10 Tips to Maintain Health and Beauty

Beauty, health, and nutrition are all integrated. If you eat a balanced diet you will be able to maintain your physique and glowing beauty externally and good health internally. A balanced diet is one that provides all the nutrients you need, the right amount of proteins, carbohydrates, and fat.

To achieve goals you need to ensure a good balance in your diet, introduce variety into your meals, and practice moderation. The basis of nutrition lies in your height, weight, dimensions, and your daily energy needs. Once you know this you can compute what your daily calorific needs are and set goals for weight maintenance, gain, or loss. By regulating your diet you can be active as well as happy.

You must:

1. Eat sensibly. Include a variety of foods in your diet such that the 40 nutrients that are required by your body are present. Make use of a food pyramid and calorie chart to prepare tasty and nutritious meals. Follow the "Dietary Guidelines for Americans" issued each year.

2. Eat plenty of whole grains, fruits, and vegetables. They will supply you with essential vitamins, minerals, and protection from several diseases.

3. Maintain your weight at a healthy level. Successful weight management is one of the golden keys to good health. By doing is you will lower considerably the risk of many diseases like hypertension, diabetes, heart diseases, cancer, and osteoporosis.

4. Learn self control, eat moderate portions. The secret lies in eating everything but in small portions. Don't give way to gluttony or greed.

5. Make a time-table for your meals and how many calories will be in each meal. Never fast, starve yourself, or skip a meal. Eat when your body demands sustenance but not huge quantities.

6. Practice moderation. Good health does not lie in eliminating carbohydrates or fats. Include all your favorite foods but balance them with the rest of your diet. If you indulge your taste buds by eating pizza one day, then try and do so at lunch time, never eat pizza late at night. Ask for low fat cheese and healthy toppings. Eat just enough to satisfy your craving not all 12 slices. Get a few friends to share you sin. The days you indulge, eat sensibly the rest of the day--salads and fruits will help you make up for the binge.

7. Be sure your meals each day include all the food groups.

8. Plan to exercise every day. Either walk or take up aerobics, dancercise, or join a gym. Exercise will not just burn calories but put a glow into your skin, tone your muscles, and strengthen your bones. Exercise also removes accumulated toxins from your body.

9. Maintain a dairy in which you record your goals, and what you eat each day. Review your week objectively and create a table that shows at a glance what you did right and what you did wrong. This will help keep you on the right track.

10. Celebrate each victory. Give yourself a present or take yourself out every time you achieve a goal.

By eating healthy, one can live a complete and rounded life without diseases, reduce stress greatly, look and feel great, be happy from within and without, age well, produce healthy progeny, and live life to the fullest.

Paul Wilson is a freelance writer for http://www.1888Discuss.com/health/, the premier REVENUE SHARING discussion forum for Health Forum, including topics on health care, Children's Health Issues, addiction, Cancer, fitness equipment, Burns & Injuries and more. He also freelances for submit free press releasehttp://www.1888PressRelease.com/Medical-0-27.html

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Addicted to Fat: Overeating May Alter the Brain as Much as Hard Drugs

Like many people, rats are happy to gorge themselves on tasty, high-fat treats. Bacon, sausage, chocolate and even cheesecake quickly became favorites of laboratory rats that recently were given access to these human indulgences—so much so that theanimals came to depend on high quantities to feel good, like drug users who need to up their intake to get high.

A new study, published online March 28 inNature Neuroscience, describes these rats' indulgent tribulations, adding to research literature on the how excess food intake can trigger changes in the brain, alterations that seem to create a neurochemical dependency in the eater—or user. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) Preliminary findings from the work were presented at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in October 2009.

Like many pleasurable behaviors—including sex and drug use—eating can trigger the release of dopamine, a feel-good neurotransmitter in the brain. This internal chemical reward, in turn, increases the likelihood that the associated action will eventually become habitual through positive reinforcement conditioning. If activated by overeating, these neurochemical patterns can make the behavior tough to shake—a result seen in many human cases, notes Paul Kenny, an associate professor in the Department of Molecular Therapeutics at The Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Fla., and co-author of the new study. "Most people who are overweight would say, 'I would like to control my weight and my eating,' but they find it very hard to control their feeding behavior," he says.

Despite a growing body of research, it has been unclear whether extreme overeating was initiated by a chemical irregularity in the brain or if the behavior itself was changing the brain's biochemical makeup. The new research by Kenny and his colleague Paul Johnson, a graduate student, shows that both conditions are possible.

Bigger waists, higher thresholds
To see just how overeating and obesity alters the brain's reward circuitry, the researchers implanted stimulating electrodes in rats' brains to monitor their changing reward threshold levels. Some rats were given only one hour a day to feast on tasty, high-fat foodstuffs, whereas others had almost unlimited access (18 to 23 hours a day). All the rats, including a control group that was given no human food, had open access to water and standard, healthful lab rat chow.

Unsurprisingly, the rats with extended access to the high-fat foods ate little to none of their comparatively bland lab fare and quickly grew obese—consuming about twice the amount of calories as the control, chow-only group. The researchers also found that even the rats with limited access to the unhealthful food were doing their best to keep up. These subjects managed, on average, to consume 66 percent of their daily calories over the course of the single hour per day in which they could eat the junk food, developing a pattern of compulsive binge eating. Only the obese rats with extended access to the bad food, however, had sharply increasing thresholds for reward levels.

"This research by Kenny's group is a great contribution," says Nicole Avena, a visiting research associate at Princeton University's Department of Psychology who was not involved in the new study but has completed similar research on addiction and high-sugar diets. Many studies have drawn the connection between excessive food intake and addiction in both animal models and humans. A 2001 study in The Lancetobserved a similar dearth of dopamine receptors in the brains of many obese people as in those hooked on cocaine or alcohol. The new research adds a more nuanced understanding of just how food can modify the brain—and shows that differences in the brain from the outset can predispose an individual for overeating.

Engineering an overeater
To start an addictive cycle, dopamine must be felt, and for that the brain must have ample dopamine receptors. In many substance abusers a low level of dopamine receptors, either from the outset or caused by the behavior, means they increasingly have to seek more dopamine-inducing substances to reach a level of neurochemical reward they can enjoy. After someone dependent on a substance stops using it, however, it often takes time for depleted dopamine receptors to return to baseline levels. For mice addicted to cocaine, it can take two days to regain normalized levels. The obese rats in the new study took two weeks to regain their baseline density of receptors.

To gauge just how much the quantity of dopamine receptors had affected the rats' eating behavior, Kenny and Johnson inserted a virus into the brains of a test group of the animals to knock out their striatal dopamine D2 receptors, which are known in humans to be at low levels in many substance abusers. They found that rather than gradually increasing rat brain reward thresholds and accompanying overeating behavior these rats almost immediately had higher thresholds and took to overeating immediately when given access to a high-fat diet. This connection, Kenny says, shows that for people who have lower levels of D2 receptors, "it could predispose you to developing this kind of habitual behavior."

Genetics likely play a role in an individual's likelihood of becoming obese—in both metabolic and neurochemical systems. In humans, for example, one genetic flag known as the TaqIA A1 allele has been linked to fewer D2 receptors as well as drug addiction and obesity. And in the rats there were "occasionally one or two animals per study that didn't overeat," Kenny says. He and his colleagues are currently investigating possible genetic underpinnings of this phenomenon to see if there is a similar genetic marker that could be useful in helping humans avoid obesity. Further findings in this field might help in developing new prevention and treatment possibilities. Counseling techniques, therapy and even pharmaceutical treatments that have shown success for substance abuse might show promise for those who struggle with overeating, Kenny notes.

fat tummy shrinks your brain

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Pleasing yourself

Although masturbation is often treated as taboo, it's entirely normal and extremely common. Sex and relationships counsellor Suzie Haymanexplains why it's vital you know how to satisfy yourself in order to make sex with a partner as fulfilling as possible.

Negative messages

As a baby or toddler, you probably explored your body to find out where you began and ended, and what felt good. This kind of experimentation usually evolves into masturbation, but children often receive a puzzling message from parents at this point. They are discouraged from touching themselves and hands are slapped away, which tends to leave a feeling that sexual exploration is a thoroughly bad thing.

It doesn't stop children doing it, but it may mean that boys masturbate hurriedly and furtively in order not to be caught out - which may lead to premature ejaculation in later life. Girls grow up feeling they should never admit to masturbating, let alone do so in front of a partner.

Lots of scare stories have grown up around sexual self-exploration over the centuries. People are told that it makes hair grow on your palms, makes "real" sex unsatisfying, and that it's only for the sad and desperate. None of these tales is true, but the overall result of the negative messages around the subject is that masturbation is seen as a sad activity for desperate people, which shouldn't be valued or discussed.

Different kinds of touch

Masturbation can be all the more satisfying if you vary the ways in which you touch yourself. Choose a time when you can be alone, relaxed and comfortable, and lie back and run your hands over your body. Try strokes, caresses, nips, pinches and gentle scratches.

No one is born knowing how their own body or anyone else's responds to sexual stimulation. You have to learn by trial and error. And since everyone's different, the only way of finding out how to please your partner is to learn from them. It's also common and normal for adults in happy relationships to feel like pleasing themselves at times.

Taking your time

Concentrate on areas that particularly excite you, but try not to stimulate only the most obvious bits. You're likely to bring yourself to orgasm by stimulating your penis or clitoris, but it will be more arousing, and your climax more satisfying, if you explore as much of your body as possible.

Try this

Masturbation can feel so much better if you introduce contrasting sensations. Try stroking yourself slowly with:

• hands covered in oil or cream
• a feather
• fake fur
• a silk scarf
• a body brush
• a sponge run under hot water, then under cold

Sharing your discoveries

When you've had a chance to explore your body and your responses alone, you could think about sharing your discoveries with your partner. Watching them pleasure themselves can be arousing, and it's also the best way to learn about what pleases each of you.

Mutual masturbation or body rubbing has a variety of advantages. It's safe, with no risk of pregnancy or infection. Non-penetrative sex also reduces the pressure to perform. Losing an erection or coming before your partner doesn't have to spell the end of love-making. All in all, brushing up your masturbation skills can add a lot to your sex life.

Is sex better when you're in love?

Some people prefer sex as part of a long-term relationship while others find familiarity a real passion killer. Psychosexual therapist Paula Hall takes a closer look at casual and committed sex.

Casual sex

The term 'casual sex' implies there's no commitment to the other person. Although this doesn't necessarily mean there's no sense of responsibility or care, in a casual encounter you're more likely to focus on the here and now. You can enjoy the moment without much thought about what your partner thinks of you or what you think of them. Without the emotional complications of a relationship, you're free to concentrate on physical satisfaction.

Sex with a stranger - for many people, unfamiliarity is the key to casual sex. They find the mystery exciting and, if there's no chance of meeting again, inhibitions can be cast aside. It offers the chance take on a new identity and act out a secret fantasy with little fear of rejection.

Element of risk - danger is generally part of casual sex. There's a sense of being naughty, of tasting the forbidden fruit. Some people deliberately add to their sexual encounters by choosing public places or partners they feel should be off-limits.

Why casual sex can be attractive

Psychological reasons - some people pick up messages during childhood that casual sex is wrong (and therefore more exciting). Others have been left with a fear of intimacy by their experiences.

Physical reasons - when we take risks and feel fear, the sympathetic nervous system is stimulated. Breathing becomes faster, blood pressure rises and adrenalin is released. Our body enters a state of high alert. If you add sexual messages at this point, the body will respond faster.

Sex when you're in love

Italian scientists have discovered that the biochemical state of falling in love is similar to obsessive compulsive disorder. The yearning of couples to be together and learn about each other in intimate detail is overwhelming. They grab every opportunity to show affection and get as close as possible to one another.

During this period sex can be very exciting. There's still some of the mystery of casual sex and also some risk. The difference is that sex is more mutual when we've fallen in love. It's about giving and sharing ourselves physically and emotionally. As well as sexual satisfaction, we can expect to feel emotional fulfilment. Sex becomes the ultimate act of intimacy.

Did you know?

• When you kiss you release dopamine, a chemical thought to be important for sexual arousal.
• A sense of risk can heighten arousal and sexual responsiveness.

Sex in a long-term relationship

Those Italian scientists say the brain returns to normal after six to 18 months. It seems it's not physically possible to stay in that manic state of obsession with a partner for much longer than that. It's then that we either fall out of love or the relationship matures.

When a relationship matures, sex matures. You now have the advantage of knowing each other well. Fear of rejection is replaced with trust and security. This allows you to move into a stage of experimentation and mutual growth. You can take the time to fine-tune your skills as a lover.

So is sex better when you're in love?

Sex can be exciting whether or not you're in love, and at any stage of a relationship. I believe sex in a loving relationship offers an opportunity to grow together and become great lovers. It may not be possible to recapture the mystery of casual sex but there's a much higher chance of all-round fulfilment.

From casual sex to long-term love

• Casual sex: risk, mystery, urgency and focus on physical satisfaction.
• Early love: mutual feelings, yearning, giving, affection and focus on physical satisfaction and emotional fulfilment.
• Long-term relationship: knowledge, trust, skill, experimentation and focus on deepening physical and emotional satisfaction.

Guide to safer sex

Helen Knox has advice on a no-nonsense, practical approach to avoiding sexually-transmitted infections which covers the best ways to dodging chlamydia, gonorrhoea, HIV and other diseases while still having fun.

Why practise safer sex?

If spontaneity is your aim, this guide might seem a little off-putting. It's not meant to discourage anyone from enjoying sex, but to help people to have healthier, happier and safer sex lives. Catching an infection is a lot more off-putting than taking care of yourself and your lover, so here are some measures to help you protect yourself from ALL sexually-transmitted infections. Many viral and bacterial sexually-transmitted infections are easier to catch and more common than HIV, which is why this guide is about more than just using a condom for penetrative sex.

Quick facts

• One million people are infected with STIs around the world every day of the year.
• Oral sexually-transmitted gonorrhoea is on the rise in the UK.

Precautions for greater safety

Penetrative vaginal sex - a condom should be put on before any genital contact, especially if the woman isn't using additional, reliable birth control. There are enough live sperm and germs at the tip of an erect penis to cause pregnancy or infection without penetration or ejaculation.

Penetrative anal sex - use a non-spermicidally-lubricated condom with extra water-based or silicone lubricant at all times. It's useful to wear an extra-strong condom, but more important to use sufficient lubrication, without which the condom is more likely to burst. Never move from anal to vaginal sex without changing the condom. If there's no spare condom handy, move from the vagina to the anus.

Foreplay - cover cuts, sores and other skin lesions on fingers with waterproof plasters or latex gloves, particularly during a menstrual period or if anal foreplay is involved. If you don't have latex gloves to hand, it's safer to use a non-spermicidally-lubricated condom over one or two fingers than bare hands. If you're not using protection and you're going to move on to vaginal foreplay, it's vital to wash your hands after anal foreplay.

Sex toys - if you're sharing toys, use the same level of protection as for penetrative sex. Wash toys thoroughly between partners. Keep whips, chains and other articles used during S&M (sadomasochistic) fetish foreplay for personal use, particularly if you draw blood (or body fluids containing blood) during use.

Masturbation - there's no risk of infection if you're alone and using unshared items, unless a disease from one part of the body infects another through poor hygiene technique. An unwashed finger, for example, can spread genital gonorrhoea or chlamydia to the eye. During masturbation with a partner, follow the guidelines for foreplay.