WebMd.com has an interesting article on why the flu occurs primarily in winter.  Bonus points for using M&M’s as an analogy.

According to the New York Times, there is new evidence that suggest drinking diet soda may not be healthy for you.  I’m really running out of things I can bad habits that won’t kill me.

WebMd.com has a great article on some of the diet mistakes people make.  Personally, I’ve committed all six, probably at one point, all in the same day.  

My new favorite site diethack.com, has yet another great post. This one describes 12 common sense things to do to reduce the chance of getting cancer.

I love ThomasHawk.com but he mostly he blogs about technology and photography, so I don’t have him on my blog roll which is focused on health and fitness. Still, he came up with a doozy of a post on the worst foods to purchase when going out to fast food. My favorite is the Arby’s Pecan Sticky Bun 4 Pack, which packs a whopping 2,700 calories.

See the whole list here.

Cold season is officially upon us, or at least for me, now that the kids are back in school and I’ve started my constant cycle of cold after cold after cold. As such, WebMD has a good article on the symptoms of the common cold and useful tips on when it might be time to see a doctor.

I found this study, reported by WemMD, very encouraging for people who have heart problems. Basically, it states that:

“People with heart failure can regain 70% of their exercise capacity if they stick to an exercise program,” says Axel Linke, MD, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Leipzig in Germany. Linke worked on both studies.

70% is a big number and that heart disease doesn’t have to be the end of activities you enjoy.

Small Bites has an excellent post on the effects the holidays have on consumption. According to the post, the average person consumes an additional 460-900 calories a day, every day, between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. Just a quick calculation of 6 weeks multiplied by 500 additional calories a day makes the potential weight gain of 6lbs (3500 calories a pound).

The money quote for me:

The biggest culprits aren’t holiday family meals astronomically high in calories, but the barrage of food we encounter in our daily lives throughout that six week period.

It’s not the big meals but all the little temptations that kick off with excess Halloween treats to the Christmas cookies my daughters love to make. A snack here and a snack there and it’s easy to see where the 500 calories extra comes from.

Diethack.com has an interesting post on ginseng, including it’s purported health benefits.  I’m a bit of a nutritional supplement skeptic, but a colleague brought some candied red ginseng from Korea and I have to say it worked better for me than my daily cup of coffee for waking up and staying focused.

One of the important ingredients to lose weight and keep it off is getting that metabolism burning faster and a key way to do that is increase your muscle mass because it burns more calories pound per pound as compared to fat.  The diet blog has two excellent posts on weight training here and here.