VitalityHouse Health Articles

Tefal Actifry : I Want One of These

I've heard a few good things about this gadget and now I've just seen the Tefal Actifry on Amazon too (at least in the Uk - couldn't find it on the .com site).

The Actifry makes a whole kilo (2.2lbs) of crisp fryer-tasting healthy fries with just one spoonful of oil.

We don't eat fries much these days and of course there are ways of making healthy fries by par-boiling potatoes and mixing (or spraying) with a little oil and baking but they are just not the same as fries from a deep fat frier.

Apparently these ones are just like that and without the hassle of boiling up potatoes or watching over them!

If you are loathe to give up eating fries you will find this a healthy way to get them - now I just need to save up the pennies bcause good health does not come cheap :)

See the video

How Much Do You Move?

I did an exercise/quiz the other day which brought home to me how little activity most of us actually do - and I think this has a lot to do with why the population in general seem to be getting more and more overweight in the western world.

The exercise involved filling in a section of a chart for each hour of the day - 24 in total - giving each section a diferent color depending how active you were in each of the 24 hours.

The categories were

• asleep/lying down
• sitting
• on your feet but only mildly active - tidying, shopping, moving about the office
• active - walking, vacuuming, cleaning
• exercise - running, lifting weights, playing sports, swimming

Yikes! I don't know about you but most of my hours were in the first two categories! I am on my PC rather than on my feet an awful lot!

And this pattern would be a marked difference from say 50 years ago when we used cars and labor-saving devices a lot less.

And the point of all this?

To give you a shock (same as I had) about how little time you are actually active each day and to get you to think a little more seriously about getting moving even a little extra each day.

If you give yourself a break every hour or so and get active for 5 or 10 minutes, you may be able to color another box active and save your shape (and maybe your life).

And I'd better go off and do something now too that Ive sat here writing this to you! :)

Presentation on Mild and Acquired Traumatic Brain Injury

NABIS Holds 6th Annual Conference on Brain Injury

The North American Brain Injury Society will hold it's 6th Annual Conference on Brain Injury October 2-4, 2008 in New Orleans, Louisiana. The conference is the largest annual gathering of North American professionals working in the field of brain injury. Attendees are comprised of basic scientists, rehabilitation physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, neuropsychologists, speech pathologists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, social workers, nurses, case managers, legal professionals, advocates and all others working in the field of brain injury.

The 2008 conference will focus on four concurrent education tracks covering the following topic areas:

• Medical-Clinical Best Practices
• Research/Science
• Life Long Living & Working
• Legal Issues in Brain Injury

In all, over 60 of the leading experts from North America will present the latest advances in the science, rehabilitation and treatment of traumatic brain injury. You can access additional information on the conference at the NABIS website here.

New Life Expectancy Tables

For many people with acquired traumatic brain injury, an adequate life care plan is essential. In personal injury cases, where the value of a life care plan is part of the damages, an essential ingredient is the life expectancy of the individual. In New Jersey and many other states, the Courts utilize a gender, race and ethnic neutral life expectancy, utilizing one life expectancy table regardless of gender or race.

Most recently “New government researches found large and growing disparities in life expectancy for richer and poorer Americans, paralleling the growth of income inequality in the last two decades.”

As reported in Sunday’s New York Times, researchers from the Department of Health and Human Services looked at life expectancy, among many other factors, using census data on education, income, poverty and housing to name but a few of the factors looked at.

This finding was similar to a study conducted by Ellen R. Meara, a health economist at Harvard Medical School who reported that in the 1980s and 1990s “virtually all gains in life expectancy occurred among highly-educated groups.” This was also similar to a Center for Disease Control and Prevention report in February documenting those with higher levels of education and income were much more likely to receive cardiac rehabilitation care than those with lower education and less income.

Since life expectancy represents only the average (50th percentile) life expectancy of Americans, half the population will live longer than the average life expectancy tables. This will have a profound effect in cases where attorneys representing those with acquired traumatic brain injury fail to adequately alert a jury of this potential result.