Your Guide to Healthy Life

Pumpkin Butter

Pumpkin lovers will love this easy, pumpkin butter recipe made from scratch. It’s like pumpkin pie in a jar, only better! Delicious smeared on toast, oatmeal, yogurt, and more!

Pumpkin Butter

Pumpkin butter has no dairy, it’s closer to a jam rather than a butter made with homemade or canned pumpkin puree, brown sugar, apple cider, cinnamon sticks and pumpkin spice. A little goes a long way when you want to add a little spiced sweetness to anything you’re eating. I love smearing some on my toast, or swirling it into my oatmeal and yogurt. A few more ways to serve it, have some on a slice of toasted Pumpkin Banana Bread or rolled in these pumpkin butter crepes.

October is one if my favorite months, and not just because it’s my birthday month. I love the changing of seasons, when the leaves start turning color, wearing cozy sweaters, and of course everything that comes along with pumpkin season.

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Mindfulness could boost opioid use disorder treatment

Mental Health

Thousands of people experience negative health outcomes from the overuse or misuse of opioids, a drug class that includes both illegal substances, such as heroin, and prescription medicines for pain relief. Can mindfulness boost the effects of traditional treatments that relieve opioid cravings?

New research suggests that mindfulness can help reduce cravings for opioids.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse report that around 21–29% of people, whose doctors prescribe them opioids for the management of chronic pain, end up misusing these drugs. Furthermore, some 8–12% of people who take prescription opioids develop opioid use disorder.

Some of the criteria that specialists use to diagnose opioid use disorder — according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — include:

taking opioids for longer or in larger quantities than the doctor advised
experiencing intense and hard to control cravings for opioids
opioid use negatively affecting performance at work or school

Usually, when a person receives a diagnosis of an opioid use disorder, doctors prescribe methadone maintenance therapy.…

4 Hormones that Contribute to Osteoporosis in Women

Fitness

Osteoporosis literally means boneporous, from osteo (bone) and porosis (porous). Healthy bones look like honeycombs under a microscope. They have small holes and pockets of space throughout them, which make them both strong and lighter in weight. Osteoporotic bones look more like cobwebs, with much larger holes throughout them. …

How Not to Die from High Blood Pressure

Nutrition

High blood pressure is the number-one risk factor for death in the world. In the United States, it affects nearly 78 million people, one in three adults. As we age, our blood pressures get higher and higher, such that by age 60, high blood pressure strikes more than half of us.

Given that it affects most of us when we get older, could high blood pressure be less a disease and more just an inevitable consequence of aging? No. We’ve known since the 1920s that high blood pressure need not occur, which I discuss in my video How Not to Die from High Blood Pressure.

Researchers measured the blood pressures of a thousand people in rural Kenya, where their traditional diet included more whole grains, beans, vegetables, fruit, and dark leafy greens. Though our pressures go up as we age, their pressures actually go down.

With blood pressure, the lower, the better.…

Cinnamon Apple Yogurt Bowls

Healthy Food

These Cinnamon Apple Yogurt Bowls are like having apple pie for breakfast, without the crust!

Cinnamon Apple Yogurt Bowls

I’m constantly trying to come up with new breakfast recipes to add to my weekly meal plans. Yogurt bowls are easy, and make the perfect blank canvas for anything you’re topping them with. Although I created this as a breakfast idea, this also makes a great snack or dessert. Apples, cinnamon and nutmeg are simmered with golden raisins and just a little sugar, served over yogurt topped with pecans or walnuts. A deliciously healthy fall treat.

I partnered with Stonyfield, my favorite organic yogurt brand to create this easy breakfast with their Stonyfield Plain 0% Fat Greek Yogurt. Organic matters because it means their products are made without the use of toxic persistent pesticides or GMO’s. So it’s not only good for you but good for the planet too. And because it’s Stonyfield, you know it’s delicious.…

Looking for links between Parkinson’s and bipolar disorder

Mental Health

A new systematic review and meta-analysis ask whether bipolar disorder is associated with developing Parkinson’s disease. Although the authors conclude that there is a link, it is a tough question to unpick.

A recent study examines the links between two conditions that appear at opposite ends of life.

Bipolar disorder (BD), which people once called manic depression, tends to begin around 20 years of age.

Characterized by cyclic episodes of depression and mania, BD affects an estimated 2.8% of adults in the United States each year.

Scientists do not know why BD occurs in some people but not others, although evidence suggests that the dopamine system might play a role.

For instance, levodopa — a Parkinson’s drug that activates dopamine receptors — can induce mania in some people.

Additionally, there is some evidence that when someone with BD switches from a depressive to a manic state, there is an upregulation of dopamine receptors.…

Can neurofeedback training increase self-esteem in depression?

Mental Health

There is evidence that people with a history of major depression have lower connectivity between two particular brain areas when recalling feelings of guilt. Now, new research suggests that it is possible to strengthen this brain connectivity and increase self-esteem with a new type of neurofeedback training.

Using a functional MRI scanner, researchers have shown that neurofeedback training can increase self-esteem in those with depression.

A team of researchers from Brazil and the United Kingdom demonstrated that just one session of neurofeedback training using functional MRI (fMRI) can produce such a result.

They report the findings of the proof-of-concept study in a recent NeuroImage: Clinical paper.

Neurofeedback is a technique that allows people to learn how to influence their own brain activity by observing a representation of that activity in real time.

Electroencephalography (EEG) neurofeedback has been around since the 1970s. Neurofeedback using fMRI, which uses imaging to look at brain activity, is a more recent development.…

Relaxation makes worriers more anxious

Mental Health

Some people become more anxious as they attempt to relax because relaxing interrupts their worrying, according to new research.

Relaxation techniques may have the opposite effect in some people.

Although the intent of relaxation exercises is to reduce anxiety, for some people, they have the opposite effect.

A new study concludes that, in these people, relaxation conflicts with a strategy that they employ to lessen the impact of negative events: continual worrying.

The authors of the study were Michelle Newman, a professor of psychology, and Hanjoo Kim, a graduate student in psychology, both at Penn State University, in College Park, PA.

The team summarized their findings in a paper that appears in the December issue of the Journal of Affective Disorders.

Why worry?

In 2011, Prof. Newman developed the theory of “contrast avoidance.” She explains, “The theory revolves around the idea that people may make themselves anxious intentionally, as a way to avoid the letdown they might get if something bad were to happen.”

Worrying is, according to this theory, essentially an attempt to “pay in advance” for something that may happen.…

Skinnytaste Meal Plan (October 14-October 20)

Healthy Food

posted October 12, 2019 by Gina

A free 7-day flexible weight loss meal plan including breakfast, lunch and dinner and a shopping list. All recipes include calories and Weight Watchers SmartPoints®.

Finally! Pumpkin patch and hay ride time! Pumpkin Pie Dip is one of my fall favorites! It is perfect to bring to a party, one of my friends actually serves it in a hollowed out small pumpkin for a festive presentation! Serve with apple slices or ginger snaps (those are extra points though!)

If you’re new to my meal plans, I’ve been sharing these free, 7-day flexible healthy meal plans (you can see my previous meal plans here) that are meant as a guide, with plenty of wiggle room for you to add more food, coffee, beverages, fruits, snacks, dessert, wine, etc or swap recipes out for meals you prefer, you can search for recipes by course in the index.…

What are neurotransmitters?

Mental Health

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