Ezy Net Articles

Is Your Food Nutritious and Toxins Free

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Aidoo) — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 16:21:00 +0000

The food and water we consume, and the air we breathe are the basic elements that determine our health. Our efforts to ensure they are of the highest quality, unfortunately, has not been successful.

Compared to the early 1900's, current soil under cultivation has lost about 85% of the minerals, trace mineral and micronutrients that give farm produce the vitamins we need to build healthy and strong bodies. Beyond this, the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides have introduce several toxins into our food supply.

Antibiotics, sulfa drugs and hormones given to farm animals to make them more marketable have introduced into the meat, pork, poultry and fish we eat chemicals that are making us sick and overweight.

We cannot go back to how farming was done in the early 1900's. Mechanized farming that depletes the soil's minerals with chemical fertilizers, and puts pesticides and herbicides on our foods, and feed farm animals with antibiotics and hormones is here to stay if we are to adequately provide food for the increasing population of the world.

All the same, it's depressing to know we can do nothing, at least in the near future, to stop the loss of minerals and trace minerals in the soil, and the introduction of toxins into our food supply; yet everything is not lost.

We can compensate for the loss of nutrients in our foods with dietary supplements, and detox our bodies with natural substances that cleanse the body of toxins; allowing our internal organs to do the job they are meant to do to keep us healthy and strong.

At this time I am not recommending any particular dietary products, but for best results choose dietary products that help with weight management and detoxing the body of toxins, while at the same time replenishing the body with essential nutrients and hydration.

For more detail on the effects of the toxins in our nutritionally bankrupt foods and things you can do to protect your family, read these articles: Toxins In Food, and Does Food influence Your Immune System, and also Proper Nutrition.

How Belly Fat Can Affect Your Health

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Aidoo) — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 16:36:00 +0000

A common feature seen in most people in the West is a bulging stomach caused by increasing belly fat. Although information is out that this is no funny matter, those affected seem helpless to do much about it.

Put simply, we are taking in more calories through the foods and drinks we consume than we are burning with normal physical activities. By the end of the day, the unburned calories are converted to belly fat which forms the stomach bulge in 70% of people in some western countries.

A waist circumference of 40 inches and above for men, and 35 inches and above for women is a general indication of excess belly fat. Difficulty with putting on your sock, a feeling that your clothes don't fit well on you, and suddenly requiring too much effort to do simple routine tasks are some of the problems from a bulging stomach.

More problematic are the health problems caused by belly fat, which include heart diseases, stroke, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, high blood pressure and others.

Along with increasing belly fat within the populace is the awareness that there will not be enough money to meet belly fat related health problems in the decades ahead. Hence the increasing emphasis on diet and fitness programs to reduce belly fat, keep people healthy and from the doctor's office.

For what you can do to reduce belly fat and maintain good health, read these articles: How to Lose Belly Fat, and Belly Fat in Men, and also Lose Belly Fat.

When Health Care Becomes Unaffordable

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Aidoo) — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 02:42:00 +0000

We can already see the effects of the high cost of health care starring in our faces. If present trends continue, health care will be expensive and unaffordable for all but the rich. Presently it costs $14,000.00 to remove an appendix; imagine how much it will cost for a heart or liver transplant, or a coronary bypass surgery in 10 years.

Insurance premiums will go through the roof and become unaffordable with the result that the average American will be forced to choose between preventing getting sick, and enduring a slow and painful death for lack of adequate health care.

Nobody or institution will deliberately deny the sick adequate health care, there will simply be not enough money, in the foreseeable future, to provide adequate health care for all who need it.

Those who are heeding the warning for the future are already preparing for the days when health care becomes unaffordable for average Americans. They are doing this by acknowledging that we are healthy or sick depending on what we eat, drink and the environmental toxins to which we are exposed.

Consequently, health conscious individuals are changing what they eat and drink by avoiding high fat, high cholesterol diets. They are detoxing, replenishing and nourishing their bodies with dietary supplements, and engaging in regular physical exercise. That is the future, and the early you get on board, the better your chances are to live to 100 healthy and strong.

For more information on unaffordable health care, and some ideas on how to solve it, read these articles: Health care Unaffordable for Many Women, and Health Care: The Price Isn't Right, and also What Will Happen to the Obama's Health Care Plan in 2011.

Can Protein be Harmful to Your Health

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Aidoo) — Tue, 24 May 2011 22:04:00 +0000

You need protein to build and repair tissues and muscles in your body, to make enzymes and hormones, as well as building blocks for cartilage, bones, blood and more. But the type and quantity of protein you eat determines whether or not you are eating for good health.

Usually when people talk about protein what comes to mind is protein from animal sources like steak, fish, poultry, milk, cheese, pork and eggs. These are great sources of protein alright, but eating too much of them have been shown to cause heart diseases, stroke, diabetes, hypertension and other major illnesses.

On the other hand, protein from plant sources including tofu, beans, nuts and seeds, whole grain, and some vegetables and fruits are also great sources of protein. The difference with plant protein is that it does not increase the levels of cholesterol in the body as animal sourced protein does.

This has been the argument for those who have chosen vegetarian diets. However, it is generally recommended to choose a diet that includes proteins from both animal and plant sources. How much animal protein versus plant protein you eat is a matter you should consult your doctor about, as only he or she can tell you what combination is good for your health.

For more information on the type and quantity of protein you should eat for good health, read these articles: The Benefits of Protein, and Protein: What Should You Eat?, and also Nutrition for Everyone: Basics of Protein.

Misconception About Diet and Physical Exercise

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Aidoo) — Thu, 12 May 2011 15:34:00 +0000

There is a misconception that only those who are overweight need be concerned with diet and regular physical exercise. The truth is everyone has visceral fat: the fat found in the inner layers of the abdomen. For this reason everyone should be concerned with diet and regular physical exercise to prevent excess visceral fat.

Visceral fat is not visible, but it is the most dangerous because it is often found next to vital organs in the body. Overtime, viscera fat secrets toxin into the organs next to it precipitating heart disease, stroke, diabetes and hypertension in people with excess visceral fat.

For detail on visceral fat and how to reduce it read these articles: Belly Fat in Women, and Exercise Keeps Dangerous Visceral Fat Away.

Is the Weight Gain Epidemic Real

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Aidoo) — Wed, 04 May 2011 18:45:00 +0000

We don't hear much about this on the evening news, but we are facing a weight gain epidemic in many countries around the world caused by the abundance of foods and drinks of all kinds; particularly foods and drinks high in fats and sugar.

The weight gain epidemic has not gone unnoticed though. People in America and Europe are trying hard to curb weight gain, unfortunately they are doing so mostly with diet which has failed to end the weight gain epidemic.

Statistics show weight loss achieved with diet alone is regained when the strict diet regimen ends. For this reason it is recommended that a sensible normal diet along with regular physical exercise is the right approach to losing weight and keeping it off.

It is also recommended to get off a diet that keeps you hungry all the time. Rather, choose a diet that provides all the essential nutrients, mineral salt and fibers your body needs for good health; while doing regular physical exercise to burn off excess fat.

On physical exercise, consult your doctor for advice on the type of physical exercise suited to your age and health condition. You may want to start your physical exercise gradually by walking 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week.

For more information on the weight gain epidemic, and what you can do to avoid becoming a victim of the weight gain epidemic read these articles: Obesity and Weight Gain Epidemic, and Excess Weight and Obesity - A Growing Epidemic, and also Reversing the Obesity Epidemic.

How to Lose Weight with a Healthy Digestive System

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Aidoo) — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 11:41:00 +0000

As a hedge against starvation your body takes in more calories than are required for its daily use, leading to the accumulation of fat in your body. You can burn off accumulated fat and lose weight with physical exercise.

If you cannot do physical exercise, the next best thing you can do to reduce fat accumulation in your body is to invest some time in maintaining a healthy digestive system that speeds up the movement of food in your body to cut down the amount of calories your body extracts from it.

Other health and weight loss benefits from a healthy digestive system include, increasing your metabolism, reducing toxicity and blood acidity, increasing nutrient absorption into your cells, and increasing your energy level.

For more helpful ideas on how to maintain a healthy digestive system and lose weight, read these articles. But before using any advertised weight loss product, consult your doctor, as some of these products may have adverse health effects.

Now the articles: Raw Food Life, and Digestive System Cleaning, and also Natural, Healthy and Safe Weight Loss.

How to Stay Motivated to Lose Weight

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Aidoo) — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 21:08:00 +0000

Every overweight person wants to lose weight, especially when you pull out your favorite jeans, dress, shirt or suit and find you can no longer fit in them.

When you have problem putting on your sock, or engaging in physical activities you could do without difficulty only a year ago, you will need nothing more to motivate you to lose weight.

The problem many face is how to maintain the motivation to do what it takes to lose weight and keep it off. Find some helpful ideas from these articles: How to Stay Motivated on Your Diet, and How to Stay on a Diet.

The Effects of Alcohol on Weight Loss

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Aidoo) — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 18:46:00 +0000

Alcohol has negative effects on weight loss. It gives the body nothing except empty calories; not to mention the diseases alcohol causes to the liver, kidney, the digestive system and to the heart.

Calories from alcohol are absorbed into the blood first before those from carbohydrates, fat and protein are absorbed. When consumed on an empty stomach calories from alcohol are almost entirely absorb immediately into the blood stream. Only when there is food in the stomach will some alcohol calories be absorbed in the stomach and the rest absorbed in the intestine.

Not only are calories from alcohol absorbed first, they are also the first to be burned as energy by the body. This means the more alcohol that is consumed, the longer it will take for your body to burn calories from carbohydrates, fat and protein.

As a result, the calories from the carbohydrates, fat and protein in your body are converted to body fat slowing down the weight loss process. Alcohol increases your appetite for foods high in salt and fat. It also induces sleep taking you away from doing physical exercise to burn off your body fat.

For more information on the effects of alcohol on weight loss read these articles: Alcohol and Weight Loss, and How Alcohol Affects Weight Lose, and also Alcohol and Nutrition Facts.

How to Increase Your Metabolism to Lose Weight

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Aidoo) — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 16:00:00 +0000

Metabolism is how your body burns calories from foods and drinks for energy to function. Increasing your metabolic rate will increase the amount of calories burned, resulting in a decrease in calories that are converted to body fat and eventual weight gain.

Increasing your metabolism happens in several ways including, eating a high protein and fiber diet that require more energy to digest; eating more often say, every 2 to 3 hours to prevent your body from slowing down metabolism; weight bearing exercise that causes minor tear in the muscles requiring energy to repair.

During these activities your body burns more calories leaving fewer calories that can be converted to body fat. And needless to say, when fat accumulates at a slower rate in your body you will begin to lose weight.

For more tips on how to increase your metabolism to lose weight and keep it off read these articles: How to Increase Your Metabolism and Start Losing Fat, and How to Increase Metabolism, and also Ways to Increase Metabolism Naturally.

Do Liquid Diets Work

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Aidoo) — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 19:27:00 +0000

The first question you want answered though is, are liquid diets safe? Yes liquid diets are safe when consumed for a short period of time, say for a week or two to quickly lose excess weight under the supervision of your doctor or dietitian.

Once you get to your desired weight, you could then slowly return to eating solid foods that maintain your recommended daily calorie intake. You can get this information from a daily calorie intake calculator.

Liquid diets come in various forms including only liquids, a combination of liquid and soft food, or liquid and solid food depending on whether they are needed for medical reasons, or only to lose excess weight.

Since the purpose of a liquid diet is to lose excess weight quickly by burning more calories than you consume daily, it is likely your internal organs will not get all the nutrients they need to carry out their vital functions, which is why you should consult your doctor or dietitian before getting on a liquid diet.

For more information on liquid diets read these articles: What Are Liquid Diets, and Clear Liquid Diet, and also Liquid Diet Recipes.

How to Motivate Someone to Lose Weight

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Aidoo) — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 19:56:00 +0000

It's a delicate undertaking trying to motivate a loved one or a friend to lose weight. If handled wrongly, or too aggressively, you will bring to the mind of the one you wish to motivate all the stereotyped views on overweight persons.

In some cases, all you need do is raise the issue of weight loss, and your loved one or friend would feel you think they are lazy, weak-minded, ugly, sluggish and dirty, and not fun to be with. It won't matter if these thoughts are the farthest from your mind.

Some overweight persons are motivated to lose weight by the fear that they would lose a loved one or friends if they don't lose weight. Others are motivated when their doctors tell them if they don't lose weight they will get a deadly disease, or die in 3 months or so.

Still others are motivated to lose weight by learning what they would gain from doing so, in contrast to what they are losing carrying around everywhere they go excess weight that neither improves their health, nor brings them happiness.

For more helpful ideas on how to motivate a loved one or friend to lose weight read these articles: 10 Ways to Help a Loved One to Lose Weight, and How to Get Motivation to Lose Weight, and also How to Encourage Someone to Lose Weight.

Is Compulsive Overeating a Disease

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Aidoo) — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 23:21:00 +0000

Compulsive overeating or binge eating leads to weight gain and obesity. But those who are overweight would caution us not to be too quick in accusing them of being lazy because compulsive overeating is a disease that has to be cured before weight loss can begin.

Research has shown that brain chemicals play a major role in compulsive eating, particularly in foods with high fats, salt and sugar content. These foods stimulate the brain chemical endorphins that conveys to us the pleasurable experience we have eating them.

Consequently, whenever we smell the scent of these foods, or see them on advertisements, or merely think about them, our brains secrete the chemical dopamine that causes us to want the pleasure foods high in fats, salt and sugar bring us.

For this reason the argument is made that until the effects of endorphins and dopamine can be inhibited, a compulsive overeater will remain helpless to avoid overeating and weight gain.

Whether compulsive overeating is a disease or an indulgence, get more information on the subjects here: Compulsive Overeating, and Binge Eating Disorder.

Tips on Preventing Diabetes

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Aidoo) — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 21:50:00 +0000

About 95 percent of diabetes cases are type 2 diabetes, so the tips you will be reading are geared mostly toward preventing type 2 diabetes; but there are also type 1 diabetes and gestational diabetes.

Type 2 diabetes is preventable by eating a healthy diet, physical exercise to lose excess weight, quit smoking, lowering your blood cholesterol and lowering your blood pressure.

However, you may get type 2 diabetes from causes other than those mentioned here. Age and family history are unpreventable risk factors for type 2 diabetes. With unpreventable diabetes, the goal of treatment is to prolong life, reduce symptoms and prevent diabetes related diseases such as blindness, heart disease, kidney failure and amputation of limbs.

Read more tips on preventing diabetes here: Type 2 Diabetes, and National Diabetes Information ClearingHouse.

Tips on Preventing Heart Attack

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Aidoo) — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 17:12:00 +0000

Because of our modern diets, almost everybody is a walking time-bomb for a heart attack. Can we do something about it? Sure we can. It's within our power to prevent premature death from heart attack. The obstacle for many is, it requires consistent efforts to do so.

The first step to prevent a heart attack is to live a heart healthy lifestyle, which involves eating a healthy diet that include a variety of fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Lean meats, poultry, fish, beans and fat-free or low-fat milk products are also part of a heart healthy diet. To reduce your blood cholesterol choose a diet low in saturated and trans fats. Reduced salt and sugars are also helpful to a heart healthy diet.

Physical Exercise: Its Benefits and What You May Have Overlooked

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Aidoo) — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 22:01:00 +0000

About 250,000 deaths a year in the U.S. are attributable to lack of physical exercise, according to estimates from the American Heart Association. More alarming are reports from several studies that at 25 in men, and after puberty in women, the muscles begin to deteriorate.

With this steady deterioration in our muscles, how are we able to maintain our upright pasture, walk, pull, push and lift objects well into our seventies? For one, normal muscle deterioration happens very slowly over our lifetime. For another, normal activities at home and at work ensure that we are using our muscles to slow down the rate of deterioration.

However, alone, normal activities are not enough to strengthen the muscles and reduce body fat to desired levels; otherwise heart disease and stroke would not be among the leading causes of death in the U.S. We need to do regular physical exercise to remain healthy and strong into our seventies and eighties.

Yet over 50% of people in the U.S. don't like doing physical exercise: the activity we need the most to boost good cholesterol (HDL) levels, blood circulation, lower blood pressure, and lower blood fat including cholesterol and triglycerides, in order to reduce our risk of stroke and heart attack.

Not only does physical exercise strengthens the heart muscles to more freely pump blood to all parts of the body, it also reduces the risk of type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome, which is a combination of too much fat around the waist, high blood pressure, low good cholesterol (HDL), high triglycerides and high blood sugar.

Several studies have shown that physical exercise also reduces the risk of colon and breast cancer. Other benefits include reduced risk of cancer to the lining of the uterus, lung and prostate.

Added to building muscle mass to displace fat, and keeping the body in a trimmed shape, physical exercise also regulates the body metabolism from slowing down when you are on a diet. This means you don't need to choose a starvation diet program to lose weight. With regular physical exercise, you can choose a normal sensible diet, and still lose weight safely.

Physical exercise allows you to take in deep breath to bring more oxygen into your lungs than normal breathing does. In this way, the lung muscles get a workout helping to clear the arteries that bring nutrients and oxygen to the lungs cells, to maintain proper functioning of the lungs to supply your body with adequate oxygen.

Regular physical exercise also slows down the loss of bone density as we age. This is especially important to the elderly who are more likely to suffer from hip fracture. But, the key to getting all the benefits of physical exercise without hurting yourself is to do regular age-appropriate physical exercise, and that means consulting your doctor before starting any physical exercise program.

Research has also shown that physical exercise increases the levels of the brain chemicals called norepinephrine and dopamine that can boost your mood, and help you retain memories of facts and events. It is no wonder why those who do regular physical exercise have a feeling of exhilaration and wellness, and a ready to take on the world attitude.

With the benefits of physical exercise before our eyes, why doesn't everybody get on with doing physical exercise daily; especially when the evidence shows we have nothing to lose. The reason many people don't is that for the past 50 years, we have trained our bodies to accept a lifestyle forced upon us by the requirements of making a living in a modern world.

Most of our jobs involves sitting for long hours behind desks talking on the phone, or staring at computer screens. Modern appliances and equipments have also ensured that we do less walking and less physical movements when doing our tasks at home and at work. The reduction in physical activities means using our muscles less, and the less the muscles are used, the higher the rate of deterioration.

In the end, difficult as it may seem, you will have to make the choice to start doing regular age-appropriate physical exercise, after talking with your doctor, to tone and strengthen your muscles including your heart and lung muscles, if you want to remain healthy and strong into your eighties and nineties.

How To Maintain Good Health With A Diet For Your Cells

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Aidoo) — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 16:19:00 +0000

Do you eat to feed your body or your cells? And is there a difference between the two worth thinking about anyway?

Some argue, as I do, that the body and cells are technically not the same thing. Although the body is made up of cells, there are trillions of cells in the body. With each internal organ and tissue having specialized cells performing unique functions, it is obvious that each group of cells will need a unique diet.

Consequently, making a difference between the body and cells will focus our resources on designing diets that met the specific needs of individual groups of cells to boost their performance levels. Additionally, since cells are the end users of the foods and drinks we consume, it is only fitting that we give them nutrients they can use.

And here your digestive system has an important role. It extract nutrients from foods and drinks, deposit them in the bloodstream, and together with oxygen from the lungs are carried to the trillions of cells to repair and rebuild tissues, and perform chemical and electrical processes through out the body.

So, when we talk about optimizing the performance of the body, we are not been specific enough, but when we talk about optimizing the cells of the heart, the cells of the kidneys, or the cells of the pancreas, we are able to design diets that cater to the specific needs of the cells that maintain the health of those internal organs.

For example, if you are concerned about preventing heart attack or stroke, you will want to include bananas in your diet. As a great source of potassium bananas provide about 396 milligrams of potassium in each fruit. Bananas lower the risk of high blood pressure, heart attack and stroke by helping to prevent plaque from sticking to the walls of the artery.

Still on heart attack and stroke, you will also want to included flavonoids in your daily diet. They are found in large quantities in apples, cranberries, grapes, green and black teas, broccoli, onions, endive and red wines.

Flavonoids are not only effective antioxidants that keep the bad cholesterol LDL from oxidizing and forming plaque in the artery, but they also keep blood platelets from clumping together in the bloodstream and forming clots to prevent heart attack and stroke.

If you are concerned about a curable kidney disease like lupus, a condition where the immune system attacks healthy kidney cells; you will want to include flaxseed in your daily diet. The lignans and omega-3 fatty acids in flaxseed reduce inflammation in the tiny and delicate arteries that supply blood to the kidneys, which prevents artery clogging and damage to the kidneys.

Foods and drinks rich in potassium like dried apricots, baked potatoes, fruits and vegetables and orange juice; magnesium rich foods like fish, long grain rice, avocados and broccoli, as well as high fiber foods have also been found to dissolve kidney stones.

If your concern is about diabetes, your diet will include avocados a good source of the monounsaturated fat oleic acid that lowers the bad cholesterol (LDL), lowers triglycerides, and increases the good cholesterol (HDL). Beans for complex carbohydrates that release sugar slowly into the blood, and soluble fiber that helps muscle and liver cells to produce more insulin receptor sites. Bulgur and buckwheat are also rich sources of complex carbohydrates.

If you are concerned about preventing cancer, you will want to include foods and drinks loaded with antioxidants in your daily diet. Antioxidants prevent unstable oxygen molecules called free radicals from attacking your healthy cells by offering electrons to free radicals to render them harmless to the body.

Without antioxidants, free radicals will oxidize the bad cholesterol (LDL) forming plaque that stick to the artery walls leading to hardening of the arteries, heart disease and stroke. Left to roam freely in the body, free radicals will also damage the DNA inside the cells resulting in the mutation of the cells and cancer.

Foods and drinks loaded with vitamin C like tropical and citrus fruits, broccoli and red bell peppers; vitamin E rich foods like sunflower seed, wheat germ and vegetable cooking oils; and beta-carotene rich fruits and vegetables like tomatoes, carrots, cantaloupe, spinach and other dark green leafy vegetables, are good sources of antioxidants.

With fruits, vegetables and herbs buy organic whenever possible to avoid pesticide residues that might be found on inorganic produce. But where their prices are too high, or they are not available, inorganic produce are better than nothing. Just be sure to thoroughly wash both organic and inorganic produce before juicing or cooking them.

While it is important to go see your doctor if you have heart disease, stroke, kidney problem, diabetes or cancer, after you are medically cured, getting on a diet that included all the named fruits, vegetables and herbs will boost the health of the cells of your internal organs toward maintaining your overall good health.

Understanding Your Pain To Avoid Painkiller Addiction

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Aidoo) — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 21:28:00 +0000

Pain is the main reason most people in the U.S. go to see their doctors. The onset of pain indicates two conditions: something has gone wrong in the body that needs correcting, or something is harmful to the body that needs to be avoided.

From very early childhood we know that fire burns and hurts, so we avoid putting our fingers in fire. We know that hitting our knees against a piece of furniture hurts, so we are careful when walking in the livingroom or office to avoid running into furniture.

So far so good for the one type of pain. The other type that is not fully understood by many people is pain from a medical condition. This pain may be mild or intense, but necessary for your survival. It is an early warning of a harmful condition in the body, if left uncorrected could lead to severe danger to your life.

In ordinary language, pain is a sensation that hurts. It can be steady and constant, throbbing or pulsating, or a pitching or a stabbing sensation. Acute pain is intense resulting from injury, and lasts for a short time. It ends with the healing of the injury.

On the other hand, chronic pain lasts for a longer period of time and may be mild or intense. Pain from surgery, sickle-cell and cancer are chronic pains that are often relieved only by painkillers. You may be wondering how people managed their pain centuries ago when the powerful painkillers we have today were not available.

Well, medieval university-trained doctors are believed to have used opiates to relieve their patients pain. However, the extent to which opiates were used has not been fully established. The most likely pain remedies available to medieval patients would have been ice for local pain, bloodletting, laxatives, purgatives, astrological seals and the monitoring of food, drink and sleep; aimed at restoring the humoral balance, or what is today called homeostasis.

This would have meant medieval patients endured extended periods of pain before getting relief, if it came at all. Merely thinking about this will make you and I cringe, knowing how tormenting and disruptive intense pain is to the mind, and normal functioning of the body.

More than any other human experience, pain can literally drive a person crazy to where he or she is willing to do anything for a relief. In this regard, resigned acceptance of pain is a false remedy, because when experiencing an intense acute or chronic pain, the ability to remain steadfast in accepting pain will fall apart.

Consequently, understanding what pain is, and taking effective action to relieve it is the option of choice for today's men and women.

Pain may be classified as nociceptive, which comprises somatic and visceral pains, while non-nociceptive comprises of neuropathic and sympathetic pains.

Pain felt on the skin, joints, bones, muscles and ligaments are somatic pains. Somatic pain receptors are sensitive to temperature, vibration, stretch in muscles, and inflammation caused by cuts and sprain that damage tissue. Somatic pain is intense, localized and painful to touch and movement.

Pain felt in internal organs including the lungs, heart, bowels, spleen, liver, kidneys, ovaries, bladder and the womb are visceral pains. Visceral pain receptors are sensitive to inflammation, stretch and ischemic muscle cramps caused by lack of oxygen to the affected area. Visceral pain is vague deep aches, difficult to localize, as in upper and lower back pain, pelvic and abdominal pain.

Nerve or neuropathic pain is non-nociceptive. It originates from within the nervous system with no specific pain receptors. Pinched nerve or trapped nerve are neuropathic pain which comes from nerves between the tissue and spinal cord, or peripheral nervous system; and nerves between the spinal cord and the brain, or central nervous system.

Neuropathic pain is caused by nerve degeneration as in a stroke, multiple-sclerosis and oxygen deprived tissue. A torn or slipped disc resulting in nerve inflammation, or nerve infection like shingles can cause neuropathic pain.

Inflamed or infected nerves becomes unstable. They send muddled signals to the brain which interprets them as pain signals, and produces sensations such as numbness, tingling, and hypersensitivity to touch, temperature and vibration.

The other type of non-nociceptor pain is sympathetic pain. A fracture or soft tissue injury will cause sympathetic pain. The damaged nerves in the affected area will become unstable, and send random and abnormal signals to the brain which will interpret them as pain. Sympathetic pain can become extremely intense that the patient may not use the injured arm or leg resulting in muscle wasting, joints stiffness or osteoporosis.

As you have already noticed, we will feel no pain if we did not have pain receptors. These are free nerve endings through out the body that warn us of excessive pressure or temperature in the environment. The terminal ends of these pain receptors consist of unmyelinated nerve fibers mostly found in the epidermis and epithelial covering of mucous membrane.

Unlike pain receptors in the skin and mucous membrane epithelial covering, stimulation of pain receptors in the organs, the joints, the skeletal muscles and connective tissue requires extreme pressure and chemical changes in the body.

When pain receptors are stimulated, they release neurotransmitters that send a message about the stimulus through the nerves to the spinal cord and the brain.

The substance that stimulates pain receptors are called second messengers. The main second messengers are bradykinin, prostaglandins, histamine, serotonin, leukotrienes, and potassium. Painkillers that inhibit the release of second messengers will prevent the stimulation of pain receptors, and consequently provide effective pain relief.

Since pain may vary from mild to intense, the medical establishment has guidelines to measure pain levels to assist doctors prescribe the right pain medications for their patients. These guidelines include pain identification, location, intensity and radiation; aggravating and relieve factors of the pain; effect of the pain on patient's function and others.

For patients who cannot verbalize the intensity and location of their pain, as in the case of an infant, or a patient with dementia, dyslexia or autism, the doctor will find clues of the pain from observing the degree of the patient's restlessness, grimacing, moaning, groaning, crying, resistance to care, reduced social interactions, not eating and not sleeping.

When the intensity and location of pain have been determined, the next step is to provide a relief. Doctors are careful when prescribing painkillers for their patients, as these are powerful drugs with serious side effects. A misuse of painkillers can increase a patient's pain level, and in extreme cases be hazardous to the patient's life.

Effective over the counter painkillers on the market include: combination of aspirin and acetaminophen for head and muscle ache; ibuprofen for fever and muscle ache; naproxen sodium for arthritis, rheumatism, musculo-skeletal aches; and ketoprofen for arthritis.

With prescription painkillers the strongest include fentanyl for gunshot and fragmentation wounds; morphine sulfate believed to be the second strongest pain medication; hydromorphone, hydrocloride, or dihydromorphinone; and oxymorphone.

As I have said before these over the counter and prescription painkillers are powerful drugs with serious side effects. They should be handled with care, and taken only under the supervision of your doctor. Not only do they cause serious health hazards when misused, they can also be addictive.

Talking about painkiller addiction, 2 million Americans use prescription opioid painkillers every year, according to the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA 2002). The problem with this is that medical practitioners have found that patients on prescription painkillers beginning at pain levels 2-3 after one year have seen their pain levels rise to 8-9.

In effect, the condition of patients on opioid painkillers gets worse the longer they remain on the medication. The explanation for this is opioid-induced hyperalgesia, a condition where the patient becomes increasingly sensitive to pain stimulus with increasing doses of painkillers. The natural reaction is to reduce the doses, but when this is done, the patient may suffer a withdrawal, with sensitivity to pain still remaining high.

At this point the patient is said to be addicted to opioid painkillers. Going forward, he or she will have two choices, either to seek pain relief from a more powerful painkiller, or search for an alternative to opioid painkillers.

An effective alternative to opioid painkillers may well be homemade juices from fruits, vegetables and herbs. Working with a dietitian, or a holistic physician, you could experiment with various combination of fruits, vegetables and herbs to find which one your pain responds to. It may take a while to find what works for you, but what do you care; homemade juices, especially from organic produce, taste delicious and wholesome.

If given a choice to relieve my pain, I will certainly prefer to become addicted to homemade juices with no side effects to opioid painkillers, and I think you would too, once you start juicing for good health.

Ending Your Fear Of Diabetes

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Aidoo) — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 13:02:00 +0000

These are the two arms of diabetes. If you are having symptoms of one or the other, call your doctor or 911 immediately, or ask someone to do so for you.

Ketoacidosis is when your body is using fat instead of glucose as fuel, leading to a build up of acids called ketones in your blood and urine.

This occurs when your body has very little or no insulin to allow it use glucose as fuel. In response, the liver secretes glucose to correct the problem, but since there is no insulin in the body glucose is left unused, precipitating hyperglycemia, or abnormally high blood glucose level.

The symptoms of ketoacidosis include abdominal pain, deep and rapid breathing, increased thirst and urination, sweet-smelling or fruity breath, loss of consciousness and nausea. Ketoacidosis usually affect people with type 1 diabetes.

The other arm of diabetes is hypoglycemic coma which causes you to lose consciousness because blood glucose level in the body is abnormally low. Normally the body gets its glucose supply from carbohydrates. A drastic cut in carbohydrates intake, loss of appetite, or the lack of food could precipitate a hypoglycemic coma, as the body seeks to prevent damage to its vital organs.

The symptoms of hypoglycemic coma include confusion, dizziness, headache, double vision, lack of coordination, convulsion or unconsciousness.

When reference is made to diabetes, most people think about type 2 diabetes as 90 to 95 percent of diabetes cases are type 2. But there is also type 1 diabetes which is usually diagnosed in childhood. It occurs when the body produces very little or no insulin; suspected causes are genetics, viruses and autoimmune problems.

There is also gestational diabetes where high blood glucose occurs during pregnancy. Women with gestational diabetes, which may be cause by giving birth to a baby more than 9 pounds, have a higher risk of contracting cardiovascular disease, or type 2 diabetes later in life.

Type 2 diabetes, on the other hand, is usually diagnosed in adulthood. In this type, the pancreas secretes enough insulin, but the muscles, fat and liver cells do not respond to insulin. This is known as insulin resistance. People affected with type 2 diabetes are usually overweight. Family history and genetics, poor diet and low physical activity are other causes of type 2 diabetes.

Testing for diabetes may be done in four ways. Urine analysis is use to find glucose and ketones in the blood and urine. Alone it cannot diagnose diabetes, it should be used with other tests.

Fasting blood glucose level test is performed after the patient has not eaten for at least 8 hours. Blood glucose level higher than 126 mg/dL on two occasions shows diabetes is diagnosed. Between 100 to 126 mg/dL is called prediabetes, or impaired fasting glucose.

Oral glucose tolerance test is usually used to diagnose diabetes during pregnancy. A series of blood glucose measurements are taken after giving the patient a sweet liquid containing glucose. Blood glucose level higher than 126 mg/dL indicates the presence of diabetes.

Random blood sugar test is a non-fasting test, and may be performed regardless of when the patient ate. Several random measurements may be taken during the day. When the measurements vary widely is an indication of the presence of diabetes, as healthy blood glucose levels do not vary widely through out the day.

When diabetes is diagnosed it has to do with the secretion and use of insulin in the body. The digestive system extracts glucose from the carbohydrate foods you eat. Glucose enters the blood stream to be transported by insulin into muscles, fat and liver cells where it is used as fuel for repairing, rebuilding, chemical and electrical processes in the body.

The body's insulin supplier is the pancreas. It is a gland organ located in the abdomen, within the digestive and endocrine systems. The pancreas is both an endocrine gland that secretes insulin, glucagon and somatostatin; and an exocrine gland that secretes pancreatic juices containing digestive enzymes into the small intestine to break down carbohydrates, proteins and fats.

The endocrine section of the pancreas is made up of about a million cells cluster called islets of Langerhans. These are classified by their secretions.

The glucagon cells secrete glucagon hormone to increase blood glucose level, whereas insulin cells secrete insulin that moves glucose into the muscles, fat and liver cells to decrease glucose level in the blood.

The somatostatin cells secrete somatostatin hormone to regulate or stop glucagon and insulin secretion; while the PP cells secrete pancreatic polypetide to self-regulate pancreas secretion activities.

As you can see, these four cell types ensure that the pancreas does not overproduce insulin in the body, as this could lead to insulin resistance; or produce less insulin as this could lead to an abnormally high blood glucose level. Both events could precipitate type 1 or 2 diabetes.

Although the pancreas internal mechanisms keep it preforming well under normal conditions, like other organs of the body, the pancreas is sometimes attacked by diseases. Among these is pancreatic cancer, particularly cancer of the exocrine cells which has a high mortality rate.

Diabetes mellitus type 1 is another deadly pancreatic disease. It is a chronic autoimmune disorder where the body's immune system attacks the insulin secreting cells in the pancreas. Once these cells are disabled insulin secretion is reduced, or cut off leading to diabetes.

Since there is no cure for diabetes, it is like an unwanted lifetime companion. The goal of treatment, therefore, should seek to prolong life, reduce symptoms and prevent diabetes related diseases such as blindness, heart disease, kidney failure and amputation of limbs.

You can accomplish these objectives by blood pressure and cholesterol control, careful self-testing for blood glucose levels, physical exercise, foot care, medication and insulin use, as well as meal and weight control.

Your doctor may tell you to regularly check your blood glucose level at home. Using the right device, you need only a drop of blood to do so. Information gathered from self-testing will help your doctor prevent diabetes related complications, and indicate how well diet, medication and physical exercise are helping to control your diabetes.

When thinking about your health in relation to diabetes, the focus should be on maintaining a healthy diet and body weight. You will find that more than any other cause, overweight and obesity are the main causes of diabetes.

Overweight and obesity are conditions where the body has more calories and fat than the cells can immediately process. A specialized membrane in the cell called endoplasmic reticulum (ER), which synthesizes proteins and processes fats will signals the insulin receptors to stop responding to insulin to allow it time to process the fat it already has. The unused insulin increases the body's blood sugar level which may lead to a type 2 diabetes.

While diabetes is usually diagnosed in patients over 40, it is now increasingly being diagnosed in overweight and obese children. This is sounding an alarm in the medical establishment, because obesity in American children has doubled since 1968, and it is just a matter of time when diabetes in children will also double.

A teenager or an adult who argues that he or she can do nothing about overweight or obesity has less information than is needed to make such life changing decision. For more information read my article titled, "Is Obesity A Disease or A Choice".

No matter how obese you are, you can reduce your weight. In doing so, you will be helping to reduce the $174 billion in direct medical and indirect costs spent in the U.S. a year on diabetes, while freeing yourself of carrying every where you go the excess weight you don't need, and begin enjoying the richness of your life in full.

Are You Getting Enough Sleep At Night

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Aidoo) — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 20:18:00 +0000

If you could remain awake for 72 hours, you will have a lot of work done, but at the end of that time, you will become irritable, unfocused, your reaction time will be slow, and your motivation and energy levels will fall.

If these reactions did not stop you to take a break and sleep, your body will by giving you fever to keep you in bed for a few days. This is the extent to which sleep is very important to the health and proper functioning of the body. If you don't take time off to sleep, your body will force you to do so.

Not getting enough sleep occurs in two ways. Not allowing yourself enough hours to sleep is called sleep deprivation. The other is insomnia, having enough hours to sleep, but unable to sleep. Which of these two is your problem the end result is the same: you are not getting enough sleep. However, the solution to each will be different.

Solving sleep deprivation can be done easily by changing your lifestyle, your work schedule, or getting proper medical treatment for sleep deprivation related diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, obesity and depression, if you have any of these.

Insomnia is the one more difficult to solve. Its symptoms includes, difficulty falling asleep, unable to stay asleep during the night, difficulty returning to sleep, waking up too early in the morning, and feeling tired and unrefreshed.

Your first line of defense when you are suffering from insomnia is to check if you are being stressed out by physical discomfort, emotional problems, or an uncomfortable sleeping environment. In many cases, when you find solutions to these problems, your insomnia should go away.

When your insomnia does not go away, the reason may be an underlying disease like obstructive sleep apnea which causes you to stop breathing temporarily and forces you to wake up. This occurs when the tonsils or adenoids located in the passage that connects the nose to the throat becomes enlarge owing to overweight or obesity.

Other underlying diseases may include, gastroesophageal reflux (GERD) where the stomach acid moves up into the esophagus producing heart burn. GERD symptoms are worse when lying down, and can interfere with the sleep cycle. Nightmares, narcolepsy and sleep walking can also interfere with the sleep cycle.

Your sleep cycle is the various stages of sleep your body goes through during the sleep-wake period. There is no fixed pattern to the amount of time spent in theses stages though, stage 1 is the transition to sleep. It lasts for 5 minutes during which the eyes move slowly under the eye lids, muscles activity slows down, and you are easily awakened.

Stage 2 is the first stage of true sleep. It last for 10 to 25 minutes when the eyes movement stops, the heart rate slows down and the body temperature decreases. Stage 3 is deep sleep when it is difficult to be awakened, and when awakened you will feel groggy and disorientated for several minutes.

Stage 4 is intense deep sleep. Your brain waves are very slow, blood flow is directed away from your brain and toward the muscles to repair muscles and restore energy depleted during the day. These four sleep stages are called Non-REM sleep, as during these the eyes do not move rapidly under the eye lids.

The REM sleep stage begins about 70 to 90 minutes after falling asleep when dreaming occurs. The eyes move rapidly under the eye lids, breathing is shallow, the heart rate and blood pressure increase, and the arms and legs become still.

The importance of these sleep stages is that if you cannot get past stages 1 and 2 because of a noisy or uncomfortable sleep environment, you will not get to states 3 and 4 where deep and intense deep sleep occur, when the body does its repair work: building muscles and tissues, secreting growth hormones for growth in children and repairing and rebuilding tissues in adults.

It has been found that sleep deprivation and insomnia lead to deficiencies in the immune system making the body less able to defend itself against invading microorganisms, and probably the reason you will get fever if you stay awake, or don't get enough sleep for several days.

According to the National Institute of Health, an average adult needs 7.5 to 9 hours sleep a night to fully restore the mental and physical energies depleted during the day from thinking, creating, walking, lifting and moving things.

Even so, many people believe all they need are 6 hours of sleep a night to have their energies restored for the next day's activities. But, with time they find that their mental sharpness, creativity, productivity, emotional balance and physical vitality begin to fall, as the body struggles to deal with daytime sleeping, reduced concentration, irritability and slow reaction time.

If you are experiencing any of these sleep related problems, you now know why. Increasing the number of sleep hours you get at night will begin to solve these problems. Yet, as I have said, you can increase the number of sleep hours, and still not be able to actually sleep the same number of hours if you have insomnia.

Obviously, where insomnia is present, you need to do more than simply increasing the number of sleep hours. Your sleep environment is an important determinant whether you are able to get past stages 1 and 2 of your sleep cycle without being awakened, as these stages are when you are sleeping lightly, and easily awakened.

Avoiding noises and bright lights; turning off the television and radio, and removing all physical discomfort will prevent the occurrence of events in your sleep environment that will start you thinking, or require you to get up to find out what is going on.

It has been known for a long time that an effective way to fall asleep is to empty your mind of all thoughts. The problem is even as you struggle to empty your mind of all thoughts, you will be worrying if you are succeeding in doing so. However, if you succeeded in keeping all thoughts from your mind for at lest 10 to 15 minutes you are most likely to fall asleep, because when the mind is empty it will have nothing to do, and so fall asleep.

Avoid talking about unpaid bills and controversial issues when you are nearing your bed time. By this, you will prevent your mind from continuing the discussion while you are attempting to sleep. And when your mind is actively finding solutions to these problems, you cannot sleep

It has been suggested that to get a better sleep, it is necessary to get back in sync with your circadian rhythm, or your natural sleep-wake cycle. This requires that you maintain a regular sleep schedule - going to bed and waking up at the same time each day. While this is possible for some people to do, for others it is not because of their work schedule, or some other demands on their lifestyle.

One to two hours of daily physical exercise is very helpful for a good night sleep. You could do this any time during the day, but be sure it is 3 to 4 hours before your bed time. Your body will want to restore the energy depleted doing physical exercise, and will be anxiously looking forward to a long and deep night sleep to do so.

I will say this on sleeping pills: they should be taken only for short periods. If used for a long period of time, you will experience side effects, drug tolerance, drug interactions, drug dependence, your insomnia will get worse when you stop taking them, withdrawal symptoms, and they may mask an underlying disease.

Without the sleeping pills, a good night sleep is most likely when you have your spouse or significant other lying beside you, as you go past stages 1 and 2 into deep sleep stages 3 and 4 of your sleep cycle. You will find, however, that merely having someone lying beside you is not a panacea in itself. The quality of the relationship you have with your spouse or significant other is what matters the most.

Yes, I know you didn't expect to find that a good night sleep had something to do with the quality of the relationship with your spouse or significant other. It does, in the sense that if you are in a bitter power struggle with your spouse or significant other, as you lie on the same bed, you are projecting negative thoughts toward each other. This will happen even if you are sleeping in different rooms.

When negative thoughts collide, they create a sleep environment that produces many disturbing questions that need to be thought out. The effect of this is you and your spouse or significant other will spend most of the night, if not all of it, finding solutions to these disturbing questions, and unable to sleep.

How you solve this problem will ask that you recall a biblical saying, "Do not let the sun set on your anger". When you allow the sun to set on your anger, you give your anger enough time to develop roots, and by the next day it will have borne poisonous fruits.

You can avoid eating these poisonous fruits by agreeing with your spouse or significant other to perform a little ritual every night before you go to sleep. You will tell your spouse or significant other that you have forgiven him or her for any known or unknown things said or done to offend you, and are now putting them in an imaginary manila envelop, and will think about them no more.

Your spouse or significant other will also tell you those same words. When done, the two of you will seal the imaginary manila envelop with a kiss, or some other romantic act and throw the imaginary manila envelop in the garbage can. To add realism to the ritual, you may want to have an actual manila envelop, and go through the motion of emptying your minds of all the negative things said and done into it, then seal it and throw it in the garbage can.

As you lie side by side on the bed, you will be projecting positive thoughts toward each other. And when positive thoughts collide, they create a sleep environment that produces genuine feeling of forgiveness, kindness and love for your spouse or significant other.

If you cannot fall into deep sleep in this comfortable and romantic sleep environment, your sleep problem may have behind it an underlying pathology, and you need to see your doctor immediately.

From Welfare To Workfare

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Aidoo) — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 12:52:00 +0000

Those on welfare do not like being there. In fact, I might venture to say the majority of them do not want to be there, because a welfare check comes with a social stigma.

Welfare recipients are constantly reminded of the accusatory expression on the faces of tax payers who see them as freeloaders, as people who get money for not working.

Some have argued that the welfare system should be abolished, without a clue as to how the problems that will arise will be handled. If welfare is ended, we will return to the world of Oliver Twist where children go hungry, and mothers knowing there is a demand will sell their bodies for money to feed their children.

This is not to say the welfare system, as it is today is the best we can have. It solves one set of problems, but inadvertently creates another. While children do not go hungry, and mothers are not forced into prostitution; getting money without working has debilitating effects on the minds and bodies of welfare recipients, and their children.

When a person stays home all day, seven days a week watching television, and not engaged in activities that challenge the mind, few neurons synapses are created in the brain. On the other hand, when the mind is exposed to challenging situations; in confronting these challenges, more neurons synapses are created in the brain. As more neurons synapses are created, the brain's capacity to store information increases, enhancing not only its agility, but also its ability to solve problems quickly.

Again, when a person stays home all day watching television, he or she has very little incentive or opportunity to exercise the body. The result is that the body becomes overweight, and moves gradually toward obesity. Overweight and obesity are the sources of stroke, heart diseases, diabetes, and a myriad of other deadly diseases. The more that overweight and obesity become a problem, the more difficult it will be, owing to limited resources, for the national health system to provide adequate health services to all who need them.

When the children of welfare recipients see their fathers and mothers home all day, yet able to get money to buy food, pay rent and buy clothes, they will be misled into thinking that staying home all day without working is a normal way of life. They will be trapped into emulating their parents, and end up on the welfare system as their parents before them.

The aim of the welfare system, which is to prevent children from going hungry, and mothers from becoming prostitutes will be twisted. Welfare will become a breeding ground for generation upon generation of young men and women expecting to be paid for doing nothing.

In fiscal year 2008 the federal government spent $522 billion, and state governments spent $192 billion on providing assistance to welfare recipients, a total of $714 billion. The figures for 2010 will be slightly higher. However, when you add the cost of administering the welfare system the total amount spent both by federal and states governments rises beyond a trillion dollars a year.

When we talk about welfare, the program that comes to mind is the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) because it is the one that comes up in most welfare discussions. But there are other programs under the welfare umbrella including, Medicaid, Food Stamps, Supplementary Security Income (SSI), Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Head Start, Work Study, Medicare and Social Security which is also an entitlement.

In 1996 President Clinton with the help of a Republican majority in Congress signed into law the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act; otherwise known as the Welfare Reform Act. This legislation devolved administration of the welfare system from the federal government to the states.

Among other provisions, the welfare Reform Act stated that all welfare recipients who began receiving assistance from the date of the legislation shall find jobs within a period of two years, after which welfare assistance will be cut off.

It also stated that current welfare recipients shall find jobs with a period of five years, after which welfare assistance will be cut off.

Another provision states that all mothers receiving welfare assistance shall receive no increase in cash assistance if they had another child. For example, a mother currently on welfare with two children will get no additional assistance for her third child, unless the state legislature decided differently.

If these welfare reform provisions appear draconian, they are the voices in Congress of hard working and tax paying Americans who see the increasing tax burden upon them taking away their ability to provide opportunities for their own children, and their pursuit of happiness.

It is our choice to pursue a planned change in the welfare system, or wait for a blind instrument to cut across the welfare system with no regard for who goes hungry, who loses health care, or who becomes homeless.

The five years period when mothers on the welfare system should have found jobs ends once again in 2011. With the unemployment rate hovering around 10%, it is not likely that welfare mothers who have received assistance for five years will have found jobs in 2011. Experts at the highest levels in the federal and state governments are thinking seriously about how to solve this problem which is already at our doors.

I have provided detail of a planned change to the welfare system that gradually moves recipients from the welfare system to a workfare system. Following the change those on the workfare system will get paid only when they work. Although, there will be some who will get paid without working, and these are about 50% of welfare recipients comprising mostly of the disabled and elderly.

The workfare system will work as following. The geographical and political area of operation will be the county. It is small enough to be effectively managed, yet large enough to have a critical mass of welfare recipients to make the workfare system work. Every building that is connected with providing welfare services and checks to recipients will be renamed a workfare building.

A short and simple form will be created and given to all current welfare recipients asking them to tell the workfare system what they can do best. Someone might say what he can do best is mowing a lawn. Another person might say he is a good painter. Yet another person might say she is a good baby sitter, or a companion for the elderly.

The workfare system will collect all the filled in forms bearing the names, addresses and job proficiencies of those who filled them. The workfare system will categorize the various job proficiencies into job training programs. So that the person who said he is a good lawn mower will be given a mowing machine and asked to mow a lawn.

When the job is done, the trainer will analyze the mowed lawn, and depending on his or her assessment, determine what level of training this trainee will need to qualify him as a certified lawn mower. The job training period will not exceed two weeks.

At the end of the job training, the trainee will receive a certification card the size of a credit card. This certification card will tell all companies he is assigned to work that he is a certified and skilled lawn mower. The same will go for trainees in other job training categories.

When job training and certification have gone on for some time, the workfare system will have available a large number of certified and skilled men and women ready to work.

As this will be a high priority operation, top officials of the workfare system will invite private companies to register for the service categories for which there are trained workfare workers. The private companies will show evidence that they have the financial resources, skilled and experienced management staff, and are doing business legally in the county where they are registered.

Next, top officials of the workfare system will through advertisement invite all private companies and individuals in the county to post onto a dedicated workfare website the services they want provided for their companies and homes.

These work assignments, as we shall called them, will posted to the workfare website the day before. They will be sorted out and put into service categories by the workfare staff. The next morning, the categorized work assignments will be posted onto the workfare website.

The workfare registered private companies will look through the categorized work assignments, choosing those work assignments for which they have the technical skills and experience to perform. As each work assignment is taken, it is removed from the list.

Each private company will be allowed to take only a certain number of work assignments expressed in money value, and could come back during the day to take more work assignments after the ones previously taken have been done. This will prevent private companies from taking more work assignments than they can satisfactorily complete within a day.

Once the private companies have taken their work assignments, they will within one hour, contact the companies or individuals who posted them on the workfare website, for the purpose of agreeing on the price, and completion time of the work assignment.

Where there is agreement, the owner of the work assignment will post onto the workfare website the agreed price, and when the work assignment is to be completed. The private company that will perform the service will also post onto the workfare website the agreed price and completion time of the work assignment.

The workfare staff will compare the two documents from the owner of the work assignment and the private company to determine the number of workfare workers the company will need to perform the work assignment.

There will be a tug of war going on between the private company and the workfare staff as to the number of workers needed to perform a particular work assignment, as the private company seeks to reduce its labor costs with few workers, and the workfare system seeks to prevent the private company from overworking the workfare workers.

When an agreement is reached, the workfare system will select the number of workers with the required skills the private company needs to perform its work assignments for the day. In effect, the workers will be employees of the workfare system hired out to the private company for the day. The hourly rate paid shall not be different from what the private company is paying non-workfare workers doing the same job.

The private company will keep accurate and updated records for all the workfare workers who worked for it in each pay period not exceeding one week. It will make unemployment, retirement, health insurance and disability contributions on behalf of those workers. At the end of each pay period, the private company will write one check with an attached detail for the wages and contributions of all workfare workers who have worked for it.

At the workfare payroll department, the check from the private company along with the attached detail will be allocated to the individual workfare worker's payroll account to determine his or her pay for that week. The workfare system will issue individual payroll checks to the workfare workers after taking into account all deductions including taxes and benefits.

In this way the private company can focus on doing its business, as long as it is able to issue the aggregate weekly checks for work done for it by the workfare workers. What is exciting about the workfare system is that the money paid to the workfare workers will come from private companies and not from the county government, as current welfare recipients will no longer get paid for doing nothing.

The argument that the workfare system, in soliciting work assignments from private companies and individuals amounts to unfair competition with private entrepreneurs is mute, because all work assignments received by the workfare system will be done by private companies. The workfare system will perform no work assignments.

Unfortunately, such smoothly run operation seldom happen without some problems. We can foresee a situation in which a workfare worker assigned to a company for a day's work gets angry for whatever reason, and decides not to work, or refuses to take instruction from his supervisor.

Private companies have neither the time nor resources to deal with the problems of a workfare worker who does not want to follow instruction or work. They should not be compelled to deal with such problems. Private companies will have the right to call the workfare office and ask for another worker who is not angry, and willing to take instruction and work.

Highly skilled and experienced psychiatrists and psychologists, employed by the workfare system, who know the human mind and how to influence it in one direction or another will get on the phone with the agitated workfare worker with a plan to remove him from the environment that is agitating him.

He is agitated, and needs not to be told what he's doing is wrong. He needs someone to complain to about how he is being unfairly treated. The psychiatrist or psychologist will say, alright Mr. Winters, to choose an arbitrary name, tell me what happened. I will make a report, and whoever is bothering you will be persecuted according to the law.

Depending on the decision of a judge, things might turn out differently for Mr. Winters, especially where there was violence against persons or property. But for now he needs to be convinced that the law is on his side.

During the course of Mr. Winters' statement, the psychiatrist or psychologist will ask at an appropriate time, Mr. Winters have you had breakfast or lunch yet? Most likely he will say he has not had lunch.

In response the psychiatrist will say, Mr. Winters in 15 minutes I will have lunch waiting here for you with your name on it. I need you to be here as quickly as possible because you wouldn't want to eat a cold lunch. The psychiatrist will proceed to describe what the lunch is made of. If the lunch is vividly described, Mr. Winters will start salivating though he has not seen the lunch yet. He will leave the work site, jump into a bus, walk briskly, or sprint to the office as fast as he can.

At the workfare office a hot lunch will be waiting for him. The lunch should be flawless. If he finds the least flaw with the lunch he will think he's being punished for what happened at the work site. It should be a lunch fit to be eaten by the psychiatrist or psychologist.

When Mr. Winters is done his lunch, the psychiatrist and psychologist will talk to him. Where no violence against persons or property was involved, the experts will find out whether he didn't want to work with that particular supervisor, or he simply didn't like the type of work he is doing.

If he didn't want to work with the supervisor, he could be reassigned to a different company under a different supervisor. Now, if he didn't like the job for which he has been trained, he may express this by saying, I don't like the job, or I don't like to work.

If he didn't like the job, the psychiatrist could say, alright Mr. Winters I have another job for you. Take this sheet of paper. I will take you to a very important building. You will stand at a particular spot. Every car that comes through that spot, make a check mark in one of the boxes on the sheet. Other suggested jobs may be a street crossing guard, or a doorman. The point here is to get Mr. Winters into a job where he will need limited supervision to do his work.

Most likely the efforts of the experts will alleviate Mr. Winters agitation, and place him in another work environment where he is less likely to be agitated. This is only one example of problems that may arise under the workfare system.

The bottom line though, is in handling this and other workfare related problems, the psychiatrist, psychologist and attorney should be on the front line. Only when there is violence would the police be called in. Even then the police should not come in with handcuffs and guns. They should seek to stabilize the situation, and quickly allow the experts on the human mind to steer the agitated person in a different direction.

When workers go to the workfare office and clock in, they expect to be assigned to do some work for the day. No clocked in workfare worker should wait more than one hour to get a job assignment. Where there are not enough day jobs for the workfare workers, the county government should create city beautification work assignments for the private companies, which in turn will hire workfare workers to do them.

In fact, one may go as far as suggesting that in an extreme case, the county government should pursue a job creation policy that may involve nothing more than digging a hole only to refill it. On the face of it, it may appear as a wasteful endeavor, but the byproducts from such endeavor, including the opportunity to exercise the mind and body, and setting good example for the children of workfare parents, will more than compensate for merely digging a hole only to refill it.

Up to this point, the workfare system will work flawlessly if only men were involved in it, but as it is obvious that women will form a significant proportion of the workfare labor force, it will be necessary to add a childcare arm to the workfare system.

If workfare mothers are to go out and work hard, they need to be convince beyond a doubt that their children are in a safe and clean environment; that they are interacting with people who have been screened, trained and have the right temperament to thoughtfully and gracefully handle the problems of children from all backgrounds.

This is possible only when the administrators of the childcare system race to the top, rather than to the bottom in terms of the standard of care given to the children. The workfare system will have to take an in depth look at the range of childcare standards; from the poorest neighborhoods to the wealthiest neighborhoods.

The purpose of this exercise is to find what standard works. Obviously, the standard of childcare in the wealthiest neighborhoods will be the standard to race up to. But while mothers in the wealthiest neighborhoods are paying $300.00 a week for childcare, mothers in the workfare system may have to pay $53.00 a week, depending on their income, for the same standard of childcare.

The workfare system will pay the difference between the $300.00 and $53.00 per week. In other words, the workfare system will subsidized the childcare services provided to workfare mothers. Money that would have gone to pay welfare checks to mothers who got money for doing nothing, will now go to pay highly screened and trained staff with the right temperament to provide top notch childcare services to the children of workfare mothers.

Because these children will be receiving the best childcare money can provide, all children regardless of where they live, their color, ethnic or religious background will have equal opportunity to reach the finishing line at the same time, and at once.

Under this childcare system, when a staff sees a child, she will not see a color or an ethnic background, she will see a child wanting to be loved, cared for, and taught the wonders of the world he or she is only beginning to know.

And no group will be fooled into believing that equal opportunity is a zero sum game where the gain of one group is the loss of another, as we wise up to what President John F. Kennedy said, "a rising tide lifts all boats."

Under this childcare system what will matter the most will be the content of a child's character, to quote our beloved brother Martin Luther King Jr., and how that character could be molded to reach the highest achievement the child is capable of.

And here on God's earth, no child shall be born condemned to a life of perpetual welfare, but all children under the workfare system shall be born to look up, and reach for the stars.

Cancer: The Terrorist Within

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Aidoo) — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 15:51:00 +0000

Cancer is the only disease with the potential to kill all humankind because it attacks and destroys the genetic information that produces the body, and protects it from invading microorganisms.

Once the genetic information is tempered with, it will change, perhaps irreversibly, and produce frightening results including incurable diseases that will stop at nothing until the body is dead.

For this reason the body protects its genetic information vigilantly. It will allow no changes without a fight, and where changes occur, it will continue to fight to restore the original genetic information.

The only disease that the body appears unable to defend itself is cancer because cancer changes the very genetic information the body uses to defend itself. It is like your enemy having succeeded in turning your missiles into stones.

The statistics tell it all. According to figures from the National Institute of Health, approximately 1500 people die each day of cancer in the United States, and about 3400 people are diagnosed with cancer every day.

The risk factors of cancer are known. They include growing old, tobacco, sunlight, ionizing radiation, certain chemical substances, family history, poor diet, overweight and others. The only advantage we have over cancer is that it is not contagious. Cancer cannot jump from one person to another.

On the other hand, the advantage cancer has over us is that once it takes hold of its victim, it creates it own source of blood supply. It ingeniously hides this supply source to prevent us from cutting it off. If we could cut off blood supply to the cancer cell, it will not receive nutrients and oxygen for its nourishment and propagation.

In ordinary language, cancer changes the chemical composition of a normal human cell, precipitating a change in the DNA sequencing. Following the change, the cell which was normal before begins to act erratically. It begins to reproduce itself at an accelerating rate. It loses all control and limitation in its makeup. Its only purpose is to grow rapidly until it kills its victim and itself.

When you talk about a homicidal terrorist which has absolutely no regard for human life, not even its own, all diseases and all persons come a distant second to cancer. It does not need to be provoked or offended. It simply takes hold of it victim and kills him or her.

Thankfully, we have not been feeble in our fight against cancer. When our body defense system has failed, and a limb or organ had been attacked by cancer, we have cut off the part of the arm, leg or organ affected by cancer to save the unaffected parts of the body.

We have used smart bombs in the form of radiation therapy and chemotherapy to kill cancer cells. In one case we use high-energy rays, and in the other we use powerful drugs to search and destroy cancer cells.

But these attempts at killing cancer cells before they kill us, have side effects. All patients undergoing cancer treatment suffer hair loss. Most patients suffer from poor appetite, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, mouth or lip sores, and some women from infertility, and some men unable to father a child.

It goes without saying that much more needs to be done to stop the growth in the rate of cancer among all peoples on the face of the earth. New smart bombs need to be produced that kill only the cancer cells and leave the surrounding normal cells untouched. New drugs need to be produced to reduce the side effects of these medical smart bombs.

In this endeavor, we will no doubt run into the tragedy of human nature. We will be tempted to spend more of our scarce resources on producing smart bombs to kill human beings, with too little left to produce smart bombs to kill cancer cells.

The great universities in Europe and America have produced the finest and the brightest of intellectuals and diplomats at anytime in human history. But once again we will run into the tragedy of human nature. We will fail to bring peace among warring parties, not because our diplomats are dumb, but because they fail in the art of negotiations.

And when our diplomats fail, bombs fall from the skies. And so long as bombs continue to fall from the skies, this story will be retold as long. A little boy is awoken by a severe pain coming from a scrap nail lodged in his upper arm. He is bleeding profusely and is crying uncontrollably.

Holding him in his arms, his father tries to console him, but the pain will not allow him to stop crying. His father gives him two little pills, the crying subsides into whimpering, and soon the little boy falls asleep.

When he wakes up, he hears the sound of fast moving steps, the sound of women crying, and the voices of men talking hurriedly. He wants to see his mother, she is dead. He wants to see his little sister, she is also dead. The little boy lies quietly listening to the sounds around him for an explanation why his mother and little sister are dead.

He will find an explanation. He must find an explanation, so that his mother and little sister would not have died in vain. In his confused little mind, he lies quietly listening to men talking. If he connects America, or an European country to the death of his loved ones, the anger and hatred in his little brain will begin to produce poisonous juices to water the seed of revenge in his little heart.

Going forward, he will wake up every morning and perform his duties, and watch his arms and legs grow bigger and stronger. One day he will wake up and stretch his arms, stretch his legs and feel power in them. They enable him to jump higher and run faster, and the seed of revenge in his heart now a fireball will eventually burst into flames.

He is now a fanatic, listening not to reasoning or logic, and tasting only blood in his mouth. He will stripe a bomb on his body, stand on a street in an American or European city and detonate the bomb, and take down with him as many people as the molten fingers of the flaming revenge in his heart can touch.

On the other hand, if our diplomats succeed in relearning the art of negotiations, and bombs do not fall from the skies, that same little boy will wake up one morning, as he has done in the past. He will hear his mother talking to his little sister; he will catch a waft of the delicious scent of breakfast being cooked. He will stretch his little arms and legs, and jump off his wooden bed. His feet will land on the warm floor and he will go to the kitchen for breakfast.

He will tease his little sister that she moves too slow, she will not be happy to hear that, and will take a wooden spoon and warn him not to say that again. He will say it again, and she will playfully attempt to hit him with the wooden spoon. He will jump off the wooden chair and run out of the kitchen into the sunlight.

Oh, he forgot his rubber ball. He will look if his little sister has put down the wooden spoon, and with soft steps sneak into the living room, take his rubber ball, and once again dash out into the open air. He will put the rubber ball on the ground and kick it around until he runs into other neighborhood little boys kicking their own rubber balls around the place.

The days will go by. His arms and legs will grow bigger and stronger, and one day he wake up in the morning and feel power in them. He will become a street peddler like his uncle, or become a shoemaker like his father, or a taxi driver like his friend's father. He will dream of earning enough money to take care of his mother now that she's old, and help with supporting his sister's children.

One day the teachers of darkness will tell him to stripe a bomb on his body and go to a city in America, or an European city. He will ask why. They will tell him America has done terrible things to his people. He will argue that America has done nothing to him. They will tell him America did it to people who are already dead. He will tell them he will do nothing bad to America because America has done nothing bad to him. They will call him a coward, a nobody, and threaten to ostracize him.

So shall it be known that the human body has an overwhelming and unshakable desire to preserve itself. Until something drastic, something traumatic, or something transformational happens to it, it will resist all inducement to destroy itself.

The little boy now a man, refusing to destroy himself will find a way to get a visa to come to an European country or America with no bomb striped to his body. The friends and relatives he meets overseas will help him find a job in a restaurant, or in a factory. He will work hard each day, and once in a month send some money to his mother and sister back in the old country. He will meet and marry a young lady from his ethnic background and work toward legalizing his stay in America.

He will have children. Protected by the equal opportunity laws of America, they will go to school and avail themselves of all opportunities for growth and education. They will enter the great universities in America and study hard. They will be among very few individuals who succeed in passing the grueling examinations to become doctors and scientists.

Evidence of this is all around us. In all the prestigious teaching hospitals around the country, a significant proportion of the doctors are of middle eastern and far eastern origins. They are fighting cancer on the operating tables in our great hospitals, and coming up with new drugs in pharmaceutical companies to find and kill cancer cells wherever they are in our bodies.

All these good things will happen because bombs did not fall from the skies, as our diplomats will have figured out and applied four principles in the art of negotiations.

1. Never use negotiation as a trigger for war. For example, don't tell you opponent do this, or else this or that will happen to you.

2. There should be mutual respect going into a negotiation; recognizing that all men and women want the same basic things for their families.

3. Always leave something on the table for your opponent. Don't take everything and walk away.

4. Bend over backward to ensure that your opponent is genuinely satisfied with what he gets from the negotiation. He should not feel that he has been hoodwinked, browbeaten or arm twisted into accepting what is not good for him and his family.

All the stars are lined up in our favor that our diplomats will succeed in bringing peace where wars now ravage the people and their resources, and more drugs will be produced to find and kill cancer cells, and less smart bombs made to kill human beings.

But, once again we will run into the tragedy of human nature; where all the facts are before us, yet we will manage to make the wrong decision. We will not heed the advice of General Sherman that "war is hell". That when a war ends both the victor and the vanquished fall from a higher level of grace to some lower level.

Does it mean we should never go to war? No. Some wars are necessary and unavoidable. These wars are called "justifiable wars". Volumes upon volumes have been written on them to guide our politicians to distinguish between a specious war and a justifiable war.

If, however, we manage to make the wrong decision we will do so not unaided. It is more exciting and more news worthy to chase terrorists across the middle east than to chase cancer cells in the human body. If nothing stops us; if the hand of Providence does not turn us in a different direction, we will devote more resources to war and the art of making war, and less resources to fighting the terrorist within our bodies.

The cancer cell will upgrade itself and defeat every attempt we make to find and kill it, not because we don't have the technology, but because the technology is poorly funded. The cancer cell will kill us one person at a time, then a time will come, in a single giant wave it will wipe out the entire human race.

Like the dinosaur we will become extinct, but unlike the dinosaur there will be an explanation for why we got extinct. On every pile of human bones that dots the face of the earth, standing at the top will be a sign that says, CANCER.

What Will Happen To The Obama's Health Care Reform Legislation In 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Aidoo) — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 12:39:00 +0000

The results of the midterm elections, as they relate to the survival of the Obama’s Health Care Reform Legislation bring excitement to some, and a sense of forboding to others, depending on what lens you are looking through, as we enter the New Year.

The Republicans won more than 60 seats and took control of Congress. How this could have happened in a country only two years ago where Republicans were seen as villains is indicative of Republican ingenuity and marketing skills.

Meanwhile, as the celebration goes on and confities are still flying, there remains across the nation an uneasy sense that the Obama’s health care legislation will be gutted, and health premiums will continue to rise putting affordable health insurance out of the reach of the majority of Americans.

Leading to the passage of the Hearth Care Reform Bill, the discussions were centered on who will control the premiums paid by policy holders. Because no definitive decision was made on this issue, the Health Care Reform Legislation that passed essentially left the old system in place. With this problem unsolved, we are, in effect, moving toward an approaching national health care crisis.

Talking about who should run the health insurance business, private companies are designed to run efficiently. An investment is made with the expectation that more than was invested will be realized. In this business model, the company’s primary concern is its own survival through generating profits. It will cut wages, lay off workers, reduce benefits and increase co-payments, modify its products, or relocate to reduce it cost of doing business in order to survive.

There is nothing sinister in all this, nor could one say companies are evil by their very nature. To produce the employment, wages and benefits on which society depends, companies must first survive by pursuing profits. It goes without saying that when private companies run the health insurance business, health premiums will continue to rise far beyond where they are today.

The alternative is to give control of health insurance to a non-profit organization designed to run efficiently, but without the profit motive. This organization will aim at keeping costs and premiums even, and whenever an unintended profit is made, it is given back to policy holders in the form of lower premiums.

So far we are doing good until we come to the question, what will happen to the revenues of the companies currently running the health insurance business, as it is being taken over by a non-profit organization.

Any attempt to drastically reduce the revenues of these companies will ignite a fight in the halls of Congress that will spill over into the streets. It will be a fight that will leave all wounded, and no winners. It is a fight that must be avoided.

A compromise could be reached where the companies that currently run health insurance will retain their present levels of revenues, but a change in their function. Following the change, their revenues will no longer come from premiums paid by policy holders, but from providing health information directly to patients and their doctors.

As the baby boomers move into their sixties and seventies, no more is needed than current statistics to indicate that the demand for health services will increase significantly. Accurate and regularly updated health information that is easily accessible by doctors and patients will become crucial than any other time in the past.

Health insurance companies like Blue Cross Blue Shield, United Health Care and Aetna already have this information, and have in place state of the art systems to protect the privacy of their customers. They should have no problem continuing what they are already doing.

I am looking at a business model in which health insurance companies will set up for their customers individual web pages, we shall called, “My Health Page” or “My Wellness Page”. Here, the full medical history of each patient will reside, pertaining to medical procedures he or she has done, current prescriptions and known drugs and activities that may conflict with them.

Doctors will be mandated to consult the health or wellness web pages of all patients treated by them to avoid duplication of medical procedures, or prescribing conflicting drugs and activities for their patients. The owner of the health or wellness page may also access it at any time after meeting certain security requirement. For this service both doctors and patients will pay a small fee.

Because the use of the health information system will be mandatory, doctors as well as patients who are curious to know about the current state of their health will use it with the result that the new health information companies will be guaranteed a steady flow of revenues.

Still, in any major reorganization, there will always be some dislocations: a short period of time where the companies affected adjust to the new realities of their corporate lives. The non-profit organization that takes over health insurance, will look to the laid off workers of former health insurance companies for the skilled staff it will need to run it operations.

In tandem with removing the profit motives from health insurance, the number of policy holders should increase beyond current levels, which is to say, everybody earning an income should contribute to the health insurance pool with figures ranging from 2% to 6%, or some other computation of taxable income.

This guarantees not only that the health insurance system will remain solvent into the future, but as the number of policy holders increases, health premiums will remain low and affordable for the majority of Americans.

There will always be detractors who will argue that turning over control of health insurance to a non-profit organization is government take-over of the National Health Care system, and will eventually lead to the rationing of health care services.

People who make this argument do so because they have the means to pay for health premiums at whatever price. Average Americans who grapple daily with the decision to buy food for their families, or to buy health insurance are not so lucky, and they go to bed every night praying they or their children will not wake-up with a cold.

The suggestion that Americans who cannot afford health insurance could be helped by health vouchers is a smokescreen. So long as the upward pressure remains on health premiums, everytime premiums go up, they will be passed onto the patient or the government agency paying the premiums, and nothing would have changed.

In the end, the last word on health insurance will be affordability, even as the nation watch the remaking of the Obama's Health Care Reform Legislation in a new Republican Congress.

Do You Know What Your Hormones Are Doing

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Aidoo) — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 15:08:00 +0000

In effect a hormone is a chemical messenger sent from a cell or gland in one part of the body to another instructing it to carry out a chemical response. Since hormonal instructions may or may not be carried out, it's paramount that you know what your hormones are doing.

Particularly, when hormones can stimulate or inhibit growth factors in the body, affect mood swings, control the reproductive cycles, activate or inhibit the immune system, regulate metabolism and homeostasis in the body, prepare the body for mating, fight or flight response, puberty, parenting, menopause, hunger cravings and the timing of cell mitosis and death.

To be sure your hormones are sending out the right instructions, you need to know how they are produced and what enable them to function effectively.

You would already know about the commonly prescribed hormones such as, estrogen and progestagen for hormonal contraceptive, testosterone for sex drive, thyroxine for hypothyroidism, steroid for autoimmune diseases and respiratory disorders, and insulin for diabetes. These and other hormones are also produced naturally by the body.

1. How Are Your Hormones Produced
In the body, hormones are produced by glands in the endocrine system which include the hypothalamus, pituitary gland, thyroid gland, pancreas, adrenal gland, pineal, gonads and more. Endocrine cells are specialized to produce specific hormones according to which genes are switched on during protein synthesis, as hormones consist of proteins.

Proteins hormones are made from templates of information in your DNA. Within the DNA are nucleotides which represent the DNA sequence that are used to code for amino acids, which in turn form chains of amino acids to create the particular protein hormone they were coded for. The hormone produced are stored in vesicles in the endocrine cells awaiting instruction for their secretion either into the bloodstream or ducts.

2. How Your Cells Secrete Hormones
For example, the pituitary gland at the back of your brain produces several growth hormones. The amount of growth hormone secreted into the bloodstream is regulated by the hypothalamus located next to the pituitary gland. When growth factors are needed by the body, the hypothalamus secretes release factors which instruct the pituitary gland to secrete the specific hormones needed by the body.

If something were to interrupt the production of the growth hormones in the pituitary gland, or interfere with communication between the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland, the essential growth the body needed will not occur, and this would lead to a disproportionate growth of the body parts and deformity of the body.

3. How Do Your Cells Communicate With Each Other
Cells communicate with each other hormonally through chemical signals. When a chemical signal exits one cell it is carried by the blood to another cell with receptors designed to recognize it. On recognizing and receiving the signal, the receptors activate a pathway which in biology is called a signal transduction.

Signal transduction is a chemical process that converts a stimulus to a cell into a specific response. The transmembrane receptors on a cell, so called, because part of the receptor is on the surface of the cell membrane and part is in the cell, receives the stimulus or chemical signal. This changes the shape of outer portion of the receptor, which sends another signal to the inner portion of the receptor.

From the initial stimulus or chemical signal, several more signals may take place within the cell until a final response is had, either in the expression of the nucleus DNA, or activity of enzymes in the cytoplasm of the cell. The final response of the cell is what should concern us the most.

4. Effect Of Breakdown in Hormonal Communication
For example, when the blood sugar level is low, the pancreas secretes glucagon from the islet cells to instruct the liver to take carbohydrate out of storage to raise blood sugar level, and when blood sugar level is too high, insulin is secreted to instruct the liver to take excess glucose out of circulation to lower blood sugar level.

If the pancreas were to fail to produce enough insulin, or there is inadequate response by the liver cells to the insulin chemical signal, or the liver cells receptors failed to recognize the insulin chemical signal, the blood sugar level will rise too high, and we say the person affected has diabetes mellitus.

When it comes to hormones and their effective use to improve the body performance, cells are the drivers. Cells produce the hormones and activate the signal transduction pathways that convert chemical signals from hormones into the desired response by the body organs.

Here again, homeostasis and tranquility in the physical body is maintained when your cells are healthy and performing optimally. By providing your cells the right micronutrients through a balanced diet and regular age-appropriate physical exercise, you will know what your hormones are doing from the enhanced performance of your body both at work and at home.

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How You Can Control Your Longevity

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Aidoo) — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 14:03:00 +0000

Too often we hear that longevity is unpredictable. That we have no control over how long we shall live. That those who live into their eighties and nineties, healthy and strong till the day they die are either lucky or have good genes.

Consequently, once we reach our fifties, we are constantly worried that we could die at anytime; especially for those who have perceived or actual symptoms of heart diseases.

I guess you will be willing to pay any amount to be freed from the fear of a sudden death, and not only that, but also be assured that you can live into your eighties and nineties, healthy and strong, while able to take care of your bodily needs by yourself.

If you thought doing this was impossible, you'll be glad to know that it is possible. Our longevity depend largely on the foods and drinks we consume, and the pollutants we are exposed to. Short of being killed by a natural disaster or a fatal accident, with a balanced diet and regular age-appropriate physical exercise, you can have control over how long you live.

1. BALANCED DIET
One reason a balanced diet is very important to your longevity is that it will protect you from becoming overweight. More than any other single factor, overweight is a major cause for premature death. The fat deposit in the body that causes overweight is like a multiple warhead time-bomb.

At appropriate times, these warheads choose the internal organs to attack. The pancreas will be attacked to cause diabetes; the heart to cause heart disease; the arteries to cause heart attack, stroke, and pulmonary embolism; the sexual organ to cause erectile dysfunction; the bladder to cause urinary incontinence; the lymphatic system to cause lymph edema; the gallbladder to cause gall stones, and more.

Asking your doctor for your optimal body weight, and working with a dietitian to design a diet program to reach that weight, you can avoid all the above mentioned diseases and improve your longevity. You will need to talk to a dietitian because your first diet program may not work, and you'll need it modified to fit your age and health condition.

A simple test you can do right now to have a general idea about your weight level is to sit on a dining table chair and put on your sock. If you cannot do this comfortably, you need to see your doctor immediately.

2. PHYSICAL EXERCISE
Keep in mind the physical exercise you perform should be age-appropriate. Doing vigorous physical exercise in your fifties and above may cause such harm as hairline bone fractures. You may want to consider brisk walking, swimming, table and lawn tennis, or golf.

You may have also noticed that when you have not done physical exercise for a long time, when you suddenly have to move a piece of furniture, or engage in a game like tennis or basketball, your muscles will be very sore the next day.

Regular physical exercise tones up your muscles and helps prevent muscle soreness, muscles atrophy, and give you the physical strength to left and move objects, as well as move and bear your own weight with ease. It improves oxygen level in the body and helps with blood circulation. It also improves bone density to help you stand in an upright position.

In your eighties and nineties you want to be able to stand upright, walk unaided and engage in family activities with your children and grandchildren. This will be possible when you start building strong muscles and bones now with age-appropriate physical exercise.

3. POLLUTANTS
From the day of birth we are exposed to harmful chemical pollutants in the air we breathe and the food and drinks we consume. When young our immune system is able to protect us from most of these pollutants, but as we become older, our immune system is less able to do so.

The greatest risk that chemical pollutants pose to our longevity is interfering with the chemical composition of our body cells. This interference often result in the body cells reproducing themselves at a faster rate than normal. The effect of this is cancer.

However, healthy cells are able to repair themselves when attacked by harmful chemical pollutants. To keep your body cells healthy, added to a balanced diet, consider drinking a 16 oz of home made juice twice a day. Non pasteurized juices loaded with life nutrients are carried to the cells quickly, as in liquid form they go through the digestive system quickly. Your dietitian will help you on the combination of fruits, vegetables and herbs, as well as teas that will provide sufficient antioxidants in your body to protect your cells from becoming cancerous.

More important than living into your eighties and nineties is the ability to enjoy everyday of your life. Nobody wishes for a longevity that meant carrying several medical devices in, or attached to his body, taking 30 or more pills daily, or having to depend on others for his bodily needs. Yet that's the life many of us are heading toward, of course, unless we take control of our longevity to ensure we live our golden years healthy and strong, and free from pain.