What is interesting about many of our social activities, according to more and more scientific research, is that they are contagious so if you want to make a habit of something new, you need to spend time with people who can infect you with the positive behaviour you desire. If you want to motivate yourself more to take better care of your health and to exercise start hanging around with a fitness fanatic. If you want to feel less stressed start making friends with people who are manage stress better than you.

Nicholas Christakis, a researcher at Harvard Medical School along with his colleague James Fowler have done extensive research on our social interactions relating to our health and wellness. Christakis calls our tendency to follow the healthy (or unhealthy) habits of friends ‘social chain reaction’.

It is worth noting that the chance of you being influenced by another’s healthy living behaviour (or you influencing them to embrace a positive behaviour) depends on whether you respect and value that person. They do not have to live close by they just have to be a person you respect enough to follow some of their actions. For example, you may have a friend in a different country who inspires you to try out a new diet program.

In one sentence, this emerging branch of social science reminds us that we can help nourish our health and well being more in the direction we want to go by spending time with people whose habits we desire to acquire.

Enjoy a wonderful day,
David

P.S. You can follow the link of the image below to read about Dr. Christakis  Award Winning (and Oprah recommended) book called Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives

You can learn more about Dr. Christakis social science relating to wellness on his website located here.

Dr. O’ Donnell and Dr. Yusuf of McMaster University studied stroke patients from 22 countries over a period of 3 years and their findings suggest ten risk factors associated with over 90 percent of the incidents of stroke.

Quoting from the study published in The Lancet here the interpretation of the study was as follows “Targeted interventions that reduce blood pressure and smoking, and promote physical activity and a healthy diet, could substantially reduce the burden of stroke”

If you like to take preventative action to keep your mind and body strong I highly recommend you take action daily to help keep your health and wellness strong. I personally take action daily by being conscious of what I eat, how I think and my level of physical activity.

If you are interested, you can pick up a Free copy of my electronic stress reduction work book via the request form on the top right of this page. You can check out some of the helpful guides I have written here, and depending on your personal situation you can check with your doctor and see if, as recommended by Dr. Hakin in the CBC report of the study, you may wish to invest in a blood pressure cuff. For one example of a blood pressure cuff you can follow this link to read about the Automatic Blood Pressure Monitor with ComFit Cuff. It currently has 884 customer reviews including review by Doctors. Please note: I do recommend as always if you are going to buy a health related product check with your own Doctor first to see what he or she says. I am only sharing this information for educational purposes.

Best of health to you,

David

The problem with white rice is that it breaks down quickly into its sugar components (glucose) and the glucose enters the blood stream rapidly. From what I understand (and I can be corrected) when glucose enters the blood stream too rapidly for the body to use it as a source of needed energy insulin is released from the pancreas to pull the glucose out of the blood stream. Then insulin helps put the glucose in storage for future energy needs. It is typically stored as fat. Over time too many emergency requests for the body to remove high amounts of blood sugar (glucose) can in a sense burn out the body’s ability to perform the action and, I believe, diabetes type 2 results. I trust this makes sense.

According to the conclusions of the study replacing white rice with whole grains could cut the risk of type 2 diabetes by more than a third.  This is because whole grains are higher in fiber and release their energy in the form of glucose more slowly. In contrast, white rice has typically all the bran and some of the germ removed during the milling process which makes it break down quicker than whole grains or even brown rice.

Apparently, according to the BBC report on the study, more than 70 percent of the rice consumed in countries like the USA and UK is white.

You can read the abstract of the study in the Archives of Internal Medicine study via this link.

If you are looking for more tips on how to create healthy eating habits including simple visual diagrams you can follow to balance your eating check out the electronic workbook ‘Simplify Healthy Eating Habits’ today. Details are located here.

You can also check out the DVD set You: The Owner’s Manual with Dr. Mehmet Oz Dr. Oz is definitely a wealth of health information. I enjoyed checking out his book You: the Owner’s Manual.

Best of health to you,

David

P.S. please share this information with someone close to you whose health you are concerned about.