Benefits of Eating Well
Eating well is vital for everyone at all ages. Whatever your age, your daily food choices can make an important difference in your health and in how you look and feel.

Eating Well Promotes Health
Eating a well-planned, balanced mix of foods every day has many health benefits. For instance, eating well may reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, bone loss, some kinds of cancer and anemia. If you already have one or more of these chronic diseases, eating well and being physically active may help you better manage them. Healthy eating may also help you reduce high blood pressure, lower high cholesterol and manage diabetes.

Eating well gives you the nutrients needed to keep your muscles, bones, organs and other parts of your body healthy throughout your life. These nutrients include vitamins, minerals, protein, carbohydrates, fats and water.

Eating Well Promotes Energy
Eating well helps keep up your energy level, too. By consuming enough calories—a way to measure the energy you get from food—you give your body the fuel it needs throughout the day. The number of calories needed depends on how old you are, whether you’re a man or woman, your height and weight, and how active you are.

Food Choices Can Affect Weight
Consuming the right number of calories for your level of physical activity helps you control your weight, too. Extra weight is a concern for older adults because it can increase the risk for diseases such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease and can increase joint problems. Eating more calories than your body needs for your activity level will lead to extra pounds.

If you become less physically active as you age, you will probably need fewer calories to stay at the same weight. Choosing mostly nutrient-dense foods—foods which have a lot of nutrients but relatively few calories—can give you the nutrients you need while keeping down calorie intake.

Food Choices Affect Digestion
Your food choices also affect your digestion. For instance, not getting enough fiber or fluids may cause constipation. Eating more whole-grain foods with fiber, fruits and vegetables or drinking more water may help with constipation.

Make One Change at a Time
Eating well isn’t just a “diet” or “program” that’s here today and gone tomorrow. It is part of a healthy lifestyle that you can adopt now and stay with in the years to come.
To eat healthier, you can begin by taking small steps, making one change at a time. For instance, you might:
Take the salt shaker off your table. Decreasing your salt intake slowly will allow you to adjust.
Switch to whole-grain bread, seafood or more vegetables and fruits when you shop.
These changes may be easier than you think. They’re possible even if you need help with shopping or cooking, or if you have a limited budget.

Checking With Your Doctor
If you have a specific medical condition, be sure to check with your doctor or registered dietitian about foods you should include or avoid.

You Can Start Today
Whatever your age, you can start making positive lifestyle changes today. Eating well can help you stay healthy and independent—and look and feel good—in the years to come.
For more information visit nihseniorhealth.gov

By Alisa Vitti

Hormones affect everything. Have you ever struggled with acne, oily hair, dandruff, dry skin, cramps, headaches, irritability, exhaustion, constipation, irregular cycles, heavy bleeding, clotting, shedding hair, weight gain, anxiety, insomnia, infertility, lowered sex drive, or bizarre food cravings and felt like your body was just irrational? It’s not, it’s hormonal. Yet women remain mystified at their bodies’ seemingly random display of disconnected symptoms, never thinking that they are connected and hormonally based.

Mentioning the word “hormones” usually elicits blank stares or comments that it’s relevant only to women over 50. The reality is, hormones influence you in utero, throughout childhood and adolescence and most importantly right now as you are reading this sentence. Do you know what your hormones are doing, how you might be interfering with their attempts to stay balanced and keep you symptom-free, and if you are dealing with an imbalance, where to begin to get your body and your life back? Your health depends on it.
Having worked with so many women with reproductive health issues, I know how overwhelming it can be to deal with a hormonal imbalance like PCOS, fibroids or infertility.

The good news, however, is that nutritional research has been catching up to some long-standing wisdom about the powerful effects food has on your body and most importantly, that you can learn how to use food to change and improve the way your endocrine system functions, so that you balance your hormones and eliminate frustrating symptoms.

At FLOliving.com, I’ve pioneered a five-step nutritional protocol that eliminates period problems, helps women get pregnant naturally or improve IVF cycles, and increases sex drive. In the 10 years since opening the FLO Living center in Columbus Circle, I’ve helped women shrink fibroids, regulate periods, lift anxiety and depression and get pregnant after IVF failed. I’ve helped women transition off the pill without having pre-pill symptoms return, and I’ve helped women recover their energy and uncover their passion and purpose in life. It’s time for a new conversation and a fresh start for an area of women’s health that has long been overlooked—and food is the answer!

This food-based approach works and can be used in conjunction with what your doctor is recommending.

Here are some of the strategies I’ll share with you in my forthcoming book, WomanCode: Unlocking the Secrets to Your Optimal Period, Fertility and Sex Drive (HarperCollins, April 2013).

FLOliving.com’s Nine Nurturing Food & Lifestyle changes for easier periods, improved fertility and supercharged sex drive:

1. Dramatically decrease white flour and refined sugar to keep insulin levels stable for better ovulation and to decrease exposure to gluten, a studied fertility inhibitor.
2. Choose organic produce, pasture-fed animal proteins and natural beauty products to reduce exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals, hormones and pesticides.
3. Eat one cup of steamed dark leafy green vegetables per day to help keep estrogen levels balanced. They are rich in calcium, magnesium and vitamin E—all extremely important for healthy cycles and fertility.
4. Have organic, free-range eggs with the yolk for a boost of the following fertility and sex drive enhancing nutrients: vitamins D3, A and K2—all essential for hormone production.
5. Eat avocados for improved IVF cycles, natural conception and improving mood and energy for sex.
6. Reduce soy products; the phytoestrogen in soy can exacerbate estrogen dominant symptoms and conditions like PMS, PCOS, fibroids, endometriosis, infertility and low libido.
7. Eat wild salmon. If you’re struggling with anxiety, depression, irritability and/or insomnia, these all indicate lower levels of Omega 3 fatty acids which help promote healthy progesterone levels and reduce PMS.
8. Take a B-100 complex. B vitamins are essential for stabilizing hormones, mood and energy. I like Jarrow B-right best (must be taken on a full stomach).
9. Swap coffee for Rooibos chai tea. The combination of cinnamon and other spices has a benefit of increasing blood flow to the reproductive organs and can help you get in the mood faster.

Alisa Vitti, HHC, AADP is the founder and CEO of FLOliving.com, functional nutritionist specializing in women’s reproductive endocrinology. Go to FLOliving.com to learn more about balancing your hormones using our Hormonal Sync System. Special to Manhattan Media readers: email us at info@FLOliving.com to schedule a FREE consultation with one of our FLO expert coaches.

The first thing you notice about Nancy Easton is the sparkle in her eyes and then the crinkle in her smile, sure signs of the eternal optimist who won’t take no for an answer and relishes a tough challenge.

Easton’s mission, through Wellness in the Schools, a nonprofit she founded in 2005, is not only to promote the notion that improved diet and exercise lead to better academic achievement and enhanced individual potential, but to put it into practice. Easton acts as the “coach”—the program’s teaching face and athletics consultant—and Bill Telepan as “cook”—its chief of sourcing, developing and implementing new school lunch recipes.

“It’s the passion and energy that Nancy brings to this project that makes it work,” said Telepan, known for his eponymous restaurant on West 69th Street. “There are a lot of roadblocks, but she doesn’t let them stop her.”

Telepan and Easton met as fellow parents at P.S. 87 and she soon convinced him to join WITS, which now operates in 40 New York City public schools as well as 14 in Kentucky and Florida.

Easton, 46, has the lithe physique and buoyant stride of the elite college athlete she once was: Recruited to play soccer at Princeton, she also ran track, setting a school record at 800 meters and anchoring a 4 x 800 relay team at the national championships.

After earning her master’s degree at Bank Street, Easton taught at I.S. 370 on the Lower East Side, where 99 percent of students were at poverty level and many struggled: “They would walk into the school with a bottle of soda and a bag of chips for breakfast. Then they ate a processed meal for lunch. The same kids couldn’t focus in class, couldn’t walk a flight of stairs without catching their breath. This was the ’90s and no one was really talking about it at the time

“We were kids teaching young kids,” said Easton, a Miami-area native. “We would take them biking after school or hiking on weekends, and they couldn’t keep up. It was just so bizarre to me, as someone who grew up running around.”

Easton’s family ate figs and mangoes from their backyard. Her mother tended garden and put health food on the table; friends and neighbors called her “Nature Lady.” Easton’s father is a self-made man who started with a dry-cleaning business and eventually became a successful real estate developer. “I attribute that positive can-do attitude to him. If you wanted to do something, you were going to do it and do it well.”

Nancy the Eternal Optimist admits to an ingenuous false naiveté: When she’s trying to get to “yes,” she’ll often conveniently behave as if “no” doesn’t exist. Asked whether she needs a realist on staff for balance, she chuckles, “Yes, that would be Marjorie [Wolfson], our director of programs. I joke that when we’re crossing the street together and the sign says ‘Don’t Walk,’ she always stops and I just keep walking.”

But there’s more to it than just forging ahead: “If the cook in the kitchen or the woman who runs the school gives us feedback that it’s not going well, we don’t gloss it over. Listening to the problems and continuing to work through them is another important trait.

“It’s not just about changing lunch,” said Easton. “We need to talk about why we changed it, to cook with the kids, cook with the parents, teach them about nutrition, so they understand why they’re not getting chicken fingers.”

Bike riders power their way up 122nd Street during the 2012 Grant’s Tomb Criterium bicycle race on March 10.

CHARITY RACE FOR 4-YEAR-OLD WITH RARE DISEASE

Hundreds of Upper West Siders came out last Sunday to support 4-year-old Rafaella “Rafi” Lily Kopelan, running a 5K in her honor through Riverside Park. Kopelan was diagnosed with a rare genetic connective tissue disorder called epidermolysis bullosa (EB), a disease that makes it difficult for skin to produce collagen, leading to skin separation, painful blisters and open wounds.

Young people with the disease are known as butterfly children because their skin is so fragile, much like the wings of a butterfly. Kopelan is only the eighth child in the world to undergo a clinical trial stem cell transplant to treat her EB, which has allowed her body to produce the necessary protein she was unable to produce before the procedure.

At Sunday’s event, State Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal presented Kopelan with a resolution proclaiming March 11 Butterfly Children Awareness Day.

“I decided to sponsor this resolution after learning about Rafi’s courage and the strength of her parents, Jackie and Brett, who have become incredible advocates on a crusade for a cure,” Rosenthal said.

“We are so happy and proud to live among such a supportive group of people,” said Jackie Kopelan, her mother. “Rafi’s Run would never have been so successful had it not been for places like Montclare Children’s School [which Kopelan attends], the first place that made her feel like everyone else. It is our hope that events like Rafi’s Run will raise enough awareness to eventually end epidermolysis bullosa, the worst disease you never heard of.”

LOCAL STATE SENATOR EYEING CONGRESS

State Sen. Adriano Espaillat, who represents portions of the Upper West Side as well as upper Manhattan and a section of the Bronx, has announced the formation of an exploratory committee for a congressional campaign. Espaillat had been rumored to be considering a run for the national seat if a district emerged with a heavily Latino population; he has been a vocal proponent for the creation of just such a district.

“This is a historic opportunity for the state of New York to send a clear and unmistakable message that the growth of the Latino community demands that our government reflect our diversity,” Espaillat said in a statement.

He said he was not announcing which district he would run for, even though federal judge Roanne Mann’s recently released maps would place Espaillat’s Washington Heights district in Rep. Charlie Rangel’s redrawn 13th congressional district.

Blacks and Latinos in Albany are pushing back against the maps, criticizing them for not accurately representing the diversity of New York City. “While it’s premature to target one particular district, given the fact that final district lines have not been settled, launching this exploratory committee is an important step in making sure we are ready when the final district lines are established,” Espaillat said.

Espaillat served in the state Assembly for 14 years, becoming the first Dominican-American to be elected to a state legislature, before winning his seat in the state Senate.

UWS WINE SHOP FIGHTS STATE BILL

WIGS, or Wine in Grocery Stores, may not be on the legislative agenda this year, but many liquor stores across New York still have reason to complain about Albany. City & State reports that Upper West Side wine shop Pour has been urging customers to rally against a budget amendment that would end the practice of warehousing liquor in other states before distributing to local stores and restaurants.

Wine sellers claim the amendment, proposed by State Sen. George Maziarz and Assemblyman Joe Lentol, is an attempt to drive them out of business by the state’s two biggest liquor distributors, Southern Wine & Spirits and Empire Merchants, who already have their storage facilities within state lines.

“Imagine a landscape with only the two largest wholesalers remaining to work with, when today there are in excess of 50,” read an email Pour sent to its customers. “Selections would become painfully limited. Prices would most certainly rise. Service would plummet.”

A spokeswoman for Lentol said the intent of the bill was to level the playing field for New York and its neighboring states, but that the assemblyman would take another look at the data before making a final decision.

BREWER HOLDS FRESH FOOD FORUM

City Council Member Gale Brewer hosted a meeting this Monday with a number of Upper West Side interests to discuss how to get more fresh, local food into homes, organizations and senior centers. One of the major participants was GrowNYC, a nonprofit that works with many of the city’s greenmarkets, and representatives from other groups like Citymeals-on-Wheels, City Harvest, local food banks and senior centers made up the about 40 people who had a productive conversation about where fresh food is most needed and how to get it there, Brewer said.

Some possibilities that emerged from the meeting included delivering bags of produce to drop-off points for seniors to purchase at low cost, about $7, as well as setting up cooking and nutrition classes in the community, organizing bus trips to and tours of farmer’s markets, and getting more locally sourced food to senior center kitchens. “We asked, ‘How do you get affordable fresh food to the neighborhoods?’ and we’re going to be the first to do that,” Brewer said. One of the next steps for the initiative is to work with the city and the Department for the Aging to expand the possible reach of the nascent fresh food programs.