Showing posts with label lifestyle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lifestyle. Show all posts

How Important Is Liver Function?

The liver is the workhorse of our body and at the same time it functions like a landfill or rubbish pit where all the toxins finish up. Exposure to many toxins is part of today's lifestyle and avoiding them is almost impossible. Without thinking of the worst scenario like living near an industrial site or near a busy freeway, or intersection with air pollution where we potentially inhale exhaust smog and heavy metals.

Toxins are everywhere especially in the food we eat and our general diet. They are in non organic fruits and vegetables, mainly the way they grown with spraying of herbicides and pesticides. The more frequent and repeated toxins come from in our every day meals of processed foods. Not only the air we inhale or the food we eat, toxins are in personal products such as make up, creams, hair products, toothpaste and even in household cleaners. These are not all, just some where toxins can come from and how our body's filter system the liver becomes overloaded.

When the liver shuts down!
Deaths caused from liver failure have increased by 40 percent in the last decade and still rising. There are several reasons for liver failure; alcohol misuse, unhealthy eating, obesity, medication and viral hepatitis. The overuse of antibiotics not only lost the war against bacteria they are lethal in many other ways including deadly effects on the liver. Statistics show that antibiotics are the single largest class of drugs that can cause fatal liver damage. Change your way of thinking, think alternatives, there are many of them work well without having the deadly effects of antibiotics. Most of the liver diseases are preventable and in most cases treatable if detected in the early stages. The liver serves a range of purpose in the body; without a functional liver you will not survive. The liver is the main filtering system of the human body where all toxins go first for elimination by the filter. Let's compare it with the car engine for a minute: On top of the carburettor is the main filter to remove all the dust and particles from the air so the engine receives clean air without doing damage to any of the moving parts. Running the engine without a filter or the lack of servicing the filter will shorten the live of the engine and stop.

How to protect the liver's filtering system and ways to flush out toxins!
It's not that hard reducing your exposure and safely flush toxins out of your body with a few simple steps and changes to your diet. Besides some medication, excessive alcohol is the quickest way to liver scleroses. The other more subtle way of liver damage comes with processed food; at first it brings on other health issues and gradually will affect the liver. How to protect the liver? The most important step is to change your diet! Eat certain foods to improve liver function; nothing else will have a more positive effect than to nourish your liver with the right food. Certain healthy foods are necessary to improve function of the liver and to help protect it from toxic damage or even help to detoxify. Choose sulphur-containing foods, like garlic, onions, eggs, any food with soluble fibre that will activate liver enzymes and is essential for liver detoxification. A good soluble fibre is also found in pears, avocados, apples which are rich in antioxidants to help reduce liver damage and protect the body from toxic surplus. Leafy greens are also important to remove chemicals; such as the brassica family are best to include spinach, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale, cauliflower etc., also include cinnamon and turmeric.

Cleanse with vegetable juice!
Vegetable juice is another way to help the body to detoxify and cleanse. Make your own juices at home with fresh vegetables; drinking a glass or two for up to five days will cleanse organs, produce better digestion and clear many skin conditions. Fresh organic vegetables become first priority because they contain no pesticides, fungicides or herbicides. When juicing try beets, lemon, ginger and kale; they taste delicious and contain fibre pectin, which helps remove liver toxins. Hydration is also an important part in toxin removal, although you don't want to flood your body with water, but in this situation increase your water intake to one glass every hour which brings you to approx. 8 glasses per day. To get your digestive juices flowing and boost nutrition adding lemon or lime to the water has other benefits and helps with the taste. To flush out toxins by using a good game plan will give you a healthy liver, renewed energy, peace of mind and better health overall.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/8608686

Change Your Lifestyle & Combat Fatigue

In my article Take Back Your Life, I talk about ways to get out from under the lengthening to do list and the stress of every day life. So, imagine my surprise when I saw a commercial the other day for a new drug on the market to help you combat "fatigue" - once called exhaustion. They actually go on to say that this product is a "natural" alternative to caffeine and sugar to help you stay alert and energized in the wake of fatigue. First of all, caffeine and sugar are not synthetic. They too are natural products, and we already know they are not good for you. In this day and age, people are too ready to pop pills or drink beverages that claim to be "all natural" when the reality is that natural products can be just as dangerous or more so than chemicals. After all, there are varieties of mushrooms that can kill you if eaten.

The commercial goes on to list the causes of fatigue as too much to do, a busy day and stress. In today's society we are too ready to take a quick fix pill to combat a problem that is not caused by a bacteria or virus but rather by our own actions.

I offer you this alternative. Take stock of your life and make healthy choices and changes. The exhaustion will go away and there won't be a need to down pills to get you up.

If you are feeling like life is overwhelming then you need to follow some simple rules, because afterall, none of us was issued a Superman cape upon entering adulthood.

1. Make a list of all of the activities and chores you do each week.

2. Be honest about what is necessary and which you are doing out of sense of obligation.

3. If you have children, now is a good time to evaluate their activities too. It is sad to say, but it is possible that your children are in the same state of exhaustion that you are.

4. From this list, mark the ones that are the most important to you and your family.

5. Discard the rest. Yes, you read that correctly. Find a way to get rid of them. It is sort of like donating your unwanted goods. Just give them away. If it is a social activity then put an end to it. If it is a chore, higher a professional to finish the project and move on.

It is very important that you do not feel guilty about giving up activities or projects. That only adds stress. Remember that if you have gotten to the point of sheer exhaustion, then it is time to take back your life. Get in control again. If you are saying to yourself, it is all important and that is why I am doing it, then you probably need to hire a life management specialist to help you really find the true priorities in your life. Nothing is more important than the health and well being of you and your family.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9873

Healthy lifestyle adds years to life

Live longer thanks to fruit, an active lifestyle, limited alcohol and no cigarettes. This is the conclusion of a study by public health physicians at the University of Zurich who documented for the first time the impact of behavioural factors on life expectancy in numbers. The results are to be taken over into prevention and health counselling in primary care.

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), cancer, diabetes and chronic respiratory disorders -- the incidence of these non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is constantly rising in industrialised countries. The Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) is, therefore, in the process of developing a national prevention strategy with a view to improving the population's health competence and encouraging healthier behaviour. Attention is focusing, amongst other things, on the main risk factors for these diseases which are linked to personal behaviour -- i.e. tobacco smoking, an unhealthy diet, physical inactivity and harmful alcohol consumption.

Against this backdrop Private Docent Brian Martin and his colleagues from the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (ISPM) at the University of Zurich have examined the effects of these four factors -- both individual and combined -- on life expectancy. For the first time the consequences of an unhealthy lifestyle can be depicted in numbers. An individual who smokes, drinks a lot, is physically inactive and has an unhealthy diet has 2.5 fold higher mortality risk in epidemiological terms than an individual who looks after his health. Or to put it positively: "A healthy lifestyle can help you stay ten years' younger," comments the lead author Eva Martin-Diener.

Analysis of data from the Swiss Cohort

For the study the researchers used data from the Swiss National Cohort (SNC). The Zurich public health physicians focussed on CVDs and cancer as they account for the most deaths in Switzerland. The researchers succeeded in correlating data on tobacco consumption, fruit consumption, physical activity and alcohol consumption from 16,721 participants aged between 16 and 90 from 1977 to 1993 with the corresponding deaths up to 2008. The impact of the four forms of behaviour was still visible when biological risk factors like weight and blood pressure were taken into account as well.

"The effect of each individual factor on life expectancy is relatively high," states Eva Martin-Diener. But smoking seems to be the most harmful. Compared with a group of non-smokers, smokers have a 57 percent higher risk of dying prematurely. The impact of an unhealthy diet, not enough sport and alcohol abuse results in an elevated mortality risk of around 15 percent for each factor. "We were very surprised by the 2.5 fold higher risk when all four risk factors are combined," explains Brian Martin. Hence, the probability of a 75-year-old man with all risk factors surviving the next ten years is, for instance, 35 percent, without risk factors 67 percent -- for a woman 47 and 74 percent respectively.

Effects only appear in later life

According to Martin an unhealthy lifestyle has above all a long-lasting impact. Whereas high wine consumption, cigarettes, an unhealthy diet and physical inactivity scarcely had any effect on mortality amongst the 45 to 55-year-olds, it does have a visible effect on 65 to 75-year-olds. The probability of a 75-year-old man with none of the four risk factors surviving the next ten years is 67 percent, exactly the same as the risk for a smoker who is ten years younger, doesn't exercise, eats unhealthily and drinks a lot.

The social and public health physicians depict the dependency of life expectancy and the four risk behaviours for the age groups in what are known as survival charts. The impact of individual risk factors and their combined effect on mortality are visible at a glance. "In future, doctors will be able to refer to the easily comprehensible charts when giving health counselling to their patients in primary care," comments Eva Martin-Diener with confidence. "Furthermore, they may also be important for the political discussions of prevention strategies for NCDs."

Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by University of Zurich. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.