Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Diabetes
This post originally appeared on the Friedman Diabetes Institute blog.
With the holidays comes food. Everywhere! At the annual office party and family get-togethers. At neighborhood gatherings and holiday celebrations. Add holiday stress, traveling and a ridiculously long to-do list — that does not include trips to the gym — and any diet will suffer. FDI nutritionist Lynn Polmanteer has some tips to help manage this time of intense eating.
Stay active! Even though it’s a busy time of year, it’s important to fit exercise into each day. Try not to break your routine. If you usually go for a 10- to 20-minute walk in the morning, continue doing this. Instead of sitting on the couch after a holiday celebration, grab your coat and go for a walk with your family and friends. Walking after eating can help to bring down your postprandial blood sugar; you’ll simultaneously burn a few calories, too!
Don’t drink your calories. Keep your nonalcoholic drinks calorie- and carbohydrate-free. Choose water, seltzer or diet soda instead of juice or regular soda. If you drink alcohol, do so in moderation: one drink for women and two drinks for men. Beer, wine and alcohol all contain calories, so if you’re watching your weight it’s wise to be mindful of this. If you drink hard liquor, be careful what you mix it with. Avoid the sugary mixers: Chose diet tonic, diet soda, club soda or seltzer instead of regular tonic, juice or regular soda.
Follow the Plate Method. Check out what is being served before you fill up your plate. Remember you want half of your plate to be vegetables, one-quarter of your plate to be carbohydrates and one-quarter of your plate to be protein. Holiday meals are often carbohydrate-filled, so pick a couple of your favorites and keep the portions small.
Don’t skip meals. If you skip breakfast and lunch, you’ll probably overeat at dinner. We suggest having a small snack before going to your friend’s or family’s house. This will prevent you from overindulging on the heavy appetizers.
Don’t overdo it on the desserts. Have smaller portions of the other carbohydrates — mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing — to allow for a little bit of dessert. Keep in mind that the first bite or two is the best, so either have a small slice or split a piece with someone. And, most important, keep the focus on friends and family instead of food. Isn’t that what the holidays are all about?
Share how you stay out of eating “trouble” during the holiday.
(Parts of this blog were previously posted in Lynn Polmanteer’s column on Healthline)
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Safety
Now is the time of year that holiday celebrations begin in earnest. When families, coworkers, club members or friends get together, there is sure to be a wide range of alcoholic refreshments.
It’s also a time to make smart choices about drinking and driving. With national strict enforcement of drunk driving laws, lower legal limits for consumption of alcoholic beverages and lack of driver education about acceptable drinking limits while driving, here are some guidelines to help: (more…)
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Health Tips
Susan Bowers-Johnson, MD, Attending Physician at Mount Sinai Beth Israel explains how you can avoid getting sick this winter.
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Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Your Health
My name is Loren Ridinger and I was diagnosed with and underwent brain surgery for a brain aneurysm, all within a couple months. I am so grateful to Mount Sinai, Dr. Joshua Bederson, and Dr. Aman Patel for saving my life; for saving my life; over 30,000 people die each year from ruptured aneurysms and I could have been one of them if it wasn’t for this hospital and its amazing doctors.
Don’t settle for less than the best when it comes to your health. You have to be your biggest advocate – there is nothing more important! Be persistent! I had learned to live with vertigo for years because every doctor I went to said there was “nothing wrong” with me. Remember that they are practitioners, not perfect, and only you know what’s happening to your body. After demanding an MRI and then an MRA (similar to an MRI except it focuses on your arteries) and learning that I had an 8.5 mm aneurysm of my internal carotid artery behind my left eye, I went from doctor to doctor and different hospitals trying to figure out what came next.
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Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Research
Personalized Medicine is a rapidly evolving approach to patient care that incorporates an individual’s genetic information into a customized prevention or treatment plan. Mapping a person’s total genetic makeup or whole genome sequencing has created mountains of data about variations in our human genetic code. As this experience has grown, some of these variations have been linked to risks for certain diseases, or in some cases the likelihood that a person will respond to a particular treatment. Individuals may now submit a DNA sample and obtain their genetic sequence with accompanying risk association analysis for a few hundred dollars. Can this technology however be harnessed to drive better outcomes for patients diagnosed with cancer? Many clinicians and scientists argue that we are not there yet.
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