Stop Smoking

No matter what the reason was when a person began to smoke, the health risks proven to be caused by smoking has many smokers doing whatever they can to stop smoking. In order to stop smoking, a person needs to stop using all types of smoking tobacco products, which isn’t as easy as it sounds. Smoking tobacco contains a substance called nicotine, which is an alkaloid poison that occurs in tobacco. Nicotine is highly addictive, which is the reason why most people are not able to stop smoking with some kind of help.

There are a number of approaches a person can use when they are ready to stop smoking including the help of doctors and medicine. Most people have probably seen advertisements for a variety of products geared toward helping people to stop smoking. It is universally agreed upon that smoking is not safe or healthy for the smoker and those around that person and smokers who value their health and the health of their loved ones should stop smoking. In fact, smokers who have successfully stopped smoking report that they feel much healthier, have extra cash that isn’t being spent on tobacco products and they know that they have significantly decreased their risks of developing a tobacco-related disease.

One of the most effective means in which a person can try to stop smoking is to have a strong support network, group or even a cognitive behavioral therapist help them along the way. If a person chooses to see their doctor for help to stop smoking, their doctor is likely to offer that person medication in addition to advising the person to find support to stop using tobacco. Any person who decides to use medication from their doctor should be aware that some of the options available for help to stop smoking are addictive by themselves and could lead to other problems.

To begin searching for the best way to stop smoking, it is a good idea to see a doctor and ask about quitting and the help that is available. There are a number of techniques available including nicotine gum, self-help books and going ‘cold turkey’ as well as alternative methods including hypnosis, acupuncture, nutritional nicotine detoxification and other paths.

One of the key factors that plays a very important role in how successful a person can be in their efforts to stop smoking is how committed the are to seriously quit their bad habit and to stay on that path. One cigarette here or there can truly undo any good that has already been done. One of the major benefits provided by support systems for people who are trying to quit is to offer ideas on what to do when the urge to smoke becomes overwhelming due to stress or other triggering situations. Not all smokers will succeed in their attempt to stop smoking their first time and should be aware that they are not alone. It takes most smokers several tries before finding the right path and strength in order to stop smoking successfully.

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How To Have A Healthy Heart

Keeping our hearts healthy is important, but how do we do it? Fortunately the answers to this are very clear.

Being overweight, particularly if you carry the weight around your waist, puts unnecessary strain on the heart. To find out if you have a problem you need to know your height to weight ratio (WHR). To work this out measure round your waist in centimetres and divide it by your hip circumference. The measurements need to be in centimetres, so if your measuring tape is in inches, multiply each measurement by 2.5 before dividing one by the other. If the figure you end up with is greater than 0.9 for men and 0.8 for women then your fat distribution is likely to be associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Research has shown that many overweight people with angina, raised blood cholesterol and high blood pressure found their condition improved greatly, even after losing only some of their excess weight. Many of those who kept their weight off were able to reduce their medication or even stop it entirely.

Exercise is important for your heart too. If you take regular exercise, it will speed up your basal metabolic rate. This means that you will burn more calories, not only when you are exercising but for some time afterwards as well. People often imagine that they have to exercise hard to have an effect, but it’s enough just to take exercise that leaves you warm and breathing heavily, but still able to hold a conversation.

Did you know that each day most of us take between 3,000-4,000 steps? And that's just not enough. Experts say that we should aim to take 10,000 steps to maintain a healthier lifestyle. Increasing to 10,000 steps a day will burn between 2,000 and 3,500 extra calories per week, which will result in achieving a vastly better health profile and longer lifespan. There are lots of ways you can increase the number of steps you take: get up to change the TV rather than using the remote; park further from the supermarket; take a walk around the local park or your garden/yard; walk rather than take the car on short journeys. Using a pedometer will help motivate you to clock up those extra steps.

Giving up smoking is likely to have a dramatic effect on your heart. Carbon monoxide produced when you smoke cigarettes attaches to red blood cells, so that in smokers up to half the blood can be carrying carbon monoxide rather than oxygen. No wonder many smokers are breathless! If you need help giving up smoking, try one of the books or CD’s by Allen Carr. He has helped thousands of people to give up.

And, if you don’t already, start flossing your teeth! This may seem bizarre in relation to the heart, but it has been shown that there is a link between gum disease and heart disease. The exact mechanism isn’t understood fully yet, but flossing your teeth and having regular dental checks is important for a healthy heart.

Finally, give and receive love. The scientific evidence isn’t there (yet) for how important this is for our hearts, but it has been established that people who have loving relationships also tend to have long and happy lives.

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Low Price Health Care - Everday Preventative Action

Low cost health care involves the practice of everyday action and simple yet vital preventative measures. Maintaining a healthy diet of vegetables and fruits, drinking herbal teas, and getting good rest is crucial. Monitoring your food intake and nutrition constantly is the key to keeping your body healthy. Pick up some good tea, fruits, and vegetables today and start taking care of yourself with little money and almost no effort. Do this everyday over your lifetime and you'll spend a lot less time suffering from pain in the hospital or nursing home.

Let's start with what you should do in the morning. Get up and go straight to the kitchen. It's very important that you eat or drink something in the morning to get your metabolism going. The earlier you get your metabolism going, the more calories your will burn. It will also help your circadian rhythm stay in balance. Get out a banana, pineapple, strawberries, blueberries, and a cup of yogurt and start blending them in your blender or better yet, your smoothie maker. Get that smoothie in your stomach and you'll be doing your intestines a favor the later morning. Bacon and eggs might be your prefered choice when it comes to taste and satisfaction, but you'll find that your tastes will change overtime and your body will start to appreciate and crave this new diet of fruit and yogurt. When lunchtime comes around go to your grocery store and browse the produce section for whatever is on sale and in season. Not only do vegetables taste better when they are in season, they can actually be more healthy for you at the same time as they can contain more antioxidants, minerals and vitamins when they are in season. In addition, people often have bad associations with fruits or vegetables just because they once ate something that was unripe or rotten and did not realize that that was not a good representation of what it was supposed to taste like. If you have a bad association with a fruit or vegetable learn how to tell when they are ripe and never leave them on the counter for too long and expect them to stay fresh and taste the same. I always examine my vegetable rigorously for this very reason and I have found that I can take a liking to almost anything in the produce section. Take your vegetables home and give them a good washing. Put them in a microwave safe dish and set your microwave setting to fresh vegetables. If you don't have a microwave with this setting, I highly recomend you go out shopping for a microwave that does. It is a huge time saver and I love being able to just press a button and get perfectly steamed vegeables everytime. Eat your vegetables up and get on back to work. But take with you your favorite tea. Green tea, black tea, spice tea whatever. As long as your tea makes you happy, I don't care what kind it is. The important thing is that you drink tea instead of something that will give you heartburn like soda pop. Drink your tea throughout the afternoon as you desire. I find it's a nice break time activity that generates good conversation with my coworkers. I like to talk about the benefits of drinking tea and I am fortunate that my coworkers do as well. If your tea has ginger in it, it is even thought to aid in digestion. You might think that you have no digestive problems, and that is great, drinking tea may just prevent you from ever having them in the future. It 's so much easier and less expensive to keep your body in good working order by taking simple preventative steps that are as easy as drinking tea. I can't stress this enought. Speaking of stress, when you get home at night and finish your dinner there is another tea that I like to drink. Before we get to that, let's talk about dinner. Dinner should not be the largest meal of the day as contrary to popular practice that may be. However, this is time for your body to slow down and get ready for a good nights sleep. Have a small portion of chicken or your favorite cut of meat with some good whole grains and vegetables on the side. If you can boil your chicken instead of fry it to reduce your fat intake. Once dinner is over, I like to drink some chamolile tea and listen to the radio in bed. The radio? Yes, the radio helps to calm my body down much more than the T.V. does. This might not be your idea of an exciting night, but it can really pay off in your long term health if you get to bed at a reasonable time and get your sleep started off early. Today, it is all to common for people to get in a bad habit of going to bed late and getting up feeling groogy and tired. This is not only a bad idea
for your body's health, it is also a bad idea if you intend on performing well at work. Please don't put your health care on the backburner. If you do, you're just asking for high price emergency health care at some point
in the future. Doctors then must resort to powerful medicines with negative side effects and surgery to treat aliments that could have been prevented. Keep your body healthy and strong and empower your natural ability to fight off diseases.

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How To Increase Your Energy

Being tired in fast becoming the new 20th century disease. According to the book ‘The 28Day Plan’ lack of energy can be attributed to: a bad diet, overindulgence in alcohol, lack of sleep and smoking. Plus we know that stress can zap our energy and leave us feeling tired. So how can we get more energy into our life?


One of the best ways to increase your energy is to eat energy producing foods such as porridge, muesli, fish, poultry, lean lamb, bananas, dried fruit, fresh fruit, fresh vegies, baked potatoes, wholemeal foods, fresh juices, water, Soya milk, seeds and nuts. Foods to limit are coffee, tea, cows cheese, beef/pork, sugary foods, pastries, biscuits, chips, white flour foods, fizzy drinks and chocolate (oh no!).


Other tips in the 28-Day Plan book to raise and restore energy are:


(1). Hibernation-take 20 minutes a day for quiet time. Think about no one and nothing. Lie down, listen to some favourite music or close your eyes and drift off to a beautiful island.

(2). Breath-Spend 5 minutes doing some deep breathing. Sit on the floor in comfortable clothes. Close your eyes and slowly breathe in through your nose, hold for a count of five and slowly exhale to a count of 5.

(3). Laugh-Have a good belly laugh. Watch a funny video or tell a funny joke. Refer back to my last newsletter for more tips.

(4). Sleep-Most of us realise we need 8 hours of sleep for the most benefit. Some other tips are to sleep with the window slightly open (be security conscious too). Have a firm supportive mattress and sufficient pillows. Eat at least 5 hours before going to bed. Go to bed the same time each night. Relax before bed.

(5). Pamper yourself-Go out and treat yourself to a beautiful bunch of flowers (or pick some from your garden). Have a massage, give yourself a facial or bubble bath, and go out for herbal tea with a friend.

(6). Do some stretching and flexing of your body at the start of each day.

(7). Exercise for 30 minutes each day. Some exercise ideas are: walking, jogging, cycling, skipping, bouncing (trampoline), swimming, cleaning and gardening. Have a health check before starting any exercise program.

(8). Eat breakfast.


So get to it. Use this information and tips to begin putting more energy back into your day!

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Tobacco - A Crime Against Humanity!

Believe me.. no other consumer product in the history of the world has even come close to inflicting this amount of damage on mankind. If anything else of this magnitude was to pose the same threat to life, whether it was human induced or naturally occurring – be it war, terrorist attack, genocide, ethnic cleansing, natural disaster or disease, it would as a rule command immediate international intervention! Think about the current ‘war on terror’. So why isn’t it?

You would have learnt how to smoke from that very first cigarette, as you most certainly practised the draw-back and other styles of smoking until you finally achieved that great smokers status.

If you were born to be a smoker then maybe your nose would have been made upside down (like a chimney) with a little umbrella over it to keep the rain out! You’d have a special filtration system for your lungs and firemen wouldn’t need any breathing apparatus either.

Seriously now, you wouldn’t pour toxic chemicals in to the fuel tank of your car, truck, motor home or bike – would you? So why is it we can suck in over 4000 toxic chemicals with every cigarette and not really think anything of it (until it’s too late). Your life has got to be more valuable than your car or truck.

There are dozens of what I call 'Smoker Myths' associated with nicotine addiction, some of them are like this....

Myth#1. "I enjoy smoking, it makes me feel good" ever said something like that, or what about….
Myth#2. "I really enjoy the flavour of tobacco" are you kidding me!!! (Dog vomit would taste better)
Myth#3. "I'm just soooo stressed out, I need a cigarette"

These Smoker Myths become apart of the smoking culture or belief system. How many times do you think a non-smoker would make these statements?

NEVER!!

You don’t lose anything when you quit smoking, as a matter of fact you gain life, health and money. Did you know that you can quit smoking anytime you choose to?

You simply LEARN NOT TO SMOKE, or you simply LEARN to think as a non-smoker "easy for you", you might be saying but the truth is just that EASY! Remember, you learnt to smoke and use tobacco in the first place – right! I know that are thinking that “this sounds too simple” and you’re right, except it took me over 20 years to work it out!

Hi my name is Colin Williams and I passionately want to teach you how to quit smoking and destroy the nicotine addiction… forever. I was addicted to nicotine for 35 years. I lost count of how many times I tried to quit smoking. So I know where you’re at and I know how you think as a smoker or tobacco user. That’s why I can teach you about….

Your Body...the health issues and scientific information you need to know.
Your Victory... know your enemy and how to kill the world’s greatest deception.
Your Bank...the $$$ cost of smoking to you, and who's making the profit?
Your Past...how to bury the memory.

The bottom line is this – the nicotine addiction IS NOT your friend or buddy, it's a lying parasite that basically wants to kill you. Have you ever wanted to quit smoking?

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GERD Essentials

GERD stands for gastroesophageal reflux disease, a clinical condition that occurs when reflux of stomach acid into the esophagus is severe enough to impact the patient’s life and/or damage the esophagus. Gastroesophageal refers to the stomach and esophagus while reflux means to flow back or return. You see, when chewed-up food slides down the esophagus or swallowing tube, and into the stomach, there digestive juices begin to break down the food. A special type of muscle called a sphincter connects the esophagus and the stomach. The sphincter works like a gate. It opens up so food can get into the stomach, and then it closes again. This keeps the food and acidic stomach juices from flowing back into the esophagus. However, if the sphincter is weak or opens at the wrong time, there's a problem. Whatever's in the stomach goes the wrong way, which is back up into the esophagus. And because what's in the stomach is high in acid, this can irritate the esophagus. This condition is then called reflux.

GERD affects at least an estimated 5% to 7% of the global population. GERD is most common in adults over age 40 but virtually anyone can get GERD, even infants. Persistent heartburn is the most frequent symptom of GERD. It is an uncomfortable burning sensation behind the breastbone, most commonly occurring after a meal. This condition has nothing to do with the heart, but everything to do with the stomach and the esophagus. Eating too much and going to bed in a very full stomach can cause heartburn in a lot of people. The difference between GERD and heartburn is that GERD is a disease and heartburn is its most common symptom. Almost everyone has experienced heartburn. About 25 million American adults suffer daily from heartburn. Someone who experiences recurring, significant heartburn two or more times a week may have GERD. Frequent heartburn that disrupts one's lifestyle suggests the diagnosis of GERD. Another symptom of GERD is regurgitation. It is a sensation of acid backed up in the esophagus.

Early diagnosis of GERD is important to avoid complications in the future. A physician can usually make an easy diagnosis of GERD if the patient finds relief from persistent heartburn and acid regurgitation after taking antacids for short periods. Laboratory or more invasive tests, including endoscopy, barium-swallow radiograph, PH monitor examination, and manometry may be required if the diagnosis is still uncertain. If patients develop persistent GERD with frequent relapses, however, and it remains untreated, serious complications can develop over time. Such complications can include the following: ulcers, severe narrowing of the esophagus, erosion of the lining of the esophagus, precancerous changes in the cells of the esophagus, and problems in other areas, including the teeth, throat, and airways leading to the lungs

There are various methods to effectively treat GERD starting from lifestyle measures to the use of medication or surgical procedures. But initial treatment of GERD is with lifestyle changes. Eating anything within three hours before bedtime should be avoided, stop smoking, avoid fatty foods, decrease portions of food at mealtime, elevating the head of the bed or mattress 6 to 8 inches, and losing weight if overweight. It is essential for individuals who suffer GERD to change their lifestyle, and seek an accurate diagnosis with their physician to receive the most effective treatment available.

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The Most Effective Treatments for Acid Reflux Disease

Acid reflux disease, or GERD, is a common compliant of the digestive system, often characterised by persistent burning or discomfort behind the breastbone. As the symptoms of GERD can mimic those of coronary disease, it is important that you visit your doctor, if you have chronic heartburn. If you have been diagnosed as having acid reflux disease, there are many treatment options available to you to help you manage your symptoms.

The treatment of GERD usually incorporates simple lifestyle changes. It is very important for patients suffering from GERD to monitor their diets, eliminating any foods or beverages, which seem to aggravate their symptoms. Avoiding a diet high in fatty foods and alcohol is very important and quitting smoking can also help decrease your symptoms. Another effective way to alleviate your symptoms of acid reflux disease is
to try to manage your stress, which causes the body to produce more acid, often causing a flare-up.

If these changes are not enough to alleviate your discomfort, however, your doctor may prescribe drug therapy. Drug therapy is usually prescribed for the lifetime of the patient and often includes medications which inhibit the production of stomach acids, such as proton pump inhibitors or antacids.

While most patients tend to respond well to these treatments, sometimes surgery is the only option for those who do not respond well to other methods. The most common form of surgery used to treat GERD is fundoplication surgery, which repairs the lower esophagal sphincter, thus stopping the stomach acid from backing up into the esophagus. The average hospital stay is between one to four days, and it can sometimes take a patient up to five weeks to fully recuperate. Although surgery can successfully eliminate symptoms, a small number of patients will still need to take medication to fully control their GERD.

Whether you have been recently diagnosed with acid reflux disease or are a long-time sufferer, there are many treatment options available to you, and with a few simple lifestyle changes, under a doctor's supervision, can help you live with your symptoms.

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