Daily Health News Blog

Vacations can be expensive. And although everyone enjoys a long trip to a new place far away, our budgets usually cannot handle many vacations such as these. You don't have to travel far to have fun though. Often you can find creative and inexpensive ways to spend your vacation close to home. Try these close to home travel ideas and save some of your hard-earned money this year. Explore Your Neighborhood Use your time off from work to visit those places that you never seem to have enough time for at other times of the year. Take a trip to the library and talk to a librarian about programs they offer. These are usually completely free. You will find book clubs for adults, and children's programs that often include free activities like puppet shows, story times, summer book reading programs, and more. Check around for local pools, mini-golf courses, and playgrounds that you've never visited. Have picnics in the park, tour a fire station, or fly kites. Use this time to take th

If you haven't found time yet to take a break from work, August is a great time to vacation. It may seem like it is still peak travel season, but the further you get into August the better it can get. Not only can you find some last minute deals, but the crowds thin down, making for a more pleasant trip. One reason August is a great time to get vacation deals is that many airlines, resorts, and popular travel destinations are reassessing their earlier estimates of the number of customers they expected. You can take advantage of unsold airline seats, hotel rooms, and resort packages that these companies expected to sell but did not. There are also cancellations to pick up. With gas prices expected to stay high through the end of summer, many people are vacationing closer to home, so you can often pick up great unsold last minute deals. The key to getting great deals is flexibility. If you are able to travel on short notice and can choose from several dates you will have better luck

High cholesterol, low energy? Get a thyroid test! A poorly-functioning thyroid gland can cause a long list of mysterious symptoms. It could produce one or many of these: Fatigue, weakness, infertility, coarse skin, hoarse voice, cold intolerance, depression, mood swings, memory loss, decreased concentration, or painful joints, to name a few. The most serious effect of mild thyroid failure is without symptoms. An elevation of cholesterol is one of the characteristic features of an underactive thyroid gland, according to the Thyroid Foundation of America in Boston. Millions of North Americans have the condition and are not aware that a sluggish thyroid is hiking their cholesterol and harming their hearts.  Doctors quoted in Prevention magazine recommend that the simple TSH test be done each time a cholesterol test is ordered. It can be done with the same blood sample and is very inexpensive. Usually, however, physicians don't order the test unless they suspect an under-active

Tip # 1 Skin care, beauty, fitness and health go hand in hand. For those of you who are looking to loose weight, beauty is a key factor in keeping motivated. If you don't feel beautiful, you are more inclined to not follow through any diet or exercise program. If you don't feel good about yourself you will most likely not be motivated and give up. However , on the other hand, If you look good on the outside, it tends to make you feel good on the inside; hence, giving you the motivation to follow through and complete your diet and/or exercise program and loose the weight you want to and be healthy and fit. Tip # 2 Skin care is very important to younger healthy looking skin. You should use a cleansing product that targets your specific needs and is specific to your age and skin type. Not all cleansing products are the same just as not everyone's skin is the same. The same goes for creams. You should use a product that targets your specific needs and is specific to your

All physical activity reduces Alzheimer's risk  An important new study shows that any physical activity, not just exercising, is linked to a reduced risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.  The finding should be considered by people in middle age, since the disease develops for years before any symptoms occur. Protective activities included washing dishes, cooking, cleaning, gardening and even playing cards.  Study subjects had no signs of dementia at the start of the study, which is part of the ongoing Memory and Aging Project at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. This is the first study to use an objective measure of physical activity in addition to self-reports. Participants wore an actigraph on their wrists to assess levels of activity.  Those in the bottom 10 percent for physical activity were almost twice as likely to develop Alzheimer's. Quoted in USA Today, study leader, physician Aron Buchman says, "The implication of this study is really astoun

Summer's a great time to do it To burn more fat, build more muscle Forget fad diets, weight-loss pills, and supplements that are supposed to create muscle growth. The path to better health and a leaner body lies in eating a proper diet and exercising to build muscle. The more muscle you build, the more you perk up your metabolism to burn more calories. For each pound of muscle, you burn an extra 12,000 calories a year. Nutritionist and author Miriam Nelson says muscle burns more calories when you walk, when you exercise, and even when you sleep. Building muscle becomes even more important when you realize that people lose about a fourth of a pound of muscle per year and replace it with fat. That means that during a 12-year period of middle life, the average person will lose three pounds of good, solid muscle. How can they get it back? Researchers at the University of Arizona at Tucson say strength training is one of the best ways to build muscle, but it also buil