The Milk Myth: What a Body Really Needs

Does milk really do a body good? It has never been necessary to drink milk to get your source of calcium if you have a diet with a wide variety of foods.

Young adults are not drinking enough milk, according to a study published in the July/August issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior by researchers from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

Well, at least that's according to the press release about the study, along with a few press reports on the matter. But according to lead author Nicole Larson, the focus on the study was on calcium.

Once again, we see the words "milk" and "calcium" used interchangeably in the popular press. Milk is a calcium source, but by no standard other than that of the National Dairy Council is it the best calcium source. Read more

Be Good to Your Heart: Eat Peanut Butter

Peanut butter "wards off heart disease," scientists say.

Peanut butter sandwiches could be the secret to beating heart disease, says a study.

Snacking on peanuts or peanut butter at least five days a week can nearly halve the risk of a heart attack.

The nuts are thought to lower bad cholesterol, help reduce inflammation in the body and boost the health of blood vessels around the heart. Read more

Upper Body Strenth Training: Workout

This video shows a workout that can be done to strengthen the upper body; however, it is not for beginners. The exercises include:

Pseudo-Planche Push-ups, Planche Push-ups, Full Planche, Straddle Planche, Tuck Planche, One-Arm Assisted Handstand Push-ups, Dips Press-ups, Chest Dips, Ab Crunch, Shoulder Press, Handstand Human Flag, No-Feet Push-ups, No-Legs Push-ups, and Balance.

Common Spices Work Better than Aspirin to Stop Blood Clots

Aspirin is often prescribed to prevent blood clots that may cause a heart attack or stroke. Though aspirin is a relatively benign drug, common spices may work up to 29 times better and have no side effects.

Spices do a whole lot more than liven up food. New research has found that the active ingredients in several common spices prevent platelet aggregation and blood clot formation up to 29 times better than aspirin, and without the side effects.

Scientists in India have done extensive testing to determine the health benefits of spices traditionally used in Indian cuisine. In the latest research to come from the Central Food Technological Research Institute, they evaluated the effect of the principle spice active compounds eugenol, capsaicin, piperine, quercetin, curcumin, cinnamaldehyde, and allyl sulphide on human platelet aggregation. They demonstrated that each compound evaluated was able to significantly inhibit blood clotting. Furthermore, the compounds performed their anti-platelet aggregation activity against several different factors that promote the clotting of blood. Read more

Diet Foods Encourage Overeating, Study Finds

Researchers explain why dieters eating low-calorie foods often still fail to lose weight.

It is every dieter's nightmare: hopping on to the scales after weeks of forgoing steak for salad, only to find they haven't lost an ounce. Now researchers at the University of Bristol claim to have found a simple explanation for this phenomenon: when people choose lower-calorie dishes, they just compensate by eating bigger portions.

These findings are sure to come as a blow to the diet industry, which makes millions selling low-calorie foods, but should make cheering reading for any dieters sworn off their favourite fatty foods. The study also showed that when faced with foods they liked, participants did not pick bigger portions of them than of any other food. Read more

Cinnamon is the Wonder Spice for Health and Well-Being

Cinnamon doesn't just taste good, but it can also improve your health and well-being. New studies show cinnamon may help with managing chronic diseases, such as diabetes and arthritis.

Cinnamon is well known as the world's oldest spice. It has a beautiful warm aroma that makes it an inviting ingredient to add to food. In the past Cinnamon was seen as an expensive luxury that was used as an aphrodisiac, and as it was more expensive to buy than silver, many people simply used it as currency. It is a wonder spice for health and wellbeing.

Apart from its amazing taste and aroma that made it so popular for cooking cinnamon was also used by many physicians to treat colds, coughing and sore throats. Burning Cinnamon in your household was thought to cleanse the air and the people within. Roman Emperor Nero took this literally and after he murdered his wife he ordered a year's supply of cinnamon to be burnt to cleanse him of the crime.
While burning cinnamon may not actually be able to clean out your soul modern day research has found that this most ancient of spices is very good for your health.

Cinnamon And Diabetes Read more

Eating More Fruits and Vegetables Can Increase Men's Sperm Counts

A new study says that eating more fruits and vegetables can increase men's sperm counts.

Real men eat lettuce, or at least they should. Lettuce and other types of high-antioxidant fruits and vegetables have been found to improve sperm quality, according to the findings of a recent study published in the journal Fertility and Sterility. Read more

Ninja Warrior Plyometrics and Explosiveness Training

Plyometrics is by far the best way to get an advantage in any sport. You can use it football, basketball, tennis, or track and field. It helps build your fast twitch fibers and leg muscles. Here is the workout:

-Squat Jumps
-Lunge Jumps
-Knee Tuck Jumps
-Tangled Lace Jumps
-Duck Jumps
-Frog Jumps
-Rocky 3 Steps
-Double Hop Jumps

What's in Your Water?

It's not just the traces of this and that, but the "stew effect."

It is true that trace amounts of birth control and other medications—as well as household and industrial chemicals of every stripe—are present in many urban and suburban water supplies around the country, but there is considerable debate about whether their levels are high enough to warrant concern.

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What may be more troubling is the mixture of contaminants and how they might interact to cause health problems. “The biggest concern is the stew effect,” says Scott Dye of the Sierra Club’s Water Sentinels program. “Trace amounts of this mixed with trace amounts of that can equal what? We don’t know.” Read more

Men Should Be Glad to Be Gray or Bald

Men should be glad to be grey or thinning on top. There are good scientific reasons why young women may prefer an older man as a mate, and they'll expect him to be bald.

... Men have evolved to attract women. Because only some men go bald, we must assume that different women are attracted differently. Some women will be attracted to young men, but young men are untried and therefore risky, so some women will seek sugar daddies instead. Mating with sugar daddies invokes a different set of risks but the trophy wife is nonetheless making a rational choice - one that may well have been rewarded preferentially in the Stone Age - to which she is in part guided by baldness in her man. Read more

Man Makers

Man makers are an extreme burpee with dumbbells. Try a few of these with 15 pound weights to work on form. Start out doing 10 if you can. Do these first for time, and then increase the weight and try to keep doing them for time. Once you can do 35 pound workouts in a good time, increase the number of reps in your set.

Why Fat People Can't Sleep

The ultimate misery: you're overweight AND you can't get to sleep at night. It turns out these two problems may be related.

Insomnia has long been associated with poor health, including weight gain and even obesity. Now researchers at UCLA have found out why.

In a study to be published in the May issue of the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology and currently available online by subscription, Sarosh Motivala, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, and colleagues looked at two hormones that are primarily responsible for regulating the body's energy balance, telling the body when it is hungry and when it is full. The study found that chronic insomnia disrupts one of these two hormones. Read more