THE ART of HEALTHY LIFESTYLE

Risk and Signs of Anorexia

2011-11-16T07:44:00.001-08:00

Anorexia can be very dangerous. Anorexia is not caused by any known disease-causing agent but by self-induced starvation and the most serious physical risk associated with the illness is death.

Anorexia is a debilitating psycho-biological illness that affects body, mind and spirit.

More often, the cause of death for someone with anorexia is either from the physical complications of starvation or from suicide, and the studies show that the risks of death from anorexia increases the longer one has had the illness.

People with anorexia may:
• Sharply restricts her intake of food out of fear of gaining weight. Eat tiny portions, refuse to eat, and deny they are hungry.
• Extremely low body weight – a much as 15 percent or more of body weight or a large weight loss in a short time.
• Responding to demands of others rather than taking initiative in life
• Act hyperactive, depressed, moody or insecure
• Have an intense fear of being fat
• Paralyzing sense of powerlessness
• See themselves as fat, wanting to lose more weight, even when they are very thin
• Exercise excessively and compulsively
• Suffer from constipation or irregular menstrual periods
• Obsessive thoughts regarding body image and appearance, food, calories, meals or weight
• Complain of nausea or bloating after eating normal amounts of food
• Binge-eat, then purge, perhaps by vomiting or using laxatives or diuretics

Stubbornness and irony are characteristics of anorexia. They are likely to defend their emaciated appearance as normal and will insist that weight gain makes them feel fat.

Anorexia affects literally every major body system:
*Cardiovascular system
*Digestive system
*Endocrine
*Immune system
*Skin, hair and nails
*Nervous system

Risk and Signs of Anorexia

Exercise with Tai Chi for relaxation

2011-09-25T19:35:00.000-07:00

Using Tai Chi Chuan as a method of advancing one’s spiritual development is an idea as old as Tai Chi Chuan itself.

The cardinal principle and rule in Tao Chi Chuan is relaxation. The entire body must be relaxed always. For the serious students of Tai Chi Chuan, this principle must flow through all levels and dimensions of life.

Relaxation is the key to being able to distinguish yin from yang and vice versa. Relaxation is the foundation of activity.

The words Tai Chi can best be translated to mean the ‘supreme ultimate’ a symbolic of balance, power and enlightenment.

Although it is often called the softest of the martial arts, those who study this art form known that above all else, it is a discipline that unites mind, body and spirit.

What is relaxation? It is freedom from tension and train. To acquire complete relaxation of the body, the person must first calm the mind.

Before begin moving, the person must stand quietly for several minutes until the person feel the entire body at ease and composed. All systems of Tai Chi Chuan incorporate this time of preparation.
Exercise with Tai Chi for relaxation

Drinking tea to prevent Alzheimer’s disease

2011-08-22T20:04:00.000-07:00

A steaming cup of black tea or green tea, the comforting drink of choice for millions of people around the word, may also help to treat or prevent Alzheimer’s disease.

Alzheimer’s disease is a type of dementia in which parts of the brain atrophy and cease to function.

The nerve cells concerned with memory are located in the base part of the forebrain. In the brain of Alzheimer’s disease patients, the nerve cells lose their functions, and the functions of these cells thought to be good way of treating Alzheimer’s disease.

The study shows that a component in tea, teannin was found to stimulate the synthesis of this growth factor.

Laboratory test found that regular consumption of green or black tea inhibits the activity of certain enzymes in the brain that are implicated in the development of Alzheimer’s disease.

The findings in the lab experiment showing that compounds in green tea may protect brain cells from damaging processes that mark dementia conditions like Alzheimer’s disease.

In China and Japan, aging doesn’t seem to mean inevitable cognitive decline and when it does occur it is often less severe than the syndrome seen in the west. There is evidence that green tea may actually ward off Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of mental degeneration.
Drinking tea to prevent Alzheimer’s disease

Using Treadmill

2011-07-04T02:18:00.001-07:00

The person needs to have reasonably good balance and coordination to use a treadmill. If don’t hold on to the side posts for support. Never get off a moving treadmill or wait for the treadmill to come to a complete stop.

The user can alter the intensity of the workout by increasing the speed and grade of the treadmill.

Treadmills offer number of advantages. Walking is a very natural activity for almost everyone, so individuals normally adjust to the skill required for walking on a treadmill within a few minutes.

The motor driven treadmill progressively increasing exercise stress through a combination of speed and grade or slope increases.

Treadmills generally produce higher peak values than other ergometers for almost all assessed physiological variables, such as heart rate, ventilation, and oxygen uptake.

Using treadmills, a larger muscle mass can be brought to endurance during treadmill exercise, leading to a greater stress on the organ systems mediating the exercise response.

Treadmill, also permits higher peak cardiopulmonary workload and is a more accurate predictor of VO2-max.

Treadmill protocols are quite flexible because the speed and grade of treadmill walking can be varied independently to change the workload.

It was said that treadmill training is a therapeutic modality that allows the individual with stroke to actively engage in repetitive stepping.

Walking on a treadmill is an example of task specific gait training that appears to be critical to the achievement of improved walking speed and endurance.
Using Treadmill

The Practice of Vegetarians

2011-05-23T04:15:00.000-07:00

Vegetarians tend to be a very healthy group of people. Death rates from chronic diseases in vegetarian are about half that of the general population.

In term of definition, vegetarian is someone who primarily eats a plant based diet and vegetarianism encompasses many different lifestyle and interpretations of just what a plant based diet is.

Vegetarian diet usually contain less fat, saturated fat and cholesterol and more magnesium and folate than nonvegetarian diets.

Vegetarian is a person who does not eat meat, fish or poultry.

Vegetarian diets that emphasize fresh fruits and vegetables contain higher amounts of antioxidants such as beta-carotene and vitamin C and E, which protect the body from cell and tissue damage.

Fruits and vegetables also contain dietary fiber and phyto chemicals – substances that are not essential in the diet but that can have important health effects.

Vegetarians have believed all along that living on a purely vegetarian diet can improve health and one’s quality of life.

On average vegetarian have lower blood cholesterol levels and are less likely to develop heart disease than nonvegetarian.

Some of the advantage can be attributed to nondietary lifestyle factors. Fewer vegetarians smoke or abuse alcohol and a higher percentage are very physically active.

Vegetarians food preferences are of interest to anyone who works in a food or medical related capacity. Increasing interest in vegetarian foods is having a significant impact on food choices in the marketplace.
The Practice of Vegetarians

Vitamin Supplements

2011-03-31T21:24:00.001-07:00

Many athletes resort to vitamin and /or mineral supplement as either a type of nutritional insurance or in hopes of improving performance.

It also enhancing effect in healthy, well nourished, physically active men on measures of maximal aerobic capacity, heart rate sub-maximal endurance running performance and muscle glycogen stores.

Non competitive athletes and fitness enthusiast are also turning to vitamin/mineral supplements in an efforts to lose weight add muscle mass, prevent injury, relive pain, alleviate stress or retard the aging process.

The research shows that multivitamin (including vitamin B, C, and E) can improve immune parameters, pregnancy outcomes and child growth and health among HIV infected women and children.

It is vital to include sufficient amount of vitamins in the diet, but in spite of the progress achieved in vitamin research, there still confusion as to what people should do.

Hopes are that vitamin supplements might be helpful in the prevention of diseases, in fighting cancer and heart disease and in postponing the ravages of aging.

Vitamins are necessary for normal functioning of the body, but for children don’t need to take vitamin supplements on a regular basis if they are eating a diet containing all the food.

Breast children need a vitamin D supplement, but once a child is drinking whole milk, it is no longer necessary as vitamin D is added to all commercial liquid milks.
Vitamin Supplements

Tea and Fluoride

2011-01-07T05:45:00.000-08:00

The tea plant naturally concentrates fluoride from soil and water. Fluoride accumulates mostly in the leaves of the tea plant, especially the mature or fallen leaf.

A large percentage of the total fluoride, 25-84%, is released during infusion, and tea is considered to be major source of fluoride.

Instant tea is a reasonably good choice of beverage, although in very large quantities, it can result in excessive fluoride intake.

Brewed tea also contains fluoride, though in lower concentrations than instant tea. In practice, fluoride content in tea as consumed will be higher if the beverage is made with fluoridated water.

Additionally, brewed tea is higher in antioxidant phytonutrients than instant tea and thus is preferable when available.

The fluoride in tea is not necessarily a bad things. Tea consumption has been linked with healthier teeth and gums and stronger bones, possibly in past due to its fluoride content.

It also contributes bones to resistant to decay by acids and demineralization.

The benefits of fluoride are greatest when exposure to it begins in infancy and continues during the development of a child’s teeth.

Fluoride is not a concern unless you are drinking more than two or three quarts of instant tea, or a gallon of regular brewed tea, daily.
Tea and Fluoride

Wellness Benefits

2010-08-22T20:10:00.001-07:00

Wellness Benefits
Performing physical activity has many benefits. Regular exercise leads to improved physical fitness. Both regular physical activity and good fitness provide benefits to health and wellness.

The first benefits is improved physical fitness. Good fitness leads to the second benefit – improved health and wellness. Good health and wellness, in turn, make you more likely to be physically active.

You might not be concern with the fact that psychical activity has been shown to be effective in prevention and treating various illnesses.

You might assume that because illness and disease are most common later in life you don’t have to worry about them now.

You might even share a common attitude among many teenagers that you are happy and healthy. However, evidence indicates that the disease process begins early life.

Choosing and adopting healthy lifestyles such as performing regular physical activity early in your life can do much to prevent disease and illness.

The benefits derived from physical activity not only help in later life – but can be enjoyed many benefits now.

These benefits include those associated with fitness and wellness such as looking good, feeling good, meeting emergencies, and being physically fit.

Making healthy lifestyles choices, including choosing to be physically active and to eat well, is necessary for achieving the benefits.
Wellness Benefits

What’s Wrong with Stress?

2010-07-04T23:49:00.000-07:00

What’s Wrong with Stress?
Research confirms that excess stress worsens nearly every health condition. Stress raises cholesterol levels and blood pressure and it makes blood clots faster, cussing heart attack and strokes.

It cripples immunes function, making us more susceptible to infections and tumors.

It raises blood sugar levels in diabetes makes irritable bladders more difficult to control and increases inflammation.

It triggers lupus attacks, causes premature birth, and increases pain and disability in arthritis.

Nearly identical reactions occur in animals experimentally subjected to stress, so it’s not all in our heads.

Prolong stress is a killer and rushed, unaware living is a major cause of stress.

More to the point , too much stress makes you feel miserable. Our muscles get tight, out breathing short, We develop pains in various parts of our body, we feel tired all the time.

This kind of stress takes the pleasure out of life and leaves us on the constant edge of anger or depression.

When we feel this way we are much less likely to engage in self care.

It must be said that’s some people can suffer very little stress and still can be sick.

Some of us actually understood, bored, doing little or nothing to keep ourselves interested in life.
What’s Wrong with Stress?

Green tea for your belly

2010-06-01T23:00:00.000-07:00

Green tea for your belly
Belly fat is not just unbecoming, it is dangerous to your long term, health and well being. When excessive fat is stored inside your abdominal cavity it has devastating metabolic consequences.

This intra abdominal adipose tissue continually dumps fatty acids into the bloodstream poisoning your muscles so they become unresponsive to the normal action of insulin.

That means your insulin, sugar, cholesterol, and blood pressure levels go up, predisposing you to high blood pressure diabetes heart disease and even some forms of cancer.

Finding a way selectively burn this toxic belly fat has been the holy grail of scientists and dieters alike, but to has proved to be an elusive goal.

Evolving evidence points to green tea and its components like theanine and catechins as at least part of the answer to this problem.

You will need to drink about three to four cups of either caffeinated or decaffeinated green tea per day to see the full benefits including weight loss, increased metabolism and a shrinking waistline.
Green tea for your belly

Living and Longevity

2010-05-05T06:29:00.000-07:00

Living and Longevity
Look at the outside world. Birds animals and many other creature are living their life. Squandering time is not real living.

Real living is where life is full of joy and happiness and associated with taking and giving, caring and sharing , smiling an calming.

We never care about our real happiness of life un the hectic schedule from morning to bed time and after fanciful and trashy ambitious.

To live up to 100 years is our right because that the way God has given us the body and mind at the time of our birth. Look at the children; how innocent and healthy they are. They have no blood pressure, no acidity, no hypertension, and no diabetes.

They do not discriminate between different castes, colors, religions, languages of origins. They do not care about anything. They just live their live happy go lucky, blither and breezy.

We should live the rest of our life as child. But as we grow up, our mind gets tainted; our health is shattered by wrong eating habits and life styles.

Physical Activity and Exercise

2010-04-09T06:59:00.000-07:00

Physical Activity and Exercise
Good physical fitness, health and wellness are all states of being that a person possesses.

On of the principle ways to achieve these states of being is by performing regular physical activity.

Physical activity is a general term that includes sports, dance and activities done at home or work, such as walking climbing stairs or moving the lawn.

Physical activity can be done to complete a specific job, to enjoy recreation or to improve your physical fitness.

Sometimes you do physical activity with a specific purpose in mind; other times you just do it with no real purpose other than enjoyment.

When people do physical activity especially for the purpose of getting fit, we say they are doing exercise.

Even though the terms physical activity and exercise have slightly different meanings, they are sometimes used interchangeably.

You should remember is that physical activity and exercise are important to your fitness, health and wellness.
Physical Activity and Exercise

Why We need Doctor

2010-03-08T05:42:00.000-08:00

Why We need Doctor
Self-care doesn’t mean rejecting medicine. Working effectively with health professionals can make all the difference in getting well.

Good doctors or nurses will share with us what they know,. Medical tests can help us understand what is happening and monitor out progress. We nearly always need doctors – and often other healers - on our health care team.

However, no chronic condition where medical care can effect a cure all by itself, or where the doctor’s contribution is more important than the patient’s.

Too often expensive and invasive treatments of dubious value distract a patient from self-care measures that could be much helpful.

Coronary artery bypass surgery frequently falls into this category if it takes the place of relaxation, exercise, healthy eating, and social support.

So does indiscriminate used of antidepressants, of they take the place of exercise, positive self-talk and counseling.

In some conditions where causes and treatment are poorly understood such as fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatigue and certain autoimmune conditions, the search for currently nonexistent medical answers can delay self-care measures more likely to improve our situation.

Overcoming illness means cooperating with doctors not attacking them. Most are overworked and underappreciated and will welcome sharing responsibility with their patients.

Self management programs have been shown to reduce doctor visits, hospitalizations and medication use, saving resource better used elsewhere.

We don’t do our doctors any favors by giving them too much power. They cannot heal us without out participation, Self care is a winning proposition for everyone need.
Why We need Doctor

Give Your Brain a Tea Break

2010-02-24T07:11:00.001-08:00

Give Your Brain a Tea Break
A steaming cup of black or green tea, the comforting drink of choice for millions of people around the world, may also help to treat or prevent Alzheimer’s disease.

Laboratory test found that regular consumption of green and/or black tea inhibits the activity of certain enzymes on the brain that are implicated on the development of Alzheimer’s diseases.

Researchers from the Medicinal plant Research Center at New Castle University tested coffee as well as green and black tea, for beneficial effect in patients with dementia.

This study found that coffee had no significant effect, but both back and green tea especially inhibited the activity of enzymes associated with the development of Alzheimer’s.

Although tea alone almost certainly will not cure Alzheimer’s disease, it could possible another tool used to treat or prevent this increasingly common and devastating disease.
Give Your Brain a Tea Break

What is life?

2010-02-07T16:09:00.000-08:00

What is life?
The question is simple but the answer requires deep thinking.

At one glance, it may look as if life is just time spent between birth and death. Beyond that, we have no idea what the source of our origin was and what our destiny will be.

Who can measure the infinity of time? Life is the interval between birth and death. The journey of the universe is eternal.

This is the only life we know, the rest is mystery for eternity. Now it all depends on us as to how and how long to live.

When a human being is born, internal body, with certain exceptions, is clean and able to live for 100 years.

After years of living unwisely, we cut short our journey of life. Life is meant for living for a long span.

But modern life cycle has created many disease, stressful living, tension in society and unhappiness in the end. Due to these artificially created problems, we are not able to live as it should be.
What is life?

Health and Wellness

2010-01-22T04:41:00.000-08:00

Health and Wellness
Health is a word often associated with good fitness. Early definitions of health focused on illness.

The first medical doctors concentrated on helping sick people get well; they treated illnesses. Health was considered as nothing more than absence from disease.

But as medical and public health experts received better training, they began to focus on prevention of illness and disease as well as in the treatment of people who were already sick.

This new focus led world health experts to define health as more than absence from disease.

In recent years the definition of health has been expanded to include wellness, as state of being that enables you to reach your fullest potential.

Wellness includes intellectual, social, emotional, physical and spiritual aspects. It has to do with feeling good about yourself and with having goals and purposes in life.

Wellness is more likely to be present in individuals who assume responsibility for their own health.

So illness is the negative component of health that we want to treat or prevent, while wellness is the positive component of health that we want to promote.
Health and Wellness

Health Reflects Life

2010-01-05T19:19:00.000-08:00

Health Reflects Life
Annoying fact: The better our lives, the better our health is likely to be. Studies show that life is unfair in this way.

Among these findings: low job satisfaction is the number one predictor for future heart attack.

Socio-economic standing – income, educational level and power predicts general health better than any other single factor except age.

It gets worse. College students who remembered loving relationships with their parents have been found thirty years later to have far less illness than those whose parental relationships were more strained.

People who believe their spouses love them live longer. People with more friends are healthier. Laugher and happiness make the immune system work better.

Sex is good for your; fun is good for you. People who report lower stress levels have lower blood pressure and stronger hearts.

It is almost as of our bodies know how we feel about our lives as of our immune systems and all our other miraculous self healing mechanisms get discouraged when we get discourages as if they feel hopelessness, grief, and stress when we feel these ways.

It’s not just that happy people exercise more or eat better – though they tend to. “Mind/body” research demonstrates that our bodies, especially our unconscious self care systems (such as the immune system), react to our life situations as strongly as do our conscious selves.
Health Reflects Life

Tea Time

2009-12-04T06:46:00.001-08:00

Tea Time
Green tea is a uniquely powerful beverage for improving health, burning body fat, and preventing disease.

Today, this ancient beverage has a bright future owing to a steady stream of new studies showing the health benefits accrued buy drinking it.

We routinely have a cup of decaf tea green tea in the evening after the kids are in bed and we can relax and enjoy spending some quiet time together.

We try to drink two to four cups throughput the day and find decaffeinated green tea keep us focused yet relaxed.

It is also one of the best sources of beneficial phytonutrients that are helpful in preventing aging and disease.

Tea is a great way to stay well hydrated without consuming excess empty calories.

Green tea increases your metabolism and appears to selectively mobilise the fat stores from inside your abdominal cavity. Regular tea drinkers have a lower risk of diabetes high blood pressure and heart disease.
Tea Time

Physical Fitness

2009-11-05T20:52:00.000-08:00

Physical Fitness
Physical fitness is the ability of your body systems to work together efficiently to allow you to be healthy and effectively perform activities of daily living.

Being efficient means being able to do daily activities with the least amount of effort.

A fit person is able to perform schoolwork as well as responsibilities at home and still have enough energy and vigor to enjoy school sports and other leisure activities.

A fit person has the ability to respond to normal life situations such as raking the leaves at homes, stocking shelves at a part time job, or marching in the band at school.

A fit person also has the ability to respond to emergency situations such as running to get help or aiding a friend in distress.

As a child you were probably very active and thought little about improving or maintaining your fitness.

However, most people become less active as they grow older.

Developing a personal plan for regular physical activity can help you keep your activity level high and avoid sedentary living.

The activities you choose can be those that you like doing best and those that are best for you. Getting fit and staying fit can be fun when you choose activities that you enjoy.
Physical Fitness

General Definition of Obesity

2009-10-16T20:23:00.000-07:00

General Definition of Obesity
Obesity is generally defined as the abnormal or excessive accumulation of fat in adipose tissue to the extent that health may be impaired.

Measuring the level of adipose tissue and determining when it is likely to affect health is not an easy task.

Quantification of adipose tissue mass can be achieved by a number of laboratory methods including underwater body density measurement and body fat content estimated by dual energy X-ray absorptiometer.

In addition, the development of new techniques, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT), has provided researchers with the opportunities to describe human adiposity in more detail.

However, most of these methods require costly equipment meaning that there is limited to clinical research setting.

In large scale population surveys and clinical/public health screening, an index of body weight adjusted for stature is commonly used as a surrogate for body fat content.

These indices are defined as different combinations of weight and height, such as weight divided by height or are defined as weight expressed as a percentage of mean weight divide by height or are defined as weight expressed as a percentage of mean weight for a given height and sex.

The most widely used in Quetelet’s index, better known as body mass index (BMI), which is body weight (kg) divided by height squared (meter square). This index has been shown to correlate weakly with height and strongly with body fatness in adults.

Determining the weight status status and level of adiposity in children and adolescent is even more problematical.

This is a stage of rapid growth and development.

During growth in childhood and adolescence, not only does height increase but body composition changes as well, thus classification of obesity according to a single measure is difficult.

In addition, international or regional weight status standards for children and adolescents may be less reliable as the age of onset of puberty and its associated physical changes often varies between different countries, ethnic groups or cultures.
General Definition of Obesity

It is not our fault

2009-10-05T07:31:00.001-07:00

It is not our fault
Before planning how to get well, it may help to consider the various reasons we get sick, only a few of which are under our control.

Sometimes our genes are programmed for susceptibility to one or another awful disease.

We may lack sufficiently healthy food or water. We may grow up without opportunities for exercise, fresh air, education, relaxation or love.

Studies of stressful life events – job loss, divorce, relocation, death of a family member, etc – consistently show higher rates of all types of disease following such stressors.

To these, we can add all of our maladaptive response to life’s insults: bad posture, attitudes, or diets, unacknowledged emotions, lack of exercise, overwork, hurry, various forms of self abuse and addition.

All of these injuries behaviors were learned somewhere or adopted before we knew better for reasons that were necessary - or at least seemed like good ideas – at the the time.

Most disease, then except for overwhelming infections or pure genetic defects, arise from numbers of factors stretching back through our lives and heredity and outward though all our social and environmental influences, a web of causation that we cam never completely sort out.

For various reasons, our bodies and minds (do not get their needs met, and they react by getting sick.)

Our bodies weren’t made to last forever and years of wear and tear eventually cause breakdown.

Therefore, it makes no sense to blame ourselves for illness, to feel guilty about things we could not control.

Guilt doesn’t do anyone any good. Far worse than guilt, though, is helplessness, the feeling that turns us into victims without hope of salvation.
It is not our fault

Effects of Exercise on Mood

2009-09-13T19:02:00.000-07:00

Effects of Exercise on Mood
Everybody now knows how that physical activity and feelings or energy are integrally related.

Moderate exercise raises energy temporary, and physical conditioning through long term exercise leads to sustained levels of higher energy.

Of course too much physical activity can reduce energy but the low levels of physical activity that modern people maintain usually do not reach that point of diminishing energy, except in short term exertion or in conjunction with health problems.

Exercise also can reduce tension, although this mood relationship with exercise is not as clear as the exercise association.

In any event, the mood effects of exercise have been evident in study after study.

Therefore, in managing moods it is essential to be fully aware of how physical activity affects you.
Effects of Exercise on Mood

Walking –The King of Exercise

2009-09-06T19:25:00.000-07:00

Walking –The King of Exercise
As you walk grasp yourself in the small of the back and feel how your entire frame responds to every stride.

Notice how almost all of your muscle are functioning rhythmically.

No other exercise gives us the same body harmony of movement and improved circulation. Brisk walking is the best exercise for almost everyone.

Your walking should never be done consciously, No “heel and toe” business. No getting there in a certain time.

Let it be fun and natural. Walk naturally with head high, spine and chest lifted up. You will feel elated, so you will carry yourself proudly, straight, erect and with arm swinging.

Vow to become a health walker and make the daily walk a fixed item on your health program all the year around, in all kinds of weather.

If the outer world of nature fails to interest you, turn to the inner world of the mind. As you walk, your body ceases to matter and you become as near poet and philosopher as you will ever be.

By end of the days, the healthy functioning of your muscles and quickened blood circulating with a sense of balanced harmony and happiness.

Gardening is another rewarding form exercise. It may give enough exercise in the open to help keep you in good physical condition.

But gardening may not prevent weight gain if there is too little movement and because you are bent over more instead of being erect.
Walking –The King of Exercise

Shake the Salt Habit

2009-08-15T16:54:00.000-07:00

Shake the Salt Habit
The health of your arteries is critically important to virtually every aspect of your health.

Too much salt (sodium) ages your cardiovascular system by raising your blood pressure and hardening, stiffening and thickening your arteries and the walls of your heart.

You want to keep your blood vessel soft, smooth and supple like they were when you were a child and a teenager and avoid developing the rigid, inflamed and crusty pipes that can lead to heart attack, stroke, and congestion heart failure.

As an American adult, chances of developing high blood pressure during lifetime are 90 percent.

If you continue to follow your current lifestyle, sooner or later you will probably get hypertension – the medical term for high blood pressure.

Why? For starters, the average American consumer about 4000 mg of sodium daily, which is about six to ten times more salt than we were designed to eat.

Add the fact that blood pressure rises in response to too much body fat, stress and sugar and too little sleep and exercise and you have to the recipe for high blood pressure.

Excess sodium does much more than just raises your blood pressure. A study shows that high sodium intake reduced blood vessel wall function.

In addition, salt leaches the calcium from your bones, making you prone to osteoporosis and fractures, and also appears to increase cancer risk – especially in gastrointestinal tract.

A recent study found that extra salt the diet increased the like-hood of heartburn (also known as esophageal reflux) by as much as 70 percent.

A good place to start lowering the sodium in our diet is by removing the salt shaker from the table and hiding it in an inconvenient spot.

But only about 5 percent of the salt in our diet comes from the salt shaker; 75 percent comes from processed and restaurant foods.

Most people do not choose to eat high sodium product – they jut eat the foods that are readily available in our culture.

Salt is everywhere in our modern diet even in foods such as bread that don’t taste salty.

Processed foods are loaded with salt to help preserve freshness, and the more sodium you eat, the more you will crave salt. When you eliminate highly processed, high sodium foods from your diet, you will take a huge step toward a healthier, more vigorous life.
Shake the Salt Habit

Formula to Good Health

2009-07-06T03:39:00.000-07:00

Formula to Good Health
Most American today are overfed yet undernourished, which eventually leads to obesity and poor health.

The answer to those pervasive problem is simply to eliminate the low nutrient to calories ration foods like processed grains, sugars, fatty processed meats, soft drinks and packaged snack foods, and increase the intake of high nutrient to calorie ratio foods like vegetables, fruits, seafood and whey protein.

A diet with a high nutrient to calorie ration supplies with large quantities of beneficial vitamins, minerals and other antiaging phytonutrients, but at the same time it reduces your calorie intake.

If you want to lean, fit, vigorous, and brought and happy, you must do what you are designed to do. People usually eat until they are full or satiated.

If you consume natural high nutrient but low calorie foods like fruits and vegetables, you can eat more volume and thus will feel satisfied for a longer period after eating.

It is very difficult to get fit by eating vegetables and fruit.

If you also make sure to include healthy lean protein with each meal, you will stay full longer and be able to avoid cravings.

If you trying to lose weight and not feel deprived, subtle changes can lead to realm lasting results.

A study researchers tested whether they could fool people into thinking they were eating the same amount of calories even though they trimmed their intake by 800 calories a day.

They did this by “super-sizing” the portions of foods with high nutrient to calorie like vegetable and fruits.

At the same time they cut high calorie synthetic foods containing sugars and fats by about 25%.

As turned out, the participant did not even notice that they were consuming fewer calories because they were eating more food and staying full longer.

On the other hand, when the researchers cut calories by just decreasing portion sizes, participants complained they weren’t getting enough to eat.

In other word, you will feel less deprived and have better luck losing body fat if you increase your intake of fruits and vegetables and cut out processed high sugar and high fat foods, rather than relying on cutting portion size alone.
Formula to Good Health