10 tips to reduce depression
The effects of depression can be be very harmful to those who suffer from it, not to mention those around them. Many times, depression may cause a person to spend less time with others, and to spend less time doing things that they once enjoyed doing. Depression is not good on your health! Those suffering from depression may face memory problems, sleep problems or a need to sleep excessively, a sense of hopelessness and an inability to join the rest of the world. As depressing as it may seem, there are around 19 million Americans who suffer from this. It could be due to a death of a loved one, a divorce, not being able to forgive someone, or just because you are overweight. Some feel depression as a result of learning that they have a health condition such as breast cancer, Endometriosis, Diabetes, Myasthenia Gravis, ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease), Cystic Fibrosis, Fibromyalgia, or some other. College students can also feel depressed when classes are not going as they would like them to.
There are ways to ease some symptoms of depression, but sometimes medication therapy is necessary for the patient to fully enjoy a symptom-free life. However, there are some tips you can try if you have the blues.
1. Speak with Someone
Marriage counselors, church patriarchs, school counselors, and life coaches can be very helpful. If you do not feel comfortable speaking with a counselor, talk to a close friend or write in a journal.
2. Exercise
Some daily exercise can really boost your mood and energy. Aerobic exercise will raise your heart rate, boost your metabolism, and allow the body to naturally release mood enhancing endorphins.
3. Eat Fresh
Start a garden. Raise some chickens (for the eggs). Buy organic products? Eat plenty of fiber (fruits and vegetables) in order to cleanse your body from toxins and preservatives and junk from processed foods. Make sure that you consume colorful fruits and vegetables. When you are healthy, you feel more vibrant and full of energy!
4. Avoid Sugar
If your depression is connected with anxiety, you will no doubt try to eat way too much sugar. This is the worse thing that you could do. Why? Because sugar can actually increase your anxiety. Sugar will also make you even more tired after the sugar high, not to mention the other health detriments related to sugar and tooth decay and the immune system.
5. Cut Caffeine
Caffeine brings you up - then drops you like a rock. Like sugar, it will also contribute to your anxiety and depression. Try drinking at least 8 glasses of water everyday.
6. Avoid nicotine
Nicotine is a stimulant. It acts in the body much like caffeine. It can make you feel better temporarily, but in the end it will only add to depression in several ways. The stimulant in nicotine can increase your anxiety. Smoking also tends to make a person more prone to upper respiratory illnesses and illness can increase you depression.
7. Meditation Helps
Meditation has been used for thousands of years to help with depression. There are ways to medite, including conscious breathing methods and creative thoughts.
8. Sleep
Sleep deprivation can cause depression and anxiety. Too much sleep can also contribute to depression and anxiety. The average adult needs between six and nine hours of sleep a night. Each individual has different needs, but this is a good guideline.
9. Use More Light
Sitting or working in the dark will add to your depression. Natural light is better than artificial light too. So open the windows and shutters and replace small lights and light bulbs with bigger and brighter ones.
10. Adopt a Pet
Companion animals provide great help to anyone suffering from depression. Studies have shown that by just stroking an animal can lower your blood pressure and calm you. So go visit your local humane society or pet store. Don't have space for a goat or a horse? Maybe a dog, cat, ferret, gerbil, hamster, goldfish, or even a hermit crab?

Spencer Hunt is a glyconutrient consultant who has used glyconutrients to help people with Alzheimers, autoimmune diseases, cancer, or to just have more energy
http://www.ifoundhealth.com.


The Diet / Cancer Link
This is one major problem when it comes to the standard diets that most people start on. Since these diets are standardized, it's more likely that you're not going to be eating the most optimal diet for you. If you're looking at any of the popular diet plans, you should look for the ones that allow the most personalization.
Following is a sample daily diet plan that is good for keeping healthy weight and good health, irrespective of whether you follow a diet plan with negative calorie foods or not.
Muscle tissue as well as new tissue growth need protein for their activities and can receive adequate levels with a protein diet. Protein intake from a high protein diet helps to transport nutrients and oxygen to our cells. The valuable protein diet aids and maintains antibody production.
Studies have now shown that weight cycling is as bad for your health as obesity. Does this mean you give up? No! It means you diet smart. How do you diet smart? By using a diet plan that not only leads you to healthy weight loss, but also prevents diet shock.
The Diet / Cancer Link

Attitudes to the link between diet and cancer are changing fast. The World Cancer Research Fund was founded specifically to fund and sponsor education and research into the diet-cancer link. There is mounting evidence that the high fat intake in a typical Western diet, along with the low intake of nutritious foods such as vegetables, fruits and wholegrains, may be responsible for up to 35% of cancers.
The World Cancer Research Fund is the only major national charity concerned with the link between cancer and food, nutrition and lifestyle factors. Their report �Food, Nutrition and the Prevention of Cancer: a global perspective� gives guidelines consistent with those published by the World Health Organisation, the E.U. �Europe against Cancer� initiative and other authoritative organisations. The idea of an �anti-cancer diet� promotes prevention by strengthening the immune system directly and has partly led to the promotion of a �five a day� campaign for fresh fruit and vegetables.
The intensification of agricultural practices has led to a decline of between 25% to 75% in the levels of key mineral nutrients in farmed vegetables over the last 60 years. There has also been a rise in farmed fruit sugar levels, so much so that some �natural� fruit juices now contain as much sugar as a fizzy drink.
If we can source quality food, our cooking methods often destroy the nutritional content. Studies show that fresh, uncooked vegetables strengthen the immune system and increase resistance to many diseases. Cabbage placed in cold water and boiled loses about 75% of its vitamin C content. Similarly fresh peas cooked for only five minutes lose 20-40% of their Thiamine content and 30-40% of their vitamin C. About 50% of vitamin E is destroyed by frying or baking food.
Tests in Spain recently measured the levels of flavonoids (a kind of antioxidant) left in fresh broccoli after it was cooked. The results show large differences in flavonoid content according to how the broccoli was prepared. The cooking methods were:
* boiling - 66% loss
* pressure-cooking - 53% loss of major antioxidant
* steaming - minimal loss of antioxidants
* microwaving - 97% loss of flavonoids
Scientists in Finland found that blanching and deep-freezing vegetables destroyed beneficial compounds. Blanching prior to freezing destroyed up to one-third of the vitamin C content of vegetables and more was lost in storage. The healing properties of uncooked foods are being increasingly recognised in natural cancer therapies.
The more we let food industries create what we eat the more likely we are to be at risk from diet related problems. In effect the commercial interests of food manufacturers are systematically robbing unwary shoppers of health, and eventually life. The more control and information we have in sourcing pure foodstuffs, the less at risk we are from dis-ease for nutritional reasons. One of the first steps in finding a healthy diet is changing how and where we shop and sourcing foods we can trust. The supermarkets give us thousands of choices but few options. Try to find for example, one of the many varieties of biscuits available that do not contain �hydrogenated vegetable oil�.
Too much protein in a diet is also harmful to health and can promote cancer. Meat and sugar-rich diets are common in the West. These are often overcooked or over processed. When cooked or processed foods are eaten our white blood cells (leukocytes) rush to the intestine to help with digestion. As a result other parts of the body may be left undefended from attack by germs and viruses after a heavily synthetic meal.
Biological enhancement of crops, growth hormones in milk and meat, mercury in our mouths, colorants and carcinogens in food are commonplace. The foot and mouth epidemic, B.S.E. in sheep and cattle, nuclear radiation and the de-naturalisation of our food are examples of how common sense is abandoned to profit. The �Precautionary Principle� is too often being overlooked in the rush of science.
Will this change our fear of the word diet? May be not but at least I will try and explain a little bit more about diet and dieting that we know it to be.
However, you should minimize intake of carbohydrates to as low as 10% of your total calorie intake. If you can maintain your consumption of carbohydrates to as low as 10% of your calorie intake, you should eat more fats and moderate protein. Then, the low-carb diet overview will be the best tool to compliment your weight loss regimen and avoid jumping on the obese bandwagon.
Abandon the thought of being on a diet and make a permanent change to the way you eat instead


You always have to be careful when purchasing some type of dietary supplement. Read the label carefully, look at the ingredients. You should also consult with your doctor to check if some dietary supplement is right for you. Try a well designed diet before you turn to dietary supplements.

The genetic modification of foodstuffs for example is still largely untested and many of its results are open to interpretation. Scientific knowledge of the processes involved is actually at an early stage. Little is known about side effects, how gene function is controlled, gene transfer into other organisms such as bacteria in the human gut. The British Medical Association (B.M.A.) has said that the potential adverse effects have not been sufficiently investigated and strongly recommend caution. The United Nations� safety body, the Food and Agriculture Organisation, has warned that the failure to carry out full health checks on G.M. foods could lead to toxic reactions, allergies and increased resistance to antibiotics.
Experience has shown that genetically modified and organic foods cannot exist together because genetically modified crops will cross-pollinate with any others. Contamination of the whole food chain has already occurred within a couple of years. Biotechnology companies that are facing opposition in Europe are targeting less well resourced countries such as India in the hope that genetically modified organisms will spread irreversibly before public opinion has time to intervene.
In addition to avoiding the carcinogens that are increasing everywhere in our culture, we need a complex yet balanced mixture of specific minerals and nutrients to maintain ourselves in a healthy way. Recent government policy recommends we should eat a minimum of five or six fruit and vegetable types in any given day. The British Dietetic Association�s survey shows that the typical English diet includes only 3.3 portions of fruit and vegetables a day. The Scottish consume 2.7 portions a day while the Irish get only a measly 2.3. New research from Spain suggests that the quality of food and its method of preparation are as important as the quantity, since many of the nutrients in food are destroyed during industrial preparation and even in domestic cooking processes. In order to gain the breadth of specific minerals we need to maintain health using food, we need fresh, quality food types, cooked appropriately, or at least someone to sell us the right supplements!
The quick-fix mentality of Western culture has grown so used to pill-popping supplements that markets have responded to this. The American public uses increasing amounts of vitamin and mineral supplements. A survey conducted by the Federal Drugs Authority (F.D.A.) in America states that over 60 million Americans believe that vitamin supplements are essential for good health. The report also shows that about 20 million Americans believe that mineral deficiency is a primary cause of disease, including cancer, which shows what a good marketing job the supplements industry has done. Drug corporations are moving quickly into the supplements industry following market forces. Legislation in Europe is posed to ban many supplements (like herbs) that have a natural source, in preference to pharmaceutical alternatives. Even though appropriate dietary supplements are becoming recognised as a useful tool in maintaining health, legislation is fast catching up to regulate this field, showing a clear preference to synthetic chemicals.
In 1980 the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Dietary Allowances (who established R.D.A.�s or Recommended Daily Allowances) found no scientific evidence for nutritional benefits from vitamins, minerals or trace elements in dosages greater than those supplied by a balanced diet. Supplement industries with generous advertising budgets persuade many people that it is better to have �expensive urine� than be at risk to disease through lacking the right vitamin or mineral in a diet.
As one of the most common causes of lethargy is constipation, learn more about colon detox today
A lot of the diet plans these days center around the low carb diet plans. These low carb diet plans are considered by some diet fads, others consider it the new wave in healthy eating. Diets such as The New Atkins Diet
A diet is a combination of a balanced selection of foods designed for medical or nutritional reasons. A good diet should include all major food groups. The weight loss diets (with or without negative calorie foods) are made to reduce body fat and weight. Some of the popular weight loss diets are : Atkin's diet, cabbage soup diet, grapefruit diet, Hollywood diet, negative calorie foods diet, Pritikin diet,the South beach diet and the zone diet.
Everyones body is different and so different diets and fitness programs effect you diffently to the way they will effect others. Some people will lose weight and tone up more quickly on certain diets so its important to ensure the diet that you are on is just right for your body.
More on detox diets at http://www.diet-detox.info
Most of the studies to date have two things in common: None of the studies had participants with a mean age over 53 and none of the controlled studies lasted longer than 90 days.


Are Women Spared From Heart Disease?
People always have the impression that heart disease only affects men. Women are less likely to have heart disease. This is definitely a common misconception. Most women are not aware that heart disease is the leading killer of women in United States and many developed countries. But, the following unexpected incident experienced by a young lady may change your mind!
Being a non-smoker and very conscious of her eating habits, an active woman who has kickboxing classes twice a week to keep fit will never imagine that she could be at risk of heart disease. But in reality, she had fatal heart attack struck on her unexpectedly.
One evening, Mary (not her real name) felt giddy and breathless after her regular kickboxing workout. She did not suspect anything else so she proceeded to the back of the studio to have a rest. She could feel tightness in her chest and before she knew it, she went into cardiac arrest which is identified by sudden loss of heartbeat and cardiac function and nor normal breathing.
Fortunately, her husband was around and he suspected it could be due to something more serious than fatigue. So, he called for ambulance without any hesitation. Mary’s heart stopped on the way to hospital. The paramedics had to stop the ambulance along the road side to save her using the defibrillator. A group of cardiologists had been called in and were waiting for her at the hospital just in time to save her of heart attack.
During the emergency rescue, the cardiologists inserted one stent in the dominant vessel. Subsequently, she was transferred to another hospital for further monitoring. One month later, she was briefed by the doctors that she had to undergo another coronary stenting procedure. This time, 4 stents were inserted to unblock the other two major arteries to her heart. She joined the cardiac rehabilitation program offered by the hospital shortly after the procedure.
She knew that her father had a history of heart disease but she had never crossed her mind that she will be affected, especially at her age of 41. She thought heart disease would affect only people in their 50s or 60s. It is quite shocking!
Recalling what had happened, she felt she was very lucky because there was minimal damage to her heart muscles. If there were any delay in the rescuing process, she might not survive.
America's Most Trusted Doctor Reveals ... How to Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease - Without Drugs or Surgery. Read more about his confession at: http://www.howtopreventheartdisease.com/heart-disease-prevention-dr-robert-article.html
Feel free to use this article on your website or ezine as long as the following information about author/website is included.
Heart Disease Prevention - 8 Simple Ways You Can Do Immediately, Go to: http://www.howtopreventheartdisease.com

Friday, December 28, 2007