Health News Nibbles

I've come across a few particularly interesting health news stories in the past week or so:

Taking a small dose of asprin is good for you, and not just for your heart. It also cuts cancer risk by 20%. The recommendation is leaning towards starting to take a daily dose in your 40s, and keep it up til you're about 75. Luckily, that gives me a few more years for the research to get further investigated before I need to take up the cause, but cutting that risk by 20% sounds great to me!

Then there's the 7 Foods So Unsafe Even Farmers Won't Eat Them. That's a dire topic, but the short list is:

1. Canned tomatoes
2. Corn-fed beef
3. Microwave popcorn
4. Conventionally grown potatoes
5. Farmed salmon
6. Milk produced with hormones
7. Conventional apples

I've been working hard to give up tinned tomatoes. I no longer eat farmed salmon or microwave popcorn and the milk I drink doesn't get produced with hormones. I unfortunately am uncertain on the beef category and have been eating more of it since Erik likes it so. That leaves potatoes and apples. Hmm. Thank goodness for Foothill Produce. Organic apples and potatoes should be do-able with a minimum of fuss.

Then there's the not especially mysterious correlation between walking speed and longevity. What is impressive is how big the numbers are:

Only 19 percent of the slowest walking 75-year-old men lived for 10 more years compared to 87 percent of the fastest walking ones. Only 35 percent of the slowest walking 75-year-old women made it to their 85th birthday compared to 91 percent of the fastest walkers.

So... I'll be going for a walk after lunch. And now it's easier to track with the RunKeeper app for the iPhone. Amanda was posting her walks using it, so I looked into it. The Pro version is free in the App Store right now. It tracks you as you walk, giving helpful distance, time, and speed announcements every 5 minutes. When you start a session, you can tell it what playlist you want to hear while exercising and you can do it all without leaving the app. Previously I've always wondered how fast I walk. Now I know with ultimate certainty: 3.18 mph. A walk from my office around Lake Lagunita (still dry) is 1.5 miles. This is so motivating; I can't even begin to describe how much. So, with that and the Daily Plate, I'm on track to drop a few pounds that accrued last year. Hopefully I'll be back into my favorite dresses in time for summer dress season!