Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Three magazines that might be useful (put 'em on your wish list for Chanukah/Christmas/Solstice/Festivus):
First off, strange as it may sound, I find the magazine Diabetic Living to be very useful for someone with heart failure. Many, many of the health concerns are the same for the two chronic illnesses, including the need to watch one's weight, to get regular medical care, to be very careful in evaluating proposed treatments (especially new ones). Plus, the magazine makes a very strong effort to make all its recipes low-sodium, or at least lower-sodium, as well as low-fat and low-sugar. I've gotten several excellent recipes out of there that suited me (low-sodium diet), my dad (diagnosed as diabetic a couple years ago at age 80, and also had a heart attack a year ago) and my spouse (borderline high cholesterol). The one catch to this magazine for CHF patients is that you may want to buy it off the magazine racks in the drug store or supermarket rather than subscribe, because if you subscribe, you'll get all kinds of bulk mail advertising assorted diabetic supplies you don't need. I buy it at CVS; most national drug store chains carry it and I've seen it in Safeway supermarkets. Diabetic Living
Prevention, put out by Rodale: this one's aimed at health in general. It used to be a bit flaky - Rodale publishes a lot of stuff having to do with alternative medicine and living lifestyles that tend toward the green/off-the-grid/deeply-into-yoga stuff. And they used to be completely uncritical about alternative medicine and all sorts of supplements. However, the past few years, they have tempered it a bit toward the real world, and they do more critical evaluations of the usefulness of alternative treatments, and offer lots of helpful advice for people undergoing any kind of medical care, as well as offering a lot of ways to live a healthier lifestyle. Many of their recipes use reduced-sodium ingredients, and are pretty healthy. Prevention
Science News, a weekly newsmagazine that offers 12 pages or so of very short articles about the latest in medicine and science. Although they emphasize science in their title, they give summaries of a lot of medical news, and any time there's a national meeting of one of the big medical associations, such as the American College of Cardiology, they have an entire page with summaries of half a dozen or so of the most important papers presented at the meeting. Intended for the regular educated person, not highly technical but the editors assume you are familiar with at least the general vocabulary of science. Science News
First off, strange as it may sound, I find the magazine Diabetic Living to be very useful for someone with heart failure. Many, many of the health concerns are the same for the two chronic illnesses, including the need to watch one's weight, to get regular medical care, to be very careful in evaluating proposed treatments (especially new ones). Plus, the magazine makes a very strong effort to make all its recipes low-sodium, or at least lower-sodium, as well as low-fat and low-sugar. I've gotten several excellent recipes out of there that suited me (low-sodium diet), my dad (diagnosed as diabetic a couple years ago at age 80, and also had a heart attack a year ago) and my spouse (borderline high cholesterol). The one catch to this magazine for CHF patients is that you may want to buy it off the magazine racks in the drug store or supermarket rather than subscribe, because if you subscribe, you'll get all kinds of bulk mail advertising assorted diabetic supplies you don't need. I buy it at CVS; most national drug store chains carry it and I've seen it in Safeway supermarkets. Diabetic Living
Prevention, put out by Rodale: this one's aimed at health in general. It used to be a bit flaky - Rodale publishes a lot of stuff having to do with alternative medicine and living lifestyles that tend toward the green/off-the-grid/deeply-into-yoga stuff. And they used to be completely uncritical about alternative medicine and all sorts of supplements. However, the past few years, they have tempered it a bit toward the real world, and they do more critical evaluations of the usefulness of alternative treatments, and offer lots of helpful advice for people undergoing any kind of medical care, as well as offering a lot of ways to live a healthier lifestyle. Many of their recipes use reduced-sodium ingredients, and are pretty healthy. Prevention
Science News, a weekly newsmagazine that offers 12 pages or so of very short articles about the latest in medicine and science. Although they emphasize science in their title, they give summaries of a lot of medical news, and any time there's a national meeting of one of the big medical associations, such as the American College of Cardiology, they have an entire page with summaries of half a dozen or so of the most important papers presented at the meeting. Intended for the regular educated person, not highly technical but the editors assume you are familiar with at least the general vocabulary of science. Science News
