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Thanksgiving
Wed 25 – Regular Business Hours : 9am – 1:30pm & 4pm – 7pm
Thurs 26 – Closed
Fri 27 – Closed
Saturday – Regular Business Hours : 9am – 12pm

Christmas
Thurs 23 – Regular Business Hours : 9am – 1pm & 4pm – 7pm
Fri 24 – Closed
Sat 25 – Closed
Mon 27 – Regular Business Hours : 9am – 1:30pm & 4pm – 7pm

New Years
Thurs 31 – Morning Business Hours : 9am – 1pm
Fri 1 – Closed
Sat 2 – Regular Business Hours : 9am – 12pm

Have a great holiday with your family and friends.

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Soft drinks are hard on your health
Soft drinks contain little to no vitamins or other essential nutrients. However, it is what they do contain that is the problem: caffeine, carbonation, simple sugars — or worse, sugar substitutes — and often food additives such as artificial coloring, flavoring, and preservatives.

A lot of research has found that consumption of soft drinks in high quantity, especially by children, is responsible for many health problems that include tooth decay, nutritional depletion, obesity, type-2 diabetes, and heart disease.

Why the sugar in soft drinks isn’t so sweet
Most soft drinks contain a high amount of simple sugars. The USDA recommendation of sugar consumption for a 2,000-calorie diet is a daily allotment of 10 teaspoons of added sugars. Many soft drinks contain more than this amount!

Just why is too much sugar so unhealthy? Well, to start, let’s talk about what happens to you as sugar enters your body. When you drink sodas that are packed with simple sugars, the pancreas is called upon to produce and release insulin, a hormone that empties the sugar in your blood stream into all the tissues and cells for usage. The result of overindulging in simple sugar is raised insulin levels. Raised blood insulin levels beyond the norm can lead to depression of the immune system, which in turn weakens your ability to fight disease.

Something else to consider is that most of the excess sugar ends up being stored as fat in your body, which results in weight gain and elevates risk for heart disease and cancer. One study found that when subjects were given refined sugar, their white blood cell count decreased significantly for several hours afterwards. Another study discovered that rats fed a high-sugar diet had a substantially elevated rate of breast cancer when compared to rats on a regular diet.

The health effects of diet soda
You may come to the conclusion that diet or sugar-free soda is a better choice. However, one study discovered that drinking one or more soft drinks a day — and it didn’t matter whether it was diet or regular — led to a 30% greater chance of weight gain around the belly.

Diet soda is filled with artificial sweeteners such as aspartame, sucralose, or saccharin. These artificial sweeteners pose a threat to your health. Saccharin, for instance, has been found to be carcinogenic, and studies have found that it produced bladder cancer in rats.

Aspartame, commonly known as nutrasweet, is a chemical that stimulates the brain to think the food is sweet. It breaks down into acpartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol at a temperature of 86 degrees. (Remember, your stomach is somewhere around 98 degrees.) An article put out by the University of Texas found that aspartame has been linked to obesity. The process of stimulating the brain causes more cravings for sweets and leads to carbohydrate loading.

Carbonation depletes calcium
Beverages with bubbles contain phosphoric acid, which can severely deplete the blood calcium levels; calcium is a key component of the bone matrix. With less concentration of calcium over a long time, it can lower deposition rates so that bone mass and density suffer. This means that drinking sodas and carbonated water increases your risk of osteoporosis.

Add in the caffeine usually present in soft drinks, and you are in for even more trouble. Caffeine can deplete the body’s calcium, in addition to stimulating your central nervous system and contributing to stress, a racing mind, and insomnia.

Skip the soda and go for:

• Fresh water
Water is a vital beverage for good health. Each and every cell needs water to perform its essential functions. Since studies show that tap water is filled with contaminants, antibiotics, and a number of other unhealthy substances, consider investing in a quality carbon-based filter for your tap water. To find out more about a high-performance filtration system, click here.

On the go? Try using a stainless steel thermos or glass bottle, filled with filtered water. Enhance the flavor of your water with a refreshing infusion of basil, mint leaves, and a drop of honey.

• Fruit Juice
If you are a juice drinker, try watering down your juice to cut back on the sugar content. Buy a jar of organic 100% juice, especially cranberry, acai, pomegranate, and then dilute three parts filtered water to one part juice. You will get a subtle sweet taste and the benefit of antioxidants. After a couple of weeks, you will no longer miss the sweetness of sugary concentrated juices.

• Tea
Tea gently lifts your energy and has numerous health benefits. Black, green, white, and oolong teas all contain antioxidant polyphenols. In fact, tea ranks as high or higher than many fruits and vegetables on the ORAC scale, the score that measures antioxidant potential of plant-based foods.

Herbal tea does not have the same antioxidant properties, though it is still a great beverage choice with other health benefits, such as inducing calming and relaxing effects.

If tea doesn’t satisfy your sweet tooth, try adding cinnamon or a little honey, which has important health benefits that refined sugar lacks. For a selection of healthy teas that promote total body wellness, click here. Drink up!

I hope you find the ways and means to avoid soft drinks. I invite you to visit often and share your own personal health and longevity tips with me.

May you live long, live strong, and live happy!

Author: By Dr. Maoshing Ni
Courtesy of Yahoo Health

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Prep Time:

10 min

Inactive Prep Time:

hr min

Cook Time:

7 min

Level:

Easy

Serves:

6 servings, serving size: 1 salmon fillet

Ingredients

• cooking spray
• 2 tablespoons packed light brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 6 (6-ounce) salmon fillets, skin and any pin bones removed
• 1 tablespoon olive oil

Directions

Coat your grill or a grill pan with cooking spray and preheat over medium heat. While the grill is heating, combine the brown sugar, chili powder, cumin, salt, and pepper. Brush each salmon fillet with 1/2 teaspoon of the oil, then rub each fillet with about 1/2 tablespoon of the spice mixture.

Grill the salmon, flesh side down, until charred, 4 to 5 minutes. Flip the salmon and cook another 5 to 6 minutes for medium doneness. For well done fish, cook an additional 1 to 2 minutes. Remove to a platter and serve immediately.

Per Serving:

Calories 280; Total Fat 13 g; (Sat Fat 2 g, Mono Fat 5 g, Poly Fat 5 g) ; Protein 34 g;

Carb 5 g; Fiber 1 g; Cholesterol 95 mg; Sodium 135 mg

Excellent source of: Protein, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Vitamin B12, Pantothenic Acid, Copper, Phosphorus, Potassium, Selenium

Good source of: Folate, Magnesium

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By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, July 14 (HealthDay News) — If fear of heart disease and diabetes isn’t enough reason to slim down, here’s another: Being overweight or obese can cause rapid deterioration of the cartilage in the knee, leading to osteoarthritis, researchers report.

Osteoarthritis usually progresses slowly, but some patients experience a more rapid progression. This is the first study to connect obesity with fast progression of the disease and cartilage loss.

The report is published in the August issue of Radiology.

The researchers recruited 336 patients from a major osteoarthritis study. All were overweight and at risk of osteoarthritis, but had minimal or no loss of cartilage in their knees, said the researchers, who were led by Dr. Frank W. Roemer, an adjunct associate professor at Boston University and co-director of the quantitative imaging center in the department of radiology at Boston University School of Medicine.

During 30 months of follow-up, 20.2 percent of the patients showed a slow loss of knee cartilage and 5.8 percent had rapid cartilage loss, the study found.

The main risk factors for cartilage loss were pre-existing cartilage damage, being overweight or obese, tears or other injury to the cartilage at the knee joint (meniscus), and severe lesions seen on an MRI. Other factors include inflammation of the membrane lining the joints and abnormal build-up of fluid in the joint, according to the report.

Being overweight was associated with rapid cartilage loss, Roemer’s team found. In fact, for every one-unit increase in body mass index, the chances of rapid cartilage loss increased 11 percent.

The association between obesity and rapid cartilage loss remained even after taking into account age, gender and ethnic background.

“It is a disease without treatment at present other than symptomatic — mostly pain therapy and surgical total joint replacement,” Roemer said.

“We know that weight loss is probably the most important factor to slow disease progression,” Roemer said. “Additional studies will have to show if other measures, such as vitamins or targeted treatment of bone marrow lesions, will help to slow progression,” he said.

“Osteoarthritis is the most common musculoskeletal disorder with major health and socioeconomic impact in our aging society,” added Roemer.

Dr. Sean Scully, a professor of orthopedics at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in Florida, agreed that the danger of developing osteoarthritis is another reason to control weight.

“Don’t let yourself get heavy,” Scully said. “This study shows a direct correlation — people who are heavy are the ones that are getting worse,” he said.

Keeping your weight down — through diet and exercise or weight-loss surgery — could prevent the need for knee-replacement surgery, he said.

SOURCES: Frank W. Roemer, M.D., adjunct associate professor, Boston University, co-director, quantitative imaging center, department of radiology, Boston University School of Medicine; Sean Scully, M.D., Ph.D., professor of orthopedics, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Fla.; August 2009, Radiology

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In my 20 years as a nutrition counselor, I’ve never had a client who knew the truth about energy bars. I didn’t worry much about that until recently when manufacturers started to expand their market beyond endurance athletes like marathoners to busy moms, baby boomers, and even kids. With virtually everyone becoming a potential customer, the industry is expected to rake in a billion dollars a year by 2008.

Before energy bars drain your wallet-many brands cost close to two bucks a pop-see how much you really know about them. Answer true or false to each of the following five statements. Then check if you knew the correct response; what you find out may surprise you.

1. The combination of ingredients in energy bars gives you more pep.

False. “Energy bars get their energy from calories, not magic ingredients,” says Nancy Clark, RD, a Brookline, Massachusetts, sports nutritionist and author of Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook. In the science world, “energy” means the number of calories in food or exercise, not how you feel. So a high-energy food is a high-calorie food. Since there is no legal definition for “energy” on food labels, any product that provides calories can be called an energy food.

2. Energy bars are more nutritious than a banana.

False. Many energy bars are filled with lots of refined sugar, and some contain unhealthy saturated or trans fats. Choose energy bars made with wholesome ingredients like dried fruits and nuts, says Clark. The real plus to energy bars is their convenience, says Roberta Anding, RD, a Houston-based spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association. “You can pack them in advance and they won’t spoil or squish easily.”

3. A snack before your workout may help you lose weight.

True. The key to losing weight is having a calorie deficit by the end of the day. Pre-exercise eating helps you work out better, so you burn more calories and build more muscle. It can also prevent you from becoming so hungry that you overeat. But choosing the correct-size snack is essential. While marathoners need 200 to 300 calories-the amount found in a typical energy bar-those following the Curves workout require about a 100-calorie snack. “You’d just want to eat half a bar,” says Anding.

4. High-carb energy bars are better before exercise than high-protein ones.True. Carbohydrate is your body’s preferred pre-exercise fuel, says Clark. So as you wade through the bars, choose carbohydrate-based ones, especially the more natural bars that include whole grains and dried fruit instead of sugar alone. Exception: If you’re using the bar to replace a meal or as a snack when you’re not working out, higher-protein bars are fine and may even be more satiating. But not the protein-only bars.

5. Some energy bars contain little or no sugar.

False. Even if an energy bar doesn’t have refined sugar, it may contain sugar alcohols like maltitol, sorbitol, and lactitol. These ingredients cause gas, bloating, and cramping in some people.

Colleen Pierre, RD, is a nutrition consultant and fi tness enthusiast in Baltimore. She has also written for Prevention and Child magazines.

Courtesy, diane, the Curves magazine, Fall 2006

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Sometimes, all we need to do is make simple changes in order to get to a healthier weight or form healthy habits.

Take a look at this list and see if any of these suggested behaviors are a challenge for you. Hopefully awareness of the new behavior will bring about change.

At Home

• Avoid eating in front of the TV
• Do not read while eating
• Pre-portion food and put the box or package away
• Keep tempting foods out of the house, and keep healthy foods available and ready
• Focus on activities other than eating
• Brush your teeth after meals if feeling the desire to eat
• Use smaller plates and bowls
• Do not graze. Sit down to a real meal, and stop when you are full.

At the Grocery Store

• Do not go to the grocery store hungry
• Make a shopping list and stick to it
• Make most of your purchases from the perimeter of the store

At a Party

• Do not show up ravenous. Have a snack beforehand to tame your hunger.
• Do not eat standing up at parties or buffets
• Do not stand at the food table at parties
• Offer to bring a healthy food item to a party

Every Day

• Park your car far away from the destination
• Take the stairs instead of the elevator
• Keep a food and exercise diary

My change: I love celery, especially with peanut butter. But, I know that celery will rot in my fridge unless I clean and chop it as soon as I bring it home. If it is not convenient for me to grab for a snack, I just won’t. So, I like to keep raw vegetables ready and available for snacking so that I will make a good choice.

Courtesy of CurvesComplete.com

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No one is perfect. We live busy lives and we don’t always plan each meal to perfection. Because we aren’t perfect, just about everyone can benefit from a little “nutrition insurance” to cover key nutrients that are missing in their diet.

This multivitamin not only covers your basic nutrition needs, but it also contains antioxidants to protect you from disease.

Additionally, the general multivitamin only gets one pass through your body. This vitamin is uniquely time-released. That means that the nutrients are gradually released over the course of a few hours. This translates into the best nutrition for you.

Do you want shiny hair and strong nails? Taking a multivitamin optimizes nutrition status for your entire body…including hair and nails. Take two tablets per day with food.

Price: $15.00

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You know fish (especially salmon!) is healthy for you, but do you know why? The omega-3 fatty acids found in fish have been shown to prevent blood clots, protect against irregular heart beats, lower blood pressure and reduce inflammation. Heart disease, some cancers, and Type 2 diabetes are among the leading causes of death around the world, and each of these diseases is linked to inflammation.

Experts recommend that you eat at least two 3 ounce servings of fatty fish per week, but most individuals fail to meet this recommendation. Instead, most people consume many more omega-6s, found in processed foods, compared to omega-3s. Therefore, our lack of omega-3 compared to our omega-6 intake puts us at increased risk for inflammation. Remember, inflammation is linked to heart disease, some cancers, Type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s and many other common conditions.

It is important that we incorporate omega-3s into our diet. The average individual should aim for 500 mg of omega-3 fatty acids each day. If you have known cardiovascular disease, you may benefit from 1 gram of omega-3s per day.

Price: $15.00

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Women reach peak bone mass around the age of thirty. After thirty, women gradually lose bone mass and 1 out of every 3 women worldwide will suffer from osteoporosis. At every stage of life it is crucial to do what you can to protect the integrity of your bones.

The two best behaviors to strengthen bones are to consume calcium rich foods and strength train. So, the exercise that you are doing at Curves is protecting your bones, but most women fail to consume adequate calcium each day. Your bones lose calcium each day, and if you are not matching that turnover with calcium and minerals, you will have net bone loss at the end of each day.

The Curves calcium is the most absorbable form of calcium on the market-calcium citrate and citrate malate. Studies show that calcium citrate malate supplements result in 70% less bone loss compared to those that do not supplement and 40% less bone loss compared to ordinary calcium supplements. Additionally, the Curves calcium is combined with minerals that enhance the absorption of calcium. This ensures you the best protection for your bones.

Several studies have also revealed that calcium and vitamin D play a key role in weight loss. Specifically, research conducted at Baylor University revealed that women who supplemented with the Curves Calcium lost 26% more body fat when exercising at Curves and participating in the Curves weight management program compared to those that supplemented with a traditional calcium citrate.

How to take them…
Take two tablets twice each day (total of 4 tablets each day). It is best to separate your calcium and multivitamin by 1-2 hours because the minerals in the calcium will block the absorption of the minerals in the multivitamin.

Price: $15.00

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