YzFit

Spinach is low in calories, yet high in vitamins and minerals that your body needs. Spinach contains magnesium that helps reduce the effects of stress on the body by keeping your blood pressure from spiking, says Beth Reardon, R.D., director of integrative nutrition at Duke Integrative Medicine in North Carolina. By eating 3 cups of spinach, you consume 40 percent of your body’s daily magnesium needs.
1 cup of raw spinach contains:
• 7 calories
• 0 grams fat
• 0 grams cholesterol
• 24 mg sodium
• 1 gram fiber
• 1 gram protein
• 56% daily value of Vitamin A
• 14% daily value of Vitamin C
• 5% daily value of Iron
• 3% daily value of Calcium
• It also contains Vitamin E, Vitamin K, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Vitamin B6, Folate, Phosphorus, Potassium, Copper and Manganese.
photo credit: Clearly Ambiguous

If you think you’re beating the bad effects of cigarettes because you don’t smoke regularly, but still bum one now and then on a night out—you’re kidding yourself! Every puff you take increases your potential for arterial damage. A University of Georgia study found that sporadic smokers who smoked two cigarettes after two days of not smoking were 36 percent less responsive to blood flow changes than nonsmokers. After four cigarettes the arterial response was even worse. Impaired arterial response is the first step to heart disease. Cigarette smokers also have more build up of fatty deposits in their arteries. In fact, the Surgeon General has declared smoking “the leading preventable cause of disease and deaths in the United States.” Secondhand smoke will cause these same effects, so try to avoid it if possible. Smoking also decreases you HDL (good) cholesterol. And don’t forget—it’s bad for your lungs, too!

photo credit: vramak

Pets are lots of fun, but did you know they also provide health benefits? Pets can increase your opportunities for exercise and socialization. They can also lower your blood pressure, cholesterol levels and triglyceride levels, not to mention keeping you company and reducing loneliness. Having a pet can even increase survival rates among those who have had a heart attack. Pets can help you deal with stress, sometimes even better than a friend or spouse. Having a pet isn’t for everyone—they’re a lot of responsibility, but for most people the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. For more information on how pets can positively impact your health visit: http://stress.about.com/od/lowstresslifestyle/a/petsandstress.htm
photo credit: OakleyOriginals

Individuals who are over weight are more likely to over eat when stressed.  Having good coping skills to deal with stress is imperative.

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photo credit: thomaswanhoff

Lifestyle can make a huge difference in maintaining brain functions such as memory, learning, judgment, and mental acuity.  Here are a few things according to Mayo Clinic, Andrews University, and Web MD that are beneficial in prevention of Alzheimers’s Disease.

1. Control your stress, stress makes it difficult to remember things and to create memory files for new information.

2. Get your sleep! A habitual loss of 1-2 hours of sleep per night can impare brain function.

3. lower if high or maintain your blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose(blood sugars) in a healthy range

4. Keep your mind active through reading, word games such as crosswords or sudoku, staying up on current events, and engaging in conversations with the sharing of ideas.

5. Exercise, Exercise, Exercise!!

6. Maintain and grow healthy interpersonal relationships. This keeps the mind occupied in a healthy way.

7. Maintaining a healthy weight and getting a variety of vegetables, fruits, beans, whole grains, omega-3 rich nuts and seeds.

A few other factors which can cause memory problems are ongoing depression, use of certain prescription drugs, chronic pain, and a deficiency of vitamin B12 in the elderly.

It seems like the more “time saving” devices we come up with the more we try to cram into our day.  Stress is very similar to pulling on a rubber band, adventually its gonna snap and its gonna hurt.  However sometimes its just taking some time for ourselves and creating some solid mechanisms to cope that protect us from that “snap” of stress.  Exercise can be a key in keeping cortisol a stress hormone in the body down, so that is certainly a powerful method but some times we need more.  Maybe we need to start viewing that Bubble bath not as much as a luxury but as a necessity to our mental and emotional health.  What healthy methods do you use to cope with stress? 
photo credit: A*Kang