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The Facts About Steroids

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

Steroids are powerful drugs that can have valuable effect if administered within proper guidelines. How they can be safely taken is very important and understanding how they work.

Steroids work on the immune system by blocking the creation of substances that trigger allergic and inflammatory actions, such as prostaglandins. However, they also obstruct the function of white blood cells which destroy foreign bodies and help keep the immune system functioning properly. The intervention with white blood cell function yields a side effect of increased susceptibility to infection.

Steroids are widely used for many conditions. They are also used to manage swelling of the joints and organs in diseases such as:

* scleroderma

* polymyositits

* behcet’s disease

* juvenile arthrtis

* dermatomyosits

* rheumatoid arthritis

* polymyalgia rheumatica

* giant cell arteritis vasculitis

* inflammatory bowel disease

Steroids are not used systemically for osteoarthritis, though they are sometimes used as a local injection into an affected joint.

Steroids can affect your heart. Steroid misuse has been linked with cardiovascular disease, including heart attack and stroke. These heart problems can even occur to athletes under the age of 30.

Steroids increase your risk of infection. Dirty needles or sharing needles using to inject steroids puts you at risk for diseases such as hepatitis and HIV/AIDS.

Steroids affect your mood. Steroids can make you angry and hostile for no reason. There are recorded cases of murder featured to extreme anger from steroid use.

Steroids are illegal to take without a prescription. Doctors prescribe steroids for definite medical conditions.  They are only safe for use when a physician administers the patient.

Steroids affect your appearance. In both sexes, steroids can cause male-pattern baldness, acne, cysts, and oily hair and skin.

The majority of teens aren’t using steroids. Among teenage males, who are most likely to apply steroids, only 1.8 percent of 8th graders, 2.3 percent of 10th graders, and 3.2 percent of 12th graders informed steroid use in the past year.

For Guys:

  • Baldness
  • Impotence
  • Development of breasts

For Girls:

  • Deepened voice
  • Breast reduction
  • Growth of facial hair

For Both:

  • Trembling
  • Bad breath
  • Aching joints
  • Nervousness
  • Mood swings
  • Yellowing of the skin
  • Swelling of feet or ankles

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The Health Benefits Of Martial Arts

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

Martial Arts3--JPG (200x0)Created in ancient Asian cultures, Martial Arts heighten spirituality and develop character. Because of their holistic approach, several of the martial arts can make an exceptional contribution to your personal fitness course. The beauty of these methods is that, more so than other types of physical exercise, they develop the mind and soul as much as the body.

The martial arts have few competitors in the catalogue of exercises and sports when it comes to psychological and spiritual nurture. As previously mentioned, they are not designed to encourage violence or aggression. Quite the opposing, people who train in the martial arts tend to quietly avoid conflict and demonstrate no need to confront. In general, studies show that there is an opposite relationship between the length of time students of the martial arts have trained and their participation in vicious encounters.

Martial arts do not present the total range of exercise needed to achieve top physical fitness. They should be increased with conventional strength and cardio training. Nevertheless, martial arts do improve posture, strength, flexibility, balance, coordination, and stamina.

A big part of the physical control in the martial arts involves rigorous conditioning through the extended reiteration of choreographed routines. Some techniques, called the “hard” styles, incorporate aerobic and cardio-vascular workouts. The “soft” styles are less powerful but focus on flexibility, balance and control.

Asian martial arts boost character development in a way that competitive Western sports typically do not. More than simply tools for self-defense, these systems offer personal growth in mind, soul and body. If you are looking for a system that will fortify not only your body but your attitude, why not consider the workouts that the martial arts offer? There is sure to be a type that suits you.

Here is a list of some of the more popular remarkable and striking styles:

1. Judo – means the “gentle way,” Judo is a grappling technique that teaches how to wrestle and throw opponents.

2. Ju Jitsu – uses the opponent’s force and strength of attack as a weapon against him, thus enabling a stronger or bigger attacker to be subdued. One of the most complete martial arts, Ju Jitsu includes unarmed strikes, chokes, joint locks and throws.

3. Karate –this style originated in Okinawa and stresses striking techniques through punches, kicks and blocks. It is highly active and makes balanced use of a great number of body muscles; it provides excellent all-around exercise and develops coordination and agility.

4. Kung Fu – a tremendously disciplined, powerful martial art, Kung Fu is another remarkable style where strength is built in low stances and powerful blocks.

5. Muay Thai – also called as Thai Boxing, Muay Thai is the oldest known form of kickboxing. Besides a focus on kicking, the sport has changed to discourage the use of upper body and knees in its strikes.

6. Tae Kwon Do – the world’s most commonly practiced martial art, Tae Kwon Do is a Korean fighting art that looks very similar to Japanese karate. The methods are characterized by powerful and graceful movements.

7. Tai Chi – a Chinese martial art as characterized by its graceful, slow, flowing movements. It promotes an inner calm and an enhanced self-awareness. The body weight or center of magnitude of the practitioner submerged into the abdomen and trunk of the body, thus allowing more relaxed and deep breathing and overall balance.

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YOGA, As A Lifestyle

Sunday, August 16th, 2009

Yoga is an immense assortment of ancient spiritual methods and techniques developed and perfected over the centuries by philosophers and mystics in India. The Sanskrit term “Yoga” often is translated as “yoke” or “union”, the ultimate goal of practicing yoga is to create a union of the body, the mind and the spirit; the Yoga practitioner can achieve higher states of awareness and enlightenment. The basic principles of the Yoga practice include proper poses (Asanas), breathing (Pranayama), relaxation, diet, positive thinking and meditation.

The benefits acquired by the nonstop Yoga perform are well known, Yoga works on all aspects of the person: the physical, emotional, mental, psychic and spiritual. Yoga creates good health, contributes to long life and develops a general well-being sense.

Yoga, along with meditation, is one of the most well-like alternative of healing therapy. Yoga considers that most medical conditions are due to incomplete life force, the best way to enhance the general life force is by sufficient deep steep, high-quality nutrition, a positive mental attitude and the practice of Yoga. The spinal column is so vital for a high energy level; the ancient yogis were well aware of the importance of the spinal column in relation to medical conditions, since the majority of their Asanas were designed to make the spinal column more flexible and stronger to avoid diseases.

The teachings of Yoga discover the precise understanding of the healthy functioning of the mind and body. The practitioner of Yoga enjoys a happy wellbeing manifested through increased vigor and flexibility, one of the most important benefits of Yoga is its relaxation property relieving stress, weakness and invigoration, a Yoga practitioner develops invulnerability and obtains effective resistance to environmental demands helping put things into perspective. Yoga also helps in improving sexual life, reducing weight and as a therapeutic and preventive therapy.

Yoga helps to discipline the mind achieving mental peace, improving concentration powers and giving you a relaxed state of living, you become more emotionally and mentally centered. Yoga cleanses the heart of the practitioner from vices such as hate, attachment, avarice, envy and other bad feelings. Yoga modifies your viewpoint about life, helping you to know who you are and how life works; you start looking at things differently and consider the world part of his family.

Yoga helps in the cleansing of the harmful emotions and physical impurities, Yoga massages different internal glands and organs of the body, Yoga ensures the optimum bloody supply to various parts of the body; helping in the washing out of toxins from every nook of your physical body maintaining the body clean, flexible, well lubricated and leaving you feeling emotionally grounded.

Yoga helps the development of social and personal values ; the well-being feeling is so real that one becomes kinder, gentler, more compassionate and more ethical. A Yoga practitioner sees the inner connections between himself and his environment recognizing that the lives of all people are intertwined.

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Energy Drinks vs. Sports Drinks – Know The Difference

Friday, August 14th, 2009

Sports drinks contain water, sugars and salt in measured amounts that help the body absorb fluids and salts lost with normal sweating and breath exhalation during strenuous exercise. The sugars help in providing fuel for the muscles that require it for activities such as walking, jogging, running and the like. Small amounts of salt help shelter the body from water intoxication, or hyponatremia, which happens when consuming large amounts of water without any salt. Sports drinks supply sugars, which the body burns to create energy and replenish electrolytes, helping to maintain salt and potassium balances in the body.

Meanwhile, energy drinks are meant to bring caffeine and a variety of other stimulants, like taurine, ginseng or guarana, giving drinkers an added rush of energy. Energy drinks are not meant to substitute lost fluids during exercise. Often, B vitamins are added in small amounts. In quantities that add very small to the energy drink as a whole, B vitamins are commonly associated with converting food into energy.

Energy drinks are created to deliver high concentrations of caffeine and other stimulants to give the drinker a rush of energy.  Energy drinks and their asserted energy performance benefits are available to pretty much everyone regardless of their dangers and side effects. In spite of their increasing popularity, there is still argument over their safety and suitability of these products for daily use.

Health specialists are sounding the alarm over the possible effects on young athletes of popular energy drinks such as Red Bull, the leading brand in a growing market. Athletes are increasingly consuming large amounts of these caffeine-loaded drinks to boost athletic performance or lose weight, said a dozen health experts at the SUNY Youth Sports Institute’s first national symposium on energy drinks here this week.

But athletes who consume too many energy drinks could endure from tremors, dehydration, heart attacks and heat stroke, the experts warned. Instead, they say, athletes should drink water while training and playing especially during hot and humid summer months.

Athletes should take serious caution in consuming these energy drinks. And remember the significance of hydrating your body with water and sports drinks.

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Get Healthy With Tai Chi

Friday, August 14th, 2009

Given that tai chi is a practice that brings the mind and body together, regular practice of tai chi techniques and forms will help you reduce stress. If you are the type of person who gets easily stressed or is always under a lot of pressure from work, it’s imperative that you put a lot of focus on your movements and breathing while doing your tai chi session. This way it will help put you in a situation of calm and relaxation. Whatever stress, anxiety or tension you may be feeling at the moment will definitely go away. While tai chi is a great way to improve your overall health, it is still not a substitute for the usual kind of medical care. Seniors may find tai chi a very appealing fitness program because of the low impact movements that doesn’t put much stress on their muscles and joints. If you have arthritis or you’re currently recovering from an injury, tai chi is definitely a great exercise program for you.

Tai chi practice

For beginners, it’s still best to seek the guidance of a tai chi instructor first before trying out any of the exercises. Also, there’s no specific type of clothing needed for you to be able to practice tai chi, just make sure that you’re comfortable in your workout clothes. If you chance upon a group of people practicing tai chi, inquire about hot to get in touch with their instructor so that you will have proper training on how to do specific positions as well as how to regulate your breathing. This is a must especially for people who are suffering from any injuries, who have chronic health conditions, or have trouble with their balance and coordination. This is because even though tai chi is a slow and gentle form of exercise and practically has no negative side effects, contracting injuries are still possible when the movement/poses are done properly. Either you could strain yourself or even fall, so it’s best that you have an instructor to guide you.

If you want to reap the full benefits of practicing tai chi, make sure to practice tai chi together because developing a routine makes it a whole lot easier to enjoy the tai chi experience and make sure stick to your program. However, if you do not have the comfort of time in your hands, just allot a few minutes of your day to your tai chi program to at least lessen the stress from your busy work.

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Kiss Of The Sun

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

Excessive expose to sunlight can cause skin cancer as well as premature wrinkling and aging of the skin. In proper amounts, however, the sun’s rays can be good for your health.

What are some of the good things about sunlight?

To start with, sunlight kills germs. That’s why it is important to sun and air out blankets, quilts, and other items that are not washed regularly and sterilized in an automatic dryer.

Appropriate amounts of sunshine also give the skin a healthy glow and help make it smooth and pliable. A fairly tanned skin is more defiant to sunburns and infections than untanned skin.

Sunlight elevates the mood for most people, producing a sense of well-being. Combined with active exercise, sunshine is an important adjunct in treating acute and chronic depressions. Remember, when depressed during cold and gloomy months; try to catch any possible ray of sunshine.

What about the bad ones?

Sunlight is a major risk factor for skin cancer, especially in light-skinned people. Too much sunlight, for them, may be particularly damaging.

You should also know that burning the skin is extremely harmful for everyone. Every burn destroys healthy, living tissue. Repeated burns cause irreversible damage and can set up a person for skin cancer.

And if all that isn’t bad enough, repeated deep tanning of the skin and even repeated sunburn gradually destroy its elasticity and its oil glands, producing wrinkling and premature aging.

What are some guidelines for healthy, safe exposure to sunlight?

  • A few minutes of sunshine on your hands and face each day will produce all the vitamin D you need.
  • Wear protective clothing, eyewear and a protective sunscreen if needed. Be especially careful around white sandy beach or water and on cloudy days.
  • If you have an outside trip or vacation coming up, set up your skin by giving it progressive exposure in the days beforehand, to the point of pinking up.

For thousand of years, sunlight has been known as a mediator of life. But we know today that it can be healing or destructive; it can be kiss of life or the kiss of death, depending on how we use it!

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What Do You Need To Know About The Master Cleanse?

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

master-cleanse

The Master Cleanse also called the lemonade diet. The Master Cleanse was mainly used by individuals who wanted to detoxify their bodies of chemicals and toxins.

The Diet consists of fasting to clear the body of toxins produced by lack of exercise, improper diet and negative mental attitudes. The purpose of the Lemonade Diet is to suspend and get rid of toxins and congestion; to cleanse the kidneys and digestive system; to purify glands; to eliminate waste and hardened materials in the joints and muscles; to build a healthy bloodstream; to uphold optimal blood pressure; and what you all are waiting to hear..  As a reducing diet it is finer in every way, reducing fat at a rate of about two pounds a day for most persons, without harmful side effects.

The Master Cleanse is a 100% liquid diet that must be followed strictly without any exceptions for a minimum of 10 days. The diet consists of lemonade organized from fresh organic lemons, cayenne pepper, and grade-B maple syrup; water with sea-salt to be had in the mornings; and laxative tea to be had just before going to bed at night. The only other exceptions to these are water and mint tea.

Master Cleanse has become popular in recent years with people wanting to lose weight quickly. The Master Cleanse is a liquid diet. It engages drinking 6 to 12 glasses a day of a lemonade concoction containing water, maple syrup, lemon juice, and a little cayenne pepper.

Other than the lemonade drink a salt water drink are and a herbal laxative recommended as part of the daily regimen. Enemas and Colonics are not recommended on the Master Cleanse.

What You Can Eat

No solid foods are allowed, nor are any supplements. You use only the Master Cleanse elixir to remain you hydrated.

The plan calls for you to drink 6 or more servings every day of the lemonade drink. The only other alternatives are “salt water flush” of 2 teaspoons salt mixed in a quart of water in the morning, and an herbal laxative tea at night, if needed.

A solo serving of the Master Cleanse drink consists of:

  • 10 ounces filtered water
  • 1/10 teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • 2 tablespoons fresh-squeezed lemon juice
  • 2 tablespoons grade-B organic maple syrup

After following this fast for 4-14 days, dieters are advised to slowly ease back into solid food, starting with foods like vegetable soup, followed by fruits and vegetable.

How It Works

You will lose weight on the Lemonade Diet because it creates a serious calorie deficit. But chances are, what you’ll lose is muscle and water weight not the fat you want to get rid of.

The Master Cleanse Diet is believed to release years of built-up waste in just 10 days, while your energy soars. Yet, specialists point out the liver already detoxifies the body. Further, there is no medical proof that fasting or cleansing diets actually rid the body of any toxins not otherwise discarded in bodily waste.

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Walk It Off

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

walk

How can I lose weight?

Eat less, exercise more.

But I’ve heard that if you eat less, your body slows down to compensate.

That’s true – to a point. The body is a motor that runs all the time. The rate at which the body motor stills is called its Basal Metabolic Rate. The faster the motor runs, the more fuel is used.

In the body, when fuel supplies are cut, an inner mechanism turns down the idling under conditions of starvation, but it defeats the person trying to lose weight.

Can this reaction be prevented?

Activity and exercise speed up the body’s metabolic rate. Not only are more calories burned during the exercise, but the effect continues for several hours. That’s why most people feel more active when their exercise program promotes weight loss by pepping up the metabolism – burning calories faster.

But I’ve heard that you have to run 10 miles to work off an ice-cream sundae.

There are other choices. You can burn the calories by sleeping for 15 hours, or by watching TV for 12 hours.

The problem, of course, is the there aren’t enough hours in the day to sleep away two ice-cream sundaes. That’s why exercise is so important – otherwise you’re not burning calories, you’re storing them away.

How many calories do I need?

Multiplying your current weight by 10 approximates the daily calories you would need to maintain the status quo if you are bedfast – this is your BMR. Your activity calories are on top of this: most people need an additional 30 percent of the BMR for this. Added together, this represents the number of calories you must eat every day to maintain your weight.

If you’re fairly sedentary and weigh 150 pounds, for example, your BMR needs would be, 1,500 calories, and your activity calories would be 450, for a total of 1,950 calories.

To lose weight, you need to reduce this number of calories or increase the number of calories used. When you develop a negative energy balance, you force your body to burn its reserve fuel, that is, fat.

Doesn’t muscle tissue turn into fat as a person gets older?

Muscle tissue does not turn to fat. It is physiologically impossible for this to happen.

When people become less active, however, their muscles shrink. Eating habits often are not adjusted to this lessened activity, so as excess calories accumulate, the body stores the fat in numerous places, including the spaces around the muscle fibers.

An important point to understand is that the muscles burn fat. When more muscle tissue is present, fat will burn faster and more efficiently. On the other hand, lack of exercise and overly rigorous dieting will cause the body to lose muscle. If this situation persists for a long time, it may become almost impossible to lose further weight.

Is 30 minutes of exercise three times a week enough?

Once a person has reached normal weight and a good level of fitness, that is may be sufficient. But people who are unfit and people who need to lose weight must aim higher – do an hour a day.

What is the best exercise?

The safest and best exercise is walking, with swimming a close second. People with high levels of fitness may select more tough exercises.

Start slowly with what you can do. How fast you go isn’t the most important thing; it is the total distance covered and the duration of the activity. Some individual must start with only 5 minutes at a time several times a day.

If your want to get thin, get in shape. Put your best food forward, begin a walk your way out of obesity, and keep going for a lifetime.

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What Is Carbohydrate Loading?

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

Carbohydrate loading is a permissible technique of boosting the amount of glycogen in the body prior to a competition. Practice of some endurance athletes in training for a major event; it consists of exercising to exhaustion, so depleting muscle glycogen, then eating a large carbohydrate‐rich meal so as to replenish glycogen reserves with a higher than normal proportion of straight‐chain glycogen.

Carbohydrate loading will boost stamina for extended aerobic workouts. If your stamina falls off sharply during your workout you may gain from this easy technique. Your body has different metabolism processes to go down each type of food. The carbohydrate metabolic method is the most efficient metabolic method. It allows your body to store reserves which can be freed during extended aerobic exercise.

Normally when carbohydrates are taken in, they are completely metabolized in the small intestines to the simplest form of carbohydrate called the monosaccharide. These then, are absorbed by the intestinal vile and transported to the blood as a source of energy.

The most predominant monosaccharide in the bloodstream is glucose. Glucose is converted to glycogen and is stored primarily in the liver when the body does not need energy. This process is called glycogenesis.

The metabolic process for storing glycogen for energy, does not work as efficiently when using proteins and fats. Therefore, carbohydrates are your best source in storing the unused glycogen, which is stored in the muscles and liver. When this glycogen, stored as extra energy is utilized, there is an increase in the stamina and endurance of a person. This is great news for any person involved in lengthy aerobic performances.

Carbohydrate loading has improved from the earlier regimens that involved depleting the body of low carbohydrates and hard exercise, then following it with a phase of increasing carbohydrate loading.

Carbohydrate loading is more effective when the diet followed has been rich in carbohydrates the entire time. Even with carbohydrate loading athletes should still replenish their bodies during an event to keep up their stamina.

It is best to consult a dietician if you are not sure what foods to include in your carbohydrate loading, to bring out your best performance in your endurance event.

As with any activity or procedure, carbohydrate loading is not for everyone. The person’s stamina and biochemical make-up should be tested first before proceeding with the method.

In conclusion, carbohydrate loading can be beneficial to many people involved in endurance activities and athletic events if they follow the steps outlined above.

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Little Tips To Tip The Scales Down

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

Take heart – you can lose weight without suffering. By making little changes in your daily habit and diet, you can drop 14 pounds in a little more than two months – without feeling deprived.

It’s simple math. For every 3,500 calories you expand above what you take in, you lose a pound. Pare 350 calories from what you usually eat and burn an extra 350 a day, and you’ll be 14 pounds lighter in 70 days.

Best of all, you will perhaps find this kind of measured approach to weight loss more painless than trying to stick to a strict low-calorie plan. “If you make a really remarkable change, you make it so overwhelming you just revert back to what you were doing before. But if you make a little change usually it means that it’s something really achievable and something that you can do forever for the rest of your life.

Follow these simple ideas and you’ll not only lose weight, you’ll also create new habits that will help keep you trim in the future.

Tune in to you body

Are you truly hungry when you eat? Or do you have a tendency to snack out of habit without paying attention to your appetite? If you’re eating when you’re not hungry, those are usually extra calories that your body does not need. Instead check in with your body to prove that you’re physically hungry before you eat.

Reportion your portions

Many of us tend to eat more servings of fat-free foods such as cereals and grains than we realize. You don’t have to measure your food to do this.  If you’re dining out and can’t control your portion, simply divide your meal into three and leave a third on your plate – you’ll cut total calories without feeling deprived.

Make smarter substitutions

We tend to eat the same foods over and over, so take a look at the foods you regularly consume and cut calories that you won’t miss. If you always eat buttered toast for breakfast, try it with fruit spread instead. Cut back on the mayo you spread in your sandwich. And as a substitute of using margarine on cooked vegetables, try a nonfat butter-flavored spray.

Every little bit helps

Finally, don’t be daunted by burning additional calories – it’s easier than you think. Everything from standing up out of a chair to walking down a hall to lifting weights or biking – counts, so people really need to be conscious of trying to increase physical activity in little ways throughout the day. Take breaks from work and walk up and down the stairs or go outside.

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