To Your Health! A SPECIAL SECTION OF THE RIVERTOWNS ENTERPRISE
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OCTOBER 4, 2013
BALANCE THE KEY TO GOOD HEALTH
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By JENNIFER EPEL MULLER
ow do you know if you’re healthy? With health fads all around us and the cultural message that thinness is everything obscuring our view of health, it’s easy to get confused about what it actually means to get healthy. Should you drink kale juice? Go gluten-free? Eliminate all high fructose corn syrup from your diet? How do you find time to exercise and how do you deal with the stress of finding time to exercise? Two Westchester nutritionists think of health in terms of how you feel. “There’s a medical way of defining health, which would be having a normal blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides, blood sugar,” said Karen Dolins, a White Plains-based nutrition consultant and exercise physiologist. “But there’s also a sense of well-being that goes along with health. People are likely to come to me because they feel fatigued, they don’t feel energetic, they don’t feel the way they want to feel. I think the most common thing I hear from people is that they want to have more energy.” Balance is the key, said Erica Leon, a registered dietitian and nutritionist who practices in Ardsley and White Plains. “One has to assume responsibility for the quality of one’s life, to shape a healthy lifestyle,” she said. “It’s finding a balance between healthy eating, getting adequate exercise, sleep and managing stress. It’s important to have pleasurable activity and companionship. I work with people whose lives are out of balance in many ways.” One important way to get more of a healthy balance into your diet is to make sure you’re eating the right amount of food at the right time of day. “Lots of the time, people will eat more energy than their body needs at one time of day, and less at another time of day, and that’ll cause them to gain weight and feel sluggish,” Dolins said. “People think of calories as bad things, but calories can be thought of as how much gas is in your gas tank. Clearly people aren’t going to go around adding up their calories all day long, but if they’re eating most of their calories at the end of the day, they should be aware of it. Roughly, you should be eating similar amounts in the morning, afternoon and evening. We do best if we have something to eat approximately every three or four hours.” This kind of balance can help ward off the 4 p.m. slump that many people experience. Another type of dietary balance is in your effort to make healthier choices, to make sure you aren’t too rigid and leave room for the variety of food situations that life throws at you. Leon said, “There Continued
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EXPERTS WEIGH IN
Best fitness advice… in 50 words or less INSIDE HEALTH... Getting the skinny on e-cigarettes ........ 2A Counteracting chronic pain................... 3A The better to hear you with: Procedures, for adult hearing loss........ 4A Partners in Lyme: Other tick-borne diseases pose local threat .................... 6A Living in a gluten-free world ................. 8A Health tips: Fighting allergies ......... 12A Shingles vaccine ................................. 14A Health notes ........................................ 16A
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s a runner, I discovered that indoor cycling was a great high intensity, low impact cross training option for me. When your bike is set up specifically for you, using correct form and having the right resistance for sitting, standing, sprinting and jumping collectively will ensure a great, safe workout. Patricia Straub, Spincredible Indoor Cycling, Ardsley
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tretching will not only make you feel better, improve posture and help prevent injury, it will make you stronger. When a muscle is tight it doesn’t function as efficiently. Consequently it will fatigue quicker, resulting in less productivity. When stretching hold for a minimum 30-60 seconds. Longer is always better. Joseph Frisenda Push Personal Training, Irvington
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he best way to stick to your fitness plan is to schedule workouts in advance. Be specific with goals and how to achieve them. We build from our habits, so make fitness part of your regular routine. Find a workout you love to do and it’ll never feel like work. Tanya Becker, Physique 57, S carsdale Continued
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