Yoga is an ancient practice that comes from India. It was not only a form of physical fitness, but was considered even more so a way to reach enlightenment. There are many different forms practiced, but the one that has become most popular in western society for physical exercise is Hatha Yoga.

All you need to start practicing Yoga is yourself and a good attitude. Find a nice quiet location where you don’t have to worry about interruptions and make sure you have comfortable workout clothes. Once you get going you might realize that a fitness mat might be a peice of equipment that will give you added support and comfort to your workout.

There are some great options on the market for a cotton yoga mat that will provide you with plenty of comfort. You will find the extra padding beneficial to protect your elbows, knees, and hips. If you are doing your workouts on carpet you will also find that the mat will eliminate carpet abrasions.

When you are looking for a good mat you will probably notice that there are many available specifically for yoga. If a typical mat doesn’t satisfy your needs, then something to consider which is a bit more money but a lot more comfort is an airex yoga mat.

One of the greatest benefits of yoga is that everyone can enjoy practicing it no matter what their age. When it comes to all the different benefits, the one thought of the most is increased flexibility that helps to strengthen muscles and joints.

As a holistic therapy, yoga has both physical and mental healing elements that will benefit the entire body. By focusing on proper breathing through meditation, you are providing the body with increased oxygen and mental clarity.

Just to name a few of the physiological benefits from doing the asanas are:

- better flexibility and joint range of motion
- improves flow of lymphatic system
- relief in joint and back pain
- improved immunity
- decreased blood sugar levels
- decreased triglycerides
- better digestion

A few of the psychological benefits from doing the pranayama and meditation are:

- increased somatic and kinesthetic awareness
- improved learning efficiency
- decreased aggression
- decreased hostility
- decreased anxiety
- improved sense of well-being
- improved social skills

Yoga is just a small piece of the bigger puzzle to the path of uniting your mind, body, and spirit. The use of specific breathing techniques and body poses are used to achieve this union. Hatha yoga poses are not only beneficial for health reasons, but they can be very spiritual as well as physical.

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Metabolism is the two-way process of synthesizing complex living tissue from simple non-living foods and then the breakdown of these living tissues into simpler substances. The building-up process is called constructive metabolism or anabolism. The breaking down of living tissues to fuel and waste products is known as destructive metabolism or catabolism. In the healthy adult who has attained his maximal growth, anabolism and catabolism proceed at equal rates, although of course in opposite directions. Thus weight remains steady.

Metabolism During Resting State

In the resting state, metabolism proceeds slowly at a basal or minimal rate (”basal metabolic rate” or BMR) since there are no demands on the body other than to remain viable.

Metabolism During Exercise

During exercise energy requirements increase. It is obvious that metabolism must accelerate in order to provide the extra fuel or calories necessary to sustain the added work load.

Sources of Energy in the Body

The principle sources of readily available calories in large quantities are glucose and fatty acids. End products of their metabolism are carbon dioxide and water, both of which readily escape via the lungs.

Protein is Not Usually Burned During Exercise

Except in exercise sustained for several hours, almost no protein is burned. This is fortunate. The end products of protein breakdown cannot find egress via the lungs but must be excreted by the kidneys. Since the kidneys shut down during exercise, a harmful accumulation of acid would result if protein were a significant fuel.

The Function Of Sweat

Sweating is useful chiefly as a means of losing heat. Because the human organism is only partly efficient, the metabolism of glucose and fatty acids yields work plus heat.

If the body were completely efficient, work and no heat would result. Thus exercise produces an increase in body temperature. After one to two hours of sustained activity, rectal temperatures of 101-103 degrees Fahrenheit are to be expected.

Sweat is an important defense against disastrous rises in temperature which may result in heat exhaustion and heat stroke. Believe it or not, the fit subject sweats better! In a recent experiment untrained subjects were exercised in a hot environment daily. At the outset they perspired moderately and lost copious amounts of salt. In a few days their sweat glands became acclimatized. They perspired more to get rid of more heat and cut back on salt losses to avoid the hazards of salt depletion.

Training the Mind

Training of the mind is as inevitable as training of the body in the fit individual. The sports-person disciplines oneself to ignore fatigue and to give forth with his best effort. Long surmised by coaches and trainers, this fact now has received scientific corroboration.

Laboratory Studies on the Mind and Strength

Trained and untrained subjects were examined in the laboratory. Each subject was asked to lift as much weight as they possibly could. Obviously the trained individuals could lift more. But that is not the point. Next, each subject was then given more weight than they said they were able to lift. At the very moment when the subject was about to hoist the weight a gun blast went off beside their head.

Jolted Into Action by the Element of Shock and Surprise

By being thus distracted and startled the untrained individuals were able to lift more than previously. However, this was not so with the trained subjects-they already had “psyched” themselves up maximally. The gun shot added nothing to their performance because they already had disciplined their minds for maximum effort.

Effects of Shrieking (!)

This point was also confirmed by asking the subjects to shriek at the top of their lungs as they weight-lifted. Again, the untrained individuals lifted more. Shrieking made no difference to the fit subjects.

Exhausting as it sounds, a rugged workout can be exhilarating. Working up a lather, shaking out the kinks, and getting out of breath can be as addicting as narcotics. Fitness should not be a deadly serious matter-it should be a kick! There are health related reasons to exercise.

Dangers Of Overweight or Obese

Obesity, the commonest background of premature death, is rare among those who exercise regularly. Obese people have a greater chance to develop heart disease, cancer, kidney illnesses, hyper-tension, diabetes, arthritis, and other degenerative disorders. While fitness per se apparently does not lengthen life, obesity certainly shortens it. There are no vaccinations or antibiotics which protect you from these illnesses. But fitness which abolishes obesity provides statistical immunization. Exercise is one way to ward of the effects of being overweight or obese.

The Best Reason For a Person to Exercise is to Have Fun

There are dividends from fitness, to be sure. These benefits are “extras,” however. These are not reasons why people keep fit. These are bonuses for people who exercise for fun and fitness. After all, fitness is about improving the quality and joy of life.

Tension is a Modern Person’s Heaviest Burden

Deadlines, promotion, competition, improvement, insecurity, and worry are part of our society. No wonder the executive has difficulty relaxing. Tight nerves and tense muscles are the usual rather than the exception. Fitness is one way out. No one can relax by being ordered to do so. Keyed-up nerves and muscles do not respond to talk. Nerves and muscles can be re-educated. Relaxing habits can be substituted for bad habits.

How To Relax

The way to relax is to non relax. Translated, this means: exercise vigorously. Having non relaxed energetically for thirty minutes, no one needs to be told to relax. He has no choice -he is exhausted-he has to relax. Ask anyone what is the best part of his workout. It is taking a shower afterward- naturally!

A workout inescapably prepares one for relaxation. During a workout it is impossible to be concerned about anything other than the task at hand. One’s every thought and effort is concentrated on the workout. Try preparing a report to the boss while watching your tennis adversary’s cannonball serve go streaking past. Try adding up all your debts while giving the bowling ball a little body English toward a remote tenpin. Try thinking about anything while exercising except exercising. It cannot be done! Your mind is off your problems-and that is good.

The Great Feeling After a Work-Out

After the workout, with physically tired muscles, with the glow of physical satisfaction, and with the refreshing relief of a warm shower, relaxation is inevitable. And in a few weeks nerves and muscles once again have learned the rewarding art of relaxation.

Don’t Get Caught Up in Definitions

The word “athlete” will be used now and then and should not scare you. By definition, an athlete is one “trained in acts of physical exercise.” The dictionary does not specify sex, age limit, type of physical activity, or competitive ability as requisites for the definition of “athlete.” There are athletic individuals, whatever gender or age, who don’t necessarily compete. But they certainly are athletes. Most, to be sure, deny they are athletes –but they are. Somehow they feel they do not deserve this approbation –but they do.

Some people choose not to eat meat for religious reasons. And there are some people who believe it’s a healthier lifestyle. They feel the conventional Western diets of the United States, usually filled with meat and dairy is unhealthy and can lead to obesity and other diseases.

No matter the reason, Vegans must adjust their bodies to habits that have been bred into the Western world for centuries. Vegans must learn what true nourishment is and how to go about living a truly healthy Vegan lifestyle.

Because animal meat has always been the main source for protein for many people, Vegans must learn to find their protein from other sources besides meat. One of the highest sources of protein is that found in soybeans and soy products.

In fact, protein found in soy can be as high as protein found in many meats. In general, soybeans have more protein than any other bean and lots of other edible plants. Protein from soy is also easily digested and can, in fact, help the digestive system in many ways. Research has been conducted and studies found that protein in soy foods can lower cholesterol by approximately 9%.

Fiber is important to Vegans because it is filling and it works the body’s many systems. Fiber has been found to improve the circulatory system, the digestive system, and to fight off some cancers and chronic diseases. In fact, research has even been conducted regarding fibrous foods’ positive affects on blood glucose levels and cholesterol.

Fiber can add bulk to any food, leaving a person feeling full and satisfied. Because some fiber is soluble, meaning it will dissolve in water, many Vegans choose fiber foods that are a combination of soluble and insoluble, for example soybeans. Soybeans and soy products contain large amounts of fiber.

Research has shown that the amount of fiber you need is based upon age and gender. Women between the ages of 19 and 50 will need approximately 25 grams of fiber per day, while men in this same age group will need at least 30 grams of fiber per day. For Vegans, the amount of fiber needed daily is even higher. A Vegan needs to add another 5 grams of fiber to his or her diet daily.

It’s important that Vegans also receive other vitamins and minerals in their food. Eating a healthy variety of foods that includes lots of vegetables and high protein and fiber meals will aid in nourishing the Vegan body. Eating healthy foods high in good protein and fiber and low in fats will also have affects on long-term health.

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Lactose intolerance is the full or partial inability to digest and assimilate lactose, the sugar found in milk and dairy products. This inability to digest lactose is due to the absence or low levels of lactase, the enzyme necessary for digesting lactose. Lactose intolerance is prevalent among  populations of East Asian, Native American, Latin American, or African descent. Lactose intolerance is not common among northern European populations.  Arguably, most of the world’s populations are lactose intolerant. The condition is not dangerous, though can certainly be uncomfortable after consumption of milk and dairy products.

Symptoms of lactose intolerance

Symptoms of lactose intolerance may include diarrhea, gassiness, and nausea. Symptoms tend to occur between thirty minutes and a couple of hours after consumption of dairy products, but sometimes may not appear until days later.

Lactose Intolerance is Not the Same as Milk Allergies

Lactose intolerance is not the same as allergies to dairy products.  Milk allergies are….  Lactose intolerance is caused by a lack of the enzyme lactase.   Lactose intolerance is not common in young white children. Lactose intolerance is more common in black, Asian, Hispanic and American Indian populations.  Lactose intolerance is not an all or nothing condition.  Lactose intolerance is when a person has difficulty or is unable to digest milk sugars.

Milk Allergies Are Quite Common

Milk allergies, usually associated with cow’s milk, are among the most common allergies that afflict people.   An allergy to milk is a reaction to certain proteins in dairy milk. More people suffer from allergic reactions to milk than those who are afflicted with an allergy to peanuts.

Read the Ingredients of Prepared Foods

Anyone with a milk allergy will have an allergic reaction to consuming dairy products such milk, cheese, and whey. Some food products contain milk in their ingredients, though it would not be obvious in many cases without reading the ingredients.  So, if you have milk allergies, or are lactose intolerant, read the ingredients of food first before deciding whether to buy it.

Young Children and Milk Allergies

Very young children are among the demographics most afflicted by an allergies to dairy products, but may develop a tolerance to milk as they grow up.

Milk Allergies and Lactose are Under-Diagnosed by Doctors, Over Diagnosed by the General

Milk allergies and lactose intolerance are often not recognized by doctors, while there is excessive erroneous self-diagnosis by people in the general population.

Milk Allergies and Ear Infections

Milk allergies are widely considered to be associated with ear infections, sinus problems, and fluid build-up in respiratory passages

Are Behavorial Problems in Children Linked to Milk Allergies?

Some studies suggest that there may be a link between children with behavorial problems and milk allergies.

Milk and Asthma

Childhood asthma may have a connection with allergies to milk.

Link Between Skin Disorders an Allergy to Dairy Products

Research suggestes that serious skin disorders such eczema, psoriasis and dermatitis may be partially caused by milk allergies.

If You Think You or a Loved One has a Milk Allergy, See a Qualified Specialist

See a qualified medical doctor and get a referral to an allergist to confirm or discount an allergy to milk. While you’re seeing an allergist, check out what else you might be allergic to. If you do suffer from milk allergies, there are a number of milk alternatives that you can consider.

Apart from affecting one’s appearance, being overweight or obese increases the risks for heart disease, miscarriage during pregnancy, diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and a range of other ailments.

Primary Focus Should be on Health and Lifestyle More than Appearance

The focus in losing weight should be more on improving one’s health than improving appearance. This is because there all sorts of extreme means of losing weight that do not improve health and may in fact worsen it. Healthy ways of losing weight are rewarding and add joyful improvements of lifestyle. A sense, not of sacrifice, but of reward. If you are healthier and happier, you will look better.

Extra Weight Makes Everyday Movement More Difficult

Being overweight adds stress not just psychologically but makes everyday physical activity more difficult to manage. Having excess body weight is associated with a higher mortality rate than people who are not overweight.

How Does One Lose Weight?

The essence of losing weight is to burn more calories than you consume. Weight loss need not be a tiresome and tedious process. In fact, you are more likely to succeed at it if you approach in an upbeat frame of mind. Losing weight actually adding more to your life rather than sacrifice. It may mean adding more healthy foods to your diet and finding new treats to replace junk food. Even with snacks, there are ways to create healthy variations of them that will be pleasing to your palate.

Surround Yourself with Expert Support and Positive People

Talk to accredited health practitioners. Surround yourself with people who are positive and encouraging. If anyone responds to your intentions like a “gunslinger,” ready to shoot down your hopes of success, pay no heed to them. Sure, you may have tried to lose weight many times and someone is bound to remind you that you have tried in the past without success. If they do, just remind that all human advances in science, the arts, and health are due to repeated efforts, and would never have happened otherwise. Water will eventually carve rivers out of rock. Sometimes it takes repetition of effort to achieved desired objectives. Be persistent, be positive, and be happy.

Lose Weight in Ways that Keep up Your Energy Levels

Weight loss is often associated with a lack of energy and a sense of fatigue. If so, you are on the wrong program. Weight loss should be associated with increased vigor, happiness, and a sense of well-being. Is this a hard concept? Take a short relaxing walk and think about it.

Hunger Should Not be a Part of Any Lifestyle

With a change of lifestyle and diet that will lead to your losing weight, you should never feel hungry. Weight loss should not feel like deprivation and sacrifice. Therefore you should have a strategy to satisfy your hunger pangs in healthy ways. Losing weight is much more effective when there is a way to defeat hunger.

Diet and Deprivation

The word diet should not even be in your vocabulary. The key to improved health is a better lifestyle, and enjoying new things. Deprivation is just plain ugly and should have no place in your life. With the concept of diet, there is subtle suggestion of sacrifice. You should feel like a winner for cultivating your life, increasing your activity, eating better foods. Never beat yourself up if you cannot lose weight right away (and don’t accept abuse from others). Instead, enjoy the new things you will add to your life, like a colorful assortment of fruits, new teas, vegetables, untried recipes, and lots of new activities. Have fun.

The Joys of Exercise

Exercise involves devoting some of your time to activity, so that you will enjoy an improvement of the quality of time you can devote to other things. With daily exercise of thirty or so mintues, even walks just in your neighborhood, your metabolism will increase and this means you will even burn more calories when you’re resting! Again, exercise, should not be overly strenuous when you are just starting out. In fact, over exerting yourself is not only avoidable — it is a bad idea. Gradually increase your physical activity levels doing things you like doing, or discovering new things, whether it is square-dancing or hoola hooping. Have fun with your physical activities.

The simplest broad formula for eating to add vigorous years to one’s life is to cut one’s calories down sufficiently to stay thin.

Thin sibllings almost always outlive their chubby brothers and sisters, with and maintain greater vigor and vitality.

Statistically, Being Slightly Under- Weight After Age 30 or 35, Means a Longer Life

Insurance company statistics conclusively prove that, after the age of 30 or 35, persons who remain slightly under weight are much better bets for a long life than those who are only a little overweight.

Nothing Should Be Taken to Extremes

The relation between food consumption and human health is very complex. Going to dogmatic extremes in consuming foods simply in ways that you imagine will make you live longer might just make life seem longer, as a result of being rendered tedious. That said, enough research and development has been to establish that food greatly factors into the length of one’s life, and eating right can make a big difference.

Longevity Diets

Most famous of all longevity diets is that developed by Dr. Henry C. Sherman of Columbia University. One of the half dozen leaders in the field of nutrition, Dr. Sherman’s name is intimately linked to several of the vitamins through its use in identifying units of vitamin dosage in early stages of investigation.

The Importance of Riboflavin in Health

Riboflavin, or Vitamin G, is essential to what Dr. Sherman calls “preservation of the characteristics of youth”- that is, vigor, clear skin, enthusiasm, lack of wrinkles, and the like. By merely changing the proportions of natural foods in the diet, Dr. Sherman believes it quite possible to increase the average life span by 10 per cent. The Biblical threescore and ten thus becomes, through benefit of science, not 70 years but 77-an extra 7 years of terrestrial activity available to those who study their nutrition lessons.

What Made Rats Live 10% Longer in Experiments?

The families of white rats at Columbia University that made this heartening promise possible lived 10% longer than others who apparently had normal diets. What was added to their feedings? Principally, additional quantities of milk solids. The essential elements that made for longer life are, as Dr. Sherman identifies them, Vitamins A and G and the mineral calcium.

Nor are the extra years mere feeble and disabled ones added to old age. “They are best conceived as inserted at the apex of the prime of life,” says Dr. Sherman. It is one’s productive years, not the declining ones of senility, that are extended by riboflavin and Vitamin A and calcium in the diet.

Eat Foods Rich in B Vitamins (No, Not Just Take Vitamin Pills)

Since gray hair is usually associated with aging processes of the body, the marvelous B complex vitamins may reasonably be assumed to play an important part in longevity. Rats that turn white on diets deficient in the anti-gray hair vitamins also exhibit early signs of senility. These extraordinary vitamins are still so new that their functions have hardly been catalogued. However, it is probable-indeed, it is almost certain-that liberal intake of the B-rich foods will play a vital role in increasing life expectancy.

The Effect of “Good Proteins” on Quality of Life

Even in this fascinating business of living longer, proteins rear their gluey heads. There is every evidence that liberal intake of good protein in quantities considerably above the minimum usually prescribed makes for a long life and a merry one. On this basis a minimum intake of some 400 protein calories a day-a large part of them preferably from such superior protein foods as milk, eggs, and meat-is a splendid idea for anyone who wishes to postpone liquidation of his life insurance policies.

“Does man gain in vigor, happiness, or longevity by eating an amount of protein which is materially in excess of the minimum?” asks Dr. James S. McLester, famous nutrition authority of the University of Alabama whose classic textbook is a diet Bible of physicians. He answers his own question: “Animal experiment and clinical experience, as well as studies in racial development, warrant, I believe, an affirmative answer.”

Proteins, calcium, Vitamins A and G and the B Complex For Long Life

Proteins, calcium, Vitamins A and G and the B complex vitamins — there you have, in part, the answers o£ science to date as to how to eat for a longer life. Always, of course, these vital elements should be taken in foods which provide just enough calories to keep one at ideal weight or slightly below it, after middle age.

Be Thin

On the average, thin experimental animals live longer than overweight ones. But thinness should be achieved in healthy way.

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A good many of our most cherished beliefs about food prove, in the light of scientific investigation, to be ill founded. For example:

“Milk Quickly Leaves the System After Consumption, Since It Is Mostly Water.”

False. It is a commonly held belief that milk, being mostly water, cannot leave any significant waste mass for the intestines. Actually, milk leaves a great amount of residue — much more than meat or eggs.

A Summary of Research Investigations into Food

Dr. James S. McLester has summarized the investigations of scores of scientists who have delved into the mysteries of food in controlled experiments.

It has been found that:

– Meat is the most satisfying food in that it calls forth the greatest activity on the part of the stomach.

– Milk ranks next to meat.

– Cooked eggs are more satisfying than raw eggs; the latter leave the stomach rapidly and are not easily digested.

– Bread, especially if toasted, has poor appetite-satisfying qualities. Potatoes are only a little higher. Both become much more satisfying, however, if a little butter is used with them, and together they add measurably to the satisfying effect of meat.

– Green vegetables are low in satisfying qualities.

– A little sugar increases the staying power of meals considerably. A meal taken without sugar remained in the stomach three and a half hours; the same meal with sugar added remained eight hours. Evidence of the value of a light sweet dessert!

– If eggs are eaten raw, beat them in order to get full value. Plain raw egg white apparently runs through the system so rapidly that it is hardly digested at all.

– Cooking loosens the connective tissue of meat so that the digestive juices reach it more readily.

– Cooking causes the starch cells of vegetables to burst and become accessible to digestive fluids.

– The most easily digested form of fat is butter.

– Hot fresh breads are just as digestible as cold if they are chewed thoroughly and are properly light in texture.

– Milk is more easily digested when mixed with other foods; take a cracker with your milk.

– Foods that are most likely to cause distress because of individual sensitivities are, in relative order according to one test involving 500 persons:

a) onions

b) milk

c) apples

d) cabbage

e) chocolate

f) radishes

g) tomatoes

h) cucumbers

i) eggs

j) fats

“You LOOK TERRIBLE, darling! Don’t take off another pound!”

When your women friends start making comments to you in this vein, you can count yourself a success. Why? Such remarks are complimentary because they are honest. You have smitten the speaker with a sense of guilt — that’s what it is, guilt! This is because when you have achieved a slim figure by virtue of diet control and physical activities, you become a sort of public enemy. You have proved that you can control your weight. How do you think your plump friends and the pudgy, portly public feels about that? Happy for you? Try envious, jealous, resentful.

– It feels like pulling you and your slim-lassie figure right down off its offensive pedestal. So you must expect to duck a barrage of remarks and side-comments like these:
“Isn’t that frightful diet putting circles under your eyes, dear?”
“I’m afraid you’re going to have a terrible time with colds-no resistance, you know.”
“I think these streamlined dresses make a woman’s figure look awful, don’t you?”
“It’s marvelous how you’ve slimmed down, darling. I just don’t dare take off a pound because I do all my own work and need all the energy I can get.”

“Haven’t you lost weight, my dear?”

On the other hand hearing a salutation from a woman to the effect that you’ve lost weight, just might be a danger sign. It may mean that the speaker has observed a girth increase in the person addressed and is courageously saying what she doesn’t think, the social amenities being what they are.

– You will need to learn the hidden meanings of subtext — what is being said, apart from the actual words spoke. You will have to learn to take remarks for their deeper meaning, not at face value. It’s fun, though, when you realize that you are an object of envy.

What a blissful inward chuckle you enjoy when a friend complains about the wicked dry cleaner who shrank last summer’s dress so she can’t squeeze into it this season! Or the woman who keeps gaining weight in spite of the fact that she eats “nothing-just nothing at all, my dear. Heredity, you know!” Or the man who excoriates the railroads because they don’t build their seats wide enough to accommodate two people comfortably.

But, as you love your social standing, don’t ever let the twinkle in your eye become visible!

You will probably need a whole new bag of tricks to get along with host or hostess. After all, when you arc invited to a dinner party you cannot come right out and say, “I’m on a diet.” Yes, some people do just that, but we’re assuming that you want a repeat invitation some day.

– Men, the handsome creatures, reduce more for health and efficiency than for beauty but they have the same reducing problems as the ladies.

The problem of avoiding the second helping is child’s play

Keep talking and eat slowly! Spring a joke or two; pay rapt attention to what the man on your right is saying; get all wrapped up in appreciation of the host’s puns. By the time the second serving comes around, most of your first will still be on your plate and you can tackle it with every appearance of zest.

Anyhow, for all you know the hostess is hoping there will be enough left over for a pick-up supper tomorrow evening.

You don’t have to consume everything on your plate, either you are now expert in identifying by a single glance of the eye those foods you can eat without undue calorie intake. Polish off the salads, the leafy vegetables, the lean meat.

Forego the thick gravies and mashed potatoes rich with butter and cream.

If you are in a social situation, mess around with them a little if you wish, so it will appear that you were just on the voracious verge of attacking them when the dessert course swept your plate from under you. Leave the rolls and the thick pat of butter on your bread-and-butter plate, covered o’er, perhaps, with a neat thatch of camouflaging celery leaves.

Dieting is one place in which you are not entitled to your just desserts, at least the ones into which the hostess pours love and whipped cream. Fancy footwork is called for here. Sometimes you can eat the cake and leave the sugar icing. If it’s ice cream, you can dawdle while it melts.

When you’re really cornered, whip out the old recipe dodge. Go into ecstasies over the dessert and demand the formula. Get busy scribbling. First thing you know the dessert will have been carried away while the hostess beamingly warns you to be sure not to forget the half teaspoonful of chopped orange rind.

As a gentleman reducer, your problems may be a little different.

Some of the above methods will work for you but you have an added weapon or two in your arsenal. Practically surefire is the trick of tossing an argument bomb. Just mention taxes, the war or the administration. Nobody will notice whether you are eating anything or not. In fact, others may lose their appetites too.

One Less Than Ideal Dieting Strategy that Just Might Work

Simplest protection of all is to skimp on breakfast and lunch so you can consume a hearty dinner without upsetting your calorie budget. A single big meal a day is not good physiology, but after all an emergency is an emergency.

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Are You Sure Constipation is Your Problem?

In many chronic cases it is not the colon that is constipated, but the mind. This may be due to widespread misconceptions about physiology, the scare stories of laxative advertisers, and the enthusiasm of mothers for daily bowel movements in their offspring.

A Bowel Movement a Day is Not an Absolute Rule

There is no “law” of nature that a daily bowel movement is necessary for perfect health. You are a custom-built citizen, remember, inside and out. Maybe you operate on a 24-hour cycle and maybe you don’t.

What is Your Bowel Rhythm?

Plenty of healthy persons have been victimized by the cathartic habit in a frantic effort to be regular on a daily basis when, physiologically, their physiological rhythm is of two-day or even three-days per movement.

Exaggerated Myths Related to Constipation

Despite horror stories that constipation causes violent poisons to accumulate in the system and that practically all diseases known to man originate from intestinal sluggishness, nothing very terrible is going to happen to you if you pass a non-eliminative day-nothing, that is, unless you get frightened and worried and resort to cathartics. Then you disturb your natural rhythm, giving the alimentary tube no chance to reassert itself because it would require, perhaps, two days to do so, so the rhythm is kept artificially “regular” by laxative measures.

The Foods You Eat Affect Your Eliminative Schedule

Such valuable concentrated foods as eggs, cheese, and meat are digested almost completely, leaving very little residue. The reputed constipating effect of cheese arises largely from the fact that it is almost entirely absorbed, leaving no bulk to excite the colon. Sugar provides very little in the way of residue. Naturally, if the diet contains a large proportion of such concentrated foods, there may not be enough waste materials to make a daily evacuation possible, but no harm will result there from.

Is Letting Nature Take It’s Course the Ticket?

From a dietary point of view, if you leave your colon alone and let nature take its course, the constipation bogey can be pretty much put in its place — assuming that your doctor assures you are free of systemic causes, which is ordinarily the case-by an intelligent selection of foods.

Sources of Roughage and What it Does

Roughage is a stimulus to frequent evacuation, and roughage is supplied by many vegetables, cereals, and fruits. Bran has long been valued for the laxative properties of its roughage. Some persons, however, cannot tolerate the coarseness of bran, but if it causes no untoward effects in your case, a dish of bran at breakfast may aid regularity. It isn’t really rough stuff you want, but bulk.

What Does Roughage Do?

Pour a little water on a newspaper and watch the fibers swell. Newsprint is made of cellulose and it is this indigestible stuff that provides roughage in fruits and vegetables. Cellulose absorbs water readily and thus not only provides bulk, but bulk of proper liquid consistency. If fruits are eaten with the peelings on, potatoes in their jackets, cereals in whole-grain form, etc., the cellulose intake is significantly increased and the colon has something to work on.

The Husks and Skins of Grains and Fruits Contain Nutrients

Moreover, there is another benefit perhaps even more important: the outer coverings of foods, in general, provide liberal amounts of Vitamin B1o This vitamin is remarkably important to intestinal function. Persons who have had chronic constipation for years have been cured by intensive Vitamin B1 treatment over periods of a month or two. Part of the effectiveness of bran is attributed to its high B1 content.

A Shortage of Minerals May Cause Constipation

A recent finding is that shortages of minerals, particularly calcium and potassium, dispose to constipation. Rats whose diets were arbitrarily limited in these minerals

Invariably developed intestinal stasis-medicalese for constipation. Testing this finding further, 19 children were put on diets restricted in potassium and calcium; 14 of them became severely constipated. The condition was relieved or prevented by salts of the minerals.

Green Vegetables, Fruits, and Salads are Highly Beneficial

Green vegetables, fruits and salads assure good mineral intakes; milk is rich in calcium and also, surprisingly, leaves a great deal of residue for bulk. Bread also is a high residue food and if taken in whole-grain form it provides significant amounts of Vitamin B1

The Roles of Water, Oils, and Fats in Digestion

Water, oils and fats are mechanically effective in aiding elimination. Your water intake should be sufficient to prevent withdrawal of liquid from the colon, which dries and solidifies its contents.

Addition of butter to the diet helps overcome constipation in some cases, or an ounce or so of olive oil, mixed with substances to give it flavor, may be used. Such measures are impracticable, however, because of the high calorie values of these foods, if you are on a slimming diet. Mineral oil is probably the most unobjectionable of all laxatives but, as we have seen, it tends to prevent absorption of Vitamin A from vegetable foods. The use of an enema is now considered harmless by most doctors and greatly to be preferred to the cathartic habit.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

by VibeFit.com

Beauty may be only skin deep, but skin is deeper than you think: it is marvelously sensitive to goings-on inside the body and is quick to break out in a rash of protest when it disapproves.

Pimples and Skin Blemishes

Few beauty blemishes are harder to bear than unsightly skin. Yet pimples, eruptions, rashes, scaliness, dryness and changes in color do not often originate in the skin itself.

Usually they reflect some disorder of nourishment (in other than specific disease processes) that affects the general health.

Causes of Skin Problems

Except for certain food allergies, such as the propensity of strawberries to cause hives, skin troubles are caused not so much by the foods you eat as by the foods you don’t eat.

Essentials of Skin Health

The essentials of skin health, and consequently of general health, are deficient in the diet, or the nourishing bloodstream is carrying substances that the skin resents.

Changes of Skin May Indicate Malnutrition

One of the first signs of vitamin shortage is unhealthy changes in the skin. Often both the causes and symptoms are vague and obscure. Persons who go on regulated diets for other reasons than beauty are frequently surprised to observe that blemished skins become soft and clear on balanced food intake.

Vitamins that Help Your Skin

Indispensable to healthy skin is Vitamin A. It is the great regulator of epithelial tissue, the stuff your skin and the linings of your body cavities are made of. When A intake is diminished, an early sign is roughness and extreme dryness of the skin. It is a special kind of dryness, not relieved by ointments.

Especially on thighs and arms, the skin becomes rough with goose-pimples. The hair follicles are plugged with cornified epithelium. “Cornified” comes from a word meaning “horn” and it means that your skin is on the way to becoming the same stuff that makes a bull fighter watch his step. In more advanced cases the skin may break out with eruptions similar to those of acne except that they are not pustular.

Not only the skin but the external layers of organs such as the eye become hard and dry in absence of Vitamin A. In fact, the eye can dry up so completely that blindness results. If you remain dry-eyed at a grand weepy movie, it may not be a sign of emotional inertia but simply an indication that the tear ducts are becoming dammed up from lack of Vitamin A. Absence of perspiration may mean that the sweat glands are becoming plugged.

Hair and nails are modified forms of skin. Just as the skin becomes dry from lack of Vitamin A, so does hair become brittle and lose its luster. Brittle nails are often improved by high-vitamin diets. Brittleness in nails is also chargeable to the over enthusiastic use of some types of lacquer and polish that abstract natural oils.

Vitamin C deficiency can also cause papular eruptions of the skin, as well as patchy areas of vaguely darkened color.

More characteristic of C shortage is the tendency of the skin to bruise easily, developing ugly black and blue spots from causes hardly more severe than being spoken to sharply. In fact, the skin can become black and blue entirely on its own initiative. Small red pinprick spots can occur spontaneously. These phenomena arise from the fragility of the blood vessels, characteristic of Vitamin C shortage.

Among the B vitamins, riboflavin and nicotinic acid are most commonly associated with skin disorders. The disease of pellagra, involving the skin, is caused by a dietary lack of nicotinic acid. In early cases the skin looks as if it were severely sun burned; it is burning, tender, and dark in color. Later the skin becomes thick and scaly and pigmentation deepens. Riboflavin (Vitamin G) deficiencies show up in painful fissures of the skin at the corners of the mouth.

Taking Care of Acne

The tragic skin curse of adolescence is acne, which peppers the face with unsightly pimples at the very age when personal appearance becomes supremely important to boys and girls. The irresistible impulse to dig and gouge at the eruptions may leave permanent beauty blemishes in the form of scarred skin.

In part, at least, acne is a skin response to the adjustment of the glandular system to maturity. Yet dietary management has a place in treatment. The mere restriction of fat, greasy, and sugar-heavy foods is often helpful.

Vitamin D Sometimes Helps Clear Acne and Other Skin Disorders

Recently it has been demonstrated that Vitamin D is sometimes beneficial. Regular daily doses of 5,000 or more units of Vitamin D have reduced the number of acne eruptions in many cases. Although not a specific cure, enough work has been done to prove that Vitamin D is a highly valuable agent in acne treatment.

Psoriasis, a skin ailment manifested by a curious silver scaliness, has also proved moderately amenable to Vitamin D. It is a mysterious disease, however, with spontaneous remissions, and dermatologists are very cautious in making any promises about it.

Soaps and Cosmetics and Their Purported Vitamin Content

Some soaps and cosmetics contain slight amounts of Vitamins A and D, and ballyhoo this virtue out of all reason. It is true that these vitamins can be absorbed to some extent through the skin. The advisability of taking them in this fashion is another matter. If the cosmetics are sold at the same prices as standard creams and ointments your druggist can show you, there is no need to avoid them; but if they are decked out in fancy prices, you can suspect that some canny manufacturer is aiming to cash in on public gullibility.

Indeed, it is amusing to consider that some soaps, bill-boarding their Vitamin D content, may actually restrict your intake of that vitamin by washing off the skin oils from which you manufacture Vitamin D with the cooperation of sunlight or ultra-violet irradiation.

Foods to Avoid In Order to Help Your Skin

In general, the avoidance of heavy, rich foods and greater dependence upon milk, eggs, liver, lean meats, fruit and fresh vegetables is a sound principle in building good health and consequent skin beauty. The elimination of foods to which you suspect you are hyper-sensitive is best left to the offices of a dermatologist, who can usually determine the offender swiftly with simple tests and thus save you from possibly eliminating from your diet the very foods that protect against deficiencies.