Lower Your Cholesterol and Increase Your Chance of Stroke

Recently, The New York Times published an article entitled – “U.S. calls for major cholesterol reductions” and which was also printed in numerous local papers.

Sounds like a great way to fight heart disease, right?

Let’s take a look at what the article does not tell you about lowering your cholesterol. Because you must understand the effects of artificially lowering your cholesterol levels without implementing other strategies which are crucial to your health.

Because the fact of the matter is the Framingham Heart study – which has followed people for over 5 decades – proved without a doubt that LDL cholesterol is just one of many misleading factors of heart disease.

In fact, LDL cholesterol levels are only a very minor factor of heart disease and only under certain conditions.

Here is a quote from Christie Ballantyne, M.D., a cardiologist from the Baylor College of Medicine – “The majority of people who end up having heart attacks or stroke don’t have high cholesterol.”

Here is another quote from an article in the Red Flags Daily By Malcolm Kendrick, M.D. who talks about the Framingham Study results as published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“There is a direct association between falling cholesterol levels over the first 14 years and mortality over the following 18 years.”

You guessed it, the mortality rate goes UP.

Scientific research has also proved without a doubt that as people lower their LDL cholesterol level, their chances for stroke go up.

Using cholesterol lowering drugs may artificially lower cholesterol levels, however, they will also increase the death rate from stroke. And because of toxicity to the body, you will also face liver and kidney failure.

Lower Your Risk of Panic Attacks

A panic attack can occur suddenly at anytime and anywhere. It can last for only a couple of minutes, but for the person suffering the attack, it can be life threatening and very traumatic. It is very important, therefore, to know these very helpful things that can help us lower your risk of having panic attacks.

There are a lot of causes of panic attacks, like genetics, high levels of stress, as side effect of some medications. It’s also being studied that nutritional deficiencies may also cause these episodes. Some of its symptoms are rapid heart beat or palpitations, nausea or abdominal discomfort, choking sensations, feeling lightheaded or dizziness, sweating, and fear of going crazy, or worse, death.

Something as simple as getting a good night’s sleep as much as possible is number one. A good sleep is an essential part of our body’s restorative process. When our body is deprived of sleep, it becomes weaker, and it manifests during our waking hours. A person who lacks sleep gets more irritable, loses concentration and focus, and gets higher stress level, therefore increasing the risk of a panic attack.

Change your diet. A healthy, balanced diet is important to maintain the nutrients needed by our body to function well. Consuming a lot of sugar, fatty food, and caffeine-based products increases our risks of having panic attacks. Caffeine is a stimulant that can keep you awake, depriving you of much needed sleep. It can also increase your heart rate, which is also one of the symptoms of a panic attack. Alcohol intake should also be reduced, since drinking alcohol in large amounts can lead to irrational behaviors that can trigger an attack.

Lowering Blood Pressure By Cutting Back On Salt – Is It Based On Sound Science?

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think about advice for lowering blood pressure?

It’s very likely to be the constant refrain to restrict salt intake. It’s hardly surprising; look at any health or medical website and the first tip you’re likely to see for reducing blood pressure is to “cut back on salt”. We’ve been lectured about this for so long, decades in fact, that salt (sodium) has become inextricably linked to hypertension (high blood pressure).

But is it true? Or could it be that like many things that we’ve heard over and over, it’s just a big fat myth? In other words…

Will cutting your salt intake really help in lowering blood pressure?

That’s a great question that many people (when they stop and think about it) would like to have answered: I mean, let’s say you follow a pretty good diet… do you need to worry about salt?

You see, this whole salt thing has been haunting us since back in the 1970’s, when Lewis Dahl did a study showing that higher salt intake raised the blood pressure of rats in a lab. Of course bad news gets attention and many people took the conclusions of that study at face value and ran with them. But there were serious flaws in the study that were widely overlooked in the zeal to identify a culprit for hypertension.

First of all, the rats were fed an amount of salt equivalent to a human consumption of five hundred GRAMS daily. By contrast, the average human salt intake is around 2500 mg (2.5 grams) per day.

And this wasn’t the only problem with Dahl’s study. Let’s just say it was basically flimsy. But despite this…

Massage Therapy – Healing Your Skin Through Massage Therapy

The largest organ in the human body is our skin. Scientifically, skin is known as the integumentary system. We don’t generally pay a lot of attention to our skin, despite its size; but it is truly a phenomenal design. An average persons skin is about 1 to 2 square meters and weighs anywhere from 9 to 11 pounds. There are three layers of skin: the epidermis, dermis and hypodermis. Massage therapy has its benefits for all three.

The outer layer of skin, which communicates directly with our environment, is the epidermis. The epidermis serves as a protective layer and aids in temperature regulation. Skin can be thick or thin, depending on where it is located. Human touch was proven to be of significant value during the war, when the mortality rate of infants receiving human touch was found to be much lower than that of infants deprived of human touch.

Going just beneath the surface we find the dermis, which is actually made up of two layers, the papillary and reticular layers. Immediately below the epidermis one finds a loosely woven mat of elastin and collagen fibers called the papillary layer. About 80% of skins thickness comes from the deep reticular layer, which is found directly beneath the papillary mat. The reticular layer is a dense layer of irregular connective tissue containing thick bundles of interlacing collagen fibers. Fibers run along many planes however most of the fibers are found running parallel to the skin’s surface. The dermis’ reticular layer is home to capillaries, nerve endings, touch receptors, glands, veins, arteries, and hair. Massage therapy, whether a special treat or a regular part of your life, is known to promote healthy gland activity, and aids the body in toxin removal.

Lower Your Blood Pressure by Practicing Yoga

If you didn’t know by now, yoga asanas can help you in the treatment of high blood pressure, and help you lower blood pressure. Yoga asanas make stable your blood pressure, so lower blood pressure when it’s abnormaly high. Asanas have favorable effects on the nervous system. By practicing certain yoga asanas you can not only lower your blood pressure, but also reduce the effects of hypertension on the other organs of the body.

There are a few categories of asanas which are recommended to lower blood pressure: forward bends, sitting, supine and inversions group.

Forward bends have the best effects on high blood pressure, so they can help you the most to lower your blood pressure. These exercises have a calming effect on the brain, the blood circulation to the brain is normalized, and they help you reduce the stress from the sense organs, things that lower blood pressure. So, the brain, the sympathetic nervous system and the sense organs are relaxed, the cardiac output and the pulse rate decelerate at the same time, and blood pressure stabilizes, so it lowers blood pressure when it’s high. Other asanas which have beneficial effects on the nervous system and help you lower blood pressure are Uttanasana and Adhomukha Svanasana , which have to be practiced with the head resting on props, so the blood circulates more freely into the aortic arch. These help you lower blood pressure.

Baddhakonasana and Virasana are some of the sitting asanas which can be practiced in order to get a lower blood pressure by the hypertensives , which in most cases are hard breathing. These poses eliminate the tension from the ribs and the intercostal muscles, so they help you to breathe with no difficulty, and lower blood pressure.

Lower Your Risk of Colon Cancer Naturally

While conventional medicine has made strides in treating colon cancer, the real goal is prevention and there is growing evidence that colon health may be promoted safely, effectively and naturally, using nutritional supplements.

Polyphenols, Plant-Based Anticancer Nutrients

Among the largest groups of plant-based nutrients with strong evidence of cancer-fighting potential is the polyphenol family. It includes the nutritional sub-groups tannins and flavonoids,which can slow, reverse or prevent cancer growth. The clinical evidence supporting polyphenols’ cancer-preventive power is considerable–and growing rapidly.These compounds are found in berries, tea, grapes/wine, olive oil, chocolate/cocoa, walnuts, and most other fruits and vegetables.

Here are a few of the polyphenol family’s most powerful members:

Curcumin

Recently, has emerged as a leading cancer fighter.  Its nutritional profile includes antioxidant, antimicrobial, and anti-inflammatory properties. Curcumin ranks among the polyphenols capable of disrupting a cancer that has started to develop and slow or stop tumor growth by apoptosis (cell destruction) and angiogenesis which limits blood vessel growth that tumors need to spread. Studies have shown that curcumin suppressed tumor growth in lab cultures better than a known chemo drug and with no toxicity.

Recently, it was discovered that a combination of curcumin and another anti-inflammatory polyphenol called quercetin (see below) could cause precancerous polyps to diminish substantially.

Natural Treatment for Chronic Back Pain

If you have chronic back pain, you may feel depressed as it can really be unbearable. Chronic back pain results from poor posture, standing too long at work, or from a previous injury. Chronic back pain is also disabling and can affect your quality of life.

While you can consume drug medications for pain relief, they may lose their effect as you ingest increasingly higher doses to help you stop the pain. Also, pain killers have various side effects. Hence, it is best not to become dependent on them. While there is no cure, you can consider choosing a natural treatment for chronic back pain.

One of the best ways to lessen the strain on your back muscles is to lose weight especially if you are overweight or obese. When your abdomen becomes overstretched, the back muscles will be used to counteract the effect of slack abdomen muscles. By keeping the abdomen toned and losing weight that is not necessary, you can alleviate your chronic back pain.

Remember how a pregnant woman stands with her hands held on her lower back? Well, pregnancy is another cause of chronic back pain. When a woman is pregnant, the back will feel the impact of a growing baby stretching out in the abdomen. Some women even have severe back pain during pregnancy when the baby sits on the sciatic nerve. Luckily, chronic back pain in the case of pregnancy is temporary and will subside once the baby is born.

Chronic back pain can also happen in the workplace or at home. For prevention, you should consider wearing a back brace at work when picking up heavy objects. Also, you should always bend at your knees when picking something up. Many bend at the waist to pick up heavy objects, causing strained back muscles, or back injury.

Pilates Exercises

The Pilates system of exercising, body toning, muscle building and posture improvement has become one of the most flexible and widely used health and fitness routines available.

Since Joseph Pilates developed the system, specialist fitness centers, coaches and teachers have become available throughout the United States and the developed world.

The system caters for all adult age groups, whether it using workouts that promote muscle building for athletes, body toning exercises to enhance that glamorous look, or training schedules that can correct the bad posture that leads to spinal and other related problems.

Irrespective of age and physical disabilities the practice of the appropriate Pilates exercise schedule can be life enhancing to those that are prepared to take the trouble to explore the variety of benefits and routines that are offered by the system and then act upon the most suitable for their circumstances.

These can vary between as little as fifteen minutes a day, perhaps to alleviate a painful back condition to a full scale regime to improve and enhance a sporting aspiration.

Pilates is not only a physical improvement system but also has an important psychological input.

Joseph Pilates believed that an individual’s mental attitude to the fitness and development of the physical body was as important as the exercises and training to which it was subject. In other words having the right mental attitude to whatever you want to achieve with your body.

There are a number of inexpensive devices that will help with the Pilates experience but essentially the Pilates system is a ¨hands on¨ opportunity to improve those areas of the body that only you feel has the need to benefit.

Lower Your Cholesterol Level – The Difference Between Good Cholesterol and Bad Cholesterol

We all nowadays know the importance of trying to reduce cholesterol and many of us actively take steps to achieve a lower cholesterol level in our blood. I am frequently asked the question: “what is the difference between good cholesterol and bad cholesterol?”

So what is HDL cholesterol? (the good cholesterol) and what is ldl cholesterol? (the bad cholesterol). Read on and find out. Cholesterol circulates in our blood attached to a protein called a lipoprotein. There are two basic types of lipoprotein. High density lipoprotein (HDL) or low density lipoprotein (LDL). HDL is usually labeled as “good cholesterol” because the molecule is mostly protein and does not carry a high quantity of free fat along with it.

LDL on the other hand is a molecule that only has a small amount of protein and for the most part is made of of freely available and very easily dissolved cholesterol fat. LDL is often referred to as “bad cholesterol.”

If you have a lot of good cholesterol or HDL in your system then your heart will be quite well protected from the effects of fat. If you have a lot of LDL – or bad cholesterol – then you will be at greater risk of heart attack or stroke. This information has now been shown to be correct in countless medical studies throughout the world.

If you are having a cholesterol check or cholesterol blood test then your doctor will look at your blood test result and check the level of the Total Cholesterol count. He or she will then examine the count for the level of the good cholesterol or HDL. The ratio of the total cholesterol divided by the HDL level is thought to be a reflection of the “true cholesterol level” in your blood and as such is a good predictor of future heart attack or stroke problems.

Severe Cystic Acne Treatment Options

Nodular acne or simply severe cystic acne is probably the most infuriating skin ailment described as big lesions distributed through out and might at times lengthen to the back. In certain cases, this kind of acne form would most likely produce extremely huge acne that may measure to centimeters in diameter. For many individuals, the affliction is not really only awkward, but very infuriating to eliminate. This article will talk about some effective cystic acne treatment.

The triggers of severe cystic acne aren’t really obvious despite the fact that it is understandable that they head out through significantly deep on the skin. It is certain that their primary reason could be the comparable as mild acne breakouts, which in turn usually are hormonal imbalances. But the particular factor that contributes to the advancement of this kind of acne might be genetic makeup. If one of the parents has had cystic acne, subsequently chances are you could have one as well in the near future after.

Because of its severity, severe cystic acne is definitely not suggested to fix the problem alone. It is always recommended to consult your dermatologists. Never give up hope. Though it could look terrible, there are effective ways to manage the breakout and put off undeviating damage of the skin.

A very popular drug to treat this skin condition is Accutane (Isotretinion), which can significantly lower the signs or symptoms. However, the drugs itself has some side effects, making it hazardous to be used without guidance by a professional doctor. Side effects include depressive disorders and even suicidal behavior in most individuals. Nevertheless, in connection to acne, Accutane often works well and is able of preventing the microorganisms irritating on the skin.