All About Black Health
Selected Quote: "We
are highly committed to reducing the disparities that exist among
African Americans, but we realize we cannot do it alone,"said
Kevin Fenton, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the CDC's National Center for
HIV, STD, and TB Prevention at a meeting of more than 100
African-American leaders held in Atlanta on March 7-8 2007 in Atlanta.
Mini Poll as of 8/16/06:
"Today, AIDS in
America is a Black disease," said Phill Wilson, executive director of
the Black AIDS Institute, at the 16th International AIDS conference held
in Toronto, Canada. Do you agree with that? To vote clickHere.
For All
About Black Health 'Calendar of Events',
Click
Here
Who can resist the
mouth-watering pictures in a cookbook? Who doesn’t have childhood memories
of the fragrances that wafted from the kitchen on holidays, and even on
regular, ordinary days? Spices, bread baking, cookies fresh out of the oven
– all these trigger a deep longing in most of us. As eating holds a
guaranteed spot in everybody’s daily schedule, so do those who prepare it.
They have beome the uncrowned gods and goddesses of our lives.
Real cooking consists
of more than opening a can with a dull picture of green beans on the front, or
popping a TV dinner from a wax-covered box into the oven or microwave. The
true goal of cooking is to nourish these marvelous bodies that we live in, to
allow them to grow and express vitality and strength, to keep them healthy and
able to overcome environmental germs and bacteria. Summarized in one word, the
main purpose of cooking is health!
When does a fruit or
vegetable (or any baked item) furnish us with the most nutrition? The experts
feel that food grown in one’s own environment will usually contain the most
nutrition. Freshly harvested food provides the maximum nutritional value.
After a fruit or vegetable has been sitting for several days, or transported
around the world, the value of the vitamins and minerals diminishes.
The best means of
‘cooking’ fruits and vegetables for their health value is to eat them raw
in salads or as snacks. As soon as heat is applied, a good quantity of the
nutrition is destroyed. A good cook can prepare a beautiful plate with the
natural colors of freshly picked fruits and vegetables.
Genetically engineered
food has infiltrated the growing of almost all crops. This procedure didn’t
exist until the last decade, and it remains highly controversial as the long
range effect on humans has never been tested.
Briefly described,
this procedure consists of infecting a healthy seed or grain with various
bacteria or insects to lengthen its shelf life, to make it look ‘pretty’
for the consumer long after the nutritional value has dissolved. This not only
has a negative effect on one’s health, but leaves the cook with a less than
delicious product to serve.
Cooking with natural
foods that are organically grown (that means with no harmful pesticides or
chemical fertilizers) gives today’s health conscious cooks the best chance
to delight in the time spent shopping and in the kitchen. Whipping up a carrot
cake that will enchant both family and friends (best make two cakes while
you’re at it), or preparing a quick but nutritious breakfast so the body
will gleefully handle the challenges of the day without needing to be drugged
by coffee or caffeine, make heading for the kitchen the favorite part of the
day! Truly the cook is the god of the household!
About The Author: Adoz
Lizzat is the brain behind Recipes Galore An Outstanding Resource for all
Cooking Requirements. Deals with all cooking requirements. Please visit http://www.cookingc.com
for more information.
Lifestyle changes could
help black diabetics
NEW YORK, October 03 -- Some basic improvements in diet,
exercise and other lifestyle habits could improve the fate of black Americans
with diabetes, results of a study suggest.
According to the report, African-American diabetics received
medical care at the same rate as American diabetics in general. However, these
services did not translate into better control of blood glucose (sugar) and
cholesterol levels, a cornerstone of diabetes therapy.
The findings underscore the need to investigate and overcome
barriers to maintaining stable blood sugar among US blacks, whose health
behaviors put them at increased risk of diabetes complications, researchers
report in the October issue of The American
Journal of Preventive Medicine.
In an interview with Reuters Health, Dr. Edward W. Gregg,
the study's lead author, said that barriers could include everything from lack
of health insurance to a lack of access to healthy foods and safe places to
walk.
Providing classes on healthy cooking and nutrition,
exercise, and how to monitor blood glucose could encourage healthier behavior
said Gregg, a researcher with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
in Atlanta, Georgia.
Over the long term, elevated blood sugar can increase the
risk of heart disease, kidney failure, lower limb amputations and blindness.
But the study of 625 African Americans living in the southern US found that
25% said they never checked their blood sugar. Only 18% reported having all of
the yearly recommended medical exams, and 46% reported having their blood
sugar levels checked by doctors to gauge their long-term control.
Fewer than one third of adults exercised regularly, 25%
smoked and 40% of men and 58% of women were obese--a major risk for diabetes
and some of its complications.
At least half of adults had cholesterol levels that exceeded
recommended levels, and one quarter of these adults had levels that should be
treated with medication, the report indicates.
Previous studies have shown that African Americans,
particularly those living in the South, have poor control over their blood
sugar compared with whites. To investigate whether adherence to medical care
and self-care recommendations play a role, the researchers interviewed black
diabetics whose average age was 58 years.
"In summary, the receipt of preventive care
services...among African Americans in these communities was comparable to
national estimates, but the benefits of this care, as evidenced by glycemic
and lipid control, was often inadequate for good health and to prevent future
complication," Gregg said in a statement. - Reuters
Exercise
Better than Drugs for Preventing Heart Disease?
Exercise appears to be an important factor for preventing heart disease. This
does not mean training for a marathon. It simply means light exercise for
moderate periods of 30-60 minutes. Proper exercise keeps the blood flowing
smoothly through the arteries, thereby preventing blockage. This is known
scientifically as improving endothelial dysfunction. Second, exercise lowers
homocysteine levels. Homocysteine in the blood is a risk for heart disease due
to its ability to scars arterial walls and elicit plaque build-up. Finally,
exercise lowers blood glucose levels. High blood glucose has shown to increase
the risk of heart disease exponentially. This is why diabetics have a 4.5
times greater chance of suffering from heart disease relative to non-diabetics
- high blood glucose. These benefits of exercise are proof that habits create
and eradicate disease, not drugs. Recognizing this, drug companies and medical
doctors will have to take huge pay cuts. Personal trainers and fitness
instructors are the true custodians of public health – as dictated by
science, not hype.
About the
Author :
Shane holds a Master's degree in
organic chemistry and has first- hand industry experience with drug research,
design and synthesis. He understands that Americans want and deserve education
rather than prescriptions. His shocking ebook surrounding cholesterol lowering
drugs can be downloaded for FREE as a pdf file at www.health-
fx.net/eBook.pdf. His book Health Myths Exposed is available at www.healthmyths.net
or Amazon.
If you have a web page and can write a classified ad, you stand to
create massive traffic to your own site by joining
Exercise appears to be an important factor for preventing heart disease. This
does not mean training for a marathon. It simply means light exercise for
moderate periods of 30-60 minutes. Proper exercise keeps the blood flowing
smoothly through the arteries, thereby preventing blockage. This is known
scientifically as improving endothelial dysfunction. Second, exercise lowers
homocysteine levels. Homocysteine in the blood is a risk for heart disease due
to its ability to scars arterial walls and elicit plaque build-up. Finally,
exercise lowers blood glucose levels. High blood glucose has shown to increase
the risk of heart disease exponentially. This is why diabetics have a 4.5
times greater chance of suffering from heart disease relative to non-diabetics
- high blood glucose. These benefits of exercise are proof that habits create
and eradicate disease, not drugs. Recognizing this, drug companies and medical
doctors will have to take huge pay cuts. Personal trainers and fitness
instructors are the true custodians of public health – as dictated by
science, not hype.