Healthier Me

Healthier Me Blog

Step to it!

Posted on 25th August 2011 | There are 0 comments. Why not be the first?

Do you walk ten thousand steps a day? Well, if you don't you're not alone. The average Brit is supposed to walk about three thousand, far short of the ten thousand target. Start incorporating more steps into your day and it will become a great, regular and healthy habit.

Ten thousand steps, about five miles or eight kilometres is admittedly a slightly arbitrary figure but has a real purpose. It helps promote weight loss (ten thousand steps equates to about 350 kcals) and if 30 minutes of brisk walking is incorporated, has a real benefit for heart health. There's also the advantage of helping reduce blood pressure and reducing the risk or improving control of type 2 diabetes. And don't forget that it's FREE!

The best way to start is to buy a pedometer; you don't need to spend much, about £5. That way you can see... read more>>

The Dangerous Truth About Your Supplements

Posted on 17th August 2011 | There are 0 comments. Why not be the first?

If you're not already aware of the snappily entitled "Food Supplements Directive (2002/46/EC) (FSD)", you soon will be. It is this that is responsible for the gradual disappearance of many well-known and useful supplements off our shelves under the guise of protecting our health.

Yes, we do need to make sure that what we supplement our diet with is made safely and won't do harm, but this is also true of any medication we take. Research has pointed out that aspirin and statins for example, both very commonly prescribed, as not necessarily as safe or effective as desired. Despite this, they are still widely available without having to go through any re-accreditation process, or additional warnings to the consumer.

If the Food Supplements Directive is allowed to go through, it will prevent you as a consumer from making choices about your health, as well as the closure of... read more>>

Why do we always fight our bodies?

Posted on 10th August 2011 | There are 0 comments. Why not be the first?

If you see any adverts for medicines in magazines or on the television, or listen to people talk about cancer, you'll realise that they always talk in terms of violence "the fight against hayfever" or "the battle against cancer". Now don't get me wrong, these things aren't pleasant but do we always have to fight? What if ill-health or dis-ease (as in the the opposite of ease, or health) is a function of our body trying to do the best it can with what it's got? What if we "suffer" hayfever because actually we're chronically dehydrated and our body produces more histamine to try and keep hold of the water it does have, for example? What if we drank more water and our hayfever symptoms improved?

Our bodies can be in one of two modes, either stress or relaxation, but it has to be one or the other. This... read more>>

Drinking too much water is bad for your health

Posted on 20th July 2011 | There are 0 comments. Why not be the first?

A recent Daily Mail article warned about the dangers of drinking water, after an article was published in the British Medical Journal. As a nutritionist, who directly sees the effect of dehydration on health, I find this sort of misinformation really worrying. My weighing scales measure weight, body fat and hydration levels and very few people meet even the lower limit for hydration.

If you read "Your Body's Many Cries for Water: A Revolutionary Natural Way to Prevent Illness and Restore Good Health", you'll see the following synopsis. Many thousands of people have benefited from the book, but these people have not been involved in clinical trials to test how water affects their health, so according to the medical and pharmaceutical industry, there's no evidence:

With sales of over 1 million copies worldwide...outlines, in his extraordinary book, the breakthrough medical descovery, that if we... read more>>

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Quality not quantity when dieting

Posted on 12th July 2011 | There are 0 comments. Why not be the first?

It appears that experts finally agree that counting calories is bad for you! If you come to my Healthier Me Club on a Tuesday night you could have found that out long ago. It seems that as a population obsesssed with dieting, we get so fixated on the number of calories, that we forget about the quality of food that we eat.

Fat does contain about twice as many calories weight for weight as protein or carbohydrate, and losing weight does ultimately rely on the "fewer calories in than out" equation and it seems that many people are following a low-calorie diet by cutting out fats. However, it's better to eat a healthy balanced diet with good quality fats in, that supports all our body's functions than concentrating on cutting out just one food group.

If we concentrate on one aspect of our diet, we're... read more>>

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