Healthy World Digest, Issue #003, June 1, 2009

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

Welcome to the second issue of our newsletter.

In this issue:

* Worst foods your children might be eating

* Water helps keep you thin

* Water makes you more powerful

* Soap reduces sexual drive

* Tone neck to reduce pain

* Beet hypertension

* Master Yoga in Twenty-eight days

* Pregnancy herbs

* Use cloth shower curtains

* Munching on spinach could build muscles.

According to Men's Health, the worst foods your kids might be eating include:

> Cap'n Crunch: piles of empty sugar

> Oscar Meyer Lunchables: Lots of salt, sugar & chemicals

> Baskin-Robbins Health Shake: A small glass contains 46 grams of fat and 27 tsps of sugar.

By the way, fast food chains that graded high for health and wellness includes Subway & Wendy's. Scoring low were Pizza Hut & Krispy Kreme.

* We told you that downing water helps keep you slim

Now research proves that gulping water does keep you thinner.

Our sister site, Healthy Water, has a page on how chugging water helps you keep pounds off or lose weight. However, we didn't have much recent research demonstrating this connection.

Well now German researchers have shown that in fact drinking water greatly revs up your metabolic rate leading to a thinner you.

Researchers found that Ninety minutes after drinking 16 ounces of cold water, metabolism rises by a whopping 24%.

Drinking 50 extra ounces of cold water each day can help use Forty-seven calories daily or about 17,400 calories yearly.

Hey, that's a bunch of calories but really it directly leads to only about Five pounds of fat loss yearly.

Simply drink more cold water to pump up your metabolic rate even more.

Click to visit our page on how cause & effect of obesity can be dehydration

Need more water benefits?

* Water makes you stronger!

Another study showed how downing water helps performance during a weight training session.

Uconn researchers demonstrated that men who drank water before lifting weights performed 17% more reps per set than men who did not drink water.

The advice is to drink 16 ounces before a workout, 4 ounces for every twenty minutes of workout time during workout & one - 2 glasses after a workout.

So along with the many other benefits to drinking water, adding water to your diet is win, win for dieters and exercisers.

* Commercial soap may reduce your sex drive

Yep, we at Healthy World Online will never be happy until every adult is having good sex!

University of California at Davis researchers found that an ingredient, triclocarban, in many soaps leads to the body decreasing testosterone. Not good if you're a man on the prowl.

Low testosterone can also lead to other symptoms such as sterility & depression. The National Institute of Health has a page on soaps containing triclocarban at hpd.nlm.nih.gov

* Strengthening exercises eliminate neck pain

A study in Arthritis & Rheumatism demonstratedthat strengthening the upper trapezius muscles relieves neck pain by 80%.

Makes sense since training helps repair muscles and prevent further strain.

Oh, the upper traps are those muscles alongside your neck, you know the ones that hide football players' necks.

Healthy Exercise World has a few good pages on building and stretching the neck muscles.

Click to visit HEW's pages on neck exercises

* Beet hypertension

The many connections between consuming veggies and fruits & good health never fail to amaze me.

Harvard & British scientists found that drinking beet juice lowers blood pressure by ten points in just a few hours.

The reason seems to be the nitrate in beets which converts into nitric oxide in your body.

Nitric oxide helps open blood vessels thereby decreasing hypertension.

* Twenty-eight Days until you're a yoga master, give or take a day

The best yoga book for people who know they should be doing yoga but can't commit to being consistent with it.

But enough about me.

Actually, here I go again. I'm starting to do the yoga program in Richard Hittleman's book, Yoga Twenty-eight Day Exercise Plan.

This isn't the place for a complete book review. I'll leave that for another day.

Anyway, I've done the program 2 - 3x before and loved it and felt so much better and, and ... then ... just stopped. Why? I don't know.

But I'm into the third day, further along when you read this and I just want to encourage the many non-Asians, and Asians, who are somewhat like me, to go buy this excellent book and give it a try.

The book is dated but very it's timeless. You wont be disappointed.

For a brief introduction to yoga visit our page on the benefit of yoga exercise

* Best herbs for pregnancy

For expectant mothers & fathers, a list of the top herbs for pregnancy follows.

The following ease pregnancy: peppermint, ginger, partridge berry, raspberry leaf teas

The following speed delivery: blue cohosh and parsley, in large amounts

To help prevent spina bifida, eat lots of spinach

Click for our page on best herbs for pregnancy

* Use cloth shower curtains

An easy way to elude health problems?

Change your choice of shower curtains.

A group in West Virginia finds vinyl shower curtains contain chemicals that are continually released, especially more so when in contact with hot water.

That pungent new curtain smell may be one clue you should switch curtain types.

* Popeye, was right. Eating spinach may build muscles.

Well, it's not the spinach itself.

Research finds that spinach helps your body absorb and use protein leading to muscle growth.

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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