A Fat-Burning Green Smoothie Recipe to Kickstart Your Morning

Photo: Getty Images

It’s a rare day when a pic of some sort of green drink doesn’t show up in my Instagram feed—and for good reason. Green smoothies are the perfect way to slip in veggies before noon. Here’s my version, with a boost of pea protein powder to rev your metabolism and keep you feeling full longer.

Ingredients

1 small very ripe green Anjou pear
2 Tbsp. minced green bell pepper
1/4 cup minced peeled cucumber
1 cup loose baby spinach leaves
1/4 ripe Hass avocado
1 cup vanilla almond milk
1 scoop plain, unsweetened pea protein powder (about 1/4 cup)
1 tsp. grated fresh ginger root
1 Tbsp. freshly squeezed lime juice

Directions

Toss all ingredients in a blender, whip until smooth and pour in a glass. (Note: The smoothie is even better when it has been chilled in the freezer for 5 to 10 minutes.)

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Move of the Week: Plyometric Side Lunge

Not everyone owns a home gym, so it can be difficult to get in cardio without leaving the house. If you don’t have a treadmill or elliptical machine, try plyometrics (or jump training) to blast fat and rev up your heart rate at home, no equipment needed.

Watch Health‘s contributing fitness editor Kristin McGee demonstrate an exercise that will get you in shape anywhere.

RELATED: The 8 Best Fat-Blasters

Here’s how to do it: Stand with your feet about twice as wide as your shoulders, then jump your left leg to the left and bend your knee to come into a side lunge. At the same time, bring your right hand down to touch the floor in front of your body. Drive with your left foot to hop up, landing in a side lunge on your right side with your left hand touching the floor. Do this for 30-60 seconds.

Trainer tip: Remember to keep your chest high while you do this move, especially when you bring your hand to touch the ground in front of you.

Try the full workout: 4 Fat-Blasting Jumping Exercises

RELATED: Stationary Lunge with Pulse

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12 Hospitals That Might Make You Sicker

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On an average day, about 1 in every 25 hospital patients gets sick from the hospital itself. How? By contracting what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) calls a healthcare-associated infection (HAI).

When a patient is already sick, one of these infections can be disastrous for their prognosis, and in 2011, 75,000 of the 722,000 patients who developed an HAI died during their hospital stay. To call attention to this problem, Consumer Reports ranked hospitals across the United States based on the frequency of MRSA and C. diff, the two most common and deadly HAIs, along with three other bugs.

They came up with a list of 12 hospitals from coast to coast with the highest rates of infection for all five types of infections they looked at—based on data all hospitals are required to report to the CDC and other agencies—between October 2013 and September 2014. “Getting a low score across all five infection categories is a red flag that the hospital is not focusing proper resources on infection control,” Doris Peter, PhD, director of the Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center explained in a release.

RELATED: 8 Things You Must Do to Prevent Hospital Overcharges

Florida had the most hospitals on the list, with three: St. Petersburg General Hospital in St. Petersburg; UF Health Jacksonville, in Jacksonville; and Venice Regional Bayfront Health, in Venice.

Many of the hospitals on the list responded with explanations of why their infection rates were so high during that period, and what they’re doing to fix the problem. Consumer Reports is posting the hospitals’ responses on the Safe Patient Project, a website from the magazine intended to make healthcare better for everyone.

The full list of hospitals is below in alphabetical order. Is yours on the list? (Each of the linked report cards are behind a paywall, but you can still view the hospital’s response, if there is one, without a subscription).

RELATED: Should You Go to the ER?

Brooklyn Hospital Center, Brooklyn, N.Y. (The hospital’s response.)

Decatur Memorial Hospital, Decatur, Ill.

Floyd Memorial Hospital and Health Services, New Albany, Ind. (The hospital’s response.)

Fremont-Rideout Health Group, Marysville, Calif. (The hospital’s response.)

Little Company of Mary Hospital and Health Care Centers., Evergreen Park, Ill.
(The hospital’s response.)

Mercy St. Anne Hospital, Toledo, Ohio

Riverview Medical Center, Red Bank, N.J.

Rockdale Medical Center, Conyers, Ga. (The hospital’s response)

St. Petersburg General Hospital, Saint Petersburg, Fla. (The hospital’s response)

The Charlotte Hungerford Hospital, Torrington, Conn.

UF Health Jacksonville, Jacksonville, Fla. (The hospital’s response)

Venice Regional Bayfront Health, Venice, Fla. (The hospital’s response)

RELATED: The 8 Germiest Places in the Mall

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10 Yoga Poses That Help With Bloating, Back Pain, and More

Aching back? Menstrual cramps? Next time you’re hurting, grab a yoga mat. That’s right your favorite fitness class might also help heal you.

For example, a new study in the Journal of Rheumatology found that among sedentary adults suffering from arthritis, 8 weeks of yoga helped improve their pain levels and general health and well-being. This adds to other research showing it might also ease annoying body problems like headaches and menstrual cramps.

Wondering how yoga can help you? Here are 10 poses that help with some of the most nagging issues, provided by Katie Brauer, chief program officer of Yoga Six, which has studios in California, Missouri, and Illinois.

RELATED: 9 Best Workouts to Do When You Have Your Period

Menstrual cramps

Often treated with over-the-counter painkillers and birth control pills, monthly menstrual cramps are a real bummer. Performing these poses at the height of your pain may be helpful.

Janu Sirsasana

Sitting, extend your left leg out straight and bend your right leg, with your right foot pressing into the inside of your thigh. Fold forward over your extended leg hinging from the hips, elongating your spine and breathing.

How it helps: This move not only works to reduce anxiety and stress levels to help you relax, but also bending from your groin stretches muscles that are tense from cramping.

Malasana

Start in standing position with feet hip width, toes turned out. Squat down deeply. Bring your hands together at heat center in prayer position as you press your elbows into the inner thighs. Option to open twist to each side. For support, a balancing block can be placed under the butt.

How it helps: The malasana will stretch your body through the thighs, groin and lower back. Additionally, this move helps to supports digestion, and the ascending and descending colon to help ease any discomfort in your lower abdomen.

Stress-related teeth grinding

So stressed your jaw hurts? You might be suffering from “bruxism,” aka teeth grinding. In severe cases this can lead to jaw disorders, headaches, on top of dental problems, but for many people teeth grinding is an unconscious habit brought on by stress or anxiety. (It can also happen while you sleep; seeing a dentist for chronic teeth-grinding is recommended.)

To ease the after-effects of a (literally) grinding day, you can use these poses to relieve stress and tension in the neck, upper shoulders, and trapezius, Brauer says.

Eagle Arms

Sitting up straight, put both arms out in front of you. Wrap your right arm under the left and catch your wrist or palms. Then, lift your fingertips straight into the air, whilst pressing pinky fingers forward in space. Take several breaths, repeat, wrapping your left arm under right.

How it helps: Eagle arms stretches out your rhomboid muscles, which helps to relieve any built up tension in your shoulder blades.

RELATED: Yoga Moves to Beat Insomnia, Ease Stress, and Relieve Pain

Chest Stretch

The chest stretch can be done in a seated or standing position. Take your arms behind you and interlace them, stretching out your chest. Bring your chin to chest and roll your neck gently, side to side.

How it helps: By rotating your neck while doing this stretch, you stress the back and side of the neck in order to reduce tightness from your clenched muscles surrounding your jaw.

Back pain from poor posture

Fact: we all spend entirely too much time hunched over our phones and computers. Research shows looking down at your screen may put as much as 60 pounds of added weight to your spine. This poor posture over time can lead to killer back pain.  See: text neck.

“Open up your spine with the cat-cow pose—start in the table top position and curve and collapse your spine 10-15 times—to open up your whole spinal column,” Brauer recommends. Then move on to:

Bridge Pose

Start by lying on the ground with your knees bent and feet planted firmly on the ground. Then, raise your hips up straight to the sky, holding the stretch. For a modification, you can place a block under your lower back for stabilization.

How it helps: The bridge pose helps open up your hip flexors and chest, while creating through the front line of the body decreasing tension and stress in the muscles.

RELATED: Best Yoga Poses for Your Trouble Spots

Belly bloat

When a big meal leads to gas and an upset tummy, a few minutes of yoga may be just what you need. Brauer says that many of the yoga poses that work to ease menstrual cramps may also help bloating. “Focus on movements that will activate or stimulate the digestive system,” she says.

Seated twist

Sit up straight with your legs out in front of you. Bend your right leg at the knee and take it over your left, with your foot planted on the floor. Inhale to create length in the spine, and exhale while twisting to the right. Use your right hand behind you like a kickstand. Take several breaths and continue to grow through the spine and twist more deeply with your exhale. Unravel and repeat on the other side.

How it helps: This move helps to the muscles of the torso and outer hip, while the twisting action helps move gas through the stomach.

Deep belly breathing

Sit up straight or lay down with your hands placed over your diaphragm. Breath deeply, through your belly, so that your abdomen expands and contracts (as opposed to your chest).

How it helps: This form of breathing through the abdomen helps stretch our your digestive muscles and organs.

RELATED: A Yoga Workout to Beat Bloat

Ringing ears

Also known as tinnitus, chronic ringing ears affects approximately 40 million Americans. Treatment often involves medications to help patients to control anxiety, depression, or insomnia. This is because stress can actually increase symptoms of tinnitus, which is why yoga, a known stress reliever might help, too.

“Yoga in its broadest sense—especially breathing exercises and some basic postures—will immediately dilute and dissipate stress,” explains Brauer.

Three-part breath

Breathe in and out through your nose. When inhaling, relax the abdomen, allowing it to expand with your breath rising through the belly, ribs and chest. Exhale from top to bottom.

How it helps: This breathing exercise is so relaxing, you just might melt.

Triangle pose

Start in standing position with your legs stepped wide apart. Turn your right foot out 90 degrees, keeping your left foot facing forward. Lift both arms straight, parallel to the floor, and then reach your right hand down your right foot and left arm straight into the air, bending at the waist. To release, straighten your upper body back up and repeat on the opposite side.

How it helps: Triangle pose opens your whole body, allowing you to focus on stretching outward and letting go.

Karna Pidasana

Lie on your back and take both legs up to sky. Bend both knees and bring them toward your body, down to your head to muffle your ears. Because this is an advanced move, beginners can use a modification. Put a yoga block under your hips and lying on your back, stretch your legs up a wall. Then take both hands and cover both ears.

How it helps: This move works to create a gentle suction on your ears as you relax your body and focus on your breathing to eliminate stress.

RELATED: 10 Natural Ways to Lower Blood Pressure

All photos: Courtesy of Katie Brauer

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Transgender Discrimination Linked to Risky Health Behaviors

FRIDAY, Oct. 2, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Discrimination may trigger risky health behaviors by transgender Americans, a new study suggests.

Transgender adults who deal with more discrimination are more likely to smoke cigarettes, abuse alcohol and drugs, and attempt suicide, the study revealed.

“This research suggests that the consequences of being [identified] as transgender and gender nonconforming are often far-reaching,” Eric Anthony Grollman, an assistant professor at the University Richmond in Virginia and a former Indiana University student said in an Indiana University news release.

“Society must become more accepting of diversity in gender identity and expression. Doing so would help put an end to systemic prejudice and discrimination against transgender people,” he added.

The study wasn’t designed to prove a cause-and-effect relationship between discrimination and risky health behaviors among transgender people, but it was able to show an association between these factors.

Even though there is more awareness of transgender people in the United States, many transgender adults still face high levels of discrimination, the researchers said.

One national U.S. survey found that 70 percent of transgender people have been discriminated against on the basis of their gender identity, the researchers said.

The study authors found that transgender adults who are more frequently identified as transgender by others are more likely to experience daily and major discrimination.

Transgender women faced more discrimination than transgender men, the study found. And transgender people in certain disadvantaged groups — such as those who are multiracial and have low incomes — experienced more discrimination than those in more advantaged groups.

The study was published recently in the journal Sociological Forum.

“As transgender celebrities and activists have pointed out in recent months, there is diversity in the experiences of transgender people,” Lisa Miller, a doctoral candidate in the sociology department at Indiana University said in the news release.

“Rather than assuming that all members of the transgender community are equally at risk, we need to investigate the extent to which some members may face disproportionate exposure to discrimination and poor health,” she suggested.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about transgender health.

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Childhood Brain Tumor Survivors May Have Memory Troubles

FRIDAY, Oct. 2, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Adult survivors of childhood brain tumors appear to have worse working memory than other adults, a small study finds.

Researchers tested 17 adult survivors of pediatric brain tumors in the posterior fossa part of the brain. Then they tested a control group of 17 healthy adults. The brain tumor survivors scored significantly lower on tests of working memory, the study found.

Working memory is the ability to retain and use information for short periods of time. The researchers said working memory is an important component of higher-level thinking.

Brain scans showed that different areas of the brain appeared to “activate” more in brain tumor survivors during a verbal working memory task compared to healthy adults. Increased activation in those areas was linked to worse performance on more demanding working memory tasks, the researchers said.

“Our goal was to identify the neural mechanisms underlying working memory difficulty in adult survivors of childhood brain tumors,” Tricia King, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Georgia State University, said in a university news release.

King said their findings showed that the brains of the adult survivors needed to use additional areas of the brain, such as the prefrontal lobe, when there were greater demands for working memory.

“This increased prefrontal activation is associated with lower working memory performance,” she said.

The findings could help improve understanding of working memory problems in childhood brain tumor survivors and lead to improved treatment, according to the researchers.

The study was published recently in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society.

Working memory problems are common in other brain disorders, such as schizophrenia, multiple sclerosis and traumatic brain injury, the researchers said.

More information

The American Brain Tumor Association has more about childhood brain tumors.

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Migrating Birds May Bring Exotic Ticks to U.S.

FRIDAY, Oct. 2, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Ticks can travel from Central and South America to the United States by hitching rides on migratory birds, a new study reveals.

Some of these ticks may be carrying infectious diseases with them, the researchers said. However, there is no evidence that any ticks from these regions have established permanent populations in the United States, according to the study published in the Oct. 2 issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

Researchers examined thousands of migratory birds immediately after they arrived in the United States from Central or South America. The investigators found that 3 percent of the birds carried so-called neotropical ticks.

Each spring, billions of migratory birds arrive from countries further south, the researchers estimated. These birds likely bring more than 19 million neotropical ticks to the United States, the study authors explained.

But the ticks have little to no chance of surviving once they reach the United States, the authors suggested.

The United States doesn’t offer the exotic ticks the features they need “to survive, reproduce and spread,” study co-author Sarah Hamer said in a journal news release. Hamer is an assistant professor in the department of veterinary integrative biosciences at the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas.

In their natural habitat, young neotropical ticks typically get their first and second blood meals from birds. But as adults they switch to large mammals such as sloths or anteaters, which aren’t found in the United States.

“Nonetheless, an adult of one of the neotropical tick species we found on [migrating birds] was recently found crawling outside of a home in Oklahoma, in the fall, which could represent a bird-imported nymph that arrived in the spring and successfully molted,” study co-author Emily Cohen explained in the news release. Cohen is a postdoctoral fellow from the Migratory Bird Center at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Washington D.C.

Climate change could make it possible for these neotropical ticks to become established in the United States, Cohen warned.

More information

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration explains how to protect yourself from tick-borne disease.

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Climate Change May Lead to Low Newborn Weights in Poorer Nations

FRIDAY, Oct. 2, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Climate change is expected to bring about a host of health harms, and a new study suggests that a surprising addition to that list might be an increase in the number of low birth weight babies born in poor nations.

The researchers looked at almost 70,000 births in 19 African nations. The births occurred between 1986 and 2010. The researchers hoped to assess the relationship between rainfall, temperature and birth weight.

They found that that lower levels of rainfall and an increased number of very hot days during pregnancy seems to raise the risk of lower birth weight. Low birth weight occurs when a baby is born weighing less than 2,500 grams (about 5.5 pounds), the researchers said.

Although this study was able to find an association between rainfall and temperature and the number of babies with low birth weights, it wasn’t designed to prove a cause-and-effect relationship between these factors.

Still, the researchers expressed concern.

“Our findings demonstrate that in the very early stages of intrauterine development, climate change has the potential to significantly impact birth outcomes. While the severity of that impact depends on where the pregnant woman lives, in this case the developing world, we can see the potential for similar outcomes everywhere,” study leader Kathryn Grace, a geography professor at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, said in a university news release.

The study was published Sept. 29 in the journal Global Environmental Change.

Low birth weight babies are at increased risk for illness, disabilities and death, the researchers said. Babies born at a low weight also tend to achieve lower levels of education and income than normal weight babies, the researchers noted.

“At the end of the day, the services we invest in to support these developing countries won’t reap the same level of benefits as long as climate change continues. Services such as education, clean water efforts and nutrition support won’t be as effective. We need to work faster and differently to combat the evident stresses caused by climate change,” she concluded.

More information

The World Health Organization has more about climate change and health.

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Obesity Won’t Affect Joint Surgery Safety, Study Finds

By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, Oct. 2, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Obese and overweight people who have joint replacement surgeries are less likely to need blood transfusions and are no more likely to face complications than normal weight patients, a new analysis finds.

“It’s a very complex issue,” said study co-author Dr. Nolan Wessell, an orthopaedic surgery resident at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. “And this finding is somewhat surprising.

“But it could just be that larger patients have a larger total blood value,” he added. “And therefore lose a lower percentage of their blood than smaller patients during surgery. Essentially, it may be that they have a larger reserve in their tank, and can afford to lose a bit more blood without needing a transfusion. We don’t know. But at least conceptually that makes sense.”

Still, senior study author Dr. Craig Silverton, vice chairman of orthopaedics at Henry Ford, cautioned that more research will be needed to confirm the findings, given that they “contradict what we have always recognized as a significant risk factor for complications and transfusion.”

Silverton, Wessell and their colleagues presented the findings Thursday at a meeting of the International Society for Technology in Arthroplasty, in Vienna, Austria. Research presented at meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

Concern about how excess weight may impact blood transfusion needs during hip and knee replacement surgery is centered on the fact that nearly 79 million Americans are now obese.

And as excess poundage increases the risk for joint problems, a large percentage of hip and knee surgery patients are overweight or obese, the researchers said.

During surgery, one overriding goal is to keep blood loss in check, to eliminate the need for a blood transfusion, they added.

Why? Transfusions have long been associated with a higher risk for infection, immune system problems, prolonged hospitalization and/or death. In fact, one-fifth of all blood transfusion patients (regardless of the surgery at hand) suffer some type of adverse reaction, the researchers said.

The good news: the majority of hip and knee surgery patients will never end up needing a transfusion. Silverton pointed out that “transfusions are much less common today than they were 20 years back. And ideally, eventually, no one would ever get a blood transfusion. That’s where we think we’re heading.”

But for the time being, Wessell said that he and his colleagues “initially thought that overweight and obese patients would need more operative time and larger surgical exposure, both of which would lead to a greater need for blood transfusions.”

To explore that theory, the team analyzed data concerning nearly 900 hip surgery patients and more than 1,500 knee surgery patients who had joint replacement operations at Henry Ford Hospital between 2011 and 2013.

First, body mass index (BMI) readings were used to classify patients as either normal weight (BMI under 25), overweight (BMI between 25 and 30) or obese (BMI 30 or above).

Blood transfusions during surgery were then stacked up against the weights of the patients.

The research team found that when undergoing hip surgery, 35 percent of the normal weight patients needed a blood transfusion. However, that figure dropped to just about 28 percent among overweight patients, and almost 22 percent among obese patients.

Similarly, during knee surgery the 17 percent transfusion rate seen among normal weight patients dropped down to just 11 percent among overweight patients and just 8 percent among obese patients.

Wessell said that his team also found no evidence that excess weight prolonged time spent under the knife.

Nevertheless, “we did see a trend towards an increased risk for infection among overweight and obese patients,” he said.

Dr. Alex Miric, an orthopaedic surgeon with Kaiser Permanente in Los Angeles, viewed the findings with caution.

“I agree that the results are counterintuitive,” Miric said. But he also agreed that conclusions “would need to be replicated with more surgeons and a larger and more current patient population before such a finding would gain traction in the orthopaedic community.”

More information

There’s more on blood transfusions at the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

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Is ‘Phubbing’ Ruining Your Life? Take The Quiz

Photo: Getty Images

You’re watching a movie with your significant other and whip out your iPhone to Google the cast. You sit down for a Sunday brunch together and have to snap a ‘grammable shot of your waffle platter mid-conversation. Does this sound familiar? You may be guilty of ‘phone snubbing’—dubbed ‘Phubbing‘—and there’s a chance it’s messing with your love life and in turn, your mental health.

A new study from researchers at Baylor University surveyed a group of men and women in romantic relationships about the extent to which being distracted by their phones is affecting their bond. They found that when folks felt snubbed by their partner’s phone behavior, it created conflict, and also lead to less satisfaction in their relationships overall.

“These lower levels of relationship satisfaction, in turn, led to lower levels of life satisfaction and, ultimately, higher levels of depression,” study co-author James A. Roberts, PhD, said in a press release.

In other words, these little distractions may seem small in the moment, but they can add up to big consequences.

RELATED: Everybody Hates When You Use Your Phone at Dinner

Are you being phubbed?

The researchers asked more than 300 adults for input about what constitutes phubbing, while also referring to popular magazines, websites, and previous studies. Based on the feedback, they built the Partner Phubbing Scale below to assess couples’ phubbing habits.

See where you stand by rating the following statements from one to five, a one meaning “never,” a three meaning “sometimes,” and a five being “all the time.”
1. During a typical mealtime that my partner and I spend together, my partner pulls out and checks his/her cell phone.
2. My partner places his or her cell phone where they can see it when we are together.
3. My partner keeps his or her cell phone in their hand when he or she is with me.
4. When my partner’s cell phone rings or beeps, he/she pulls it out even if we are in the middle of a conversation.
5. My partner glances at his/her cell phone when talking to me.
6. During leisure time that my partner and I are able to spend together, my partner uses his/her cell phone.
7. My partner does not use his or her phone when we are talking.
8. My partner uses his or her cell phone when we are out together.
9. If there is a lull in our conversation, my partner will check his or her cell phone.

If you got a high score, you’re not the only one

Tallying up mostly 3s, 4s, and 5s? It sounds like you’re being phubbed often. And sadly, it’s all too common: A second survey of 145 adults included in the paper showed that more than 46.3% of people felt snubbed by their significant others, and 22.6% said it caused issues. Unsurprisingly, the bad effects of phubbing among “anxiously attached” couples—those in shakier relationships—were more severe.

“When you think about the results, they are astounding,” Roberts said in the release. “Something as common as cell phone use can undermine the bedrock of our happiness—our relationships with our romantic partners.”

Thankfully the fix is pretty easy: put away your phone!

RELATED: Tied to Your Phone? Here’s a Simple Way to Use it Less

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