The following paragraphs summarize the work of health experts who are completely familiar with all the aspects of health. Heed their advice to avoid any health surprises.

Here are ten tips to improve your fitness health. Even athletes who are incredibly fit may not be really healthy. They often tread a fine line between health and illness or injury.

1) Listen to your body. As you are training it is easy to become preoccupied with the repetitions you are doing, or the time you’ve been exercising. Leave your watch at home and slow down or walk when your body hurts.

2) To improve your fitness health you need to eat a varied diet. Five fruit and vegetables a day should be your minimum target. Your health will improve if you eat at least five different kinds of fruit, then any vegetables will be a bonus.

3) Take a complete day off from exercise every once in a while. It doesn’t have to be every week, but doing extra training when you are tired may have a detrimental effect on your health and fitness. You become fitter and healthier through rest as much as exercise.

4) Limit the number of supplements you take. Adequate amounts can in fact be absorbed by modifying the diet without the risks involved by taking a dietary supplement. Consult a professional dietician. Many sprinters and power athletes, for example, take creatine supplements because it gives them a legal edge. There is a risk, though, as it is possible that they have been contaminated by banned substances. This is a risk to your fitness health, and a risk financially if you are a professional athlete.

See how much you can learn about health when you take a little time to read a well-researched article? Don’t miss out on the rest of this great information.

5) Your health will improve if you minimize the number of tablets that you take. Paracetamol may seem okay, but you will be surprised how often a headache can be cured by drinking water, having something to eat or sitting in a quiet room.

6) You will improve your health and fitness by stretching more. Your muscles get shorter through exercise, and if you never stretch you will get injured. One method is to warm up slowly first, then spend several minutes stretching before the main workout. Stretch thoroughly after exercise as well.

7) You need to stay hydrated if you are exercising more. This means drinking water and sports drinks if you are sweating a lot. You lose minerals in your body while sweating. It is recommended to drink five glasses of water a day, but if you are working out you need to drink more than this. Don’t get carried away, though, because it can be just as dangerous to drink too much as too little.

Exercise with other people. You will meet new friends, and your fitness will improve if you have other people to motivate you.

9) Don’t become too competitive as this may harm your health. Motivation from other people is good, but you should only compete against yourself. Try too hard to keep up with someone else, and you could become injured.

10) Have fun! Your health and fitness will improve if you are having fun because you will stick to your exercise program.

This article’s coverage of the information is as complete as it can be today. But you should always leave open the possibility that future research could uncover new facts.

Michael Hehn
http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/ten-tips-to-improve-your-fitness-health-88198.html

It is every person’s secret wish to find the elixir of eternal youth. Cosmetic companies work on this weakness to make big profits. However, it is not very difficult to look young if you live right. Looks can be compared to the savings a person makes. If you start saving at an early age, you can look forward to a comfortable retirement. Similarly, youth is an asset. If you squander it, you may regret it later. If you preserve it well when you have it, can be stretched to last – a long time. You can defy ageing by making certain lifestyle rules. It is vital to follow a disciplined lifestyle. Practise the following lifestyle rules to turn back the hands of the clock.

Avoid Excess sun:

Agreed that sunlight is essential for development but experiments have proved that a person gets the daily needed quota of vitamin K from 15 minutes in the sun. The ultraviolet rays in the sunlight harm the skin. Excess exposure may lead to cancer too. So, while venturing out, smother your skin with sunscreen. Use umbrellas and shades to keep those nasty UV rays off your lovely skin.

Eat right:

Eat healthy food and this will show on your skin. This does not mean that you have to follow a strict diet. In fact too severe a diet and a total lack of oils in food, robs your skin of its elasticity and glow. So, avoid crash diets. Vitamin C is good for the skin, so incorporate foods rich in it in your diet. Eat a lot of fruit and vegetables. Drink at least eight glasses of water daily. Avoid fried and spicy stuff in excess.

Diet supplements:

It is essential to supplement your diet with these additives for greater benefit. Vitamins give you vigour and glowing skin. Iron peps up your energy level, calcium is necessary for good bones and nails and Omega three will work wonders for your general well-being. Consult your doctor and ask him to prescribe the best combination for you.

Pamper your skin:

Nothing cuts down your age like a healthy glowing skin. Never step out without using a moisturiser. Use a sunscreen in the summers. Exfoliate once a week to remove dead skin. Use extra hydration for your hands, under the eyes and on your lips.

Exercise:

Besides getting rid of the extra calories, a regular exercising routine steps up your metabolism too. This revs up your circulation and gives you extra energy, vitality and a blooming complexion. Notice the people around you who move slowly, slouch and look much older than they are. A person who stands up straight and is agile looks much more youthful. Your body is machine that deteriorates if not used regularly. Some yogic exercises are said to retard ageing. Exercise at least three times a week for 30 minutes.

Sleep:

Your overworked body needs sleep to regain its vitality. Do not deprive yourself of sleep. Lack of proper sleep makes you sluggish and tired. Ensure that you have at least eight hours of peaceful sleep daily. Draw up a sleep routine and stick to it religiously. However exciting they might seem, frequent late night parties take their toll. Restrict them to once a week.

Keep stress at bay:

Notice how a problematic situation prematurely ages a person. Stress is one virus that eats up your vitality from within. The face is the mirror of the mind. A worried mind reflects worry on the face too. Avoid stress. This is easier said than done. Stress has became a way of life. You have to tutor your mind to stay away from unnecessary worry. Breathing exercises and yoga help. Keep yourself occupied, as an empty mind is a devil’s workshop.

Enjoy life:

Try to extract the best out of life. If you are bored, it will reflect on your face. A person who is passionately involved in anything remains energetic. Find something that fires your imagination. If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Do not lose your vitality in the dreary desert sands of dead habit.

No smoking:

Apart from those much touted health hazards, smoking regularly leads to the formational feathery wrinkles along the upper lip. Lack of oxygen makes the skin sallow and dull. Smoking causes the lips to blacken too. These side effects of smoking are very difficult to reverse. Hence, it is advisable to refrain from smoking if you wish to preserve your youth and vigour.

Try these tips and see your youth stretch out for a long, long time!

Michael Douglas
http://www.articlesbase.com/women’s-issues-articles/look-years-younger-the-natural-way-turn-back-the-clock-115205.html

The enclosed ten tips are designed to help you lose weight fast.

The first 5 will get your metabolism working quickly to burn fat quicker and then you the 5 tips that follow will help you lose weight easily.

These 10 tips can be incorporate in sensible any diet and will see you shed pounds and lose weight fast!

5 Detox Tips

The body needs to be working as efficiently as possible to lose weight fast; as if your body organs are working at maximum efficiency you will shed weight quicker. Logical but not many people think about this when dieting

So here are your 5 easy natural detox tips

Eat cherries and strawberries

These foods are rich in ellagic acid a nutrient that helps mop up free radicals and help combat pollutants such as alcohol and as a by product they boost brain power.

You can also add raspberries an alternative to the above 2 choices.

Eat Grapes

These are rich in flavinols, which help your arteries work to their maximum and make blood run smoothly and quickly around the body.

Eat citrus fruits such as berries

These foods are rich in vitamins C & E, which will help cleanse and detoxify the liver making it work more efficiently.

Prunes & Fibre

Eat prunes as they will naturally cleanse the colon stimulating the gut and help expel waste quicker, you should also up your intake of fibre as well to cleanse the colon further.

Apricots

If you are smoker this food is particularly useful, apricots are rich in beta-carotene and vitamin C which helps repair smoke damage to the lungs.

Cranberries or juice

Contains proanthocyanidin which are antitoxants that will help cleanse and flush out the kidneys.

You can also add a couple of supplements if you wish top the above list to help detoxify further. Alfalfa and milk thistle are good choices. The first acts as a general cleanser and the second as a cleanser for the liver.

Your organ will be working more efficiently with above foods and this will help you get rid of weight faster as your kidneys and liver in particular will work more smoothly.

Now here are 5 tips to lose weight fast

5 Easy weight loss tips

Drink Iced Water

Two litres a day minimum. Water has to be iced as the body will burn 100 calories just heating the water to normal body temperature. Also hunger pangs are very often thirst pangs, so this will help you stop over eating.

Add lemon to flavour if you wish and gain the added benefit of cleansing your liver at the same time.

Water also helps your body metabolize stored fat by helping the kidneys flush waste quicker. When you don’t drink enough water the liver needs to help the kidneys perform this function. When the liver has to help the kidneys its normal function of providing stored fat for energy is slowed down.

Green tea

Drink 5 cups a day. Research shows this can burn a massive 80 calories a day! It is believed the antioxidant catechins in green tea boost the metabolism and help burn fat.

Chilli sauce & mustard

These foods increase your calorie burning capacity by between 5 – 10% for up to 2 hours after eating. This is because they contain capsaicin which speeds the metabolism, so if you enjoy hot food your in luck!

Low fat diary foods

Can increase fat burning in the abdominal area. Why? Because these foods are rich in calcium which encourages the release of fat from fat cells and also reduces the amount of fat absorbed.

Eat Fibre

Eating fiber foods to help keep things moving through your bowel as stated above and makes you feel full.

The average person can lose 9-10 pounds in one year just from doubling their fiber intake aim for 25grams per day ( the average for most adults is just 8grams ) fiber rich foods include strawberries, apples, brown rice, chick peas, potatoes ( with skins ) and brown rice.

The above tips should be incorporated into a sensible diet and they will enhance it and help you lose weight fast.

Sacha Tarkovsky
http://www.articlesbase.com/weight-loss-articles/lose-weight-fast-5-detox-tips-to-speed-metabolism-5-tips-to-lose-weight-fast-56364.html

I have had bad health since I was a child. Up to now, I can’t ever recall exceeding the 125 lb mark or outgrowing 25 inch waistline pants. I’ve had backaches, toothaches, typhoid, fever colds etc repeatedly growing up. My worst enemy of all, however, was asthma. Ever since we were toddlers, me and my sisters exhibited a propensity towards developing asthma. Luckily, they were able to grow out of it eventually. I can recall my sister having her last ever asthma attack at 18 years old and almost nothing after that. I though, have to be a lot more careful. Up to now, if I fail to get a decent night’s sleep in 2 days, I just know I’m going to get sick.

We’ve had a family doctor, who is a family friend and a relative. He was already quite old when I got to know him, a little less older than my grandparents. He has been treating our family (our whole clan probably) and guess what, he never lets us pay. Whenever someone in the family comes down with something, we call him and he drops by to check up on us for free. Almost everybody who is sick dreads visiting the doctor, but with us, it feels like he is just a friend visiting. After the checkup, injections or whatever is needed to be done, we all go to the kitchen and have some coffee and snacks and talk about things. Of course we had tried to give him his consultation fee a number of times but he just refuses.

We fondly called him Doc V.D., that was his initials and as you can imagine, it also stands for something else so his friends jokes about it a lot! He passed away around 4 months ago and we sorely missed him. He was a good doctor and a good friend.

He used to be the only doctor who treated our family and everything he said, we took for gospel. However, my mother had her doubts. I’m still not entirely sure up to this day if what she did was right or wrong.

The good doctor prescribed a medication for my asthma, the generic name is betamethasone. I cannot mention the brand name . I got started on it when I was 5, even earlier says my mom. On really bad attacks, I would be on this every 4 hours. Now what is so bad about this?

My mom, along with some relatives were convinced that my health never recovered because I was exposed to a lot of strong medication when I was young. Her older sister too, was given strong medication which included betamethasone, which we also suspect was the cause of her slight disfigurement. So whenever the doctor prescribed the drug, my mom would cut the dosage in half. If the attack wasn’t so bad, she would do away with the drug altogether.

Betamethasone is classisfied as a glucocorticoid steroid used to treat a number of disorders ranging from respiratory, muscular, skeletal, gastrointestinal to skin conditions and many more. Basically, corticoid steroids are a class of steroid hormones that are produced in the adrenal cortex. Steroid hormones are steroids which act as hormones, hormones being chemicals which are released b.y cells that affect cells in other parts of the body. Everyone practically knows what steroids or “roids” are by now right? Most athletes and bodybuilders who desire immediate gain in muscle mass or performance turn to steroids. But not all is well and good, steroids are so potent they can easily create an imbalance in the body (an understatement) which can lead to death.

Now how could our good doctor, who always had our well being as his utmost priority, prescribe such a drug to such a young child? Let me jump to another story…

I was in a forum the other day, arguing about the merits of alternative medicine. The guy who I was discussing with was so adamant, claiming that there is no such thing and at best, what alternative medicine provides is a placebo effect. I think we were on different wavelengths on the discussion, perhaps what he had in mind was crystal therapy and such while I was just talking about cures and medicines one can find in the kitchen and the garden. Anyhow, here’s my thing against most synthetic and commercially produced medicine:

1. Big pharmaceutical companies are profit driven organizations while alternative medicine in not a profit driven endeavor. Information on how to heal oneself is readily available everywhere while synthetically produced commercial medicine are prohibitively expensive, trademarked and proprietary.

2. Despite all the funding, research and ultimately, agressive marketing for commercial medicines, a lot still manages to get recalled. Usually somebody has to be gravely ill or die first before the recall gets initiated. Alternative medicine, especially Chinese Traditional Medicine has been around for centuries and uses ingredients readily found in nature. I don’t think TV and other media would have been there back then for this to get advertised. A lot of people has professed and still professes to being healed, this being another reason why western medicine finds it hard to penetrate China and neighboring countries.

3. Yes, alternative medicine is fast becoming a multi-million dollar enterprise in the US and other western countries. Even big pharmaceutical companies are getting in on the act much like Shell and other big oil companies are going into renewable energy. But sometimes you just instinctively know when someone is earnestly interested in healing you PERMANENTLY and when someone just wants you to be perpetually dependent on a drug which at times, makes you feel well.

There are so many more arguments to be said but lets focus on the useful stuff first.

I got into thinking and came up with several reasons why our doctor prescribed the drug I mentioned earlier.

It is possible that since he was already old, he failed to keep up with the newer innovations in the medical community. Highly unlikely because as far as I know doctors are required to attend seminars to be updated…

The agent and the pharmaceutical company he was working for who endorsed the drug to our doctor failed, or intentionally kept information about the side effects of the drug. Of course, the information would be printed on the brochure, but take a look at this example:

Did GSK trial data mask Paxil suicide risk?

At times, only the information that would not scare off people are put on the brochure.

Ironically enough, I also have a cousin who works as a medical representative for an international pharmaceutical company. I have confirmed that indeed, these drug companies give doctors cash incentives, free vacations, gift baskets etc etc etc just to prescribe their drug, only their drug.

Pretty scary huh? Well you have a fighting chance. Here is what I propose you do.

If you are really unsure about the drug or the course of treatment given to you by your doctor, ask for a second and third opinion. Here’s another funny story…

My youngest sister is another one who is suffering from multiple afflictions. One minute there’s colds and cough, at times bruising or rashes, warts, fevers and and the all time favorite: asthma. At 15, she complained of a sharp pain near the diaphragm. My parents took her to an internist ans said she had problems with her spleen and she had to had an operation! My mother was shocked but went ahead to another doctor to ask for a second opinion. This time, the second doctor gave her a combination of laxatives and told her to drink cranberry juice, dismissing it as nothing more than cramps. Occam’s Razor, we opted to for the laxative and juice treatment. She has been well ever since.

Another one. My dad is a diabetic. Some time ago he was having problems with his legs retaining fluids because of his heightened glucose levels. They had it checked up by a doctor who prescribed some albumin tablets. So they went shopping for those and found them to be prohibitively expensive! Went to another doctor. This doctor recommended just taking egg white instead along with this korean jade bed thing treatment. I myself was skeptical about this and just recommended the albumin tablets. We compared and contrasted the cost of both methods and found that egg white and jabe bed treatment would be much cheaper. Lo and behold, after several sessions the swelling indeed go down!

There is nothing wrong with taking commercially made medicine. My point only is this, if you are going to take medicine, do your research first. Get a consultation from a trusted doctor, then a second opinion, then research the facts on the Internet and library before proceeding with the treatment. If you find some conflicting information, consult again with your doctor. I am sure that if he has your best interests in mind, he will welcome your input.

A good doctor is also open minded. After all, where do you think most medicines come from? From Nature of course! He should be humble and open minded enough to propose course of treatments which are the cheapest and least invasive. A lot of alternative medicines and methods are now being accepted as legitimate medical treatments. For example, honey or Manuka Honey is now being used to treat burns:

Honey as a topical antibacterial agent for treatment of infected wounds

As always, your best weapon would be awareness. One has to read, compare and contrast before making a decision. Studies can be manipulated, people can be bribed, sometimes but not all the time.

As for my asthma, I have been using Ventolin (Salbutamol) for several years now but fortunately I haven’t had an attack for around a year already. If I feel like I’m coming down with it, I make sure to get some rest and sleep, drink plenty of ginger tea, eat well. Only when worse comes to worse do I use the inhaler. It is still full now but already about to go into expiration so I must be doing something right.

Shannon
http://www.articlesbase.com/alternative-medicine-articles/you-your-kids-and-medication-756736.html