In a recent health tip from National Institutes of Health nutritionist Janet de Jesus talks about eating plans rather than short-term diets.

Ms. de Jesus weighs in on the problems associated with short-term diets, stating that, “People often make goals to go on diets, but they are often short lived.” She prefers eating plans to make long term lifestyle changes.

Ms. de Jesus says.“Changing the way you eat and also increasing your physical activity is really worth it for your health. Give it a try and don’t get too frustrated. We all stumble. Keep it up throughout the year.”

De Jesus recommends two stellar eating plans from  the National Institutes of Health – DASH and TLC.

These eating plans were designed to promote blood pressure and blood cholesterol control, but experts rank them as very good ways to have complete, balanced nutrition with the right calorie counts.

U.S. News and World Report ranked them as the number-one and number-two eating plans.

Unlike some other eating plans, they’re free.

For a comprehensive overview of the DASH Eating Plan go to http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/dash/

For more information on the TLC Eating Plan go to http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/cgi-bin/chd/step2intro.cgi

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zehhhra/490859924

Ms. Curly Top  (age 4), has two parents and three older siblings, ages 9, 7, and 6.

She is, as her parents tell me, ‘tearing the family apart’. Their otherwise strong marriage is beginning to show signs of strain. In our meeting at the house, the little one in question was quite busy jumping and shouting on the couch and yelling “OLAY”. Where she got that word, remains a mystery. She had been asked many times to stop jumping on the couch, but that led to more jumping and even louder OLAY’S !Her three siblings were playing downstairs. The parents and I were in the family room with Ms-I-Will-Yell-and-Jump-on-the-Couch-and-Shout-OLAY-if-I-Want-to.

After repeated requests to get down from the couch, we gave some time warnings, counting clues, and at “That’s 3, no yelling OLAY and jumping on the couch”, all three adults got up and left the room.  We said nothing else. We literally removed her audience. She was so startled, she didn’t move. Almost immediately, we all walked back to where she had plunked herself on the couch and  I said, in an upbeat way, “Are you all done jumping on the couch, and yelling OLAY so that we can all be together nicely?” She yelled, “OLAY!” and did a jump worthy of an Olympiad.

We just said, “That’s 3, no jumping and yelling Olay” and walked back into the kitchen.  Within seconds, we all returned and I asked again, in a pleasant tone, if she was all set to be with us nicely. She gave an almost imperceptible nod.  We clapped and gave high-fives and sat back down with her. This time, she decided to play quietly with Dad who was the closest body to her on the couch.  There was no jumping. There was no shouting, “OLAY!” She had decided to stop.

Soon, Ms. Curly Top wanted an Italian Ice.

Her parents were fine with that. The other three had come upstairs and wanted some, too. We decided to continue practicing the process of sharing a simple request and then the follow-through. Mom and Dad asked for everyone to wait for 5 minutes for the Italian Ices. They were asked not to say one word about them until the timer went off.  We set it. If someone decided to say the illegal words, their time would, sadly, need to start again. We made it clear that we would be happy when it was time for the delicious treat.

Little Ms.-Has-Her-Family-Wrapped-Around-Her-Finger had NO idea what five  minutes was, but she ran back and forth to the kitchen, gazing at the timer. This was a very good sign: She was accepting the limit.

Soon, the kids formed a team, with the older ones letting everyone know what the timer information was.

No one said a word about Italian Ice. The timer went off. Italian Ices were produced for all four children.  Hands were washed, they all sat in their seats, and enjoyed their sweet treats.

The point of all of this was that Ms. Curly Top’s parents had not demanded anything. They had been respectful and clear. They got her attention without threats or punishments of any kind. All four children did a grand job of deciding to wait. Mom and Dad had set a limit, stuck to it, minus adult theatrics which had previously been the norm.

Of course, her parents were delighted when Ms. Curly Top decided to cooperate with their very reasonable requests and stars were added to her star chart.

Before I left, Little Cutie, now calm and loving, cuddled with me and said very earnestly, “Jean, I’m going to see some pretty fireworks really soon. It’s gonna be so so so pretty.”  Enjoying each other replaced ignored requests to stop illegal jumping on the couch.

Later that night, I received an email from the family, with an attached photo. When Ms. Curly Top’s parents checked  in on her,  she was found fast asleep, hugging her star chart!

 FABULOUS!!!!

Source: Today’s guest post is by Jean Hamburg, LICSW, a previous contributor to this blog. Jean is the  Author of Cooperation Counts! Life-Saving Strategies for Parenting Toddlers to Teens,  an effective guidebook for parents, to defuse family conflicts and help children make responsible choices.

Jean’s experience includes clinical specialties in the areas of child abuse and neglect, family therapy, developing and implementing treatment plans for at risk adults and children, anger management, crisis intervention, and classroom management issues.

You can follow Jean on her website: www.cooperationcounts.com

You can access her blog posts: either via the website and blog button or http://bit.ly/mRHqzo

At Amazon: http://amzn.to/x3NEzj

The Center’s for Disease Control(CDC) wants you to know that there’s too much sodium in many common foods.

The CDC Vital Signs program is a call to action each month concerning a single, important public health topic. For American Heart Month, the February edition of CDC Vital Signs focuses on the amount of sodium in Americans’ diets and what we can do to reduce it.

About 90% of Americans eat more sodium than is recommended for a healthy diet.

Too much sodium increases a person’s risk for high blood pressure. High blood pressure often leads to heart disease, stroke, and other vascular diseases.

Key Messages

• About 90% of Americans aged 2 years and older eat too much sodium.
• Reducing the sodium Americans eat by 1200 mg per day on average could save $20 billion a year in medical costs.

• Most of the sodium we eat comes from processed foods and foods prepared in restaurants.

• 44% of the sodium we eat comes from 10 types of foods.
• Different brands of the same foods may have different sodium levels. For example, sodium in chicken noodle soup can vary by as much as 840 milligrams (mg) per serving so be sure to read the labels on foods.
• Over 800,000 people die each year from heart disease, stroke and other vascular diseases, costing the nation $273 billion health care dollars in 2010.

What to Do About It:

• Check the sodium content listed on  he nutrition label on everything you buy.
• Check the menu information as to sodium content in the restaurants where you eat before you make your selection
• Don’t salt your food at the table

We all know that carrying extra pounds carries health risks, but did you know weight gain can directly effect your lower back, even play a role in disc degeneration?

Past studies of Body Mass Index(BMI) link carrying extra pounds around with low back pain. A new study, links weight gain to lumbar disc degeneration.

The new study, done in southern China, included more than 1,000 men and nearly 1,600 women aged 21 and older.  Overall, 73 percent of the participants had lumbar disc degeneration, but the condition was more common in men than women (76 percent vs. 71 percent) and more prevalent among older people, according to the study in the new issue of the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism.

Seven percent of the study participants were underweight, 48 percent were in the normal weight range, 36 percent were overweight and 9 percent were obese, the investigators noted.

“Research confirms that with elevated Body Mass Index (BMI) there is a significant increase in the extent and global severity of disc degeneration in the back. In fact, end-stage disc degeneration with narrowing of the disc space was more pronounced in obese individuals,” said Dr. Dino Samartzis, of the University of Hong Kong in a journal news release.

Study authors suggest that as people gain weight, disc degeneration may begin to occur due to physical loading on the disc. In addition, fat cells may play a role by causing chronic low-grade inflammation.

“Since overweight and obesity are worldwide concerns whose prevalence continues to rise, our study’s findings have considerable public health implications. If these issues continue to plague society, they can further affect spine health leading to low back pain and its consequences,” Samartzis said.

Back disc degeneration is a complex process and future studies that investigate risk factors for the condition should take into account the effects of being overweight or obese, the researchers recommended.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases has more about back pain.

(SOURCE: Arthritis & Rheumatism, news release, Jan. 30, 2012)

The results of a recent comparison study of four diets suggest that it doesn’t matter where the calories come from, as long as dieters reduce their daily intake of calories. That is how dieters ultimately lose weight.

Dr. George Bray, who worked on the new study, said earlier research had found certain diets — in particular, those with very little carbohydrate — work better than others. Diet books also often guide consumers to adopt a particular type of meal plan, such as low-fat or low-carb-high-protein diets.

Since there hasn’t been consensus among scientists, Dr. Bray of Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and his colleagues randomly assigned several hundred overweight or obese people to one of four diets: average protein, low fat and higher carbs; high protein, low fat, and higher carbs; average protein, high fat and lower carbs; or high protein, high fat and lower carbs.

Each of the diets was designed to eliminate 750 calories a day.

After six months and again at two years after the diets started, the researchers checked in on people’s weight, fat mass and lean mass.

At six months, people had lost more than nine pounds of fat and close to five pounds of lean mass, but some of this was regained by the two-year mark.

People were able to maintain a weight loss of more than eight pounds after two years. Included in that was a nearly three-pound loss of abdominal fat, a reduction of more than seven percent.

The team found no differences in weight loss or fat reductions between the diets. It  all comes down to calories.

Dr. Bray recommended a diet developed by some of his co-authors, and which is also endorsed by the National Institutes of Health, called the DASH plan, or Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension.

“We would encourage patients to follow this diet modified as they and their Health Care Provider chose to emphasize macronutrient changes that they thought might work best for them,” Bray said.

SOURCE: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, online January 18, 2012.