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Your attitude affects your reality Mar 6th 2013, 06:00 If the stress in your life is more than you can cope with, get help right away. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-TALK (8255) Go to the nearest hospital or emergency room Call your physician, health provider or clergy National Alliance on Mental Illness www.nami.org 1-800-950-NAMI (6264) Myths about weight loss Mar 6th 2013, 06:00 With Mayo Clinic preventive medicine specialist Donald Hensrud, M.D. read biography Latest entries Myths about weight loss March 6, 2013 Is a calorie always a calorie? Nov. 10, 2012 Tips to save time, eat healthy and exercise regularly July 10, 2012 Can-do attitude, action plan key to weight loss resolutions Feb. 16, 2012 Fewer calories, healthy food best weight-loss plan Nov. 5, 2011 Free E-newsletter Subscribe to Housecall Our weekly general interest e-newsletter keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics. Sign up now The Mayo Clinic Diet blog March 6, 2013 Myths about weight loss By Donald Hensrud, M.D. Recently, there was an article in a medical journal on myths about obesity, and there are many. Why is this? Losing weight is challenging as everyone knows. And much more complex than it seems. It's much more than just eating less and exercising more. Because we don't understand weight loss well enough to be more successful, we search for explanations — and myths are created. Here are a few of these myths: The reason why I weigh more is my metabolic rate is low. As people gain weight they increase not only body fat, but also some muscle to support that fat. Approximately 20-30 percent of excess weight is muscle. Muscle tissue burns calories, so the more muscle someone has, the greater the metabolic rate. So in general, the more someone weighs, the greater their metabolic rate. This doesn't include calories burned through physical activity. The reason why I weigh more is my thyroid isn't working well. It's true that weight gain will occur in someone who has advanced hypothyroidism (low thyroid hormone). However, weight gain doesn't occur until someone has had hypothyroidism severely and for a long time. The vast majority of people whose thyroid gland isn't working properly have it discovered on a laboratory test when it's mild, long before it affects body weight. A simple blood test can tell if your thyroid gland is working properly. Small changes in calorie intake will cause large changes in body weight over time. Occasionally, someone will state something such as: If you eat one less cookie each day, and that cookie contains 100 calories, then by doing the math you should lose more than 10 pounds after one year. Yet, why don't we know more people who've accomplished this? It's because as we lose weight, we burn less calories (our metabolic rate decreases as discussed above). This is also one of the reasons why we hit a plateau when we lose weight, and one of the complexities of weight loss. There are many other weight loss myths. In our book, "The Mayo Clinic Diet," we have tried to take some of the myths and complexities out of weight loss. We try to explain things simply and provide a program that people can understand and follow. While weight loss is still challenging, we believe this can help. blog index Teamwork unites caregivers, those with dementia Mar 6th 2013, 06:00 Alzheimer's blog March 6, 2013 By Angela Lunde Alzheimer's Caregiving Subscribe to our Alzheimer's Caregiving e-newsletter to stay up to date on Alzheimer's topics. Sign up now The Meeting of the Minds Dementia Conference 2013 has ended. After many years of planning and participating in these conferences, they're beginning to feel a bit like a family reunion. While most of the faces I see are still new, more and more are familiar and oh-so-special. The conference this year reflected the spirit and compassion of more than 1,000 people coming together to find better ways to care for one another. Pat Summit, the winningest college basketball coach in history, now living with younger onset Alzheimer's, along with her former player, Michelle Marciniak, opened the conference. Her remarks were brief but impactful. Her advice — surround yourself with a good team. She spoke of her son's support with pride and gratitude. She thanked Ronald Petersen, her Mayo Clinic doctor, for his role and commitment to her care. And when Michelle spoke, it was clear that she and the other players who knew Pat Summit as both coach and mom were back on her team to offer endless support. Hopefully we all have a team, or at least a precious few that offer us healing energy and unconditional support. Yet, in the face of adversity, relationships often change, and our existing support systems can waver. As I walked around the conference and spoke with caregivers and those individuals living with Alzheimer's or a related dementia, I could see and hear new relationships being formed. A new version of life was emerging; a version that exposes what's truly important, or perhaps one that's discovering how resilient the inner self can be. A version, at least I hope, that believes we are all people, with or without a label of disease, worthy of a meaningful life from beginning to end. And a version that indisputably recognizes that relationships are essential to well-being and that belonging to a "team" is a basic need. At the end of the conference, however, precious silence and solitude was my welcomed gift, a time for replenishing and reflecting. What I felt most was gratitude — thankful to my passionate colleagues who share in this mission, thankful to my extended family (all of you) living this journey for the ways in which you enrich my life, and more importantly what you offer one another. To those of you who attended our "'reunion" last Saturday, I hope you received something in return. "You never know how much you belong until you walk in." - Marty, conference attendee blog index

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