Saoirse Rohan at The Host LA premiere

Saoirse Rohan wears a maroon Lanvin shift dress and black Mary Janes shoes to The Host LA premiere - vote on celebrity fashion, style and red carpet looks in GLAMOUR.COM’s Dos and Don’ts

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5 tips for healthy grilling

Posted May 27, 2013, 1:31 pm

Memorial Day marks the unofficial beginning of summer and the official beginning of grilling season. From northern Maine to southern California, the backyard barbeque will be a key part of the holiday weekend. Whether your menu includes simple burgers or something more elaborate, a little preparation can help you serve up a healthy meal.

Start out clean. Don’t let the charred buildup on your grill transfer to your meal. Use a wire brush to give your grill a good cleaning. Then wipe it down with a cloth or wadded-up bunch of paper towels to make sure that no grill-cleaning bristles will get into your food—or your guests.

Smoke and fire. Exposing protein-rich meat, poultry, and fish to high heat and open flames creates heterocyclic amines. When fat drips and burns on the grill, the resulting smoke contains polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. These two groups of chemicals have been linked to various types of cancer. You can reduce the formation of heterocyclic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons several ways: Line the grill with foil perforated with holes. Cook for longer at a lower temperature. Have a spray bottle filled with water handy to control fatty flare-ups.

Marinate. Marinating food for a while before cooking limits the formation of potential carcinogens while grilling. Recipes abound for healthy marinades that will add flavor to whatever you are grilling. If you rely on bottled marinades, choose those that are low in salt.

Give veggies and fruit equal billing with meat. Grilling intensifies the flavor of fruits and vegetables, just as it does for meat. Kebabs that alternate meat with pieces of onion, pepper, or other produce, like spicy chicken kebabs with Moorish flavors, are a great way to increase vegetable and fruit intake. Or skip meat altogether, with something like grilled eggplant cutlets with tomato or portabella mushroom “steak” sandwiches.

Practice safe grilling. Keep raw meat, poultry, and seafood separate from vegetables and other foods. Use a food thermometer to check the internal temperature of grilled meat, poultry, and seafood. Place grilled foods on clean plates, not on the ones that held them when they were raw. The USDA offers other tips for keeping food safe.

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need weight loss motivation

So I am bipolar, and I was put on Zoloft months ago and I gained 25 pounds since I started. I'm not exactly blaming it on the Zoloft because I had stopped eating well and exercising when I started the med. but I no longer had motivation and I stopped caring. I need motivation again. I need to exercise again. I started counting calories yesterday and I already didn't do well. Anyone have motivation tips or things I could maybe start doing? I'm just ready to start caring and get back in shape.

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Joint Replacement May Reinvigorate Sex Life

Study shows unsung benefit of the surgery may be the ability to enjoy all aspects of life more

By Barbara Bronson Gray

HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, March 19 (HealthDay News) -- Although most people get a total hip or knee replacement to decrease pain and move around more easily, a team of orthopedic surgeons has discovered an unexpected benefit: people enjoy sex more after surgery.

A new study found that total hip or total knee replacement surgery improved self-reported sexual function in 90 percent of patients.

Study author Dr. Jose Rodriguez, director of the Center for Joint Preservation and Reconstruction at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, created a survey to learn more about how sexual experience was affected by getting a new joint. He said he thought that if he brought up the topic by asking questions about sexuality, people would respond. And they did. "Most patients won't bring up the topic on their own," he said.

Rodriguez said that many patients fear they'll damage the new joint if they have sex, but don't ask any questions about it. Now he makes a point of telling people, after their operations, that "most of what you want to do -- physical and intimate -- you can do."

Getting total hip or knee replacement may improve overall well-being and self-esteem, which itself can be a turn-on, said Rodriguez. "Anything that causes pain and affects how you move is going to influence sexuality," he explained. After surgery, if you feel you are more sensual yourself, you're going to enjoy having sex, he added.

The study, which is scheduled to be presented Tuesday at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons annual meeting in Chicago, involved reports about sexual activity done before and after total hip or knee replacement surgery. Male and female patients under 70 years old were recruited from the practices of two arthroplasty surgeons. They were asked to anonymously complete and mail back one survey before surgery and two other surveys at six months and one year after surgery.

Out of 147 people who returned the preoperative questionnaire, 116 returned the six-month survey and 65 also sent back the one-year survey. The mean age of patients was about 58 years; there were 69 males and 78 females in the initial group.

Before surgery, 67 percent of respondents reported having physical problems with sexual activity that included pain and stiffness; reduced sex drive (49 percent); an inability to attain the necessary position (14 percent); and psychological issues such as a lack of well-being (91 percent) and low self-image (53 percent).

After surgery, 42 percent of the patients reported an improvement in interest in sex; 35 percent said they had increased duration of intercourse; 41 percent reported more frequent sex; 84 percent said they had improved well-being; and 55 percent reported having an improved self-image.

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Calories in take out shrimp and snow pea pods?

my family got Chinese food tonight and I'm really scared because I never eat fast food or sodium filled crap and I'm SO scared because of the brown sauce they put on it and I'm terrified of sauces.

I can't find the calories online.

1 cup of just shrimp and snow pea pods, no rice, would be how many calories approximately? I must know the calories so I can see if I ate enough at the end of the day

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Americans Still Making Unhealthy Choices: CDC

High rates of obesity, heavy drinking, smoking and inactivity reported, but most people getting enough sleep

By Dennis Thompson

HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, May 21 (HealthDay News) -- The overall health of Americans isn't improving much, with about six in 10 people either overweight or obese and large numbers engaging in unhealthy behaviors like smoking, heavy drinking or not exercising, a new government report shows.

Released Tuesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the report found Americans continuing to make many of the lifestyle choices that have led to soaring rates of heart disease, diabetes and other chronic illnesses, including the following:

About six of 10 adults drink, including an increase in those who reported episodic heavy drinking of five or more drinks in one day during the previous year.Twenty percent of adults smoke, and less than one-half of smokers attempted to quit in the past year.Only one in five adults met federal guidelines for both aerobic activity and muscle-strengthening exercise. One in three was completely inactive when it came to any leisure-time aerobic activity.

The one bright spot in the report came in the area of sleep behavior. About seven in 10 adults meet the federal objective for sufficient sleep.

The findings have been gleaned from nearly 77,000 random interviews conducted between 2008 and 2010.

The numbers reflect persistent trends, said report author Charlotte Schoenborn, a health statistician at the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics.

"Changes have not been enormous," Schoenborn said. "It's been a very, very slow process of changing awareness of personal choices for healthier ways of life. All of the health-related federal agencies, and a lot of nonfederal groups, are putting a lot of resources to make people aware of the effect they can have on their own health. This report is just designed to say where we are."

The findings did not surprise Rich Hamburg, deputy director of Trust for America's Health, a nonprofit public health organization.

"I think we're in a situation now where we're at a crossroads," Hamburg said. "We have two paths to go. We're hopeful that if we continue to invest in community-based prevention, if we promote healthy eating and active living, these rates will begin to decrease."

Public health organizations use this report to determine which groups of Americans are susceptible to unhealthy behaviors, study author Schoenborn said.

For example, while overall people are getting enough sleep, it turns out that doesn't hold true for people with marital problems, she said. About 38 percent of divorced, separated, or widowed adults have trouble getting enough sleep, compared with 27 percent of married folks.

While this is not the federal government's official report on obesity, its findings jibe with both public and private research into the epidemic, said Hamburg at Trust for America's Health.

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Man Dies After Parasitic Worms Invade Lungs

Steroid treatment for inflammatory disorder may have spurred 'hyperinfection,' report says

By Randy Dotinga

HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, March 20 (HealthDay News) -- A Vietnamese immigrant in California died of a massive infection with parasitic worms that spread throughout his body, including his lungs. They had remained dormant until his immune system was suppressed by steroid drugs used to treat an inflammatory disorder, according to the report.

The 65-year-old man was apparently infected by the worms in Vietnam, one of many countries in the world where they're known to infect humans. About 80 percent to 90 percent of people die if they are infected by the worm species and then suffer from so-called "hyperinfection" as the worms travel through their bodies, said report co-author Dr. Niaz Banaei, an assistant professor of infectious diseases at Stanford University School of Medicine.

The man's case emphasizes the importance of testing patients who might be infected with the parasite before giving them drugs to dampen the immune system, said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, who's familiar with the report findings.

"You have to think twice before starting big doses of steroids," Hotez said. "The problem is that most physicians are not taught about this disease. It often does not get recognized until it's too late."

Parasitic worms of the Strongyloides stercoralis species are most commonly found in tropical and subtropical areas of the world, although they've also appeared in the Appalachian region of the United States. Typically, they infect people in rural areas such as Brazil, northern Argentina and Southeast Asia, Hotez noted, and may currently infect as many 100 million people worldwide.

The worms live in the ground or water, typically in places with poor sanitation, and infect humans by penetrating the skin. They may live in the intestines for years or even decades, creating new larvae that grow into worms about 2 millimeters long, Hotez explained.

For the patient in this case, trouble came when he took steroids, which dampen the immune system, to treat "giant-cell arteritis," a disorder that causes inflammation of arteries of the scalp, neck and arms. The drugs appeared to have allowed the worms to grow and spread because they were no longer kept in check.

Exams uncovered a massive lung infection, report co-author Banaei noted. "The adult worms were producing eggs, and the larvae emerging from the eggs were invading the intestinal wall and disseminating to multiple organs in the body," Banaei said.

When this happens, Baylor's Hotez said, hundreds of thousands of larvae can transmit bacteria from the intestines into other parts of the body.

A medication can help treat infestation with the worms, but it doesn't help when the hyperinfection reaches an advanced stage, he said.

What should be done? In cases where patients come from a region of the world where the worms are common, Hotez suggested that physicians consider that they may be infected and screen them for the worms. That may be difficult though, because multiple fecal tests may be necessary, he said, and another kind of test has limited value in terms of detecting cases.

The study findings are published in the March 21 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

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