Feed Your Eyes With a Healthy Diet

January 10, 2012 by greystar

To protect your vision, get your eyes checked once a year. But you can do more than that: simply eating a healthy, balanced diet will help ensure that your trip to the eye doctor is quick, painless and worry-free.

Start with orange juice and green vegetables. They are packed with vitamin C, which helps fight glaucoma, and the heavy dose of antioxidants will guard against macular degeneration.

While you’re at it, remember the color orange; carrots, sweet potatoes, and other orange fruits/vegetables are high in beta carotene, which is a building block for vitamin A. Vitamin A strengthens your corneas and helps prevent night blindness.

Salmon, flax seeds, walnuts, and avocado are good sources of Omega 3 fatty acids. Besides preventing dry eye syndrome, this beneficial fat helps heart and brain health!

You’re not limited to meals, either. Think of all the finger foods you can snack on throughout the day—citrus fruits, broccoli, peaches, mangoes, garlic, chickpeas . . . with every bite, your eyes get stronger. So get that annual eye exam, but “feed” your eyes every day. Bon appetit!

Filed Under: Lifestyle Tagged With: Cooking, Diet, Health, Nutrition

Save Some Green: Safely Skip Organic Versions of These Vegetables

December 28, 2011 by greystar

With all of the hubbub about organic produce, the truth is that you don’t have to buy organic everything to eat healthfully. Organic growing methods make a big difference in some produce and virtually no difference in others. If you’re looking to save a little money, here are five vegetables that are safe and delicious when conventionally grown:

Onions are a bulb vegetable and they absorb very little pesticide through the growing process. In addition, growing onions organically is very expensive, as their stalks are vulnerable to a wide variety of insects.
Sweet corn is also very acceptable to purchase conventionally-grown. While there's a great deal of concern over genetically-modified corn in the open market, the majority of sweet corn is not GMO and can be consumed with confidence.
Avocados are also a food that grows better under conventional techniques. The thick skin of the fruit prevents contamination from airborne pesticides, and considering that the vast majority of avocados are grown abroad it’s difficult to find affordable organic options.
Sweet potatoes, unlike standard potatoes, are fine to eat conventionally-grown. The less starchy flesh is less likely to absorb toxins through the soil.
Cabbage has thickly-packed leaves don’t hold pesticides and chemicals like lettuces do.

Filed Under: Lifestyle Tagged With: Cooking, Diet, Health, Nutrition, Vegetables

Hearing Loss: What You Can Do

December 6, 2011 by greystar

Hearing loss is the third leading health problem for people over 50, surpassed only by arthritis and hypertension. It’s a natural consequence of getting older; even if you worked in a quiet library all your life, your hearing is likely to dull with age.

The problem can sneak up on you. It typically occurs gradually, with extreme frequencies (high or low-pitched sounds) affected more than others. Often this results in temporary difficulty understanding speech, which can easily be blamed on other factors. By the time hearing loss affects your lifestyle, it may be too late to correct.

If you find yourself routinely asking people to repeat themselves or turning up the television volume beyond others’ comfort level, hearing loss may be a problem. Another sign may be buzzing or ringing in the ear, especially after leaving a noisy environment. If you have these symptoms, see your doctor for a hearing test. When caught early, hearing loss can usually be corrected to an almost normal state.

Filed Under: Lifestyle Tagged With: Fitness, Health, Hearing Loss

Can’t Find Those Car Keys? Exercise Your Brain!

November 1, 2011 by greystar

As we get older, even the healthiest among us will occasionally forget where we put the car keys. But don’t worry, because the brain is just like the rest of your body: use it, and it gets stronger. A 2006 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that five years of brain exercises improved the lives of participating seniors. And we don’t exactly mean weight lifting, either—these things will make you smile.

Experts like the Alzheimer's Association say that word games are your best bet for improving memory. For example, crossword puzzles not only help you recall long-buried facts, they give your logic skills a workout as you sort through hints and synonyms. Board games like Scrabble and Boggle have similar effects, with the added benefit of requiring strategy and social interaction.

Number games help too, but they should focus on patterns and sequences. Playing Sudoku—a Japanese game that requires you to plug numbers into a grid—is a huge challenge to several types of associative memory, as are multi-player games like dominoes and Yahtzee.

What are you waiting for? Get yourself a crossword book, line up those dominoes, and play your way to a longer, stronger, happier life.

Filed Under: Lifestyle Tagged With: Crossword Puzzles, Exercise, Health, Memory, Scrabble, Word Games