Q: How much exercise do I need each week? 
It is summertime, and the sun is giving us the kind of heat that makes us crave foods that are cold and sweet, like ice cream. But there’s a question that comes to mind: does ice cream fall under the category of healthy foods? Does it make you fat? Should you feel guilty after each time you enjoy it?
We need calcium, the mineral that is best known for building bones. Ice cream has lots of calcium. But aside from building bones, calcium also helps control blood pressure. Most of us probably do not know that calcium also helps prevent colon cancer and diseases of the kidney. For women, calcium dampens the discomfort of PMS. And here’s the best news of all: calcium can help you lose that extra fat that makes your belly look less sexy. The head of the Department of Nutrition at University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Dr. Michael Zemel, said after finishing his most recent research on dairy-rich food that “one of the benefits of eating a dairy-rich diet is that dairy is about twice as effective as calcium alone in augmenting weight loss. With the same level of calorie restriction, you lose approximately twice as much weight and twice as much fat on a dairy-rich diet, and you do a better job of preserving lean body mass.”
So, if you are trying to lose some weight, do not skip entirely on ice cream. You may have it every once in a while; don’t be afraid to down a small serving of your favorite ice cream flavor (just like what I have done before writing this) a couple of times each week. But remember that too much of anything is not good. Ice cream has saturated fat and lots of sugar, so people with diabetes should be cautious about having ice cream and must consult their doctor first about the kind of ice cream that they may have. Ice cream is also rich in sodium, so people with hypertension must also have their doctor’s advice before indulging themselves with the joy that ice cream gives.
Skyr. My favorite yogurt in the whole entire world.
Five years ago my family was visiting friends in Iceland. Looking into their refrigerator for something delicious, Maria, a girl my age, handed me a tub of what looked like yogurt. She told me that it wasn’t just yogurt and that it was Icelandic. Scooping myself a bowl of Skyr, I gingerly put a spoonful of this white stuff to my tongue.
And that’s how we fell in love.
Skyr is along the same lines of those Greek, or strained, yogurts that people have been commercializing more and more these days. It has a similar texture and flavor and is really healthy. When I first tried the Greek yogurt Fage, I fell in love with that, and I settled with it as an alternative to Skyr. However, one day as I was looking for my weekly tub of Fage in the dairy aisle in Whole Foods in Boston, Massachusetts, I saw what my taste buds had been craving for over 5 years.
Buying the vanilla flavor, I sat down on a bench outside and opened my personal container of Skyr–it even came with a spoon! I put one scoop in my mouth, and then my whole mouth was watering.
Maybe it’s just me. Some people may not taste the difference between Skyr or some other alternative yogurt, but I do. Skyr is extremely healthy for you. One container, which is small, contains 16% of your daily value of calcium intake. There also is no fat in this yogurt, and there are at least 16 grams of protein in the container. Skyr is traditionally made with pasteurized skim milk and live active cultures. The flavor is kind of crazy, it has a slightly sour dairy flavor, with a hint of residual sweetness.
I personally do not like the plain flavor as much as I do the vanilla. The strawberry one is good as well, but the blueberry is disappointing.
You can find Skyr at Whole Food Stores.
Music has medical benefits. This came out in a recent study conducted by a research cardiologist, who happens to be an amateur musician. Dr. Mike Miller of the University of Maryland Medical Center found out in his study that music, like laughter, opens up blood vessels and produces protective chemicals within the listener that could help the heart stay healthy. Dr. Miller has been studying the effects of laughter and happiness on the heart for years. He found out that funny movies and laughter help a lot in opening up of blood vessels, which leads to a freer circulation of blood.
While studying the benefits of laughter, it came into Miller’s mind that probably music has the same effect on the blood vessels as laughter. He studied the effects of music on the cardiovascular system and found out that music may be one of the best de-stressors — either by playing or even listening to music. But not all kinds of music can act as a de-stressor because when a person is forced to listen to music he does not like, his blood vessels close up.
Using high-tech imaging, Dr. Miller was able to measure blood vessel size as people listened to music. He learned that when a person listens to the kind of music that she likes, her blood vessels open up. When forced to listen to music she doesn’t like, the blood vessel were observed to shrink.
“The inner lining of the blood vessel relaxed, opened up and produced chemicals that are protective to the heart,” stated Dr. Miller, as he explained the effects of music on the blood vessel.
Stress can contribute to the damage on the cardivascular system, so it is important to have a de-stressor. Music is always there, ready for you to enjoy and fight stress with. It is good to have music that you like play in the background as much as possible to help you fight stress.
Do you have days when you go you bed thinking, “Finally, time to catch up on some sleep,” and twenty minutes later you still are laying wide awake just wishing there was some solution for this? Of course, we are aware of the medicines that exist for this problem, but we are also aware that these medicines can cause a person to develop dependency and are, perhaps, stronger than what we need. Want to fall asleep faster with more natural means? Try these remedies:
