Vegeterian Diets --Let Me Count The Ways There are several types of vegeterians: Lacto-ovo-vegetarians eat plant foods, milk, milk products and eggs, but avoid flesh foods (meat, poultry and fish). Lacto-vegetarians eat plant foods, milk and milk products, but avoid eggs and flesh foods. Ovo-vegetarians eat plant foods and eggs, but avoid milk, milk products and flesh foods. Pesco/pollo-vegetarians eat meats like seafood and chicken, but do not eat other meats, such as beef, lamb, and pork. Total vegetarians, also called vegans, eat plant foods only. Read the Source Article |
Water -The Importance of Drinking Water
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March 15, 2009, last updated July 12, 2009
By A. J. Lee, Associate Editor and Featured Columnist
We've heard it all our lives. Drink 8 glasses of water a day.
But, have you ever wondered why? What exactly are the
health benefits of drinking water, beyond the obvious one
of avoiding dying from thirst?
Before we get to the Top 10 reasons you should drink
water, here are some basic facts about the machine you
travel through life with called your body.
By the time you reach the end of puberty, around age 18
for women and 21 for men, two important changes occur.
First, you stop growing. Second, and this is the key change
most people do not know about, your body starts to slowly
lose its ability to detect that it is thirsty.
This is the reason that so many people in their 20's can get
get in trouble physiologically when they drink alcohol.
Alcohol robs the body of water, and their bodies have
begun to lose the ability to detect that they are quickly
becoming dehydrated. So, they die of "alcohol poisoning",
which in effect is dehydration. It means that alcohol has
displaced too much water in their bodies. Ironically, they
drink too much but they die of thirst.
By the time you reach 30 and 40, your body has lost about
15% of its ability to detect dehydration. By the time you
are older than 60, you barely even notice when you are
dehydrated. This is why so many elderly people can die so
easily of simple dehydration.
Here are the Top 10 reasons you should drink 8 glasses of
water a day.
1. Your Brain Needs Water. Our bodies are 75% water
overall. But or brains are 85% water. Studies led by
researchers at the University of Montreal of people who
have become dehydrated from illness such as diarrhea and
gastroenteritis have shown that they also often suffer from
a range of neurological impairments, ranging from simple
dizziness, to panic attacks, to depression, to agoraphobia,
the fear of going outside. Dehydrated patients experience
these symptoms after being deprived of water for the first
times in their lives.
If you drink 8 glasses of water a day, that first glass goes
to hydrate your brain. That's the priority of the body-- it
takes care of the brain first. An brain without water cannot
function. A brain without water is under severe stress.
There is a reason, after all, that severely dehydrated
people lost in the desert see mirages and other
hallucinations.
2. You Get Dehydrated While You Sleep. We spend about
8 hours a day sleeping. But the process of sleeping,
contrary to popular opinion, is not inactive. We are not
dead. We are merely asleep. Or bodies are active, hard at
work pumping blood, breathing air, refueling muscles,
rebuilding cells, cleansing our blood of toxins and waste.
When you are awake, your sense of "thirst" reminds you to
replace the water that is used up by your body as it works
to pump blood, breathe, etc. But this sense of thirst is not
turned on when you are asleep.
As a result, by the time you wake up, you are dehydrated.
Drink your first glass of water before you are awake an
hour, just to douse the fires of thirst that build up during
sleep.
In fact before noon, you should drink 4 of the 8 glasses of
water you will take in as a minimum that day. I drink one
full glass of water, one tall glass of lemonade (no sugar)
and two big cups of chamomile tea to get in my 4 before
noon.
3. Water Regulates Blood Sugar. Too little water in your
body increase the concentration of sugar in your blood.
This triggers your body's insulin response. As a result, you
start to crave food. When you crave this food, you're not
really craving food. You're often craving water.
4. Water Keeps you Feeling Full. A related effect of water
dampening the insulin response is the side benefit that
water has volume. It takes up a lot of space in your
stomach, which stretches your stomach and triggers a
signal to your brain to "stop eating". I know this from
personal experience and from the experiences of many
other people I know who have dieted. Notwithstanding
this personal common sense evidence, there are some
scientists who recently have questioned the usefulness of
drinking water to suppress appetite.
5. Cold Water Burns Calories. If you drink cold water, you
receive the side benefit. Not only do you hydrate your
body, but you burn about 50 to 70 calories a day.
6. You Lose Water When You Breathe. Most people know
that they lose water when they exercise. But do you know
that simple breathing makes your body lose between 1 and
2.5 quarts of water a day. If you put a mirror under your
nose, you can see the expiration of water in the form of
condensation on the glass. With every breath you exhale,
you are losing water.
7. Your Skin Need Water to Stay Moist and Smooth. When
your skin gets dry, what do you do first. Most of us reach
for the creams and oils. But the most common cause of dry
skin is lack of water. We're simply dehydrated. Again,
there are 2 sides to every story. The same reports that
question the usefulness of water in quieting your appetite
also question whether water helps to keep your skin
smooth. From my personal experience, I know that
whenever I drink water regularly and eat plenty of
water-filled vegetables, my skin literally glows.
8. Your Bones Need Water to Function. Bones become
brittle as we age not only because of lower calcium levels.
Bones need water. Dehydrated, under-watered bones
break more easily as we age.
9. Your Heart Needs Water to Pump. Blood is mostly
water,of course. Without sufficient water, our blood
becomes thick. This can lead to increased risk of heart
attack and stroke.
10. Water Calms You. I become nervous and anxious if I
do not drink enough water over a few days. The studies of
dehydrated patients who experience panic attacks suggests
that water does in fact have a role in keeping us calm.
Bottom line. The balance of real-world experiences and
studies suggest that drinking sufficient water is essential to
our physical and mental health. How much water is enough
is still open to debate. But the old adage of 8 glasses a day
works for me.
Find out more about how water keeps you healthy:
Drinking Cold Water Burns Calories
My Aching Bones
Snoring Increases Stroke Risk 67%
What Causes Snoring
Can't Sleep-Here's Help
Heavy Snoring Linked to Alzheimer's Risk
Child Snoring Different from Adults-Possibly An Allergic Type Disease
Snorers Cost Spouses 2 Years of Lost Sleep
UCLA Center for Sleep Research
Lose 10lbs -A Simple Plan for The Rest of Us
Why Your Dog Snores
My Heart Attack
Adrenal Fatigue-Why You Wake Up Tired
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