In Good Health

Nutrition's Role in Disease Prevention
Evidence is mounting that a healthful diet can help protect you from some diseases. What you eat -- or don't eat -- may help prevent heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis and type 2 diabetes.

Increase Your Energy Level Through Sleep, Nutrition, Exercise
Instead of popping a pill to restore long-lost vigor, try propping a pillow under your head and getting to bed earlier. More sleep, exercise and better nutrition are the natural path to greater vitality.

Give Your Energy Level a Tune-Up
Eating smaller, healthy meals distributes energy calories more evenly than large meals and keeps your blood sugar normal throughout the day.

Potbellies Warn of Later Problems
The fact is, you might not care as much about looks as your wife does, but that fat around your abdomen is no laughing matter. A man's potbelly often warns of later problems ranging from heart disease to cancer, diabetes, arthritis, back pain, and sleep apnea.

A Guide to Healthier Eating
You should cut back on foods that have only limited nutritional value, that are overprocessed or that contain too much fat, salt, sugar and refined white flour.

Eating the Right Foods for All-Day Energy
If your blood glucose drops too low -- which can happen if you go too long without eating -- you're going to feel lightheaded and lethargic.

Low-Fat BBQ: Cooking as Delicious as It Looks
Barbecuing uses healthy cooking techniques for a low-fat, healthy lifestyle -- especially when compared with frying.

Simple Ways to Improve Your Diet
Eating healthy can reduce your risk of illness and lengthen your life. Eating a balanced, low-fat, low-cholesterol diet reduces your risk of heart disease, certain cancers, diabetes, stroke and other diseases. Follow these tips to help improve your diet.

How to Junk a Junk-Food Diet
Whether you’re trying to maintain a healthy weight or improve your health, junk food can sabotage a worthy effort.

Why Portion Sizes Are Important
Most people are serving-size challenged, thanks to today's large portions: mega-muffins, heaping plates of pasta, behemoth burgers and extra-large bagels.

You Can Be Your Own Fitness Coach
If you don’t have the time or money to meet with a trainer, just hire yourself to get the job done.

Lifting Your Way to Weight Loss
If you've tried a dozen diets but the pounds always sneak back, you may be able to lose them for good by making strength-training an integral part of your weight-loss program.

Exercise Goals for Healthy Living
You know it's important to stay active but still find yourself falling back on old habits. What can you do? Planning for exercise isn't hard if you make it a priority.

Keep Moving to Manage Your Weight
You can lose weight by dieting, exercising, or a combination of both. Including exercise into your daily routine offers other benefits besides weight control.

Using Dumbbells for a Fast and Effective Workout
Dumbbells, one of the most underrated and versatile types of exercise equipment, can help you build strength and muscular endurance.

Give Your Health a Lift
Weight lifting is one of the fastest-growing U.S. fitness activities. And the American Heart Association recently threw its weight behind weight lifting, too.

Walking Works for Everyone
Walking is easy because you can do it almost anywhere and at any time. It also offers a range of health benefits.

Tai Chi: Exercise for Mind and Body
Tai chi is called a mind-body type of exercise because it combines meditation, focused breathing, and physical movement. Because it’s also a low-impact exercise, it may be particularly well suited for older adults, but it’s a beneficial exercise for people of all ages.

Move to the Music: Dancing as Exercise
The benefits of dancing go well beyond heart health and physical fitness. Dancing, especially group dance activities, provides opportunities for people of all ages to be socially and mentally engaged, as well.

Major Depression
You may have depression if you have a persistent sad or "empty" mood, or if you find it difficult to concentrate or make decisions.

Men and Depression
Instead of asking for help, men who are depressed are likely to drink alcohol to excess, take drugs, or become frustrated, discouraged, and irritable.

Depression Not a Normal Part of Aging
In general, only about three percent of the elderly living independently in the community will experience depression. That figure increases to around 20 to 30 percent of persons in nursing homes or with chronic illnesses like emphysema, heart disease or diabetes.

Where to Turn for Mental Health
It's normal to feel stressed or anxious now and then. But it's time to call for help if emotional issues interfere with your life, your job or your personal relationships.

Mental Health: Finding the Help You Need
When your life seems to be spinning out of control, it's OK to seek professional mental health help.

Eating Disorders in Men
Boys and men have eating disorders, too. Males make up 5 to 15 percent of patients with anorexia or bulimia and 35 percent of those with binge-eating disorder.

When Sadness Is Seasonal
If you feel depressed during fall and winter months, you may have a form of depression called seasonal affective disorder (SAD).

Men and Mental Illness
Mental illness can cause different symptoms in men than in women, so some disorders in men may be harder to recognize. Men who are depressed, for example, may appear angry and irritable rather than sad and withdrawn.

Being There: Advice for Expectant Dads
Remember scenes from old movies where the husband paces around the waiting room while his wife is in labor? As a father-to-be today, you know that you can participate throughout your partner's pregnancy.

How to Make Love Last Forever
Keeping your primary relationship healthy, positive, supportive and together isn’t easy. But it can be done.

All Family Time Is Quality Time
Quality time should be woven into our lives. As our children get older and slip away, we need to stop worrying about the extraordinary and think more about the ordinary."

Why the Family Meal Is Important
When a family sits down together, it helps them handle the stresses of daily life and the hassles of day-to-day existence.

Helping Kids Cope with a Divorce
Anger, fear, separation anxiety, a sense of abandonment, self-blame, sadness and embarrassment are common reactions to divorce for most children.

Talking Sex with Your Teen
With studies showing that more than half of America's teenagers have experienced sexual intercourse by the age of 18, educating kids about sex is something all parents need to do.

Knowing When to Seek Treatment
Families, spouses, or friends are often the first to suspect that their loved one is challenged by feelings, behaviors, and/or environmental conditions that cause them to act disruptive, rebellious, or sad.

How to Juggle Home Life and Work Life
No matter how energetic you may be, stretching yourself to the limit every day puts your health and happiness at risk.

Life After Loss: Walking the Path to Wholeness
Whatever the nature of your loss, active grieving can help you get through the following months and years.

Grief and Loss
Grief moves in and out of stages from disbelief and denial, to anger and guilt, to finding a source of comfort, to eventually adjusting to the loss.

Overview of Sleep Problems
Sleep is essential to physical and emotional health. Adequate sleep may also play a role in helping the body recover from illness and injury.

Sleep Apnea
Sleep apnea is a breathing disorder in which a person experiences brief interruptions of breathing during sleep.

Why the Doctor Treats Snoring Seriously
The movies and television depict snoring as funny, even hilarious. But snoring is no joke: It's a medical problem that can have serious health and social implications.

Paybacks for Lost Sleep
Do you have sleep debt? Lack of sleep, or "sleep debt," can leave you feeling tired, listless and sleepy on a daily basis.

Insomnia
If you experience difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, or enjoying a restful night's sleep, you may be suffering from insomnia.

Good Night, Sleep Tight
Insomnia, trouble falling asleep or trouble sleeping, is a growing problem in the United States.

Facing Up to Alcohol in the Workplace
Alcohol-dependent employees incur twice the health care costs of the average employee, are more likely to steal from their employers, are more likely to be involved in workplace accidents and are five times more likely to file worker’s compensation claims.

Break Through the Alcoholic's Psychological Defenses
The most important thing that friends and family can do for an alcoholic is to stop enabling the addictive behavior.

Helping a Friend With an Addiction
When a friend shows signs of abusing alcohol or other drugs, it's hard to know what to do or say.

Helping an Unwilling Alcoholic
You don't have to wait for someone to hit rock bottom to act. Here are steps to help an alcoholic get treatment.

Answers to Your Questions About Codependency
Codependency is an emotional and behavioral condition. It affects a person’s ability to have healthy, mutually satisfying relationships.

Smoking and Cardiovascular Disease
Smokers not only have increased risk of lung disease, including lung cancer and emphysema, but also have increased risk of heart disease, stroke, and oral cancer.

Recognizing Domestic Violence
Domestic violence is behavior someone uses to control a spouse, partner, date or elderly relative through fear and intimidation.

Recognizing a Partner's Emotional Abuse
Physical violence is just one form of domestic abuse. If you have a partner who verbally humiliates you, demands all your attention, blames you for everything that goes wrong or threatens to harm you or your children, you’re also being abused.

Domestic Violence
Abuse often begins with verbal behaviors such as name-calling, threats, and hitting or throwing objects. It can become worse, including pushing, slapping, and holding against the victim's will.

What You Can Do to Prevent Child Abuse
Child abuse can happen in any family and in any neighborhood. Studies have shown that child abuse crosses all boundaries of income, race, ethnic heritage and religious faith.

Understanding Domestic Abuse
Although the most common form of abuse is males abusing female partners, females can abuse male partners, and abuse also takes place in same-sex relationships.

Close the Door on Intimate Partner Violence
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines intimate partner violence as actual or threatened physical or sexual violence, or psychological and emotional abuse, directed at a spouse, former spouse, current or former boyfriend or girlfriend, or dating partner.