Healthy nuggets of news to keep your motor humming

Welcome to our 3nd issue of our newsletter:

Healthy World Digest

In this issue:

1) Water helps keep you thin

2) Water makes you more powerful

3) Soap reduces sex drive

4) Tone up neck to cut back pain

5) Beet hypertension

6) Master Yoga in Twenty-eight days

7) Pregnancy herbs

8) Use cloth shower curtains

9) Chomping spinach may build muscles.

10) Worst foods your children might be eating

Oh, and we wont harass you with numerous mailings or with articles that are longer than the Bible.

Just a few important, interesting, up to date, super beneficial health items that you could easily apply to you life or pass along to loved ones.

Now research proves that gulping water does keep you thinner.

Our sister site, Healthy Water, has a page on how gulping water helps you keep pounds off or lose weight. However, we didn't have much recent research demonstrating this connection.

Well now German researchers have concluded that in fact gulping water greatly boosts up your metabolic rate leading to a thinner you.

Researchers found that Ninety minutes after drinking 16 ounces of cold water, metabolic rate rises by a whopping 24%.

Drinking 50 additional ounces of cold water each day can help use Forty-seven calories each day or about 17,400 calories yearly.

Hey, that's a bunch of calories but really it directly leads to only about 5 pounds of fat loss every year.

Simply drink more cold water to raise your metabolic rate even more.

Need more water benefits?

2) Water makes you stronger!

Another study showed how downing water helps performance during a weight training session.

University of Connecticut researchers demonstrated that men who drank water before lifting weights did 17% more reps per set than men who did not drink water.

The recommendation is to drink 16 ounces before a workout, 4 ounces for every 20 minutes of workout time during workout & One -2 glasses after a workout.

So along with the many other benefits to drinking water, adding water to your diet is win, win for dieters and exercisers.

Click to visit our page on how cause & effect of obesity can be dehydration

3) Store bought soap may reduce your sex drive

We at Healthy World Online will never be pleased until every adult is having good sex!

Ucal at Davis researchers found that an ingredient, triclocarban, in many soaps, leads to the body decreasing testosterone production. Not good if you're a man on the prowl.

Low testosterone can also lead to other symptoms such as sterility & depression. The National Institute of Health has a page on soaps containing triclocarban at hpd.nlm.nih.gov

4) Strengthening exercises eliminate neck pain

A study in Arthritis & Rheumatism demonstrated that strengthening the upper trapezius muscles relieves neck pain by 80%.

Makes sense since training helps repair muscles and prevent further strain.

Oh, the upper traps are those muscles alongside your neck, you know the ones that hide football players' necks.

Healthy Exercise World has several good pages on building and stretching the neck muscles.

Click to visit HEW's pages on neck exercises

5) Beet hypertension

The many connections between consuming veggies and fruits & good health never fail to surprise me.

Harvard & British scientists found that drinking beet juice lowers blood pressure by ten points in just a few hours.

The rationale seems to be the nitrate in beets which converts into nitric oxide in your body.

Nitric oxide helps open blood vessels thereby lowering blood pressure.

6) Twenty-eight Days until you're a yoga master, give or take a day

The best yoga book for you guys who know they should be doing yoga but can't totally commit to being consistent with it.

But enough about me.

Actually, here I go again. I'm starting to do the yoga program in Richard Hittleman's book, Yoga Twenty-eight Day Exercise Plan.

This isn't the place for a full scale book review. I'll leave that for another day.

Anyway, I've done the program 2 -3 times before and loved it and felt so much better and, and ... then ... just stopped. Why? I don't know.

But I'm into the third day, likely further along when you read this and I just want to urge the many non-Asians, and Asians, who are somewhat like me, to go get this excellent book and give it a try.

The book is dated but very timeless. You wont be disappointed.

For a brief introduction to yoga visit our page on the benefit of yoga exercise

7) Best pregnancy herbs

For expectant mothers & fathers, a list of the top herbs for pregnancy follows.

The following ease pregnancy: peppermint, ginger, partridge berry, raspberry leaf teas

The following speed delivery: blue cohosh and parsley, in large amounts

To help prevent spina bifida, eat lots of spinach

Click for our page on best herbs for pregnancy

8) Use cloth shower curtains

An easy way to avoid health problems?

Switch your choice of shower curtains.

A group in West Virginia finds vinyl shower curtains contain chemicals that are continually released, especially more so when in contact with warm water.

That pungent new curtain smell may be one clue you should switch curtain types.

9) Popeye, was right. Munching on spinach may build muscles.

Well, it's not the spinach itself.

Research finds that spinach helps your body absorb and use protein leading to muscle growth.

10) Worst foods your children might be eating

According to Men's Health, the worst foods your kids might be feeding on include:

> Cap'n Crunch: lots of empty sugar

> Oscar Meyer Lunchables: Loads of salt, sugar & chemicals

> Baskin-Robbins Health Shake: A small glass contains 46 grams of fat and 27 tsps of sugar.

By the way, fast food chains that graded high for health and wellness includes Subway & Wendy's. Scoring low were Pizza Hut & Krispy Kreme.

See you next month!

Sal