Personal Finance Blog, Your Guide to Financial Fitness
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Heather Levin
Heather Levin
Until a few months ago, I’d never even heard of activated charcoal (also known as activated carbon). However, I soon learned that this substance provides a number of amazing benefits.
While some people use it to cleanse their skin or whiten their teeth, the true value of activated charcoal is in its ability to remove toxins from your body. For instance, if you’ve ingested a poisonous substance, or if you’ve been bitten by a deadly snake or spider, activated charcoal could save your life.
Heather Levin
“Eat your vegetables” is more than just dinner table advice. The vitamins and antioxidants found in fruits and vegetables are the foundation for a healthy life. Such healthy foods can help stave off cancer, are naturally high in fiber, have a high water content to keep you hydrated, and decrease your risk for heart disease, stroke, and hypertension. The only question is, why don’t we eat more of them?
Heather Levin
Every year it seems that countless new “get in shape” gimmicks rear up from the daytime talk show and infomercial void. Whether it’s a new diet paired with a book or a pill, or an exercise routine that requires a unique piece of gear, the fitness and diet industry are relentless in their promises of perfection.
While many “new” exercise routines disappear as quickly as they arrive, others show results because they have survived the test of time. Yoga, for example, was born in India 5,000 years ago, and is now more popular than ever. The treasured gymnastics and calisthenic routines of Greece are staples of today’s workout classes, and the kung fu martial arts of the Far East are popular with kids, adults, and moviegoers alike.
Heather Levin
There are many natural and herbal remedies to ease the common ailments of humans: We can take valerian root and chamomile to sleep better, St. John’s Wart to ease the symptoms of depression, and feverfew to combat migraines. Furthermore, we can use natural and herbal remedies to ease some of the symptoms from chronic pain, constipation, and bad breath. Many of these same treatments work wonders for dogs – though we can’t assume that every remedy that treats humans will work for dogs.
Heather Levin
Human bodies are built for work and constant movement. However, the average person now spends nearly 10 hours a day sitting down thanks to work, TV, and commuting – and that doesn’t include sleep time. Because of this rampant inactivity, our obesity rates are skyrocketing: Currently, 68% of the American population is either overweight or obese.
If you’re like most people, you likely spend the majority of your work day sitting behind a desk, in front of a computer. But have you ever thought of standing at your computer instead? The popularity of standing desks is rising as more people discover the health benefits of standing while they work. And as a computer-bound worker who uses one of these desks myself, I can tell you from experience that the benefits are real.
Heather Levin
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), heart disease is the number one cause of death in America. We lose almost 600,000 people to heart disease each year, and 58.8 million Americans currently have some form of this disease.
But that’s just heart disease – if you look at cardiovascular diseases as a whole (including both heart attack and stroke), the number of yearly deaths rises to 950,000, according to the University of Maryland Medical Center. And because of the rising rate of obesity, which is linked to heart disease, these numbers continue to grow. Furthermore, heart disease doesn’t just strike the elderly, as many people think. One out of every 20 people in the United States below the age of 40 has heart disease.
Heather Levin
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), more than one-third of American adults are obese – and the number might even be higher than that. The BMI (body mass index) scale that’s typically used to determine whether or not someone classifies as obese might be dramatically underestimating the problem, especially in women.
According to doctors quoted in the Los Angeles Times, the 200-year-old BMI index could be misdiagnosing up to 50% of women, and up to 20% of men. Put simply, 50% more women and 20% more men could be obese and not even realize it. This means that as a nation we could be in much worse health than we had thought.
Heather Levin
The shift from warm weather to cooler temperatures is enjoyable for many people. You get to dig out those sweaters and jackets, walk through fall foliage, and wake up to brisk air streaming through the still open windows. But the flip side of crisp, cool autumn – and the approaching winter – is that something else needs to change: the way you take care of yourself.
Heather Levin
Once the kids head back to school, it’s time to brace yourself for the inevitable cold and flu germs that will start showing up in your home on a regular basis. Germs and viruses are rampant in classrooms, and most kids (and their families) get sick several times throughout the school year.
On average, more than 22 million school days are lost each year due to contagious illness. However, there are things you can do to limit the amount of germs that come into your home, and how often your kids are exposed to those germs.
Heather Levin
For some people, there’s no greater pleasure than settling into a comfortable chair, cracking open the stiff spine of a new book, and diving headlong into a different world. Books open up infinite possibilities and pleasure, but sadly, reading is a pastime that fewer people are engaging in.
If you’re like a large percentage of Americans, you haven’t picked up a book at all this year, and it’s even likelier that if you did, you didn’t finish it. Poll results released by the Associated Press and Ipsos show that one in four Americans don’t read books at all, and half of Americans read less than four each year.
Heather Levin
“I want to grow old without facelifts. I want to have the courage to be loyal to the face I have made.” -Marilyn Monroe
Although Marilyn Monroe tragically never got the opportunity to stay loyal to the face she made, her statement still holds a lesson that all of us can, and should, learn from.
Our society is one that celebrates looking youthful, and scorns age. Our media, whether it’s online, in print, or on TV, is saturated with beautiful, young faces. There are thousands of chemically laden products and procedures that will, so the claims go, smooth away your wrinkles forever. And in spite of the down economy, cosmetic surgery is steadily growing.
Heather Levin
Today, we have the ability to predict with more accuracy than ever dangerous tornadoes, hurricanes, winter storms, and floods. We know the areas that are prone to earthquakes and areas that are susceptible to wildfires, and we can tell hours in advance whether a tsunami will hit our shores.
However, in spite of all the capabilities for advance warnings, Americans are still quite poor at preparing for these disasters. Many of us really believe that it can’t happen to us.
Heather Levin
You might have heard that Americans consume more sugar than any other nation on Earth. It’s a bold statement; after all, there are more than seven billion people on the planet. But it’s true. Americans eat the equivalent of 17 four-pound bags of sugar per person every year. That’s 68 pounds! If you add in the total caloric sweeteners, like high fructose corn syrup, this total bumps to 152 pounds per year, according to the USDA.
Eating 152 pounds of sugar may sound like an astronomically high number. But once you start thinking about our eating habits and the amount of processing that goes into most foods, it becomes easier to see how those pounds add up.
Heather Levin
Head into any gas station and you’re likely to pay $1.50 or more for 20 ounces of water. Some of this water is labeled “pure,” but such a distinction can be misleading. It might be spring water, it might have been purified by reverse osmosis, or it might have been steam distilled.
Not only is bottled water more expensive per ounce than gas, it’s also bad for the environment. In fact, according to Mother Nature Network, bottled water produces 1.5 million tons of plastic waste each year. All this plastic takes 47 million gallons of oil to produce, and only 20% of these plastic bottles are ever recycled.
Heather Levin
Drive around many new neighborhoods, and you often see the same thing: street after street of behemoth homes, most that look like they came off an assembly line. Oddly, these homes are often occupied by small families, spreading everyone out into different rooms, limiting interaction. Even in older neighborhoods, especially in larger cities such as Austin and Atlanta, smaller homes have been torn down, wanted only for the lot they sit on. In their place, gigantic structures are erected.
While the McMansion boom of the last decade appears, for the most part, to be waning, the result is that there are now millions of families living in these large, palatial homes, which often come with enormous mortgages to match.
