Bad sleep habits may set you up for poor blood sugar control. Sleeping for less than 6 hours or more than 9 hours per night was associated with an increased risk of diabetes in a recent study. These same poor sleep habits also were linked to impaired glucose tolerance, a condition marked by higher-than-normal blood sugar levels. Aim for 6 to 8 hours of sleep per night.

A recent study revealed that sleep deprivation reduces levels of leptin, an appetite-suppressing hormone. If you have trouble sleeping, practice good sleep hygiene: go to bed at the same time every night, avoid caffeine or large meals late in the evening, exercise regularly earlier in the day, sleep in a cool, dark room, and unwind before bedtime.

Add a good night's sleep to your checklist of helpful weight-loss aids. Sleep deprivation interferes with appetite-suppressing hormones, increases stress hormone levels, and decreases a person's glucose tolerance, all of which may contribute to weight gain. Another way sleep loss may help pile on the pounds: late-night munching. Go to bed and get up at the same time each day to help achieve sounder sleep.

Mind Meltdown
Brain scans of sleep-deprived people performing gambling tasks showed something quite revealing: The orbitofrontal cortex, an area that aids in learning from a loss or a bad decision, was less active. Researchers suspect that poor sleep, besides prompting risky behaviors, hinders the brain's ability to process emotions, such as regret. The result? You're less likely to think about the consequences of a decision. This leads to poor nutrition choices!

Overweight and obese adults are more likely to report skimping on sleep compared to people with healthy body mass indexes.

Shortchanging yourself on ZZZs makes your heart work harder.

Here's how: When you sleep, your body goes into a lower blood pressure mode. But too little time in this low-key state can eventually lead to high blood pressure. So set the list aside and give your heart a little holiday instead.

If you've traded sleep time for to-do lists, tight deadlines, or fretful toddlers, you're like most people over 30 who are getting historically low levels of sleep. One study of people aged 32 to 59 found that those who got fewer than 5 hours of sleep a night for several years were twice as likely to develop hypertension as people who got a healthy 7 or 8 hours each night.

Cutting back on a full night's sleep again and again comes back at you in several ways:

• It deprives you of the time when your blood pressure is lower.
• It means you spend more time dealing with stress instead of resting.
• And salt retention, a well-known contributor to high blood pressure, may increase with sleep deprivation.

Frozen, fresh, or cooked veggies?

You'd think that boiling veggies would suck the nutrients right out of them. But in the case of carrots and broccoli, that may not be so.

Seems that lightly boiling these two veggies can actually increase the concentration of carotenoids. The downside? It also depletes their phenolic compounds.

Steaming may be your best bet for both preserving phenolic compounds and boosting bioavailable carotenoids -- at least for broccoli. For carrots, you'll have to choose what's more important to you.

Whatever cooking method you choose for your veggies, keep in mind that frying or sauteing kills off the most antioxidant compounds.

Try out these other tips and tricks to make your veggies extra nutritious:

• Skip the thaw. Cooking straight from frozen retains more vitamin C.
• Spice them up. Adding cumin, ginger, and sage, rosemary, marjoram, and thyme will boost the antioxidant punch of both raw and cooked veggies.

Fresh is best when it really is farm-fresh and ripe. However, many commercial fruits and veggies are picked before peak ripeness -- which also means before their nutritional peak -- to avoid spoilage during transport and storage. And just a few days after harvest, fruits and vegetables begin to lose some of their nutritive goodness. What's more, the longer they sit on the shelf -- during transport, in the supermarket, and in your fridge -- the fewer nutrients they have left to pass on to you.

On the other hand, fruits and vegetables intended for freezing are usually picked closer to the peak of ripeness and are flash-frozen immediately after harvest. The processing does deplete some nutrients, but it locks in the rest for up to 12 months. So in some instances, frozen fruits and veggies may actually have more of the vitamins and minerals your body needs.

Numerous studies show that getting more of the omega-3 fatty acid called DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) in your diet may boost your mood and your brainpower. Even people battling tough-to-treat depression may feel as much as 50% better when they get lots of DHA. To keep your chin cheerfully up, aim for 200 milligrams (mg) of DHA a day. 1 Farm egg (150 mg)

Spinach is full of folate, a B vitamin that's a must for making feel-good serotonin. Like DHA, folate may help ease depression, according to researchers.

· Add a 10-ounce packet of frozen chopped spinach to soups, stews, and casseroles, homemade or not.
· Use spinach instead of lettuce in sandwiches and wraps.

Eating lutein-rich spinach every day for six months was enough to improve the vision of people already suffering from AMD.

Lutein and Zeaxanthinis found in high amounts in:

• Kale and spinach
• Turnip and collard greens
• Romaine lettuce
• Broccoli
• Zucchini
• Brussels sprouts

There is about 0.25 mg of lutein in each egg yolk -- in a highly absorbable nearly ideal form. Egg yolks also have zeaxanthin in an equal amount.

Quite simply, the lutein in egg yolks is superior because it is more easily absorbed by your body. A study in the Journal of Nutrition even proved this.

Your Mother Was Right -- and Wrong -- About Washing Fruits and Vegetables

Soaking your food in water saturated with ozone will not only selectively kill all the microbes on your produce BUT, and more importantly for most of us, it will break down all the pesticides that are on the outside of the vegetables.

Ozone, unlike radiation or chemicals, will not damage the vitality of the produce you are going to consume. This is FAR safer than soaking your produce in bleach, which while it will work, is clearly toxic to you.

Ozone can be toxic if you breathe it in large quantities, but when it is dissolved in water and acting on the vegetables, it is completely harmless.

The name of the product is the Lotus Sanitizing System. You can pick up this handy, device at Amazon for a little over $100.

OR soak your vegetables in water from a www.wetcooler.com water cooler.

The FDA is Pushing Dangerous and Damaging Ways to Sanitize Foods

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been considering irradiation since 1999. What exactly is irradiation?

Irradiated foods are exposed to a radiant energy source such as gamma rays or electron beams, which create positive and negative charges. This process disrupts the genetic material of living cells, which kills pathogens, insects and just about anything. The process also extends the shelf-life of foods, as the FDA boasts that “irradiated strawberries stay unspoiled up to three weeks, versus three to five days for untreated berries.”

Irradiation Also Destroys Nutrients

It says so right on the FDA’s Web site:

“The process [irradiation] may cause a small loss of nutrients but no more so than with other processing methods such as cooking, canning, or heat pasteurization.”

Raw foods rule! The moment you cook, heat, pasteurize or irradiate most food you lose a major element of its vitality. The energetic element of food -- such as biophoton nutrition -- is largely undervalued in the United States, and the only way to get it is from raw foods.

Meanwhile, when foods are cooked or heated:

• Nutrients, like vitamins, minerals, and amino acids are depleted, destroyed, and altered.

• The biochemical structure and nutrient makeup of the food is altered from its original state. Molecules in the food are deranged, degraded, and broken down.

• The interrelationship of nutrients is altered from its natural synergistic makeup.

• All of the digestive-friendly enzymes present in raw foods are destroyed.

So imagine what would happen if ALL food, including your fresh produce, was irradiated before it reached your hands. These once lively and health-giving foods would be, literally, dead. And they would not provide the health benefits that raw, natural foods are known for.

Well, There Was That Spinach Scare

You remember, back in 2006, during which all spinach was pulled from store shelves.

Well, the researchers that are behind the above study are using that as a springboard to suggest that irradiation is necessary for fruits and vegetables.

A similar thing happened after a couple of salmonella outbreaks in 2001 and 2004 were traced back to raw almonds. The USDA then announced that they would require all raw almonds to be pasteurized. Now, if you want to buy truly raw almonds, you have to get them from a grower overseas.

So if the idea of irradiating fresh produce sounds like a long-shot, it may not be so far off. The USDA is applying its flawed logic once again, and suggesting that since it is possible to become sick from a raw food, you had best kill everything on it (good or bad) before you eat it.

You Can Avoid Irradiated Foods

For now, food that is irradiated must be labeled as such (except for spices, which are usually irradiated and not labeled). This may not be the case for long, however, as the FDA is considering allowing some irradiated foods to simply be labeled as pasteurized.

For now, though, keep a look out for foods labeled as "treated with radiation," "treated by irradiation,” or that contain the international symbol for irradiation, the radura:
 

Remember that what’s needed to keep your food supply safe is not a hefty dose of irradiation. What are needed are healthy animals and non-toxic growing practices. So if you want to find food that is safe for you and your family, avoid the symbol above like the plague, and buy your food from a local farmer near you who still takes pride in raising food the healthy “old-fashioned” way -- no irradiation required.

If the FDA gets its way, as long as the food looks and smells normal, chances are better than good you won't know whether that specific food has been "nuked" or not.

Rightly so, consumer groups aren't at all happy with the proposal that "would deny consumers clear information about whether they are buying food that has been exposed to high doses of ionizing radiation," according to Food & Water Watch. Industry groups like the Grocery Manufacturers/ Food Products Association are elated about it, however, considering the irradiated label has such a negative impact on consumers it acts like "a warning label."

Well, it should be a warning label!

Research has revealed a wide range of problems in animals that eat irradiated food, including premature death, a rare form of cancer, reproductive dysfunction, chromosomal abnormalities, liver damage, and vitamin deficiencies. Irradiation also destroys vitamins, disrupts the chemical composition of food, and masks and even encourages filthy conditions in slaughterhouses and food-processing plants.

All the more reason you should stay away from processed foods entirely, restrict your meat choices to grass-fed or organic meats and seek out local sources for the foods you eat.

Good Reason to Go Organic
According to John La Puma, MD -- RealAge expert and author of the new book ChefMD's Big Book of Culinary Medicine -- going organic with these 12 fruits and veggies could cut your exposure to pesticides as much as 90 percent!

Fruits

o                                         Peaches and nectarines

o                                         Strawberries and cherries

o                                         Apples and pears

o                                         Imported grapes

Veggies

o                                         Spinach and lettuce

o                                         Potatoes and celery

o                                         Sweet bell peppers

The Vitamin That Could Add Years to Your Life

If there were an Olympics for anti aging nutrients, vitamin D would have a good shot at the gold medal. Here's why: Scientists recently examined how blood levels of vitamin D affect aging on a cellular level. High intake was associated with as much as 5 fewer years of chromosome aging!

New Wonder Vitamin
D seems to be particularly relevant to a cellular yardstick of aging called a telomere. These "end caps" on your chromosomes get shorter and shorter with age, but having high blood levels of vitamin D seems to help ensure longer telomeres. That's a good thing, because when telomeres get really short and disappear, cells stop dividing and start to die. Translation: You age and become more vulnerable to disease.

Every time a cell reproduces, the telomere gets a little shorter. Over time, once the protective covering on the tip wears away, your DNA shoelace begins to fray. The cell stops dividing and can no longer replenish your body. Each time a telomere retires, you age a little.

So, get this: The telomeres of people who feel more stressed are almost 50% shorter than people who say they’re less stressed. Since scientists have a rough idea of what the average telomere length is for a specific age, they can estimate how much older the higher stress group is biologically: a whopping 9 to 17 years!

More D Delights
For years, D -- a vitamin found in food but also synthesized by your skin with a bit of sun exposure -- has been a nutritionist's delight because of its impact on bone health. Now, evidence is growing that the vitamin not only helps build bone and thwart aging but also defends against multiple sclerosis, several cancers, and inflammation disease. D is definitely moving into bona fide supernutrient territory.

Better Get Yours
Milk remains an excellent source of vitamin D, with 100–125 international units (IU) per cupful. Not into milk? Here are a few other sun-free ways to get your fill of D:

• Choose fortified foods. Food manufacturers are catching on: We want more D! Check the labels of everything to see if they're fortified.
• Eat fish. The richest source of D is salmon (360 IU of vitamin D in 3.5 ounces), but tuna and sardines canned in oil are good sources, too.
• Have an egg. D is in the yolk, and although 26 IU doesn't sound like much, it all adds up.
• Take a supplement. Just stay below 2000 IU per day from food and supplements combined. Ask your doctor for the best supplement and get your Vitamin D levels tested before you start supplementation.

Why You Should Snap Up Asparagus

Seems that getting lots of folate -- specifically from food, not so much from supplements -- may help protect you from pancreatic cancer. And just half a cup of asparagus delivers 190 micrograms of the stuff, more than 25 percent of what you need.

Your Pancreas, and More
Folate is a member of the B-vitamin group, and it has long been touted as a heart helper. Some early research also links high folate intake to a lower risk of colon, breast, ovarian, and lung cancers.

Food Is a Factor
Folate from both food and the stuff found in supplements (folic acid) helps your heart. But in scientific studies, when it came to defending against pancreatic cancer, only food sources seemed to have an effect. Folate-rich foods aren’t hard to come by if you go for the green -- as in artichokes, brussels sprouts, lima beans, avocados, soybeans, and broccoli and asparagus.