Feeling Unhealthy? 7 Ways to Improve Your Health

 

 

There is nothing quite as important as our health. Practicing healthy habits not only increases your lifespan, but it also just makes you feel good! Below are a few habits to increase your health in simple ways.

 

Improve your eating habits.

Obviously, eating healthy is important. What many do not know is that healthy eating does not just involve decreasing calories. To increase health, individuals also need to stop skipping breakfast, eliminate late night snacks, and even stop drinking juices and soda.

 

Maintain an active lifestyle

A common misconception is that exercise must be rigorous to be beneficial. While intense workouts are great, there are other options. In fact, walking is one of the healthiest activities you can do! Find something you enjoy like golf, tennis, or biking and have fun!

 

Stop those bad habits.

Addictions like smoking and drinking are obviously harmful. But even things like nail biting and self-depreciating thoughts need to be avoided. Create good habits like positive thinking and exercise to replace those negative tendencies in your life.

 

Hire a maid service for your home.

Tedious tasks, like mopping the floor, take time and cause stress. By hiring a maid service like Maid Brigade, you are not only increasing the time you have to do most important tasks, but you are also decreasing your stress level. Plus, with the time you gain by hiring a maid, you can exercise or cook a healthy meal to increase your health too!

 

Set specific “down time”.

In this fast paced world it is easy to get carried away with all of the tasks to be done. It is important to fit a few moments of peace into your day. Try something that you enjoy like daily meditation, or a bubble bath. In fact, relaxing can lower your stress and improve your blood pressure!

 

Re-decorate a room.

Re-decorating a room has many benefits. To start, any “refresh” in your home will make you feel better. Having a clean, well-kept home reduces your stress level. Also, redecorating allows you to indirectly exercise! Painting, moving furniture, and even shopping burns calories. In fact, these benefits hold true for just about any hobby.

 

Read something you enjoy.

Reading also has many benefits to your health. Reading is exercise for the mind because it will keep you thinking. Also, reading is relaxing and enjoyable for most people. This makes reading an additional way to reduce your stress level.

 

 

 

Categories: health, improve, unhealthy, ways to

5 Pests You Didn"t Know That Are Making Your Home Unhealthy

Did you know that hundreds of thousands of pests call your home home as well, and many of these pests are making your home an unhealthy place to live? There’s no denying that the average person does not enjoy the sight of bugs and rodents, but many people don’t understand that the pests you do and don’t see scurry by can also be affecting your health. Here are 5 pests that are in the common residential building that could be making you sick:

 

Bed Bugs Could Be Feeding On You

The typical household insects don’t carry any major illnesses or diseases, but they can spoil your food with germs if they can locate it. Bed begs on the other hand, are parasitic pests that feed on human blood and are typically located within your mattress. What scares many is knowing that these bugs can feed and still go undetected in the night, and these feedings can lead to allergic reactions and skin outbreaks.

 

Rodents Spreading Illness

Rodents can spread illness almost immediately when a human comes into contact with their droppings or saliva. In fact, rodents spread more than 35 different diseases, some of these more serious than the others. Rodent control can be very difficult because of their elusive nature, and calling a reliable pest control service provider like Admiral Pest Control may be a better choice than do-it-yourself poisons and traps.

 

Ticks Can Be Carried Into the Home

Ticks do not naturally live in a home, but rather in the woods. If you have pets who do roam in the wild, ticks can be carried into your home using your animal as its host. Once in the home, a tick can spread Lyme disease, which can lead to a serious and draining sickness in a short period of time.

 

Mosquitoes Are a Long Going Problem

Mosquitoes have been a problem for hundreds of years. Centuries ago, mosquitoes were blamed for the rapid spread of the Black Plaque, and today they are still spreading disease from city to city. Like bed bugs, mosquitoes feed on hosts, but they have the ability to spread disease quickly due to their ability to fly. While most cities have eradication systems, mosquitoes are still a problem.

 

Termites and Your Home

Termites naturally eat wood, and bad infestations can affect the structural integrity of your home. If you have termites, you could be living in an unstable home that needs to be more than just treated. Call a reliable provider of pest control services immediately if you notice some of the signs piles of saw dust or droppings around your drywall, and have the problem addressed.

 

Everyone wants to feel safe in their own home. Sometimes, dangerous intruders are not humans at all. Look out for the signs, have your home inspected, and take action if you discover that pests are calling your home their home away from homes.

Categories: bed bugs, Home, Mosquitoes, nbsp, pest control, pests, spread, unhealthy

The Shocking Truth About Soy!

From years it is said that soy or soya bean is healthy food because of its rich nutritional value. However, a recent study suggests that this might not be the truth. Soy is used in various food products including packaged products and pet food. But did you know that soy is a hidden ingredient in many processed food products? This is to extend the validity of foods like hamburgers, dry kibble pet food and is also found in the packaged bread products at the supermarket.

 

Ancient culture and Soy

Many sources claim that soy forms a staple diet for Asians and this has been running for years. However, it was the Chinese community that first started eating soybeans, 2,500 years ago, after they understood how to ferment it. They figured that soy contains a lot of toxins and only started eating them once they could neutralize them through fermentation. Soy was formerly an inedible plant, often used to fix nitrogen in the soil. In ancient Asia, soy was consumed in small quantity such as a topping or a condiment along with seafood, pork and other such animal dishes, rich in protein. It is only recently that soy is consumed by many without fermentation or in a highly processed form.

 

About 2,000 years ago, tofu was used in China monasteries in order to promote sexual abstinence as the phytoestrogens in soy lower testosterone levels. However in times of famine, people started to use tofu as a condiment to add flavor to pork or seafood with high levels of protein.

 

Miso, fermented soy, was consumed by Japanese about 1,500 years ago. Tempeh –form of fermented soy was discovered by 1,000 A.D when it came to Indonesia. However, this formed a major constituent for a poor man’s meal. Soybean milk was never consumed by Asians. The soy milk available in market today that claims to be healthy and nutritional contains high level of toxins that can hamper your health.

 

Here are some quick facts about soy

Soybeans contain high levels of phytic acid which reduces assimilation of magnesium, copper, calcium and zinc. The acid cannot be neutralized by regular preparation methods such as sprouting or soaking. Cooking soy slow or fast will not help either. It is found that children with high phytate diets have faced growth problems.

While processing soy, free glutamic acid or MSG – a potent neurotoxin, is formed. This is also added separately in many soy food products.

Vitamin B12 analogs in soybean are not absorbed. This actually increases the body’s requirement for B12.

Soy products can increase the body’s requirement for vitamin D as well.

It is found that soy products contain high levels of aluminum which is toxic to the kidney and the nervous system of human body.

Trypsin inhibitors in soy interfere with protein digestion and may cause pancreatic disorders. In test animals soy containing trypsin inhibitors caused stunted growth.

Soy contains Trypsin that interferes with protein digestion and can cause pancreatic disorder. When tested on animals, it was found that trypsin inhibitors caused stunned growth.

Fragile proteins are denatured while processing at a high temperature in order to make soy protein isolate and textured vegetable protein.

Soy phytoestrogens are potent anti thyroid agents that cause hypothyroidism. This may also cause thyroid cancer. Consumption of soy formula has been associated with autoimmune thyroid disease in toddlers and kids.

Soy phytoestrogens can also cause infertility in adult women and increase the risk of breast cancer due as it upsets endocrine function.

Toxic lysinoalanine and highly carcinogenic nitrosamines are formed while processing soy protein.

Categories: bad, Facts, fermented soy, food products, high levels, inhibitors caused, processing soy, protein digestion, Soy, soy phytoestrogens, Soy Protein, trypsin inhibitors, unhealthy

Unhealthy Snacks You Didn’t Realise Were Bad for You

In an ideal world, everyone would snack on fruit and carrot sticks. If you’re one of the few that already do, well done! For everyone else, snacking is a tricky area of your diet to navigate. It can be difficult to know what’s good for you and what isn’t – you may be surprised to know that some of these snacks make the unhealthy list, despite much PR to the contrary. It’s easy to be swayed by a bit of fancy marketing that tells you that something is good for you, but do you really know what you’re eating? Here are a few snacks masquerading as good for you, and the real nutritional details you need to know about.

Home-style popcorn

Popcorn should be great for dieters, as its naturally low in fat and calories, a whole grain and surprisingly high in antioxidants. If you were to make this from freshly popped kernels in your own home, you’d be fine. However, in the hands of manufacturers this becomes an unhealthy snack. Suddenly, our low-calorie snack food is high in salt, trans fats, calories and sugars.

Yoghurt

If yoghurt was left alone by the food industry, it would maintain its healthy nature. However, most yoghurts on the market are packed with sugars and added flavours that make them an unhealthy snack. Some products contain corn syrup, gelatine and corn starch – not ingredients you want to be eating on a regular basis. Stick to natural yoghurt and just add fruit for a sweetener – a far healthier way to eat this product.

Ritz crackers

Cheese and crackers may sound like a harmless snack, but just one serving of this has more salt and twice the saturate fat as a small portion of chicken nuggets – even more alarmingly, it contains more sugar than two Hershey’s kisses. Cheese is incredibly high in fat, so if you want to snack on this you should limit yourself to just a dice-sized cube.

If you want to make healthier choices with your snacks, you need to look for those that are high in protein, fibre, minerals, vitamins, and that are low in salt, sugar and fats. The ingredients are the top of the list will indicate to you what your product is made of. So, for example, if it is high in sugar, you know you should avoid it. Don’t be fooled by other variations though, such as glucose or malt syrups, as these are still sugar by another name. Check for foods that say they contain whole grains to ensure that they really are made up of whole wheat flour, or the equivalent. If there is just a small quantity of it, then it won’t be as good for you as you think. Try to stick to unprocessed foods where possible, such as fresh fruit and raw vegetables – you could also add a healthy dip such as houmous to make them taste a little more appealing. Nuts and seeds, as long as they are salt and sugar free, are great for snacking as they contain plenty of healthy oils and fats and are low in calories, salt and sugars. Snacking is often more out of habit than a need to eat, so try having a glass of water when you feel hungry to ensure that you really are craving food – dehydration is often mistaken for hunger and could lead to you eating empty calories throughout the day.

Categories: calories, high, popcorn, Ritz crackers, Salt, Snack, snacks, Sugar, unhealthy, unhealthy snack

Unhealthy Snacks You Didn’t Realise Were Bad for You

In an ideal world, everyone would snack on fruit and carrot sticks. If you’re one of the few that already do, well done! For everyone else, snacking is a tricky area of your diet to navigate. It can be difficult to know what’s good for you and what isn’t – you may be surprised to know that some of these snacks make the unhealthy list, despite much PR to the contrary. It’s easy to be swayed by a bit of fancy marketing that tells you that something is good for you, but do you really know what you’re eating? Here are a few snacks masquerading as good for you, and the real nutritional details you need to know about.

Home-style popcorn

Popcorn should be great for dieters, as its naturally low in fat and calories, a whole grain and surprisingly high in antioxidants. If you were to make this from freshly popped kernels in your own home, you’d be fine. However, in the hands of manufacturers this becomes an unhealthy snack. Suddenly, our low-calorie snack food is high in salt, trans fats, calories and sugars.

Yoghurt

If yoghurt was left alone by the food industry, it would maintain its healthy nature. However, most yoghurts on the market are packed with sugars and added flavours that make them an unhealthy snack. Some products contain corn syrup, gelatine and corn starch – not ingredients you want to be eating on a regular basis. Stick to natural yoghurt and just add fruit for a sweetener – a far healthier way to eat this product.

Ritz crackers

Cheese and crackers may sound like a harmless snack, but just one serving of this has more salt and twice the saturate fat as a small portion of chicken nuggets – even more alarmingly, it contains more sugar than two Hershey’s kisses. Cheese is incredibly high in fat, so if you want to snack on this you should limit yourself to just a dice-sized cube.

If you want to make healthier choices with your snacks, you need to look for those that are high in protein, fibre, minerals, vitamins, and that are low in salt, sugar and fats. The ingredients are the top of the list will indicate to you what your product is made of. So, for example, if it is high in sugar, you know you should avoid it. Don’t be fooled by other variations though, such as glucose or malt syrups, as these are still sugar by another name. Check for foods that say they contain whole grains to ensure that they really are made up of whole wheat flour, or the equivalent. If there is just a small quantity of it, then it won’t be as good for you as you think. Try to stick to unprocessed foods where possible, such as fresh fruit and raw vegetables – you could also add a healthy dip such as houmous to make them taste a little more appealing. Nuts and seeds, as long as they are salt and sugar free, are great for snacking as they contain plenty of healthy oils and fats and are low in calories, salt and sugars. Snacking is often more out of habit than a need to eat, so try having a glass of water when you feel hungry to ensure that you really are craving food – dehydration is often mistaken for hunger and could lead to you eating empty calories throughout the day.

Categories: calories, high, popcorn, Ritz crackers, Salt, Snack, snacks, Sugar, unhealthy, unhealthy snack

How to Get Back in Shape After the Diwali Celebrations

Diwali is a wonderful time filled with festivities, celebrations and, above all, wonderful food, to be enjoyed with family and friends. When the celebrations are over, however, many people look around and realise that their gym regime and diet have completely gone to pot. It can be very hard to pick up the reins of a healthy lifestyle, but of course it is very important for your wellness and wellbeing.

 

Try not to berate yourself too much, first of all, because it is important to recognise that these special celebrations with family and friends have health benefits for you in other ways. As long as you get back into the groove and reclaim your healthy regime afterwards, there is no harm in taking a little time off over Diwali to truly celebrate and indulge.

 

The human body has a natural detoxification system, but if you have really been going to town on the sweet treats and unhealthy food, your vital organs will be suffering, and you will suffer some unpleasant side effects as your body struggles to cope with getting rid of all the toxins you are pumping into it. These can include skin problems, a bloated tummy, constipation and even unpleasant body odours. Underneath these surface problems, it can also lead to more serious problems such as high cholesterol, blocked arteries and heart problems.

 

To fight against all these, you need to bear some important health tips in mind, and the most important one is not to go on a crash diet. Your post-Diwali panic may lead you to want to lose all the weight straight away, but avoiding any food group is an unhealthy way to go about things. You should eliminate unhealthy foods but don’t cut out any actual food groups.

 

It’s definitely time, however, to stock up on the fresh fruit and veg. Replace all your usual unhealthy treats with vegetables, juices and fruits as well as coconut water and fruit yoghurts for optimal health.

Categories: diet, Diwali, Food, nbsp, problems, unhealthy, weight

The Truth About What Fad Diets Really Do To Your Health

The hardest thing about losing weight is the length of time that it takes. It can be so daunting to set out on a new diet, and to know that at the rate of one or two pounds per week (the healthy recommended amount of weight loss), it will take months or even years to reach your goal weight. People understandably want to see results quickly, especially when they are doing something as enormously difficult as changing their eating habits. This often leads people to try faddy diets, which promise that they will see results in a short space of time, but the problem is that, often, these types of diets are not good for long-term wellness.

One of the reasons that fad diets don’t work, long term, is that they are not sustainable. They often focus on eating one type of food in isolation, or cutting huge areas of food out of the diet altogether. In order to be sustainable, diets have to be something that you can maintain after the first flush of weight loss is over. As well as being unrealistic, however, these diets may also be damaging to your wellbeing – if not downright dangerous.

Fad diets are unhealthy for a number of reasons, and yet magazine editors continue to promote them.

One of the main reasons that they are unhappy is because they restrict certain food groups. This means that the diet is not balanced, and this can cause all kinds of nutrient deficiencies. Fad diets can also make you feel really run down and lacking in energy, which affects your ability to exercise as well as to enjoy your life.

The huge reductions in calorie intake which can be part of the diet can also slow down your metabolism, making it harder rather than easier to lose weight. When you do finally give up on the restrictive diet, as so often happens, the period of restrictive fasting can make you eat twice as much when the diet comes to an end, piling on more weight than you started with.

The Truth About What Fad Diets Really Do To Your Health

Categories: diet, Diets, fad, Fad Diets, Food, Long term, reasons, unhealthy, weight, Weight Loss