Hyvin
A Natural Health and Wellness Blog

Think you can get by skimping on sleep? In my younger years, I did this quite a bit, and I regret it now. A friend and I were discussing once the incredible benefits of sleep. She opined that you could bottle it up and sell it as a new wonder drug for all the positive effects it has on your body.

Research seems to concur: The May 2006 edition of the medical journal Hypertension reports that regular sleep deprivation is linked to high blood pressure.

According to the Reuters Health report of this research finding: “The new findings are based on an analysis of data for 4810 subjects, between 32 and 86 years old, who participated in the first National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Hypertension was diagnosed in 647 subjects during the follow-up period from 1982 to 1992. Among the subjects between 32 and 59 years of age, sleeping less than 6 hours per night more than doubled the risk of developing hypertension, the report indicates. Moreover, this association remained significant even after taking obesity and diabetes into account.”

Taken with another post earlier this week, we now have two very practical ways to reduce the risk of high blood pressure (and, most likely, provide many, many other total health and wellness benefits): get enough sleep and take steps to combat loneliness.

According to a recent AP article, there is a movement afoot to scientifically link the high consumption of soda in the U.S. with the alarming obesity rate, to identify this liquid intake as a cause of this health concern.

Why, you may wonder? Why “prove” soda intake helps make you fat?

Well, apparently doing so opens the door for sales restrictions, and governmental oversight such as additional taxes (to discourage consumption) and maybe even label warnings.

As you might imagine, there are leading players on both sides of this “discussion.”

I do find it alarming that, according to the article, soda is the nation’s single biggest “food”!! Aye-yi-yi! It seems quite obvious to me that it’s a sweet “treat” food, like a dessert, only in liquid form.

Someone has done an incredible marketing job, I’d say. We, as a nation, bought into it, and now we’re paying.

The online edition of Time Magazine reported last week on a study in the Psychology and Aging journal that found an association between loneliness and high blood pressure in people aged 50 to 68.

The magazine reports, “The difference in blood pressure readings was much greater than the researchers expected. While this is still an associational study — and therefore doesn’t prove cause and effect — it does fit with previous data suggesting that greater social involvement plays at least some role in promoting good heath as we age.”

Ah, yes, one more common sense link in the total wellness picture… to be hyvin [well].

You may have heard before about the role of calcium in reducing the risk of colon cancer. New research reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition this month affirms this role, concluding that “the risk of colon cancer from all regions of the colon and rectum decreased according to increased total dairy food consumption.”

Researchers also noted the need to consider the potential beneficial effect of other nutrients in dairy products. That is so true… nutrients do not occur in nature in isolation, do they? There is a whole complement of compounds in any natural food source, some of which we have not yet even identified!

That’s why, when we’re using supplements to provide the nutritional support that our current food supply can’t provide, it is SO important to be sure that the supplements we use include and preserve these additional compounds as found in nature. Presumably because of the expense and scientific prowess required to do so, many supplement manufacturers, unfortunately, do not.