10 posts tagged “health”

Great recipes to be found here along with other ideas to cook healthier such as using olive oil. But watch out--they also suggest cutting the amount of cheese you eat!

Eat Healthy, Nutritious & Delicious Food

http://www.eatbetteramerica.com/?WT.m...

Join us... for free! Let's take small, doable steps to eat—and live—better. Step one? Sign up today for free coupons, expert articles, delicious healthy recipes, and friendly advice from other folks like you.

New stuff to try: herbs, spices, soaps, lotions, cleaning. This brand has been around since the late 19th century. I saw a few of these products at Target last week.

Welcome to J.R. Watkins Official Homepage

http://www.jrwatkins.com/

A Natural History From a bluff high above the Mississippi River in Winona, Minnesota to the homes and hands of our grateful, hard–minded customers comes the purity of Watkins. It´s wholesome, it´s refreshing and it´s never "doctored up" like some big city factory products. Watkins has been good and natural through and through since 1868. We invented eco-friendly products.

I want to be forever young, so when I see an article like this one with advice to keep me at least looking younger, I save it. Excerpted from RealAge.com

Foods That Make Your Skin Glow

Top skin creams average about $400 per ounce (and you thought gas was expensive!), yet most offer little proof that they do half of what they promise. Want to save a bundle and improve your skin? Load your shopping cart with nutrients that have been shown to possess skin-hydrating, sun-protecting, and even wrinkle-preventing powers, says Manhattan dermatologist Amy Wechsler, MD. Here’s her grocery list of the best foods for your skin:

Firm and Bright
You’re probably up to your eyebrows (Botoxed or not) with the mantra “eat more fruits and vegetables.” But if you’ve yet to take that advice to heart, maybe knowing that they prevent wrinkles will do the trick.

The skin doc’s three top picks: sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and cantaloupe.

What they do: Replenish your skin’s supply of antioxidants, so they're ready to scarf up free radicals whenever they make an appearance. Free rads are highly reactive oxygen molecules that damage cells and contribute to just about everything that can go wrong with skin, from dryness to wrinkles.

Fresh and Juicy
Your body can’t store much wrinkle-fighting vitamin C, so you need to top up your supplies regularly. The easiest way: Have some citrus every day.

The skin doc’s four top picks: oranges, lemons, limes, and grapefruit.

Ounce for ounce, oranges are the top citrus source of C, but you can only eat so many, right? For variety, make lemonade; squeeze limes on melon; add grapefruit to salad; and, instead of drinking soda, fizz OJ with sparkling water. It all adds up.

What they do: Keep skin’s vitamin C levels high. While C is a nifty antioxidant, that’s not the key reason it’s here. It helps keep collagen -- the supportive protein fibers that stop skin from sagging -- strong and resilient. (Flimsy collagen means lines and wrinkles.) Since collagen breakdown really picks up in your mid-30s, eat citrus early and often to head off aging.

Smoothing and Soothing
There’s a particularly potent antioxidant known as EGCG that does all kinds of good things for skin. The best place to find it? True teas: black, green, or white (not herbal). Brew a full teapot every morning so that sipping 4 to 6 cups throughout the day is a no-brainer.

The skin doc’s #1 pick::green tea.

While all true teas contain EGCG (by the way, that stands for epigallocatechin-3-gallate), the various types of green tea have the most. Dr. Wechsler’s personal favorite is hojicha green tea (available at http://www.adagio.com/). “The roasting process that turns this green tea a brownish color also lowers its caffeine content,” she says -- handy if you’re caffeine sensitive or it’s one of those days when you don’t need another stimulant.

What it does: Gives your skin a healthy dose of EGCG, which is a great multitasker. EGCG puts a damper on inflammatory chemicals involved in acne and sun-related skin aging, it helps prevent skin cancer; and it has a lion-tamer effect on tumor cells. What’s more, green tea contains L-theanine, a de-tensing amino acid -- and anything you can do to stanch the flow of the stress hormone cortisol helps keep collagen fibers intact.

Dark and Green
Certain dark green vegetables, whether they’re fresh, frozen, raw, or steamed, really deliver on vitamin A, one of the most skin-essential vitamins going.

The skin doc’s three top picks: spinach, turnip greens, and broccoli.

What they do:Deliver a hefty supply of vitamin A, which supports skin-cell turnover, the process that keeps cell growth and development humming along flawlessly. Without enough A, skin becomes dry, tough, and scaly.

Fish Faves
Several cold-water catches give your skin a double benefit: age-fighting omega-3 fatty acids and the restorative powers of protein.

The skin doc’s seven top picks: salmon, trout, tuna, sardines, Atlantic mackerel, Pacific herring, and most shellfish.

Just don’t, uh, go overboard. As good as omega-3s are for skin (and the rest of you, too), worries about the amount of mercury in many fish mean it’s smart to limit seafood or freshwater fish to two meals a week. That’s a must for young children and for women who are pregnant, who may become pregnant, or who are nursing. (Go here for the government’s fish guidelines)

What they do: Omega-3s fight inflammation, now considered one of the top skin agers, and they also help protect against sunburn, enhancing the effects of your sunscreen’s SPF. Protein is required to build and repair skin cells and to make enzymes and hormones that help keep it glowing.

Fill your grocery cart with all of these foods and you won’t just look younger, you’ll be younger. Eating at least one serving of fish a week and getting the right amount of antioxidants through diet or supplements lowers your biological age. In fact, the antioxidants alone can make your RealAge up to 6 years younger.

For more ways to look years younger, take the RealAge Skin Care Assessment.

For several years I've been sluggish and tired. Every single day. I don't really feel sick although it's easier to get sick as I get older. But I know something isn't right. Almost by rite of passage to a new way of thinking about life, I started hearing and reading more about the toxins we build up in our bodies from processed foods, cell phones, electrical appliances, medications we take, water we drink, the perfumes and fragrances we inhale, the synthetic clothes we wear, the laundry soap, the air we breathe, and the list goes on and on...I had to stop caring so much for a while because it was depressing. And then I discovered massage therapy and its amazing health benefits--it not only feels great but a good relaxation massage will help flush those toxins and balance your endocrine system. That means more balanced hormones and overall good feeling. Who can say no to that? Needless to say it rekindled my enthusiasm to learn more.

It doesn't stop there--nothing is ever as easy as just getting a massage once in a while. The next step for me was to  try fasting as part of a cleansing regimen. There's a lot of history in our world that includes fasting, especially concerning religious rituals. It's actually safe as long as you don't go for more than 40 days without food before starvation begins but I don't advocate going that long. Our modern lives are too busy and we need the daily sustenance to keep us fit for the daily grind. For me, one day was long enough.

It's hard - really hard - at first. Just like anything else, you have to train your body and force it to learn how to go without food. You might ask 'Why the hell would you do that? We're supposed to eat to live!' Of course we are, but we don't always need to eat as much as we do. That little bit of info was hard for me to digest at first, so to speak.

I researched several sources before getting up the nerve to actually do it, so here's the gist of it. Our bodies are nothing more than a bunch of cells. The majority are good and keep us alive, while some are old and unnecessary. The body works hard to kill off and purge the bad cells that are full of crap such as toxins, excess fats, etc. (Next time someone says you're full of crap, they're probably right.) This is necessary to avoid getting sick (as often) or developing life-threatening cancers. Ah hah! That's an attention getter, eh? The body typically does its house cleaning while we rest because technically we are--you guessed it--fasting at this time. We fast each and every day but don't always realize it. Sometimes, because of our environments we take in a little too much crap every day so it's even more important to flush it out and prevent an imbalance that can cause disease. But, we can run into a problem when our bodies are forced to multi-task too much. The biggest culprit is eating huge amounts of food. Remember the last big turkey dinner you had for Thanksgiving when you pigged out and then felt logy and tired and huge? It's not really the tryptofan's fault. Digesting food--especially proteins--takes priority over everything else and uses a lot of energy. The same energy the body would otherwise be using to kill off the crappy cells we no longer need.

I set aside a Sunday when I had nothing much else scheduled to do for the first fast time. It was a complete failure. I made it about 12 hours and caved.  I waited a week and tried it again and was successful. This time I had knowledge of what to expect and it was much easier. For the next week I felt great. Not only had I accomplished something I had never before even considered doing, but my body felt rested and---well. That's a good feeling.

therapy

It's official now. I picked up my transcripts from Texas Healing Arts Institute (THAI) today. I'm a graduate of Massage Therapy School.

The next step is to apply to take the state board exam. When I pass it, the license will appear in the mail a couple of weeks later! Then I'll be Gina, LMT :) helping people feel better, get healthy, and I'll earn some extra cash.

It's exciting to have a new career even if it's a part-time gig. And it's my 3rd. I'm only 33. I think the days of retiring with one company after 20-30 years of service are almost over--especially for the generations succeeding the Baby Boomers. I simply can't stay at the same job for that long. Maybe the precedent was set when I joined the Army at 19. I liked it, I really did. But after a 4 year commitment I was ready to move on to something else. I used to wonder why I couldn't stick with one thing and was there something wrong with me? After some soul-searching I realized it's not a bad thing at all. I get a chance to move on once in a while, get out of my ruts, and learn about another facet of the world and meet new people. I might not be a high-powered executive raking in the cash, but frankly that would bore me to tears. There isn't enough time in this life for me to settle for that.

I've been a member for 10 or more years, so I can vouch that this is not a trendy 'green' organization that sprang up overnight.

This site is chock full of wonderful tips for a healthy lifestyle as well as information about human and animal rights. Many of the tips I comment on come from here...enjoy!

Care2

http://www.care2.com/