FitSugar

What's the Deal with: Irritable Bowel Syndrome

FitSugar — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 02:30:00 PDT

The Mayo Clinic reports that Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) affects one in ten Americans. That's a lot of people! It predominantly affects women who experience their first signs of the syndrome in their early 20s. But what is IBS exactly?

IBS, also know as spastic colon, is considered a functional disorder meaning the normal function is disrupted and in this case it is (you guessed it) the bowels, even though the intestines appear fine. The intestines normally contract and relax in a coordinated rhythm, but with IBS, the contractions may be longer and stronger than normal, and thereby cause pain. This inability of the intestines to contract rhythmically interferes with digestion causing nausea, diarrhea and constipation not to mention abdominal pain.

It is not clear what causes IBS, but it doesn't trigger inflammation or other changes in the bowel, and doesn't increase the risk of colorectal cancer. Some studies do suggest that intolerance to certain foods may increase symptoms. The major culprits seem to be wheat, dairy, coffee, potatoes, corn and onions.

Lifestyle changes seem the best approach to managing the symptoms: eating a healthy diet, exercising regularly and reducing stress. Increasing fiber intake and even taking fiber supplements can help.

To read more about IBS, check out the Mayo Clinic's article on the syndrome.

What Is the Deal with: Chromium Supplements

FitSugar — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 08:45:00 PDT

I wrote last week that Coke and Pepsi will soon release their health and energy sodas...oops I mean beverages. Pepsi is adding, among other things, the mineral chromium to their Tava drink. This prompted me to do a little research on this space age sounding mineral.

Trivalent chromium is required in trace amounts for sugar metabolism in humans. For this reason, it has been suggested that the supplement known as chromium picolinate may control blood sugar levels, and therefore help prevent Type 2 diabetes. In fact, there doesn't seem to be much scientific evidence to support this claim.

In the U.S. the dietary guide lines for chromium are fairly low, 35 micrograms for adult male and 25 micrograms for adult females. Interstingly enough,they were lowered from 50-200 micrograms when the supplement chromium picolinate generated chromosomal damage in hamster cells. So look for mircrograms of chromium in foods. Raw onions, tomatoes, and romaine lettuce are naturally high in the mineral.

What is the Deal With: Folate

FitSugar — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 10:15:00 PST

I just learned something new and I thought I should share it with you: folate and folic acid are the same thing. Well not exactly the same thing. Although they are both forms of a water soluble B vitamin, folate naturally occurs in food and folic acid is its synthetic form found in supplements and added to fortified foods.

Folate and folic acid not only prevent anemia during pregnancy, they also help to produce and maintain new cells. These two reason are why it is essential to take folic acid before and during pregnancy. So if you are planning on becoming a mama soon, make sure you're getting your daily value (DV) of this vitamin, which is 500 micrograms if you are pregnant or breastfeeding. For all other adults the recommended DV is 400 micrograms.

Aside from pregnancy, folate is an important nutrient since it is needed to make DNA and RNA, the building blocks of cells. It also helps prevent changes to DNA that may lead to cancer. The "C" word usually catches people's attention, so now I want you to know what to eat for your DV of folate.

Foods naturally high in folate are: leafy green vegetables like spinach and turnip greens (don't toss the greens when cooking with turnips you can sauté them with garlic just like spinach), citrus fruits and juices, as well as dried beans and peas. Since 1998, folic acid has been added to "enriched" grain products like breads and cereals. Many fortified cereals contain 100% of your daily folate needs. Ahhhh...another reason to read those labels.

10 Tips to Save on Memorial Day Grocery Shopping

Emily Co — Sat, 26 May 2012 00:15:10 PDT

It's fun to host people for a barbecue, but it can also get quite pricey when everyone isn't chipping in. Consumer expert Andrea Woroch provides suggestions to cut your grocery bill when shopping for your Memorial Day meal:

Prepare most of your meal. Woroch says, "The general rule for prepared foods is that they are more expensive, and it's cheaper to buy the ingredients to prepare yourself." For example, prepared veggie platters and fruit salads "are never a good deal" and aren't exactly the freshest produce. However, prepared potato salad at a regular supermarket is less expensive and will save you time in the kitchen.

Get chicken from the butcher. Buy chicken breasts from the butcher counter instead of the prepared packets. They tend to be cheaper and are generally more fresh.

Consider boxed wine. Save money by skipping the bottled wine and going for the box. "Boxed wine is an affordable option for large parties, and the quality has greatly improved in recent years," she says.

Buy liquor at a superstore. If you're insistent on a specific bottle, then check out warehouse clubs like Costco. There are better deals on wine, liquor, and beer at a superstore, according to Woroch. While you're there, pick the store's generic version of vodka for an even cheaper deal.

Make your own salad dressing and marinade. Check out recipes online - here's a list of over 60 different marinades to make. "Most people will already have the basic ingredients like olive oil, some type of vinegar, and herbs at home," she says. "Other ingredients like lemon or lime, soy sauce, or honey won't cost much extra."

Read on for more.

Hysteria Director Tanya Wexler Talks Vibrators, Faking It, and Duck Sex

Tara Block — Fri, 25 May 2012 04:00:15 PDT

Don't be shy . . . It's time to talk sex toys! And Hysteria director Tanya Wexler is writing us a prescription for pleasure. Tanya's film - what she calls "the vibrator movie you can bring your mom to" - is in limited release and stars Hugh Dancy, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Rupert Everett. When working on a romantic comedy that centers around the invention of the vibrator, you end up with some entertaining and embarrassing situations along the way, and lucky for us, Tanya spilled all the hilariously dirty details. From teaming up with the film's partner Jimmyjane for a drive-by vibrator drop-off to a certain female Oscar-winner to trying unsuccessfully to get ducks to shag on command, Tanya was bursting with great stories from working on this very unconventional film. And while Tanya isn't ashamed to discuss the sexy subject matter of her latest film with us, the mother of four and her partner of 21 years did have a tricky challenge telling her preteen kids what her movie was about. (She eventually gave them the script and let them figure it out themselves!) Check out our interview with the fun-loving director now, and we dare you not to have a girl crush on her by the end!

TrèsSugar: What were some of the challenges to getting a movie made about vibrators?
Tanya Wexler: Getting the script right was tricky because if you just make a movie about the invention of the vibrator, it's actually a really short movie: you go "bzz" and it's done. And we had a kind of light romantic comedy. I say I made the vibrator movie you can bring your mom to. But some people wanted it to be raunchy or some people wanted it to be more serious and about feminism. People project a lot onto this movie of what they want, because there isn't a lot out there about vibrators and women's pleasure, and we still don't really deal with that topic very well, or we're overly antsy around it. And as a result, people have a lot of ideas of what the movie could and should be, and you can't please everyone. [laughs]

TS: Ha, good one.
TW: It's nonstop!

TS: Do you find sex toys inherently funny or something to be seriously celebrated?
TW: Yes!

TS: Both?
TW: Yes! Yes. I think they make me laugh, and I think that the inner kind of Beavis and Butt-head in all of us goes "[laugh]." You know, that inner 13-year-old, like, "Hahaha vibrator . . . " and yet they're awesome and fun.

TS: What shocked you the most when researching the movie?
TW: That ducks are the rapists of the bird world, and you'll see when you see the movie, because there's a little bit of questionable duck behavior - or awesome duck behavior - in the movie. It's totally a sidebar, but you cannot make ducks shag on command. I'm just saying.

TS: What about the whole history of hysteria being a medical condition?
TW: When I first heard the idea, I was like, "What do you mean it was invented in Victorian times?" I knew about hysteria, but the idea that the treatment was manual [British accent] massage deparaxism - which is what they called it - and, of course, the denial. The most shocking thing is the denial, that they didn't think it was sexual.

TS: Do you think they were really in denial?
TW: No, I don't think that some people were. My college roommate was with her high school boyfriend for two years and she had never had an orgasm. I think there's all kinds of denial, especially with women's sexuality. So the fact that there are young women today who haven't had an orgasm, whether self-induced - which is insane - or with a partner, then why wouldn't we think back then that women wouldn't know what orgasms were?

They would get a massage, and the doctor's saying, "Without a penis, this isn't sex, because sex is about procreation," so what is this? The best physical therapy you've ever had. So once you don't think of it as something other than what the doctor's supposed to do to cure your uncontrollable crying or uncontrollable laughter or whatever, then it's just an awesome muscle spasm. If you don't think women have their own inherent sexuality, then you're not thinking about it like that.

Keep reading for Tanya's thoughts on Fifty Shades and more!

Enter Our Choose Your Summer Getaway Giveaway

SavvySugar — Thu, 24 May 2012 17:09:41 PDT

Are you sitting at work, dreaming of where you'd like to spend those long Summer days? You're in luck, because SavvySugar has teamed up with DailyWorth and CheapOair to make your getaway wishes come true.

What's better than a free vacation? A free vacation at your choice of three dreamy destinations. Do you want to feel the adrenaline on Las Vegas's streets or gawk at the bay views of San Francisco? Just maybe you want to feel the hot sands of Miami on your feet. Enter to win two round-trip tickets, a three-night hotel stay, and $750 in spending money to take you where your heart desires.

In addition, we'll be serving up tips on how to save for your Summer travel and how to find the best vacation deals. Enter below by May 28 to win your Summer getaway, and you'll be one step closer to getting there.

Enter Below

1. Like us on Facebook

SavvySugar

DailyWorth

CheapOair

Video: Charlize Theron Talks Bringing Home Baby Jackson on Ellen

Lauren Turner — Thu, 24 May 2012 10:10:44 PDT

Charlize Theron sat down on The Ellen DeGeneres Show to promote her upcoming projects Snow White and the Huntsman and Prometheus, but talk turned from movies to her family life. She opened up about what it was like to bring home her son Jackson at just 9 days old, and revealed how her two dogs are dealing with the new addition. Watch the video now!

Link Time: Chefs Share Their Most Bizarre Meals Ever

Susannah Chen — Wed, 23 May 2012 10:00:31 PDT

Chefs share their most bizarre meals ever - Zagat
Funny or Die spoofs Gwyneth Paltrow in the kitchen - HuffPost Food
What the royal family really eats - Delish
Guy Fieri was best man at Robert Irvine's wedding - The Braiser
A strawberry rhubarb tart is simple yet impressive - BGSK
11 foods you should (and really shouldn't) fry - Kitchen Daily
Spanish language pizza deal: discrimination or not? - Grub Street NY

The Questions You Must Answer to Get a Spousal Green Card

Annie Scudder — Tue, 22 May 2012 11:40:02 PDT

Each year, almost 80,000 foreign spouses are awarded US green cards. The American government has determined that these couples are in bona fide relationships with the help of the "Stokes interview." Stokes refers to a federal court decision that ordered New York's immigration services to be more fair in deciding marriage green card cases. When officials have any suspicion that they're dealing with a sham marriage, they will interview the spouses separately, asking them questions about their personal life and relationship. The answers to these questions can't be memorized ahead of time, and officials will compare each spouse's answers afterward for discrepancies.

The New York Daily News recently looked into the city's "Stokes unit" and reported on some example questions. They include:

What restaurant do you and your husband usually order takeout from? Where do you keep the menus?
How did you celebrate New Year's Eve last year?
How much is your rent? Who writes the check?

One man, the paper reports, reported sleeping in the same bed with his wife every night, but didn't know that she had an oxygen tank next to the bed. Whoops. If an immigrant can avoid something like that and beat the system, after 10 years of citizenship, you're off free, thanks to the statute of limitations. Would you ever consider getting married for a green card?

"I Snooped and Found Something . . . Now What?"

Tres Community — Tue, 22 May 2012 03:05:00 PDT

This question is from a Group Therapy post in our TrèsSugar Community. Add your advice in the comments!

I'll try my best to make this short. I really appreciate any and all advice here, I am so stumped on what to do.

My boyfriend and I have been together for about three months now. I'm 24 he is 28. We met at work, and were not really friends before we started dating. So basically I have some trust issues because I don't really know much about his dating life before we got together, other than the fact that he was kind of a player.

We have an interesting relationship. Most of the time we are great, have a good time together. He told me he loved me first, probably about two months in. That was a big deal for him because he had only said it to one girl before, and they dated for five years.

A couple weeks ago we had a bad string of fights about all sorts of things, but the past couple weeks have been great with no problems.

I'm not really sure how much of this back story is relevant, but there it is anyway lol.

So back to my trust issues.... I snooped in his phone last night because I just had a bad feeling. I know it's totally wrong and an invasion of privacy, but I couldn't help it. Anyways, I found something. A text conversation between him and another girl from last Saturday late night / Sunday afternoon.

This conversation happened when he was away at a bachelor party all weekend on a boat with a bunch of guys. I was under the impression that he didn't have cell phone service out there, so seeing that he was talking to anyone was kind of a shock, because I didn't hear from him until Monday, only one little text on Saturday.

He initiated the convo, asking for her to send him a video. She responded that her boyfriend probably wouldn't like the type of video he was trying to get her to send. He then asked her for a picture of her boobs the next afternoon. Thankfully she didn't send one. The whole convo was only around 10 texts, and in it he also made a comment implying that he didn't have a girlfriend.

I don't want to be conceited, but I'm an attractive girl. This girl he was talking to is really not that pretty and also pretty white trash.

Also I'm not a prude, we have a great sex life and see each other all the time, so it's not like he's missing anything in that department. I had actually sent him a naked picture two days before this, so why would he go asking another girl for the same thing?

I'm so confused. I really don't know what to do in this situation, so please if anyone has been there, let me know how you handled it. I really want to trust him deep down, and don't think he's actually cheating on me, but this is definitely not ok behavior. What do I do?

Thanks for any help!

Have a dilemma of your own? Post it anonymously to Group Therapy for advice and check out what else is happening in the TrèsSugar Community.