 trust.
Always feel free to reach out to learn more.
Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. "What are the qualifications of a registered dietitian?" http://www.eatright.org/.
Be sure to contact Kelsey SOON to take advantage of her special spring pricing - prices go up June 1st!
I believe we all want what's best for our kids and do our very best to provide them with the environment and opportunities to help them thrive. Many kids are lucky enough to be involved in extra-curricular activities including sports, drama, music and other hobbies. Through these activities, they learn valuable skills in self-discipline, teamwork, and stick-with-it-ness that will hopefully serve them well in their future endeavors.
That being said, if I could recommend families do only ONE thing to improve a their child's health, wellbeing and chances for success in the world, it would be the family meal.
Need some FREE & easy recipe ideas? Check out these One Pot Wonders from the Family Dinner Project. Slow cooker and Quick & Easy recipes from AllRecipes.
Kylie Vannaman MD is a Board-Certified Family Medicine Doctor in Kansas City who believes that trusting relationships and quality conversations are essential to providing outstanding primary care to one and all. Sign up today!
I love this book. In fact, many of my friends reading this blog will have a copy (paperback or audiobook version) that I gave them as a gift throughout the year following my first reading.
So, what's so great about it? Well, where to start?!
It's a book about food, but not in the way you think.
It's a book about people and their (our) relationships with food.
It's a book of great recipes (including a "No-Knead Artisan Bread for Busy People"), in fact, I store this book right along with my cookbooks in my kitchen.
It's a book about the joy of learning something new and realizing the kitchen can be a source of inspiration, health and happiness for you and your family.
The author explains that the book was, "Inspired by a supermarket encounter with a woman loading up on processed foods, I decided to use my culinary training to help nine novice cooks find their cooking confidence. The Kitchen Counter Cooking School takes these lessons and provides practical, healthy tips to boost your culinary self-confidence, and strategies to get the most from your grocery dollars, as well as simple recipes to get you cooking."
Kathleen's goals with her books, website (www.cookfearless.com) and blog are to, "teach the world to cook, to foster a sense of confidence - no, more than that - the ability for people to once again be fearless in their kitchens".
I know that my attitude about food and cooking changed immensely after reading this book and highly encourage everyone to check out this very enjoyable, informative read. Who knows, maybe you too will find yourself hosting a salt-tasting or knife skills party...be fearless!
Dr. Vannaman is a Board Certified Family Medicine Doctor in Kansas City who believes that trusting relationships and quality conversations are essential to providing outstanding primary care to one and all. Sign up today!
The American Heart Association strongly promotes "Life's Simple 7" to raise awareness of what it exactly means to live healthy. More importantly, there has been significant research in looking at these 7 goals and how they reduce the chance of developing heart disease and even cardiac death.
High blood pressure goes undiagnosed and many times because of the lack of time with your physician, it may not be treated appropriately. Many organs can be injured from high blood pressure aside from developing a stroke or a heart attack. These include kidneys, liver, your GI tract, eyes, and much more. Goal blood pressure is less than 120/80.
By reducing your cholesterol levels, you give your arteries the best chance of not getting clogged. Plaques form from cholesterol deposits that can lead to strokes or heart attacks.
We may not realize how much sugar we consume as several foods we eat are full of sugar. The average American, according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), consumes anywhere between 150 to 170 pounds of sugar in 1 year! That is equal to about 30-34 five pound bags of sugar lined up next to one another in a counter! High blood sugar levels affect every organ in our body, including fighting infections and healing wounds. Certainly, Diabetes is a major concern when one consumes a lot of sugar. Diabetes is a multi-system disease and the good news is that it is preventable and treatable. So how much sugar should you eat? As close to zero as you can get.
What is the ideal weight? We are all inundated with advertisements of what it means to "look fit." So here is the truth and reality of what goals regarding weight actually result in optimal cardiovascular health, longevity, and living well. By focusing on your BMI, you can get a good assessment of where you need to be. It is a simple calculation by knowing your height and weight. Calculate yours today!
This is a no brainer. The days of the Marlboro man are gone and most have tossed the cigarettes. Smoking causes cardiovascular disease, increases risk for stroke, peripheral vascular disease that can lead to amputation of limbs, poor wound healing, emphysema where you may need oxygen to breathe, and many types of deadly cancers. There is strong evidence regarding the risk of second hand smoke and the fact that it can cause similar damage to the body as if the person was a smoker.
YOU CAN LOSE WEIGHT without changing what you eat or doing one minute of exercise! It’s a bold claim. And don’t get me wrong: Nutrition and exercise are important! But there’s another key to weight loss – and most people don’t even know about it. It’s sleep.
In fact, besides eating whole foods and moving your body, getting enough sleep is the most important thing you can do for your health. On the flip side, sleep deprivation makes you fat – AND leads to depression, pain, heart disease, diabetes, and much more.
That’s why in today’s blog I want to talk about the impact sleep has on your health and give you 19 tips you can use to get a good night’s rest and enjoy all the health benefits sleep has to offer. Let’s start by talking about a rather serious sleep condition called sleep apnea.
Sleep apnea is a condition where your sleep is interrupted all night because your airway closes and your body startles you awake so you don’t suffocate. This is a very common and extremely under-diagnosed problem. It affects 18 million Americans and most are NOT treated for it.
Let me tell you about one of my patients who was in that same predicament. He was so tired that he had to stand up at his computer to work during the day so he wouldn’t fall asleep! His wife reported hearing his horrible snoring and gasping episodes at night. He would fall right asleep as soon as he sat down to watch TV at night.
Most frightening, he had fallen asleep at the wheel when driving. Then he came to see me. When we got his sleep apnea diagnosed (with a sleep study in a sleep lab) and got him treated with a device to keep his airway open at night, he lost 50 pounds, his blood pressure turned to normal – and he got his life back.
But people with sleep apnea are not the only ones in trouble. It is estimated that 70 percent of Americans are sleep deprived. The era of Starbucks has been surpassed by an era of prescription stimulants to keep people awake and functioning, like dexadrine and Ritalin – otherwise known as “speed” or amphetamines.
Surprisingly, I see an increasing number of patients prescribed these “uppers” by their psychiatrist because coffee is not enough to keep them energetic. It seems we believe that if you can’t do ten things at once, something must be wrong with you. But this is preposterous.
Your biological rhythms keep you healthy and produce cyclic pulses of healing and repair hormones, including melatonin and growth hormone. When those rhythms are disturbed by inadequate or insufficient sleep, disease and breakdown get the upper hand.
It is estimated that 70 percent of Americans are sleep deprived.
We evolved along with the rhythms of day and night. They signal a whole cascade of hormonal and neurochemical reactions that keep us healthy by repairing our DNA, building tissues and muscle, and regulating weight and mood chemicals. The advent of the light bulb changed all that.
When you are sleep deprived, your cortisol rises – and so do all its harmful effects, including brain damage and dementia, weight gain, diabetes, heart attacks, high blood pressure, depression, osteoporosis, depressed immunity, and more.
First, you have to prioritize sleep! I used to think that “MD” stood for “medical deity” and meant I didn’t have to follow the same sleep rules as every other human being. I stayed up late working long shifts in the emergency room, ignoring the demands of my body to rest. It wasn’t until I learned that shift work (like I did in when I worked in the emergency room) leads to a shortened life expectancy that I quit.
Unfortunately, our lives are infiltrated with stimuli – and we keep stimulated until the moment we get into bed. This is not the way to get restful sleep. Frankly, it’s no wonder we can’t sleep well when we eat late dinners, answer emails, surf the Internet, or do work, and then get right into bed and watch the evening news about all the disaster, pain, and suffering in