Health and Wellness
Holiday weight gain adds up to estimated 70 tons for Black people in Milwaukee
On average, Americans gain about a pound apiece during the holidays. That may not sound like much, but problems occur when the extra pound stays around. Excess weight increases a person’s risk for serious diseases like cancer, heart disease, and diabetes.
A study by researchers at Tufts University found that those who were already overweight gained more than just one pound during the holiday period from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day.
Holiday weight gain accounted for half of the weight study participants gained over the entire year. In short, the extra weight tends to stick around.
If every African American man and woman in Milwaukee gained just one pound during the past holiday season, there would be 156,006 new pounds hanging over belts and waistbands throughout the city.
That’s the equivalent of about 3.9 garbage trucks filled to capacity weight. Adding in the extra pounds gained by those who are already overweight would fill another about half of a garbage truck.
The good news is there are ways to lose that holiday weight. Cutting 100 calories per day can help you lose that pound in the six weeks after New Year’s Day. It also means losing 10 pounds over the course of the year.
Here are a few eating tips for cutting 100 calories instantly:
Or, if you prefer to break a sweat, here are exercise tips for burning 100 calories:
Community Resources
Local health organizations in the Milwaukee area that are focused on improving community health are the Black Health Coalition of Wisconsin, which addresses health disparities among the African American population, and the Center for Urban Population Health.
Black Health Coalition of Wisconsin, 2801 W. Wisconsin Ave., 2nd Floor, (414) 933-0064 or Center for Urban Population Health, 1020 North 12 Street, Suite 4180, (414) 219-5100.
Are you getting the most out of your supplements and vitamins?
by Makeisha Lee, Black Health Consultant
www.CleanseFormula.com
In order to have a healthy body, we as humans are dependent on proper nutrition that must be supplied everyday of our lives. Sadly though, the Standard American Diet (SAD) is severely deficient in minerals, and the soil in which we depend on for our food source has been depleted of vital nutrients.
The United States Senate document #264 states: "Our physical well being is more directly dependent upon the minerals we take into our systems than upon calories or vitamins, or upon the precise proportions of starch, protein or carbohydrates we consume. Because American produce is now grown in highly depleted soil, even people who pay close attention to what they eat simply can’t get all the necessary nutrients. The alarming fact is that the foods, fruits, vegetables and grains, now being raised...no longer contain enough of certain needed minerals."
Many people still don’t realize that without minerals, vitamins have no function. A marked deficiency in any one of the more important minerals could result in disease. When this happens, people turn to drugs and surgery because of lack of understanding that the root cause of their ailments may very well be from specific mineral or nutritional deficiencies.
The state of affairs is as such that even the American Medical Association is recommending that we all, at the very least, should be taking a multi-vitamin pill.
Most of us truly care about our health, but are at a lost when it comes to purchasing health supplements. We feel that if we are going to spend money supplementing our diets, we want to make sure that we get the full benefits of the nutrients. However, price doesn’t necessarily equal quality. So no matter how much you spend, if the supplement is not absorbable--you’re just throwing away your money because you’re not receiving the full benefit of the product.
Well, how should one gauge the effectiveness of health supplements?
Tablets
If your vitamins are in the form of a tablet, you’re only getting about 10-15% absorption. This means that for every $100 you spend on nutrients, your actually throwing away $90.
There are two reasons for this decreased absorption: 1) Tablets contain binders, fillers, glues, and coatings that can be very toxic and inhibit the body’s ability to absorb the nutrients. 2) A lot of these pills have a high metallic content, which gives them the consistency of crushed up rocks, subsequently making it difficult for our bodies to digest.
So the companies will add massive doses of nutrients, that in turn, when consumed causes much stress on the kidneys and the liver. Not to mention the fact that all these ingredients are then smashed into a tablet by damaging heat and pressure, further degrading nutrients by 25%.
Capsules
If the supplement is in the form of a capsule, the absorption rate is about 30-50% more than that of tablets. If liquid is not available, this is the preferable choice because the nutrients are at least retained in their original form and don’t have the toxicity that tablets have.
Liquid
Liquid vitamins and minerals are the superior form of supplement, as compared to the other two. Nothing needs to be broken down for the body to absorb.
But not all liquid vitamins are the same. Here are some questions to ask:
Are they organic? Are there live enzymes? How bio-available are they? Are the dosages of nutrients balanced and if so how are they processed?
Given the right liquid vitamin and mineral supplement, there is a potential for almost 100% absorption.
So, this information should cause you to realize the importance of proper nutrition and the need to be selective in choosing a clean source of supplementation!
Good health to you!!
Makeisha Lee is a health and nutrition consultant. For more information about cleansing and detoxifying your body, contact her at 614-595-1425 or makeisha@cleanseformula.com or learn more at www.CleanseFormula.com.
