If you are like most people, you only wash to your wrists when washing your hands and in many cases, you don’t wash the back of your hand. The typical hand shake contacts both the palm and the back of the hand if you don’t believe me shake someone’s hand and see what parts your hand touches and what parts their hand touches. Pay attention to where the tips of the fingers are.

If you use antibacterial products but only to a specific point on the hand, there is a little line where the bacteria is getting a small dose of the antibacterial agent without being killed. Because you are not killing all of the bacterial you are stimulating an immune response that leads to acquired resistance.

This is seen in Bacteriostatic products which are designed to reduce the ability for the bacteria to grow and replicate. Many products on the market have this type of antibacterial. Triclosan is just one of the most common ones that you will see.

For this reason you should only use Bacteriocidal products. These products by definition kill the bacteria on contact. You should look for products that have alcohol as their active ingredient preferably 80-90% in strength.

I personally stay away from anything that doesn’t have alcohol in it. In fact, if you can’t use an alcohol based antibacterial, you are better off just washing your hands with regular soap and warm water.

Last night they showed a breakdown of his day and the night before they talked about his diet.  I am going to attempt to summarize.

Michael Phelps eats a whole days worth of calories at one sitting.  He averages 3000 calories per meal and continues to eat throughout the day.  That means that he eats over 10,000 calories per day yet he complains that he can’t break over 200 pounds.  Why he would want to do that, I personally don’t understand.  As far as swimming goes, his Tuesday at the Olympics started with a warm-up swim of 2400 meters followed by 200 meter gold medal swim.  He then swam a 2400 meter warm-down, accepted his gold medal attended press conferences and attempted to rest a little before he had to do it all again for the 800 meter relay.  With all of his swimming measured out throughout his day, he swam over 5 1/2 miles in one day.

When you look at him you will quickly notice that he is tall, 6′4″ to be exact and weighs only 195 pounds.  He isn’t big from the standpoint of muscle mass compared to body builders, however, the fact that he is he has long muscles and a lot of them creates a huge metabolism.  2% body fat is the reason that you can see his muscles when he flexes them. His metabolism is like nothing I have ever seen.  He burns calories at an accelerated rate even while he sleeps.  He is truly a metabolism machine.

We can learn a lot from him if we stop and consider how his body works.

Swimming as an exercise is very dynamic.  It creates NO IMPACT on the body and allows you to move your body through large ranges of motion while the water creates muscular resistance.  This is key to burning calories in any exercise regimen. As for swimming there isn’t another exercise that compares to it.

So in conclusion, I say way to go Michael Phelps.  You are an inspiration to all of us who like to eat.  Maybe if I start swimming, I can eat like Mike.

My first response is usually to do a chelation detox of some type.  There are numerous products that are available on the market as well as special medical treatments that can be performed by your medical doctor.  I have made my recommendations in the past.  You can find the products that I personally use and recommend at www.axonhealthonline.com.  However, this is not why I am writing this post.

The reason i am writing this post is to alert you to the dangers of one of the most common toxic metals that we consume…Aluminum.

Most people assume that aluminum toxicity comes from drinking from aluminum cans.  This is only partly true.  The canned drink industry has addressed this issue by lining the inside of the can with coating that prevents the acids from the drink and the carbonation from dissolving the aluminum of the can.  Please note that this process was not done to protect you, but to help remove the metal taste from the drinks.   This change has significantly reduced the amount of aluminum that is absorbed from drinking from the can.  However, not 100%.

Today our biggest problem with aluminum consumption is found with other products that we use.

The two big contributors are Aluminum Foil used in cooking and surprisingly…underarm Deodorant!

Aluminum foil is pretty self explanatory however deodorant is something that is very innocuous.

Aluminum compounds or aluminum salts, such as aluminum oxide (Al2O3), are the key ingredients in almost every antiperspirant and deodorant. They are powerful astringents that close pores, stopping sweat and odor from escaping the body.  This prevents the body from eliminating toxins through the sweat, forcing the body to eliminate them some other way.  The problems lies in the fact that these aluminum salts must be absorbed through the skin to do its job properly.  This absorption is toxic to your body.

Aluminum has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological diseases.  In 1993 the World Health Organization (WHO) released a “Public Health Report” and commented that autopsies of people afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease showed found high concentrations of aluminum in the brain.

This is definitely something that you should take seriously.  I encourage you to find a natural deodorant or a deodorant that does not contain aluminum.  These are available at your local health food or vitamin store. If you don’t have access to a local store, there are plenty of places online to purchase natural health products.

2 medium potatoes, peeled and sliced

2 carrots, cliced

4 c. yellow squash

3 T. all purpose flour

1 1/2 c. chicken broth

1/4 tsp. cayene

1 c. whipping cream

1/4 tsp. nutmeg

2 1/2 tsp. paprika

Melt butter in a large pot. Add onion and saute until tender. Add other vegetables. Stir until covered with butter. Add flour and pepper. Add broth and cook over medium heat for 5 minutes. Cover and cook until vegetables are cooked. Puree cooked vegetables in batches in a blender or food processor. Return to pot and add cream. Heat and and nutmeg; cook for 304 minutes-do not boil. Sprinkle with paprika. and mix thoroughly.

otc cold medicines sending children to emergency rooms

When is it ok to give your children over the counter medication?

It seems we have lost touch with why our bodies do what they do.  Whether you are religious or not, you have to acknowledge that there is a power that runs our bodies that is greater than our conciousness.  This is clearly visible in the fact that many life sustaining processes happen without your knowledge.

Life is a delicate ballet of chemical reactions of life and death divinely inspired to express themselves in the form that is your body.   When you interfere with this ballet, you find that the dance is altered, awkward in a sense, creating more death than life both at the cellular and also at whole body level.

A cold or flu virus by itself is not bad.  It is what it is.  By itself it is just a bunch of just cells.  They have no affect on your  life…Until you give them a soil that they can live in.

The soil in this case is your body.  If you were to do a swab culture of the mouth you would find that you have just about every common type of bacteria and virus including the bacteria that causes Strep throat living inside.  The question you have to ask yourself is, why aren’t I sick all the time if these “bugs” are so bad?   It boils down to your immune system.

The immune system when working properly is capable of preventing or stoppin just about any “bug” you may come across, especially the common ones.

The problem lies in the fact that we as a society have been scared into believing that the body is missing something and that it is incapable of protecting itself.   We have even been tricked into believing that the the body’s protective mechanisms are bad and that they should be prevented at all costs

One example of this is fever.  We have been told that fever is a bad thing and that it should be prevented.  This is a shame because this is the body’s way of immobilizing the “Bug” and killing it.  Bacteria and Viruses cannot live in a Fevered body.  Once the bug is dead, the fever breaks.  This is the way it was done long before over the counter drugs, pharmaceutical companies and medical doctors got a hold of it.

So what are we to do?  I say do what our ancestors did.  They rested, monitored the fever, and cooled themselves down when the fever got too high. By the way 104 degrees is too high.

The use of over the counter meds has led to a loss of immune function and a general laziness of the body’s ability to recognize a “bug” threat.  Consequently the body is late in coming to the defense, resulting in the huge symptom package that you suffer from.

So I ask you, when do you think it is ok to give your children over the counter medication?  I’ll let you answer that question yourself.

news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080728/hl_nm/exercise_weight_dc

This article talks about the relationship between type 2 diabetes, exercise and weight loss.

They recommend that we walk 45 minutes more each day.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t have 45 minutes per day or more to exercise each and every day.

As we all know exercise is an essential for weight control.  Hold on, let me clarify that statement.  Lean muscle is essential for weight control.  Walking as an exercise does not significantly increase muscle mass which is why you have to do a lot of it to get weight loss changes.

Before you start discrediting me, you first have to understand the mechanics of weight loss.  Lean muscle is what burns or metabolizes fat, sugar and protein in the body.  This means the more lean muscle fibers that you use, the greater the burn, the better the weight loss and the better control you have over your blood sugar.

The act of walking at a pace of 3.5 mph involves 25% of the body’s muscles and those muscles are working only through an average of 15% of their full range of motion. This means that only 25%x15%=3.75%, or less than 4% of the body’s total muscle cells are involved in energy consumption during walking. These 3.75% of all the body’s muscle cells will consume more energy if you walk faster (or jog or run) or if you walk uphill or if you carry weights while walking. To get a high amount of energy consumption out of only 3.75% of your body’s muscle cells those few cells will have to be extremely highly trained, such as in top athletes.

To get from A to B, walking is a very energy efficient activity and therefore does not consume large amounts of energy. For a cardio workout you would like to engage in an energy wasting activity, an activity that needs a lot of energy to accomplish the task. Problem is that most doctors keep recommending walking as their favorite exercise prescription and they don’t even expect their patients to follow their advice of spending 45 to 90 minutes walking. They only keep recommending walking because it is advice that is immune to malpractice lawsuits. The reason why people will not follow their doctors’ advice and why the doctors do not follow their own advice is because people will not do things that require a lot of time and have marginal results.

After we exercise, our bodies continue to burn calories at a slowly decaying rate for up to 48 hours.  This process is called “Latent burn”.  The largest percentage of latent burn is during the first 4 to 5 hours after the workout. 80% of the latent burn is accomplished during this period of time.  Many people do not take this extra calorie burn into consideration when they start their exercise program.  While there are many variables here is an generalized example of how this works.

If you walk 3.5mph for 30 minutes and weigh 200 pounds you will burn approximately 125 calories during the workout.  When you finish your workout, the muscles will continue to burn calories for up to 48 hours based on the level of exertion, the percentage of muscle fibers used and the range of motion that they were put through.  Lets say you burn an average another 50 calories per hour for only a total of 375 calories.

I am going to propose something to you that may go against what you have been taught in the past.

Working out more intensely for a shorter period of time will actually burn more calories over a shorter period of time and will result in a much greater “latent” calorie burn!

Ten minutes of high range of motion resistance exercise such as aerobics, running or circuit training has as much effect on your ability to loose weight and will have a much larger Latent burn than 45 minutes of walking. In fact you will actually burn more calories throughout the day because you have many more muscles that are going through the latent burn cycle.

Using the same example as we used previously, consider this. If you workout hard for 10 minutes using 50% of the muscle fibers over 50% range of motion you will burn approximately 100 calories.  When you finish your workout, the muscles will continue to burn calories for the next 4 to 5 hours based on the level of exertion, the number of muscle fibers used and the range of motion that they were put through.  This time instead of burning only 50 calories per hour you burn 100 calories per hour for a total of 600 calories. In this case you have burned 225 more calories while working out less.

This is why you are seeing so many infomercials that say work out in only 10 per day 3 days per week.

It has been proven in many university and independent studies that working out more intensely for a shorter period of time has a greater impact on overall health.

As always you need to consult your physician before starting any nutrition or exercise program.

What are your thoughts?

I have always had a passion for giving people information that they can chew on.  I that as you read this posts, you realize that I am not trying to convince you of anything.  I just want to open your eyes to the possibilities.  I hope you enjoy the site and welcome any constructive criticism.

It is very easy to create your own program and it will be fresher and much better for you. For example, and regular sized apple has approximately 100 calories.  All you need is a Calorie counting book and a few hours each week.   By portioning out your own meal base on their calorie content and freezing them, you can have a freezer full of healthy “Unprocessed” meals.

If you do not have the time to portion out and cook your own food, I highly recommend these pre-packaged diet programs. The final result is lost weight, however, once you go back to eating an unregimented and uncontrolled calorie diet, you can be sure that weight gain will follow.

Once you have reached your target weight, it is recommended that you slowly add back calories in a documented and controlled manner so that you will know what calorie level you need to maintain your goal weight