Health and Beauty tips

Yoga, which is generally translated from the Sanskrit word yukti as “union” or “integration”, is an ancient system of practices. Developed in India thousand of years ago as a physical discipline and meditation, yoga aimed at integrating mind, body, and spirit to enhance health and well-being.

There are many different forms of yoga, with Hatha yoga being the most widely known form of yoga in the West, and the most closely allied with Ayurvedic medicine. It includes three practices all of which are highly beneficial for health. They are:

1. Asanas: Yoga asanas include different physical postures and exercises. They help to align the spine and head, improve blood flow, give a state of relaxation, energize glands and organs, and improve well-being. Some asanas have been used to treat specific medical conditions.

2. Pranayama: Pranayama is the control of breath. Pranayama exercises often emphasize slow, deep abdominal breathing.

3. Meditation: Meditative practices induce a relaxed state in the autonomic nervous system, which has a beneficial effect on other systems, including the immune system.

Yoga has proven effective in treating a variety of medical conditions, including heart disease, high blood pressure, breathing problems, asthma, stress-related illnesses, and mood disorders. Yoga is also beneficial in the management of pain, for improving respiratory endurance and efficiency of breathing, for muscle strength, and for motor control. It has shown the potential for helping to prevent musculoskeletal problems and is beneficial for people with arthritis and those recovering from bone fractures.

Yoga programs help to manage and reverse heart disease by influencing blood pressure, anxiety, and negative reaction to stress. Yoga may be particularly beneficial for older adults or individuals with disabilities. Beyond their physical and mental benefits, the practices of asanas, pranayama, and meditation contribute to an integration of mind, body, and spirit.

A great way to learn yoga is taking yoga classes, where you can learn the basic asanas from an expert instructor. However, real breakthroughs come from practicing yoga on your own, when you can listen to yourself instead of someone else telling you what to do. Give yoga a try and enjoy all the benefits it can give to your mind, body and spirit!

Osteoporosis means porous bones. That means people diagnosed with osteoporosis run a greater risk for bone breaks and fractures. Osteoporosis is often referred to as “silent disease” because there are virtually no symptoms of bone loss. The best way to fight osteoporosis is to strengthen up bones. Here are some tips on how to do that and better your overall health at the same time:

Exercise Regularly. Exercise is known to be one of the most important things you can do to fight osteoporosis. The best exercises in this respect are walking, jogging, dancing, aerobics and strength training.

Get Some Sun. 15 minutes of exposure on the hands, lower arms, and face (without sunscreen) is enough to allow your body to produce and store the necessary amount of vitamin D.

Maintain Healthy Weight. Being underweight puts you at higher risk for a deficiency of calcium, which can affect your bones’ health. On the other hand, being overweight is no guarantee of bone health either, because it tends to discourage regular bone-building physical activity.

Stop Smoking. Smokers absorb less calcium from foods. In addition, female smokers have less estrogen, which helps protect bones, and tend to go through menopause earlier.

Eat more soy products or take a supplement that contains soy isoflavones to balance estrogen levels.

Limit the Alcohol Intake. Alcohol interferes with the body’s ability to absorb calcium.
Consume Less Salt. Excess salt intake and taking diuretics increase the amount of calcium your body loses through urine.

Forget the Phosphorus Myth. There is a widespread fallacy that the phosphorus in carbonated drinks can deteriorate your bones. In fact, too much phosphorus can hinder your body’s absorption of calcium, but the amount of phosphorus in soda is not sufficient to cause any problems.

A handful of sesame seeds had every morning may also help osteoporosis.
Another home remedy for osteoporosis is calcium- rich almond milk.

Cholesterol can build up along the artery walls. When too much builds up, it can block the arteries that supply blood to your heart or to your brain. This can cause a heart attack or stroke. That’s why managing high cholesterol is vitally important.

The only way to get all the vitamins that may lower cholesterol is a healthy, balanced diet low in saturated fat, trans fat, and cholesterol, combined with regular physical activity and losing excess weight. Here are some home remedies to win a complex battle against cholesterol:

Regularly intake garlic cloves will help reducing cholesterol levels.

Ishabgul - The herb ishabgul has been proved beneficial in the treatment of high cholesterol level. The oil of the ishabgul seeds should be taken by those suffering from high blood cholesterol to cure the condition fast.

A mixture of onion juice with honey reduces cholesterol levels and also works as a tonic for nervous system. It cleans blood, helps digestive system, cures insomnia and regulates the heart action.

Sunflower seeds are helpful in reducing cholesterol deposits from the walls of the arteries.

Some studies prove the effectiveness of antioxidants in preventing and combating heart diseases:

• Vitamin C, vitamin E, and beta-carotene are the vitamin antioxidants.
• Oranges, grapefruit, strawberries, green peppers, broccoli, and tomatoes are rich in vitamin C.
• Carrots, apricots, squash, spinach, and other green leafy or yellow-orange fruits and vegetables are rich sources of beta-carotene.
• Vitamin E is found in dark-green leafy vegetables, nuts, and vegetable oils.
• The mineral selenium acts as an antioxidant when combined with special proteins.
• Red wine is also believed to contain an antioxidant that may partly explain lower rates of heart disease among people in some Mediterranean countries.

Make permanent changes to your lifestyle. Commitment to lowering blood cholesterol and improving heart health requires a change of daily habits for the long period of time. No “yo-yo” dieting!

Avoid saturated fats. The more saturated fat, found in dairy products made from whole milk, the red meat, the skin of poultry, and certain oils commonly used in commercially prepared baked goods in your diet, the more cholesterol in your blood. Be sure to check product labels to choose the foods with the lowest saturated-fat content.

Avoid trans fats. Trans fatty acids are found in processed baked goods, margarines, and many other foods. Check margarine labels and buy trans-fat-free ones and avoid snack foods with partially hydrogenated fats.

A hearing aid is a small electronic device that you wear in or behind your ear. It makes some sounds louder so that a person with hearing loss can listen, communicate, and participate more fully in daily activities. A hearing aid can help people hear more in both quiet and noisy situations. For reaping the full advantage of hearing aids, it is very important that you pick them carefully. In this article, we have provided information on the types of hearing aids and how to choose the best one amongst them.

How to Choose Hearing Aids

• First of all, get a checkup done to make sure that your hearing loss is permanent and you need to get hearing aid for the same. At times, hearing loss is because of a temporary problem and can be completely cured.
• Visit a good audiologist and check out the various types and styles of hearing aids available from him. From those, take your pick.
• Now, decide on the style of hearing aid that you want. Usually, the smaller a hearing aid is, the less powerful it will be and the more it will cost. In other words, the shortest hearing aids are recommended only if the hearing loss is mild. On the other hand, the ‘behind the ear’ hearing aid is good for all types of hearing loss and all the age groups.
• After this, make a decision as to what technology of hearing aid will be most suited to you.
• After you have decided on the type and style of hearing aid that will suit you the best, it is the time to buy it. Make sure to get a trial period for the aid and arrive on the price of trial beforehand.

Types of Hearing Aids

• Completely in the Canal: these aids fit into the ear canal. Because they are small, canal aids may be difficult for a person to adjust and remove. They usually are not recommended for young children or for people with severe to profound hearing loss because their reduced size limits their power and volume.
• In the Canal: This hearing aid fits only partly inside the ear canal and party sticks outside. It is suited for people suffering from mild to moderately severe hearing loss. Some of the ‘In the Canal’ hearing aids come with a remote control too.
• In the Ear: This hearing aid is totally visible to the eye, as it is mainly placed over the bowl-shaped area of the outer ear. Such units often the most comfortable, the least expensive and the easiest to operate. They are the best choice for those with mild to severe hearing loss.
• Behind the Ear: Behind-The-Ear hearing aids are the largest hearing aids, often the least expensive, and they are very reliable. BTEs rest on the back of your ear. They are connected to the ear canal via custom-made plastic tubing; the earmold. The earmold is usually custom made from an ear impression to perfectly replicate the size and shape of your ear.

So, now you can make an informed choice and improve the quality of your life and enjoy all its niceties to the full!

Most teenagers don’t plan to get pregnant, but many do. Teen pregnancies carry extra health risks to the mother and the infant. Often, teenagers don’t receive timely prenatal care, and they have a higher risk for pregnancy-related diseases and its complications.
Teenage births pose considerable health risk for the baby including the following:

• Teenage mothers sometimes fail to gain adequate weight during their pregancy, leading to low birth weight, which can lead to infant and childhood disorders or infant mortality. Low-birthweight babies are more likely to have underdeveloped, which can result in a variety of complications.
• Teenage mothers tend to have unhealthier diet and disregard recommended daily multivitamins. They are also more likely to smoke, drink, or take drugs during pregnancy, which can cause health problems for the baby.
• Teenage mothers are less likely to seek regular prenatal care which is essential for monitoring the growth of the fetus and advising the mother on nutrition and ensuring a healthy pregnancy.
• In case of unprotected sex, the chances of contracting sexually transmitted diseases are really high. These diseases then get contracted to a baby.

In addition to increased health risks, children born to teenage mothers are more likely to experience social, emotional, and other problems such as abuse and neglect, lack of proper nutrition, health care, and attention.

Teenage mothers are more likely to drop out of school and only about one-third obtain a high school diploma. In the United States, the annual cost of teenage pregnancies from lost tax revenues, public assistance, child health care, and foster care, is estimated to be about $7 billion.

We all know a popular saying that a pregnant woman is eating for two. The latest research has proved that actually that a woman should be eating for two before she becomes pregnant. Certainly it is all about quality, not quantity of the foods taken in.
The studies have proved that many aspects of the fetus’s normal development depend greatly on the mother’s nutrition before pregnancy, one of the most crucial links being that between the future mother’s intake of folic acid and neural-tube birth defects in her child.
According to research, the risk of neural-tube birth defects can be substantially decreased by eating a healthier diet and increasing their intake of folic acid. By the way, this treatment can be followed before and during pregnancy.

Undoubtedly, a woman’s diet and lifestyle during pregnancy greatly affect the likelihood of having a healthy baby, too. Adequate weight gain during pregnancy is vital for reducing the chance of having a low-birth-weight infant, and avoiding toxic substances (alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and other illegal drugs), and some legal medications during pregnancy also increases the chances of delivering a healthy baby.

Studies have shown that by getting enough of the folic acid in the month before conception and during the first several weeks of pregnancy, a woman can help prevent neural-tube defects (or NTDs) in her baby. NTDs are proved to be the only birth defects to be so directly linked to the mother’s nutritional status. Unfortunately, pregnant women usually start taking prenatal supplements that provide folic acid when it makes no sense as all NTDs occur in the first four weeks after conception. After that, spinal-cord development is complete.
So, it’s clear: Any woman who might become pregnant should get plenty of folic acid through foods and supplements. Indeed, the U.S. Public Health Service recommends that any woman capable of becoming pregnant consume 0.4 milligram (400 micrograms) of folic acid a day.

Besides multivitamins or prenatal vitamins, food sources of folic acid include fortified breads, cereals, rice, pasta, and other grain foods. Good food sources of folate include leafy green vegetables (romaine, endive lettuce and mustard greens), broccoli, legumes (dried beans and peas and lentils), and orange juice. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) now mandates that manufacturers add folic acid to enriched grain products (breads, flour, cereals, crackers, cornmeal, rice, pasta), just as they add other B vitamins and iron. Some breakfast cereals are fortified with the full 400 micrograms of folic acid per serving.

It should be mentioned, that folate is in fact the naturally occurring form of B vitamin; folic acid is the synthetic form found in supplements and fortified foods. Folic acid is more easily absorbed by the body. Since your body requires B vitamin in either form for proper protein metabolism, for cell division, and to make the red blood cells that carry life-giving oxygen throughout your body, it’s vitally important for men, women, and children to get plenty of folate from their diet.

Infertility is usually defined as inability to conceive after at least one year of trying. About one-third of cases is infertility due to female factors. In another one third of cases, infertility is caused by male factors. The remaining cases are provoked by a combination of male and female factors or by unknown factors.

The most common cause of infertility in women is ovulation disorders. The first line of treatment for most women with ovulation problems is through taking fertility drugs as(Clomid, Femara, Gonadotropins).

If the problems are found with the fallopian tubes microsurgery may be required to open the blockage or a procedure in which an egg is removed and replaced beyond the point of the obstruction, where it may be fertilized normally.

Female hormone estrogen which stimulates the increased production of mucus necessary to transport the sperm may be helpful if a cervix prevents the survival of sperm. Sometimes sperm can be transported directly into the uterus, bypassing the cervix completely.

Endometriosis can be treated by the surgical removal of displaced tissue and the scar tissue that has formed around it.

Hormonal imbalances can be corrected with hormone therapy.

If there’s a problem with the woman’s cervical mucus, or in cases of unexplained infertility artificial insemination, also known as IUI (intrauterine insemination), may be used. This procedure entails placing specially washed sperm directly into the uterus.

Test-tube, or in vitro, fertilization starts with stimulation of ovaries by fertility drugs. If everything goes well at that stage, those eggs are removed from the woman’s ovary and then placed together with sperm in a special cocktail of nutrients, and left alone until fertilization takes place. Once the eggs have been fertilized, one to three embryos are placed inside the woman’s uterus, where they will continue to grow. This technique is used primarily in women whose blocked fallopian tubes cannot be opened by surgery.

Another technique used to treat infertility is called gamete intrafallopian transfer (GIFT). In this procedure, the egg and sperm are not fertilized outside the body. Instead, after treatment with fertility drugs, they are placed together into one of the woman’s fallopian tubes, where fertilization may then take place normally. GIFT is a complicated and expensive procedure that is recommended only to couples who have been unable to conceive using standard treatments for infertility.

With all positive results, it should be noted, that although infertility treatment methods are advancing rapidly, about 15 percent of all female infertility problems remain undiagnosed and therefore untreatable.

Hysterectomy is the surgical removal of the uterus (womb), which causes the termination of menstruation and the inability to bear children. Now it ranks as the second most common surgery among women.

A hysterectomy may be total, radical or partial. Total hysterectomy involves total removal of the uterus and the cervix. Partial hysterectomy refers to removal of the upper part of the uterus, while leaving the cervix in place. Radical hysterectomy is an extreme surgery which involves the removal of the uterus, cervix, the upper part of the vagina, as well as some surrounding tissues. The most common illnesses hysterectomies are used to treat are fibroids (benign growths in the uterus), endometriosis, gynecologic cancers, uterine prolapse (falling of the uterus out of its normal position), persistent vaginal bleeding and chronic pelvic pain.

Removal of the uterus can be performed through an abdominal incision or through the vagina.
To conduct abdominal hysterectomy the doctor makes a cut in the belly, either across the bikini line or straight up and down to reach your uterus. The advantage of entering through the abdomen is that the surgeon has a better angle to view reproductive organs and more room to operate. This type of hysterectomy is the most common and is generally done when cancer might be present or when severe endometriosis, or a very large uterus makes the uterus hard to remove. The downside is that this type of surgery usually involves more visible scarring than a vaginal hysterectomy, as well a longer and more painful recovery period.

In the procedure of vaginal hysterectomy, the doctor will enter your uterus via your vagina; this technique requires no external incision and, therefore, leaves no external scar.

Some risks of having a hysterectomy include damage to the urinary tract, bowel or bladder, breathing or heart problems, blood transfusion, resulting from heavy blood loss, and opening of wounds. Contrary to common myth, a hysterectomy does not interfere with, or diminish the pleasure of, sexual intercourse. Nor does a hysterectomy cause a woman to gain weight.

Artificial insemination, sometimes known as “alternative insemination” or “donor insemination,” is a procedure when sperm is inserted into a woman’s uterus to attempt to create a pregnancy. Artificial insemination using semen from a donor can be an alternative to adoption when the man cannot father a child, whether because of low sperm count, absence or poor quality of sperm, lack of motion by sperm, or inability to perform sexual intercourse. It may also be considered when the man does not want to transmit to the child a genetic defect he has. It is also often used by lesbians, heterosexual single women who wish to conceive without sexual contact with males and by gay men create families through surrogacy or through co-parenting.

Sperm donor may be classified as a donor or as a father. While the latter is known to the mother and assumes parental responsibilities, the former is generally anonymous and legally relinquishes parental rights and responsibilities. However, a growing number of sperm banks allow children, with the consent of the donor, to initiate contact with their genetic father at a specified age.

There are some advantages of getting pregnant using a known donor: first of all, you are aware about his physical and mental health, family history, and personality; besides, you don’t have to pay for the sperm, although you may have to pay a doctor to inseminate you. On the flipside of the coin, there is always a risk of HIV, AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases; moreover, issues around parenting can come up if the known donor chooses to stay involved in the child’s life.

Getting pregnant using a sperm bank (unknown donor), though being expensive and not covered by most insurances, can be beneficial as sperm banks test semen for diseases and collect health and genetic information from donors.

You may consider it as bad news or a new motivation for dieting and workouts, but Dr. Yaiping Yang and his colleagues at the Lawson Health Research Institute affiliated with The University of Western Ontario found that abdominal fat tissue can reproduce a hormone that stimulates fat cell production. To put it simply, the extra fat we carry around our waist could be making us hungrier, so we eat more, which in turn leads to even more belly fat.

Dr. Yang identified that the hormone Neuropeptide Y (NPY), which previously was believed to only be produced by the brain, is reproduced by abdominal fat tissue.

Yang believes this novel finding will change in the way we think about and treat abdominal obesity.
The traditional view of the main reasons why overweight people consume more food is because their brains overproduce the hormone NPY, the most potent appetite stimulating hormone known, sending signals to the individual that they are constantly hungry. However, Yang, a Professor in the Departments of Obstetrics & Gynaecology and Physiology & Pharmacology at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at The University of Western Ontario, has provided evidence that in obese rat models NPY is also produced locally by abdominal fat.

A fat cell is unable to replicate itself. But the researchers found NPY stimulates the replication of fat cell precursor cells, which then change into fat cells, thus increasing fat cell number.
Yang claims “this may lead to a vicious cycle where NPY produced in the brain causes you to eat more thus gaining more fat around your waist, and then that fat produces more NYP hormone which results in even more fat cells.”

Being overweight is universally acknowledged to be unhealthy. However, because of its anatomical location and its byproducts, abdominal fat is considered to be the most dangerous. People with the apple shape run an elevated risk for heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and some cancers.
Next, the researchers are planning to investigate whether NPY produced by fat is released into the body’s circulatory system. If the researchers find that NPY is transported in the blood circulation then it may be possible to work out a simple blood test to detect increased levels of NPY. “If you can detect NPY early and identify those at risk for abdominal obesity we can then target therapy to turn off NPY. It would be much easier to use drugs to prevent obesity than to treat the diseases caused by obesity.”
These findings were reported in a recent issue of The FASEB Journal.