight.net:

Consequently, the long 150-page health and safety charter has been replaced by a short eight-page draft to streamline the existing procedure for health and safety practices for young children.

It was believed that owing to fear of litigation and unnecessary risk for the children, a large number of education trips were being intermingled in the long and cumbersome procedure of parent’s approval.

With this new draft, a single consent form will be signed by the parents in the very beginning rather than before every single trip, to speed up the process.

Confirming the news, the Education Secretary, Michael Gove, said it was a “more common-sense approach to health and safety” to remove prevalent red-tapism in the system.

“There is no reason – and never was – why children should be prevented from going on school trips by over-enthusiastic misinterpretation of rules, “Employment Minister Chris Grayling said.

If there is no better reason in your life than to stay ahead of the rest, these motivational quotations will help you realize all dreams and goals in quick time.

Look to your health; and if you have it, praise God and value it next to conscience; for health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of, a blessing money can’t buy. – Izaak Walton (1593 – 1683)

Health consists of having the same diseases as one’s neighbors. – Quentin Crisp

It is amazing how much crisper the general experience of life becomes when your body is given a chance to develop a little strength. – Frank Duff, A Coder in Courierland, 03-20-05

What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn’t much better than tedious disease. – George Dennison Prentice

Health is not simply the absence of sickness. – Hannah Green

A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how by his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses. – Hippocrates (460 BC – 377 BC), Regimen in Health

Getting my lifelong weight struggle under control has come from a process of treating myself as well as I treat others in every way. – Oprah Winfrey (1954 – ), O Magazine, August 2004

A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world. – Paul Dudley White

Pain (any pain–emotional, physical, mental) has a message. The information it has about our life can be remarkably specific, but it usually falls into one of two categories: “We would be more alive if we did more of this,” and, “Life would be more lovely if we did less of that.” Once we get the pain’s message, and follow its advice, the pain goes away. – Peter McWilliams, Life 101

The more severe the pain or illness, the more severe will be the necessary changes. These may involve breaking bad habits, or acquiring some new and better ones. – Peter McWilliams, Life 101

Rejecting a U.S. plan that had called for a five-year delay, health ministers from around the world recently agreed to put off setting a deadline to destroy the last known stockpiles of the smallpox virus for three more years.

The 193-nation World Health Assembly agreed by consensus, after two days of heated debate, to a compromise that calls for another review in 2014.

From news.yahoo.com:

The United States had proposed a five-year extension to destroying the U.S. and Russian stockpiles, arguing that more research is needed and the stockpiles could help prevent one of the world’s deadliest diseases from being used as a biological weapon.

But other ministers at the decision-making assembly of the World Health Organization said they saw little reason to retain the stockpiles, and objected to the delay in destroying them.

Dr. Nils Daulaire, head of the U.S. Office of Global Health Affairs and the chief American delegate to the assembly, expressed some disappointment but said the compromise was satisfactory.

“Three years is a reasonable time period in terms of the next review,” he told reporters. “Obviously during that time period, we expect there will be meaningful progress in the research on anti-virals and vaccines and diagnostics.”

The assembly declared smallpox officially eradicated in 1980, and the U.N. health agency has been discussing whether to destroy the virus since 1986.

The assembly “strongly reaffirmed the decision of previous assemblies that the remaining stock of smallpox (variola) virus should be destroyed when crucial research based on the virus has been completed,” as per WHO officials.

Loneliness could be as bad for your health as obesity, smoking, and alcoholism, according to a recently concluded study.

The study disclosed that the chances of living to a healthy old age increase by 50 percent with the support of family, friends, and neighbors.

From Dailymail.co.uk:

But the findings, based on an analysis of more than 300,000 people, suggest social isolation is as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day or being an alcoholic.

It also does more damage to your health than not exercising – and is twice as harmful as obesity.

The American scientists who made the discovery say lack of social support should be added to the ‘short list’ of risk factors for an early grave.

Dr Julianne Holt-Lunstad, of Brigham Young University in Utah, who led the study, said friends and family influenced health for the better by offering a ‘calming touch’ or by helping people find meaning in their lives.

A spokesman for the journal PLoS Medicine, which published the study, remarked, ‘The idea that a lack of social relationships is a risk factor for death is still not widely recognised by health organisations and the public.’

A spokesman for the journal PLoS Medicine, which published the study, said: ‘The idea that a lack of social relationships is a risk factor for death is still not widely recognised by health organisations and the public.’

Health experts have urged for a ban on sun creams below factor 15 and said low factor sun creams offer low protection to the users who are falsely assured that they are safe.

Experts also said the government should also scrap VAT on creams with higher factors for ensuring that they were affordable.

From Dailymail.co.uk:

At present, 57 per cent of people never use sunscreen in Britain, while 60 per cent of those who do use it buy products with a Sun Protection Factor below 15.

Dr John Ashworth, a consultant dermatologist, said a radical shift in Government health policy was required.

‘I think anything less than factor 15 is worthless,’ he said. ‘If you have only got a tiny bit on, and it’s a really hot day then the little protection it does give you will be quickly sweated off.

‘People underestimate the strength of the UK sun and at the first hint of a glimmer people rush outside and lie in it and get as pink as a lobster.

‘A lot of people think they might get a little bit burned and that’s that. However, lying in the sun unprotected is like someone smoking 80 cigarettes a day – it carries big risks.’

Lloyds Pharmacy decided to stop stocking any sun creams below factor 15 five years ago. Now the pressure is on others to follow suit.

Chemists should not sell cream below factor 15, according to Rod Tucker, a community pharmacist who was involved in the all party parliamentary group on skin’s report into cancer.