“Ask not what your health care can do for you, but what you can do for your health care.”

Yes, this is modification of the famous lines spoke by President Kennedy at his inaugural address. But medical self-care needs to become a larger part of our health care practices to reduce improper use of the health care system. None of us like the continually rising cost of health care insurance that continues to take away from our paychecks.


How prevalent is this improper use?

• According to many national survey’s Americans are guilty of utilizing the health care system unnecessarily. Studies show that up to one-third of all Emergency Room visits and regular physician office visits are unnecessary.

What does this improper use cause?

• It increases wait times for care in the ER or increased days to get into and see a physician.
• Increase health care costs, which leads to increase health insurance premiums.

What can you do?

1. Many illnesses can be managed easily and effectively without medical intervention. Unfortunately everyone can get an illness or injury at times, but your body is built with its own defense and repair system to handle many of these problems. Improve your health care knowledge on what will get better on it’s own in time and simple home treatments you can do on your own.
2. Improve your health to decrease severity and frequency of illnesses and injuries. Through proper diet, exercise and stress reduction you can greatly decrease risk of getting an illness or injury and recover quicker if you do get one.

Is snacking needed or is it bad for me?

Snacking is an optional dietary requirement. While many myths and mix-ups are surrounded around snacking such as:

• You need to eat every two to three hours to keep your metabolism revved up.
• Snacking will help keep your blood sugar levels steady.
• Snacking will lead to increase weight gain.

All of these often heard points are simply not true, but misinterpretation of true facts.


Eating more often does not boost your metabolism. It is stated that by eating more often in the day you prevent your body from going into “starvation mode”. During “starvation mode” your body adjusts its metabolism to slow down to conserve energy and burn fewer calories. While this might have partial truth to it, your body does not go into starvation mode after only a few hours without food.
Your blood sugar naturally rises after a meal and then slowly falls back to baseline as the glucose is taken up by the cells of the body for energy. Having this natural rise and fall of blood sugar is natural and good for you (as long as it does not fall to low). This is why to measure your blood glucose level you are to not eat for 12 hours to see what its baseline is. Going more than 3 or 4 hours without food for a healthy non-diabetic individual is not harmful for you.

Snacking will only lead to increase weight gain if it adds to increase overall calorie intake for the day based on your metabolism needs. If you eat less for your regular meals to compensate for the snacking calories then you will not gain weight.

Snacking is fine to do as long as it doesn’t lead to increasing your overall calorie needs for a day and is made up of healthier foods. But it is not required either for a healthy diet.

Staying up late may lead to your weight going and staying up as well

Research shows that people who stay up later are at increased risk for weight gain. The night owls (staying up past 2 am) typically consumed about 250 more calories then their morning lark counterparts (getting to bed before midnight). Also those that stayed awake later consumed two times as much processed fast food, more regular soda and half as many fruits and vegetables. This increased calorie intake and poor food choices could lead to weight gain of 2 pounds per month if not balanced with increased physical activity. Those that stayed up later had a higher body mass index (BMI), which is a general measurement of a person’s body fat based on weight and height. Normal BMI is 18.5 to 25, a BMI over 30 is obese and over 40 is morbidly obese.

People who eat unhealthy foods and more calories because they are staying up later may increase their risk of stroke, heart disease and gastrointestinal disorders due to obesity related risks.

Nutrition Facts Label made easier

Gaining improved understanding of the Nutrition Facts Label on packaged and prepared foods will help you know how the food adds (or subtracts) from you nutrition goals for the day.


Serving size:

• Check how many servings the package contains. Often times things packaged in a way that we would think are single serving actually are two or three servings on the Nutrition Facts Label. Missing this crucial fact can easily lead to over consuming far more calories than you intend to.

Calories:

• If your diet intake needs are around 2000 calories a day (This would be for a 40 year old female that weighs 150 pounds and is about 5’ 6” and is lightly active), then look at the total calories, knock off the last digit and divide by 2. This will give you a rough estimate of percent of calories for the day. For example if it is a 300 calorie frozen meal, that would be 15% of your daily calorie needs.

Daily Values (DV):

• While the percentages can vary person to person you want to look at balancing your diet with all three macro nutrients (Carbohydrates, Fat and Protein).
• General guideline percentages: 
• Carbohydrates 45-65% of your calories. 
• Protein: 10-30% of your calories. To find minimum grams needed take you weight and divide by 3, to find maximum take one gram of protein for each pound of weight. For example if you weigh 150 pounds, you should at a maximum get 150 grams of protein and a minimum 50 grams.
• Fat: no more than 30% of your diet should come from fat calories.
• Try to look for food that the % DV of fiber is equal to or greater than % DV of carbohydrates.
• Most people tend to have too much sugar and not enough fiber in their diet. Avoid eating foods that have more sugar grams than fiber grams.
• Sodium content is an ever growing number in many foods. Try to find foods with less then 5% to help keep sodium intake in check. Too little sodium is very rarely a problem for most people’s diet needs in the United States.

Importance of Exercise for Arthritis Patients

Exercise can help ease joint pain and stiffness for arthritis sufferers. Research has shown the old thought process: “rest your arthritic joints”, only makes them worse. But despite this knowledge and plenty of science documenting appropriate exercise benefits for arthritis suffers, many men and women with osteoarthritis do not engage in any meaningful physical activity in a typical week.


Dunlop DD, Song J, Semanik PA, et al. Objective physical activity measurement in the osteoarthritis initiative: Are guidelines being met? Arthritis Rheum. 2011: Jul 26 [Epub ahead of print]

OBJECTIVE: Measured physical activity levels of adults with knee OA and report the prevalence of meeting public health physical activity guidelines.

METHODS: Cross-sectional accelerometer data from 1111 adults with radiographic knee OA aged 49 to 84 years participating in Osteoarthritis Initiative accelerometer monitoring ancillary study were assessed for meeting the aerobic component of the 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans (≥150 minutes/week in episodes≥10 minutes). RESULTS: Aerobic physical activity guidelines were met by 12.9% of men and 7.7% of women with knee OA. A substantial 40.1% of men and 56.5% of women were inactive, doing no moderate-to-vigorous (MV) activity over 7 days that lasted 10 minutes or more.

CONCLUSION: Despite substantial health benefits from physical activity, adults with knee OA were particularly inactive based on objective accelerometer monitoring. The percentages of men and women who met public health physical activity guidelines were substantially less than previous reports based on self-reported activity in arthritis populations.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Physical Activity and Arthritis
(found at: http://www.cdc.gov/arthritis/pa_overview.htm)

Why is physical activity important for arthritis? Scientific studies have shown that physical activity can reduce pain and improve function, mood, and quality of life for adults with arthritis. Physical activity can also help manage other chronic conditions that are common among adults with arthritis, such as diabetes, heart disease, and obesity.

Tips for S.M.A.R.T. physical activity if you have arthritis

• Start low, and go slow
• Modify activity when arthritis symptoms increase, try to stay active.
• Activities should be “joint friendly.”
• Recognize safe places and ways to be active.
• Talk to a health professional, like a physical therapist, who is specialized in training movement/exercise.