Healthy Body

Ingredients:

3 cups finely diced seedless watermelon
2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and minced
1/3 cup chopped cilantro
1/4 cup lime juice
1/4 cup minced red onion
Lite tortilla chips

Instructions:

In a glass bowl place watermelon, jalapenos, cilantro and onion. Mix together lightly. Add lime juice and toss to cover. Chill in refrigerator. Serve with lite tortilla chips.

Most of us have experienced a night of where we just couldn’t get to sleep, or kept waking up in the middle of the night. While one night of not sleeping can be annoying, persistent insomnia can have negative consequences on our work, personal relationships, and health. If you just haven’t been able to get a good night’s sleep, here are some tips and tricks you can use to catch some z’s.

To get proper sleep at night, you should watch what you eat. Here are some eating tips for you to sleep on.

• Avoid caffeine and other stimulants. You may think you’re okay if you don’t drink caffeine before bedtime, but stimulants can stay in our bodies for up to 6 hours. If you’re having trouble sleeping. Try not to drink caffeine after lunch time.
• Don’t drink alcohol. This may put you to sleep right away, but you’re much more likely to wake up in the night and have a much less restful sleep.
• Try some tryptophan. This is the chemical in turkey that makes you sleepy. It’s also found with most protein. Try eating a little protein with some complex carbohydrates at night. You could also try a warm glass of milk, another good source of tryptophan.
• Avoid a big dinner. A lot of food late at night provides you energy and actually helps wake you up. It can also cause painful indigestion that will keep you from sleeping. Try eating a moderate dinner and a small bedtime snack instead.

You can also get to sleep better if you adjust your sleeping and bedtime habits. Here are a few suggestions you can try.

• Have a set sleeping schedule. Our bodies thrive on schedules and rhythms. Waking up and going to bed at a set time will help your body develop a normal sleeping rhythm.
• Get darkness and light. Another way to help set your natural rhythms is to make your bedroom dark or wear a mask while you’re sleeping. Shortly after you wake up in the morning, expose yourself to the sun or other bright lights.
• Start a bedtime ritual. Our bodies develop natural responses to what we do. If you follow a certain pattern before you go to sleep every night, your body will know it’s time for sleep when you do these things. This will help you fall asleep faster and easier.Â
• Only sleep in your bedroom. You’re much less likely to be able to sleep in a place where you work, read, or watch T.V. If you sleep and only sleep in your bedroom, your mind won’t be occupied by other things.

If you’re feeling stressed and have a wandering mind at bedtime, you should try these techniques to calm yourself down.

• Take a warm bath. This will soothe your muscles and help you relax. Just be sure your bath isn’t too hot; it can actually make you more awake.Â
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• Try deep breathing and visualization. These can not only help calm you and prepare you for rest, they can also clear your mind and push away stressful thoughts.
• Avoid stimulating activities. This includes not reading or watching T.V. before bed. Instead of relaxing and sleeping, you’ll end up thinking about what you saw or read.

If you find that none of these techniques work for you, you may also want to look at herbal remedies that will calm you and help you rest. If all else fails, you should pay a visit to your doctor.Â

Ingredients:

2 ripe bananas
1 cup low-fat cottage cheese
1 cup plain low-fat yogurt
2 eggs
1 tablespoon of lemon juice
3 tablespoons honey
1/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon vanilla

Instructions:

Place bananas, cottage cheese and yogurt in blender. Blend just long enough to breakup bananas. Add eggs, lemon juice, honey, flour and vanilla and blend on high until mixture becomes smooth. Be sure to scrap sides of blender to make sure all ingredients mix together and no banana chunks are left. Spray pie plate with canola non-stick spray. With rubber spatula put all the banana mixture into pie plate. Make sure to spread it out evenly. Place pie plate on middle rack of preheated 350 degree oven. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and cool to room temperature. When pie has cooled place in refrigerator for 4 hours or overnight. Garnish top with a few banana slices just before serving.

Most people get out less in the winter than they do in the warmer months. It’s just easier to sit in front of the television with a cup of hot tea than it is to bundle up and brave the cold. Besides it’s too cold to participate in the activities we do in the summer.

However, the inactivity that many people experience in the winter can be detrimental to their health. No matter how healthy one’s diet is one needs exercise as well. That’s why winter is the perfect time to join a gym.

Joining a gym gives you access to numerous exercise options. You might not be able to go on a nature hike or whitewater rafting but there are plenty of options available to you at the gym. There are all sorts of equipment, classes and even indoor pools.

Working Out To Stay Well

Working out burns fat and keeps our hearts healthy. It reduces our risk for many diseases and ailments. It increases our metabolism. Did you know that studies suggest that exercise benefits our immune systems?

Regular moderate exercise can help us ward off colds and the flu.  A study of 50 women showed that those who walked briskly 5 days a week had half as many colds as those who did not exercise at all. They also had healthier immune systems with more virus- and bacteria- killing cells.

Choosing a Gym To Join

Finding a gym that you like and is convenient for you is crucial. If you join a gym and find out later that it isn’t what you wanted, you probably won’t be able to get a refund. It’s important to check out a number of gyms before deciding on one.

Location is important but it’s not everything. If there is a gym that you can stop by on your way home from work without going out of the way, by all means check it out. If it has a friendly environment and equipment and facilities that you will use, go ahead and sign up. If not, keep looking.

Some gyms offer free trial memberships. This is a great way to try them out before paying membership fees. Make sure you check out all they have to offer before deciding. It’s great if they have good equipment but if you’re looking for a fun aerobics class you’ll need to see what they have to offer in that department as well.

Even when it is freezing outside, you can stay fit by joining a gym. If you can get a friend to join with you it will be easier for you both to say motivated. Then you can spend the winter staying in shape instead of putting yourself in a position to work twice as hard in the spring.

Many people find themselves unhappy during the winter. For some, the inability to partake in their favorite summer activities leaves them bored. Others become clinically depressed due to Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD.

SAD is believed to be caused mainly by the decreased amount of sunlight in late fall and winter. Those who are sensitive to light and predisposed to depression are likely to suffer from it. The ions in the air are also different in springtime than in the winter and studies have shown that those ions may also be partially responsible for triggering SAD.

Those with full-blown SAD are often treated with light therapy. This requires sitting in front of a source of bright light for 30 minutes or more each day. The treatment is often quite effective. Doctors often try it before prescribing drugs.

While light box therapy is a wonderful thing, there are other ways that can help ward off winter depression. If you just have a mild case of the winter blues, you may be able to keep it at bay without using a light box. Here are some things you can try.

Remaining Active

Walking has been shown to reduce the severity of winter depression. It is especially effective when done outside in sunlight. If you don’t want to brave the elements you could try walking on a treadmill or doing some other type of exercise next to a sunny window.

Getting out of the house for any activity can also be beneficial. Cabin fever is extremely common in the winter, but unless road conditions are hazardous there is no reason that you can’t get out and have fun. If all else fails, take a lesson from kids. They can always find something to do outside in the snow, whether it’s building a snowman or sleigh riding.

Eating the Right Foods

A healthy diet is an important weapon in the battle against seasonal depression. Getting enough vitamins and minerals in your diet will help your mind and body perform more efficiently. A diet high in caffeine, fat and sugar, on the other hand, can make things worse.

Of particular benefit to those with SAD is the amino acid tryptophan. Serotonin, a chemical in the brain that depression suffers don’t have enough of, is made of tryptophan. Eating tryptophan rich foods such as fish, turkey, bananas, nuts and avocados can help boost serotonin levels.

Herbal Therapy

Herbs have been used to successfully treat depression for many years. St. John’s wort and gota kola are two herbs that are frequently used. Tea made of licorice root, St. John’s wort and ginseng may be prescribed by herbalists for those with SAD. They can boost energy levels and improve mood.

SAD can be debilitating. Treating it doesn’t necessarily require drugs with dangerous side effects. Some lifestyle modifications may be all that is needed to get you back on your feet during the winter months.

Ingredients:

3 eggplant, peeled and thinly sliced
Egg beaters equivalent to 2 eggs
4 cups lite Italian seasoned bread crumbs
6 cups low fat no salt spaghetti sauce, divided
1 package (16 ounce) low fat mozzarella cheese, shredded and divided
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese, divided
1/2 teaspoon dried basil

Instructions:

Place egg beaters into small bowl. Place bread crumbs in a separate bowl. Take sliced eggplant and dip into egg, coating completely. Place slices in bread crumbs covering entire slice. Place slices on cookie sheet being sure not to layer slices. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 7 minutes then flip slices and continue baking for 5 minutes more. Remove eggplant from oven. In a large oven safe dish spread enough spaghetti sauce to cover bottom of pan. Put eggplant slices in a single layer over sauce. Cover with cheeses. Continue to layer until all the sauce and eggplant have been used. Sprinkle basil over top of casserole. Return to oven and bake 30 minutes or until browned.

The South Beach Diet book became extremely successful as soon as the diet book with the fitting name was finally published and grew with fast succession among friends, families and fellow dieters. Each with dieting success stories to tell everyone about, the South Beach Diet book, officially titled as, The South Beach Diet: The Delicious, Doctor-Designed, Foolproof Plan for Fast and Healthy Weight Loss, continues to grow in popularity, but the South Beach Diet Phase 1 keeps confusing readers.

The South Beach Diet Phase 1 is designed to be the shortest of phases 1, 2 and 3 of the diet, only lasting for a fourteen day period. It was created to be in your face, kick-start your body and your mindset about how you diet from that now on. The myth to popular thinking and one of the harder to understand parts to Phase 1 of the South Beach Diet, you do not have to limit yourself only eating low carb foods.

In a nut-shell, Phase 1 instills in you the thinking to: rid yourself of bad carbs that are not providing anything nutritionally for yourself, replace the bad carbs that are overwhelming in quantity in the American diet with substantial amounts of protein, good fats and low glycemic index (G.I.) carbs that satisfy your hunger and regulate your blood sugar balance.

Foods that do more harm than benefit: fruit, candy, cereal, potatoes, grains, etc. all are to be eliminated, or the dieter must phase themselves off of during the South Beach Diet Phase 1. A safe bet, if you should have any confusion, is to ingest all the salad, greens, and (most) vegetables you want, as they are on target for dietary benefit.

It is during this South Beach Diet Phase that Doctor Agatston has proven that one’s body resistance to insulin will decrease, thus depending on your current weight and current health, you may lose 2 to 12 pounds initially, even in the first two weeks, as your body begins to shed surplus body weight.

The major goal of the South Beach Diet Phase 1 is 2-fold: to throw you into a routine that you stick with that keeps you from being hungry and to plant a seed and the groundwork for a mindset that ensures you rid yourself of the bad foods and move towards the food that sheds pounds, deliver energy and better your quality of life.

Finding no b.s. health content and healthy resources about the healthy living you want to achieve, doesn’t require a Masters Degree in Physics. No matter your interest: from water conservation to how to really lose weight once and for all, you name it. Committing a healthy lifestyle doesn’t have to be frustrating, or at all life altering if you don’t want it to be, nor is it mandatory that you have to forgo all the flavors, joy and adventure you now appreciate as often is the misconception.

- Thor Daniels

I used to think that the ringing in my ears was just something that I should just ignore and should not really make me worry, but in the long run, as I continuously ignored the ringing noise, I noticed the ringing has become persistent and too noisy. It is already starting to irritate me.

This was the point that I started to think about my condition and decided to go to a physician to have him check on the ringing in my ears. This was also the only time that I started to realize that I just made a very big mistake. I should have consulted with my physician when the ringing was still not this noisy and persistent and things could have been much easier to handle.

The very first thing that I discovered was that I had a punctured ear drum and this was mainly because I clean my ears using an ear scraper. I make use of an ear scraper because my earwax is the type that is dry and easily removed by an ear scraper than by cotton buds. But my physician told me that using an ear scraper is very dangerous to the ears since there is a very big chance that I can injure my ears with it.

That is certainly what happened to me. I punctured my eardrums as I kept using an ear scraper to clean my ears. I may have gone deeply in cleaning my ears that is why I injured my eardrums. The slightest injury that I did to my eardrums may have been signaled by that very mild ear ringing that I heard. Since I neglected that signal, I continued using an ear scraper and eventually just added more damage to my eardrums. Now that the damage is much bigger, my ringing in ears has also become noticeably loud and out of my control.

You should never ignore any symptom; it can be a sign of a serious underlying health issue. Early detection is the key to solving the problem early on before it does cause any more injury. I learned my lesson the hard way, if I had consulted a physician early on when the ringing in my ears started, I could have prevented myself from needing to use an ear scraper, and having to go through the whole experience of tinnitus.

If you need to discover more about a ringing of the ears and what your best treatment options are make sure download this 130pg free tinnitus book – self help guide. We have found that the best tinnitus treatments like homeopathic remedies have had the best results for ringing ears.

- JJ Currie

With the brand new fall season shortly underway, most people are gearing up to watch their favorite shows. Not only does this signal the start of winter but is a particular time when there is the potential for weight gain.

Let’s face it; the football season has just commenced and along with favorite shows yet to come, most fans will be sitting in front of the TV with a myriad of snacks. Add to this inclement weather, lack of exercise and the need to hibernate adds a new set of eating routines that are unlike any other season. Thus, weight gain is imminent.

One could suggest it is the natural order of things; that is, to spend more time at home sitting in front of a roaring fireplace nestled in that favorite chair and watching that favorite show while consuming those favorite comfort foods.

Winter is also a time when the flu may restrict movements. The time to feed the cold, not starve the fever. Whatever the case may be, it is common for most individuals to take advantage of the winter months to enjoy heavy and high fat foods. The cycle of dieting during the rest of the year seems to wane during the winter months.

In order to maintain a healthy diet year round, and while admittedly it is hard to do especially with the holidays approaching, it is necessary to exercise as often as possible in order to avoid the inevitable weight gain that is more likely to occur during the winter months.

While there will be the occasional snacking during Sunday night football, combined with more heavier foods that are meant to warm and comfort, it will also take a great amount of effort to exercise and pay attention to how much of these high fat foods are ingested.

If you are already on a diet regimen, whether it’s counting calories or consuming prepared foods, no doubt you will want to eat snacks and other foods that are not on the diet menu. If this is the case, retain the portion control that you have utilized from the outset and exercise a bit more often to compensate for the extra calories.

Prepare homemade vegetable soups, which are not only hearty, but healthy as well. Freeze several containers to last a few weeks at a time. Winter is a problem for just about everyone when it comes to weight gain. However, the more active we stay the more likely we will emerge healthier in the spring.

Ingredients:

2/3 cup boiling water
1 package (4-serving size) sugar free, low calorie lemon gelatin
Ice cubes
1/2 cup cold water
1-1/2 teaspoon lemon peel
2 tablespoon lemon juice
2 cups thawed fat free whipped topping
1 ready-to-use reduced fat graham cracker crumb crust
Lemon slices

Instructions:

Place gelatin in mixing bowl. Add boiling water and mix until all the gelatin has dissolved. Measure 1/2 cup of cold water and add ice to make 1 full cup. Pour cold water and ice into gelatin and stir until all the ice completely melts. Add lemon peel and lemon juice stirring well. Fold in Cool Whip and blend well. Cover and place in refrigerator for 15 minutes. Gelatin needs to be very thick when removed from refrigerator. Using a rubber spatula put gelatin mixture into crust being sure to spread evenly. Place back in the refrigerator overnight. Before serving garnish with lemon slices.