High-Fat Diets Lead to Greater Weight Loss

For decades, dieters have believed doctors who insisted that a high-carb, low-fat diet is the key to weight loss. Recently however, an overwhelming amount of new evidence is turning the tide and changing the advice.

It has long been the modus operandi of dieters around the world - cut the fat and opt for 'lighter' foods to try and shift the pounds.

The NHS itself recommends eating plenty of potatoes, bread, rice and pasta with some milk and diary foods, but advises opting for low-fat options.

But now a growing body of evidence is turning the tide on that advice.

A vast collection of studies are changing the dieting landscape, as experts open their eyes to the real enemy targeting our waistlines - carbohydrates.

Now one dietitian, Dr Trudi Deakin, has revealed her diet is 82 per cent fat - and claims she has never felt healthier. Read more

5 Herbs and Spices That Relieve Joint Pain

Medical treatment for join pain is often ineffective and, of course, always expensive. These five herbs and spices may work just as well or better, while saving you money.

Millions of people suffer from rheumatoid or osteoarthritis or other form of joint disease which causes pain, stiffness, swelling and inflammation in the hips, knees, hands or shoulders, among the most commonly affected areas. This can greatly reduce quality of life for sufferers of any age and many mainstream treatments are simply not adequate to the task of symptom management. Below, however, are herbs that can help reduce the pain and inflammation of joint disease. Read more

Health Benefits of Cayenne Pepper

Cayenne pepper is a medicinal herb that has a myriad number of health benefits. This video goes over its benefit to the heart and circulatory system in general, plus some other lesser-known cayenne pepper benefits.

5 Hottest Healing Foods

Mike Barrett reveals the five hottest healing foods of 2014.

2014 was a great year for so many reasons. Although the health food and natural health movement had begun some time ago, it seems that this was the year that it truly took off. Many health battles have been won, and many advancements have been made in the natural health field that unveiled the true power of food, converting countless individuals to ‘foodies.’ Below are 5 of the hottest foods of 2014 that helped torpedo so many into a natural healing lifestyle. Read more

How to Do 100 Pushups in a Row

A man who can do 100 straight pushups will almost always be in great overall shape. Push-ups work the chest, shoulders, triceps primarily, but since you have to hold your body straight and rigid, they involve almost every muscle in your body. Even the strongest beach presser in your gym probably can't do 100 push-ups in a row. Working up to this level will not only build up your chest, shoulders, and arms, but also give you awesome total body strength and endurance.

Here is a simple program to help you reach the goal of 100 push-ups in a row. Do your push-up workouts on three non-consecutive days a week such as Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. You can continue to do other exercises while doing the 100 push-up program, but do your push-ups first and take several minutes recovery before going on to the rest of your workout.

The 100 Push-ups Program

Begin the workout by doing a set of as many push=up as you can..You can pause briefly and continue the set, but if you have come out of the plank position by sagging or sticking your butt in the air, the set is over. Rest one minute after finishing the set..

Next, do a second set of as many push-ups as you can. Remember that if you have to pause more than a couple of seconds or come out of the plank position, the set is over. Rest one minute.

Then, do another set as many push-ups as you can followed by one minute rest. Continue doing sets of as many push-ups as you can with one minute rests between until you have performed a total of 100 push-ups.

Over the next six weeks, you are going to decrease the rest time by 10 seconds every week while also trying to increase the number of push-ups you can do in each set. In other words, in the next two workouts of the first week, you will try to increase the number of push-ups that you do in your sets while keeping your rest between sets at one minute. In the following weeks, your rest between sets will go to 50 seconds, 40 seconds, 30 seconds, 20 seconds, and then in the sixth week, to 10 seconds. (Even though you try to increase the push-ups per set, you will still only do a total of 100 push-ups in the workout.)

In the seventh week, you should attempt to do 100 push-ups in a row. If you miss that goal, you still should be able to do many more pushups than you could to begin with. To reach the goal of 100 push-ups, just go back to week one and repeat the program.

You can use this program for any exercise and any number of goal repetitions. For example, if you wanted to do 20 pull-ups in a row, you would perform 20 pull-ups in as few sets as possible with one minute rest between sets. Then in the following weeks, reduce the rest periods ten seconds every week while also trying to increase the number of pull-ups per set.

Did you know you can actually build muscle using ONLY bodyweight exercises? To find out about the revolutionary new program that allows average people to pack on muscle WITHOUT weights in the comfort of their own home, Click Here!

Perfluorinated Compounds (PFCs) - Do they really have any negative impact on human health?

A long while back I was reading an article about perfluorinated compounds. Within that health-related post, they mentioned that researchers from Denmark think that chemicals used (PFCs) to keep stuff grease-free and stain-free could be predisposing children to metabolic disorders later in life.
PFCs are everywhere, evidently, and are not limited to food packaging like you find with microwave popcorn bags, etc. Here is a quote from the page that I was recently reading: "...they keep your upholstered furniture and carpets stain-repellant and water-repellant and your drapes wrinkle-free. The chemicals serve the same function on permanent-press clothing and any outerwear, backpacks or other accessories that are advertised as water-repellent. While you'll wind up eating PFCs that are used in food packaging, you'll most likely inhale PFCs in all the other applications listed, since the chemicals bind to dust floating around your home." Source = healthyliving.msn.com/pregnancy-parenting/kids-health/harmful-food-packaging-putting-kids-at-risk

On the other hand, after reading more about the recent study they mentioned, it made me less sure if the perfluorinated compounds really have any negative impact on human health. I mean, they were basically using overweight kids to prove their point. Yet, within that study, they plainly said that normal-weight kids that had high levels of PFCs in their body didn't show any ill effects. WTF? In conclusion, they assume that people who are already overweight would be more sensitive to these supposedly dangerous PFCs. Once again, WTF?

Now, what does seem to suck, is that it takes humans much longer to rid their self of the PFCs than it would for animals out in the wild, lab rats, etc. In fact, it takes several years for a typical humanoid to flush their current PFCs out of their biological system that they often refer to as a body. If you'd like to read more about that subject, go here: www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/newscience/half-life-of-perfluorooctanesulfonate-perfluorohexanesulfonate-and-perfluorooctanoate-in-retired-fluorochemical-workers-olsen-et-al/

If you'd like to read another negative article about perfluorinated compounds, go here: pollutioninpeople.org/toxics/pfcs

Now, here is where the "do they really have any negative impact on human health?" part of this post begins. What about the retired workers from places that manufacture stuff that is loaded with PFCs? You'd think they would have never lived to retirement age and/or would have all dropped dead by now or had severe problems if these particular chemical compounds were highly hazardous to human health, wouldn't ya say? Well, apparently not, since many of them are totally healthy. Could this latest PFC scare tactic all be a lie or simply some hyped-up hulajula mawktooey hoopla and ballyhoo? Either way, feel free to go visit an article about another study concerning this subject, except this one says that PFCs have no negative impact on human health: solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/PFOS/PFOA/Information/Health-Environment/

At any rate, I'm getting tired of these studies that are constantly picking on my damn microwave popcorn! LOL!

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Semi-related Post: Worried about Popcorn Lung?

Will chocolate pills be the next health craze in the future?

Side Note:  This post is about 10 months old, as I recently moved it to this Health & Fitness Blog from another location/website.  Anyway...

 In today's 'health supplement' market, you never know which supplement will really hit the floor running until after the commercial hype turns into a trending craze. In the past, one of the biggest pills to take the market by storm was the fish oil supplements. Like fish oil, these chocolate pills are also going to be aimed at cardiovascular and heart health. Numerous studies are underway, of course, so expect to see these chocolate pills explode in the coming years.

"The study will be the first large test of cocoa flavanols, which in previous smaller studies improved blood pressure, cholesterol, the body's use of insulin, artery health and other heart-related factors." Read more about the potential use of chocolate pills, here: news.msn.com/science-technology/study-to-test-chocolate-pills-for-heart-health

Personally, I'm not that impressed that they found a way to extract the goodness of chocolate into a mega dose and/or high-concentration pill form. Like most of y'all, I also already knew that chocolate was good for you; duh! Dark chocolate has the most health benefits, of course, but I'd much rather have it in the candy bar/brownie format; ha!

What I'm leery about is this "mega-dose" craze. Many studies of the past have shown that basically mega anything either has no additional benefits or, in some cases, causes more harm than good. For example, a lot of people now think that extremely high doses of antioxidants that you'd find in certain supplements actually raises your risk for cancer and/or causes it. As always, moderation wins again. The bottom line is, unless they find chocolate pills to be a good drug-replacement therapy for heart patients (or something along those lines), it will be nothing more than marketing hype. Simply eating dark chocolate on a regular basis should provide all the health benefits from this substance your body needs without expensive chocolate pills.

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