Healthy World Digest, #33, November 2011

"Healthy nuggets of information to keep your motor humming."

Welcome to the 33rd issue of our newsletter.

In this issue:

* Easy herbal remedy for under eye bags

* Lemon juice modulates blood sugar

* Home remedy for warts

* Why aerobics don’t help

* Measuring weight, fat

* When not to do meditation exercises

* Chest exercises

* Taking care of your sneakers

* Fatigue herbs

* Easy herbal remedy for under eye bags

Everybody has heard of placing cool cucumber slices under the eye to relieve puffiness. Cooled potato slices, placed under puffy eyes can also be helpful.

We are finishing up a section on puffy eyes. You can visit our umbrella page at home remedies for puffy eyes

* Lemon juice modulates blood sugar

Yep. A bit of lemon juice on salads, seafood or roasted chicken helps your body process sugars. So, if you are peripatetic or diabetic, indulge.

I like to get an organic lemon and a couple of organic apples and juice them, skin and all, for a delicious apple-lemonade. Pour over ice for a refreshing treat.

* Home remedy for warts

Lots of good remedies to help melt away those pesky, and unsightly little skin mounds. Here’s a pretty good one.

Pineapple. The enzyme in pineapple helps melt away the wart.

Just get a small square of the skin and apply, inner side on wart. Secure with gauze. Keep on for several hours. Do daily, even 2x a day. May take many days more for noticeable improvement.

Obviously, remember to eat the rest of the pineapple.

For much more, visit our page on herb & home remedies for warts

* Why aerobics don’t help

Yes, doing aerobic exercise is good for you, certainly better than doing nothing. But there are 2 major negatives aerobics.

1) Too many people overemphasize aerobics over anaerobics, which help build bone and muscle.

Especially as we age, anaerobic exercise takes on greater importance as we naturally lose muscle and strength. And, improving muscular strength is actually very healthy, as much if not more so than aerobic conditioning.

2) Too much mindless aerobics instead of interval training or, better yet, play.

I can’t tell you how often I see exercisers just doing the same thing over and over, with little seeming effort and little progress.

Better strategy. Work out a little more intensely for shorter durations then rest hard. Or mix up your routine with some play. Play tennis, frisbee football, hide and seek, whatever floats your boat.

* Measuring weight, fat

Of course there are lots of ways to measure your weight or fat level. Get on the scale or use a high fangled scale that displays weight, fat% and body mass index, like I have. Don’t be jealous. I don’t really think it does what it says it does except for taking your weight.

But what scales measure is open to normal body fluctuations that can make you feel undeservedly encouraged one day, depress you the next day. Like a little water retention or loss.

But there is a simple measure that is meaningful & consistent. What statistics students term "reliable" & "meaningful."

A good belt. A belt with holes about an inch apart, one that doesn’t stretch or collapse.

I have such a belt and it is worth way more than my ritzy scale. What hole I put that thingy in when I secure my pants tells me all that I have to know about how I am doing weight-wise or shape-wise.

Move an inch left or right and I can pretty well tell that I gained or lost 8 - 10 pounds, bad pounds, fat around the gut. It doesn’t penalize me for putting on a little muscle and it doesn’t unduly encourage me for losing a little muscle.

It’s also not that sensitive to a little water gain or less.

Also, since it’s not that sensitive, it doesn’t record miniscule developments that are probably unimportant. That prevents the roller coaster reactions that my sensitive scale could encourage.

* When not to do meditation exercises

Yoga exercise is great. Especially when done with focus and concentration.

Yoga exercise that stresses meditation over postures is also potentially of great benefit.

However, emotionally fragile persons should do attention, focus exercises not mind blanking meditation exercises. That’s because, when you feel emotionally vulnerable the last thing you need is to blank out.

Doing so can in fact exacerbate emotional disturbance and even lead to a psychotic break.

There are no real hard and fast rules on this issue but if you are not feeling emotionally well, you might want to wait before delving into meditative exercises.

* Chest exercises

Ah yes, the chest. Young men want to develop plate-like “pecs” while women and older men just want to delay the effects gravity has on the chest muscles.

Bad news? Eventually gravity wins. Good news? You can improve functionalism and appearance by doing chest exercises.

I like pushups and pressing dumbbells.

For more, visit our section on chest exercise

* Taking care of your sneakers

I recently noticed some of my friends using their walk-about sneakers for their running or walking sessions.

Don’t use running/walking shoes to hang around with and vise versa.

Why? Because you want the full cushioning features of your running sneakers. Using them to just walk around, all day long, reduces their cushioning making them poor choices to play or run in.

* Fatigue herbs

Feeling fatigue is perhaps the second most lodged complaint to doctors, next to maybe stress. Both are almost certainly the result of lifestyle habits.

Too little exercise, too much fast food, job pressures, a world that is changing so rapidly all around us, for better or for worse.

It’s dizzying, stressful and fatiguing.

Hard to change the world but a few changes to your own world could help a lot. Regular sleeping hours, emphasis on whole, natural foods, exercise could all contribute to well being.

Taking a high quality multivitamin, multimineral can also be helpful assuring receipt of many vital nutrients.

So too can a few natural remedies including ginseng, astragalus, olive leaf extract and rosemary.

For more on taking herbs for fatigue visit Healthy World Remedies:

Home remedies for fatigue, pg1

Herbs for fatigue, pg2

Herbal remedies for fatigue, pg3

Comments? Ideas? Feedback? I'd love to hear from you. Just reply to Healthy World Digest and tell me what you think.

See you in a few weeks!

Sal

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