Month: November 2016

Nestled strategically between the guilt of eating too much Halloween candy and the letting out your pants out in preparation for Thanksgiving gluttony, November is National Diabetes Month. Here at Heal, we don’t think it’s a coincidence.

One of our favorite doctors, Matt Walvick, DO, shares with us important facts about diabetes and how Heal can help.

The more common type of diabetes is type 2. Type 2 diabetes is a condition that prevents insulin from helping sugar into your cells.

A major medical journal published a study this past September, citing that nearly half of adults living in the U.S. have diabetes or pre-diabetes. This trend was noted over the past few decades across all age groups, regardless of sex, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status.Hence, diabetes and pre-diabetes states have reached epidemic proportions nationally.

All parents want their children to eat a healthy diet, but what exactly does that mean? In the spirit of National Nutrition Month, here are some tips and tricks to help you make the right choices for your child’s meals.

1) Avoid sugar-sweetened beverages, including juice.
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While juice appears to be healthy (it comes from fruit, right?), it’s actually full of sugar. Unlike fruit, which contains plenty of fiber to help satisfy their appetite, juice provides calories without filling children up, leaving them still hungry to consume additional calories. Other sugar-sweetened beverages, like soda, lemonade, and sweet teas also provide empty calories that do not contribute to your child’s nutrition. Instead, give your child water to drink throughout the day and provide fresh fruit as a healthy snack!

The Zika virus, first found in monkeys during the 1940s in the Zika Forest in Uganda, is transmitted by mosquitoes. Detected in humans in 1952 in Uganda and Tanzania, the virus spread to the Western hemisphere in February of 2014, first on Chile’s Easter Island, making its way to Brazil in May 2015 and to the U.S. in Florida in July 2016.

How Is the Zika Virus Transmitted?

The virus can be transmitted four different ways:

• Via infected mosquitoes
• From pregnant mothers to their newborns
• Through sexual intercourse
• Via blood transfusion