Self-Care Strategies for Your Busy Lifestyle

According to Jack LaLanne, who still works out for two hours a day and eats at least 10 fresh, raw vegetables daily, "Exercise is king, nutrition is queen, and if you put them together you build a kingdom!" Here are a few ways you can build your own "kingdom" even in the midst of your hectic, stressful life.

Challenge Your Body: Higher levels of physical fitness reduce the risk of heart disease and early death. Try to achieve a burn rate of greater than 10 calories per minute. If you go to the gym two to three times a week and spend 30-60 minutes per session, you can focus on 10-minute high-intensity sessions on your off days

Feed Your Body: Nine servings of vegetables are recommended per day. (If you can do 10, like Jack does, go for it!) Boost the health benefits by eating different colors of produce. This is called the "technicolor" plan. Additional healthy eating suggestions include:

1.	Eat more cold-water fish like salmon for the benefits of omega-3s. These lower the risk of heart disease, lower blood pressure, improve mood and concentration, and are good for the brain.
2.	Drink red wine or eat grapes. The resveratrol in dark grapes is being studied for its effect on extending life, which it seems to do for almost every species studied.
3.	Eliminate sugar. Sugar's effect on hormones, mood, immunity, weight, and possibly even cancer cells is enormous – and it's all negative. To the extent that you can remove sugar from your diet, you will be adding years to your life and life to your years.

Rest Your Body: Insufficient sleep depresses the immune system, making you susceptible to colds, upper-respiratory infections, low energy, weight gain, a tired appearance, and other complaints like feeling irritable. Proper sleep hygiene involves getting uninterrupted sleep, in the dark, without the television on, in a relaxing environment.

The overall goal is to get you in the best shape of your life without spending considerable time doing it – because after all, how much of that do you have these days? Talk to your doctor for more information.

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Playing to Win: Injury Prevention Is the Key

Whether you're an All-Pro running back or a weekend warrior, the goal is the same: You undoubtedly want to lower your chances of incurring an injury while participating in your favorite sport. Fortunately, there are some general rules for injury prevention that apply to all sports, which is important because sports scientists suggest injury rates could be reduced by 25 percent if athletes took appropriate preventative action.

The #1 Rule: Don't Overdo It: Studies have shown that your best direct injury predictor may be the amount of training you completed last month. Fatigued muscles do a poor job of protecting their associated connective tissues, increasing the risk of damage to bone, cartilage, tendons and ligaments.

The point isn't to avoid exercise, but rather to appreciate that overdoing it can lead to injury, and that when your muscles are fatigued, they need rest. It's about knowing what your body can handle at any particular point in time.

If You Can Predict an Injury, You May Avoid an Injury: If you have been injured before, you are much more likely to get hurt again than an athlete who has been injury free. After recovery, if you re-establish your desired training load without modification to your biomechanics, your knees are likely to be injured again.

The second predictor of injury is probably the number of consecutive days of training you carry out each week. Scientific studies strongly suggest that reducing the number of consecutive days of training can lower the risk of injury. Recovery time reduces injury rates by giving muscles and connective tissues an opportunity to restore and repair themselves between workouts.

Other Injury Prevention Tips:

	Increase your consumption of carbohydrates during periods of heavy training.
	Match increases in training with increases in resting. (Rest is how the body regenerates.)
	Precede any increase in training load with an increase in strengthening.
	Treat even seemingly minor injuries very carefully to prevent them from becoming a big problem.
	If you experience pain when training, stop your training session immediately.
	Never train hard if you are stiff from the previous effort.
	Pay attention to hydration and nutrition (water before exercise, electrolyte drink during exercise and water after exercise).
	Use appropriate training surfaces.
	Introduce new activities gradually and make sure you are clear on how to perform them safely.
	Allow lots of time for warming up before your workout/activity and cooling off after your workout/activity.
	Monitor daily for signs of fatigue; if in doubt, ease off your workouts for a day or two.

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Minerals Matter – But Are You Getting Enough?

Webster's Dictionary defines minerals as "inorganic substances occurring naturally in the earth and having a consistent and distinctive set of physical properties and a composition that can be expressed by a chemical formula: sometimes applied to substances in the earth of organic origin, such as coal." Even the official definition leaves questions regarding the vital role of minerals in the body.

Minerals are essential for all the chemical processes required for the human body to function properly. All nutrients, such as vitamins, proteins, enzymes, amino acids, carbohydrates, fats, sugars, oils, etc., require minerals for proper cell utility. In fact, minerals play a more important role in our health than do vitamins. While vitamins are required for every bodily biochemical process, they are useless without the presence of minerals.

Minerals are also essential for healing. Tissue rebuilding occurs more easily when the body has access to necessary minerals. Certain minerals are critically necessary to the body. These are known as "trace" minerals and include zinc, iron, magnesium, calcium, selenium, and copper, to name a few.

When it comes to mineral supplements, most are not easily incorporated into the body, either. It's important for mineral supplements to be water-soluble (liquid form is best) and not in rock form, and that the elements be absorbed readily and fully, bringing more oxygen to the blood cells and thereby releasing toxins from the body.

Remember to talk to your doctor before taking any mineral, vitamin or other supplement for the first time, particularly if you are taking prescription or over-the-counter medications.

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