Top 10 Countdown for Optimum Health: Fast, Simple Steps to a Happy Life

10 - Practice mindful breathing.  Most people are "shallow breathers," taking rapid breaths that enter only the upper portion of the lungs.  As you read the rest of this countdown, try focusing on drawing full breaths into your belly so that it expands first. Breathe in as if your lungs are a vessel being poured full of air, until they are filled to the brim.  Then, release the breath, until your lungs are free off any stale air.  Breathing this way oxygenates the blood, so organs can function at their best.  Take a few minutes to focus on your breathing at the beginning and end of each day or whenever you need a moment to refocus and center.

9 - Brush and Floss. Practicing proper oral hygiene can reduce your risk of health problems as serious as cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

8 - Cleanse Your Internal Systems.  Cleansing the body of toxins is a preventive measure at the core of many traditional medical philosophies.  Now more than ever, regular cleansing is essential.  Our food, air, and water deliver daily doses of toxins that accumulate in the body and inhibit proper function.  Plan a full detox at least once a year.  It may be seem difficult to sacrifice certain habits at first, but you will be rewarded.  Your systems' function will improve and you'll feel light and energized!

7 - Take a Multi-Vitamin.  Vitamins and minerals prevent imbalance at the cellular level, the primary level at which illnesses are treated and cured.  

6 - Laughter really is the best medicine.  It's proven to be one of the most powerful ways to prevent sickness.  Laughing alleviates pain, reduces stress, and connects you to others. One hardy belly laugh can boost your immune system's function for up to three days! 

5 - De-Clutter.   The application of this recommendation is quite expansive, and it's and important tool to have on your belt at all times.  Before signing up for another stressful commitment with friends, family, or at work consider how the obligation will effect your spirit.  Don't tack on additional "downers," and slowly take steps toward focusing on your goals.  Eliminate distractions by turning off your gadgets from time to time so that you can focus on your needs rather that the overflow of outside information.

4 - Sleep.  In the past 50 years, the average sleep time has decreased by 1.5-2 hours.  Sleep is treated as a luxury, yet hormone release, metabolism and immune function are drastically altered by curtailing sleep.  Getting 8 full hours of sleep will minimize stress, stabilize your appetite, and give your mind and body the space it needs to rest and repair.

3 - Drink Plenty of Water.  Drink half your body weight in ounces each day ( 140 lbs. / 2 = 70 oz. water ) and more if you are exercising or sick.  Try to cut out excess alcohol, sugary/fizzy drinks, and diuretic beverages such as coffee and tea.  Avoid drinking during and within 30 minutes of meals for optimal absorption. 

2 - Focus on food.  See a professional who can address nutritional deficiencies and identify any hidden food allergies.  Keep yourself interested in your daily diet by trying out new recipes. Incorporate lots of green and colorful veggies, Indian spices, nuts, whole grains, and fruit.  Reduce sugar and caffeine intake, and avoid processed food as much as possible.  Eat oodles of fresh, whole, preferably organic foods in their natural state (i.e. berries, apples, carrot sticks, red pepper slices).

1 - Exercise all the time, in ways that you can enjoy.  If you hate the gym, quit! Sign up for a dance class or try yoga, participate in charity walks or runs, forgo the elevator for the stairs, walk to the store to pick up the newspaper, and depending on the season do your own raking, mowing, and shoveling.  Making exercise a priority is important for so many reasons.  It's a preventive measure that lessens the risk of disease while promoting mental, physical, and spiritual fitness.

Barley Grass Benefits

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Many health conscious individuals are including green food concentrates such as Barley grass and other cereal grasses in their diets. The appeal being that Barley grass is richer in individual vitamins and enzymes than many other known super-foods. The real benefit and power of Barley grass is the combination of all these nutrients and enzymes in one food.

Barley grass is sprouted from barley seeds and is best consumed by juicing the grass sprouts (at 3 to 7 days old) to produce a powerful fresh green juice elixir. It is also available in powder form (spray-dried barley grass) and is very easily digested by the body.

Celebrity Nutritionist, Gillian McKeith, states in her book, "Living Food for Health: 12 Natural Super-foods to Transform Your Health", that barley grass offers more protein than a sirloin steak, five times the amount of iron as broccoli, seven times more vitamin C than orange juice and 11 times more calcium than milk.

Consuming Barley grass has also shown to balance the pH of the body. The average Western diet is fairly acidic especially when large quantities of processed foods are eaten. Raised acidity in the body is linked to many diseases and general ill-health. Barley grass is very alkalizing and useful for helping the cells in the body function optimally.

Studies on Barley Grass
Research done on patients with ulcerative colitis showed that those given Barley grass showed significant improvements in their symptoms - including fewer episodes of diarrhoea and less pain - compared to the group receiving conventional medication (standard anti-inflammatory medication including steroids).

Ulcerative colitis is linked to low levels of friendly bacteria in the gut and an accumulation of toxins in the bowel. Barley grass helps reverse this by stimulating the growth of friendly bacteria, which in turn helps reduce inflammation and improves symptoms. Barley grass helps combat ulcerative colitis by lowering the amount of inflammatory chemicals in the bowel, including one called epithelial NF-k, and by balancing the water content of the bowel content. Studies also show that barley grass increases the amount of friendly bacteria in the patients' bowels.

Other studies done in Japan have shown that barley grass tea significantly improves the flow of blood as well as lowers the amount of LDL (Low Density Lipoprotein) cholesterol.

Barley grass has also shown promising results in preliminary studies done on its ability to inhibit certain cancer cell growths, mainly breast and prostate cancer. There are testimonies of cancer patients, who have been healed by consuming Barley grass and changing their lifestyles, but further studies are needed.

How To Include Barley Grass In Your Diet
Enjoy barley grass in healthy smoothies or by juicing it. It's simple to grow all year round (by sprouting) on a sunny kitchen windowsill. Cut the grass with kitchen scissors to juice with carrots, apples, beetroot, parsley and celery. Its super-food status makes it well worth having in constant supply.

Try this super-food energising drink from the recipe below. Drink it straight away to benefit from the enzymes and nutrients - it makes enough for two. Use a juicer with a centrifugal twisting action. Ordinary juicers don't twist the juice out thoroughly enough.

Take 2 cups of fresh barley grass and juice with:
2 medium-sized beetroots
2 medium-sized carrots
2 celery sticks
1 cup of parsley
1 large peeled apple or two smaller ones.

Other healthy grasses you can sprout and eat are alfalfa grass, oat grass and wheat grass.

References

1. "Dr. Gillian McKeith's Living Food for Health: 12 Natural Superfoods to Transform Your Health"; Gillian McKeith, M.D.; 2005

2. Yu YM, Chang WC, Chang CT et al. Diabetes Metab 2002, 28(2):107-114

3. http://www.thehealthierlife.co.uk/natural-remedies/herbs/barley-grass...

About the author

Katherine Oosthuis is completing a Diploma in Nutritional Therapy. She researches and writes for a health and nutrition website Detox For Life . Her passion is to make research available to those who are looking to improve their well-being and revolutionise their health through better nutrition and alternative medicines.

Source : Dave Sommers

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Chicken Nuggets May Contain Fluoride

Natural Cures Not Medicine!

Do your Chicken Nuggets Contain Fluoride?

Maybe you’re not concerned about the little bit of fluoride you might ingest from brushing your pearly whites each day. You’re probably more concerned about the fluoride coming out of your tap, right? But, these aren’t the only sources of fluoride that you may be exposed to each day. In fact, you could be serving up a dose of fluoride for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The good news is that you can easily navigate the sea of processed products and reduce your risk of health effects from long-term exposure.

Fluoride is a naturally occurring element found in air and water – not just your fluoridated tap water, but in all water to some degree. If you live in a large city in the U.S., chances are good that your tap water has had fluoride added to it since 43 of the 50 largest cities engage in community water fluoridation. This makes you are a member of the club representing 62% of the population, or roughly 144 million people that have fluoridated tap water. (1) However, some of the highest concentrations of fluoride in drinking water don’t always come from the public water supply but from deep wells. And here’s another unpleasant surprise: fluoride has also found its way into many ordinary foods and beverages.

One Lump or Two?

A national survey of oral health in the U.S. conducted by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that dental fluorosis occurs in 32% of American children between the ages of 6 and 19, an increase of 9% from two decades ago. The survey also revealed that African American children experienced a greater rate of incidence than all other ethic groups, although the reason is not clear. (2) What is evident is that the increased exposure to fluoride is not related to accidentally swallowing toothpaste.

According to the Medical College of Georgia, fluoride may be your cup of tea – literally. The tea plant, which is brewed into the world’s most consumed beverage, absorbs fluoride from the soil to the tune of 3 to 4 parts per million (ppm). A few cups a day doesn’t present a significant risk, but some studies indicate that people who drink large amounts of black tea are at higher risk for a bone disease called skeletal fluorosis. (3) Fluoride is also found in prepared iced tea mixes, but in smaller amounts, generally between 1 and 4 ppm.

Process This

Many processed foods and beverages contain fluoride for one simple reason: they’re processed with fluoridated water from the public supply. This includes soft drinks, fruit juices, infant formula, cereal, canned soup, dried fruits, wine and beer. Scientists at Oregon State University have found that chicken nuggets and other processed chicken products that undergo mechanical deboning significantly contribute to fluoride overload, with nuggets and sticks containing an average of 3.6 ppm and pureed chicken meals for infants up to 5.6 ppm. (4)

 

Hard Facts to Swallow

Fluoride is not an essential nutrient, which means your body doesn’t need it to function and there’s no such thing as fluoride deficiency. This element is, however, more toxic than lead and only slightly less toxic than arsenic. The current argument in the scientific community doesn’t appear to be related to toxicity of fluoride in general but its degree of chronic toxicity, meaning the long-term effects of ingesting sustained levels of fluoride over time. Ironically, the Institute of Medicine maintains that the “safe” daily intake of fluoride over the course of a lifetime is 10 milligrams per day – the same amount the agency admits can cause skeletal fluorosis within 10 to 20 years. (5) The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) acknowledges the toxicity of fluoride because of its use in pesticides and rodenticides, yet it’s in your child’s toothpaste. If you didn’t immediately run to check for yourself just now, we’ll fill you in: the FDA requires fluoride toothpaste to include a poison warning that directs consumers to the poison control center in the event more than the amount of paste needed for brushing goes down the hatch.

Numerous studies indicate that a wide variety of health risks are associated with prolonged, elevated intake of fluoride, specifically arthritis, kidney disease, cancer, thyroid disease, cardiovascular disease, glucose intolerance and infertility. (6)

Tips to Reduce Fluoride

The Fluoride Action Network (FAN) provides some great information on how to significantly reduce the amount of fluoride in your life (See References). But first, be assured that the fluoride that naturally occurs in whole foods, including dairy, grains, meat, fruit and vegetables, is very low and not likely to cause health problems. The exception to this is tea and seafood, as well as water from deep wells. That said, consider drinking green and white teas, which come from the same plant but are made using young leaves with lower fluoride levels and undergo minimum processing. Enjoy seafood, but in moderation. And if you have well water, have it analyzed and/or install water filters either at the well house or the tap. Installing tap filters or a water filtration system for the entire house is also a good idea if you have municipal water that is treated with fluoride.

At the store, keep in mind that the more processed the food or drink is the more fluoride it likely contains. Choose 100% fruit juice over fruit “drinks” and beverages made from concentrate. Whenever possible, buy organic foods and beverages since they are free of pesticides that contain fluoride (not to mention other toxic chemicals). Of particular importance is to opt for organic nuts, beans, dried beans, dried fruit (including raisins), grapes and wine. When it comes to convenience, buy a roasted organic chicken to help you prepare busy weeknight meals instead of deli sliced chicken breast or frozen nuggets. At home, try to prepare foods using filtered water as much as possible.

References

The American Dental Hygienists' Association: Fluoride Facts

http://www.adha.org/oralhealth/fluoride_facts.htm

Centers for Disease Control (CDC): Surveillance for Dental Caries, Dental Sealants, Tooth Retention, Edentulism, and Enamel Fluorosis --- United States, 1988--1994 and 1999—2002

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5403a1.htm

Science Daily: Tea May Contain More Fluoride Than Once Thought, Research Shows

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100714104059.htm

Fluoride Action Network: Fluoride Levels in Mechanically Deboned Chicken

http://www.fluoridealert.org/content/chicken/

Fluoride Action Network: Health Effects

http://www.fluoridealert.org/issues/health/

Fluoride Action Network: FAQ

http://www.fluoridealert.org/faq/

FAN’s Grocery Store Guide: 7 Ways to Avoid Fluoride in Beverages and Food

http://www.fluoridealert.org/content/grocery_guide/

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