Think Healthier: because you need to!

Imagine eating tiny grains of arsenic with your healthy morning cereal? Or downing some sushi with minute amounts of poisonous compounds? Or taking your daily vitamin with a little bit of arsenic? Impossible you say. Not so, says recent research that confirms the presence of arsenic in our food, water, air, and soil. The fact…

Vitamin B deficiency is a condition that affects the body’s ability to make sufficient red blood cells, which can have a number of preventable and unavoidable causes. This condition can be caused by a number of dietary factors, including a lack of animal products (as with vegetarian and vegan diets), poor nutritional intake during pregnancy,…

Iron deficiency, a common form of anemia, is a disorder characterized by a lack of healthy red blood cells in the blood. Those cells handle transporting oxygen to the body’s tissues. This condition, according to the World Health Organization, affects more people worldwide than any other and has been deemed a “public health condition of…

Loss of appetite, abnormal heart rhythms, severe fatigue, depression, seizures and personality changes. These are some little-known symptoms of nutritional deficiencies. This list demonstrates how many important bodily systems are disrupted at a basic level of functioning by insufficient levels of vitamins and minerals.  “Nutrient deficiencies alter bodily functions and processes at the most basic…

Whether your dining habits tend more toward swanky restaurants or hole-in-the-wall, hidden-gem dives, the chances are that you’ve had at least one bad restaurant experience. Not all bad experiences are sanitary, although a CDC study, conducted on people who had experienced symptoms typical of foodborne illness (vomiting or diarrhea), showed that about 25 percent of…

When considering what fish to add to your diet and which should be avoided, there are a number of considerations. Among those – which fish are unhealthy (because of farming, environmental pollutants, or other factors), which fish bring us the greatest benefits per calorie, and, lastly, the consumption of which species poses the greatest threat…

The spice is right. Whether you’re looking to give your dish a spicy kick or build from an aromatic base, chances are you’ll be reaching for your spice rack as you prepare your next meal. But flavor aside, the spices you choose can actually be boosting your health, adding to your daily vitamin and mineral…

A healthy, nutrient-rich diet can help minimize risk factors for countless health conditions, and macular degeneration is an example that certainly proves the rule. This condition, the leading cause of vision loss in the United States, affects more than 10 million Americans according to the American Macular Degeneration Foundation (AMDF). And not only will diet…

Pepperoni pizza doughnuts steak diet soda. The staples of the American diet – not to mention the ingredients for skyrocketing stroke risk. From sodium nitrates, which can directly harm your blood vessels, to preservatives, salts and artificial sugars, these foods wreak havoc on the body. Understanding Strokes Before we delve into the unhealthy foods that…

“Stroke is scary for many people because it seems — and often is — an unpredictable and mysterious event,” said Amy L. Doneen, medical director of the Heart Attack and Stroke Prevention Center in Spokane. “The good news is these events are preventable.”  Eighty percent preventable, according to the National Stroke Association. That’s 80 percent,…