Kemper Drug and Gifts of Elk River, MN















Paying Attention to What You Eat and Getting Regular Exercise Affects More Than Your Waistline!

Studies show that the foods we eat and the exercise (mental and physical) we get can help our brains work better, our hearts and bodies be healthier and help us overall feel better.

Many of the illnesses that we treat with medications today can be better controlled and in some cases prevented by changing how we eat and exercise:

  • Diabetes
  • High Blood Pressure
  • Alzheimers disease
  • High Cholesterol
  • Depression
  • Arthritis
  • High Triglycerides
  • Osteoporosis
  • Attention Deficit Disorder
  • Gastrointestinal Reflux Disease

Paying attention to how and what you eat can affect how you feel. Just as we all look differently, our bodies can respond to the foods we eat differently. Take a few days and write down everything that you eat and drink. Click here for a printable food journal page. Choose at least 1 weekend day and 1 week day because diets vary on weekdays and weekend days. Use the food labels on the side of the packages of what you are eating to determine the number of servings you are eating or the grams/ounces and the number of calories for the amount you are eating. If there is not a nutrition label, you can get this information on the internet at www.nutritiondata.com (you don't have to register or log in) or you can buy a calorie book or get one at the library. (You can also do this online at Sparkpeople.com -they make you do a free registration to access their information - or at Nutrition Data ).


Are you eating too much or too little? How should you change the foods you eat? The first step to finding this out should be to determine how many calories that you should eat in a day based on how much you currently weight and how active you are. I have found a great website where you can get this information. Visit Ask the Dietician Website at http://www.dietitian.com fill in the questions it asks and put their Healthy Body Calculator to work for you. (If you don’t have a computer or don’t know how to use the internet, we can help you fill this information out at Kemper Drug). You will be provided with a printout of the total number of calories that you should be eating along with essential nutrients. This is important to know so that you make sure you are getting these nutrients at all of your meals. Once you have a general idea of how to do this, you don’t have to be counting every calorie and nutrient amount you are eating.

The National Diabetes Education Program has a good booklet that you can use. You can see and download it from their website by clicking here. It tells about diabetes and helps you set target goals to help you delay and reduce your risk of getting diabetes.

I have been looking for good healthy eating guide books for a long time - ones that make sense from a food as drug standpoint and ones that teaches you realistic eating habits. I have found some! One book is called Ultra-Metabolism and the Author is Mark Hyman M.D. He explores the 7 Myths that make you gain weight. He looks at ways to control your appetite, increase your metabolic power and decrease inflammation. The best part is if you don't want to know why, he has a skinny book The UltraSimple Diet which has detailed daily instructions - no thinking or guessing. Another good book is You On a Diet. by Dr. Michael Roizen and Dr. Mehmet Oz. It explains how the foods that you eat affect your body in an easy to understand way. They also have a great website full of insights on how food affects your health www.realage.com that is worth going to!

When you do physical exercise, you increase blood flow to the brain and you can even grow new brain cells. If you exercise your brain by learning something new or solving puzzles you increase the brain cell connections in your brain and this can help you stay more mentally fit. You can read more about this on John Ratey M.D.s Website.

I have put together a list of websites that can help you learn more about how the way you eat and exercise can affect you. This isn’t about losing weight - although it could be a good side effect from changing how you eat and exercise. Remember, making small changes can have big results.

If after looking at these websites you have questions or need help making changes to how you eat, you can schedule an appointment to sit down and talk about it. Call 763-441-1353 or email Wendy at Kemper Drug

I have had lots of questions about fish oil capsules lately. Fish oil capsules provide Omega 3 fatty acids. We need to get less Omega 6 fatty acids (corn oil, soybean oil, processed foods) and more Omega 3 fatty acids into our diets. I have put together an Information Sheet on Fish Oil Capsules to answer some of your questions.

The first website I suggest is The Nutrition Source. http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/ This is a Website maintained by the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. Aside from not smoking, the most important determinants of good health are what we eat and how active we are. The Nutrition Source is designed to get you started down the path toward the healthiest diet possible.

The second website I suggest is an Ask the Dietician Website. http://www.dietitian.com/ibw/ibw.html/ This website will help you figure out approximately how many calories you should eat in a day. Have a tape measure ready and think hard about how active your lifestyle is. One of its strengths is that it can let you decide what percent of your calories should come from carbohydrates, fats and proteins. The number of calories you eat is only part of the key to healthy eating.

The third website I suggest explores the term Glycemic Index. This information is very beneficial for people who are pre-diabetic or diabetic. http://www.glycemicindex.com/ It looks at the glycemic index of a variety of carbohydrate containing foods and helps you understand which foods and combinations of foods are preferred. In a nutshell, foods with a high glycemic index make your blood sugar and consequently your insulin levels rise much higher and faster then foods with a low glycemic index (combinations of food and quantities eaten can affect the rise in blood sugar). High insulin levels can make you hungry quicker and less focused, can make you deposit more fat in your stomach, can make your blood pressure and cholesterol levels increase. Check out their FAQ page.

Another website I suggest is Hussman Fitness. It is a non-profit service project. It ties healthy eating and fitness together. It explains the whys of changing your diet and exercise. It gives good tips on getting the most out of your exercise. http://www.hussmanfitness.org/index.html

For information on the composition of different foods go to Nutrition Facts and Calorie Counter http://www.nutritiondata.com/ This site provides complete nutritional information for any food or recipe

If you would like to have nutrition tools for your computer or palm. A Computer Geek named John Walker has developed his own nutrition website called The Hacker's Diet http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/e4/. On it he has tools you can download for free to your palm or computer. I have not had a chance to try them out. Please use the same cautions you would normally use downloading programs from the internet onto your computer.



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