Tips on Traveling while on Medication - Healthy Lifestyle Living

In our healthy lifestyle living keeping a medication schedule is hard enough when you have to do it at home, but during travel, it’s an absolute nightmare. If you are like most people, you probably have had to travel at least once while on medication and you know how difficult it can be. Aside from remembering your travel itinerary, you also have to squeeze in your meds. If you need to take several meds at different points during the day, here are some tips that can help you manage your meds schedule easier:

1. Make a meds calendar. I find this really helpful especially if I’ll be away from home for a week or so. Just print out or make a personal calendar inclusive of your travel dates. Aside from your daily agenda, also jot down your medication schedules on the calendar. This way, instead of a being a hassle, your meds become a part of your daily schedule.

2. Get prescription refills before setting out. Visit your local pharmacy or your doctor to get a refill of your prescription meds prior to traveling. This way, you prevent missing out on your meds just because the amount you brought with you isn’t enough. This is especially important if you are using a medication that is not common or popular.

3. I am not saying that this will happen to you, but there have been cases of overdoses and others that are related to medicating while on the road. Just to be sure, make a list of all medications you are using and their purposes. Make several copies and put these in your bag, your glove compartment, and your hotel end table. This way, it’ll be easy for medical personnel to help you even if you are indisposed.

Lastly, never travel without a companion especially if your medications are strong and trigger strong side effects on you. Trust me, it’s hard to drive when you are feeling woozy down the freeway.

When The Going Gets Green

Everyone is riding the bandwagon of “going green,” which means “staying healthy and protecting the environment at the same time.” Even cleaning products are getting into it: from the green kitchen sprays and bathroom scrubs to emerald dishwashing detergents and liquid soaps.

However, these products cost more. And in addition to its trendy graphics and emerald labels, a host of multi-syllable, unpronounceable chemicals tend to lurk inside many of these earth-friendly-looking bottles, if they are listed at all, since federal law doesn’t require manufacturers to do so on cleaning products. And on the rare occasion that they do, it’s hard for most people to know what these names mean, much less whether they’re safe.

According to Jeff Bishop, technical advisor to the Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification (IICRC), the nonprofit organization that regulates industry standards and certifies cleaning, inspection and restoration companies, cleaning things to a sanitary state creates a more habitable environment.

Allen Rathey, president of the Healthy House Institute, a consumer resource dedicated to providing information about healthier homes, and founder of the

HousekeepingChannel.com, said that much of the cleaning we do isn’t cleaning, but polluting, which is the whole reason the green movement began.

Green cleaning is a combination of products, equipment, and procedures. It means that in addition to using products that are safe and environmentally friendly, we must also use non-polluting equipment and procedures. The following tips will help keep dust, soil, and contaminants to a minimum and decrease the need for cleaning products:

· Use entry mats outside your home and always wipe shoes before entering. This will remove 83% of the abrasive soil that is tracked inside.
· Remove your shoes at the front door.
· Vacuum at least twice a week.
· Use a high-quality HVAC filter (not fiberglass) and change every month.
· Have your carpets professionally cleaned at least once a year by a qualified specialist.
· Get water leaks fixed immediately, to avoid mold.
There is no quick-and-easy formula for evaluating how green, or safe, the products are. It always involves a risk: to ourselves and the environment.
Consumers normally look for the Green Seal when searching for green products. Arthur B. Weissman, PhD, is president and CEO of Green Seal Inc., a nonprofit organization considered to be the gold standard for “green certification,” said that they award their seal of approval to manufacturers who adhere to specific health and environmental standards.
Aside from the Green Seal, it is also recommended that consumers pay special attention to “signal words” on labels such as
· Poison/Danger – which means the product is extremely toxic; a few drops can kill you.
· Warning – means the product is moderately toxic; as little as a teaspoonful can kill.
· Caution -- refers to a less-toxic product; 2 tablespoons to a cup can kill you.

These “signal words” are regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission and must be placed on hazardous products.
Other words that often signal danger are:
· Strong Sensitizer
· Toxic
· Carcinogen
· Flammable
· Corrosive

Annie B. Bond, author of Clean & Green and Home Enlightenment: Practical, Earth-Friendly Advice for Creating a Nurturing, Healthy and Toxin-Free Home and Lifestyle, recommends that we avoid all products containing these warning labels.
Weissman also instructs consumers to avoid those with any significant amount of phosphates (more than 0.5%); high levels of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which contribute to outdoor pollution and may also have negative effects on health; and those containing ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid, or “EDTA,” which is not biodegradable.

Other potentially harmful yet commonly used ingredients (often in all-purpose cleaners) include:

· Alkylphenolethoxylates (APEs): found in surfactants; tend to break down into endocrine disruptors which adversely affect the human endocrine system.
· Certain glycol ethers, like 2-Butoxyethanol (or "Butyl"): typically found in household cleaners and “degreasers” which are a lung irritant.
· Heavy metals (chromium, selenium, lead, mercury): used to add color to cleaning products.
· Ammonia: a respiratory irritant found in many cleaning products
· Ethanolamines: a respiratory irritant common to all-purpose cleaners
· Chlorine: mostly found in bleach, can be irritating to the lungs and eyes.
· Anything with a strong fragrance, which contains potentially hazardous petrochemical ingredients.

When You’re Sick… EAT! – A way to a healthy lifestyle living

t’s hard enough to eat when you have fever, colds, or flu. How much more challenging it is to eat when you have a chronic illness like cancer, arthritis, or even depression? Illness and their treatment can sap your appetite or leave you nauseated. When you have arthritis, it’s a lot harder to get out and shop for groceries. With cancer fatigue, you will be too worn out to cook. So what happens with healthy eating now?

Let’s face it. Good nutrition naturally slides down when you’re coping with an illness. But it’s risky for your healthy lifestyle living. Everyone needs to get enough vitamins and nutrients… most especially when you’re sick.
But if you know what to look for, and by making smart choices, you can get the nutrition you need without a lot of extra effort.
Protein is very important when you’re sick. According to Paula Charuhas, RD, nutrition education coordinator at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, “Protein is crucial for building and repairing cells.” It can help you prevent the loss of muscle mass, helps maintain fluid balance, and improves your body’s ability to heal.
The best sources of protein are obvious: chicken, pork, lean beef, fish, and lamb are all good. Eggs and cheese are also easily digestible forms of animal protein.
But what about those people who are vegetarians? Christine Gerbstadt, MD, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association, said that vegetarians have a harder time getting enough protein.
“The problem is that you have to eat a lot of vegetable protein to get the equivalent of a much smaller amount of animal protein,” said Gerbstadt. “Not everyone can do it.”
For non-animal sources of protein, go for beans, soy products like tofu, and nuts. Try adding more peanut butter or almond butter to your diet which is one easy way of getting additional protein.
There are times that you just can’t get enough protein from foods. Let your doctor recommend high-protein nutritional supplement drinks, such as powdered protein that you can stir into any food.
As we become adults, we begin to count our calorie intake. But those who get sick may actually need to increase them. When you’re sick, your body is working harder. But just as when you need to eat more, your appetite flies out of the window. You begin to lose weight which can become serious, leaving you exhausted, weak, and may interfere with your treatment.

Attempting to prevent weight loss can put people and dietitians in a quandary. According to Rachel Zinaman, MPA, RD, of Memorial Sloan-Kettering’s Evelyn Lauder Breast Center, she actually recommends cheese fries, burgers, and milkshakes to some women with cancer to stop them from losing too much weight.
But Zinaman emphasized that a high-calorie diet is only a good idea for people who are losing weight because many chronic diseases and treatments pose a risk of weight gain instead.

Here are some tips for healthy eating when you’re sick:
Boosting protein in your diet, since protein is calorically dense

Drinking whole milk instead of skim

Adding cream to soups, fruit, cold cereal, and other foods
It is important to consult your doctor first before you start up a high-calorie diet to see whether unintended weight loss is a risk for you.

Keeping Your Workouts Injury-Free

No matter how committed you are to get in shape, work out injuries may derail your healthful plans – healthy lifestyle living. There are different reasons why injuries happen. It could be that you are doing the wrong work out program. Or it maybe, you have the right program but you're actually doing it the wrong way or perhaps overdoing it.

To avoid workout injuries, try to follow these five basic steps:

1. Know Your Body's Limitations

While this may seem very basic, experts say it's often overlooked. It's about knowing what your weak areas are, and then avoiding the type of activities that are going to push hard on that weakened area. Those who have knee-problems should avoid using a stepper, a treadmill, or do leg presses, which can aggravate an already weakened knee. Better try a stationary bike or an elliptical machine, which does not cause any pounding on the knee joints.

On the other hand, if you have a bad back, avoid doing back stretches on stability ball. Those who have weak wrists should stay away from weight lifting. While people with hip problems may shun joining a spinning class.Acknowledging the weakest areas of your body will allow you to slowly build them up or help avoid the activities that stress them.

2. It's A Matter of Sex

Whether it's politically correct or not, experts say that gender plays a role in workout injuries. There are specific gender-related physiologic issues that can set men and women up for injuries when they do specific types of workouts.

This doesn't mean avoiding certain activities, but taking a few precautions. Generally, men function better in activities requiring a rigid plane of motion like weight lifting in a restricted format, push-ups, Nautilus machines, etc. Women, who have certain flexibility issues, do better at activities requiring multiple or diagonal planes of motion, like Pilates, yoga, a stair stepper, or spinning. In these activities, most men are more likely to be injured. Women, likewise, should exert greater care when participating in activities requiring quick “twist and turn” leg motions, such as skiing, basketball, and racquet sports.

During menstrual cycle, women are more prone to fitness injuries since hormones can increase the looseness of the joints and make injury more likely to occur.

3. Train With A PRO.

Taking a few lessons with a certified trainer will help ensure that your body is in proper alignment while you're working out, which can go a long way in protecting you from exercise injuries. An expert advice can also keep you from doing the wrong workouts for your body type and help you moderate your routines to avoid doing too much, too soon.

A professional trainer will aid in the appropriate progression of exercises, weights, and rest periods. The right program will allow muscles to heal properly, which in turn helps avoid some of the more common injuries.

4. Warm Up and Slow down

You are less likely to get injured if you warm up before every workout and slowly build the pace over time. It helps the muscles so they are less likely to be injured, and the pacing is just the commonsense way to avoid injury.If you're new to weight training, start with weights you can lift for 8-12 reps, and do no more than three sets. When that gets easy, increase the weight by just 2% (and no more than 10%) at your next session. Do not overestimate your strength. It may lead to improper technique and recruitment of auxiliary muscles, which means, a higher risk of injury.

5. Variation And Rest

Perfecting your program by doing it over and over again can also set you up for a workout injury. It can overuse the muscle and may lead to repetitive use injuries, such as shin splints, tendinitis, and never-ending muscle soreness.

Varying your workout can solve the problem. If you're running on a treadmill one day, you can lift weights the next day.
Rest between workouts is also important. Tired muscles are an invitation to injury, so give yourself adequate time to rest and recover. Keep a small injury from becoming worse by resting the sore muscle.

On Skipping Meals and Regaining Weight

Whether due to your busy schedule or because you are trying to lose weight, skipping meals and the amount of food you eat on your next meal can affect your overall
well-being.

Based on studies about fasting, the effects on obese people have been shown to have significant metabolic benefits. In animal studies, intermittent feeding and fasting reduces the incidence of diabetes and improves certain indicators of cardiovascular health. However, several observational studies and short-term experiments have suggested that there is a link between meal-skipping and poor health.
A recent study, conducted by The National Institute on Aging, involved men and women in their 40s who are healthy and are within the normal weight range for their ages. They were given three meals a day for two months. Then, for the next two months, they skipped two meals but ate the same number of calories in one evening meal, consumed between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m.

The results show that skipping meals during the day and eating one large meal in the evening could cause potentially risky metabolic changes. The meal skippers had elevated fasting glucose levels and a delayed insulin response — conditions that, if allowed to persist over the long-term, could lead to diabetes.

However, based on a previous study, the medical community had come to believe that skipping meals every other day could actually improve a patient’s health. Overweight adults with mild asthma were given normal meals one day, followed by a day of severely restricted eating, when they ate less than 20% of their normal caloric intake, or about 400 or 500 calories a day – the equivalent of about one meal. Nine out of the ten participants in the study were able to stick to the eating plan.
After two months of the alternate-day dieting pattern, the dieters lost an average of 8% of their body weight, and their asthma-related symptoms had improved. They had lower cholesterol and triglycerides, “striking” reductions in markers of oxidative stress, and increased levels of the antioxidant uric acid. Markers of inflammation were also significantly lower.

Based on the more recent meal-skipping study, the authors concluded that skipping meals as part of a controlled eating plan results in lower calorie intake and may lead to better health. On the other hand, skipping meals during the day and then overeating at the evening meal results in harmful metabolic changes within the body.
When it comes to keeping off the lost weight from coming back, another study shows that having contact with a weight-loss counselor is favorable.

The study shows just how difficult it is for dieters to keep lost weight from coming back. With 1,685 overweight or obese adults who weigh an average of 213 pounds were found to be successful in losing weight. Statistics show an average weight loss after six months of 18.7 pounds.
The second phase of the study had about 1,000 people who lost 9 pounds as participants. Some used an Internet-based weight counseling tool, while others had regular personal contact with a weight-loss counselor. A third group received basic instruction on maintaining weight loss, and those participants were instructed to keep the weight off on their own.

After more than 2 years, almost everyone had gained back some of their weight they had lost. The people who tried to maintain their weight on their own fared the worst, with an average of 12.1 pounds regained. Those who used the Internet counseling tool gained back 11.5 pounds. However, those people who took part in the personal contact group gained back the least — with only 8.8 pounds on average.
At the end of the study, more than 45 percent of those who had received counseling were still maintaining at least 9 pounds of weight loss, an amount with clear clinical benefits, they noted.