Archive for the ‘Health & Wellness’ category

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Ways to Safely Gain Weight

February 24th, 2010

With all the stories out there about how many of us are getting heavier, it’s interesting to know that there are actually people who have problems gaining weight.

I myself know quite a few people who have gone through their lives being skinnier than what’s considered normal. I see them eating all sorts of things trying to gain weight, and it just doesn’t stick to them. Many of us may be envious of them, wishing we could eat anything we wanted to and not gain weight. But the truth is that people who can’t gain weight can suffer health issues of their own, which means they not only have to try to gain weight, but have to find natural, safe ways to do it; here are a few safe ways to gain weight.

One popular way people try to gain weight is by taking a weight gain supplement. Most of the time when you hear about weight gaining supplements, they are associated with bodybuilders, but individuals looking to gain weight that don’t lift weights, often need or want a weight gainer. Most of these powders have different proteins and fibers that, when mixed with water, can provide a nutritious supplement that helps you gain weight.

Although you often hear that eating fruit is a way to lose weight, there are some fruits that might help you gain weight. Mangoes are considered a fruit that will help you gain weight, along with raisins, dates, figs, and bananas. It’s recommended to add either milk or water when consuming them to help retain the weight.

You might think that foods high in protein, like steak, can help you gain weight, but thats not always true. In the quantities that you would have to eat steak to gain weight, it could end up harming your body more than helping it. Therefore, it’s best to have a combination of things that go well with protein such as carbohydrate foods like potatoes and rice. Something that you can also get away with if you’re underweight is adding gravy in big doses, making sure you use something like vegetable oil in preparing it.

What about herbs and spices, can they put on some pounds? Believe it or not there are a few that are recommended to do just that such as tarragon, dried rosemary, bay leaf, curry powder, and black pepper. Supposedly, putting these on food you eat will help you retain the weight as they make you feel fuller.

If you’re trying to gain weight, stick with the suggestions above and stay away from foods and drinks like twinkies, donuts and soda.

See Also:
Healthy Ways to Gain Weight

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Chinese Food Therapy

February 15th, 2010

Chinese Food Therapy is an ancient process; practitioners believe that a body can be healed by eating certain foods in certain combinations and amounts, instead of taking traditional medicine. It’s controversial because, in general, physicians don’t believe that most diseases can be cured by changing one’s diet. However, there have been several studies which have proven that eating correctly can add to the health of the body, so the basic principles behind Chinese food therapy seem to be sound.

This practice believes that most illnesses come about due to improper eating. Practitioners believe that most people know when they are eating something that does not agree with their body, and if they continue to eat or drink that particular item, they know that they’re doing harm to themselves. That part seems to be true according to most medical studies. Where the problem comes is in the determination of which foods are recommended to treat people and the types of illnesses they’re recommended to treat.

For instance, having someone ingest chili pepper to take care of nosebleeds or dry skin might seem a bit out of touch with what someone else might recommend. However, having someone suggest something like red wine to help stimulate blood circulation has been proven to be an effective treatment. Chinese food therapy tends to address multiple issues with the body and not just one specific issue, therefore it’s a combination of different foods and spices that are believed to help the body achieve overall health, as opposed to addressing only one issue at a time.

It also defines foods based on their yin or yang, something most of us have heard of but don’t know much about. The basic idea behind these two words is to describe foods in terms of their temperatures or nature. For instance, yin describes things towards the cold side whereas yang describes things towards the warm side. The belief is that too much yang will over-stimulate the body, and too much yin can bring on depression and sadness. Modifying these can help bring the body into balance, but also takes into account the seasons of the year to help determine how much modification needs to take place.

All in all, Chinese food therapy is a lot more complicated than it seems on the surface. It’s hard to say in specific terms how much it works towards healing the body if someone has a serious medical issue. However, it does seem to be a legitimate diet that can help a person’s body feel healthier.

See More:

Alkaline Food Therapy
Top 12 Easy Chinese Recipes

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Bone Health Is Important

February 10th, 2010

Without healthy bones, chiropractors and other medical practitioners might not be able to help you out as much as they could if you had healthy bones. There are some things our bodies need to have strong bones, and there are some things that we can do to help our bones remain strong. Here are three things that can help improve bone health.

1. Calcium is the major component of bones, or at least healthy bones. When people get things such as osteoporosis, it usually means that their bones are losing calcium and therefore becoming more brittle and less strong. As we get older, we tend to eat and drink fewer things that have enough calcium in them. You can take calcium supplements to help you out, but sometimes all it takes is adding certain foods back into your diet. Seafood like salmon and shrimp can help; almonds are a good source of calcium too. Many adults can’t handle milk as easily as they could when they were younger, but if you can then milk is a good calcium source. We all just need to be cognizant of making sure that we can get enough calcium into our bodies.

2. Exercise is very important, although it doesn’t directly impact bones. What it does is build up the muscles around the bones to help give them support and cushion. Weight training does more to help protect the bones and cardiovascular, and the thing is that many people could actually lose weight by doing weight training, even though cardiovascular weight training gets more credit for it’s ability to shed pounds. If you gain weight from weight training don’t worry, muscle weight is definitely preferable to not having good muscular tone at all.

3. Vitamin D is an important element that many of us don’t get enough of. You can get vitamin D from the sun, but most of us really don’t get enough sun because of our busy lives. You can also get vitamin D from supplements and food, here are a few foods that high in vitamin D: seafood (tuna, salmon, shrimp), vegetables (mushrooms, potatoes), and dairy products like (milk, cheese). Check out this resource for Foods Highest in Vitamin D

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Milk Thistle

January 28th, 2010

milkthistletopMilk thistle is a herb that’s been given credit for helping a lot of maladies people might have. It’s been used for more than 2,000 years, originally growing in the Mediterranean area, now grown in many areas around the world, including the United States.

Milk thistle goes by many names; some of them are: Bull thistle, heal thistle, holy thistle, kanger, kocakavkas, kuub, lady’s thistle, natursilum, pig leaves, and wild artichoke. The main active ingredient is called silymarin, which has antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, and it may help the liver repair itself by growing new cells, as well as protect the liver from toxins.

Milk Thistle Products

If one believes everything they’ve read, milk thistle is a cure-all for many things. Here’s a list of some of those things:

  • Liver diseases such as cirrhosis and hepatitis C
  • Treatment and prevention of gallstones
  • Mushroom toxicity (milk thistle is used in many emergency rooms to try to fight mushroom poisoning)
  • High cholesterol
  • Used as a post (oral steroid) cycle therapy for body builders
  • Reducing insulin resistance in people with type 2 diabetes who also have cirrhosis
  • Used in many products claiming to reduce the effects of a hangover
  • Used by individuals withdrawing from opiates
  • Used by those taking oral steroids
  • Reducing liver damaging effects of chemotherapeutic drugs
  • Dyspepsia (upset stomach)
  • Menopausal symptoms

Milk thistle is one supplement that has had some testing done as far as one of its major uses, that as an agent for fighting cancer. In one particular test, milk thistle was used for around 50 children to see if it would allow them to take greater doses of chemotherapy without side effects. The study, peer-reviewed by the American Cancer Society, showed that milk thistle helped reduce inflammation of the liver as well as removed the need of many to reduce the levels of chemotherapy. They also found that milk thistle didn’t reduce the effects of chemotherapy, and was safe to take.

Milk thistle might not be quite a miracle drug, but it’s one of the more respected herbal alternatives on the market.

See more:
LiverSupport.com Milk Thistle Facts Overview
Drugs.com – Milk Thistle
Milk Thistle & Cancer

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Neurofeedback

January 26th, 2010

neurofeedback_headDepending on who you talk to, neurofeedback is either a legitimate medical procedure that helps people address things such as anxiety, depression, and attention deficit disorders, or a bunch of expensive nonsense that doesn’t do anything except cost people a lot of money.

It borders on the fringe of alternative medicine because it does use electronic equipment to measure brain activity. Electrodes are applied to the scalp and then brainwave frequencies are measured to find patterns, of whoever’s being examined, that need to be altered. Then what the practitioner does is try to teach the recipient new ways of thinking and processing information to change behaviors with the intention of creating positive results. Some call it using your mind to change your brain.

The arguments for neurofeedback are the number of people who say they or their family members, especially children, have been helped to overcome certain behavioral problems and not only find themselves able to overcome learning disabilities, but able to calm down and learn how to interact better with others. Those who argue against it believe it’s nothing more than a placebo that rips people off.

The problem is that there have been no significant studies based on neurofeedback to either support or dispel whether it’s a valid treatment or not. There have been small independent studies that have produced positive reports, but none of them pass the requirements of a closed study. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is about to conduct its first peer-reviewed study to see if it’s a valid procedure or a waste of time.

How exactly does neurofeedback work? It starts off with a questionnaire and an electroencephalograph (EEG) reading. Based on the outcome of the questionnaire, the therapist will place electrodes in certain places on your head after the initial reading and then give you live feedback of things you should try to do to change your brain patterns. They can have you do things such as reciting passages, different kinds of meditation, or even sing a little song.

The entire process can take about 90 minutes, and they usually recommend that people have 20 to 40 sessions. At a minimum of $100 a pop, they can get very expensive very quickly. Some people have tried to purchase their own machines to do the process in their homes, but the machines range from $2000-$3000, and they still need help from a therapist to know where to place electrodes from time to time.

The belief is that if the government study comes back and shows that neurofeedback actually works, it could bring more practitioners into the business and reduced the cost significantly. At that point it might move from the fringe of being alternative medicine into a legitimate medical procedure.

See more:
Neurofeedback Studies and Links
New Study Supports Neurofeedback Treatment for ADHD
International Society for Neurofeedback and Research

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Super Blue Green Algae

January 21st, 2010

Photo Credit: www.ehow.com

Photo Credit: www.ehow.com

Super blue green algae is a supplement whose makers claim can help people lose weight by suppressing the appetite, boosting a person’s immunity, and increasing the energy. Instead, not only does this product probably not work, but it might cause but it might cause some to local problems for some people and probably should be avoided.

I well remember taking super blue-green algae in the mid-1990s. I had a friend who had started taking it and lost a lot of weight. She recommended it to us, and we figured if it works for her it would work for us. It came in a capsule form, with what look like green stuff inside the capsule. That turned out to be very significant, because the main thing my wife and I noticed was that our stools were suddenly dark green all the time, and it felt like we always had to continually be going to the bathroom and working hard to keep ourselves feeling clean. We each took these pills for about three weeks, before finally deciding that this wasn’t for us. Four months after my friend had reached her lowest weight, she gained half of it back, which proved to all of us that this super blue-green algae did not work.

Super Blue Green Algae Pills

Super Blue Green Algae Pills

As it turns out, the original company, K. C. Laboratories, had already been sued and ordered to stop making the product in 1986 when a judge declared that the therapeutic claims that it been made for the product were invalid. What the company did instead was remarket the claim as a supplement instead. However, the Canadian Health Protection Branch in 1999 stated that products containing blue-green algae might be toxic and harmful to the liver. They did some testing and found that as long as the level of microcystin stayed relatively low, that’s a supplement may not be harmful overall, but click on his some gastrointestinal discomfort and general malaise in some people.

The people marketing this super blue-green algae are now claiming that it can help people overcome Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), but independent testing seems to indicate that those claims are false. Overall, it seems that people who take super blue-green algae receive no medicinal benefits and very little of nutrients by taking these pills. Instead, most physicians will still recommend that a balanced diet and exercise will achieve greater benefits than super blue-green algae could ever hope to provide. However, for anyone who decides to still take it, they should make sure not to give it to children because it could cause dire consequences with their systems because of possible contamination by toxic substances in the algae.

See more:
Blue Green Algae Health Risk
Why Blue Algae Makes Me Tires
Wikipedia Cyanobacteria (Blue Green Algae)

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Gene Therapy

January 19th, 2010
How Gene Therapy Works

How Gene Therapy Works

Gene therapy is a scientific process where abnormal genes are replaced by either normal genes or altered genes to try to correct some kind of hereditary problem that a person was born with. In some cases gene therapy has proven to be a wonderful thing, while in others, gene therapy has proven to be more dangerous than anyone could imagine.

As there are more studies done on the body, scientists have found ways to determine which genes in the body cause certain types of diseases. Things such as cystic fibrosis, multiple sclerosis, blindness and cancer are considered as things that are possible to correct with proper gene modification.

In a couple of recent reports, gene therapy is credited with helping one little girl overcome what’s known as “bubble boy” disease (ADA-SCID), which meant that she had the antibodies to protect her from disease initially, but after the reintroduction of stem cells from her bone marrow, which were exposed to an engineered retrovirus, had been injected back into her body, her immune system became populated with functioning T cells, which restored protection to her body and allowed her to be able to go outside and play like any other child.

For another patient who was suffering a progressive loss of vision from a disease known as Leber congenital amaurosis, he had a gene known as RPE65 injected into his retina, after being exposed to a virus known as adeno-associated virus. In less than a week his eyesight started to improve, and he was able to see more light which made it easy for him to be able to walk around in the evenings. He also was suddenly able to see stripes on his clothes, which he hadn’t been able to see for years.

Although these kinds of results, which were dramatic, were expected, even though not as fast, there have been some failures which have resulted in death. Sometimes putting a gene back into someone’s body activates the white blood cells to such a degree that they overwhelm the system and kill the host. It’s for this reason that gene therapy still is considered on the fringe of normal medicine, and is still considered to be in experimental stages. Still, the possibilities are endless for treating all sorts of diseases in the future.

See more:
Gene Therapy Pros & Cons
Gene Therapy Journal
The Ethics of Gene Therapy

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Positives And Negatives About Multivitamins

January 14th, 2010

Multivitamins Pros and Cons

Something that’s very popular in American culture is the idea of using multivitamins as a way to get all of the nutritional supplements that one needs on a daily basis. As with anything else, there are positives and negatives in using multivitamins.

One major positive in using multivitamins is that you can get a whole lot of vitamins into your body all at once by using one little pill. Actually, the pills may not be so little, but you can get a lot of nutrients all at one time. This includes vitamins like A, C, D and E, as well as many of the B vitamins. Also, multivitamins might include minerals such as iron and magnesium. This means you could get a number of daily supplements that are recommended for your body easily enough.

The flipside of this is that you might not be getting enough of specifically what you need and will need to make sure to use other supplements or foods to overcome the deficiencies. For instance women with osteoporosis need a higher level of vitamin D and calcium per day than what you can get from a multivitamin, so they would either have to supplement that with more calcium and vitamin D, or make sure they eat enough foods during the day that contain higher levels of calcium and vitamin D.

There are also different types of multivitamins these days. Some are geared to a specific group, such as women, while others allow you to take them without having to swallow the pill, such as with powdered drinks or chewable vitamins. Also, there are specialty vitamins geared for specific groups. A multivitamin created for women will concentrate on women’s issues, while a multivitamin created for older people will be geared for their issues.

One thing that everyone has to recognize is that a multivitamin will not take care of every need that a person has for their body. We all still have to find a way to eat properly, to get at least a little bit of exercise, and to make sure that we keep enough fluids in our body. But a multivitamin might be a good first step for someone who eats very few things that have enough nutritional value to make a difference in their lives.

See more:
Multivitamin May Help Women Suffering From Hair Loss
Family Multivitamin Oral
What you need to know about multivitamins

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Five Ways To Lose Weight

December 29th, 2009
Time to lose some weight?

Time to lose some weight?

Weighing too much can bring on so many complications in your body that it doesn’t even make sense trying to name them all. Suffice it to say that carrying around too much weight isn’t a good thing. Also, trying to count calories doesn’t work because it’s too restrictive, plus it’s not an eating plan anyone can stick to for long. But your eating habits do have to change if you’re to lose weight, then possibly keep it off.

Here are 4 techniques you can try which might help you adopt a healthier lifestyle.

1. Eat smaller portions. This sounds easy, but many people have problems doing it. Actually, it’s easier than you might think, even if what you have to do is fool yourself. A way to do that is to fill your plate, then remove half of what’s on your plate before you eat it. That technique will also work if you want to go out to a restaurant, and it gives you another meal for later on.

2. Eat more meals per day. Along with the smaller portions, eating multiple meals actually stimulates digestion and helps you lose weight. Your body tends to hold onto energy in fat because it’s not sure when it’ll be getting its next meal. Therefore, if you convince it that more food will be coming sooner, it’ll start burning that fat instead of retaining it.

3. Exercise just a little bit. You saw this one coming, but instead of trying to find 30 minutes at one time to pour your heart into, if you’re not used to working out try to find either two 10-minute periods or 3 5-minute periods to do a little something. Walking for 5 minutes might not do a lot, but it’s something, and with your increased meals and better digestion, it can’t hurt. The more you can exercise the better, but it’s important to at least start some kind of program.

4. Plan your meals in advance. This is probably the hardest part of an eating plan, but it can make your life so much easier. Pick either Saturday or Sunday and cook all of your meals in advance. If you have containers, portion out your food so that all you have to do is grab something, heat it up, and eat. Having your food already set helps because you’ll find that once you start eating multiple meals you’ll get hungry faster and harder, and when you’re hungry, you’ll be more apt to go off your eating plan. Therefore, having ready made meals helps drastically.

5. Skip dessert and snacks. Desserts can contain a lot of unwanted calories, and if shedding a few pounds is goal you’ve set for yourself, those unwanted calories aren’t going to do you any favors. Similarly, snacking, snack foods, needs to be cut out of your diet too if you wish to burn additional calories. If you must snack, seek out non-fatty, or sugary, foods that offer nutritional benefits. You’ve heard of this type of food before, it’s called fruit!

See more:
Exercise Tips
Healthy Meal Planning Advice
Simple Tips To Increase Energy & Avoid Illness

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10 Foods That Will Help Improve Your Memory – Part One

December 22nd, 2009
Tuna Fish Helps Your Memory!

Tuna Fish Helps Your Memory!

With so many worries about our memories these days, more people are looking for natural ways to help alleviate any problems with memory. Deciding to go with foods that help to keep one’s memory sharp might be the easiest route to go, because you already have to eat, so you might already be eating the right foods, and if not it might be easy to add some of these foods to your diet.

In the first part of this article, we’re going to look at 5 foods you might want to take a good look at.

Chocolate Improves Your Memory!

Chocolate Improves Your Memory!

1. Chocolate. How much more perfect can you go than chocolate? It’s already been determined that dark chocolate has flavonoids that help the heart stay healthy and keeps the blood flowing better, which is also good for the brain because the brain always needs a fresh supply of blood. It also has a small bit of caffeine in it that can help keep the brain stimulated.

2. Tuna. Most of us think of tuna fish sandwiches as something that’s easy and quick to make, but tuna not only has a lot of Omega-3 healthy fats in it that helps keep the body running smoothly, and is very heart friendly, but it has a high amount of B6, which has been proven to help stimulate memory and maintain brain health. Of course, you still want to get the tuna that’s in water to help cut down on calories.

3. Blueberries. Actually, most berries can help, but blueberries have been given a lot of attention for helping to keep the brain healthy. Blueberries are high in something called polyphenols, which is a type of flavonoids, and supposedly can help to reduce the decline of brain functions. They’re also good against cancer; that’s not bad either.

4. Garlic. We’re talking about the food, not the spice, and for years people have been touting garlic as something that can help with memory. It affects the seratonin levels in the brain that helps stimulate brain function. Fresh garlic is suggested, as opposed to garlic powder or garlic salt.

5. Beans. Beans have always been considered as healthy for many things, but they also seem to help with memory. It’s mainly because of two things. The first is thiamine, which is a B-vitamin that helps build brain cells. The second is that it has glucose, which also helps stimulate the brain, but doesn’t overload the brain with too much glucose.

Click here to read Part Two 10 Foods That Will Help Improve Your Memory.

See more:
Improving Your Memory: Tips & Techniques
Using Foods to Improve Memory
Foods for Better Concentration

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