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With access to the leading health experts right here in the region, Get Healthy offers readers a local perspective on what’s best for your health, including nutrition, fitness, mental health and environmental health. Along with the magazine, email newsletter and Facebook page, Get Healthy offers an array of valuable content that is both relevant and proactive.

The easy-to-navigate Get Healthy site will have even more beneficial content in the near future—including blogs and expert columns—so stay tuned. We’re here for you 24/7, so check it out, and let us hear from you!

The Green Silence shoe can break down in a landfill in 20 years compared with hundreds of years for other models. (Photograph courtesy of Brooks Sports/Medill.)

Can a shoe save your feet and the environment?

For runners, shoes often don’t last for too many months. Melanie Suffredin, an avid runner for 17 years, has been coaching at Bartlett High School in the Chicago suburbs for the past three years. Her shoes generally last about five months, and then she switches to a new pair. She thinks aged sneakers cause knee pain for many runners. “I will look at their shoes and ask how old they are,” she said, “and they know what to do from there.” So long, shoes.

While 25 million shoes have been recycled through projects such as Nike and Converse’s ReUSE A SHOE program, millions more get cast aside in landfills, where they take, on average, hundreds of years to break down.

The last thing you want to do when disinfecting your hands is worry about what harmful chemicals may be in the disinfectant. That’s where CleanWell’s All-Natural Hand Sanitizing Wipes come in.

Available in original and orange vanilla scents, the wipes use a formula made from plant essential oils to meet FDA standards and kill 99.99 percent of germs. The wipes are alcohol and Triclosan free, important to note because Triclosan is a synthetic chemical that when absorbed in the body can mimic or block hormones, disrupting the body’s functions.

CleanWell’s All-Natural Hand Sanitizing Wipes are available for $4.99 at Whole Foods Market, diapers.com, drugstore.com and cleanwelltoday.com.

A diagnosis of diabetes can be heartbreaking, especially if it means not being able to eat some of your favorite foods, such as pasta. But Dreamfields pasta encourages you to put that broken heart back together with its special-recipe pasta, formulated to be healthy for everyone. Dreamfields is a specially made pasta with about the same high fiber as whole wheat pasta and fewer digestible carbohydrates. It also has a lower glycemic index than traditional pasta, which means it breaks down more slowly and releases glucose into the bloodstream at a slower rate, making it ideal for those with diabetes.

Available in shapes such as spaghetti, elbow, rotini, lasagna and angel hair, Dreamfields is available in local supermarkets as well as online at dreamfieldsfoods.com for a suggested retail price of $2.49.

Want to be treated with the same technology used at Grey’s Anatomy’s Seattle Grace Hospital? Ask and you shall receive. The same thermometer used by the doctors in the popular television medical drama is available for you to check your temperature. The Exergen TemporalScanner is an infrared thermometer that reads temperatures in just two seconds by capturing the heat emitted from the skin over the temporal artery on the forehead. A red LED light and soft beep let the user know the temperature has been read correctly.

The thermometer is available at stores such as Walmart, Walgreens, Costco, Babies R Us, Toys R Us and Sam’s Clubs for a suggested retail price of less than $50. For more information, visit temporalscanner.com

When suffering a heart attack, seconds count.

That’s why Advent Consumer Healthcare, LLC, has developed a way to fight heart disease that fits in the palm of your hand, preventing you from having to open bottles or dig around in medicine cabinets. In August, the company rolled out the At Heart emergency aspirin dispenser, available in CVS pharmacies for under $5, to help fight heart disease. The dispenser is only three inches, making it the perfect size to attach to a keychain or slip into a purse, making the two blister-sealed 325 mg aspirin tablets easy to access.

At the first onset of heart attack symptoms, the American Heart Association recommends calling 911 and chewing on a regular strength aspirin tablet. When that aspirin tablet is readily available via the At Heart dispenser, a life could be saved. For more information about At Heart, visit at-heart.com.

Stepping onto a scale, it’s the numbers staring back at us that make our hair stand on end. That’s why the Quantum Scale might be your best new weight-loss friend. Instead of showing you how much you weigh, the scale shows how much weight you lost, or gained, focusing on the progress instead of the numbers. The scale is available in five colors at quantumscale.com for $59 plus an additional $10 for shipping and handling.

Craving something sweet but don’t want to pack on the pounds? With four new, crave-worthy flavors introduced in June, the LARABAR is ready to satisfy that sweet tooth. Chocolate chip cookie dough, carrot cake, peanut butter chocolate chip and chocolate chip brownie flavors are made with 100 percent whole food and only between two and six ingredients in each nut and fruit bar. To stock up on the gluten-free tasty treats, visit larabar.com.

Need a reason to start your daily exercise routine? What about Facebook? Or catching up on some of that work that you didn’t get done at the office? That’s the idea behind the FitDesk, a folding exercise bike with a laptop platform attached. The device was developed by creator Steven Ferrusi when he was training with Team in Training, a sports program that raises funds for blood cancer research and services. Ferrusi didn’t have time for both exercise and work, so he combined the two. “It’s designed to get you to exercise,” Ferrusi says. “You wind up exercising more.” The FitDesk is available at fitdeskbike.com for $199.95. To buy the desk to attach to an existing stationary bike, check out the FitDesk PRO for $79.95.

A new mouthpiece from Under Armour looks to help you take a bite out of the competition by using the strength in your jaw. The new Under Armour Performance Mouthwear line, which includes the ArmourBite mouthpiece and ArmourBite mouthguard, prevents an athlete from clenching his teeth, which releases hormones that produce stress and fatigue. The mouthwear was created using technology from Bite Tech Inc., a Minneapolis-based company. Without clenching, the athlete increases his strength, endurance and reaction time, and reduces stress by relieving pressure on the temporomandibular joint. The mouthpieces and mouthguards are specially made for each athlete by Under Armour-authorized dentists who can be found on the website at underarmour.com and armourbite.com.

(Photograph courtesy of stick-e.com.)

If your downward facing dog is interrupted by sweaty palms, slipping and un-zen-like internal curses, you’re not alone—you’re in luck. Slide on a pair of slip-proof Stick-e Yoga Wrist Savers, which help keep you firmly planted on your mat during weight-bearing poses. The Wrist Savers are nearly weightless, so they won’t disrupt your practice, and they also alleviate pressure on your wrists so you can hold your planks a little longer. Created by the inventor that brought Yogis the Yoga Stick-e Socks, you can pick these up online for $20 at stick-e.com.