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How both hydration and dehydration

February 19, 2010 By Leave a Comment

If you’re a parent you must know how important it is to keep your child hydrated. However, there are a few ways you could prevent your child from dehydrating themselves. Firstly, take into account the physical condition of your child as this plays an important role in the way their bodies adjust to the heat outside. If your child is overweight or hasn’t been involved in physical activities for a long time then they will be more prone to dehydration when exposed to the outdoor heat suddenly.

What you need to do is encourage your child to play games or exercise slowly and in a lesser degree so that their bodies can adjust to the external environment. Also, make sure that they play or exercise in cooler and shadier places in the beginning. This gradual process helps their body to learn how to sweat.

It is also important to ensure that they drink lots of water or energy drinks. Studies have shown that children need to drink plenty of water or juice before going to play and it is also necessary to make them drink fluids every 20 minutes even in between the game. This will keep then adequately hydrated. Also, be aware of the weather conditions. The hotter and more humid the weather is the more probability it is for dehydration. Try to encourage your child for early morning or evening activities. If you follow these simple tips you should be able to ensure that your child does not have to suffer from dehydration.

Now moving on to adults for a similar yet different problem, the problem of excessive sweating. Humans shed water through pores in the process known as perspiration. This is normal. What is not convenient however, is when even small activities like a walk in the park or climbing up the stairs cause you to sweat profusely.

Yet many of us especially men do suffer from this problem. It is a nuisance at best as you constantly have to so freshen up, wear dark clothes to hide the sweat stains and wear sweatpants even in summer. The best way to deal with this issue is to stay fit and this exactly the reason why athletes don’t even break a sweat for running short distances.

Filed Under: Dehydration, Exercise, Health Articles, Nutrition Tagged With: , , ,

How to lead the best healthy lifestyle

February 16, 2010 By Leave a Comment

“You are what you eat” which is why it is so important to pay attention to what we feed ourselves. A healthy lifestyle incorporates a healthy diet. There are plenty of websites and books advising you what to eat but only you know your body best. Choose a diet suitable for your body type and avoid junk food at all costs. The first step is to read those labels well and there’s always more than meets the eye.

Also, the labels can give you a good idea on the vitamin and mineral content so you can decide what is best for you. Make a habit of eating fruits. Substitute an apple or mango for your in between, junk food snacks. Fruits are a good substitute for other sugar based food as well since unlike the latter they don’t make you gain weight. Buy fresh vegetables instead of packed ones as they have more nutritional value. Go easy of fatty products and milk but completely avoiding either is not healthy either. And a tip to make sure you don’t eat excessively as any meal would be to eat some food appetizers, they reduce your appetite by filling you up a little.

For those of you trying to lose weight here are a few tips. Avoid oily food and when cooking in oil, use the one with low cholesterol value. What you also need to avoid are fruits such as bananas, dairy products like cheese or butter and also alcohol (unless you want to end up pot bellied). What you must do is drink lots of water as it increases you metabolism and burns calories, eat plenty of veggies, protein is great and of course, don’t forget to exercise. Whatever you do, don’t starve yourself as it’s just a sure fire way of harming your body.

Other aspects of maintaining a healthy body and healthy lifestyle are to get enough sleep and exercise. Yoga is great for keeping the mind and body in balance. For a normal adult, a minimum of 8 hours of sleep is necessary. Try to catch up on that or you could find yourself yawning though the entire day. Also, negative thinking has a great impact on how your body feels. Negative emotions and stress can zap all your energy and leave you inactive. Avoid smoking and drinking as these make you gain weight, age you sooner and kill your stamina. Eat well, nurture a healthy mind and you will find yourself enjoying life a lot more.

Filed Under: Exercise, Health Articles, Nutrition Tagged With: , , , ,

Bees are fairies of health

February 10, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Believe it or not, bees might actually do a lot for your health if you can make use of them in the right way- that is to say that they give you honey and honey is being proved at being very good for health. Honey being researched on has proved in many ways of being a healer for people in many health issues and their healing and medicinal value is increasing day by day. There are indeed ways in which those six legged creatures could actually help you out.

In fact among the medical things that honey is best at curing is supposed to be burns. Of course this refers to the medium burns that anybody can get accidentally at home if they have been cooking or from a candle etc. Honey is said to have the capacity of being able to soothe a burnt wound and thus might even be more helpful as a treatment for a burn than other kinds of dressings and ointments that people generally use. The healing process of the burn is supposed to become faster if honey is used in the right way.

There is also a certain kind of honey, known as Manuka honey that is found in New Zealand that is supposed to work wonders on leg wounds and leg ulcers caused due to infection. However, even though you might be excited with the prospect of downing some of that tasty honey, the healing process actually does not work that way. The honey is actually combined with the dressing for the wound and is pretty much applied to the area on your skin. This particular honey is supposed to contain a certain kind of component that helps reduce the effect of the infection.

There were actually studies carried out where they compared honey and certain cough medicines for proof and found that honey actually worked better to reduce cough. Therefore f it can actually be proved that honey works much better at combating cough than over the counter medicines then one can only imagine the prospects that this tasty natural medicine will have against the mostly bitter cough syrups etc.

In fact already because of the harmful side effects that many of these cough drugs caused, children below two years of age are banned from being treated with these cough medicines. In situations therefore where your one year old might be suffering from cough, what better medicine to give your child to stop the coughs than a spoonful of honey, which will cause no harm or side effects whatsoever.

Filed Under: Health Articles, Nutrition Tagged With: , ,

How premenstrual syndrome (PMS) affects women

December 24, 2009 By Leave a Comment

PMS is a burden that all women must share and though the intensity may be different for different women it is a curse we wish we could pass it onto men. The symptoms usually begin up to 14 days before your cycle begins and stop a few days after it ends. The causes of PMS lack a solid, scientific base though most evidence points towards the interaction between sex hormones and brain chemicals known as neurotransmitters. Symptoms of PMS include:

  • Depression
  • Anxiety
  • Irritability
  • Mood swings
  • Trouble sleeping
  • Changes in appetite and food cravings
  • Hot flashes
  • Joint aches
  • Headaches
  • Back pain
  • Acne
  • Bloating of abdomen
  • Tiredness
  • Increase in heartbeat
  • Swollen and tender breasts
  • Weight gain

PMS for many women is also accompanied with menstrual cramps that can range from mild to severe. Severe menstrual cramps can be so severe that it may interfere with a woman’s daily activities for several days.

Unfortunately there is no cure for PMS but maintaining a healthy diet, exercise and taking pills may help. Be careful about the medicine you take since not all will suit you. The medicines can be over-the-counter or in some cases, require a doctor’s prescription. Doctor’s may also prescribe anti-depressants or birth control pills as anti-depressants may reduce irritability and depression while birth control pills help by evening out your hormone levels.

There are a few steps you can follow to ease your symptoms and make sure each month goes a little more smoothly. These are:

  • Keeping a regular schedule of meals, exercise and sleep.
  • Eating 6 small meals instead of 3 heavy ones.
  • Avoid salt during your period as salt bloats you up and increases fluid retention
  • Cut back on caffeine to reduce soreness of breasts
  • Cut back on alcohol to reduce depression, anxiety and irritability
  • Eat complex carbs such as cereals and whole grain products.
  • Also eat lots of fiber, protein and food high on iron content
  • Sleep well for at least 8 hours.
  • Take vitamin and other supplements such as calcium

Of course, do consult your doctor especially regarding the vitamins and additional supplements as they may ending doing you more harm if not taken in the right proportion.

Filed Under: Health Articles, Mental Health, Nutrition, Stress Tagged With: , ,

Vitamins are very important for our well beings

October 8, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Vitamins are very important for our well beings. In order to live and stay healthy, we need a balance of nutrients so that our body can function efficiently.

Most of us get our daily vitamins from the healthy food we eat, but those of us that eat a lot of junk food or very little food at all will not have a well balanced diet which is where vitamins can help.

However, many people wonder whether taking vitamins actually works and whether they are even good for your overall health. Many people think that a small vitamin cannot provide the nutrients the body needs and refrain from buying vitamins.

If you eating a well balanced diet you will be gaining a lot of healthy nutrients from your food, but it is very difficult to gain every source of vitamin from the food you eat. Not many people eat five pieces of fruit and vegetables a day, drink eight glasses of water a day so the body is not being given the nutrients and vitamins it needs to stay healthy.

On top of this many healthy eaters are unsure about what vitamins are in our food produce today and whether the way we cook our food actually destroys the minerals needed for our daily intake.

The best way to achieve a happy and healthy diet is to eat sensibly and take a multivitamin at the same time. Multivitamins should be treated as a backup food we eat so we are getting the most out of the nutrients we consume on a daily basis.

There are also a wide range of other types of vitamins specific to any illnesses, or deficiencies you have in your body. For example, if you have a vitamin c deficiency you are able to buy Vitamin C tables to boost your intake and get you onto a healthy track.

Vitabits are an award winning online retail group who stock and sell hundreds of different types of vitamins to suit your needs and requirements.

Established in 2006 the company has delivered a wide range of fantastic services and products to people looking to improve their health and have a balanced diet.

Vitabits.co.uk said, “Our aim is to deliver a memorable online shopping experience, selling a quality range of products supported by a team of knowledgeable, empowered and valued employees.”

They want you to be completely happy with everything they do and whatever you buy from our online store.

Each of the staff members are trained to give the best support and advice when purchasing vitamins and minerals for you and your family.

The website is easy and efficient to use and you can walk away feeling completely satisfied with the products you have bought and will see the positive results straight away.

Filed Under: Nutrition Tagged With:

Ateronon Study, Tomato Pill Study

June 11, 2009 By Leave a Comment

For years, there has been a huge amount of very interesting debate about the benefits of the Mediterranean diet, and lycopene in particular. The Mediterranean diet which is based on high consumption of fruit and vegetables, with olive oil replacing butter on bread and in cooking, gives people a higher lycopene intake. Lycopene comes from the red pigment in tomatoes and seems to protect people against heart disease, cancer, and a whole variety of other chronic and ultimately fatal, diseases.

Greeks, Italians and Spanish people have been smoking and drinking more than anyone else for centuries, but still live longer than the rest of us – because of lycopene.
The problem for scientists until now, has been finding a way of ensuring that lycopene is reliably absorbed. Now a team of Cambridge scientists have come up with Ateronon, a new lycopene compound which can be taken as a one pill a day treatment, which instantly raises blood lycopene to the optimum level.

The first data on this new wonder treatment were presented at the World congress on heart disease in Toronto last year (2008), http://www.cardiologyonline.com/wchd08/advance_program.htm

The study ATERONON: FIRST CLINICALLY PROVEN ANTI-ATHEROGENIC ANTIOXIDANT
makes interesting reading. It claims to have completed eliminated the low density lipoprotein oxidation that leads to the build up of atherosclerosis.

Another study by ATERONON, CHLAMYDIA INFECTION IN CARDIOVASCULAR PATHOLOGY: SEQUEL II from the same Ateronon inventors, showed how chlamydia pneumoniae, a bacterial infection, seems to be involved in the development of clogged arteries. People with the condition always seem to have the bacteria in their bodies. Cambridge Theranostics, the team who have invented Ateronon, has also developed a blood test for the antibodies to chlamydia pneumoniae. This tells you whether active atherosclerosis is going on, or whether the tomato pill is effectively damping down the disease process.

It is a simple, but clever way of finding out how well Ateronon is doing. There is a lot of interest in Ateronon from researchers investigating heart and circulatory disease, and projects have just got underway at Harvard medical school in America and Cambridge university in Britain, to monitor the future health of sick people taking Ateronon long term.

Filed Under: Heart, Nutrition Tagged With: ,

dr philip akrill talks about Nutritional Diets

April 20, 2009 By Leave a Comment

DR Philip Akrill talks about Nutritional Diets

Today we hear the word diet much more than we hear the word nutrition. There are so many diets on the market that it’s easy to get lost in the fad and forget what nutrition truly is. There is the Atkins Diet, the Zone Diet, Weight Watchers and many others, from Slim Fast to the various one-food diets, such as the cabbage soup diet or the grapefruit diet. Society has become fixated on the ‘diet’, instead of quality nutrition. Unfortunately, this fixation isn’t working. The UK is close to becoming one of the fattest nations in the world, with high rates of diabetes, heart disease and other life threatening illnesses at an all time high. While diets are becoming more popular, nutrition is suffering.

What is a diet?

While many people think a diet is a set of rules you follow to try to lose weight, your diet is actually the food that you eat to supply your body with the nutrients it needs to function properly. While an average Briton’s diet consists of large quantities of processed sugar, white flour, meat and fast foods, a healthy diet is one that supplies the body with vitamins, minerals, fibre, antioxidants and enzymes. These nutritional building blocks affect your energy levels, your quality of life, and have a direct affect on your mood, memory, eyesight, body functions and lifespan. Without a healthy diet that supplies the body with much needed nutrients, you are more susceptible to colds, infections, and illnesses. Your diet, in other words your nutrition, is what sustains your life.

Nutritional Labels

There is much confusion surrounding nutritional labels. Most people look strictly toward the top for calories, fat grams and serving size information. The truth is that nutritional labels offer a look at the nutrients in one’s food, such as vitamins A, C, D and E, as well as calcium, iron, magnesium, zinc and folic acid. This information, although lower down on the nutritional label, is very important information if you are seeking to supply your body with nutrients, as opposed to empty calories.

The most important aspect of a nutritional label, although almost completely overlooked, is the actual ingredients within your food. While it may be easier to check to see how many calories and fat grams a certain food product has in each serving, when it comes to healthy nutrition the most important ingredient is what you are actually ingesting. It may have only 220 calories, but where are those calories coming from? Are you ingesting mostly corn syrup and sodium phosphate, or high amounts of preservatives, such as sorbic acid and sulfur dioxide? The ingredients in your food are the tell-tale clues to how much nutrition you are actually taking in. If your food is strictly cheese and flour, as opposed to nutrient providing vegetables and vitamins, it doesn’t really matter if the calories are low.

A Nutritional Diet

Nutrition comes from vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. Food sources that are rich with nutrients are whole, living foods that are supplied from the earth. Dark leafy greens offer more calcium than milk, while beans and grains offer high amounts of iron. It is easy to turn your focus from diet to nutrition. And when you do, you might find yourself eating a diet that is rich in nutrients and optimal for losing weight.

Filed Under: Nutrition