Here are this weekend's reading diversions for your enlightenment. Have a great (long) weekend (Alberta, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Prince Edward Island)!
Your Kids and Tobacco
We know that kids who start smoking do not feel confident about themselves. Some teenagers are easily affected by pressure from their friends and family. Other teenagers believe the hype that smoking is cool and grown up. Many teenage girls smoke because they think it will help them be thin.
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Barbara Hannah Grufferman: The Best Things in Life Are... Free?
Money. It's something we all need. Whether you work for it, inherited it, saved for it, married into it, won the lottery, or some combination thereof, when you start to inch toward midlife, just make sure you have a plan so there's some left over for you to live on... and enjoy.
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Mark Hyman, MD: Sugar Addiction? It Might Be Genetic
As I reviewed in my previous article on food addiction, the science demonstrating that people can be biologically addicted to sugar in the same way we can be addicted to heroin, cocaine or nicotine is clear. Binging and addictive behaviors are eerily similar in alcoholics and sugar addicts. In fact, most recovering alcoholics often switch to another easily available drug: sugar.
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Childhood Obesity: The Longer Mom Works, the More Overweight the Kids
Over the past 35 years, the percentage of U.S. mothers who hold down a job while raising kids has soared, from less than 50 percent to more than 70 percent. The childhood obesity rate -- which is now close to 17 percent -- has more than tripled during the same time frame
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Basic Bananas Foster Recipe - CHOW
Flambéing bananas and rum in front of your guests gives you massive kitchen cred. (And this dessert is actually easy!) What's not good cred? Having the fire department at your dinner party, too. So make sure nothing flammable is near the dish.
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Michael Friedman, L.M.S.W.: How to Have a Conversation When Memory Fades
As we age, more and more of us have family and friends with substantial memory loss. They do not just forget a name and have to wait for hours or even days for it to pop back into their minds. They do not just go from one room to another and have to go back to the first room to remember why they left in the first place. These kinds of failures of memory are increasingly common with age and not a big deal. Major memory loss means, for example, asking the same question or telling the same story over and over and over again:
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Watch your heart health | Chatelaine.com
July 9, 2009, started out like any other workday for Traci Wells. The 40-year-old senior-level manager at a large media organization in Toronto recalls standing in line at the coffee shop in her office building, feeling pretty much the same as she normally did. But this time she didn't end up back at her desk, drink in hand; instead, she woke up in the hospital, lucky to be alive after suffering from cardiac arrest — a life-threatening situation in which the heart stops beating. You have only minutes to get help
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Why do mothers lie? | Chatelaine.com
Remember what's important: If you're spending time with your children and it's meaningful quality time with appropriate limits in your loving relationship, that's so much more important than whether or not you should order in or not.
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Poor diets may lower children's IQ | Science | The Guardian
Diets high in fat, sugar and processed foods are lowering children's IQ, a new study suggests. The report says that eating habits among three year olds shapes brain performance as they get older.
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Are Good Looks Problematic for Women? | Psych Central News
In the study, women who are looked at as sexual objects not only react as sexual objects, they also exhibit less proficiency with math
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Srinivasan Pillay: Acne and Stress Connected Through the Brain
How, you may wonder, are those bumpy aberrations on your skin connected to your brain through your gut? If, at first, it is difficult for you to believe that the brain and the gut could be connected at all, consider the following: We generally associate depression and anxiety with abnormalities of the brain chemical serotonin, but the majority of serotonin receptors are in the gut. Yup -- it is not that strange after all that anxiety is associated with a "queasy" effect on the stomach. In fact, Stokes and Pillsbury suggested that how we feel might alter the normal intestinal microflora (those creatures that keep us company in the gut, breaking things down so that we can adequately digest them).
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Superfoods for Your Heart | Reader's Digest
Powerful protection for your heart is as close by as the aisles of your local grocery store. These foods can rescue you from artery attacking LDLs, shield you from the damaging forces of free radicals, combat high cholesterol, and keep your heart safe.
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Diet Soda Tied To Stroke Risk, Though Reasons Still Unclear
It's far from definitive proof, but new research raises concern about diet soda, finding higher risks for stroke and heart attack among people who drink it everyday versus those who drink no soda at all.
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Wendy Diamond: Treat Your Dog This Valentine's Day
Apple. An apple a day keeps the doctor away (for the pet parent), but apples are a great Valentine's Day treat too. Dogs love the crunchy, healthy snack. Apples are high in vitamin A, vitamin C and fiber, making it a super-healthy and delicious treat. When giving your dog apples, remember to take off the skin because it's full of plant chemicals. Never give your dog the core or seeds because the seeds contain cyanide, which is harmful.
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5 ways love does the body bad - TODAY Health - TODAYshow.com
However, there might not be much to be jealous about. Relationships can be fraught with sadness, anger, confusion and stress. Here are five examples of how relationships — especially strained ones — can be bad for your health.
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Mark Hyman, MD: Acne: Are Milk and Sugar the Causes?
It's confirmed. Dairy products and sugar cause acne.
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Menopause And Insomnia: How Hormones And Hot Flashes Affect Sleep
If you're within a few years of menopause, you may find yourself channel-surfing at 3 a.m. the morning for the first time in your life. Hormonal ups and downs may have affected your sleep during menstruation and pregnancy, as well, but chances are, that was nothing compared to these fearsome midlife fluctuations
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Eggs: Forget high cholesterol warnings, they're healthier than ever | Mail Online
For after years of telling us to shun them as an everyday food, the health police now say that eggs have become better for us.
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PubMed Health - What is Crohn's Disease?
People with Crohn's disease have ongoing (chronic) inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract. Crohn's disease may occur in any area of the digestive tract. There can be healthy patches of tissue between diseased areas. The ongoing inflammation causes the intestinal wall to become thick.
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Judith J. Wurtman, PhD: Dropping Serotonin Levels: Why You Crave Carbs Late in the Day
You may think you are the only mom who seems to go a little crazy around four or five p.m. when it is getting dark and it's too cold or icy to go outside and your kids are getting cranky or worse. Join the club of moms who find their sanity slipping a wee bit late every afternoon and resort to the only therapeutic agent they can find: sweet or starchy snacks.
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John Shore: Elderly Parent Caregivers: How to Stay Sane
One of the most emotionally complex and difficult things a person can experience is taking care of an elderly parent. I recently spent time tending to my aging, widowed father, and thought I'd pass along these 15 points, each of which I found to be significantly helpful during this phase of my own life:
