Sunburns can vary in severity from the minor to the very severe. For mild burns there are home remedies you can try, and believe it or not, your diet may help you in your healing.

First off, an extremely severe burn which chars or damages the skin should be treated professionally. However, with some of the more minor burns you may be able to treat them at home. An important thing to do is to eat a proper diet both before and after the burn takes place.

Of course, this may sound somewhat odd, as it is a difficult thing to know in advance whenever you’re going to get a sunburn yourself. Ideally, of course, when you take proper precautions, using a sunblock and avoiding excessive exposure, you should not be getting a sunburn at all. Nonetheless, minor burns could occur and eating a proper diet can benefit you in healing. You should aim for a diet that is high in raw food, with as many organic fruits and vegetables as possible. Avoid processed foods which are high in sodium, sugar and chemical additives. You should also make sure to get plenty of beta carotene, which can help the skin as well. Beta-carotene comes from sweet potatoes and carrots, to mention a few.

If you have an existing burn that is in the process of healing, it is not too late to change your diet in order to help it heal even better. A diet that is high in protein will promote new skin growth, but the type of protein that you are is very important. It is best to consume protein from organic sources, preferably plant-based, such as legumes.

As you heal, also make sure to stay hydrated as this will give your body the best opportunity to heal properly and it will work right along with your diet in order to take care of the problem.

As you may know, sunburns should not be taken lightly. If you have concerns about a severe sunburn you should not hesitate to see a qualified medical professional. To learn more about sunburns and the dangers of sunbathing, The Mayo Clinic has an informative article: Sunburn. Find out more in the video below.

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Does Diet Help in Sunburn Relief?

Without a doubt, we would rather be on the Forbes 400 than this particular Forbes 20:

We set out to discover which cities were the worst offenders when it came to leading a sedentary lifestyle. Our list is 20 cities long and is topped by Memphis and New Orleans. It also includes surprising entries like Miami and San Diego.

Behind The Numbers
We created our list by collecting data on body mass index (BMI), physical inactivity and TV watching habits for the country’s 50 largest metropolitan statistical areas. For information on BMI and physical inactivity, we turned to 2006 data from the Centers for Disease Control and its comprehensive Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, which surveys metropolitan areas annually on a range of health issues. For BMI, we added the percentage of obese or overweight people and ranked cities based on the combined number. When measuring frequency of exercise we looked at the survey’s sole indicator: the percentage of people who had not engaged in any physical activity in the past 30 days. To determine TV watching habits, we used Nielsen data on the average number of hours of TV watched per week by metropolitan area.

Find out if your city is on the list.

New Orleans

Oprah Winfrey discussed thyroid disease and its recent impact upon her. Story below after the jump.

Winfrey, 53, was feeling incredibly sluggish by the time her talk show wrapped up its season in May. She eventually discovered the problem: an out-of-balance thyroid.

“My body was turning on me,” she says in the October issue of O, the Oprah magazine. “First hyperthyroidism, which sped up my metabolism and left me unable to sleep for days. (Most people lose weight. I didn’t.)”

“Then hypothyroidism, which slowed down my metabolism and made me want to sleep all the time. (Most people gain weight. I did! Twenty pounds!)”

Hyperthyroidism can also cause a fast heartbeat, among other symptoms; hypothyroidism, the opposite condition, can result in fatigue and weakness.

Winfrey, exhausted and stressed, took a month-long break in Hawaii to regain her health.

Winfrey also discussed her thyroid condition on Tuesday’s “Oprah” show, saying she “wanted so many other women who are going through the same thing to check on yourself and recognize that … it’s an issue we all share in common.”

Mary Shomon, About.com’s thyroid disease expert, wrote a detailed response to Oprah’s program and the discussion about thyroid disease which Oprah had with physician and author, Christiane Northrup, M.D. Fat Loss Victory highly recommends it, as it sheds light on the disease and takes issue with some of Dr. Northrup’s philosophy. Here is a key excerpt:

Ultimately, in claiming to advocate for women’s health, Dr. Northrup and Oprah both have inexplicably embraced an extreme — and, frankly, quite unsympathetic — view that blames women’s lifestyle and emotional life for our health problems, hormonal imbalances, and symptoms.

Here’s what else Dr. Northrup has to say about thyroid disease:

“In many women thyroid dysfunction develops because of an energy blockage in the throat region, the result of a lifetime of ‘swallowing’ words one is aching to say. In the name of preserving harmony, or because these women have learned to live as relatively helpless members of their families or social groups, they have learned to stifle their self-expression….It’s no coincidence that so many more women than men have thyroid problems. Thyroid disease is related to expressing your feelings…”

Why Christiane Northrup Needs a Wake-Up Call About Thyroid Disease

While Christiane Northrup may be, as the Oprah.com site says, “the woman Oprah calls for help,” Northrup is the one who clearly needs a wake-up call. It is irresponsible of her to suggest that an inability to express yourself is somehow responsible for a woman’s thyroid condition. Christiane Northrup is doing a serious disservice to women’s health by trying to blame women for an already misunderstood health problem. Is it any wonder that doctors across America fail to take women’s thyroid conditions seriously? Because on one end of the spectrum, we have dogmatic doctors claiming that we women are just stressed, depressed and PMSing, in need of an antidepressant or tranquilizer to solve all our problems. On the other end, we have Dr. Northrup — with Oprah’s glowing endorsement — telling us our lives and emotions have run amok, we’re unable to speak out, we’re stifling our self-expression, and therefore we’re developing thyroid problems as a result.

Fat Loss Victory is in agreement. While identifying negative emotions and its impact upon health is crucial, such an approach does not obviate the need to take concrete action to solve one’s health problems. Read the rest of the article for more detailed information about thyroid disease, its origin, causes, and ways to treat.

We know we need to stay away from the simple sugars and starches, high on the glycemic index, which measures how rapidly a food causes a rise in blood sugar levels.

Now there is another reason to avoid high glycemic carbohydrates. Science Daily reports on new research indicating a link between high glycemic carbohydrates and fatty liver disease:

The researchers, led by David Ludwig, MD, PhD, director of the Optimal Weight for Life program at Children’s Hospital Boston, fed mice either a high- or a low-glycemic index diet. High-glycemic index foods, including white bread, white rice, most prepared breakfast cereals and concentrated sugar, raise blood sugar quickly. Low-glycemic index foods, like most vegetables, fruits, beans and unprocessed grains, raise blood sugar slowly.

On the high-glycemic index diet, mice ate a type of cornstarch that is digested quickly whereas on the low-glycemic index diet, mice ate a type of cornstarch that is digested slowly. The diets had equal amounts of total calories, fat, protein, and carbohydrate, and the mice were otherwise treated identically.

After six months, the mice weighed the same. However, mice on the low-glycemic index diet were lean, with normal amounts of fat in throughout their bodies. Mice on the high-glycemic index diet had twice the normal amount of fat in their bodies, blood and livers.

When sugar melts out of high-glycemic index food, Ludwig explains, it drives up production of insulin, which tells the body to make and store fat. Nowhere is this message felt more strongly than in the liver, because the pancreas, which makes insulin, dumps the hormone directly into the liver, where concentrations can be many times higher than in the rest of the body. Fat buildup in the liver, or fatty liver, is usually symptomless, but it increases the risk for liver inflammation, which can progress to hepatitis and, in some cases, liver failure.

This is all the more reason to follow a sensible diet with low glycemic carbohydrates. David Mendosa has a wealth of resources on the glycemic index, including a detailed glycemic index of foods; a very valuable reference. Also helpful is the official website of the glycemic index and international GI database maintained and updated by the School of Molecular and Microbial Biosciences at the University of Sydney.

Labor Day, the last major holiday of the summer in the United States has all but lost its original significance and purpose, as a hard won right and celebration for workers. Nowadays we associate Labor Day with picnics and barbecues. Aside from the usual concerns about calories and carbohydrates in barbecue foods, we must take into consideration the health risks of foods prepared at high temperatures, which create a carcinogenic substance, heterocyclic amines (HCAs). MedicineNet explains the dangers and offers a list of practical suggestions to enable you to avoid most of the risks. Essentially, it is important to avoid excessively high cooking temperatures.