Archive for June, 2010
June 28th, 2010 -- Posted in Green Living, Healthy Eating, Natural Beauty, Natural Remedies |
Ginger has a wonderful taste and aroma and has been used for thousands of years, both for flavoring food and for medicinal purposes. This common cooking spice adds flavor to many dishes, but it can also help with many illnesses and ailments.
Ginger, also called ginger root, comes from the stem of a plant that grows to about a foot tall in tropical climates. But it’s the underground part of the plant, called the rhizome, the thick, knotty stem which is used in cooking and healing.
You can purchase ginger as raw, powdered, crystallized, in extracts, tinctures, capsules, tea, and in oil form.
Ginger root cures:
*1. Migraine headache. It has been found in various researches that consuming about half-a-teaspoon of powdered ginger, taken up within 30 minutes of the onset of migraine or severe headache, helps in reducing the symptoms.
*2. Muscle and/or joint pain. Many components of Ginger are, like aspirin and Motrin. In a study of 10 patients with muscle pains and 46 patients with arthritis, 100% of muscle pain and 75% of arthritis patients noted relief.
The recommended dose was 1000mg of powdered Ginger a day. Many patients took 3000-4000mg a day and noted quicker and better relief using the higher dose (Medical Hypothesis,39:342-8; 1992).
Ginger oil (available in health food stores) and fresh ginger may also be rubbed into a painful joint. A warm poultice can be made with fresh or powdered ginger. Mix enough ginger (several tablespoons) with very hot water to make a paste, spread on a gauze and allow it to soak in. Apply, ginger side to skin, to painful areas for a few minutes
*3. Nausea and vomiting. You might try taking it every four hours as needed. Chewing on a 1/4 oz piece of fresh ginger sometimes helps too.
Ginger gives relief from the nausea associated with morning sickness during pregnancy. It can also be used to treat nausea caused due to chemotherapy or seasickness continue reading »
June 21st, 2010 -- Posted in Fitness, Green Living, Healthy Eating, Natural Beauty, Natural Remedies, Weight Loss |
“Eat your peas,” I tell my children, as Mom once told me. Peas, once viewed as a starchy vegetable, are now being recognized as nutritional blockbusters, with healthful amounts of protein, dietary fiber, and vitamins wrapped in a low-fat, cholesterol-free package.
Peas flaunt twice the protein of most vegetables, so they’re the ideal substitute for fattier protein fare, providing an excellent strategy for controlling your fat intake and keeping that waistline in check.
Their fiber, mostly insoluble, aids intestinal motility and may help lower cholesterol. Of the myriad nutrients peas provide, iron is particularly important since it’s hard to find non animal foods with much of this blood-building nutrient.
Besides the fact that peas are loaded with vitamins like A and C, and with minerals like phosphorus and iron, they’re exceptionally low in sodium.
In fact, a half cup of frozen peas contains just 5 percent of the daily recommended value of sodium (about 2,400 mg a day is what’s recommended, a figure most people exceed in the course of a day, or in the case of some restaurant dishes, in the course of a dinner course!).
The low sodium content may explain why peas are so great for lowering one’s high blood pressure. That’s just me speculating, though.
Canadian researchers have found that proteins in common garden peas can help fight high blood pressure and chronic kidney disease (CKD). The new research focuses on the yellow garden pea, a mainstay pea variety. continue reading »
June 16th, 2010 -- Posted in Fitness, Green Living, Natural Beauty, Weight Loss |
Walking is a popular form of exercise, but may not be enough to experience significant health benefits. In most cases, even if you’re out of shape your body will quickly adapt to your walking routine and will require a greater challenge to reap the most benefits.
You’ve got to do more than light exercise and move towards the inclusion of regular moderate activity, and don’t be shy to interject an occasional period of time at the vigorous level. You should pick up a pace which is fast involving the workout of the entire body but that pace should be within comfortable range and should not exhaust you in a couple of steps.
Most exercise works just fine for people under 30, but after that your growth hormone dramatically starts to drop. You can actually increase your growth hormone naturally through specific types of exercise. But nearly ALL common types of exercise done in the United States by those over 30 do not generate growth hormone naturally.
Regular cardio, aerobics and even most all strength training do NOT increase growth hormone because they are not exercising the super fast muscle fibers. There is no magical pace or speed that triggers your body to make growth hormone. It is all personally relative and dependent on your fitness level.
That is why some can achieve the benefits by alternating walking with faster walking. However, as you become more fit, it will become necessary to increase the exercise to the same type of exertion or until “out of breath” response is achieved as when you were less fit.
By starting out at the appropriate intensity and gradually increasing your pace and duration as your body allows, you’ll be able to reach your fitness and health goals safely. continue reading »
June 13th, 2010 -- Posted in Fitness, Green Living, Healthy Eating, Natural Beauty, Natural Remedies, Weight Loss |
Cauliflower is packed with minerals and vitamins for better health and weight loss. It is a very nutrient dense vegetable and is low in fat, high in fiber, folate, selenium and vitamin C. Vitamin C is necessary for the manufacturing of collagen, the protein which forms the basis of connective tissue. Folate is necessary for the production and maintenance of new cells.
In fact, one-half cup of cooked cauliflower provides almost half your day’s worth of vitamin C. As an added bonus, cauliflower also supplies vitamin A, calcium, magnesium and potassium. Eating cauliflower helps maintain a good cholesterol level, keeps bones healthy, strengthens the immune system and can act as a blood detoxifier.
Cauliflower is as versatile as it is healthful and is a great addition to any meal and is an ideal weight-loss companion for meatless meals. Its strong flavor allows it to stand alone without meat or other fatty foods. And if you’re really hungry, raw cauliflower makes a wonderful snack.
1. Simply rinse and cut then serve with low-fat cheese or ranch dip and you’ve got a crowd pleaser every time!
2. Or, try cutting the florets down to one-inch pieces and spritzing them with olive oil, and lightly salt and pepper.
Then roast the in a cooking pan at 400 degrees for around 20 minutes. The cauliflower that comes out is quite soft, slightly sweet, and mildly caramelized. It is perfect for dipping in homemade hummus! This basic recipe can be adjusted to your taste, and you can get lots of different effects by using different spices and seasonings.
3. Best of all, the combination-cauliflower spiced with turmeric-is absolutely delicious! The way to prepare it is to cut cauliflower florets in quarters and let them sit for 5-10 minutes.
This allows time for the production of phenethyl isothiocyanates, which form when cruciferous vegetables are cut, but stops when they are heated.Then sprinkle with turmeric, and healthy saute on medium heat in a few tablespoons of vegetable or chicken broth for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and top with olive oil, sea salt and pepper to taste. continue reading »
June 6th, 2010 -- Posted in Fitness, Healthy Eating, Natural Beauty, Natural Remedies, Weight Loss |
Have you tried to burn body fat by workout exercise before breakfast in the morning when you first wake up.
The reason you burn fat better is because your body has been without food for several hours and you do not have carbohydrates available when you first wake up. This is our natural health solution for weight loss.
When you exercise your body need carbohydrates for energy but will instead substitute your body fat for energy , which improves your fat burning ability.
Several studies suggest exercising while your body is low on food may be a good way to trim excess fat. In a recent paper, European researchers found that cyclists who trained without eating burned significantly more fat than their counterparts who ate.
“When you exercise (without eating), fat is broken down more quickly in the muscle,” said Andrew Greenberg, director of the Obesity and Metabolism Laboratory at Tufts University.
“Science is finally catching up with what smart runners have always known,” said Ron Maughan, a professor of sport, exercise and health sciences at Loughborough University in Britain.
“If you have a long, hard run without breakfast once a week, that hard run will train you to burn fat,” he said. “And for the rest of the week, have plenty of carbohydrates so you can train hard.”
Maughan cautioned against doing too much exercise on an empty stomach. continue reading »