There is a new beverage gaining popularity called Drank. Not content with following the herd of energy drinks, Drank is the antithesis of such products, claiming to be “the anti-energy drink,” whose slogan is “slow your roll.” This purple carbonated beverage is infused with melatonin, valerian root, and rose hips which give it a sedating effect.
… What the heck is this stuff? On its purple cans, Drank calls itself an “Extreme Relaxation Beverage.” The drink’s motto: “Slow your roll.” Bianchi, a former financier who started Innovative Beverage seven years ago and introduced Drank in early 2008, pitches his product as an alternative to alcohol. “We wanted to give the people on the go something to drink during the day which would help them relax, calm down, and not have to keep an old bottle of gin in their drawer,” says Bianchi. You can also take a sip before bedtime and perhaps save yourself some cash the next day. “Something like this gives you a better night’s sleep,” says Bianchi. “You’re going to wake up feeling better rested and less apt to get a double venti-venti-venti at Starbucks, then wash it down with a Red Bull just to get through your day.” Read more
Alison Johnson lists some foods and drinks to avoid if you’re trying to deflate your tummy.
Extra fluid and gas can puff up even the fittest among us. Beyond eating right and exercising, here are some foods and drinks to avoid if you’re trying to deflate your tummy:
Salty foods. Water molecules are attracted to sodium, so you’ll retain more fluids if you pour on the seasoning or eat lots of processed foods.
Certain produce. Broccoli, cabbage, citrus fruits, onions and peppers are top examples of healthy foods that contain difficult-to-digest sugars, which can cause gas. Even if you’re susceptible, though, don’t stop eating them; try limiting servings to a half cup at a time. Cooking raw veggies also can help.
Soda. Not surprisingly, the carbonation in soft drinks can cause bloat. Alcohol, coffee and some fruit juices also can cause intestinal irritation and swelling, so stick mainly to water and unsweetened teas that will help your body flush out waste products. Read more
Brushing and flossing is not only good for your teeth and gums, but also for your heart and mind.
Brushing and flossing your teeth daily does more than help prevent cavities, periodontal (gum) disease and bad breath. According to the American Academy of Periodontology, having healthy teeth and gums also lowers your risk of heart disease and stroke. And now researchers at West Virginia University have found a clean mouth may also do something else — prevent memory loss. Read more
Garlic isn’t just for high blood pressure. It can also ease the pain of earaches.
An earache is an awful thing to experience. Everyone has experienced one at some time of his/her life. It was probably an event so traumatic, that s/he is bound to remember. An earache can be caused by a number of things. These could include infections, allergies, or even situations with your teeth. Although much more common in children, the many adults that have experienced an earache, say it was the worst pain they have ever experienced. While looking for natural remedies to help ease the pain naturally, consider these.
Use garlic. Garlic has been known to help a painful earache. Read more
Worried about dangerous statin drugs? Red yeast rice may lower cholesterol.
Two years ago, Chuck Jones of Yardley had high cholesterol, but his medicine caused severe leg cramps that routinely ruined his sleep.
Since participating in a clinical trial of red yeast rice, a supplement taken in China for centuries, Jones has gotten his cholesterol under control.
And within a week of starting the rice, “the pain was gone,” the 59-year-old chemist said.
For Jones and most other “statin-intolerant” patients, red yeast rice combined with a heart-healthy diet and exercise helped lower bad “LDL” cholesterol, concludes a small study published today in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Read more
An older gentleman tells The People’s Pharmacy how he spiced up his sex life with cinnamon and ginko biloba.
You recently ran a letter from a fellow who was disappointed in the herbal sex pills he bought. I, too, am an older gentleman who has faced challenges in the virility department. I’d tried maca, horny goat weed and other herbs with few real, sustained results.
I also had started putting cinnamon on my cereal to help lower my high cholesterol. I noticed on days that I ate this breakfast I was much more likely to be successful than on days that I didn’t.
Then a lady friend of mine suggested Ginkgo biloba. I’d never heard of using ginkgo for male potency before, but let me tell you the difference for me has been significant and sustained. It now is easier to get and maintain a state of readiness than it has been for years. I can be ready again in 20 minutes as opposed to 24 hours. I take one tablet after breakfast and one after dinner, so spontaneity is no problem. I hope this helps other readers as much as it has helped me.Read more
Want more energy, better sleep, and a clearer mind? It may be time to clean your organs, says Margaret Durst.
Cleansing the body periodically is one of the tenets of natural health. The purpose of cleansing is to assist the body in eliminating harmful toxins which helps the body run more effectively and efficiently which translates to better health. As adults, 80% of our energy goes towards eliminating byproducts of normal metabolism from our bodies. Our bodies are actually very good at eliminating things that we don’t need; however, our modern diets with lots of refined and processed foods tend overwhelm our bodies and clog not just our arteries, but our livers, colons, lymph system and kidneys as well.
From a naturopathic perspective, most problems with health arise either from deficiency or congestion. Congestion involves both overconsumption and reduced eliminative function. Many of our acute and chronic diseases result from clogged tissues, suffocated cells, and subsequent loss of vital energy. Frequent colds and flus, cardiovascular disease, arthritis and allergies are all consequences of congestive disorders. Read more
Even a natural remedies guru can come down with swine flu. Sara Altshul’s experience is a reminder that natural remedies don’t work for everyone all the time - though they’re safer and less expensive than pharmaceuticals when they don’t.
When I wrote about ways to prevent the H1N1 flu virus last month, I never suspected I might actually catch the bug myself. I’m healthy, and I’m committed to my three-times-a-week gym workouts; plus, I eat well, and I take vitamins. So when, a few days ago, I started feeling flu-ish, I was pretty surprised.
Immediately, I took regular doses of echinacea, a known antiviral herb, and Sambucol, a black elderberry extract that’s been proven to kill 10 different strains of flu virus (though I don’t know whether H1N1 is one of them). I did not, however, order the two different Chinese herbs recommended by Martha Howard, MD, the director of Wellness Associates of Chicago, Center for Advanced Integrative Environmental Medicine, that I wrote about in my flu blog.
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I was pretty disappointed when neither the echinacea nor the black elderberry staved off my symptoms, which came on with a bang: fever of 103, pounding headache—in fact, my entire body aches, a dramatic cough, no appetite, and extreme fatigue. Read more
Master Tonic, which contains garlic, horseradish, ginger, cayenne peppers, and onion in an apple cider vinegar base. fixes colds, flu, and respiratory problems. It’s also an immune booster, anti-allergy, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, anti anything that can hurt you. Even though “HealthyHerbalist” stole the formula from either Dr. Schulze or Sam Biser (see formula on Biser’s website), the directions for making it are good.
The function of fat is to protect your body, but when our body is overloaded with “stuff” it can’t handle, it must put it somewhere, so it stores it as fat. Margaret Durst says there are a couple of diets that deal with detoxifying the body while stopping the onslaught of new “stuff,” and they can really melt that toxic fat right off your body.
Fat – that horrible stuff that hangs in all the wrong places on your body. I’m not even sure that there is a “right” place for the stuff. Americans in general have been getting fat for some time and it seems to have gotten worse lately. Why?
The function of fat on the body is to protect us. We need it for padding, but it also functions like a pocket or purse. Our bodies get overloaded with the wrong kinds of food, with toxins from the chemicals that are used to process our food and from environmental toxins such as cleaning products, pesticides and synthetic fragrances.
When our body is overloaded with “stuff” it can’t handle, it must put it somewhere – so it stores it as fat. The body means to come back and deal with the “stuff” later, but we feed it more bad food and chemicals and so it never catches up, but continues to stash the “stuff”.
Most people with excess body fat are very toxic and tend to have congested or sluggish livers. The liver is one of our major organs of detoxification. When it gets overwhelmed, our metabolism gets slow, we gain more weight and we have difficulty losing weight.
The good news is that there are a couple of diets that deal with detoxifying the body while stopping the onslaught of new “stuff”. These can really melt that toxic fat right off your body. Read more
Changes in your diet and and exercise could prevent 25 percent of cancer, according to a new report.
Nearly a quarter of cancers could be prevented by simple changes in diet and exercise, including up to 70 percent of cases of certain varieties, according to a report issued by the World Cancer Research Fund.
“The evidence linking diet, physical activity, obesity and cancer has become stronger over the last decade and this report can play a part in people adopting healthier lifestyles,” said Mike Richards, the United Kingdom’s National Clinical Director for Cancer. “After not smoking, it is clear that diet and weight are the most important things people can do to reduce their risk.” Read more
The discomfort of vaginal dryness is experienced by almost every woman at some point in life. A dry vagina can feel itchy and burning, and can take the joy out of sex. Fortunately, there are natural remedies can give relief from this painful and irritating condition.
There are some common problems that plague every woman at some stage in her life and vaginal dryness is one of them. This condition can make a woman nervous and irritating. The causes for vaginal dryness are many, but the main cause is decrease in the level of Oestrogen hormone. Now even when this condition troubles them, very few women go for medical treatments and consult doctors. Many women consider discussing this condition as a taboo and hence prefer to suffer than speak. Therefore, I am presenting some herbal remedies for curing vaginal dryness which can be implemented easily to get relief from this painful and irritating condition. Read more
What’s the best kept diet secret? The right soups tame the dieter’s worst enemy: hunger.
Imagine a typical lunchtime meal – say, chicken and vegetables with a glass of water.
If you eat the food and drink the water, you will feel full for a couple of hours before hunger kicks in. But if you blend the food with the water – to make soup – you will stay hunger-free for much longer, and less likely to snack through the afternoon.
How can blending the food into soup make such a difference? The answer lies in the stomach. Scientists have used ultrasound and MRI scans of people’s stomachs to investigate what happens after eating solid-food-plus-water meals compared with the same food made into soup. Read more
Sunburn is better avoided than treated, but here are five food and five herbal remedies to soothe the pain, inflammation, redness, and discomfort if it happens.
When summer arrives, sunburn often isn’t far behind. Perhaps you forget to put on your sunscreen, or you don’t put enough on, or maybe you’re someone who doesn’t worry about sunburn. Until it happens.
Here are five food and five herbal remedies to soothe the pain, inflammation, redness, and discomfort of sunburn. While you are treating your sunburn, remember to keep hydrated with cool water or herbal teas. Read more
Not everyone is aware that the “scientific consensus” that fat is bad for you was wrong. Some people - particularly women - are still trying to lose weight by limiting fats, which leads to mood problems like depression.
The subject of dietary fat is always one of controversy - fat is good, fat is bad. Eat this fat, not that fat. And it always seems that information is changing and new opinions contradict the old. So what is true? Most people still assume that when it comes down to it, the less fat the better. It’s literally a sad misconception, since research is showing low-fat diets are behind mood problems like depression. Read more
While a little wine may help you live longer, heavy alcohol consumption increases the risk of dementia later in life, especially for women.
Heavy drinking may be to blame for one in four cases of dementia. Doctors have linked alcohol intake to the development of the brain-wasting condition in between 10 and 24% of the estimated 700,000 people in the UK with the disease.
They warn that binge drinking and increased consumption are likely to produce an epidemic of alcohol-related brain damage in the future, which could see drinkers starting to experience serious memory problems in their 40s.
Women who drink a lot are at much greater risk than men of suffering problems with their cognitive functions, because they are physiologically less well able to cope with alcohol’s effects. Read more
This video demonstrates a stretch that targets the hips, which in turn increases circulation and vibrancy throughout your whole body. You can participate by sitting in a chair, wearing whatever you happen to be wearing (although if that includes a belt, loosen it slightly first to breathe and move more easily).
Food is the ultimate natural remedy since we have to eat. Here’s a list of the best and worst foods to eat to for performing various mental tasks.
If you want to make the right decisions in confusing times—Time to refinance? Explore a different career? Root for the singing spinster or the 12-year-old?—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.
On our new Eat This, Not That! Web site, we rounded up the best foods to munch on when you need a mental boost—and found studies that show, in fact, that 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! Read more
A new study finds that drinking a little wine each day boosts men’s life expectancy by five years.
Men who regularly drank up to a half a glass of wine each day boosted their life expectancy by five years, Dutch researchers report.
Light, long-term alcohol consumption of all types of beverages, whether wine, spirits or beer, increased life by 2.5 years among men compared with abstention, the researchers found. By “light,” they meant up to 20 grams, or about 0.7 ounces a day. Read more
“Recipes for Health” author Martha Rose Sulman lists twelve foods every pantry should have, so you will always be able to throw together a good, healthful meal.
In her online series for The New York Times, “Recipes for Health” author Martha Rose Shulman offers delicious foods that also reflect scientific thinking about health. Last week she responded to dozens of reader questions about healthy eating, “Recipes for Health: Talk to the Chef.”
Several readers asked about the best foods to stock the pantry. Today, Ms. Shulman offers 12 foods she always tries to keep on hand. “With these ingredients, I know I will always be able to throw together a healthy, good meal,” she says. Read more
Which are better for anxiety and depression: antidepressant drugs or sunflower seeds? Since studies show that antidepressant drugs don’t work, why not give tasty, nutritious sunflower seeds a try?
Sunflowers are the earthly representation of the sun. They have such an affinity for the life giving force that they twist on their stems so their faces can bask in sunlight all through the day. Photons from the sun are stored in the DNA of the sunflower, making its seed resonate with the photons in human cells. This resonance is good for mind as well as body, and makes sunflowers one of the top foods for fighting depression.
Key nutrients raise serotonin levels and boost nerve function naturally
If we believe that we are what we eat, it is clear that nerves depend on what they are fed. While all of the wealth of nutrients found in sunflower seeds contributes to nerve health, sunflower seeds are particularly rich in key nutrients that have a direct impact on alleviating depression. Their high levels of magnesium counterbalance calcium, helping to regulate nerve function. And the substantial content of the amino acid, tryptophan, enhances serotonin production and thus improves mood. Read more
Many people are losing their health insurance due to unemployment. Lila Rajiva tells what to do if it happens to you.
I stopped carrying health insurance over five years ago for many reasons that I won’t get into here. It wasn’t a big decision, because I’d done without it for a couple of years when I was between jobs
In any case, when I had it, it was never much use. I was misdiagnosed on a couple of things and ended up having to treat myself. I got to resenting the way some doctors never really listened. I bridled at having my questions treated like the uninformed babble of a simpleton.
And since I had to pay most of the bill for “maintenance” items like vision and dentistry anyway, dropping insurance altogether seemed like the logical thing to do.
That doesn’t mean it will work for you, though. Especially if you have an on-going illness, be sure to do your own due diligence.
Still, if you’re a relatively healthy person, if you’re cash-strapped or need to pay off a debt, or if you want to strike out in a new direction on your own, you might find my tips useful in helping you go insurance-free for a couple of years.
Or even longer.
You’ll worry less about doing without those “bennies” you’ve got used to for so long. And the less worried you are over going it alone, the more you’ll be able to stand up to the big lie of modern life – that people need the government to survive.
They don’t.
Here are ten simple things you can do to prove that to yourself: Read more
What helps you lose more weight: focusing solely on diets or working out?
Everyone likes to attack weight loss differently. There are those who like to combine exercise and nutrition; others change their eating only; and some would rather hit the gym and run rather than give up their favorite foods.
Weight loss is possible by watching what you eat exclusively, but the research says that any successful long-term weight loss program includes a strong exercise component. In fact people who diet often regain all the weight they’ve lost and then some. Not to mention that constantly restricting food can be irritating, leaving us feeling grumpy, tired and hungry all of the time.
