That's Fit

National Wear Red Day is February 1, 2008 -- mark your calendars! -- and that means you simply must make a red fashion statement on this day. Not only will you look dashing in your vibrant hues, you'll be sending a heart-healthy message too. So pull out your favorite red dress, laugh until you're red in the face, or eat a red apple. It's up to you. You get to choose exactly how you'll go red.

Going red is about finding a personal way to take part in the fight against the number one killer of American women: heart disease.

Go Red For Women is the American Heart Association's nationwide movement that urges millions of people across the country to help make a difference. The color red, and the red dress, have become symbols for the ability all women have to improve their heart health and live stronger, longer lives.

While heart disease is a force to be reckoned with, the good news is that the disease can largely be prevented. And so the mission of this Go Red movement is to arm women with tips and information on healthy eating, exercise, and risk factor management.

To learn more about all things red, visit this site. It's sure to inspire you to love that heart of yours.

We all know by now that there are just some foods you should stay away from. Trans fats, for instance. And high fructose corn syrup too. But those are in lots of things -- what specific foods should you stay away from? eDiets recently put together a list of the foods you should always avoid:

1. Cheeseburger and Fries. Fatty meat topped with fatty processed cheese, in between white bread with a side of fatty deep-fried starch. Yikes.
   
2. Doughnuts. Deep-fried dough and sugar -- it's tasty, but not very nutritious.
   
3. Fried Chicken, chicken fingers and chicken nuggets. Chicken is good for you, but not when it's processed, battered and deep fried.
   
4. Packaged lunches. You know, those ones for kids. Convenient, but ... ick!
5. Sugary cereal. Start your day off with a whole bunch of energy-draining sugar? No thanks.
   
6. Processed Meats. You never know what goes into those meats -- and you don't want to.
   
7. Canned soup. It's got wayyyyy to much sodium.
   

In case you needed an extra boost today to help you resist that trip to the vending machine or that jelly donut with your coffee, maybe a little reminder on why it's so important to lose weight will help? I personally prefer positive means of motivation, but unfortunately sometimes the cold hard truth is the most effective! The following are just a few of the ways being overweight kills you, slowly but surely:

• Fat strains your heart in more ways than one. Blood pressure rises, cholesterol starts to clog arteries, and blood loses some of its ability to clot which increases the risk for stroke.
• Fat increases male hormones, which for women can have many adverse side effects -- namely increased risk for heart disease.
  
• Fat also increases the hormone insulin, which increases the likelihood of developing diabetes, which in turn damages and stresses your heart (among other things!).
• Fat makes it harder to get a good night's sleep. The most common sleep disorder for overweight adults is sleep apnea, which strains many systems including your cardiovascular system (your heart again!) and your risk for diabetes.
• Fat strains and damages joints and bones. The simple fact that your body is carrying around more weight than it was designed for will make it "wear out" faster, plus being overweight is linked with thinner and more brittle bones.

It may not be easy to lose weight, but it's definitely worth the effort for both yourself and those who love you!

Merck has stopped promoting the mandatory use of Gardasil that targets the human papillomavirus (HPV). It's probably no coincidence that their turn-around comes at the same time that reports from the National Vaccine Information Center are surfacing about fainting and dizziness reported by dozens of patients as side effects of Gardasil. There are also some concerns that Gardasil may cause infertility.

An early version of the Virginia house bill contained a clause addressing liability issues "if a female who is inoculated with the HPV vaccine becomes incapable of naturally conceiving a healthy child carried to live birth or experiences impaired fertility as a result of the HPV vaccine".

Legislators got that idea because the vaccine contains Polysorbate 80, which is linked to infertility in mice. The Merck HPV vaccine also contains sodium borate which is a common roach killer in each of its three doses. The National Library of Medicine (NLM) of the National Institutes of Health notes of sodium borate that it "is now known to be a dangerous poison, it is no longer commonly used in medical preparations." That was published in 2005. Yet the FDA in 2006 approved the Merck vaccine with this "dangerous poison" to be "commonly used" in these vaccinations. The symptoms of sodium borate poisoning according to the NLM citation include many of the side effects being reported after less than six months of the vaccine usage. These include convulsions, collapse, and seizures that include twitching of facial muscles, arms, hands, legs, and feet.

How many of these young women taking this vaccine will find out that they are barren 10 to 15 years down the road and what will their options be if they are forced to take this drug because of legislation mandates?

How many of you use that old sponge at your kitchen sink until it is about ready to crumble apart forcing us to get another one out of the pack under the sink? Guilty by admission. How many of you use the sponges on a handle that will dispense soap to wash dishes. I Used to. Dish washing sponges are full of concavities, millions of them and these concavities help produce foam but are also a breading ground for lots of different bacteria. Most of the bacteria nestled inside sponges comes from food when we wash dishes or wipe counters, especially raw foods, like meat or poultry and vegetables.

Some people put sponges in the microwave to kill bacteria. Well lets blow this myth out of the water. The spores that some kind of bacteria make to survive harsh conditions do not contain much water and they might survive microwaves. Bacteria that spill food may be killed in a microwave, but the toxins that they produce are the actual substances that make us ill, and they are not destroyed by microwaves. Improperly cleaned microwaves are a breeding ground for germs and bacteria also.

Wooden and poly cutting boards are full of crevices and if you wash them with a sponge that is full of bacteria you are just pushing bacteria deep into the board creating a risk for food poisoning or infection.

So how do you protect yourself from these bacterias and germs breeding around your kitchen sink and in your sponge. Start healthy habits when cleaning. Wash your hands even before you pick up the sponge to wash dishes. Leave your sponge very dry and without any residue of organic material by cleaning your sponge after you wash your dishes and by all means keep it away from your cutting board. Soak your sponge in vinegar which is a natural bacteria killer. Most important is to change your sponge every week. Oh come on, you can't complain about that. You can buy 4 sponges for $2. The cost of a trip to a hospital for food or bacteria poisoning is $200. Cost of the sanity to know you are safe.......... PRICELESS.

Sometimes when life throws you a bunch of difficult situations to handle and you think you will never get through it all, your inner strength may just need to take a vacation to let you know your body and mind need a complete rest before you totally shut down. Stress. The silent killer. Oh boy was I there the last few weeks and this past weekend my inner strength said it had had quite enough to deal with and was time for a vacation. I had hit that brick wall and it knocked me flat on my big girl pantie butt. Health issues, financial issues, sick family members, computer problems, relationship problems, and the loss of a dalmatian that has been a child in the family for 13 years. No willpower in the world was going to drag me out of bed. I am not a violent person but finally when I did make it out of bed, I just wanted to hit something and cry.

Then it dawned on me all of the articles I had read on boxing and how it relieved stress and not to mention was a good cardio work out. Well I didn't want to go to a gym all puffy eyed from crying for two days and start beating the crap out of punching bags in public. People might think I was waging a war inside toward someone. And actually I was waging a war inside with life's situations that somehow creep up on you when you reach that soon to be 50 mark and responsibilities seem to triple. So I stuffed an over sized pillow case full of towels and blankets and hung it over the door of my closet and whala a punching bag and a huge stress reliever. When I was completely out of breath, I sank to the floor and let the weight of the world fall to the ground. Nothing had been resolved any more than it was 15 minutes before that, but it felt like it had.

Just getting rid of some of the stress let my inner strength back in to start dealing with everything that I faced. I miss my dog "Cally" just like losing a family member but now I am able to focus on the memories we had with her and not just the pain of losing her. I got a letter saying I was accepted into a health program that will give me financial assistance for medical care, and after three weeks of trying to figure out a computer problem, my best friend finally figured out my computer problems with me over the phone and that allowed me to get back into the server to blog. I should have made that make shift punching bag years ago and now I am a firm believer of lightweight boxing and doing something to get rid of stress.