Your Health is in Your Hands
By now all the enthusiastic New Year’s Resolutions have fallen by the way-side, collecting dust bunnies beside the gym bag in the back of the closet.
Don’t despair! Every new day is another chance: another chance to take a step in the right direction towards taking better care of your body. Make a commitment to improving your health. Try one thing each week towards improving your health. Read more 
What Are Flavonoids?
Why flavonoids are good for you, and what foods you’ll find them in
Benefits of Flavonoids
Flavonoids are plant-based compounds with powerful antioxidant properties, which means they reduce inflammation, promote healthy arteries, and help fight aging by preventing — and repairing — cellular damage. Flavonoids may also protect against dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and some cancers.
Recommended Amount: How Much You Need
Get your fill of flavonoids by eating plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables every day — we recommend four servings of fruit and five servings of veggies. Tea, red wine, and dark chocolate also contain flavonoids, but that’s not a green light to overindulge. Limit wine to a glass a day for women, two for men; and limit chocolate to a couple of small squares — about an ounce.
A Remedy for Ear Ringing
Are your ears ringing? Then you might want to take a break from your cell phone.
As cell phone ownership has surged in recent years, so have questions about how extended use may affect health. One new potential impact researchers have discovered? Tinnitus — a little-understood condition that causes distracting ringing, buzzing, humming, or other low-level sounds in the ears.
Ring, Ring . . .
In a recent study, researchers examined a group of people who already had tinnitus, as well as a group of people of a similar age who didn’t. And after doing ear exams and hearing tests and surveying people about their cell habits and history, researchers discovered that the risk of tinnitus was about 71 percent higher among people who used their mobile phones at least 10 minutes a day. The odds of having the condition were also doubled in people who’d been using a cell phone for at least 4 years.
Stay Tuned
It’s one of the first studies on the topic, and much more research is needed to confirm whether cell phones definitely play a role in tinnitusdevelopment. But researchers theorize that exposing the cochlea and auditory pathway to microwave energy for prolonged periods of time might not do our ears any favors. Still, a number of things are believed to contribute to tinnitus, including environmental noise exposure, so it’s not clear how significant cell phone use might be in the grand scheme of things. If you’d like to limit your cell phone use anyway, try a hands-free device or consider a landline for extended calls.
How Four Legs Can Help you Stay Fit
Got a dog? Or know someone close by who does? Great! Then grab the leash and become a regular dog walker. Read more
