April Foods Day….
By Deborah Yaffee, CH, CN 
April is International Humor Month and I’d be a fool if I didn’t share some April Foods tips with you to bring in the month with a smirk on April 1st. Don’t be shy… go ahead and throw a huge dinner party. Serve the courses in reverse…starting with dessert, then the entrée, then the salad, and finally the appetizer. Sure, let them eat dessert with the butter knife and give them a spoon to attack the salad with. Don’t forget to put salt in the sugar bowl…oh, right, this is a nutrition article: remember to put the Celtic sea salt in the Succanat bowl. And how about some hearty tomato soup in the coffee cups?
How to Achieve Good Life and Fitness
Crizza Reyes
How will you know if you have a good life and a fit body? When you visit your doctor, do you ever bother to ask him that question? Good life and fitness are somehow synonymous, but not all people will agree to that. If you’re fit, then you’re bound to have a good life in terms of being healthy and not being prone to illnesses. If you have a good life, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re already fit, because chances are, you’re one of the many people living an unhealthy lifestyle.
So how will you find out if you have a good life and fitness altogether?
The Battle with Insomnia
Many of us experience the occasional night of sleeplessness without any consequences. It is when the occasional night here and there becomes a pattern of several nights in a row that you are faced with a sleeping problem. 
Repeated loss of sleep affects all areas of your life: The physical, the mental, and the emotional. Sleep deprivation can affect your overall daily performance and may even have an effect on your personality. If your insomnia continues for a long period of time it can cause problems in your relationships, compromise your productivity, and perhaps lead to other health problems.
It can become a relentless cycle of worry and anxiety as night after night you toss and turn, wondering when sleep will come, wondering what is wrong with you. Insomnia and sleeplessness generally fall into three categories:
- “Initial” insomnia: where you have difficulty in falling asleep, generally taking 30 minutes or longer to fall into a sleep state.
- “Middle” insomnia: where after falling asleep you have problems maintaining a sleep state, often remaining awake until the early morning hours.
- “Late” or “Terminal” insomnia: where you awake early in the morning after less than 6 hours of sleep.
Insomnia can be the symptom of some medical conditions that may require your doctor’s advice and medical care. In those cases the cause will be treated, not the insomnia.
If, however, your sleeplessness is due to a pattern of not sleeping, or because your body and mind find it difficult to settle into a state of relaxation necessary for sleep, this book offers you alternative choices for achieving healthy sleep without the use of prescription drugs.
- This book will teach you how to:
- Set the mood for a comfortable sleep atmosphere
- Prepare your body for relaxation
- Use colors to stimulate calmness and relaxation
- Understand the importance of exercise
- Use music and other relaxation techniques
- Relieve your mind of anxiety and worry
- Discover the importance of reducing stimulants
- Use herbal teas and warm drinks to promote relaxation
- Use herbs and vitamins to promote natural sleep
After reading this book you will have the information you need to turn your sleepless nights into restful ones, waking in the morning refreshed and alert rather than tired and anxious. All of the techniques and sleep-inducing aids in this book can be applied naturally and easily in your life. Get ready to embark on the journey of falling asleep naturally!
The entire book can be downloaded in PDF format by clicking on the link below.
A Guide on How to Improve Your Memory
Improve Memory
Many scientific experts will tell you that we just do not have the ability to recall facts, images or events perfectly as if we had a photographic memory. Unfortunately, although people may say that they do have a photographic memory; this simply isn’t true, as it does not exist.But do not worry as through this book we will show you the steps that you can take to help improve your memory. In fact, with a little time and a lot of practice, many people are able to gain the ability to memorize what seems to be an impossible amount of data and information.
Even if you just want to remember where you actually left your keys from the night before, then this book should help you.
You know that in order to gain muscular strength you need to exercise, well the same goes for actually increasing your ability to remember things. Your brain needs exercise, as well as being nurtured. So your diet needs to be good, and you need to look at taking up much healthier habits.
Unfortunately, because our brains are so complex, they need a lot of effort in order to get them in the best shape possible. There are a number of things that you can look at doing which will help you improve the capacity of the retrieval mechanism in your brain. But first, let us take a look at how it is we remember things.
To put it in simple terms, our memory is the activity carried out in our brain to recall information that we have gained through experiences in our lives. However, it is a complex process which involves various parts of the brain, and serves us all in very different ways. It can either be short term or long term.
With short term memory, you will find that your brain is able to store certain pieces of information for only a few seconds or minutes. Unfortunately, the problem with this memory is that it is very fragile, and if it were to retain all the information it receives, your brain would soon be telling you that it has no more space. Plus, each person’s short term memory is only meant to hold around 7 items at any one time, and this is why, although you may be able to remember a new telephone number for a few minutes, you will often find that when you are going to buy something online with your credit card, you need it beside you, because it actually has more than 7 items on it.
Long term memory is all to do with the information that you are making an effort to retain, both consciously and unconsciously. This is because the information may be particularly personal and meaningful to you, or it is because it is something that you need in order to complete a task or to take some exams. However, there is some information that you retain in your long term memory which will need you to make a conscious effort in order to recall it, such as a personal memory which relates to a specific experience or time in your life, known as episodic memory, or it may be some factual data that you need to recall, and this is known as semantic memory.
The other type of long term memory that we all have is known as procedural memory, and this is where your memory will recall skills or routines that you use so that you do not have to consciously need to recall them.
There are certain parts of the brain which are especially important in relation to not only the formation, but also the retention of memories, and these are as shown below.
Hippocampus - This is found deep in the human brain, and plays the largest role in the brain processing information as memory.
Amygdala - This is an almond shaped piece of the brain which is found close to the hippocampus and processes a person’s emotions. This particular area helps to imprint memories into the brain which involve emotions.
Cerebral Cortex - This is the outer layer of the human brain, and is where most long term memory is stored in various different sectors. It will all depend on where particular memories are stored, as to what process the information involves. So language will be stored in one sector, sensory input into another, problem solving into yet another sector and so on.
As well as the above, the memory also involves communication occurring between the brains various network of neurons and cells (millions of which are activated by chemicals in the brain known as neurotransmitters).
Buying Salmon - Health and Value Secrets!
Filed under: Food & Cooking Tips, Healthy Lifestyle
by Chef MartyYaffee, Certified Culinary Educator
Martin Yaffee
It’s a dilemma! Even when cash is loose and flowing, the cost of wild salmon has always made salmon seem like an extravagance, but with a tight economy, it seems to look even more beyond our fiscal reach. Is it worth it? And if not, what are the alternatives?
Salmon is truly “the king” of “the good fats” fare. It’s one of those foods that has no equal in providing us with those omega-3 fatty acids that our bodies absolutely can’t do without in our continuous production of new cells. Our body literally makes billions of new cells every day and for them to be created healthy, we need an adequate supply of omega-3 fatty acids which our cell membranes are actually made of. These particular healthy fats come from oily fish like salmon, sardines and tuna.
What’s Green, Sometimes Irish and Helps You Lose Weight?
By Deborah Yaffee, CH, CN
If you guessed tea, you’d be right!
Researcher Dr. Carrie Ruxton, of King’s College in London, has shown that tea just might be even healthier for your body than plain water is. Tea contains many antioxidants that may help to protect against heart disease, stroke, cancer, and other compounds that help protect the brain and prevent bacterial infections. Dr. Ruxton found that it takes about 4 cups per day to get the full health benefits of tea.
The Better & Heathy You
Chapter 1: Introduction about Healthy Lifestyle
A healthier, happier and more successful you
The Better and Healthy You
You can become a healthier, happier and more successful person by making a few simple changes to your lifestyle. You will have to make changes to the overall you, not just change the amount of exercise you do or your diet. The secret to achieving happiness and a healthier you is to balance your body and mind in harmony, it is only when we are balanced in physical health, mental and spiritual that we are truly healthy.
If we are healthy then we are happier and can reach success more easily in life, here are some ways you can bring back harmony and balance to your life
Exercise is an essential part, it helps to tone our body, keep our heart and lungs healthy and detoxifies. Exercise can be anything from more vigorous routines such as aerobics to simply walking, pick your favorite activity and set aside a specific time of day and commit yourself to devoting a half-hour per day towards getting your body back into shape.
Eating right is the next essential step to maintaining a well-balanced life; our bodies need the right amount of vitamins, nutrients and minerals to work at its best. Making changes to our diet is easy, keep away from fast foods which contain a lot of saturated fats and sugar and start including more whole grains, chicken, fish, plenty of green vegetables and try to eat fresh fruit instead of juice when available.
Along with making changes to your diet you should include supplements such as vitamins, nutrients and minerals. Modern farming methods strip many of our foods of the minerals our bodies require and now just provide us with the basic nutrients. Due to this we might be lacking in certain minerals and vitamins, by supplementing your diet with vitamin and mineral supplements we can ensure we still get all the vital minerals, nutrients and vitamins we need in our daily diet.
Reducing the amount of stress we have in our life plays an important part in how we are able to cope with it. Stress can do much damage to our body and mind and has been linked with “burnout”, fatigue, sleep problems, depression and it lowers our immune system. Learning techniques on how to cope with stress and worry are essential to keeping yourself balanced and full of energy. There are a wide variety of techniques from simple breathing exercises which can be done anywhere, at anytime, to yoga which is a full system for relaxation and de-stressing to meditation. There are many books, DVDS and CDS available on the subject or there are courses you can attend.
Lastly but by no means the least important is keeping life fun, doing something which you enjoy doing and makes you feel relaxed and happy each day. No you are not being selfish by taking time out each day just for yourself, this time is essential. It is just as important as exercising, eating right and reducing stress, your time could be spent doing a hobby or pastime that you enjoy, sitting quietly and reading, taking a hot bubble bath while listening to your favorite music or spending quality time with your family or friends. It can be anything as long as it’s something you like to do and enjoying doing.
12 Tips for better health
10 Ways to Help Your Teen Lose Weight
Today, teenage obesity is a growing problem, and there is plenty you can do as a parent in order to help your teen with any weight problems they may have.Although there is no magic formula to helping your teen lose weight, the real key to succeeding is by helping them to lead a healthier kind of life that they can then carry on into adulthood.
1. Talk to your Teen
If your teen is overweight, then they are probably concerned about it too. Aside from there being long term health issues involved, such as high blood pressure or they may suffer from diabetes, there are also the social and emotional issues involved as well.
Offer your teen the support and gentle understanding that they are looking for, and help them to take control of the problem.
2. Unrealistic Images
For many teenage girls, their weight and how they look can be a very delicate matter, and you should remind them there is no perfect body out there. Remind them that, what might the right weight for one person, is not the right weight for somebody else.
Instead of talking to them about fat or thin, encourage your teenage to focus on behaviors which will promote a much healthier weight. If you want to, talk to your family doctor, and he will help to set realistic goals for your teenager with regard to body mass index, and the weight they should be based on their age, height and general health.
How To Free Yourself From Bad Habits
By Crizza Reyes
Is it possible to free yourself from bad habits? Can people really change in any meaningful and lost-lasting way? Can I change myself? The answer to each of these questions is “yes.” But you can’t change in 24 hours, as some programs and self-help books promise.
My research, as well as my experience and common sense, tell me that anyone can change, but at the same time, I know that people need a compelling reason to change.
What does it mean to change? To change means to establish new priorities—to choose a behavior that’s different from the one we’re using now. David Lucero is stuck on the street, waiting for a solution that doesn’t exist. When a real solution is right in front of his nose, he can’t see it.