Healthy World Digest, Issue #002, May 1, 2009

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

Welcome to the second issue of our newsletter.

In this issue:

1) Exercise!

2) Bottled water is for losers

3) Sexy supper

4) Healthy coffee

5) Good-for-you antiperspirant/deodorant

Covert Bailey, an exercise physiologist who taped lectures for PBS in the '90s, retired from the field a few years ago. Too bad.

He had the most marvelously succinct information about physical exertion and could get the laziest among us to exercise and like it.

If you are not sufficiently motivated to work out (or even if you love exercising) I'd suggest you run to the bookstore, library, search online, wherever, and get some of his books and videotapes.

He is smart, entertaining and very motivating.

OK, so what's the nugget of health items here? It's Bailey's central theme.

Sure engaging in many healthy life-style choices is wise. Eating right, not smoking, and so forth. But the thing that genuinely separates the healthy from the unhealthy is exercise.

Exercise does for your body what the best herbs do, what steroids do, what fruits and vegetables do, what fish oil capsules do, what ginseng does, what Prozac does, what relaxation techniques do. On and on.

If you exercise, to the point of fitness, you can likely make heaps of other mistakes and you'll still be ok.

If you don't exercise, well...

So Exercise!

Today, tomorrow, yesterday. Hey, workout right now. You'll feel great in about Fifteen - 30 minutes and soon, you'll look great.

2) Bottled water is for losers

I'm penning an article on bottled water and of all the topics I've written on, this is the one that gets me genuinely riled up.

Briefly, the facts:

* Most bottled waters are less safe than tap water

* Even filtered bottled water goes through low-end filtration which leaves in a lot of the unhealthy stuff

* They are selling us water, WATER! that's not that good, at between $1 - $2 a pop. What's next, air?

* The glut of used plastic water bottles results in an unbelievable amount of landfill pollution

Here's a solution. Get a water bottle, a high end filter and bottle your own, healthy water for less than a dime a bottle.

Click for great discounted water filters

3) Sexy supper

Want to put together a meal that can genuinely resurrect your love life? Well, forget the oysters & avocados.

The following meal features courses and a drink, each having aphrodisiacal powers.

Just start with a glass of red wine, then serve a shrimp cocktail, then present a nice piece of steak, maybe filet mignon, baked sweet potato and spinach salad. End with fresh berries drizzled with chocolate. Now fasten your seat belt.

4) Healthy coffee

Ok. I'll just come right out and admit it. I love the java brew. I know there are a whole lot of concerns about coffee's health effects.

Well, darn it, I grew up on the stuff.

So, I worked out a way to get the taste, some of the rush and add some fringe health benefits.

My coffee recipe, if you will.

Start with a carafe of fresh filtered cold water (use auto-drip electric coffeemaker)

Use organic coffee. I mix 1/2 caffeinated, 1/2 decaf so I don't get a ton of caffeine at once.

In the carafe, I put 1/3 tablespoon natural stevia, an excellent, no calorie sweetener and a sprinkling of either cinnamon or powdered dark chocolate.

Fire it up.

When it's done, I boil about a cupful of organic soymilk and add to my hot coffee.

I then proceed to work for several hours, sipping my luscious coffee, just about guilt-free.

My recipe has no carbs, no sugar, healthy cinnamon or chocolate, two great herbs, clean water and about a cup of very healthy soymilk.

After drinking the pot of coffee - I know it's a bit too much caffeine - I don't even need a snack because the brew serves as a healthy, filling snack.

I usually wait a few minutes until I relieve myself and then go and work out.

5) Make your own good-for-you antiperspirant/deodorant

OK, maybe this is too personal but I can't use off the shelf anti-perspirants because they make me break out. Well, the more I looked into my particular problem the more horse sense it made to me.

Briefly, antiperspirants host a whole lot of chemicals and it's the metal aluminum, a very poisonous metal, that prevents you from sweating. Yep, bits of this metal are just deposited into your sweat pores. So you can't sweat.

That can't be good for you which is why my body protests when I use it.

But look, I work around a bunch of kids and am a big guy, and so I perspire, ok. So, what can guys like us do, especially as the summer nears?

Here's an all-natural antiperspirant formula that should please those of us who are concerned about chemicals and aluminum, and those of us who are economical (ie cheap).

Just make a blend of a natural moisture absorber (cornstarch), a natural deodorizer (baking soda), and a natural anti-bacterial, anti-fungal oil (tea tree oil) to keep sweat and odor at bay.

1/4 cup baking soda 1/4 cupful cornstarch 10 - 12 drops tea tree oil 2 tablespoons shortening

Put baking soda and cornstarch in a small bowl with tea tree oil. I use Fifteen - 20 drops of tea tree oil, just in case. Some other oils, like lavender oil, work well also.

Fold in shortening until it's a proper consistency. You may need to experiment a bit.

Cram final product into an empty deodorant canister. It will be the proper consistency to apply in about a day.

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

See you next month!

Sal