DEMO: Health Theme

Understanding ocular nutrition and eye health can be one of the ways to support your vision. As early as in our 30’s, our eyes and vision can begin to deteriorate. Wind, dust, chlorine fumes, automobile fumes, smoking, freezing temperatures and physical injury are examples of threats to healthy eyes and good vision. Long hours spent at a computer screen and the vibration from driving have a cumulative negative impact on eye health over time.

Healthy vision is related to the health of the individual parts of the eye ? the cornea, iris, macula, lens, optic nerve, pupil, retina and the vitreous humor. And making good ocular nutrition and eye health food choices are one of the ways that good vision can be supported. Information provided by the U.S. National Eye Institute and the results of other ocular nutrition and eye health studies have shown that using nutrition to improve and support eye health definitely happens.

Here are foods that are known to support and improve eye health:

Collard greens, kale and spinach - studies on ocular nutrition and eye health show that eating foods rich in carotenoids is associated with reduced risk of developing age-related macular degeneration. Foods rich in carotenoids are leafy green vegetables such as spinach, collard greens and kale. Macular eye nutrition becomes increasingly important as we get older.

Those Glorious Dandelions! Taraxacum officinale (composite family)

Spring is coming! Starting about this time every year I find myself craving bitter flavors. My body is longing to cleanse itself of toxins accumulated over a long winter of holiday indulgence, rich foods and various colds & flus. I am aware of an overall stagnation of energy in the digestion, kidneys and liver.

I am always so amazed at how much better I feel when I start using dandelion in the spring! All that stagnated liver/kidney/stomach energy lifts and I feel renewed!

This craving for bitter flavors always has me out searching for those young green dandelion leaves popping up everywhere about now. I eat them fresh in salads or just munch on them throughout the day. I also strain and bottle the dandelion root tincture that I put up in the late fall.

This common “weed” of the composite family is a powerful restorative to the liver. It’s also rich in minerals like calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorous, potassium, selenium and zinc, as well as vitamins B1, B2, B3,and C. Ounce for ounce, dandelion contains more carotene than carrots.

With tons of information out there on "Fat Acceptance" does it do more harm than good? Being body positive and body fat are two different topics. South Beach Diet may work for one but not the other.

How can one confuse having a body positive attitude than with a "Fat Acceptance One? Are you really fat and happy? Most women are in emotional pain around their body size but to hail on for "Fat Acceptance" is a no-no, neither should one be ostracized for be overweight or fat.

This is more than just a debatable topic of "Fat Acceptance" what about health. Can you really sit and tell yourself you like wearing a size 22 and find the extra "Pinch an Inch" to be conformable and contrite? Can you feel both? Ask yourself, deep inside, how you really feel.

So where is the "happy medium"? Eye Candy yes, waif like magazine models perhaps not, but some women are naturally thin. Shows like "The Biggest Loser", "Fat Actress" make fun of those who do not fit into the cookie cuter world of what we deem as "Eye Candy".

The most common and popular diet fad over the past two years has undoubtedly been the low-carb diet. It has many followers, both in the U.K. and the U.S.A., and its various celebrity endorsements, particularly of the most renowned version, The Atkins Diet, have undoubtedly played a large part in its popularity. Is it merely another fad diet designed to hook the diet junkies amongst us and deliver more opportunities for the food manufacturers to create another new product in response to the "demand"? Or could it be that it is actually a healthy and effective way of losing and controlling weight?

The whole concept of a "diet" is, of course a false one, perpetuated in order to keep the "diet industry" in profit and playing on our insecurities and gullibility. The word diet simply means the food that is customarily eaten on a daily basis. People living in less developed countries and living on a subsistence diet would be totally baffled by the notion that a "diet" is a means of eating less in order to lose weight! However, in the greedy and overfed western world, we either fail to grasp that we eat too much for our needs, or we lack the self control to eat less. Furthermore, we are inundated with opportunities to eat delicious tempting treats at comparatively low cost, and these items are often those with the highest calorie content.

Approximately 10 million Americans suffer from a condition known as fibromyalgia syndrome. This condition is characterized by widespread muscle pain, extreme fatigue and chronic non-restorative sleep disturbances for more than three months’ duration. Although pain and inflammation are among the symptoms, they are not the cause of the disease. Therefore, treating the inflammation and pain of fibromyalgia with anti-inflammatory drugs, pain medication or even natural remedies is rarely effective.

There are four common traumas that can cause fibromyalgia. Most patients with fibromyalgia have experienced one of the following events 4 to 12 months before their symptoms appeared: (1) neck injuries or cervical spine trauma; (2) toxicity or chemically induced trauma; (3) acute or prolonged severe emotional stress; and (4) immune system trauma from unresolved viral or undiagnosed illness.

Although these traumatic events seem unrelated on the surface, each one can be the precipitating cause of two systemic problems present in almost every fibromylgia patient. The first effect is damage to the neuroendocrine system, resulting in adrenal exhaustion and hormonal imbalance. The second effect is the reduction of cellular energy in the mitochondria, which is the power-producing part of the cell. Recovery from fibromyalgia requires that all causative factors and the hormonal and cellular energy production problems be addressed and corrected.

Who really wants to lose weight? None of us, right? How much fun is it to be on a diet, deprived of all you really want and need when there is a McDonald’s, Krispy Kreme or Baskin and Robbins right around the corner calling out your name? Learn to love what you’ve got, get more (and bigger portions) out of life and let all the skinny people fend for themselves! Following is our guide to not losing weight:

1. Drive Everywhere You Go.

God gave us cars for a reason - so that we would never have to walk another step unless we wanted to! Forget about buying or using a bike, motorcycle or your own two feet. Drive everywhere you need to go - even if it’s just around the block.

2. Never Take The Stairs.

All those exercise books are always advising us to ‘take the stairs instead of the elevator’. Can they spell c-o-n-v-e-n-i-e-n-c-e? Elevators get us to where we need to be quickly and efficiently - and that’s good enough for us. Use stairs only in case of an emergency.

3. Eat Whatever You Want.

Fad diets have been around for more than 50 years and no matter how many come and go, we are always intrigued and excited by the next one feeling almost sure this will be the one to work. And they do work…for a while and then we bounce around like yo-yo’s going up and down in weight over the years.

Fad diets generally ask us to remove certain foods and often whole food groups from our diet. This most often results in a decrease in calories and ultimately weight loss. Although people lose weight on most fad diets, they tend to be too restrictive to follow over a long period of time. They aren’t realistic in the real world and once we go on that trip out of town or life gets too busy we drop the fad diet and go right back to our old eating habits. Once we go back to their old eating habits, we regain the weight and often gain even more than where we started. This is followed by feelings of guilt, and shame that we couldn’t stay on "the diet", which can and does greatly affect peoples’ self-esteem and the way they view themselves and their relationship with food.

Did you know that there are free radical biochemical "terrorists" systematically attacking your cells and the DNA of your cells everyday, on an average of 10,000 hits per day?

These internal weapons of mass destruction are abnormal (free radical) oxygen molecules that are destroying your health and accelerating the aging process. 73% of all diseases are caused by these free radical biochemical "terrorists" molecules.

A Free Radical Oxidant molecule is a molecule of oxygen that is MISSING an electron. Because it is so out of balance, it is very dangerous and extremely destructive. So it STEALS electrons from other molecules in your cells, destroying cells and your precious DNA in the process. Often the DNA is mutated, leading to cancer and other deadly diseases.

How often does this happen? Scientists estimate that EACH cell in your body takes over 10,000 HITS per day from these oxidant free radicals "terrorists"!

You can observe this oxidative process outside your body in several ways. Remember the last time you saw a fire? Didn’t it destroy the material it burned? Fire is a rapid oxidative process. One antioxidant for a literal fire is water-it stops the oxidation process, if you have enough.

It happens every morning when you mosey out of bed, somewhere between the time you take off that robe and the instant you step into the shower. For others, it happens immediately after a workout, as soon as you peel off those sweaty clothes and stand aimlessly in your birthday suit.

Then, the big moment arrives. The excitement, the tension, it all forms a giant knot in your throat. This experience is a lot like playing the roulette wheel and you know you have plenty riding on this one. Hence, the numbers that come up can spree a variety of reactions.

You step onto the scale in your bathroom and peek through your fingers at the fate staring back at you.

To some, you jump up and down like you just hit the jackpot. Others shriek as if they’d just crapped out.

Well, the scale is indeed a useful tool to monitor your weight-loss developments. What other method is there to track specifically how much you’ve progressed in your endeavors to lose weight?

Yet, the scale can be like a lousy personal trainer. It can be giving you bad information. In other words, do not become too dependent on this devilish, little device sitting on your bathroom floor. Here are two reasons why:

Have you ever attempted to perform a simple act and completely failed? From completely mistiming a shot to losing balance at a crucial moment, the outcome may have fallen short of our intention and expectation. In contrast there are times when everything goes just right, every act is carried out to perfection with little perceived effort. Why should this be the case? If we are capable of achieving feats of brilliance one moment, why do we fail so comprehensively the next? What condition is present one moment and gone the next? Athletes refer to the later as ‘The Zone ‘ and spend their lives trying to reach this subliminal level.

The elusiveness of the zone gives us a clue into its nature. Athletes experiencing these moments cannot explain how they came to be there, and report that the state is lost as soon as they become aware of being in it. From their observations it appears that ‘being in the zone’ involves integration of the conscious and unconscious aspects of movement, that is the voluntary decision to act and the reflex that facilitates the action. Becoming conscious of the moment seems to destroy it. A comparable situation is the act of falling asleep, as soon as we become aware we are about to fall asleep we interrupt the process. We cannot do anything to directly make ourselves fall asleep. All we can do is to stop doing what may be preventing the process. At an early age I learnt you do not fall asleep any quicker on Christmas Eve by closing you eyes tighter.