Air Purifying House Plants

1. Bamboo Palm: According to NASA, it removes formaldahyde and is also said to act as a natural humidifier. 2. Snake Plant: Found by NASA to absorb nitrogen oxides and formaldahyde. 3. Areca Palm: One of the best air purifying plants for general air cleanliness. 4. Spider Plant: Great indoor plant for removing carbon monoxide and other toxins or impurities. Spider plants are one of three plants NASA deems best at removing formaldahyde from the air. 5. Peace Lily: Peace lilies could be called the “clean-all.” They’re often placed in bathrooms or laundry rooms because they’re known for removing mold spores. Also know to remove formaldahyde and trichloroethylene. 6. Gerbera Daisy: Not only do these gorgeous flowers remove benzene from the air, they’re known to improve sleep by absorbing carbon dioxide and giving off more oxygen over night. If you can't even put a plant in your living room because you say it is too much trouble, then you need to die and wait for the other life to bring sense in your spirits!!! Just do it. Random people like our whole team here are trying to put you back on your feet.. we arent doing that because we've got nothing else to do. We have families, too. We have ALL OF YOUR EXCUSES but yet, we're here, with you. Do it.

Eat your way to a healthier cholesterol level

Not all foods are equal. Studies
have found that certain foods —
such as salmon, walnuts, oatmeal
and some veggies — can help
control your cholesterol. Nehal
Kamdar, senior dietitian at Raffles
Hospital, suggests including these
four heart-friendly foods into
your diet.
1 Fatty fish
Oily fish such as salmon,
mackerel and sardines are rich
sources of omega-3 fatty acids,
which help to lower blood fats
linked to heart disease. According
to Kamdar, omega-3 fatty acid
prevent blood clots by making
platelets less likely to clump
together and stick to artery walls.
It also makes blood vessels less
likely to constrict. She suggested
eating at least two servings of such
fish twice a week. Just be sure
to cook your fish using healthier
methods such as steaming and
baking to avoid unhealthy fats.
2 Go nuts
Nuts such as walnuts and
almonds are high in polyunsaturated
fatty acids, which keep
blood vessels healthy. In particular,
walnuts are one of the best plant
sources of protein as they are
packed with vitamins, fibre and
antioxidants, said Kamdar. But be
sure to stick to just 30g (a fistful)
each day, and avoid nuts that are
salted or coated with sugar. Besides
nuts, Kamdar recommended
including one to two tablespoonfuls
of ground flax seed into your
food each day to help lower bad
cholesterol. However, Dr Chin
Chee Tang of NHCS added that
while some studies have shown
that flax seed and peanuts may
help lower cholesterol levels,
further research is required to
confirm their cholesterol-lowering
benefits.
3 Soy good
Soy protein such as soy
beans, tofu, soya milk and tempeh
(fermented soybeans) may be
able to keep cholesterol levels in
check. “Rich in omega-3 fatty acids,
protein, vitamin and minerals,
soy protein is a good alternative
to red meat as it is lower in fat
and higher in fibre,” said Kamdar.
She added that those with high
cholesterol may be able to lower
their cholesterol levels when
soy protein is eaten as part of a
healthy low-fat diet.
4 A bowl of oatmeal
a day keeps high
cholesterol away
Eating oats not only keeps your
bowel movements regular, it
may even help lower cholesterol
levels, and reduce risks of heart
disease and diabetes, said Kamdar.
Diabetes is another risk factor
for heart disease. She added that
oatmeal also fills a person up for
a longer time, so he or she will
not tempted by unhealthy snacks
that may raise cholesterol levels.


In general, the lower the total and LDL cholesterol levels, the lower
your risk of getting medical problems associated with atherosclerosis,
said Dr Chin Chee Tang of National Heart Centre Singapore.
What is considered a ‘healthy’ cholesterol level depends also on
the presence of other medical conditions, he said.
“For an otherwise healthy individual with no other significant
medical problems, a total cholesterol level greater than 6.2mmol/L
(or 240mg/dL) is considered high and undesirable. Similarly, people
with no significant medical problems should aim to have a LDL cholesterol
level of no greater than 3.4mmol/L (130mg/dL).”
For patients who have medical problems such as a previous
heart attack or stroke, the recommended levels are even lower.
What is considered a healthy level of cholesterol?

Clinton says no to junk food

NOT even former United
States president Bill Clinton
(picture) escaped the perils of
high blood cholesterol. Earlier
this year, the 63-year-old was
hospitalised due to a clogged
heart artery. In 2004, he had a
quadruple (that’s four blocked
arteries) bypass surgery. Clinton’s
love for fast food was wellknown.
He only changed his diet
and lifestyle after his bypass.
health bite

Walking keeps you young

NEW YORK - EVERYONE knows that walking limbers the aging body, but did you know it keeps the mind supple as well? Research shows that walking can actually boost the connectivity within brain circuits, which tends to diminish as the grey hairs multiply.

'Patterns of connectivity decrease as we get older,' said Arthur F. Kramer, who led the study team at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

'Networks aren't as well connected to support the things we do, such as driving,' he said. 'But we found as a function of aerobic fitness, the networks became more coherent.' Dr Kramer's walking study, which was published in the journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, tracked 70 adults from 60 to 80 years old over the course of a year. A toning, stretching, strengthening group served as a control against which to evaluate the previously sedentary walkers. 'Individuals in the walking group, the aerobics training group, got by far the largest benefits,' he said, and not just physically.

'We also measured brain function,' said Dr Kramer, whose team used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine brain networks. A group of 20-to-30-year olds were tested for comparison.

'The aerobic group also improved in memory, attention and a variety of other cognitive processes,' Dr Kramer said. 'As the older people in the walking group became more fit, the coherence among different regions in the networks increased and became similar to those of the 20-yr olds,' Dr Kramer explained.

But the results did not happen overnight. Effects in the walking group were observed only after they trained for 12 months. Six-month tests yielded no significant trends.

Morning Banana Diet

The Theory behind the Diet

Given its origins as a group-developed diet program, there are many theories about why it has proven to be effective to many. The prinicple creators of the diet have their ideas about why it worked for them. Members of the various internet groups devoted to the diet have offered various explanations. And physicians who have tried the diet or who have been consulted in connection with the books, magazine articles, and television reports about the diet have also offered their theories. And finally, as the diet enters the Western mainstream, various theories have been put forth by researchers, banana promoters and members of the forum here on this site.

At any rate, here are some of the ideas that have been thrown around to explain various aspects of the diet:

* Bananas contain a large amount of an insoluble carbohydrate called “resistant starch.” Resistant starch has been credited with various weight management benefits, including the ability to initiate fat burning (or “lipid oxidation”) (See Wikipedia, Prevention Magazine, Dole Nutrition Institute, and Gail Gedan Spencer.)
* Bananas contain enzymes that assist in digestion, speeding it up and thus reducing the amount of time the intestines need to work to digest food, resulting in a metabolism more suited to losing weight. These enzymes only exist if the bananas are eaten in their raw state.
* Bananas plus water results in faster and more frequent elimination and improvement of constipation symptoms. Some Morning Banana Diet followers report two or three trips to the toilet daily for “number 2.”
* Finishing dinner early and avoiding or reducing evening snacks allows the most active portion of the digestive process to complete before bedtime, making for a sounder sleep and more energy in the morning.
* Laying off the manditory exercise and allowing afternoon sweets reduces stress, which would otherwise lead to overeating.
* Even though you can eat “anything you want” for lunch and dinner, the filling, high-fiber banana breakfast, the early dinner, and the limiting of meal beverages to water (preventing the washing down of food in the manner of the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest “gurgitators”) tend to influence Morning Banana dieters to eat reasonable amounts.
* The three meals and one or two snack rule, along with the early bedtime, act as a throttle on grazing and unmindful eating throughout the day.


Morning Banana Diet Rules

Every diet has rules. If a diet works for you, it’s simply because the rules have had the effect of making you eat less food (nothwithstanding whatever magical claims a diet may make). Diet rules generally do this by making eating a little harder or less convenient, through restricting when or what you can eat. Throw in a little “scientific theory” for motivation, and you have a diet. And remember, no diet works for everybody. So what are the Morning Banana Diet rules? Here’s a synopsis collected from various sources:
Eat a banana for breakfast

* You can eat more than one, and in fact the inventor of the diet often ate four (smallish Philippines) bananas in the morning, but don’t stuff yourself to the point of fullness or discomfort.
* Eat only raw, uncooked, unfrozen bananas.
* Other fruit may be substituted.
* If other fruit is substituted, some variants require it be restricted to one type of fruit per meal.
* If you are still hungry 15 or 30 minutes after your banana, you can eat other food (the Japanese inventor of the original Asa Banana Diet sometimes ate a rice ball two and a half hours later, about 200 calories worth; Morning Banana forum members have suggested oatmeal, although it’s not as portable as a rice ball).

Eat normally for lunch and dinner

* Dinner must be eaten by 8 p.m. at the latest (6 p.m. is better).
* There are no explicit limits on the types of food you can eat for lunch and dinner, or the amount. But in practice dieters report on Mixi that they try to cut the amount of rice they eat and find substitutions for fried foods. As with many diets, the mere fact you have decided to go on a diet tends to make you more aware of what and how much you are are eating and how healthy it is. The diet avoids strict food rules to prevent a sense of deprivation.
* However, you should not eat a dessert with dinner or any of your meals; you’ll need to satisfy your sweet tooth during a snack, but we’ll get to that later.
* At all meals you should eat only until you’re satisfied but not full or stuffed. The Japanese have a proverb, Hara hachibu ni isha irazu, “A stomach eight-tenths full needs no doctor.” American dietitians define this level of fullness or satiety as a 7 on a 1-to-10 “hunger scale,” and they teach their clients to recognize this feeling.

Drink only water

* The only beverage allowed at most meals is water, preferably mineral or filtered.
* The water must be at room temperature, not chilled or hot.
* The water should be drunk in small sips and not used to wash down food.
* There is no quota of water to drink, and you should not drink it in excess.
* Outside of meals non-caloric beverages like tea, coffee, and diet soda are generally allowed but somewhat frowned upon, and in general water is encouraged as much as possible; frequent consumption of milk products is discouraged.
* On social occasions you may drink beer or wine.

Eat your food mindfully

* Chew your banana and other food thorouoghly and be mindful of its taste.

You may eat an afternoon snack

* A sweet snack of chocolate, cookies, or the like is allowed at about 3 p.m.
* Ice cream, a donut, or potato chips are not recommended.
* Some substitute fresh fruit for their snack, but if you want sweets you should not deny yourself.
* Some Japanese who like salty snacks eat salted konbu (seaweed) snacks and some Japanese who are very hungry in the afternoon substitute a filling, fist-sized rice ball for sweets.
* A good alternative if a salty or more filling snack is needed is popcorn according to Morning Banana forum members, but watch out for excessive fat content.
* If you are hungry after dinner, you may have a second snack of fresh fruit, but this should not be a habit.

Early to bed

* Go to bed by midnight. If you can manage to go to bed earlier, all the better.
* Try to aim for a four-hour period between your last meal or snack and bedtime (which is why 8:00 p.m. is the latest you should eat dinner).

Exercise only if you want to

* Put no pressure on yourself to exercise.
* If you want to exercise, go ahead: the test is to do what puts the least stress on you.
* But try to get some walking in every day if possible (but again, don’t force yourself if it stresses you out).
* If you want a traditional Japanese light workout, consider taking up the kendama.

Keep a diet journal

* Because the original Japanese banana diet was developed on the internet, many successful Japanese dieters naturally documented their daily food intake and progress online via blogs, forums, or social networking services, and they felt this gave them extra support (we have prepared a Morning Banana Diet Forum with individual food blogs for your use).
* Because of the diet’s emphasis on digestive processes, some Morning Banana Diet journalers record a bit “too much information” — so remaining anonymous may be advisable.

Source:
http://morningbanana.com/

Lack of sleep linked to early death

Lack of sleep linked to early death: study

LONDON (AFP) – People who get less than six hours sleep per night have an increased risk of dying prematurely, researchers said on Wednesday.

Those who slumbered for less than that amount of time were 12 percent more likely to die early, though researchers also found a link between sleeping more than nine hours and premature death.

"If you sleep little, you can develop diabetes, obesity, hypertension and high cholesterol," Francesco Cappuccio, who led research on the subject at Britain's University of Warwick, told AFP.

The study, conducted with the Federico II University in Naples, Italy, aggregated decade-long studies from around the world involving more than 1.3 million people and found "unequivocal evidence of the direct link" between lack of sleep and premature death.

"We think that the relation between little sleep and illness is due to a series of hormonal and metabolical mechanisms," Cappuccio said.

The findings of the study were published in the Sleep journal.

Cappuccio believes the duration of sleep is a public health issue and should be considered as a behavioural risk factor by doctors.

"Society pushes us to sleep less and less," Cappuccio said, adding that about 20 percent of the population in the United States and Britain sleeps less than five hours.

Sleeping less than six hours is "more common amongst full-time workers, suggesting that it may be due to societal pressures for longer working hours and more shift work"

The study also found a link between sleeping more than nine hours per night and premature death, but Cappuccio said oversleeping is more likely to be an effect of illness, rather than a cause.

"Doctors never ask how much one sleeps, but that could be an indicator that something is wrong," said Cappuccio, who heads the Sleep, Health and Society Programme at the University of Warwick.

Research showed no adverse effects for those sleeping between six and eight hours per day.

How much sugar in your food ?