Reaping the fruits of good health, five servings a day

“Fruits and vegetables are good for health,” says everyone from parents to physicians. And this is not without precedent. Fruits and vegetables contain much-needed vitamins and minerals that cannot readily be obtained elsewhere. Moreover, scientists have discovered that fruits and vegetables are rich in antioxidants and other chemicals that help prevent many diseases.

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To reap the full benefits of fruits and vegetables, people in general must eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables a day. A serving usually consists of a half cup of cooked vegetables or fresh fruits (about the equivalent size of a medium-sized fruit); this can also be matched by a 1/4 cup of dried fruits or a 3/4 cup of fruit juice. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a calculator to help precisely determine the serving amounts a person needs based on individual factors.

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Fruits and vegetables can be incorporated into meals or eaten whole. The former is a practical application to add variety into one’s diet by making delicious meals incorporating healthy ingredients. Eating fruits and vegetables is also a good way of managing one’s weight while adding flavor and volume to a meal through creating lower calorie versions of regular dishes.

Fruits and vegetables are an important aspect of a person’s diet and can have a positive effect on the person’s overall health and wellness. Eating them frequently can reduce the risks of many diseases and provide the body with a rich source of rejuvenating nutrients.

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More on health and wellness can be found at Dr. Rachna Mehra’s website.

No more suffering: Hormone therapy for menopausal women

Menopause is the permanent end of menstruation and fertility in women, and occurs 12 months after the last menstrual cycle. For most women, the onset of menopause is usually marked by hot flashes, mood swings, and sleep disturbances which can be unbearable.

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This is why bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT) is gaining popularity among women who do not want to suffer any longer from the discomforting symptoms of menopause, explain physicians such as Dr. Rachna Mehra. BHRT uses supplemental doses of hormones that have a chemical structure identical to the hormones that the human body naturally produces.

For some menopausal women, hormone therapy is the answer to their quest for regaining balance back into their lives. This was certainly the case for Oprah Winfrey , who admitted back in 2009 that menopause caught her “off guard.” In O magazine, she recalled how a hormone specialist told her that her “hormonal tank was empty” and gave her a prescription for bioidentical estrogen.

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“And after one day on bioidentical estrogen, I felt the veil lift,” Winfrey wrote. “After three days, the sky was bluer, my brain was no longer fuzzy, my memory was sharper. I was literally singing and had a skip in my step.”

Indeed, bioidentical hormones worked wonders for Winfrey and for other women, too. BHRT significantly reduces symptoms associated with drop in hormone levels before, during, and after menopause, including hot flashes, memory loss, weight gain, and depression. In addition to symptomatic relief, bioidentical hormones protect the brain, heart, blood vessels, bones, skins, hair follicles, and muscles from decline.

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Visit this website to know more about bioidentical hormone replacement therapy.

Rachna Mehra, MD, on bowels: Move often

Bowel movement is a vital part of the body’s natural expulsion of toxins. While it seems deceptively simple at first glance, doctors like Rachna Mehra, MD, stress that regular bowel movement should not be neglected or overlooked. A seemingly natural process, bowel movement must be maintained at least twice a day to keep the body free from accumulated toxins that could jeopardize its health in the long term.

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Bowels are part of the body’s rather complicated system of excretion that includes the urinary organ system, lungs, and skin. The colon and rectum are responsible for extracting the remaining water and salt from the food that the body has consumed and expelling solid waste from the system. Indigestible matter like fiber aids in the process of excretion by providing roughage that clears out the system.

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For Rachna Mehra, MD, constant movement is important for the bowels to do their job in cleansing the human body. Without regular movement, the body’s production of B vitamins and hormones and the metabolism of hormones slow down, and toxins otherwise expelled by the body are reabsorbed. In addition to natural bowel movement, bowel detoxification can aid in eliminating the harmful toxins that have accumulated in this region and help bring about an improvement in the body’s wellbeing.

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More information on this and other topics on holistic medicine from Rachna Mehra, MD, can be accessed from this website.