Distress Spouse

Diabetes is the main disease which GTF Worldwide Sdn Bhd would like to eradicate. Diabetic patients are often fighting hard to overcome the problems which haunt them now and then, they tried many types of medications and treatments, but very little are aware of the presence of GT&F Products, which are formulated to specially improve diabetes and other related metabolic syndromes. While the patients are trying hard, we often forget about what their spouses (if they have one) are experiencing most of the time.

Melissa M. Franks, an assistant professor of child development and family studies found that spouses of older diabetic patients who are dealing not well with diabetes are suffering from stress as far as diabetes and its management is concerned. Franks mentioned that spouses of diabetic patients always feel the responsibilities they are shouldering all the while when their the other halves are not controlling diabetes as good as expected. After certain moments have passed, the spouses could develop great distress and slowly transforms into depression.

What is more, Franks and colleagues postulated that spouses feel the same way as the diabetic patients do, and thus contribute to the presence of sadness. Researchers also found that when male patients were concerned about the management of their diabetes, their depressive symptoms were elevated more than those for female patients with similar levels of concerns.

To prevent such phenomenon, one of the most useful things to do, is to consume GT&F Products , especially if you are a diabetic patient or a health-conscious person, and of course together with your beloved spouse!

Nutritional Resolutions

A few weeks have passed since the announcement that we have stepped into the brand new year of 2011. Many people, I reckon, have made their personal new year resolutions, and of course, vowed to make their resolutions no longer a dream, but a reality within this year. This post is also serves as a reminder to some readers whom have made their resolutions that, "Hey, you've got some resolutions to fulfill!" Among the very common new year resolutions, are those which you can see in the picture above. But for those who have yet made any resolutions for yourself, you can try this very exclusive new year resolution out which The GTF Team is about to tell you, and what is more, it comes with some guidance too.

As how the title implies, this post is all about the healthy eating resolution. Besides treating "losing weight" as one of the outcomes of this resolution, more importantly is to have a healthier body this time around. A registered dietitian from Porter Adventist Hospital, Britanny Glassett explained that to achieve a healthy-eating goal this year, making a S-M-A-R-T decision is very important. S-M-A-R-T consists of Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely. In other words, instead of reminding yourself that you need to eat better this year, you should making more specific promises to yourself, such as only have one fast food meal once in every two months.

Other than that, there are 5 simple changes which could bring you drastic differences. The first is none other than reducing the intake of carbohydrates. Instead of taking in carbohydrates, replace them with whole grain products. Not only whole grain products contain large amount of heart-friendly substances, vitamins and minerals, they are also able to make you full without taking in much carbohydrates. As a consequence, weight-losing becomes very feasible.

The second thing which you could consider is about adding more colors into your meals. By saying adding more colors, it does not refer to adding more food additives like those unhealthy coloring, but mix up more leafy green vegetables and fruits into your meals. Those are great antioxidant sources! You could tell yourself to try a new fruit/vegetable a month, through this, you would have also learn the existence of 12 different foods which you have never approached before in your lifetime.

Breakfast might be a routine for many people, but it can be also just a skippable meal for many people. For those who skip breakfast regularly, the cancellation of this routine is strongly recommended. If you skip breakfast most of the time, treat this as one of your new year resolution. Breakfast is so important that it could determine whether you live your day lively or dull like a the mud.

Next up, it is high time now for you to change the oil you use in the kitchen. Though we know that dining at home is so much better than having the foods outside as it can be very healthy (depends on the cooking-style), but we should also know that most households use vegetable oils to cook. Vegetable oil contains Omega-6 fatty acids, which can be found excessively in an American diet, and it is no good as it causes inflammations and other diseases in human body. Instead of using vegetable oil, canola or olive oil are the better choices.

If you are a person who is keen to writing stuffs, keeping a food diary can be a useful tool for you this year. Many studies show that those who write in a food diary to keep track about their very own food journals proved to have higher chances in achieving their weight management goals.

Fight Monday Blues

To every working individuals, whenever Friday arrives, bad mood will somehow being elevated from the bottom of the heart to cloud nine. Almost everybody, from this point onwards, will have high EQ, and see things very differently as they are especially across the weekdays. Flowers seemed to be much more prettier on Friday and Saturday. When when Sunday comes, marvelous mood that they experience on Friday and Saturday would suddenly fell from heaven back to the hell, just because they could foresee the arrival of Monday. So what does it take for you to smile all the way, from Sunday night to Thursday night?

ITV Daybreak's Health Editor and Alzheimer's Society supporter, Dr Hilary Jones mentioned his top 5 tips about how to keep your mind and soul happy as you want across the whole week. The very first tip that he gave, was all about exercising. This one is especially important if you stay firm with your own goal. If you have a goal on completing some new regimes with exercising, it is much easier for you to implement. Exercises such as running not only can lift your mood, it can also improve your well-being.

The second is none other than showing kindness to other people. Showing kindness including helping people out with their own problems, support them whenever they need someone besides them, and a lot more. Not only it does help improving people's mood, it also elevates yours too! Other than that, individuals who received your help will also remember the kindness you offered them. The birth of new friendship or the extension of current friendship to greater heights can also be expected, by simply showing some kindness!

By making contacts with the nature, such as viewing a magnificent panoramic view of a green and leafy garden, with the presence of blue sky, and deep blue ocean, this can also elevate your current inferior mood. What is more, such experience is said to have even the same effects comparing taking in prescribed drugs to treat certain mental distress.

More to come, as the saying goes, "laughter is the best medicine". Yes, indeed, it can be the greatest medicine ever to cure your moody situations. Whenever you're feeling low and down, it is high time for you to go out for a comedy night, a hilarious show or movie, or just simply hang out with a bunch of wacky friends whom you think they are capable enough to make you laugh out loud. Laughing causes the stimulation of endorphin, substance which reduces stress. Sometimes these really are the best medicines.

Last but not least, is the B-A-N-A-N-A, banana, monkeys' symbolic food. There was once a story for the kids, mentioning that why monkey likes to jump all over and can be so happily living with its community, is because of the power of bananas. Is that true? Scientifically speaking, it is true enough. Banana contains tryptophan, which in turns will stimulate the serotonin hormones, also known as the happiness hormones. So go and grab some when Sunday comes, it might come in handy.

Daily Steps Matter

There was a time in those early mornings where I noticed many people were brisk walking. This activity somehow motivated the inner me and encouraged me to join the crew. Days after that, I decided to give it a try, and I started to join the league of brisk walking. When I started my new routine back then, I asked one of the comrades about his purpose of doing this every morning without fail. He told me, "Brisk walking is good in burning off those fats that you can see under my arms." That was the answer, simple and modest.

Without a doubt, brisk walking, or simply walking, can definitely burn the excessive adipose fats that you would not want to store, provided that you achieve certain number of steps per day. In one of the latest study which published on bmj.com, taking more steps everyday now not only helps ward off obesity, but also reduced the risk of diabetes.

That's right. Many other studies shown that physical activity could reduce body mass index effectively, but at the same time, it also improve insulin resistance. Just in case you do not know about it, insulin resistance is an early stage in the development of diabetes. Hence, if taking more steps in a day could really help improving insulin resistance, such activity is worthy to be investigated long-term in future studies.

The research, which was conducted in Melbourne, involved some 592 middle aged adults in order to map diabetes levels across Australia from 2000 to 2005. These participants were given pedometer and were taught the way to use it. Throughout these studies, lifestyle factors like diet, alcohol consumption and smoking were taken into account.

There was a saying that if an individual meets the target of 10,000 daily steps, his or her health condition can be improved drastically. This appears to be very true as far as this study is concerned. The author of this study estimate that, if a sedentary person is able to change his or her lifestyle and meets the popular 10,000 daily steps, the individual would have a threefold improvement in insulin sensitivity.

Be Positive!

Developing a good EQ (Emotional Quotient) in an individual requires the person to be happy all the time, in other words, one should be positive, optimistic all the time in order to have high EQ. But teens these days, many tend to be inferior as long as temper and pessimism are put into the picture. In the study, "A Prospective Study of the Effects of Optimism on Adolescent Health Risks" which published in the February 2011 issue of Pediatrics, it shows that how a teen behave, their mental health condition really makes a difference when they grow older, especially against the onset of depressive symptoms.

This study involved some 5,634 students who were in their adolescent years, where the age range was from 12-14 years old. Several factors were considered in this study, such as optimistic thinking style, emotional problems, substance use and antisocial behaviors. From the results, it is surprising that boys appeared to have more stable in optimism, but in the contrary, girls were the ones who had marked falls in optimism across the study.

This phenomenon really needs to be taken into deep consideration as the youngsters are the future leaders of our society, our country, and hence, their condition, especially this one which concerns depression, should be strongly focused on. Those who were reported to have high level of optimism appeared to be protective in terms of health risks, and interestingly, those who are high in optimism level reported to have only almost half the risks of the least optimistic in developing depression in the future. Other than heath issues, optimism was also said to be protective against the onset of certain activities such as substance abuse, interpersonal violence, theft and vandalism.

Diet of Mental Energy

Some kids would think to themselves, "can I bend the stainless steel utensils with my mind?", "can I get hold of the cup without needing to enter the kitchen?", and then they claim that they could attain such kind of power, an extraordinary mind power. Consequently, they would sometimes nag their dad to buy some power source for them to acquire these new mental energy.

But come on, we know that those situations above can only be seen in many Hollywood sci-fi movies, and they are known as telekinesis, and they have got nothing to do with the mental energy we are talking about today (better tell that to your kids in case they are thinking the same thing :) ).

When mental energy is put into the picture, there are basically three different categories which we can break up into. The first would be mood (transient feelings about the presence of fatigue or energy), motivation (determination and enthusiasm), as well as cognition (sustained attention and vigilance). These three therefore forms what we everyday experience mentally.

In the past, there are four famous food sources which we could relate to the contribution of mental energy, and they are ginkgo biloba, ginseng, glucose and omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA). All these four are said to have effects in causing drastic improvement in human's mental health.

Life Sciences Research Organization, Inc. (LSRO), however has published a review article on the foursome, and about their effects on mental energy. From the article, ginkgo biloba appears to have strongest evidence to have effects on certain aspects of mood and attention in healthy subjects, while omega-3 PUFA has strong associations with reduced risk of age-related cognitive decline.

All About Depression & Others

Recently in the United States, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had a somewhat discouraging results when they screened U.S. adults for depression. The probability of a person getting depression is 0.1, in other words, one in ten U.S. citizens has depression. When the word depression comes into the mind, people could just thought of the sad emotion one experiences. But depression is much more than just negative feelings that one feels, it contains even more than you could think of.

Other than affecting badly the quality of life of somebody, depression can also impacts an individual's physical health. Everybody knows this one. But what exactly could depression turn into when it is left untreated? CDC reported that untreated depression can adversely impact the outcome of such chronic conditions such as asthma, cancer (yes, even cancer), diabetes, obesity and arthritis. When the condition worsens, it could even transform into short-term disability.

So how do we know when one experiences depression? Beware and pay extra attention when symptoms below appear:

- Persistent sadness and the feelings of emptiness

- Acts pessimistic, hopelessly

- Lost of interest in normal activities

- Sudden decrease in energy and quick fatigue

- Difficulties in concentrating and making decisions

- Excessive sleeping or insomnia

- Loses appetite or over-eating

- Suicidal thoughts

- Weird aches that would not ease with treatment