More than 45 million Americans smoke cigarettes, despite the evidence that tobacco use is the single biggest cause of preventable disease and premature death in the United States.
In addition to cigarette smokers, there are 13.2 million cigar smokers and another 2.2 million who smoke tobacco from a pipe.
Cholesterol is a fatty chemical that is needed for the outer lining of cells.
The liver makes all the cholesterol we need—all the rest comes from food sources.
There are a number of different kinds of cholesterol, but the main two are LDL (low-density lipoprotein) and HDL (high-density lipoprotein).
LDL is known as the “bad” cholesterol. It is the main carrier of cholesterol in the blood, and deposits cholesterol in the arteries, which can lead to heart disease.
When it comes to purchasing dietary supplements, Vasilios Frankos, Ph.D., Director of FDA's Division of Dietary Supplement Programs, offers the advice: "Be savvy!" Today's dietary supplements are not only vitamins and minerals. "They also include other less familiar substances such as herbals, botanicals, amino acids, and enzymes," Frankos says. "Check with your health care providers before combining or substituting them with other foods or medicines." Frankos adds, "Do not self-diagnose any health condition.
So many ways to forget! We forget names and faces; appointments and anniversaries; where we left the car keys; what we read; what we said; what we were doing before we were interrupted. Not to mention all the numbers we have to memorize nowadays: telephone and beeper numbers, new area codes, PINs, password and user IDs, Social Security numbers, which five of those 100 cable channels we actually use.
How does our memory handle it all? And how can we get it to be more reliable?
A generation ago, the idea of a mind-body connection was laughed at in medical circles. Today, however, it's pretty much common knowledge that what happens mentally and emotionally has a significant effect on the physical, and vice versa.
Over the years, aquatic exercise has acquired a reputation as a wimpy workout for inactive people. But practically every land-based exercise can be adapted to water (with some obvious exceptions, such as inline skating and skateboarding).
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), childhood obesity in the United States is reaching epidemic proportions, and the number of overweight children has more than doubled in the last two decades. Lack of physical activity, larger portion sizes, and increased intake of sugar-sweetened soft drinks are all contributing factors.
As a company dedicated to helping people live healthier lives, Health Plan of Nevada (HPN) and Sierra Health and Life (SHL) encourage our members to receive preventive care services.
