JustCare

Tag: Health

  • How to stay young? Travel

    How to stay young? Travel

    Fall is in the air and, before long, many Americans will be bracing themselves for the cold or planning a trip to warmer climes. According to a new study, that trip could slow the aging process, Andrea Sachs reports for The Washington Post.

    Researchers at Edith Cowan University looked at the benefits of travel and found that travel is a way to stay young. How could that be, you might wonder? Well, in many cases, travel means social interactions, activity, and good feelings. Travel also activates your mind.

    In short, travel satisfies important health needs. When you take a fun trip, it’s good for your body’s “low entropy,” slowing the aging process. It engages you mentally and socially. It often exposes you to the outdoors, lowering your stress level and improving your mood. It gets you walking. All of these positive aspects of travel can keep you young.

    Travel is also somehow associated with healthy eating. The theory is that you eat better when you’re traveling. And, the latest research reinforces what we already know, eating a healthy diet is good for your health. In the study, which took place over 25 years, more than 25,000 women reduced their risk of dying by eating a healthy diet.

    According to the researchers in Australia, travel is good for lots of people, including people who are not in great shape. Travel can slow down or stop a worsening health condition, promoting quality of life.

    Keep in mind that all travel is not good for your health. The “wrong” travel can endanger your health, creating health issues. A bad travel experience or destination could lead to danger and disease or aggravate a person’s anxiety.

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  • Skip the alcohol, try a nonalcoholic drink

    Skip the alcohol, try a nonalcoholic drink

    Sitting down with a cocktail at the end of the day is no longer the norm for many people. Dana G. Smith reports for The New York Times that nonalcoholic drinks are taking off in the “alcohol” market. In the year between 2022 and 2023, sales of nonalcoholic beverages rose 32 percent. Given the health risks of alcohol, try a nonalcoholic drink.

    Americans are drinking far less alcohol than ever before. Sales in the alcohol market are up just one percent. Whole Foods sold more nonalcoholic beer in 2024 than alcoholic beer.

    Alcohol is not good for our health. So, why not switch to nonalcoholic beverages? Without the alcohol, there’s no worry about harm to your liver or toxins that increase your risk of cancer.

    Many nonalcoholic drinks today tend to taste a lot like their alcoholic counterparts but have less than a half of one percent alcohol content. Companies can remove the alcohol through filtration and distillation or an altered fermentation process that prevents the sugars from becoming alcohol.

    Other nonalcoholic drinks might have hibiscus tea as their primary ingredient and taste less like alcohol. I like to make a mocktail at the end of the day with some ginger syrup, fresh juice, seltzer water and mint. Not only is the mocktail healthier than alcohol, it has far fewer calories!

    People who should stay away from any alcohol are better off avoiding the nonalcoholic drinks and sticking to mocktails, where you know what’s going into them. If you buy prepared nonalcoholic drinks, check the ingredients. Some of these drinks have CBD, THC or ashwagandha.

    Bottom line: If you have not yet tried a nonalcoholic beverage, go for it. Drink it instead of one alcoholic drink or all alcoholic drinks each week. Any reduction in your consumption of alcoholic beverages is a benefit to your health.

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  • Tips for a healthy brain

    Tips for a healthy brain

    Everyone wants a healthy brain, a brain that functions well. Ayana Underwood, a neurologist, writes for Self on what people can do for the health of their brain. The National Institute on Aging also offers tips.

    You want your brain to do a good job in helping you think, learn and recall information. That’s cognitive health. You want your brain to help with your motor functions, so you have good balance and can control the way you move. A healthy brain can also help you regulate your emotions. And, it can allow you to experience touch, such as pain and other physical sensations.

    How can you strengthen your brain health? Underwood explains that your brain powers all your daily activities, be it exercise, cooking, socializing or reading. Your brain literally controls your body. The question becomes how to tend to your brain so that it is as functional as possible for as long as possible.

    Try new things: Engage your brain. That’s how to ensure you have strong neural pathways. Learning something new and challenging requires your brain to rely on new systems, which can keep your brain healthy, possibly even working to counter Alzheimer’s disease and memory loss.

    Do something challenging: You might try learning a new musical instrument. To me, that sounds daunting. But, apparently, playing music offers extra benefits, including helping memory function and adaptive functions. You could also take up painting or dancing or learn a language or master the art of baking.

    Learn a new skill to keep your mind active. You can practice your new skill as you please, but engage yourself. Do it as often as makes sense. You could see memory improvements and feel better.

    How do these mental challenges work? You build protein–a myelin sheath–around your nerves. This myelin sheath helps your brain process and send information more easily.

    The National Institute on Aging recommends a broader approach to what you can do to improve brain health. In addition to keeping an active mind, manage your stress, keep socially active, be physically active, eat healthy, manage your blood pressure, don’t smoke or drink too much alcohol.

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  • Roundup: Your doctors and your health

    Roundup: Your doctors and your health

    Some doctors are a lot better than other doctors. As you get older, it’s especially important that you and your loved ones have doctors who listen to you, who do not undertreat or overtreat you, and who work with you to think through your health care wishes and your treatment options. These days, many doctors are looking at their computers and their watches during the patient’s visit, and those doctors should be avoided at all costs. Here’s a bunch of things to think about as a caregiver and as a patient:

    Take care of your health:

    Choose your doctors carefully:

    Make the most of your doctor’s visit:

    Speeding your recovery:

  • People with low incomes struggle to access care in US

    People with low incomes struggle to access care in US

    The United States rations care based on ability to pay, creating severe health inequities. People with low incomes in the US are more likely to suffer from chronic conditions and struggle to access care than people in other wealthy nations. The Commonwealth Fund found income-related disparities are prevalent in nearly all 11 high-income countries it studied, but health disparities based on income are the worst in the US. 

    People with low incomes in the US suffered from greater income-related disparities than people in the other 10 countries. In the US, more than one in three people with low-incomes has at least two chronic conditions. Other advanced nations also indicate greater chronic conditions among people with low incomes.

    That said, in the US, about one in three people with low incomes suffer from anxiety or depression, more than every other country except Australia and Canada. People in Germany and Switzerland were least likely to suffer from anxiety and depression. Fewer than one in six of them suffer from these conditions.

    Disparities based on income in the US are evident in all key aspects of life. More than one in four (28 percent) people with low incomes worry about their ability to pay for housing, food and other fundamental needs. In other countries studied, between six and 22 percent reported these worries.

    One in two people in the US with a lower income skip care, including visits to the doctor, tests, treatments and prescription drugs because of how much it costs. In other advanced nations such as Germany, Norway, the UK and France, around one in eight people with low incomes skip care because of how much it costs.

    More than any other advanced nation, people in the US struggle to pay bills for their health care. More than one in three people with lower incomes in the US (36 percent) face difficulty. In other nations, between one in six and one in 14 face difficulty.

    In the US, many adults with low incomes don’t have a primary care doctor or place to go to get their care. And, only about 40 percent of them are able to get care the day or day after they try to get it. In Germany and the Netherlands, more than 60 percent of people can get same day or next day care.

    And, just 58 percent of people with low incomes in the US are able to get care after hours. Forty-five percent of Americans with low incomes go to the emergency room for needed care in cases in which they could have simply gone to the doctor’s office had they had access to a doctor.

    Health care is a human right. Everyone regardless of income in the US, the wealthiest country in the world. should be able to go to the doctor and get the care they need without worry about the cost. Shouldn’t the US do at least as well by its citizens as New Zealand, Germany and Japan?

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