Eat this! Cholesterol-fighting foods

Don't eat this, that and the other says the doctor. When you have cholesterol, everyone has a suggestion regarding what you cannot eat. But not one of them can tell you what you should eat!
All fresh fruits such as apples, bananas, pears, watermelon, lemons, and oranges are good. Fruits are low in saturated fats and have no cholesterol at all. A daily intake of fruits will lower cholesterol and flush the toxins out of your system.
Apples in particular are rich in antioxidants and fibre. They help lower bad cholesterol and raise good cholesterol.
Like fruits, all vegetables are good. However the best ones are the dark greens like spinach, fenugreek, ladyfingers and broccoli.
These vegetables are rich in iron, proteins and antioxidants that help purify the blood, keep your weight in check and lower cholesterol.
Fish has Omega 3 fatty acids that help prevent blood from clotting. It also has Vitamin B3 that helps lower bad cholesterol while increasing good cholesterol.
Besides a low fat content, lean meats have Vitamin B3. Substitute whole meats with lean meat and watch your bad cholesterol decrease.
Black beans, dal, rajma and kala channa are high in dietary fibre, which helps lower cholesterol.
Brown rice, 100% whole wheat bread, whole grain breakfast cereals, oatmeal and whole oat have a good source of Vitamins B and E, fibre, iron, magnesium and antioxidants.
Besides copper, barley is rich in dietary fibre that helps lower bad cholesterol.
Soy is rich in protein and fibre. It is also low in saturated fats and has no cholesterol at all. The protein helps lower the bad cholesterol and prevents heart disease. Soy nuggets are available but you can also have them as soya vadi, soya granules and flavoured soy milk.
You can also mix 10% of soya flour in wheat flour while making your rotis. This way, you can be sure of your daily intake of protein and fibre.
Almonds are a rich source of proteins, Vitamins B3 and E, calcium and monosaturated fats that decrease bad cholesterol.
Walnuts contain Omega 3 fatty acids, Vitamins B and E, and fibre, which increase good cholesterol.
Peanuts are rich in Vitamin E, protein, fibre, copper, calcium and monosaturated fats that are known to lower bad cholesterol.
Cashews are high in monosaturated fats, copper and calcium, which help decrease bad cholesterol.
However, keep a check on the quantity of nuts you eat.
Honey contains antioxidants that help lower cholesterol. This will be beneficial as part of a balanced diet.
Remember, when cooking foods bake, boil, grill, shallow fry (minimal oil), roast or poach. These methods involve minimal or no oil and preserve the natural proteins in food.

Fish Oil For the Brain

The reason fish is so good for the brain is the so-called omega-3 fatty acids it contains. Oily fish, like salmon, sardines, mackerel, herring, bluefish and black cod, are the best sources of those special fats. One of the omega-3s.

DHA.is the main constituent of cell membranes in the brain, and a deficiency of it can weaken the brain's architecture and leave it vulnerable to disease. Diets associated with longevity and good health, like the Mediterranean and traditional Japanese diets, are high in omega-3 fatty acids from fish.

A good starting dose of fish oil of any kind is 1g a day. Higher doses, up to 10g a day, have been used, with varying results, to treat such diverse conditions as depression, attention deficit disorder, bipolar disorder and even autism. Vegetarian sources of omega-3 fatty acids, such as walnuts, flax and hemp, are good additions to the diet but not so reliable as fish. They supply a short-chain compound (ALA) that the body must convert to long-chain DHA, and the efficiency of that conversion can vary. Some people don't do it well, and those eating mainstream diets top-heavy in the omega-6 fatty acids found in processed food and prepared meals are at a disadvantage because omega-6s interfere with the conversion of ALA to DHA.

For vegetarians and vegans, there is one nonfish source of long-chain omega-3s: supplements made from algae. (Algae is the source of the omega-3s that fish store in their fat)

Cooling Foods during Summer

Curd which is a very good summer food as it cools you from inside and also it could be consumed in varying options. From chaas , to lassi to curd rice... just take your pick. You must include one member from the gourd family in your daily intake. Pumpkins are not only cooling, but also good for people suffering from stomach upsets.
Summer just doesn’t mean only mangoes, but loads of cucumber as well. It not only beats the heat, but is also low on calories. It not only beats the heat but is very low on calories.

To cool the body through sweating, add small amounts of hot spices to food while it quickly sautés or steams. Hot peppers, fresh ginger, and black pepper are all great spices to warm you up and cool you down.
To avoid too much heat in food, focus on fast cooking methods this summer. Steaming, blanching (plunge into boiling water briefly, then into cold water)
Extremely cold foods and drinks are actually known to interfere with digestion and sweating, the body's natural cooling mechanism. So, however tempting it may be to sit on your porch licking an ice cream cone or sipping a cool glass of tea, try a wedge of watermelon instead.
Among fruits almost all citrus foods are cooling. You can extract juice and store it for a day without any preservatives. Citrus fruits offer you more cooling if you can mix these to make a mock tail and also add in some lemon juice.
A lemon and honey drink combination has the power of instantly replenishing your body's lost water and also work as energizers.
Some foods are especially beneficial in the summer heat. Eating vegetables with high water content will help you stay cool. Leafy lettuce and summer greens, corn on the cob, cucumbers, watermelon are delicious ways to stay cool. They all contain a significant amount of water and can actually thin the blood, which has a cooling effect.

If you are a non vegetarian, you should try and avoid red meat and instead go for fish and oysters.
The best summer diet solution includes large salads. Onions too are just great in summer, because of their ability to beat the heat and provide relief from summer ailments.
If you get burnt, seek relief by sipping on green tea. Green tea is a potent source of antioxidants that can neutralise cellular damage caused by the sun's rays.

Drink This to Fight Fat

Have a little fat you’d like to lose?

Maybe now is a good time to turn on the kettle and pour yourself a cup of this: white tea. Made from the buds and early leaves of the same plants used to make green and black teas, white tea may have special fat-thwarting powers, a new study suggests. Fat-Blasting BrewFat cells increase or decrease in size, according to your weight. And in a lab study, human fat cells treated with white tea extract accumulated significantly less fat.

In fact, the white tea extract reduced the incorporation of fat by as much as 70 percent! The tea also seemed to stimulate the breakdown of fat from mature cells.

Why White Whittles

Because white tea is less processed than green or black tea, it has more of certain active compounds, like epigallocatechin-3-gallate (an antioxidant) and methylxanthines (theobromine and caffeine). And researchers suspect that these compounds influence fat-cell metabolism by acting on the expression of certain genes. But human studies will be needed to confirm it.

Fight Wrinkles with This Breathing Exercise

Take a deep breath. Now let it out. Breathe in again. Breathe out. In. Out. Slowly. Evenly. Feel better? More relaxed?

Good.

You might look better when you are done, too, because studies show that stress does more than rumple your mood. It may actually help rumple your face, too.

Stress can cause wrinkles. How? By increasing the production of cortisol -- a stress hormone that also stymies collagen production, one of the natural substances skin needs in order to plump itself, repair itself, and keep wrinkles at bay.

Don’t skimp on sleep. Sleep deprivation exacerbates stress and a haggard appearance.

Have more sex. Besides boosting beta-endorphins, making love and cuddling with your significant other increases levels of the tension-squashing, feel-good hormones prolactin and oxytocin

Carbon based infrared saunas

Carbon based infrared saunas are healthy to use and more efficient. Since the skin is the largest organ, it has an important role to play in eliminating unwanted toxins.

Saunas with far infrared sauna heat therapy and Carbon Wave 360 technology have a very detoxifying and therapeutic benefits to the body. It is a beautifully handcrafted product at fantastic prices. You can actually create a personal health place with your own infrared sauna.

East Coast Saunas believes in supplying the health benefits of far infrared saunas to health conscious at the best price possible. It provides Carbon based Carbon Wave 360 Technology and infrared coverage from every direction within the sauna!

Far infrared warmth directly enters the body's tissues to a depth of over 1½ inches right into the muscle.

A conventional sauna (steam sauna) has to depend on indirect method of heat. With Far Infrared heat and the feature of unique Carbon Wave, only 20% of the far infrared energy heats the air, which leaves an over 80% available to be converted to heat within our body.

Therefore a Far Infrared Sauna can warm all the health conscious people to a much greater benefit than a conventional sauna.

Right fuel for your Brain

You need to pay special attention to what you eat. That’s right:

Your grocery list can help with your to-do list. That’s because the right foods are a kind of clean-burning fuel for your body’s biggest energy hog: Your brain.

A study in the Journal of Physiology makes the point that, though your brain represents only 2 percent of your body weight, it makes 20 percent of the energy demands on your resting metabolism.

You can be up to 200 percent more productive if you make the right eating choices. Stock up on these items to halt mental decline, jog your memory, sharpen your senses, improve your performance, activate your feel-good hormones, and protect your quick-witted sharpness, whether you’re 15, 40—or not admitting to any age whatsoever!

FOR SHORT-TERM MEMORY

Drink COFFEE
Fresh-brewed joe is the ultimate brain fuel. Caffeine has been shown to retard the aging process and enhance short-term memory performance. Just one cup of coffee helps improve attention and problem-solving skills.
Not ENERGY DRINKS/TOO MUCH COFFEE
FOR LONG-TERM MEMORY

Eat BLUEBERRIES
Antioxidants in blueberries help protect the brain from free-radical damage and cut your risk of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. They can also improve cognitive processing (translation: thinking). Wild blueberries, if you can find them, have even more brain-boosting antioxidants than the cultivated variety.

Not THE UNRIPE AND UNREADY
Here’s a cool tip: if your favorite berries are out of season, buy them frozen. The freezer locks in peak flavor and nutrients, so the berries’ antioxidant capacity is maxed out. Those pale, tough, and expensive off-season berries usually ripen on a truck, rather than on the bush, so they’re nutritional imposters compared to the real thing.
TO THINK FASTER

Eat SALMON OR MACKEREL
So put salmon or mackerel on the grocery list. The omega-3 fatty acids found in fatty fishes are a primary building block of brain tissue, so they’ll amp up your thinking power. Salmon is also rich in niacin, which can help ward off Alzheimer’s disease and slow the rate of cognitive decline.

Not FULL-FAT ICE CREAM
Not all fats are created equal: Beware foods high in saturated fats, which can clog blood vessels and prevent the flow of nutrients and blood to the brain. Ice cream is not a brain-health food.

TO ENERGIZE

Eat HIGH-PROTEIN SALAD WITH VINAIGRETTE
The oil in the dressing will help slow down digestion of protein and carbs in the salad, stabilizing blood-sugar levels and keeping energy levels high. Build your salad on a bed of romaine and spinach for an added boost in riboflavin, and add chicken and a hard-boiled egg for more energizing protein.
Not PANCAKES OR BAGELS
TO CALM DOWN

Eat LOW-FAT YOGURT OR MIXED NUTS
Scientists in Slovakia gave people 3 grams each of two amino acids—lysine and arginine—or a placebo, and asked them to deliver a speech. Blood measurements of stress hormones revealed that the amino acid-fortified guys were half as anxious during and after the speech as those who took the placebo. Yogurt is one of the best food sources of lysine; nuts pack loads of arginine.

Not SODA
TO CONCENTRATE

Drink PEPPERMINT TEA
The scent of peppermint helps you focus and boosts performance, according to researchers.

Not CANDY
Sugary foods incite sudden surges of glucose that, in the long term, cause sugar highs and lows, leading to a fuzzy state of mind. So you’ll need to avoid all the attention-busting sugar bombs on this list.

FOR GOOD MOODS AND GRINS

Eat SPINACH SALAD
Leafy greens—arugula, chard, spinach—are rich sources of B vitamins, which are key components on the assembly line that manufactures feel-good hormones such as serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. Nursing, a lack of B6 can cause nervousness, irritability, and even depression.

Not WHITE CHOCOLATE
White chocolate isn’t chocolate at all, since it contains no cocoa solids. So it won’t stimulate the euphoria-inducing mood boosters like serotonin, as real chocolate does. Grab the real thing, the darker the better. More cacao means more happy chemicals and less sugar, which will eventually pull you down.

FOR SHARPER SENSES

Eat 1 TBSP OF GROUND FLAXSEED DAILY
Flax is the best source of alphalinoleic, or ALA—a healthy fat that improves the workings of the cerebral cortex, the area of the brain that processes sensory information, including that of pleasure. To meet your quota, sprinkle it on salads or mix it into a smoothie or shake.

Not ALCOHOL
This one’s obvious, but worth mentioning anyway. A drink or two can increase arousal signals, but more than that will actually depress your nervous system. This makes you sloppy, not sharp.

Entire Cosmos Is ThereIn The Human Body

Yoga scriptures say that the prana-shakti or life force called kundalini dwells at the base of the sushumna, the spinal column, in the muladhara or base chakra of each individual from where it controls the entire physiological system through its network of 72,000 nerves. There are two dimensions to the prana-shakti: at the external level, the life force operates through the sense organs and takes care of our worldly lives; at the internal or spiritual level, usually the kundalini remains dormant.

Kriya yoga consists of a number of pranayam-based techniques that help in hastening the process of spiritual evolution through awakening of the dormant kundalini with controlled breathing. The practitioner of kriya yoga endeavours to make the pranic energy revolve upward and downward, around the six spinal centres or chakras situated in the sushumna muladhara, swadhishthana, manipura, anahata, vishuddha and ajna.

Within the human body, or what is referred to as the pinda, is contained the entire cosmos or Brahmanda: the first five chakras, from muladhar to vishuddha, are the centres of pancha-bhutas or the five elements earth, water, fire, air and ether. The sixth chakra, ajna, is the seat of the mind, while the seventh, the sahasrara, is located in the brain, and represents Shiva, the supra-causal state of Consciousness. The seven lokas corresponding to the seven chakras are bhu, bhuvah, swarga, maha, jana, tapa and satya.

Through kriya yoga the awakened kundalini renders the pinda pure by piercing the chakras. The seeker is then able to enter into deep meditation spontaneously and begins to experience mystic phenomena associated with higher levels of Consciousness. A stage comes in meditation when the seeker starts hearing rapturous divine music called anahada nada that manifests in 10 different forms: chin-chin, chinchina, the bell, the conch, the veena, the cymbals, the flute, the mridang, the kettledrum, and finally, thunder or meghanada. The meghanada, accompanied with the sound of AUM, leads the seeker to nirvikalpa samadhi, the supra-causal state of Consciousness, where the awakened kundalini finally unites with Shiva in sahasrara. The seeker then begins to perceive the scintillating neel bindu, the seed of the universe, which is surrounded by a golden halo tinged with saffron.

The Importance and benefits of Calcium in Your Diet

To have the best health, you need to have a good balance of all the vitamins and nutrients. Calcium is no exception. Calcium is important in helping prevent:
Colon cancer , Kidney stones , Polycystic ovarian syndrome , High blood pressure , Osteoporosis
That’s quite a list of health benefits!

You may have known most of these benefits, but did you know that calcium plays an important part in many other physiological activities in your body?

Calcium helps your blood to clot properly, is important for keeping your nerves in good condition, good muscle contraction, and cell membrane function.
If you don’t get enough calcium in your diet, it could have many adverse effects including softening of the bones, muscle pain, muscle spasms, and tingling and numbness in your hands and feet.
To make sure you are getting enough calcium in your diet be sure and include leafy, green vegetables like mustard greens, collard greens, and spinach.

Other good sources of calcium are yogurt, mozzarella cheese, cow and goat milk.
Other vegetables that are high in calcium are Brussel sprouts, oranges, asparagus, crimini mushrooms, green beans, garlic, tofu, sesame seeds, broccoli, celery, and romaine lettuce

German researchers uncover 'longevity gene'

German scientists have uncovered a gene linked to longevity in Europeans — a finding which suggests that individuals with the right genes can reach a ripe old age.
Kiel scientists have proved that 100-year-old Europeans carry a special sequence variation of the FOXO3A gene.
According to researchers, a variation in the gene FOXO3A has a positive effect on the life expectancy of humans, and is found much more often in people living to 100 and beyond - moreover, this appears to be true worldwide.
A research group in the Faculty of Medicine at the Christian-Albrechts-University in Kiel (CAU) has now confirmed this assumption by comparing DNA samples taken from 388 German centenarians with those from 731 younger people.
The study has been published in the prestigious American scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Last year in September, an American research team led by Bradley J. Willcox had published in PNAS a study that indicated a higher frequency of this genetic variation in long-lived Americans of Japanese origin (ages 95 and above).
Professor Almut Nebel, the scientific leader of the "Research Group for Healthy Ageing" at Kiel, comments: "That published result is only of scientific value if it can be confirmed in a study with an independently chosen sample population. Without that there must still remain a tinge of doubt.
"We have now eliminated that uncertainty about the connection between FOXO3A and longevity, both by our results from the German sample study and by the support from our French partners in Paris, whose research on French centenarians showed the same trend.
"This discovery is of particular importance as there are genetic differences between Japanese and European people. We can now conclude that this gene is probably important as a factor in longevity throughout the world."