Eating the right foods, especially towards the end of your day at your evening meal can help you sleep more soundly and restfully. If you eat a well balanced diet containing sleep inducing ingredients, you will have a greater chance for a more restful sleep.

Two specific nutrients are responsible for promoting better sleep. Magnesium is found mainly in meats, fish, seafood, dairy products and green vegetables. B-vitamins are found mainly in potatoes, beans, whole grains, broccoli, meats and bananas.

By eating complex carbohydrate-rich foods at the evening meal, such as whole grains and complex starches, you encourage the production of serotonin which has a calming effect on the brain, reduces depression and is important in regulating the brain’s wake/sleep cycle.… Read the rest

Products containing chocolate have been prized as very special treats for hundreds of years. In recent years, studies are showing extraordinary health giving qualities in chocolate after the milk, sugar and high fructose corn syrup are stripped away. The phytochemicals (nutrients derived from plants) in chocolate are some of the most concentrated and powerful in any food source. These plant nutrients have fancy names but don’t let their names fool you. They all have flavonoid and antioxidant qualities that are unrivaled in the plant kingdom.

Procyanidin flavonoids, epicatechins and catechins are what make chocolate one of the world’s most potent super foods. Over 10 percent of the weight of pure cocoa powder is flavonoids. There is a small fraction of theobromine, about 1.2… Read the rest

The intestinal tract needs a lot of water to break down the food you eat. If you don’t chew your food properly, it will take more effort to break it all down into useable nutrients. The process of liquefying food stuffs into dissolved nutrients is totally dependent on available water in the body. Dissolved nutrients are absorbed through the intestinal walls into the blood stream and transferred to the liver for processing. The leftovers that cannot be further broken down are moved along the intestines to be eliminated. The body compacts the remnants, withdrawing some of the water and pushes it down the chute.

The amount that the stool is compacted depends on the amount of available water in the body.… Read the rest

Every day, hundreds of people have a bone density test and find out that they have thinning bones and are at risk of bone fractures. The early stage of bone loss is called osteopoenia. The more advanced stage is called osteoporosis.

When your body is acidic there are certain dynamics that happen and certain parts of the body that must be protected and kept within a certain range of pH, particularly the blood. When the blood comes dangerously close to the lower or acidic edge of its range of tolerance, a signal is given to the bones to release mineral to help the blood become more alkaline. With chronic acidity in the body, over time the bones release more and more mineral to keep the blood alive.… Read the rest

All swimming pools need to have something put in them to control contamination. The “something” of choice is chlorine. It is fairly inexpensive and is widely used. Chlorine is an industrial left over that needed to be sold or destroyed. The industrial sector managed to convince government to put it into the water supplies and into swimming pools and hot tubs. That saved them the cost of having to destroy it. But, and this is a big but, chlorine can be dangerous and is accumulative in the body over time.

The chlorine is put into swimming pools to neutralize contamination from sweat, urine, blood, feces, mucous skin cells and other organic matter that comes in contact with the water. When the chlorine comes in contact with organic matter in the water, it forms chloramines, chloroform, trihalomethanes, haloacetic acids and other dangerous by-products.… Read the rest

Baby boomers are members of a group of babies that exploded into the world at the end of World War 11 and beyond. Between 1946 and 1964, there were 76 million of us born. The oldest of us is at or nearing retirement age. Studies have shown that as a demographic, we are more interested in our health and staying fit than any other group in history. We spend a lot of money to improve and preserve our health.

As we age, we tend to be more prone to aches, pains and injuries than younger fitness buffs. These aches and pains, we laughingly refer to as “boomeritis.” Despite this, we have helped the fitness and health club business grow stupendously since the first boomers hit the big “four O.”… Read the rest

Public health advocates are pushing for a ban on the sale of sports drinks and flavored waters in schools, warning that drinks such as Gatorade and Powerade contain as much as two-thirds the sugar of sodas, and more than three times the sodium.

But a report from the University of California at Berkeley warns that people who drink one 20-ounce sports drink every day for a year may gain about 13 pounds. This is no surprise to some nutritionists, who note that when you look at the ingredients, it’s water, high-fructose corn syrup, and salt.

According to Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, “For years we’ve been programmed to believe that sports drinks are healthy and you need to replenish those electrolytes after you go out and walk your dog.… Read the rest

Ever since you could stand, you have been taught to wash your hands and since you have been probably been doing it for that long, you probably think you know all there is to know about hand washing. Of course we all know that we wash our hands to get rid of dirt and germs, but unless you work outdoors, your hands probably don’t get really dirty.

We have become a society concerned about germs. I’m not sure if the advertising industry created the “need” for antibacterial soaps but almost half of all hand cleansers sold in the US contain antibacterial compounds. Scientists have shown that antibacterial cleansers are really no more effective than traditional soaps and may even result in “super bug” infections at the germs mutate in response to the antibacterial product.… Read the rest

In most people, urine is very acidic. It is the body’s way of getting rid of excess acids in the body from the metabolism of food and other lifestyle choices. When the little engines in the cells called mitochondria fire to provide us with energy, they give off little puffs of metabolic exhaust, which is very acid. The urine is the body’s way of getting rid of it. Unfortunately, if the body is dehydrated, it becomes harder and harder for these acids to be eliminated.

Normally we don’t pay attention to our bladder until we get a signal that we need to empty it. We don’t know what’s in our urine or how acid or neutral it is, we just want to get rid of it.… Read the rest

Think about it! Wouldn’t it be wonderful to feel, look and perform better and better every day? Look in magazines, on the internet, or at your local spa and you can find lots of things that you can put on your skin to smoothen it, soften it and reduce fine lines and wrinkles. There are machines that will reduce your cellulite or melt away your fat and tone your body. We have so much technology that helps us to feel and look better. To a lot of people, personal image is very important. They don’t want to look like they ‘re getting older.

What if I told you there was a “secret something” that would make all of the products and treatments you are using work so much better?… Read the rest