Restless nights full of mediocre sleep and tossing and turning can leave you feeling worn out and unmotivated all day long.  Even if you’re past the point of retirement, there are plenty of things that need to be done during the day and feeling exhausted certainly won’t help you get them done.  If you want to feel better and more energized during the day, you probably need to get better sleep at night – and here are some tricks that can help you do it.

Using your living room as your living room and your bedroom as a bedroom can lead to a more restful night’s sleep.  Avoid planning on watching a show, watching a movie, eating or playing a game of solitaire in bed – the excitement, stimulation or aggravation will most likely keep you up longer than you’d intended and doing a multitude of activities in bed can make it difficult to identify the actual time you went to sleep, which can seriously throw off your schedule.  In order to make the most of your time in bed, schedule a bedtime that will allow you at least seven consecutive hours and make an effort to stick to it.

Getting on a consistent daily schedule for the majority or your activities, not just bedtime, can help you to get better sleep as well.  Seniors who are past retirement age often fall out of regular habits, but if you stick to a scheduled time to get up every morning, set regular meal times and regular times for activities sticking to your bed time will be much easier.

Making sure that you get your daily exercise can do wonders for your sleep habits as well.  You don’t have to run a marathon or take up body building, but a simple 30 minutes of aerobic activity a day, like walking will get you looking, feeling and sleeping better in no time.

Remember to consult your doctor or health aide prior to beginning a new exercise program and if the night time sleeplessness continues after you’ve tried the tricks and tips above, you might want to discuss your diet and medications with your doctor or home nurse to see if any of the things that you are consuming are interfering with your regular sleep pattern.

There is an endless array of “wonder drugs” and diet aids that fill magazine, television and internet advertising as well as the shelves of your local pharmacies and nutrition centers, but you may already have ample access to one of the most effective and safest ways to help you fight the battle of the bulge.

A recent study conducted by a Virginia Tech Associate Professor of Nutrition has revealed just how much increasing your consumption of H2O can help you to melt excess pounds away.  The study consisted of nearly fifty people between the ages of 55 and 75 who were broken into two groups that both consumed low calorie diets over the course of a twelve week period.

One group in the study consumed 2 eight ounce glasses of water prior to meals and the other did not – the water drinkers lost an average of more than 25% more weight than the non-water drinkers over the course of the twelve week study.

Drinking water prior to meals helps to fill your stomach so you need less food to feel full and since water contains no calories (and has plenty of positive benefits for the body); it is a perfect appetite suppressant.  Water is readily available, it’s free and it is completely safe making it one of the very best weight loss tools available to you.

Prior to starting any new diet you should consult your doctor or health aide to ensure that you’ll be getting all of the nutrients you need to maintain good health while you are trying to lose weight.  If you’ve got a lot of excess weight to lose as your doctor or home nurse for suggestions on an appropriate exercise program that can help you maximize your weight loss efforts.

A recent study of knee arthritis patients compared the results of traditional Chinese acupuncture to a placebo version of acupuncture and to no course of treatment at all and the findings, which will appear in the September issue of Arthritis Care and Research, were pretty surprising.

Patients who received both the traditional Chinese acupuncture treatment and the placebo version of acupuncture reported almost the same benefits in terms of pain relief, and while many people who don’t have much faith in alternative treatments wouldn’t be too surprised by this, it wasn’t the most surprising part of the findings.  In addition to being prescribed one of the two types of treatment (traditional and “fake”), patients were also separated into seeing practitioners that had a very positive outlook and those who had a neutral outlook and the communication between the doctor and patient had a profound effect on the benefits that the patient received.

Patients who saw the practitioners with higher expectations had much better results from the treatment than those that saw practitioners who were neutral about the results that would come from the course of treatment.  While the success of a treatment certainly isn’t entirely dependent upon the outlook of the medical practitioner, this study does show that patients may respond better to doctors and home health aides who are confident in the treatments that they provide.

The relationship you have with your health care provider is a very important one, in order to get the most out of that relationship you need to be confident in the abilities of the medical professionals that you are seeing and they need to be confident in the courses of treatment that they are prescribing.

Adding ample amounts of fresh fruits and vegetables to your diet has many benefits, but recent research shows that dark, leafy greens in particular may have an added benefit that medical professional were previously unaware of.  The research, conducted by a research nutritionist from the University of Leicester, found a strong link between dark, leafy greens and type 2 diabetes.

The research looked into six separate studies comprised of more than 200,000 people and the information collected concluded that people who consumed at least one and a half servings of dark leafy greens a day could possibly reduce their risk of developing type 2 diabetes by as much as fourteen percent.  The findings from this research aren’t quite being accepted with open arms among the medical community as the original studies were performed to necessarily find a connection between dark leafy greens and diabetes, but the information does seem very promising.

There are already studies in place that link consuming more fruits and vegetables to a reduction in the risk for certain cancers and heart disease, so whether the information gathered in this latest of research is completely accurate or not it may be a good idea to up your intake of fruits and veggies and it certainly couldn’t hurt to include plenty of dark leafy greens.

If you need suggestions for getting started on a healthier diet, consult your doctor or home care nurse and if you want to add some regular physical activity into the mix in order to keep yourself as healthy as possible, get clearance from your doctor or home care nurse prior to beginning to ensure that the activity that you choose is right for you.

It’s no secret that consuming healthier foods and participating in regular exercise will reduce your risk of serious conditions like obesity, heart disease and diabetes, but for people who are rigidly set in their ways the thought of making a complete lifestyle change can be a bit daunting.  The good news is that you don’t necessarily have to dive headlong into the unfamiliar waters of a “healthy lifestyle” all at once in order to see positive results.

If you’d normally take the car to drop off a letter at the mailbox or to pick up a quart of milk at the convenience store around the corner, opt for the fresh air approach and walk instead; rather than taking the escalator or elevator to go between floors at the mall, take the stairs and instead of having your newspaper delivered to your home, walk to the store or machine to get it instead.  Adding even small amounts of physical activity to your everyday routine can make a big difference in you looking and feeling better and you won’t feel completely overwhelmed because the initial changes made were small. – and as soon as you start to realize how much better you are feeling from the increase in activity, the more likely you’ll be to want to add more.  When you’re ready to take the plunge into a regular exercise routine, consult your doctor and home health aid for ideas that suit your current fitness level.

In terms of diet, there are a number of simple changes that can be made that will yield positive results.  You can satisfy your sweet tooth with fresh fruit instead of candy or cake, switch white breads and white flour pastas for whole grain varieties and switch from higher fat red meats to leaner sources of protein.  Making these small changes, which in all honesty you probably won’t even notice, will lead to plenty of positives in terms of your health.  You doctor and health aid should also be able to give you a few more tips and tricks on dieting and nutritional supplementation that will get you on your way to a healthier body and healthier heart.

Regular exercise can be very beneficial to arthritis sufferers – it can strengthen the muscles around your joints, increase your flexibility and really help to reduce your arthritis related pain.  Mobility is a huge concern as you age – the ability to move around freely gives elderly people the opportunity to stay in their own homes with minimal assistance from a home nurse rather than being moved to a full time health care facility, but the type of exercise you perform may be just as important as how much you get.

Arthritis sufferers don’t have quite as broad an array of choices when it comes to selecting an exercise program.  You’ll probably need to avoid high impact forms of exercise like running, jumping and any sports that may put undue stress on your joints.  Low impact exercises are the best options for those with painful joints, movements like walking, swimming and cycling will help to ease pain and increase flexibility just as well as higher impact movements but without the associated risk of potential damage to already sore joints.

If you are looking to start a new exercise program to help keep you mobile and pain free, to help manage your weight or to just look and feel better; it’s best to first discuss the different options with your doctor and home health aide to make sure that you will be getting the bets possible benefits from your program without the possibility of causing injury.

Diet is a huge part of overall health – in order to be as healthy as possible and to ward off many serious diseases and ailments you need to keep a close eye on both the types and the quantities of foods that you are consuming.  Most Americans now aware that eating a diet consisting mainly of fried foods and foods that are high in saturated fats and sugar can contribute to obesity, heart disease and diabetes – but far fewer realize the potential negative effects that can be brought on by how you eat the food that you eat.

A great starting point for controlling your consumption is to slow down the pace at which you eat.  Chew each bite thoroughly and take the time to take a breath between bites.  Your stomach needs time to communicate the fact that you are full to your brain; if you are inhaling your food at every meal you could be consuming many more calories than you actually need to feel satisfied.

Another great trick is to make meal time for meals and nothing else.  Don’t plant yourself in front of your favorite television show or computer game with heaping helpings of food, because eating while you’re distracted often leads to overeating as well.  Focusing only on your food will go a long way toward helping you keep your portions under control.

If you are going to have snack foods around as an occasional treat, be sure that you put them where they belong.  Keeping bowls, boxes or bags of snack foods where they are visible will almost always lead to unnecessary snacking.  Keep your food in the cupboards where it is out of sight and you’ll be less likely to eat it when you probably shouldn’t.

Your primary care physician or home care nurse should be able to provide more advice on structuring your diet and if you are looking for healthy ways to control your weight beyond your diet, your doctor or health aide may be able to provide suggestions on a regular exercise routine as well.

There is absolutely no shortage of advertisements on television or in magazines claiming fantastic results for weight and body fat loss, without having to change your current diet or put in any work at the gym.  Though most of these advertisements seem geared toward young adults, it is certainly possible for a senior who is self conscious or concerned about their weight to fall prey to these clever advertising gimmicks.  Obesity is a huge concern among all age groups in this country, but unfortunately for most, the answer to the problem of obesity rarely comes through supplementation alone, regardless of what the advertisement says.

Maintaining a healthy body weight is very important to help ward off a number of serious diseases, but overweight individuals need a complete lifestyle change in order to lose weight safely.  Attempting to transform your body with pills, potions or starvation diets could open the door for even more potential problems in the future and in many cases the weight that is lost as a result in the participation of an unhealthy, fad diet returns once the individual resumes normal eating habits.

You should consult your physician, home health care provider and maybe even a dietician prior to making any changes in your diet to be sure that the plan that you are considering is safe for you.  If you want to optimize the results of your weight loss and be able to see and feel results in as little time as possible, consult your doctor and home health aide for ideas about increasing your daily activity levels – the most effective and safest way to lose excess weight is through a combination of a healthy diet and regular exercise.

For years people have been searching for a way to slow down or reverse the effects of aging without much success.  There are many products available that claim to be “fountains of youth,” but few are actually backed by any real scientific evidence – until now.

A recent, small scale research study conducted by the University of Buffalo that will be published  in a future issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism has revealed findings that resveratrol (which is commonly found in grapes, blueberries and cranberries), may help to reduce inflammation and prevent the development of free radicals.  This study comes on the heels of others that had shown the power of resveratrol

In part one of this list we talked about three very powerful and very beneficial “super foods” that are awesome additions to the diet of anyone who wants to start living, looking and feeling better.  Incorporating healthier foods into your diet gives you the opportunity to manage your weight, ward off disease and may even allow you to enjoy your time at home with regular visits from a health aide rather than being on constant supervision at a nursing home.

Blueberries happen to be another of my personal favorite foods that just so happen to be out of this world in terms of health benefits.