You need time for the ancient fruit, which is in season from September through January.

Split open the purplish-red rind and you’ll find a mass of seeds embedded in a spongy white membrane. Only by bursting the tiny bubble of liquid around each seed with your teeth do you get a squirt of sweet-tart juice. Whether you spit out or swallow the seeds, it takes time to eat.

On the other hand, when you just want something to nosh on, a 100-calorie (potassium-rich) pomegranate that takes half an hour to munch through is a good thing. (If you don’t have time, check your supermarket’s produce section for small plastic tubs of fresh pomegranate seeds.)

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Of course, you can also sprinkle the seeds over your salad or mix them with couscous and dried fruit (apricots, raisins, currants) and nuts. Or team them up with chopped oranges, red onion, garlic, and lime juice to spice up your seafood.

It’s too early to know if pomegranate can reduce the risk of heart disease or cancer (see “Super Fruit,” Nov. 2006, p. 11). If it does, you might be better off with a glass of 100% pomegranate juice than the seeds in one fruit.

But if you just want something exquisite to keep your taste buds grinning, give a pomegranate a go.

http://www.pomegranates.org/

DOWN MARKET
“Hearty serving,” says the label on many of Boston Market’s new frozen Home Style Meals. They’re not kidding.

Boston’s Meatloaf with Homestyle Mashed Potatoes & Gravy and Salisbury Steak with Macaroni & Cheese have enough calories (some 700) to make a hearty contribution to your belly fund. And your ticker needs their day’s worth of bad fat (about 18 grams) and sodium (about 2,000 milligrams) like your salary needs a trim.

The Swedish Meatballs, “with freshly made buttered egg noodles,” will contribute 860 calories and 21 grams of bad fat to those freshly made fat depots under your belt and inside your artery walls.

Even the Home Style Meals that aren’t labeled “hearty” mount a stealth assault on your body parts. The Honey Boasted Chicken with Au Gratin Potatoes, for example, serves up 410 calories, 8 grams of bad fat, and 1,140 mg of sodium on an aluminum platter. The Lasagna with Meat Sauce is even worse.

A few of the company’s frozen meals keep the bad fat to around 3 grams, but the sodium will still pump up your blood pressure.

Boston has some of the greatest markets in the world. Boston Market isn’t one of them.

Boston Market: (800) 488-0050

TIP OF THE MONTH
Core an apple (try Rome or Gala), but don’t cut all the way through the bottom. Sprinkle with 1 Tbs. brown sugar plus a touch of cinnamon and nutmeg. Top with ВЅ tsp. no-trans-fat tub margarine. Microwave on high for 2 minutes (3 minutes for two apples), or until tender.

Nutrition Action Health Letter, Dec2006

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A few months ago, a woman I’ll call Nancy attended one of my seminars. Nancy had been through hard times: Three years earlier her house had burned down; then her husband’s National Guard unit shipped out to Iraq, and when he returned he was angry, depressed, and traumatized. The couple got therapy yet grew further apart until, finally, her husband asked for a divorce. Nancy realized she had a choice: She could drown in self-pity or move forward. After seeing how the trauma of war had torn up her husband, she wanted to make a difference with her life. So, at 35, she enrolled in nursing school.

I think even Nancy was surprised by her resilience. But her leap into a life of greater meaning came from a simple change in outlook. She shifted her focus from her own problems to the difficulties of others. And that one change brought her clarity and peace.

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This time of global uncertainty challenges each of us to create our own sense of security, That doesn’t mean you need to follow Nancy’s lead into a nursing career, but keeping an eye on what really matters will help you maintain your balance when things around you seem to fall apart. Here are a few practical steps that can help you become more resilient.

Don’t Let Bad News Overwhelm You
Journalists are biased. I don’t mean politically — I mean that although good news rarely gets repeated, bad news is aired again and again in living color. But one exposure to mayhem is more than enough. Research by psychologist Turhan Canli, PhD, and his colleagues demonstrated that emotionally intense images get deeply etched in memory because they activate the amygdala. That’s the part of the brain that processes threats to our survival, and it’s involved in anxiety and panic. Why program it with frightening images that have staying power? Instead, during times of disaster, avoid being overwhelmed emotionally and physiologically by rationing TV, Internet, and radio news. You’ll get all the information you need in a few minutes; after that, it’s just more of the same. Place inspiring images where you’ll see them often, because you’ll remember them just as readily as distressing ones (and more easily than neutral photos).

Know What You Don’t Know
There’s an old story about a Ukrainian priest who walks to church each morning. One day, a Cossack stops him and asks imperiously where he’s going. “I don’t know,” says the priest. The Cossack is furious — after all, the priest always went to church — and hauls him off to jail. There, the Cossack asks why he lied. “I didn’t lie,” the priest replies. “I really didn’t know that I was going to jail.” We really don’t know what will happen either. People who always expect the worst tend to be stressed-out and to suffer worse health than those who think more optimistically. But worry about a situation often turns out to be worse than the reality. Make plans to avert possible disaster, but repeat to yourself that you really don’t know anything other than what’s happening at this very moment.

Learn from the Super-Resilient
Dennis S. Charney, MD, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, has investigated people who suffered extreme stress and emerged psychologically intact. With colleague Steven M. Southwick, MD, of Yale University, he studied 750 men, mostly pilots in the Vietnam War, who were held captive for up to 8 years and subjected to torture or solitary confinement — or both — but avoided depression. These men shared a number of characteristics. Among other things, they were optimistic and altruistic, had a moral compass based on firmly held beliefs, used humor, had strong role models, and were guided by a sense of mission or purpose in life. You can nurture these traits in yourself. Look for ways to help others less fortunate than yourself, for instance, or strengthen your sense of right and wrong by reading biographies of inspiring men and women.

Explore Faith and Spirituality
Many of the POWs studied by Charney and Southwick said they prayed daily during their captivity; others didn’t. You don’t need to be religious to be resilient, in other words, but a sense that life has meaning does seem to help. Simply exploring different religious and philosophical traditions can deepen your sense of why you’re here and what you think the purpose of your life is. These qualities can help you to endure and bounce back from adversity.

People such as Nancy, who face difficulty and emerge stronger, rekindle the hope in all our hearts. My holiday wish for you is to remember the good and the beautiful that are the essence of life — and to resolve to keep a positive outlook in the year ahead. That way you can become more resilient and help create a better future for the generations to come.

“Worry about a situation often turns out to be worse than the reality”

3 more stay-strong tips

• Make one thing better The world’s problems can be overwhelming. Pick just one and try to improve it, whether that means making fewer car trips to help the environment or revitalizing an abandoned neighborhood garden.
• Have an emergency plait Assembling a security kit can make you feel more in control. Include comfort items (a journal, photos of loved ones) along with food, water, and first aid supplies.
• Keep an eye on the upside Set your Internet home page to a site like www.goodnewsnow.com, which features news stories that inspire. Reading about people cooperating to rebuild war-torn countries is much healthier than focusing on hatred.

By Joan Borysenko, Prevention, Dec2006

The next stage of recovery for Roberts: getting her finances back in shape. While she was undergoing treatment, she was able to work only 12 hours a week and her income, normally around $65,000, dropped by more than two-thirds. As a result, she dipped into savings to help cover her living expenses and to pay the $15,000 in medical bills she incurred for deductibles, co-payments, prescription drugs and other costs not covered by her health insurance. Roberts had routinely socked away about a quarter of her pay before her illness, so she wasn’t forced to take on debt. But the disease stalled progress toward her goals of buying a home and retiring early, and added a major element of uncertainty to her financial outlook. “I’m assuming I’ll live another 50 years,” she says. “But I know the cancer could return, and I don’t know how to plan for that.”

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Roberts’ predicament is an all too common one. Many working people who survive serious health problems are forced to drain their savings. Or worse: Medical bills related to illness contribute to one in four bankruptcies in the U.S., according to a 2005 study by Harvard researchers. And even when the damage stops well short of insolvency, the costs associated with a serious health problem can disrupt cherished plans and require a new approach to setting and reaching financial goals.

That said, survivors are just that: survivors. Facing down a health problem calls for grace and determination–qualities that will help power you past serious financial hurdles. “Handling money issues is small potatoes after what I’ve been through,” says Roberts. And just as good medical advice can help with your physical recovery, the right financial advice will help restore your finances. Start with these steps.

Give Yourself a Financial Checkup When you’re battling a serious illness, you aren’t likely to have much time or energy for bill paying, let alone financial planning. Meanwhile, your finances are undergoing radical changes as you deplete your emergency fund (so that’s what that money was for), dip into savings and, possibly, pile up debt. As soon as you’re better, it’s critical to assess your new circumstances–to figure out how much you’re spending (especially if you need ongoing care that isn’t covered by insurance), how much you have left in savings and, perhaps most important, how much you owe.

Once you have a better sense of where you stand, perform financial triage–that is, identify your most threatening money problems and come up with a plan to deal with them. For many people recovering from a serious illness, debt is first on the list. If you’re hard-pressed to make payments on both your credit cards and your outstanding medical bills, focus on paying down the card balances first. Unlike card issuers, most hospitals, doctors and labs don’t charge interest or impose late fees. And their billing offices will often agree to work out a more manageable repayment schedule if you just give them a call.

Rethink Your Risk Tolerance A narrow escape can leave behind a lurking sense of fear. You’ll feel much better if you take steps to manage your risk. Replenish your emergency fund, perhaps building a larger stash if you face the chance of a relapse. Move some (but not all) of your long-term savings from stocks to bonds, at least temporarily, since the potential cost of further treatments effectively reduces your time horizon. “Consider where you’d be if the stock market dropped 35%,” says Milwaukee financial planner Paula Hogan. “Most people coming off a serious illness can’t afford that kind of loss.”

Shore Up Your Insurance Don’t let your medical coverage lapse for even a day. If you then try to buy an individual policy, a new carrier might be able to deny you coverage, citing a pre-existing condition, depending on your state’s laws. If you’re joining a new group plan and you’ve gone without insurance for 63 days or longer, the new carrier can refuse to pay bills related to an existing condition for up to 12 months. To prevent a break in coverage if you’re leaving a job, consider signing up for transitional coverage, known as COBRA, which is available at close to group rates, typically for 18 months. COBRA isn’t cheap. But the costs won’t be nearly as great as footing the full tab for a serious illness yourself.

And if you don’t have one, shop for a disability policy also. A good agent should be able to find a carrier who isn’t scared off by your medical past. But you’ll likely have to wait 12 months before being covered for disabilities related to your recent illness.

Look Before You Leap… Your new lease on life might get you itching to quit your job, travel the world, move to Tahiti or make other major changes that cost a lot of money. Take at least a few months to mull those ideas over. “A basic tenet of financial planning is to avoid making one big life change right after another,” says Hogan. “And a serious disease is truly a life-altering change.”

…But Leap if You Must That said, a brush with mortality sometimes has a side benefit: a deeper understanding of what’s truly important to you. Use your newfound clarity to redefine your goals, and set about reaching them. “I’m no longer interested in money for money’s sake,” says Roberts. “Money is just a tool for living life fully.”

For example, Roberts recently decided to buy her first home, a two-bedroom, $430,000 stucco. The $43,000 down payment wiped out a third of her savings, and the $2,600 monthly mortgage payment is a stretch. Roberts certainly won’t be retiring early now. But she says it’s worth it. “My illness put things in perspective,” she muses. “Why have I saved this money if not to use it for what’s most important to me?”

43% of adults with chronic illness struggle to pay their medical bills.

SOURCE: Commonwealth Fund.

Do It Now
Took time off while you were ill? Let your boss know you’re back and in fine form. Volunteer for projects, pitch ideas and be a mentor. Show co-workers they don’t have to worry that you are not up to the job.

1 Instead of going candy crazy all night, limit the number of houses you go to and get just a few pieces. Then settle in with friends and watch a scary movie.
2 Pace yourself by creating a schedule. For example, you can choose to eat eight pieces of candy on Halloween and then one piece a day after that until it’s all gone. Or decide that you will eat no more than three pieces a day for a week.
3 Separate your candy into three piles: what you really like, what you sort of like, and what you couldn’t care less about.В  Then give away all but the first pile.В 
4 Stay in and make your own healthy Halloween recipes with friends. Try this recipe for Bloody Finger Pizza.

You’ll need:

• chopped red bell peppers

• low-fat string cheese sticks

• cooked pizza crust

• pizza sauce

Spread pizza sauce on cooked crust. Arrange cheese sticks on the pizza. Then place bell pepper pieces at tips of cheese to look like fingernails. Heat in the oven for about 10 minutes at 350 degrees or until the cheese starts to melt.

Source: Current Health 1, Oct2006

We’ve all been there. It’s time to get some shut-eye, but tomorrow’s to-do list starts swirling through your mind like a tornado, you can’t stop rehashing the tense conversation you had with your babysitter, and you’re freaking out about work. As your head spins into a panicked frenzy and your stomach is aflutter, you curse yourself for not being able to turn off your brain: Missing out on sleep is only going to make you even more stressed.

So how do you arrest this whirl wind of wakeful negativity? There are ways to let go of the day’s worries, says neurologist David Simon, M.D., cofounder and medical director of the Chopra Center and author of the new book The Ten Commitments: Translating Good Intentions Into Great Choices. Here, tips that’ll help you unwind when your thoughts are running rampant.

* Stick to a natural sleep schedule. If you’re having problems sleeping (like 74 percent of women across the country, according to the National Sleep Foundation), try to align your schedule more closely with nature’s. “Your body clock; hormones, temperature, and blood pressure fluctuations measure out a 24-hour day that’s in tune with the rising and setting of the sun,” says Simon. When you stay up into the wee hours reading a book, baking cupcakes, or doing a few extra loads of laundry, the odd hours you’re keeping throw off your body’s production of melatonin, the hormone that controls sleep regulation and wakefulness. “Syncing up your daily routine with the rhythms of your environment–namely, by getting up around 6 a.m. and going to bed around 10 p.m.–will help you maintain mental clarity,” Simon notes.

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* Turn off the TV. Chilling out in front of the television may feel like a good way to relax, but an emotionally draining or violent program actually provokes turbulent thoughts, which can result in insomnia, indigestion, even headaches. Unless you’re looking at images of baby animals frolicking in a field–or something just as innocuous–skip the late-night TV, or at least turn off the tube a half hour before you turn off the lights, so you have some time to direct your attention inward. “This will help your brain separate the heart-pumping drama on 24 from the more tranquil reality of your bedroom, and let your mind settle into a peaceful state,” says Simon.

* Download your internal conversation. Keep a journal by your bedside for the specific purpose of recording your thoughts before bed. This is not another to-do list, just a way to unload anything that’s agitating you from the day that’s passed, and anything you’re concerned about for the one ahead. “It’s like freeing space on your hard drive by saving files on a CD or Zip Drive,” says Simon. Once you’ve got your concerns written down, put the journal away. This process won’t make your worries magically disappear, but it’ll clear your head.

* Create a musical pharmacy for yourself. Listening to mellow music jibes with the unwinding of your mind and body, and enables your brain patterns to remain steady. A slower beat stimulates the right hemisphere of the brain–the area that’s in charge of order, balance, and peace–and will evoke a temporary forgetfulness, allowing you to slip away from your problems. “Fast beats, on the other hand, activate the left hemisphere, which affects reasoning, and can create tension and stress,” says Simon. Even if you’re comforted by up-tempo tunes, they’ll counteract what you’re trying to accomplish–a good night’s rest!

* Tune in to your body. Pay attention to physical sensations to quiet your overactive thought process. First, listen to the sounds around you, like the cars passing by, or the hum of the humidifier in the background. Then concentrate on your body: the feeling of your feet rubbing against the sheets, the weight of your pajamas against your skin. Focus on the passage of air through your nostrils, noticing the subtle aromas of your room and your own body. “Continue observing the inflow and outflow of your breath, and it’ll bring you into the now,” says Simon. Staying in the present relaxes your body and mind.

* Look within. Now turn your attention to the inside of your body. Still breathing deeply, allow yourself to get in touch with your emotions. “If sadness wells up, allow yourself to feel it without resistance,” says Simon. “If you feel anger, let it move through your body and release it with your exhalations.” Negative feelings that aren’t fully expressed will continue to ricochet around in your head and upset you. Acknowledging and breathing through those thoughts will help you to let go of them.

* Envision another world. Imagine that you’re drifting over the countryside in a hot-air balloon, or that you’re floating in a canoe on a tranquil stream–any image that transports you away from everyday worries. Okay, yes, it’s a Calgon moment–but it works!

“Mental anguish often stems from the belief that we’re living in circumstances that we can’t free ourselves from,” says Simon. Allowing your mind to picture adventures and goals that seem too impractical during the day puts tomorrow’s to-do list on your brain’s back burner.

* Meditate. Often the hardest part about meditation is trying not to fall asleep–but in this case you can! Just lie comfortably, close your eyes, and begin observing your breath. Concentrate on words with a quiet resonance that have no significant meaning, like “So hum.” As you’re inhaling, silently say the sound “so.” As you’re exhaling, silently say the sound “hum.” When you find that your attention has drifted away from “So hum,” gently return it to the mantra. Continue like this for about 10 minutes, or as long as it takes to drift off.

three simple sleep enhancers
Shake it all out. Before bedtime, lock your door, take off your shoes, and dance like a madwoman for 60 seconds. Letting go physically, even for a minute, releases tension and relaxes your mind.
Drink something warm. Drink a half cup of warm milk with a pinch of nutmeg, or a cup of calming herbal or mint tea. The warmth temporarily increases your body temperature, and the subsequent drop often brings on sleepiness. Sip with your full awareness, then brush your teeth and head straight to bed.
Give yourself a massage. Briefly massaging your head and feet can prepare you for a restful sleep–plus it feels great! Warm a couple of tablespoons of massage oil and rub it into your scalp as if shampooing your hair. Next, apply it to your forehead and around your eyes, cheeks, and chin. Then massage the oil into your heels, arches, and each toe. In the meantime, fill a bathtub with hot water and add a few drops of lavender aroma oil. After your massage, soak in the tub for 10 minutes and then hit the sack.

By: Berson, Tara Rummell, Redbook, Oct2006