We need to keep a healthy heart to ensure a longer life. But how do we do that? Having a well-balanced diet will improve our health and our well-being. But what does it mean to have a balanced diet? A diet that contains high fiber and has low saturated fat is a well-balanced diet.

Fiber is very important if you want to keep a healthy heart. They help lower your cholesterol levels and reduce the risk of diabetes and certain types of cancer. Although it is based on weight, a recommended intake of fiber for good health in men would be around 25 grams a day. The best way to ensure that there is sufficient fiber in your diet is to eat a large variety of whole grains and a good mixture of fruits and vegetables that have both insoluble and soluble fiber. Soluble fiber is vital as it helps clear out bad cholesterol from your bloodstream and prolong your stomach emptying time so that sugar can be absorbed more slowly. Benefits of soluble fibers include lower cholesterol and a good regulation of blood sugar for people with diabetes. Insoluble fiber helps your body in digestion and controls your acidity in your intestines. Some benefits of insoluble fibers are regular bowel movement and the prevention of constipation. It also removes toxic waste in the colon in less time and helps prevent colon cancer by keeping an optimal pH level in the intestines to prevent microbes from producing harmful cancerous substances. Good sources of soluble fibers include oatmeal, barley, dried beans and peas while insoluble fiber is found very commonly in beets, Brussels sprouts and whole-grain bread.

Carbohydrates play a key role in our human body. Therefore, it should make up around 50 to 60 percent of your diet. You should obtain it from legumes, whole-grain breads, pastas and brown rice. Obtaining carbohydrates from these sources are excellent as they provide you with nutrients, vitamins and fiber. You should be careful to eat your carbohydrates with the right fats as carbohydrates are often vehicles for saturated fat. This is detrimental to your health as it increases your bad cholesterol.

Vitamins and minerals also aid in keeping a healthy heart. However, it is not recommended to get your vitamins from health care supplements and other products. You should rather obtain these from a well-balanced diet. Good sources of vitamins would include vegetables and fresh fruits, while minerals can be obtained in small quantities from different sources of food in your daily diet.

A healthy lifestyle has many advantages and you should strive to keep yourself healthy. In the long run, a healthy body would ensure less problems while an unhealthy one will cause you to suffer.

The adage “everything in moderation” maintains its wisdom these days, even when looking at supposedly “healthy” behavior. While healthy eating is important, if not essential, for cardiac health, vitality and overall well-being, when one becomes obsessively focused on only eating a narrow band of initially “healthy foods“, one can suffer from a new member of the eating disorder family, orthorexia.

Orthorexia, a term coined in 1997 by Colorado physician Steven Bratman, has its origins in two Greek words, orthos, meaning “correct of right” and orexis, meaning “appetite”. An orthorexia suffer may initially have “health-minded” goals in their eating plans, but may take these goals to an extreme, to the point their diet is so restricted or severe, malnutrition can result.

I remember, in college, one of my classmates was obsessed with eating carrots and carrot juice. While a healthy food, when eaten in mass quantity, carrots turn your skin orange and can make you sick. My classmate became more and more orange, and started to feel ill. It was an earth-shattering revelation for her to discover that you CAN get too much of a “good thing”.

Raw food eating can become a breeding ground for orthorexia as well. When taken to the extreme, it can become a kind of anorexia, where the individual becomes emaciated and denies themselves the nutrition their body truly needs in pursuit of a rigid principle.

Likewise, avoiding food preservatives and additives is important in healthy eating, however, when one’s definition of products that are “pure and healthy” (in contrast to industrial products and processed foods, which can be considered artificial and unhealthy), becomes too extreme, one’s health can start to decline.

While the anorexic wants to be thin, and compulsively works to lose weight beyond what is tolerable for their well-being, the orthorexic wants to feel pure and natural to the point they lose sight of what is actually healthy.

Sadly, eating issues in one generation may translate into eating issues for another generation. A woman I know whose thoughts and habits are at least borderline orthorexic, is the mother of a young teenage daughter who has become anorexic. In some ways, the teenage daughter is in a power struggle for perfection with her mother. Since her mother is so focused on being healthy and pure, the daughter needed to find a trump card. Anorexia became her point of power.

Finding a way to a healthy middle ground is an emotional, spiritual and educational journey in a culture that too easily swings between extremes. With eating, the healthy middle ground is truly a balance point worth defining!

NSAIDs are commonly prescribed anti-inflammatory medications. They are very powerful, may provide temporary relief, but also come with many potential adverse side effects. They only treat symptoms,(pain) but do nothing to help your condition and can actually make it worse.

Most common side effects of NSAIDs are vomiting, nausea, constipation, diarrhea, drowsiness and headache.

The most serious are kidney and liver failure, ulcers, internal bleeding, shortness of breath, perforation of the intestines or stomach, raising of blood pressure and increased risk of a fatal heart attack or stroke. Drug interactions with medications you may be taking are possible and seniors are more likely to suffer the worst effects of NSAID drugs.

If you are considering using one of the NSAID drugs, take another look at the serious downside and start to look for better options. Ask your doctor about the effect of exercise, possible diet changes, losing a few pounds if you are carrying some extra ones, and trying a good, natural joint relief supplement.

More than likely, your doctor may not be able to give you a complete, knowledgeable answer on this. Why? Because modern medical training offers very little in the way of natural treatments or nutrition. So your doctor treats, the way he or she is trained.

However, your doctor should be able to tell you if moderate exercise is appropriate for you condition. In some cases of arthritis, it isn’t. If your doctor gives the okay, start out slowly. There is no need to overdo it. A great advantage of exercise, is that it helps to strengthen the muscles surrounding the joint, which gives it more support. Start slowly and increase as you can.

Your doctor should also know what foods may have a negative impact on your condition. For instance, tomatoes and potatoes can be foods you might want to avoid.

Your weight is very important too. If you’re like many of us, you might be carrying some extra pounds. For a weight-bearing joint, like the knee, an additional pound of weight equals three or more pounds of additional stress. Even a few pounds lost, can make a big difference for you.

Exercise, proper diet and weight control naturally translate into positive benefits for your overall health as well. Small changes can equal a big difference.

Why not also try a good, 100% natural joint relief supplement too? Taking the right one can stop the pain, and actually start to rebuild your thinning cartilage. So, you can forget the pain while you’re correcting the problem and there’s no need to worry about those weird side effects of NSAID drugs.
There are over 100 different types of arthritis and they all hurt. Millions of people in America suffer from arthritis, but unfortunately, the most common treatments you are offered do nothing to actually heal your condition. NSAIDs are often prescribed, but they only help mask the pain, so your condition keeps getting worse instead of better. Is that what you want?