Energy-saving tips for your home

Energy-saving tips for your home often provide a modest cost-savings as a natural byproduct to conserving energy, but economic hardships needn't be your primary reason to be more aware of your carbon footprint.

Saving money while being energy efficient is easy! One example for saving energy and increasing your disposable income is to install dimmer switches throughout your home. For more helpful "green" tips, read "Eight Everyday Green Tips for Your Home" on Yahoo! Voices.

Alternative remedy to help prevent an asthma attack

Sipping a cup of black tea may help you relax your airways. Remedy Healthy Living magazine's Fall 2011 edition suggests brewing strong black tea (three bags for a cup of hot water) each morning and afternoon in addition to breathing exercises for relief from asthmatic symptoms. Tea contains the mild muscle relaxant aminophylline, which helps open up the airways.

Important note: While breathing exercises and drinking black tea can improve overall lung health, these tactics should be considered complimentary only and should not replace the need for medications prescribed by your doctor.

Play D for Good Health!

Last summer, Men's Health magazine (July/Aug 2011) cited a study in the journal Diabetes Care on the usefulness of vitamin D against diabetes. "Vitamin D may help cells recognize insulin," says study author Anoop Shankar, M.D., Ph.D.

Study results

If your vitamin D level is adequate, you might very well be less likely to experience high blood sugar. In the study, participants with lower blood levels of vitamin D were 47 percent more likely to have prediabetes than those with higher numbers.

For more information

Interested in more information? In an article I personally researched and published on Yahoo! Contributor Network, "What is vitamin D?",  I explain in great detail the benefits of vitamin D and how to determine if you are deficient. You would be wise to read it and play D against diabetes!

Sources:
"Play D against diabetes," Men's Health, July/August 2011 -- page 33.

Burn even more calories during your walk.

It seems as though the news on walking gets better and better with every step. Not only does walking burn about 100 calories per mile, it gives your heart a great workout, too.

According to Maggie Spilner of Walk For All Seasons, the University of Illinois recently discovered during a study that "regular walking might even make you smarter by improving the connectivity of important brain circuits.

The American Heart Association suggests that brisk walking for a minimum of 30 minutes per day for five days per week is a great target for beginners. One way to improve your success rate of meeting or beating the aforementioned goal  is to join a walking group.

Not interested in walking with strangers? Start your own walking group by asking co-workers, neighbors, family members or friends to join you at a mutually comfortable area or post an ad on Craigslist to get a foothold on forming a walking group.

Lower your blood pressure with celery.

Fresh celery. Photo courtesy of
www.commonswikimedia.org

For centuries, "celery has been used in Asia as a folk remedy for high blood pressure," according to Prevention Magazine. Researchers at the Univ. of Chicago Medical Center actually tested this ancient remedy after one man persuaded them. His persistence paid off in spades! Within one week of participation in the study, his blood pressure plummeted from 158/96 to 118/82.
 
Later, the researchers began testing the celery theory on lab animals. Once again, within one week, the animals' blood pressures dropped an average of 12 to 14 percent! Celery was found to relax the muscles of the arteries that regulate blood pressure allowing the vessels to dilate.

Earthquake rocks Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania!

Here in Pittsburgh, the earthquake visibly shook me today as I sat at a small table on the seventh floor of an office building downtown. It has been more than 25 years since I can remember feeling the effects of an earthquake.

In spite of today's activities, I believe I was lucky that things weren't worse than they could have been and think I should share the following portion of an article from Yahoo!News as an explanation:

MINERAL, Va. (AP) — Tens of millions of people from Georgia to Canada were jolted Tuesday by the strongest earthquake to strike the East Coast since World War II. Three weeks before the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11, office workers poured out of New York skyscrapers and the Pentagon, relieved it was nothing more sinister than an act of nature.

There were no known deaths or serious injuries, but cracks appeared in the National Cathedral, and three capstones broke off its tower. Windows shattered and grocery stores were wrecked in Virginia, where the quake was centered. The White House and Capitol were partly evacuated.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake registered magnitude 5.8. By West Coast standards, that is mild. But the East Coast is not accustomed to earthquakes at all, and this one unsettled some of the nation's biggest population centers.

In New York and Washington, people said their thoughts were of an explosion or terrorist attack. In some cases, workers in Washington mentioned the tremors in phone calls to colleagues in New York, and seconds later, the shaking reached there, too.

"We thought it was a bomb at first because everyone has 9/11 on the brain and that it's so close to September and the 10th anniversary," said Cathy McDonald, who works in an IRS office in downtown Washington.

Hundreds of people spilled out of the federal courthouse blocks from ground zero, workers in the Empire State Building rushed into the streets, some having descended dozens of flights of stairs.

"I thought we'd been hit by an airplane," said one worker, Marty Wiesner.

Adrian Ollivierre, an accountant who was in his office on the 60th floor when the shaking began, said: "I thought I was having maybe a heart attack, and I saw everybody running. I think what it is, is the paranoia that happens from 9/11, and that's why I'm still out here — because, I'm sorry, I'm not playing with my life."

The quake was felt as far north as Toronto, as far west as Indiana and Kentucky and as far south as Atlanta and Savannah, Ga. It was also felt on Martha's Vineyard of Massachusetts, where President Barack Obama, who is vacationing there, was getting ready to tee off in a round of golf.

The White House said there were no reports of major damage to the nation's infrastructure, including airports and nuclear facilities. Two nuclear reactors at the North Anna Power Station in Virginia were automatically taken off line by safety systems, said Roger Hannah, a spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The plant is in the same county as the quake's epicenter, about 80 miles southwest of Washington and 40 miles northwest of Richmond, Va.

The Park Service closed all monuments and memorials on the National Mall, and ceiling tiles fell at Reagan National Airport outside Washington. Many nonessential workers in Washington were sent home for the day.

The Capitol was reopened by late afternoon for people to retrieve their things.

At the Pentagon, a low rumbling built until the building itself was shaking, and people ran into the corridors of the complex. The shaking continued, to shouts of "Evacuate! Evacuate!" The main damage to the building, the largest single workspace for the federal government, came from a broken water pipe.

To read the article in its entirety, click here.

How-to reduce your risk of prostate cancer.

As a man approaching 45, I can't help to wonder about cancer and ways to possibly lessen my chances of being a statistic one day.

While reading a booklet a few days ago, I stumbled across some helpful tips for possibly reducing the risk of developing prostate cancer and wanted to share them.

Prostate cancer is cancer that starts in the prostate gland. The prostate is a small, walnut-sized structure that makes up part of a man's reproductive system. It wraps around the urethra, the tube that carries urine out of the body. More than 198,000 new cases of prostate cancer are diagnosed annually.

Prostate cancer is the third most common cause of death from cancer in men of all ages and is the most common cause of death from cancer in men over age 75. Prostate cancer is rarely found in men younger than 40.

Some ways to reduce your risk are as follows:

• Limit the amount of animal fat in your diet.
• Eat one or more servings daily of tomatoes or tomato-based foods, such as tomato juice and spaghetti sauce. Tomatoes contain the antioxidant lycopene, which may protect the prostate from cancer. Other food sources contain lycopene, but tomatoes are the best source.
• Talk to your doctor about screening tests, especially if you are at high-risk -- African-Americans and men with a close relative who had prostate cancer at a young age.

Men who eat fewer than five servings a day of meat, milk, cheese, etc. have a lower risk of prostate cancer. A great deal of scientific research has been conducted to identify the properties of animal fat responsible for the increase in prostate cancer risk. One explanation is that animal fat might affect different hormone levels and increase the risk of cancer.