10 Tips for "Going Green" at home

More than ever before, individuals are taking responsibility for the environment – and with good cause. As the result of simply being on this earth, each of us impacts the environment. That effect is commonly known as a carbon footprint.

According to Wikipedia, a carbon footprint is a "measure of the impact human activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of green house gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide. It is meant to be useful for individuals and organizations to conceptualize their personal (or organizational) impact in contributing to global warming.”

The size and type of our homes, the cars we drive, the amount of air travel we do – almost every aspect of daily life adds to the size and scope of our individual carbon footprint. Below are some steps that each of us can take to make our homes – and the Earth – a greener place.

Let there be (efficient) light!
Use Compact Florescent Lightbulbs (CFLs). According to PathNet.org, if every family in the U.S.A. replaced their five most-frequently used light bulbs with CFLs, greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced by one trillion pounds.

Eliminate junk mail
5.6 million tons of catalogs and other direct mail advertisements make their way through American households each year, eventually finding their way to U.S. landfills. This accounts for about 100 million trees. To reduce the amount of junk mail that gets delivered to your mailbox:

• Register with the Mail Preference Service of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA)
• OptOutPreScreen.com enables you to remove your name from solicitations by credit card and mortgage companies.
  
• Download a Stop the Junk Mail Kit.
  

Charged by the sun
Your MP3 player, laptop, PDA, cell phone, and camera can all be charged with portable solar chargers. The added benefit is that you will never again be caught hunting for a wall outlet when the battery in your phone or laptop gets low.

Plain and simple
Sometimes the most effective measures are the most obvious ones: If you’re not using it, turn it off and unplug it. Remember that even power strips and electronic appliances that go into a “sleep” mode are still pulling a current, even if they are switched to the “off” position. To optimize this tip, unplug unused appliances, or use power strips that can be turned off at night.

Cool it
Did you know that 25% of your home’s energy use can be accounted for by your refrigerator? Perform these quick tests to make sure yours is operating at peak efficiency:

• Close your refrigerator door on a dollar bill, then try to pull the bill out. If it comes out easily, the seal on your door isn’t tight enough, which means cold air is escaping from inside, causing your refrigerator to run more than necessary.
• Open your refrigerator door, and then let go. If the door doesn’t close again by itself, your refrigerator may need to be leveled. If you have a refrigerator that’s more than 10 years old, it’s time to replace it.
  

Man or Machine?
You may be surprised to learn that it can be better to wash your dishes in an energy-efficient dishwasher than it is to wash them by hand. Just make sure the dishwasher is full before running it.
Speaking of cleaning…
Try using eco-friendly products around your home. www.EverydayHealth.com provides a list of alternatives for cleaning, home maintenance, auto, and hobby products you use every day.

One man’s treaure
GreenDisk.com can help you turn your electronic media such as DVDs, CDs, zip drives, and audio and video tapes into items that can be reused. When items can’t be reused, GreenDisk.com can also make sure they are properly and safely disposed of.

Keep it in tune
Taking care of your car with regular maintenance and tune-ups will help you burn less gas, and help prevent car trouble down the road. According to Yahoo! Green, if every American’s car tires were properly inflated we could save around 2 billion gallons of gas each year.


By following these simple suggestions you can make your home healthier and cleaner, while reducing the carbon footprint you and your family leave behind.

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Is stress causing you to gain weight?

We've all heard about the far-reaching effect that stress can have on our health. But did you know that stress can cause you to gain weight?

Stress creates actual physiological changes in your body. Specifically, it is responsible for the production of cortisol - a hormone that is a powerful appetite trigger. Simply put, when you're rushing through a day that's crammed with deadlines and filled to the brim with anxieties, you eat more. And cortisol doesn't just trigger your appetite; it creates cravings for carbohydrates and sweets - the foods that are most likely to be stored as abdominal fat.

In her article, 10 Toxic Weight-Prevention Tips, author Dr. Pamela Peeke offers 10 tips for avoiding weight gain due to stress. Among them are some simple things that everyone can do such as scheduling meals, controlling food portions, and drinking more water. Read her article at DiscoveryHealth.

Dr. Pamela Peeke is a former speaker at Women's Wonderful Weekend, an exclusive event designed for today's woman - only at The Greenbrier.

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Teach your body to burn fat by eating more

Want to teach your body not to store fat? Follow Nutrition Rule #1: Eat five meals a day. Read on to learn the science behind how and why following this rule will help you lose weight.

Your endocrine system produces powerful hormones that control growth and energy, among other things. If you eat too infrequently, your body recognizes a famine situation and this system will respond by making changes that are counterproductive to weight loss. Your body does this to protect you. This is how human beings have survived periods of time when food has not been available. (Cavemen didn’t have a friendly grocer's freezer.)

When you severely restrict your calories, your body doesn’t know you’re choosing not to eat; all it knows is that the stretches between food intake are too long, so it must be that you don’t have access to the food you need. Your body does what it has to do to protect you – which means slowing everything down and storing more of what you do eat as fat.

If your objectives are to lose weight, build a little muscle, and have enough energy for an active and fun life, then you must teach your body how to support those needs. Food intake is one of the ways in which you communicate with your body. When you eat strategically, you will begin to direct your body to do the things that support your weight loss and fitness goals.

By eating five small meals throughout the day, the first message you send is that there is an abundant supply of food, and that your body needn’t worry about starvation. It’s similar to the way you budget your money. Expenditure decisions are made based on cash flow, reserves, and income. Your body acts in a similar way with fat storage. If your body knows that more food is always coming in, it won’t be as likely to store fat, and it will be more likely to let stored fat go.

In addition to teaching your body that it doesn’t need to hoard fat, frequent meals create another very beneficial situation. Every time you eat, your blood sugar level increases. Blood sugar gives you energy. When you go for long periods of time without eating, your blood sugar level drops, and so does your energy level. Small, frequent meals spread evenly throughout the day encourage consistent energy levels. By eating every three hours or so, you will no longer have the lags and dips in energy that most people experience throughout the day.

Here’s another important thing to consider: Whenever you eat and your blood sugar level rises, your pancreas releases the hormone insulin. It is the job of insulin to help transport blood glucose (sugar) into your cells where it can be used for energy. When you eat bigger meals that are higher in sugar, your body will respond by releasing a surge of insulin which will then wipe out all of your blood sugar, causing your energy to plummet shortly thereafter, and resulting in food cravings, which make you want another big meal, which causes another insulin spike, and on and on it goes.

Smaller, more frequent meals lead to:

• smaller increases in blood sugar


• smaller releases of insulin


• less fat storage


• greater mobilization of stored fat


• more consistent energy levels
  

That’s five fantastic reasons to stop skipping meals and switch to five small meals a day.

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Six Easy Tips to a Better Night’s Sleep

According to Dr. James B. Maas, author of "Power Sleep: The Revolutionary Program That Prepares Your Mind for Peak Performance," 40% of Americans are moderately to severely sleep deprived. That’s 100 million people - are you one of them?

The top health benefits of sleep include reduction of stress and inflammation, and an increase in memory and immune function. And if all that isn’t enough to make you want to take a nap, sleep also increases productivity and alertness – and it really does make you more beautiful; during sleep, your skin is restored, healing itself from the daily damage of UV light.

If you’re one of the millions who just aren’t getting enough shut-eye, here are a few tips to help you get a better night’s sleep – beginning tonight.

• Stick with a schedule: Our brains regulate sleep according to a “circadian clock” of wake and sleep patterns. A consistent waking time in the morning (even on weekends) strengthens the circadian function. A stronger circadian function means that when you are ready to go to sleep, your brain will be ready, too.

• Make the transition: With such busy lives, we tend to go from work, to dinner, to family activities, to the late news, and then expect to drop off to sleep on demand. Try establishing a routine that takes you gently from the hubbub of the day into the quiet of night. Take a warm bath and then enjoy a cup of chamomile tea while reading a chapter in a book. Creating a little space for your body to unwind can go a long way toward a restful night.


• Create the right environment: Cool, dark, quiet, and comfortable is the best environment for sleep. If street noise or house noise distracts you from falling asleep, add some white noise to your bedroom with a fan, humidifier, or a commercial sound therapy device. Have a partner who snores? Keep a set of ear plugs handy. Room darkening shades can help create the right environment even if street light or sunlight interferes with your ability to drift off.


• Refrain from eating during the 2-3 hours before bedtime. Digestive activity can make it difficult for you to relax. You’ll also discover that giving up the bedtime snack will make weight management a little easier.


• Avoid caffeine later in the day. Caffeine affects different people in different ways. If sleep is an issue for you, try eliminating caffeine after 3:00 pm. If you don’t notice an improvement, try making noon your cut-off time. Experiment to discover your own individual tolerance for caffeine in order to determine its affect on your sleep patterns.


• Count sheep. (Seriously.) Sometimes our inability to fall asleep is due to our inability to silence the chatter in our minds. Focusing on a mundane task such as counting sheep, naming the U.S. states in alphabetical order, or recalling grade-school timetables can serve as a resting meditation that clears your thoughts enough so that your brain can let go of emotional thought and slip into sleep mode.

Naturally, if you experience on-going difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, or if you experience extreme sleepiness during the day, consult your physician.

For more tips on enjoying optimum health through sleep, visit http://www.health.discovery.com

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