Seven Tips For A Long And Healthy Life

 

 

As good as modern medical technology is, it can never save you from the problems caused by a life style that is unhealthy. Instead of getting a modern medical fix for every problem, it is far better to live in such a way that you will hardly ever fall ill.

An ounce of prevention is certainly better than a pound of cure. Here are seven tips on how to live a long and healthy life. In addition, the same life style that helps you to avoid illness also helps you to lose weight.

1. Get Enough Exercise

In the past people had to use their physical bodies in the course of their normal work. But today someone may get up, go to work in a car, then sit down, get up to go home in the car and when arriving at home, sit down again for the rest of the day. In such a life there is no physical labour. This physical inactivity is one of the main reasons for a host of diseases. Sport, running. walking and other things must be added to our life if our normal work does not require us to exert ourselves physically. I

2. Go to sleep when you feel sleepy

This may sound simple, but many people stay up late even when their body is telling them that it is time to sleep. Yoga and Ayurvedic doctors also say that it is better to sleep in the night and be active during the day. However, people such as students will take coffee and stimulants to study late into the night. Others develop the habit of remaining active at night and sleeping during the day. While we can do this, it eventually takes a toll on health. Alternative health doctors say that this kind of unnatural living is one of the contributing factors in the causation of cancer and other diseases

3. Eat when you feel hungry
This is also a simple idea, but once again we often go against the messages of the body. If you eat out of habit or due to social pressure at certain time of the day, even when you have no real appetite, then you will not digest your food properly. Acidity and indigestion begin, and this contributes to the likelihood of other more complex diseases taking root. Having an appetite is actually a sign of good health, but if you have no appetite you should wait a bit and then eat. (If you have no appetite even after awaiting a reasonable amount of time, then you should consult a doctor because something is wrong.)

4. Fast on a Regular, Systematic Basis

If you would ask any person to work 365 days per year without any rest, they would complain and say that they must have some rest or else they will break down. But we have never bothered to ask or to think about our digestive organs which we compel to work day after day without a rest. They cannot protest the way a person would to his boss, but they do give us signals that they cannot work non-stop. When we ignore those signals and still compel them to work, those organs break down. That is why periodic fasting is necessary. Refrain from eating for one complete day. This gives a rest to your digestive organs and also helps in the elimination of wastes from your body. Regular fasting allows a person to gain extra time for intellectual or spiritual pursuits. Fasting is not for hermits in a cave, but is a sensible practice that anyone can practice.

5. Wash with cool water before going to bed
As mentioned above, proper sleep is essential for the maintenance of health. If you wash your important motor and sensory organs (hands, arms, eyes, legs, mouth, genitals) before sleep using cool water, this will relax you and prepare you for deep sleep.

6. Perform meditation on a regular basis

Your body is linked to your mind. Many of the diseases of this era are psychosomatic. Stress and anxiety take their toll on our physical health. Meditation is a mental exercise which, among other things, allows you to detach yourself from the worries of life. Learn a simple technique and do it regularly.

7. Get up early every day
Once again the old proverb, “Early to bed, early to rise makes a person healthy, wealthy and wise.” I don’t know if it will make you wealthy, but it will certainly make you healthy. Your body needs just enough sleep, not too much and not too little.

Follow these tips and you can’t go wrong.

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Healthy Dieting Tips

When it comes to dieting you will find all kinds of crazy and faddish diets on the market today. In addition to the many diets there seems to be every kind of diet aid you can imagine. From shakes the diet industry has evolved to include everything from candy bars and pudding to pills and patches. Each item makes the claim that it can help you drop those unwanted pounds quickly and easily. Well I can tell you for a fact there is very little easy for most of us about dropping a few pounds.

If you would like a few tips that should make your weight loss goals a little easier to achieve then perhaps the following tips will help you out.

Drink Plenty of Water

There really isn’t enough that can be said about the importance of drinking water in an effort to reach your fitness goals. Water hydrates the body first and foremost but water is also an important way of tricking your body into believing it is full. Other drinks do not work nearly as well as water in this endeavour and many drinks, even fruit juices, contain empty calories that you can ill afford when dieting.

Another great thing about drinking a lot of water while dieting is that it helps your skin retain its elasticity so you can avoid some of the ‘loose skin’ look that often accompanies massive weight loss. As an added bonus drinking plenty of water will have your skin looking radiant and beautiful as well.

Set Goals

Having goals is one of the most important things you can do when working to lose weight. Try to make sure that your goals are aggressive but can be achieved. If you are frustrated early in the dieting process by unrealistic goals you are much more likely to give up. However, challenges are always going to inspire us to achieve greater things in life. If you can find a ‘weight loss partner’ in order to have a little friendly competition for the weight loss totals for a week or a month then you are going to be far more likely to accomplish your goals than if you keep them quietly to yourself.

Eat More

Did you read that twice? Yes, eat more healthy foods that are high in fibre. Eat more vegetables and fruits-fill up on these foods that are good for you and you will not be inclined to binge on calorie laden junk food.

Move!

While this seems a little too simply stated for most, getting up and moving is one of, if not the absolute best way to burn calories. The simple truth is that you are not going to lose weight unless you use more calories than you consume. The more activities you enjoy that burn calories, the more likely you are to shed those unwanted pounds and meet your weight loss goals.

Some great activities that actually burn calories include the following: gardening, golf, dancing, playing volleyball, walking, jumping rope, playing hop scotch with your little ones, and playing tennis. I mention these activities because you can trick yourself into believing that you aren’t really exercising while burning calories. Even cleaning house requires movement and energy and if you dance around a little to some good music in the process you might burn a few extra calories.

Dieting, when successful can help restore self image and self-esteem in people who are otherwise beautiful people inside and out. The steps above are not the only things that are involved in the dieting process but they can help you reach your weight loss goals particularly when combined with a diet plan that you feel confident you can follow. Be sure that on those days when will power is non-existent that you do not derail your diet efforts all together by giving up. The most important thing you can do when dieting is to go back to dieting once you’ve strayed.

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How To Maximize The Health Benefits Of Green Tea

Whether you are trying to lose weight or improve your health in general, drinking several cups of green tea per day can help. Green tea is the next best thing to a warm cup of hot chocolate to sooth and clam you, especially in the winter months.

Fat Fighting Benefits of Green tea

Drinking green tea can be a great addition to a well-rounded nutrition and exercise program. Green tea works to raise your metabolism, therefore helping you to burn more fat even while you’re resting and sleeping. Although this doesn’t give you an excuse to slack off at the gym, it does help us to burn up the stored fat we carry a little quicker. It also oxidizes the fat. It burns the fat that commonly settles around our middles: the waist, hips and thighs.

The other benefit dieters receive from drinking green tea is having a reduced appetite. We all know that the fewer calories we take in and the more calories we burn are what it takes to lose weight. By this reasoning, green tea is the perfect diet companion.

The Other Health benefits of Green Tea

Dieters aren’t the only ones who should e drinking green tea though. There are many health benefits achieved from drinking this hot beverage every day.

Green tea will reduce your total cholesterol levels, decreasing the bad cholesterol and increasing the good cholesterol.

Because green tea is high in antioxidants it is a good tool to fight the flu. It will help boost your immunity against viruses.

Green tea kills bacteria in the mouth that causes plaque. This is good news for people who fear frequent trips to the dentist.

Green tea helps us to think more clearly. It also helps stave off memory loss, like that associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

In addition, green tea aids people with medical conditions like cancer, arthritis, heart disease and serious infections.

Maximizing the Benefits of Green Tea

Use high quality green tea leaves. Once soaked, the tea should turn out a pale green colour.

Experts suggest that drinking mildly hot green tea produces better benefits that making it into iced tea.

Let the tea brew in the mildly hot water for several minutes to help bring out the flavonoids.

Experts suggest drinking between 3and 5 cups of green tea per day for better health.

Skip adding sugar to your green tea. If you feel like you need to adjust the taste, add some honey, lemon or skim milk for added health benefits.

Just don’t like the taste of green tea? Don’t worry. You can still reap the many health benefits of green tea in the form of a pill.

However you manage to include green tea in your diet, including it on a regular basis will help you experience maximum results. Add green tea to a healthy, well-balanced diet and exercise routine for good overall fitness.

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Lemon and Pineapple Shift the Body’s pH in Your Favor

Do you know there is a link between our body’s pH and numerous diseases? Health conscious people sometimes try to maintain higher pH value than normal.

Having lower pH value than what is considered to be healthy is pretty common occurrence in the world we live in today. Becoming acidic is very easy. Becoming alkaline, on the other hand, requires proper healthy diet and nutrition and optimum pH can be easily achieved.



If you are familiar with anything about pH balance in the human body, then you probably know that having a faulty regulation can lead to some serious health conditions and consequences. Our body’s enzymes require very specific pH value in order for them to work properly.

Any increasing or decreasing in the pH value can lead to improper enzyme work which leads to halting some important metabolic processes. If you have low pH value, you have increased risk of getting heart disease, arthritis, cancer and osteoporosis.

By eating acidic fruits you will gain an alkalizing effect upon your body. An important thing to know about alkalizing – when consuming acidic food, the food’s minerals are the one that count, not the initial acidity of the actual food.

If you try to regain pH balance, try to consume pineapple and lemon juice. These juices can be very helpful when trying to achieve the perfect pH balance. If you want to notice the difference you need to consume lemon and pineapple juices on a regular basis.
You can drink them in a raw juice form or you can add them both in a glass of water. Another important thing to remember is to avoid drinking carbonated water due to its acidifying effects onto human’s body.

Find recipes which will match your taste when it comes to drinking pineapple and/or lemon juice. Make sure you consume that kind of beverages regularly.

http://www.healthyfoodhouse.com/lemon-and-pineapple-shift-the-bodys-ph-in-your-favor/

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THE 10 BEST FAT LOSS SNACKS

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Burning Fat Vs Burning Calories

 

To lose weight and get in shape you must have a good diet and exercise regularly to burn fat. The first thing you must understand about exercise is that just because you are burning calories does not mean you are burning fat. Your main focus when you exercise should be losing body fat, and you can’t lose body fat just from burning calories. When we exercise, our bodies will start burning calories, but the calories that are burned are the calories from carbohydrates in our system. In order to burn calories from your stored fat, your body requires the presence of oxygen. There is a certain amount of oxygen that your body needs in order to start burning fat and the only way for you to measure the amount needed for your own body is to keep up with your target heart rate during exercise. Please understand that if you continue to only burn calories from carbohydrates, you will lose mostly “water weight” which leads to a decrease in your metabolism. Also, think of the calories that are burned from carbohydrates as your energy calories. If you lose too much energy calories then your muscles will not receive enough energy to increase your metabolism which indirectly burn fat. Therefore you must increase your calorie intake when you are on an exercise program to replace your burned energy calories.

Burning Fat Calories during exercise

During aerobic exercise, your body goes through several stages before it reaches the point where you are burning fat. You will hear people say that you are only burning sugar (carbohydrates) not fat during the first 10 minutes of exercise. This is true to a certain extent. I say this because you will continue to burn sugar past the 10 minute mark if you are not working out hard enough for your body to want more oxygen; or you are working out too hard and you can’t supply your body with enough oxygen for fat burning. When you exercise you must move at a steady pace (not too fast, not too slow) so your body will utilize your stored fat (not carbohydrates or sugar) as its energy source. Also remember that just because you reached the fat burning stage does not mean you will stay there. Staying at the fat burning stage once again depends on if you are moving at a pace that is right for your body. Make sure that you are within your target heart rate range.

Burning Fat Calories at rest

The only way for you to continue to burn fat calories hours after you have finished working out is through the anaerobic exercise of weight training. Weight training is the key to burning fat at rest. Weight training is an anaerobic activity that will cause you to burn more calories than aerobic exercise. The calories that you are burning during weight training exercises are mostly calories from carbohydrates (meaning you must eat even more calories per day for energy); but the calories you burn at rest are mostly calories from fat. The reason you are burning fat at rest is because weight training increases your metabolism which uses your stored fat as energy.

To make your body the ultimate fat burning machine you must do aerobic (cardio) and anaerobic (weight training) exercises.

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Why Vegetarianism Is Good For You And The Planet

 

Even the Utah Beef Council admits, “Several epidemiological studies indicate that vegetarians have lower morbidity and mortality from chronic degenerative diseases.” Today, vegetarians only make up about two percent of the population, but everyday more and more people give up eating red meat or try their first bite of tofu. Aside from ethics, what are the main reasons people are turning away from meat? Health and the ecology.

Lower rates of disease amongst vegetarians

Hundreds of different studies concur, showing that vegetarians who eat balanced diets have lower rates of coronary artery disease, hypertension, obesity, and certain cancers. Registered Dietician Winston Craig says that meat eating costs Americans somewhere between $30-$60 billion per year in medical expenses for hypertension, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, gallstones, obesity, and food-borne illnesses associated with meat. Craig says that a vegetarian diet is associated with lower cholesterol, lower blood pressure, and less obesity.

In 1997, the World Cancer Research Fund recommended a vegetarian diet for reducing the risk of cancer. Lifelong vegetarians have 24% less heart disease, while vegans have an astounding 57% less. A comprehensive study of a vegetarian religious group, the Seventh Day Adventists, found that they had half the rate of high blood pressure and diabetes, half the rate of colon cancer, and two-thirds the rate of arthritis and prostate cancer as other groups (2001). Furthermore, Cornell University reported that eating less meat did more to reduce osteoporosis than supplementing your diet with calcium.

Do you have to be completely vegetarian to benefit?

In 1999, a meta-analysis of several vegetarian and vegan mortality studies was conducted. The results of these studies were compared together and re-analysed. The researchers concluded that even reducing meat in your diet had a significant effect on lowering your rate of disease. People who ate meat just once a week had a 20% lower rate of dying from heart disease, and their over-all mortality rate was reduced by 10%.

Those who ate only fish saw as much as a 34% reduction in heart disease death, while their over-all mortality was lowered by 18%.

In the same sense, the more you reduce consumption of animal products, the more you appear to benefit. Only 7% of the vegans studied died of cancer (lung, stomach, and colorectal). Alarmingly, 19% of over-all deaths in the US are from cancer.

Vegetarian diets are good for the planet

Every year, meat eaters contribute to the cattle farming industry. This industry uses farm lands that could be producing human food to make grain for cows. As most people know, cows produce large amounts of environmentally-toxic methane gas. Raising cows also uses precious water resources.

Vegetarianism and the rain forest

What you may not know though is that eating meat also contributes to the destruction of the rain forests. In an effort to make a cheaper Big Mac and Whopper, companies are growing cattle in Central America, where labour and other costs are lower. Eager Central Americans are slashing and burning their native rain forests to make room for the beef industry.

Vegetarianism and carbon dioxide emission

Estimates show that a vegetarian diet saves 1.5 tons of greenhouse gas per person per year. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reports that producing one calorie of animal protein requires ten times the fossil fuel as producing one calorie of plant protein. Wow! Furthermore, eating a vegan diet reduces more carbon dioxide emissions than driving a hybrid car, according to the New Scientist.

Vegetarianism and water reserves

What’s more disturbing is that every hamburger that originated from a rain forest cow required the destruction of roughly 55 square feet of rain forest. Furthermore, studies show that one pound of beef requires 2,500 gallons of water. The water used to produce one hamburger patty is enough for two-week’s worth of daily showers.

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Why Algae Can Fundamentally Solve Your Health Problems

Why algae can fundamentally solve your health problems - NaturalNews.com

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Diet And Exercising For Weight Loss

 

Obesity is now being called an epidemic in the health community. In fact, it will soon be the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, even ahead of cigarette smoking. Obesity leads to type two diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease or stroke and even an increased risk of cancer. With all of these health risks, as well as the general improvement in the quality of life that can occur, losing weight is one of the best things that you can do for yourself.

No matter what we would like to believe, there simply isn’t a magic solution to losing weight. The body will shed excess fat when it needs more calories to function through the demands you place on it in a given day than the amount of calories that you feed it. It’s that simple. So, in order to lose weight, you need to decrease the number of calories that you eat as well as increase the amount that you burn.

There is a wide range of options to choose from when looking for a weight loss program. All of them often spend a lot of time explaining what to eat, in what amounts and even at what times or in what combinations. But few of them emphasize the importance of exercise – not just for losing weight, but for your general health and wellbeing. Exercise is vital when trying to lose weight for several reasons:

First, as you start to eat less, your metabolism will slow down somewhat. Exercising helps to elevate your metabolism back to an efficient level. Second, as mentioned, exercise burns more calories so that you can lose weight faster and stay motivated in your efforts. Third, exercise actually releases endorphins, chemicals that keep your mood elevated.

Exercise doesn’t have to mean spending hours at the gym or straining through exhausting workouts. In fact, in order for you to stick with it on the long run, exercising should be something that you enjoy. Start by increasing your activity level in an overall way. Take the stairs when you can. Park further from the mall door when you go shopping. Go for a walk in the park or through a neighbourhood you love and bring a dog or a friend along for company. Take dance or martial arts lessons.

Once you become more active in general, you’ll find it easier and more natural to move into regular exercise. Which you’ll need to do eventually in order to get regular, noticeable health benefits. You need to raise your heart rate to a fat burning level and keep it there for at least 20 minutes, 3 times or more a week. However, if you don’t want to go to a gym, there are other options. Videos and DVDs are now available in all kinds of exercise types. That way you can change your routine whenever you want so that you don’t get bored with what you’re doing. Try a range of aerobics, kickboxing, yoga, or pretty much any activity you want right in the comfort of your own home.

If you have physical limitations that would keep you off from exercising, you can still find a way to increase your activity level. Water aerobics is a wonderful option for those who have joint problems or limited mobility because it relieves the pressure on your body that your weight provides. But you still get the resistance to challenge your muscles from the water. There are even classes and videos available that let you exercise in a seated position.

Whatever kind of exercise you choose, it’s important to stay motivated and keep it fun. Try gathering a group together to make it a social event. Or get a pedometer, a device that tracks how far you walk, and see how many miles you can walk a week. Make a competition amongst your friends or family members and treat the winner with something special (not food related!). Make the experience of exercising something that you look forward to, and it will soon become a regular part of your healthier lifestyle.

 

http://plrplr.com/93503/diet-and-exercising-for-weight-loss/

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Boost Metabolism With Foods That Help Burn Belly Fat and Weight Loss

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Healthy Green Tea to Lower Your Blood Pressure, and More

 
   

There are certain foods that should be a part of every person's diet, even if they don't particularly care for the taste. These foods could be referred to as natural medicine, as they do so much for us and yet have virtually no side effects. So why wouldn't you take them, even if you haven't yet developed a taste for them. One of those foods is green tea, and just by looking at the grocery shelves and their wide variety more people are obviously on to green tea.

The latest research published in the British Journal of nutrition states that the long-term intake of this variety of tea has a significance effect on lowering blood pressure. After drinking this tea for 12 weeks blood pressure was lowered the most substantially and black tea performed the next best. So significant are blood pressure reductions that they can reduce the risk of stroke by 8% and coronary disease by 5%. To get these results we would need to ideally drink about 3 to 4 cups per day.

By understanding the prevalence of high blood pressure and the effects it has on overall health would be reason enough to drink tea regularly. However, there are many other health benefits that have been scientifically proven through testing:

1. Weight control. Green tea has one of the most powerful catechins called epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG). EGCG has been shown to have a positive impact on a number of illnesses. In addition to its beneficial effects on your circulatory system, it has a regulatory effect on fat metabolism, thereby increasing fat oxidation and preventing obesity. It has also been shown that exercise improvement can be gained by drinking green tea.

2. Diabetes. Diabetes and obesity usually are related, so when there is a benefit for one there usually is a benefit for the other. An animal study found that EGCG was as effective as the diabetic drug Avandia in diabetic mice, suggesting this tea, or a high-quality green tea extract, could help in the treatment of diabetes.

3. Alzheimer's disease and dementia. Research has found the potential to enhance brain function, and this would be important in preventing healthy aging associated with brain degeneration. Specifically, EGCG can decrease the production of the protein beta-amyloid, which when it over-accumulates in your brain can result in nerve damage and memory loss over time.

4. Protection against glaucoma. Catechins in green tea seem to protect against eye diseases. In one study, scientists analyzed eye tissue from rats that consumed it and found that eye tissue in the lens and retina had in fact absorbed catechins.

5. Normalizing cholesterol levels. Because of green tea's ability to relax blood vessels and regulate blood clotting, cardiovascular health will be promoted.

So what is it about green tea that gives us all of these health benefits? Green tea tends to be the least processed of the teas, and therefore the most natural. When you look on the grocery shelves there is an abundance of these teas to choose from, and not all are equal health-wise. Also, remember that just because it has these health benefits does it mean they will be absorbed into your body. Many of the things that we use in conjunction with green tea will block absorption, and even ice can be an issue. Experts say that hot or freshly brewed green tea with lemon or other citrus will best preserve its nutritional content.
 

Rich Carroll is a health enthusiast and writer living in Chicago.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Healthy-Green-Tea-to-Lower-Your-Blood-Pressure,-and-More&id=8836892

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How Drinking Soda Is Aging Your Body

Health & Nutrition News / October 31, 2014

 

 

 

          

Bad news if you’re a soda drinker: according to a new study, downing just eight ounces of the bubbly stuff per day can age your cells by nearly an additional two years.

Researchers are the University of California San Francisco analyzed data from 5,309 adults by looking at numbers from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Specifically, researchers wanted to check the correlation between drinking soda and telomere length—which is the cap on every chromosome in the body, associated with shorter lifespan, higher stress, heart disease, diabetes and certain forms of cancer, among other issues. The researchers found drinking just eight ounces of soda a day increased cell age by 1.9 years. Drinking 20 ounces increased cell age by 4.6 years—which is the same aging effect smoking has on your telomeres.

Interestingly enough, the link between soda and cell aging only seems to exist for sugary, regular variety—not diet. “The extremely high dose of sugar that we can put into our body within seconds by drinking sugared beverages is uniquely toxic to metabolism,” says study author Elissa Epel, PhD, professor of psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco. Interestingly, there’s no link between cell aging and sugary fruit juices either. For now, soda seems to be the main culprit affecting our telomeres in the beverage department.

Luckily, soda drinking has been on the decline since the researchers pulled these numbers from the survey nearly 14 years ago. And while telomeres normally and naturally shorten with age, past studies have shown you can actual help grow your damaged telomeres up to 10 percent by eating a healthy diet (without sugary soda) and cutting stress from your life. So if you’re still popping the top on regular Pepsis and Sprites, it’s time to settle on a new drink of choice.

https://blog.myfitnesspal.com/2014/10/how-drinking-soda-is-aging-your-body/?utm_source=MFP&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=weekly_20141124&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRons63OZKXonjHpfsX76%2BQqW6W2gYkz2EFye%2BLIHETpodcMTcpqPa%2BTFAwTG5toziV8R7DBLM153N8QXRTg

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