15 Healthiest Foods to Eat Year Round

If optimal health is your goal, there's no getting around your diet. Your physical health is a direct reflection of what you put into your body, and how you live your life in general. Pre-packaged processed foods may be convenient, but cooking from scratch using fresh unprocessed ingredients is a must if you want to improve your health. Remember that one of the keys to staying healthy is avoiding processed foods as much as possible. This means someone, you, your spouse, or someone else, needs to spend regular time in the kitchen. Once you're eating non-adulterated foods—foods that are as close to their natural state as possible—then basically everything you eat is a "superfood." You need nutrients—all of them—and nutrients are found in abundance in fresh, raw foods. Lists of specific items can be helpful to steer you in the right direction. The following 15 foods are items I recommend you keep on hand so that you always have healthy key ingredients to choose from for cooking and snacking. 1. Sunflower and Other Sprouted Seeds - One of the easiest and most efficient ways to optimize your nutrition is to add sprouted seeds to your vegetable juice and/or salad. While you can sprout a wide variety of seeds, my favorite is sunflower seeds. Sprouted, the protein, vitamin, and mineral content of sunflower seeds soar, and will typically provide you with 30 times the nutrient content of organic vegetables! Sprouts in general also contain valuable enzymes—up to 100 times more enzymes than raw fruits and vegetables—that allow your body to absorb and use the nutrients of other foods you eat. Sprouts are the ultimate locally-grown food, and can easily be grown in your own kitchen, even if you're tight on space. And since they're very inexpensive, cost is no excuse for avoiding them. I started sprouting seeds in ball jars nearly 15 years ago. Now I grow them in them in trays using soil instead. It's far easier and produces far more nutritious and abundant food. Sprouts-as-medicine.com and The British Verticalveg.org are two good websites to read more about sprouted seeds. 2. Organic Pastured Eggs - Proteins are essential to the building, maintenance, and repair of your body tissues, including your skin, internal organs, and muscles. Proteins are also major components of your immune system and hormones. While proteins are found in many types of food, only foods from animal sources, such as meat and eggs, contain "complete proteins," meaning they contain all of the essential amino acids. Eggs also contain lutein and zeaxanthin for eye health, choline for your brain, nervous and cardiovascular systems, and naturally occurring B12. Eggs are powerhouses of healthy nutrition, provided they're harvested from organically raised, free-range, pastured chickens. The nutritional differences between true free-ranging chicken eggs and commercially farmed eggs are a result of the different diets eaten by the two groups of chickens. You can tell the eggs are free range or pastured by the color of the egg yolk. Foraged hens produce eggs with bright orange yolks. Dull, pale yellow yolks are a sure sign you're getting eggs from caged hens that are not allowed to forage for their natural diet. Your best source for fresh eggs is a local farmer that allows his hens to forage freely outdoors. To find free-range pasture farmers, ask your local health food store or refer to EatWild.com or LocalHarvest.com. Cornucopia.org also offers a helpful organic egg scorecard that rates egg manufacturers based on 22 criteria that are important for organic consumers. 3. Butter - Good old-fashioned butter, when made from grass-fed cows, is a rich in a substance called conjugated linoleic acid (CLA). CLA is not only known to help fight cancer and diabetes, it may even help you to lose weight, which cannot be said for its trans-fat substitutes. Butter is a rich source of easily absorbed vitamin A (needed for maintaining good vision to keeping the endocrine system in top shape) and all the other fat-soluble vitamins (D, E, and K2), which are often lacking in the modern industrial diet. Butter is rich in important trace minerals, including manganese, chromium, zinc, copper, and selenium (a powerful antioxidant). RealMilk.com can help you locate a source of raw butter. If you want to try your hand at making it yourself, check out Positron.org. They have an excellent web page with step-by-step instructions for making your own butter from scratch, using raw, grass-fed milk. 4. Fermented Vegetables - Your gastrointestinal tract (GI) houses some 100 trillion bacteria. These bacteria actually outnumber your cells 10 to 1. When your GI tract is not working well, a wide range of health problems can appear, including allergies and autoimmune diseases. If you suffer from any major illness, it's imperative to "heal and seal" your gut in order to fully recuperate. Balancing the menagerie of microorganisms that occupy your GI tract is a key part of maintaining a robust immune system. To maintain a healthy gut, fermented foods are a necessity. Just one quarter to one half cup of fermented food, eaten with one to three meals per day, can have a dramatically beneficial impact on your health. Yogurt and kefir are two examples, but there are many others. Ideally, you'll want to include a variety of cultured and fermented foods in your diet, as each provides different beneficial bacteria. 5. Avocado - They are actually classified as a fruit, are low in fructose and rich in healthy monounsaturated fat (which is easily burned for energy), and research has confirmed the avocado's ability to benefit vascular function and heart health. It is also very high in potassium (more than twice the amount found in a banana) and will help balance your vitally important potassium to sodium ratio. Avocados also provide close to 20 essential health-boosting nutrients, including fiber, vitamin E, B-vitamins, and folic acid. Besides eating them raw, you can use avocado as fat substitute in recipes calling for butter or other oils. Another boon of avocados—they're one of the safest fruits you can buy conventionally grown, so you don't need to spend more for organic ones. Their thick skin protects the inner fruit from pesticides. 6. Macadamia Nuts and Pecans - Mounting research suggests that nuts may actually help you live longer, and help you lose weight. This isn't so surprising considering the fact that tree nuts are high in healthy fats that, contrary to popular belief, your body needs for optimal function. Most nuts' nutritional makeup closely resemble what I consider to be an ideal ratio of the basic building blocks—fat making up the greatest amount of your daily calories, followed by a moderate amount of high-quality protein and a low amount of non-vegetable carbs. Macadamia nuts and pecans provide the highest amount of healthy fat while being on the lower end in terms of carbs and protein. The main fatty acid in macadamia nuts is the monounsaturated fat oleic acid (about 60 percent). This is about the level found in olives, which are well known for their health benefits. 7. Organic Coconut Oil - Besides being excellent for your thyroid and your metabolism, coconut oil is rich in lauric acid, which converts in your body to monolaurin, a monoglyceride capable of destroying lipid-coated viruses such as HIV and herpes, influenza, measles, gram-negative bacteria, and protozoa such as Giardia lamblia. Its medium chain fatty acids (MCTs) also impart a number of health benefits, including raising your body's metabolism and fighting off pathogens. Additionally, a very exciting and recent discovery is that coconut oil may serve as a natural treatment for Alzheimer's disease, as MCTs are also a primary source of ketone bodies, which act as an alternate source of brain fuel that can help prevent the brain atrophy associated with dementia. Coconut oil is easy on your digestive system and does not produce an insulin spike in your bloodstream, so for a quick energy boost, you could simply eat a spoonful of coconut oil, or add it to your food. Make sure you choose an organic coconut oil that is unrefined, unbleached, made without heat processing or chemicals, and does not contain genetically engineered ingredients. 8. Fresh Herbs - Herbs are not only great in meals for spice and added flavor but are key to the nutritional density in the foods you eat. As just one example, plain black pepper actually increases the bioavailability of just about all other foods! Herbs can protect you against diseases, clear toxins from your body, and provide you with vitamins and minerals. Every time you flavor your meals with herbs or spices you are literally "upgrading" your food without adding a single calorie. You really can't go wrong when using herbs and spices, and I recommend allowing your taste buds to dictate your choices when cooking. Turmeric is one example of a spice with potent and scientifically proven medicinal benefits—against cancer no less. 9. Raw Garlic - Raw garlic is a food that should be on your menu daily. It boosts your body's natural abilities to protect you from hypertension and osteoporosis, and research is mounting that it decreases your risk for various forms of cancer. It is a potent antimicrobial as well, working as a natural antibiotic, antifungal, antiviral, and antiparasitic agent. Garlic must be fresh to give you optimal health benefits, though. The fresh clove must be crushed or chopped in order to stimulate the release of an enzyme called alliinase, which in turn catalyzes the formation of allicin. Research has revealed that as allicin digests in your body, it produces sulfenic acid, a compound that reacts with dangerous free radicals faster than any other known compound. To activate garlic's medicinal properties, compress a fresh clove with a spoon prior to swallowing it, or put it through your juicer to add to your vegetable juice. A single medium size clove or two is usually sufficient, and is well-tolerated by most people. The active ingredient, allicin, is destroyed within one hour of smashing the garlic, so garlic pills are virtually worthless. You also won't reap all the health benefits garlic has to offer if you use jarred, powdered, or dried versions. 10. Homemade Broth - Homemade bone broth is excellent for speeding healing and recuperation from illness, as it helps "heal and seal" your gut, the importance of which was discussed earlier. It contains healthy fat, of course, but also important minerals like calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, silicon, sulfur, and trace minerals, as well as the broken down material from cartilage and tendons—including chondroitin sulphates and glucosamine. Making your own bone broth is extremely cost effective, as you can make use of leftover bones that would otherwise be thrown away. One important caveat when making broth, whether you're using chicken or beef, is to make sure they're from organically-raised, pastured or grass-fed animals. 11. Himalayan Salt - Salt is essential for life, and your body needs it for optimal function. But it's important to realize that there are major differences between the refined and highly processed salt found in processed foods and regular table salt, and unrefined natural salt, like sea salt or Himalayan salt. Natural unprocessed salt, such as Himalayan salt, contains about 85 percent sodium chloride and 15 percent naturally-occurring trace minerals—about 84 of them in all, including silicon, phosphorus, and vanadium. On hot days, or after exercising and sweating profusely, you can make a wholesome sports drink to replenish lost electrolytes and minerals by mixing a pinch of Himalayan salt and a dash of fresh lemon juice in a glass of water. 12. Canned Alaskan Salmon - Rising pollution levels have contaminated most fish to the point of being potentially hazardous, especially for children and pregnant women, if eaten too frequently, or in too high amounts. The key to eating fish these days is to choose fish that are high in healthy omega-3 fats, and low in hazardous contaminants. Wild-caught Alaskan salmon (NOT farmed) fits this description. While fish will certainly stay fresh for a long time if frozen, another option is to stock up on canned salmon. Just make sure it's labeled "Alaskan Salmon," as Alaskan salmon is not allowed to be farmed. Avoid Atlantic salmon, as all salmon labeled "Atlantic Salmon" currently comes from fish farms. Also, sockeye salmon cannot be farmed, so if you find sockeye salmon, it's bound to be wild, and therefore a good choice. Other canned fish that are in the safer category (having lower contamination risk and higher nutritional value) are sardines, anchovies, and pickled herring. 13. Raw Milk from Organic, Grass-Fed Cows - Contrary to popular belief, pasteurized milk is not safer than raw milk from a healthy, grass-fed cow raised according to organic standards. Data shows that even illnesses linked to raw milk are minimal, and far lower than those from pasteurized milk. Grass is a cow's natural food. Corn and other grains are not. When cows eat grains—which is the standard fare in confined animal feeding operations—their body composition is altered, including the balance of essential fats. As a result of the animals' diet, high-quality raw milk has many health benefits that pasteurized milk lacks. Getting your raw milk from a local organic farm is one of the best ways to ensure you're getting high-quality milk. You can locate a raw milk source near you at the Campaign for Real Milk Web site. The Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund also provides a state-by-state review of raw milk laws. 14. Whey Protein - Even if you don't have access to raw milk, you can use a high-quality, minimally processed whey protein derived from the milk of organically-raised grass-fed cows to receive many of the same health benefits. Whey protein contains beta-glucans and immunoglobulins, which protect your immune system and support your body's natural detoxification processes. Whey protein is often referred to as the gold standard of protein, and when consumed 30 minutes before and/or after your workout, it can help increase both fat burning and muscle building. Amino acids found in high-quality whey protein activate certain cellular mechanisms which in turn promotes not only muscle protein synthesis, but also boosts thyroid, and protects against declining testosterone levels after exercise. 15. Yogurt and Kefir Made from Organic, Grass-Fed Milk - Cultured dairy products such as yogurt and kefir made from organic, grass-fed milk are other powerhouses of nutrition you'll want to keep in stock—and you can easily make them yourself, using a starter culture. Besides cow's milk, you can also make them fusing raw goat or sheep's milk. While both kefir and yogurt are cultured milk products, they contain different types of beneficial bacteria (probiotics). Yogurt contains transient beneficial bacteria that keep your digestive system clean and provide food for the friendly bacteria that already are present. Kefir actually helps to colonize your intestinal tract -- a feat that yogurt cannot match. Additionally, kefir contains several major strains of friendly bacteria and beneficial yeasts not commonly found in yogurt. Kefir's active yeast and bacteria may provide more nutritive value than yogurt by helping digest the foods that you eat and by keeping the colon environment clean and healthy. It also contains vitamins, minerals, and essential amino acids that help your body with its natural healing powers and maintenance functions. Source: mercola.com, 7/15/14.

Sleep and Technology Don't Mix: Why You Need to Set an Electronic Curfew

About 95 percent of Americans use an electronic device within one hour of going to sleep, according to a National Sleep Foundation poll. Furthermore, nearly all adults (89 percent) and the majority of children (75 percent) have at least one electronic device, such as a television, tablet, or smartphone, in their bedrooms. This has a major implication on the quality of your sleep, in ways you might not even imagine. Certainly, such devices can keep you awake by making noises, but they also interfere with your sleep-wake cycle, or circadian rhythm, in far more insidious, and damaging, ways. Light from Electronic Gadgets Interferes with Your Sleep. The quality of your sleep has a lot to do with light, both outdoor and indoor lighting, because it serves as the major synchronizer of your master clock. This master clock is a group of cells in your brain called the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN). As a group, these nuclei synchronize to the light-dark cycle of your environment when light enters your eye. You also have other biological clocks in your body, and those clocks subsequently synchronize to your master clock. In the non-artificial light environment of our historical past, people experienced greater light exposure only during the day between when the sun rose and when it set. Now with the advent of the light bulb, artificial light, high-definition televisions, and any number of lighted electronic gadgets, we're exposed to a lot more light over a 24-hour period, and a lot less darkness. This creates a very novel situation for your internal time keeping and the biological pace setting mechanisms of your body; in other words, your circadian rhythms. As reported by the National Sleep Foundation: "There is robust scientific data documenting the role of light in promoting wakefulness. Photoreceptors in the retina sense light and dark, signaling our brain about the status of the outside world and aligning our circadian rhythms (centered in a small region of the hypothalamus called the suprachiasmatic nucleus) to the external day-night cycle. This signaling of light and dark helps us to be alert in the morning and be able to fall asleep at the appropriate time at night. The power of light as an alerting agent is easily conceptualized when we think of the sun, but may be more difficult to appreciate when considering the light emitted from a tablet or smartphone." Even the Small Amount of Light Emitted by Your Smartphone Can Keep You Awake. Normally, your brain starts progressively increasing the hormone melatonin around 9 pm or 10 pm, which makes you sleepy. This helps regulate your sleep cycle as well as provide other important health benefits, including helping to prevent cancer. Melatonin acts as a marker of your circadian phase or biological timing. In a nutshell, this hormone influences what time of day or night your body thinks it is, regardless of what time the clock on the wall displays. Somewhere between 50-1,000 lux is the activation range within which light will begin to suppress melatonin production. However, wavelength is important here as red and amber lights will not suppress melatonin while blue, green, and white lights will. So if you use a clock in your bedroom, make sure it has red LEDs. Melatonin is a regulator of your sleep cycle, and when it is suppressed, there is less stimulation to promote sleepiness at a healthy bedtime. This contributes to people staying up later and missing valuable sleep, as well as missing out on melatonin's health potential (research indicates it also helps protect your brain health and fights against cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, heart disease, and more). Whether you have the light on for an hour or for just a second, the effect is the same. It would be nice if your melatonin production resumed when you flip the light back off, but unfortunately, it doesn't. So remember, when you turn the light on at night, you are seriously short changing your melatonin production. Not to obsess about it, but certainly don't make it a regular pattern. A 2011 study compared daily melatonin profiles in individuals living in room light (<200 lux) vs. dim light (<3 lux). Results showed that, compared with dim light, exposure to room light before bedtime suppressed melatonin in 99 percent of individuals, and shortened the time when the body has an elevated melatonin level by about 90 minutes. Furthermore, exposure to room light during the usual hours of sleep suppressed melatonin by more than 50 percent. Even the light from your computer screen or smartphone is enough to interfere with your circadian rhythm and melatonin production. Computer screens and most light bulbs emit blue light, to which your eyes are particularly sensitive simply because it's the type of light most common outdoors during daytime hours. As a result, they can easily disrupt your melatonin production and keep you awake. Research shows, for instance: • Children who use electronic media at night go to bed later, get fewer hours of sleep per week, and report more daytime sleepiness • Adolescents with a television in their bedroom go to bed later, have more difficulty falling asleep, and have a shorter total sleep time • Sending texts or e-mails after initially going to bed increases daytime sleepiness among teens (even if it's done only once a week) Computer and Cell Phone Use Before Bed Linked to Insomnia. The research is quite clear that people who use their computer for playing, surfing, or reading on the Web, or those who use their smartphones for the same purpose, as well as texting, are more likely to report symptoms of insomnia. This is an enemy to your sleep for multiple reasons, in addition to the problems with light exposure explained above. It can be difficult, for instance, to slow your mind down after surfing the Web, leading to racing thoughts when you should be in slumber. Plus, when you're connected to the Internet, your phone or computer are communicating with nearby cell towers, which means they're also emitting low levels of radiation. One 2008 study revealed that people exposed to radiation from their mobile phones for three hours before bedtime had more trouble falling asleep and staying in a deep sleep. People Who Turn Off Their Gadgets Report Excellent Sleep. According to the 2014 Sleep in America Poll, 53 percent of respondents who turn electronics off while sleeping rate their sleep as excellent, compared to just 27 percent of those who leave their devices on. This is why I recommend avoiding watching TV or using a computer or tablet at least an hour or so before going to bed. An alternative, you can try a free computer program at www.JustGetFlux.com, which alters the color temperature of your computer screen as the day goes on, pulling out the blue wavelengths as it gets late. You can also wear yellow-tinted glasses, which block the blue wavelengths of light. Since humans evolved in the glow of firelight, yellow, orange, and red wavelengths don't suppress melatonin production the way white and blue wavelengths do. In fact, the range of light that inhibits melatonin is fairly narrow — 460 to 480 nm. If you want to protect your melatonin, when the sun goes down you would shift to a low-wattage bulb with yellow, orange or red light. Dr. Russel Reiter suggests using a salt lamp illuminated by a 5-watt bulb in this color range. Remember, You Can't Cheat Sleep…at least, not without consequences. You can have the healthiest diet on the planet, be as fit as an Olympic athlete, be emotionally balanced, but if you aren't sleeping well, it is just a matter of time before it will adversely, potentially seriously affect your health. Sleep deprivation is such a chronic condition these days that you might not even realize you suffer from it. Science has now established that a sleep deficit can have serious, far-reaching effects on your health, and once you're deficient, lost sleep can be difficult to "make up." For example, interrupted or impaired sleep can: • Dramatically weaken your immune system. • Accelerate tumor growth—tumors grow two to three times faster in laboratory animals with severe sleep dysfunctions, primarily due to disrupted melatonin production. Melatonin inhibits the proliferation of a wide range of cancer cell types, as well as triggering cancer cell apoptosis (self-destruction). The hormone also interferes with the new blood supply tumors require for their rapid growth (angiogenesis). • Cause a pre-diabetic state, making you feel hungry even if you've eaten, which can wreak havoc on your weight. • Seriously impair your memory; even a single night of poor sleep—meaning sleeping only 4 to 6 hours—can impact your ability to think clearly the next day. It's also known to decrease your problem solving ability. Earlier this year, I interviewed Dan Pardi on the topic of how to get restorative, health-promoting sleep. Pardi is a researcher who works with the Behavioral Sciences Department at Stanford University and the Departments of Neurology and Endocrinology at Leiden University in the Netherlands. According to Pardi, the following three factors are key to determining how restorative your sleep is: 1. Duration—i.e. the number of hours you sleep. Sleep requirements are highly individual, and can change from one day to the next, depending on factors like stress, physical exertion, illness, and pregnancy, just to name a few. But, on average, most people need about eight hours of sleep per night. 2. Timing—i.e. the habit of going to bed at approximately the same time each night. Even if the duration of sleep is the same, when the timing of your sleep is shifted, it's not going to be as restorative. 3. Intensity—This has to do with the different stages that your brain and body goes through over the course of the night, the sequence of them, and how those stages are linked. Some medications will suppress certain phases of sleep, and certain conditions like sleep apnea will lead to fragmented sleep. With these scenarios, even if you're sleeping for an adequate duration and have consistent timing, your sleep will not be as restorative. One of the easiest ways to gauge whether you've slept enough is to assess your level of sleepiness the next day. For example, if you had the opportunity, would you be able to take a nap? Do you need caffeine to keep you going? Answering yes to these two questions would indicate you need more and or better sleep. How to Get a Truly Restful Night's Sleep. Small adjustments to your daily routine and sleeping area can go a long way to ensure uninterrupted, restful sleep. I suggest you consider implementing the following changes. Number one on my list? Turn off your electronic gadgets and keep them out of your bedroom: • Avoid watching TV or using your computer, smartphone or tablet in the evening, at least an hour or so before going to bed. • Make sure you get BRIGHT sun exposure regularly. Your pineal gland produces melatonin roughly in approximation to the contrast of bright sun exposure in the day and complete darkness at night. If you are in darkness all day long, it can't appreciate the difference and will not optimize your melatonin production. • Get some sun in the morning. Your circadian system needs bright light to reset itself. Ten to 15 minutes of morning sunlight will send a strong message to your internal clock that day has arrived, making it less likely to be confused by weaker light signals during the night. • Sleep in complete darkness, or as close to it as possible. Even the tiniest glow from your clock radio could be interfering with your sleep, so cover your clock radio up at night or get rid of it altogether. Move all electrical devices at least three feet away from your bed. You may want to cover your windows with drapes or blackout shades, or wear an eye mask when you sleep. • Install a low-wattage yellow, orange, or red light bulb if you need a source of light for navigation at night. Light in these bandwidths does not shut down melatonin production in the way that white and blue bandwidth light does. Salt lamps are handy for this purpose. • Keep the temperature in your bedroom no higher than 70 degrees F. Many people keep their homes too warm (particularly their upstairs bedrooms). Studies show that the optimal room temperature for sleep is between 60 to 68 degrees F. • Take a hot bath 90 to 120 minutes before bedtime. This increases your core body temperature, and when you get out of the bath it abruptly drops, signaling your body that you are ready to sleep. • Avoid using loud alarm clocks. Being jolted awake each morning can be very stressful. If you are regularly getting enough sleep, you might not even need an alarm. • Be mindful of electromagnetic fields (EMFs) in your bedroom. EMFs can disrupt your pineal gland and its melatonin production, and may have other negative biological effects as well. A gauss meter is required if you want to measure EMF levels in various areas of your home. Source: mercola.com, 6/30/14.

30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself

As Maria Robinson once said, “Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” Nothing could be closer to the truth. But before you can begin this process of transformation you have to stop doing the things that have been holding you back. Here are some ideas to get you started: 1. Stop spending time with the wrong people. – Life is too short to spend time with people who suck the happiness out of you. If someone wants you in their life, they’ll make room for you. You shouldn’t have to fight for a spot. Never, ever insist yourself to someone who continuously overlooks your worth. And remember, it’s not the people that stand by your side when you’re at your best, but the ones who stand beside you when you’re at your worst that are your true friends. 2. Stop running from your problems. – Face them head on. No, it won’t be easy. There is no person in the world capable of flawlessly handling every punch thrown at them. We aren’t supposed to be able to instantly solve problems. That’s not how we’re made. In fact, we’re made to get upset, sad, hurt, stumble and fall. Because that’s the whole purpose of living – to face problems, learn, adapt, and solve them over the course of time. This is what ultimately molds us into the person we become. 3. Stop lying to yourself. – You can lie to anyone else in the world, but you can’t lie to yourself. Our lives improve only when we take chances, and the first and most difficult chance we can take is to be honest with ourselves. 4. Stop putting your own needs on the back burner. – The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too. Yes, help others; but help yourself too. If there was ever a moment to follow your passion and do something that matters to you, that moment is now. 5. Stop trying to be someone you’re not. – One of the greatest challenges in life is being yourself in a world that’s trying to make you like everyone else. Someone will always be prettier, someone will always be smarter, someone will always be younger, but they will never be you. Don’t change so people will like you. Be yourself and the right people will love the real you. 6. Stop holding onto the past. – You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading your last one. 7. Stop being scared to make a mistake. – Doing something and getting it wrong is at least ten times more productive than doing nothing. Every success has a trail of failures behind it, and every failure is leading towards success. You end up regretting the things you did NOT do far more than the things you did. 8. Stop berating yourself for old mistakes. – We may love the wrong person and cry about the wrong things, but no matter how things go wrong, one thing is for sure, mistakes help us find the person and things that are right for us. We all make mistakes, have struggles, and even regret things in our past. But you are not your mistakes, you are not your struggles, and you are here NOW with the power to shape your day and your future. Every single thing that has ever happened in your life is preparing you for a moment that is yet to come. 9. Stop trying to buy happiness. – Many of the things we desire are expensive. But the truth is, the things that really satisfy us are totally free – love, laughter and working on our passions. 10. Stop exclusively looking to others for happiness. – If you’re not happy with who you are on the inside, you won’t be happy in a long-term relationship with anyone else either. You have to create stability in your own life first before you can share it with someone else. 11. Stop being idle. – Don’t think too much or you’ll create a problem that wasn’t even there in the first place. Evaluate situations and take decisive action. You cannot change what you refuse to confront. Making progress involves risk. Period! You can’t make it to second base with your foot on first. 12. Stop thinking you’re not ready. – Nobody ever feels 100% ready when an opportunity arises. Because most great opportunities in life force us to grow beyond our comfort zones, which means we won’t feel totally comfortable at first. 13. Stop getting involved in relationships for the wrong reasons. – Relationships must be chosen wisely. It’s better to be alone than to be in bad company. Don't rush. If something is meant to be, it will happen in the right time, with the right person, and for the best reason. Fall in love when you’re ready, not when you’re lonely. 14. Stop rejecting new relationships just because old ones didn’t work. – In life you’ll realize that there is a purpose for everyone you meet. Some will test you, some will use you and some will teach you. But most importantly, some will bring out the best in you. 15. Stop trying to compete against everyone else. – Don’t worry about what others are doing better than you. Concentrate on beating your own records every day. Success is a battle between YOU and YOURSELF only. 16. Stop being jealous of others. – Jealousy is the art of counting someone else’s blessings instead of your own. Ask yourself this: “What’s something I have that everyone wants?” 17. Stop complaining and feeling sorry for yourself. – Life’s curveballs are thrown for a reason – to shift your path in a direction that is meant for you. You may not see or understand everything the moment it happens, and it may be tough. But reflect back on those negative curveballs thrown at you in the past. You’ll often see that eventually they led you to a better place, person, state of mind, or situation. So smile! Let everyone know that today you are a lot stronger than you were yesterday, and you will be. 18. Stop holding grudges. – Don’t live your life with hate in your heart. You will end up hurting yourself more than the people you hate. Forgiveness is not saying, “What you did to me is okay.” It is saying, “I’m not going to let what you did to me ruin my happiness forever.” Forgiveness is the answer… let go, find peace, liberate yourself! And remember, forgiveness is not just for other people, it’s for you too. If you must, forgive yourself, move on and try to do better next time. 19. Stop letting others bring you down to their level. – Refuse to lower your standards to accommodate those who refuse to raise theirs. 20. Stop wasting time explaining yourself to others. – Your friends don’t need it and your enemies won’t believe it anyway. Just do what you know in your heart is right. 21. Stop doing the same things over and over without taking a break. – The time to take a deep breath is when you don’t have time for it. If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting. Sometimes you need to distance yourself to see things clearly. 22. Stop overlooking the beauty of small moments. – Enjoy the little things, because one day you may look back and discover they were the big things. The best portion of your life will be the small, nameless moments you spend smiling with someone who matters to you. 23. Stop trying to be perfect. – The real world doesn’t reward perfectionists, it rewards people who get things done. 24. Stop following the path of least resistance. – Life is not easy, especially when you plan on achieving something worthwhile. Don’t take the easy way out. Do something extraordinary. 25. Stop acting like everything is fine if it isn’t. – It’s okay to fall apart for a little while. You don’t always have to pretend to be strong, and there is no need to constantly prove that everything is going well. You shouldn’t be concerned with what other people are thinking either – cry if you need to – it’s healthy to shed your tears. The sooner you do, the sooner you will be able to smile again. 26. Stop blaming others for your troubles. – The extent to which you can achieve your dreams depends on the extent to which you take responsibility for your life. When you blame others for what you’re going through, you deny responsibility – you give others power over that part of your life. 27. Stop trying to be everything to everyone. – It is impossible, and trying will only burn you out. But making one person smile CAN change the world. Maybe not the whole world, but their world. So narrow your focus. 28. Stop worrying so much. – Worry will not strip tomorrow of its burdens, it will strip today of its joy. One way to check if something is worth mulling over is to ask yourself this question: “Will this matter in one year’s time? Three years? Five years?” If not, then it’s not worth worrying about. 29. Stop focusing on what you don’t want to happen. – Focus on what you do want to happen. Positive thinking is at the forefront of every great success story. If you awake every morning with the thought that something wonderful will happen in your life today, and you pay close attention, you’ll often find that you’re right. 30. Stop being ungrateful. – No matter how good or bad you have it, wake up each day thankful for your life. Someone somewhere else is desperately fighting for theirs. Instead of thinking about what you’re missing, try thinking about what you have that everyone else is missing. Source: Marc Chernoff, 6/10/14

8 Tips for Staying Active When You Have Kids

In a two-year study of young adults, what do you think impacted levels of physical activity more… marriage or having kids? If you guessed kids, you’re absolutely right. The study found that having a child significantly decreased physical activity levels in the parents, for reasons I probably don’t need to list. When you have kids, your priorities change such that your morning workout session turns into getting your children fed and out the door to school… or you use it to catch up on an extra hour of much needed sleep, after staying up through the night with a newborn. You Can Stay Active with Kids: If you’re a parent, you already know how difficult it can be to make exercise a priority again… now you need to know how it can be done -- and, yes, you can stay active and physically fit even if you have children. Here’s how… 1. Stay Active All Day - For those days when you can’t fit in a structured exercise session, stay active anyway. Stand instead of sit while you fold laundry, put your kids in a stroller and take a walk around your neighborhood, walk from the far end of the parking lot when running errands, and generally move around as much as you can. This type of non-exercise activity is actually emerging as a key player in optimal health, and may be just as important, if not more important than structured exercise. A simple goal is to stand up once every 10 minutes while you’re sitting. 2. Shorten Your Workouts - It’s a myth that you have to exercise for an hour, or even half an hour, daily to stay fit. If you exercise intensely, and correctly, you can achieve high levels of fitness with 20-minute workouts, or less. High-intensity interval training (HIIT) is one such example. You can also break up your longer workouts into smaller 15-minute sessions twice a day. 3. Make Exercise a Priority - When you do have down time, resist the urge to watch TV, surf the Web or go shopping. Instead, use the time for exercise. Realize that anytime you spend your ‘me’ time doing something that gives you only instant gratification (like stopping for a latte), you’re substituting your long-term goal of physical fitness and health for a fleeting quick fix. 4. Cultivate Social Support - The more opportunities you have to carve a few minutes out for yourself, the easier it will be to fit in an exercise session. Extended family nearby works well if you need someone to watch your child for an hour or two, but if that’s not an option, cultivate friendships with other parents and trade off watching each other’s kids once or twice a week. 5. Establish Family Fitness - Walking with your baby in the stroller, or exercising at home while your baby naps, are options for infants and toddlers. When you have preschool or older kids, make fitness a family affair by riding bikes, going for hikes, swimming, ice skating and engaging in other vigorous activities as a family. 6. Set Goals - Establish small realistic goals to help keep your motivation going. For instance, set a goal to lose one or two pounds a week, or shed one pants size a month. As you reach each milestone, set another goal and give yourself a reward for staying on track. 7. Put in the Effort - It takes work to stay physically fit, so realize that you will have to work hard to achieve the benefits. But once you do, you will gain increased energy that makes running a household and taking care of kids easier and more enjoyable. The more you exercise, the better you’re likely to feel, physically and emotionally, which makes the hard work well worth it. 8. Be a Role Model - Your kids are watching your every move, what better example could you set than to teach your kids the importance of staying physically fit? Every time you fit in a workout, go for a hike or walk the dog with your kids, you’re teaching them about fitness that will hopefully stay with them for a lifetime. Remember How Good Exercise Is for You It’s easy to put exercise on the backburner… until you remind yourself just how much you stand to gain from it. Having kids is actually among the greatest motivations to exercise that there is, after all, you’ve now got more reason than ever to lead a long, healthy life. Toward that end, one of the primary benefits of exercise is that it normalizes your insulin and leptin levels, with the secondary benefits of weight loss and normalization of blood sugars. These basic factors in turn cascade outward, creating a ripple effect of positive health benefits. Did You Know That Adults Need Playtime Too? Unstructured playtime is essential for kids to build their imagination, relieve stress and simply be kids. But when’s the last time you took time for play? Regular playtime for adults, which could include time for exercise, hobbies, laughing and just general goofing around, is actually quite beneficial and even necessary for optimal well-being. Making time for play offers: • Stress relief - Taking a break from your worries feels good, and if you laugh while you do it you’ll also relax your muscles, optimize your blood flow and even boost your immune system. • Better physical health - Pain, fatigue, sleep troubles and indigestion often disappear. • Increased self-esteem and productivity - It makes you feel good about yourself and about your life in general. Playing during your free time also boosts creativity and enhances your problem-solving skills, which, in turn, may make you perform better at work. • Social support - Fun outings with friends and family help you to strengthen relationships and enhance the social support in your life. Fortunately, there is an easy and proven effective remedy for play deprivation: go out and play! Source: mercola.com, 5/23/14.

10 Ways to Lose Friends and Irritate People

Want to win friends and influence people? Here are 10 things that ensure you won't: 1. You thoughtlessly waste other peoples' time. Every time you're late to an appointment or meeting says your time is more important. Every time you wait until the grocery clerk finishes ringing you up to search for your debit card says you couldn't care less if others have to wait unnecessarily. Every time you take three minutes to fill your oversize water bottle while a line stacks up behind you says you're in your own little world--and your world is the only world that matters. Small, irritating things, but basically no big deal? Wrong. People who don't notice the small ways they inconvenience others tend to be oblivious when they do it in a major way. How you treat people when it doesn't really matter--especially when you're a leader--says everything about you. Act like the people around you have more urgent needs than yours and you will never go wrong--and you will definitely be liked. 2. You ignore people outside your "level." There's an older guy at the gym that easily weighs 350 pounds and understandably struggles on the aerobic and weight equipment. Hats off; he's in there trying. Yet nobody talks to him. Or even seems to notice him. It's like he's invisible. Why? He doesn't fit in. We all do it. When we visit a company, we talk to the people we're supposed to talk to. When we attend a civic event, we talk to the people we're supposed to talk to. We breeze right by the technicians and talk to the guy who booked us to speak, even though the techs are the ones who make us look and sound good onstage. Here's an easy rule of thumb: Nod whenever you make eye contact. Or smile. Or (gasp!) even say hi. Just act like people exist. We'll automatically like you for it--and remember you as someone who engages even when there's nothing in it for you. 3. You ask for too much. A guy you don't know asks you for a favor; a big, time-consuming favor. You politely decline. He asks again. You decline again. Then he whips out the Need Card. "But it's really important to me. You have to. I really need [it]." Maybe you do, in fact, really need [it]. But your needs are your problem. The world doesn't owe you anything. You aren't entitled to advice or mentoring or success. The only thing you're entitled to is what you earn. People tend to help people who first help themselves. People tend to help people who first help them. And people definitely befriend people who look out for other people first, because we all want more of those people in our lives. 4. You ignore people in genuine need. At the same time, some people aren't in a position to help themselves. They need a hand: a few dollars, some decent food, a warm coat. Though I don't necessarily believe in karma, I do believe good things always come back to you, in the form of feeling good about yourself. And that's reason enough to help people who find themselves on the downside of advantage. 5. You ask a question so you can talk. A guy at lunch asks, "Hey, do you think social-media marketing is effective?" "Well," you answer, "I think under the right circumstances..." "Wrong," he interrupts. "I've never seen an Return On Investment. I've never seen a bump in direct sales. Plus 'awareness' is not a measurable or even an important goal..." and he drones on while you desperately try to escape. Don't shoehorn in your opinions under false pretenses. Only ask a question if you genuinely want to know the answer. And when you do speak again, ask a follow-up question that helps you better understand the other person's point of view. People like people who are genuinely interested in them--not in themselves. 6. You pull a "Do you know who I am?" OK, so maybe they don't take it to the Reese Witherspoon level, but many people whip out some form of the "I'm Too Important for This" card. Maybe the line is too long. Or the service isn't sufficiently "personal." Or they aren't shown their "deserved" level of respect. Say you really are somebody. People always like you better when you don't act like you know you're somebody--or that you think it entitles you to different treatment. 7. You don't dial it back. An unusual personality is a lot of fun--until it isn't. Yet when the going gets tough or a situation gets stressful, some people just can't stop "expressing their individuality." Look. We know you're funny. We know you're quirky. We know you march to the beat of your own drum. Still, there's a time to play and a time to be serious, a time to be irreverent and a time to conform, a time to challenge and a time to back off. Knowing when the situation requires you to stop justifying your words or actions with an unspoken "Hey, that's just me being me" can often be the difference between being likeable and being an ass. 8. You mistake self-deprecation for permission. You know how it's OK when you make fun of certain things about yourself, but not for other people to make fun of you for those same things? Like receding hairlines. Weight. A struggling business or career. Your spouse and kids. It's OK when you poke a little gentle fun at yourself, but the last thing you want to hear are bald or money or "Do you want fries with that?" jokes. (Bottom line: I can say I'm fat. You can't.) Sometimes self-deprecation is genuine, but it's often a mask for insecurity. Never assume people who make fun of themselves give you permission to poke the same fun at them. Only tease when you know it will be taken in the right spirit. Otherwise, if you feel the need to be funny, make fun of yourself. 9. You humblebrag. Humblebragging is a form of bragging that tries to cover the brag with a veneer of humility so you can brag without appearing to brag. (Key word is "appearing," because it's still easy to tell humblebraggers are quite tickled with themselves.) For example, here's a tweeted humblebrag from an actor friend of mine: "Oh dear. Don't know what to do at the airport. Huge crowd, but I'll miss my plane if I stop and do photos... oh dear don't want to disappoint." Your employees don't want to hear how stressed you are about your upcoming TED Talk. They don't want to hear how hard it is to maintain two homes. Before you brag--humbly or not, business or personal--think about your audience. A gal who is a size 14 doesn't want to hear you complain that normally you're a size 2, but you're a size 4 in Prada because its sizes run small. Or better yet, don't brag. Just be proud of what you've accomplished. Let others brag for you. If you've done cool things, don't worry--they will. 10. You push your opinions. You know things. Cool things. Great things. Awesome. But only share them in the right settings. If you're a mentor, share away. If you're a coach or a leader, share away. If you're the guy who just started a paleo diet, don't tell us all what to order. Unless we ask. What's right for you may not be right for others; shoot, it might not even turn out to be right for you. Like most things in life, offering helpful advice is all about picking your spots--just like winning friends and influencing people. Now it's your turn. What would you add to the list? Source: Inc – Wed, Apr 16, 2014

Eating More Fruits and Vegetables Can Cut Your Risk of Dying in Half

Despite the fact that vegetables have been proven to help lower your risk of chronic disease and support longevity, most Americans are not eating nearly enough of these natural, relatively inexpensive superfoods. The latest data shows that nearly 23 percent of Americans report consuming vegetables and fruits less than one time daily, with a median vegetable intake of just 1.6 times per day. Adding in more vegetables to your diet is a simple and powerful step to dramatically improve your health. Vegetables are quick to prepare and come in so many different varieties that they should suit virtually everyone’s tastes. If you want even more motivation to eat more veggies, check out these newly unveiled health benefits (which are so dramatic the researchers called them “staggering.”) Eating Veggies Lowers Your Risk of Dying Prematurely by 42 Percent - People who eat seven or more portions of vegetables and fruit a day have a 42 percent lower risk of dying from any cause. They also enjoy a 31 percent lower risk of heart disease and a 25 percent lower risk of cancer. The research, published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, is among the first to quantify the health benefits of eating different amounts of fresh produce. As you might suspect, eating any amount of vegetables was better than none at all, but the benefits increased with more servings. So what counts as a vegetable serving? According to the US government, one cup of raw or cooked vegetables or fresh vegetable juice, or two cups of raw leafy greens can be considered as one serving from the Vegetable Group. Also, the study highlighted that vegetables had a larger protective effect than fruits. So while consuming small amounts of whole fruit is fine (and even beneficial) if you’re healthy, your focus should be on vegetables. When broken down by vegetables only, each additional daily portion of fresh veggies lowered participants’ risk of death by 16 percent compared to 4 percent for fresh fruit. Optimal Health Depends on Eating Large Amounts of Fresh Vegetables - We all need to eat large amounts of fresh, high-quality vegetables every day to achieve high-level health. Most vegetables are not very calorie dense and as a result they probably should constitute the bulk of your diet by volume. Vegetables contain an array of antioxidants and other disease-fighting compounds that are very difficult to get anywhere else. Plant chemicals called phytochemicals can reduce inflammation and eliminate carcinogens, while others regulate the rate at which your cells reproduce, get rid of old cells, and maintain DNA. The Impressive Power of Vegetables - Vegetables have an impressive way of offering widespread benefits to your health. When you eat them, you're getting dozens, maybe even hundreds or thousands, of super-nutrients that support optimal, body-wide health. Vegetables Are One of the Best Forms of Dietary Fiber - Unless you regularly eat whole fruits and vegetables (along with nuts and seeds), you may be missing out on the healthiest forms of fiber available – and that could be a problem. It is actually because your body can’t digest fiber that it plays such an important part in digestion. Soluble fiber, like that found in cucumbers and blueberries, dissolves into a gel-like texture, helping to slow down your digestion. This helps you to feel full longer and is one reason why fiber may help with weight control. Insoluble fiber, found in foods like dark green leafy vegetables, green beans, celery, and carrots, does not dissolve at all and helps add bulk to your stool. This helps food to move through your digestive tract more quickly for healthy elimination. Many whole foods, especially fruits and vegetables, naturally contain both soluble and insoluble fiber. One of the signs that a food is a natural source of fiber is that you must chew it a good number of times before swallowing. Processed foods, which basically melt in your mouth, are not going to give you the fiber your body needs. Vegetables, on the other hand, will, and this is yet another one of their virtues. There’s no shortage of research showing how a high-fiber diet may boost your health. Some of its top potential benefits include: • Blood sugar control: Soluble fiber may help to slow your body’s breakdown of carbohydrates and the absorption of sugar, helping with blood sugar control. • Heart health: An inverse association has been found between fiber intake and heart attack, and research shows that those eating a high-fiber diet have a 40 percent lower risk of heart disease. • Stroke: Researchers have found that for every seven-grams more fiber you consume on a daily basis, your stroke risk is decreased by seven percent. • Weight loss and management: Fiber supplements have been shown to enhance weight loss among obese people, likely because fiber increases feelings of fullness. • Skin health: Fiber, particularly psyllium husk, may help move yeast and fungus out of your body, preventing them from being excreted through your skin where they could trigger acne or rashes. • Diverticulitis: Dietary fiber (especially insoluble) may reduce your risk of diverticulitis – an inflammation of polyps in your intestine – by 40 percent. • Hemorrhoids: A high-fiber diet may lower your risk of hemorrhoids. • Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS): Fiber may provide some relief from IBS. • Gallstones and kidney stones: A high-fiber diet may reduce the risk of gallstones and kidney stones, likely because of its ability to help regulate blood sugar. Fermented Vegetables Are Phenomenal for Your Gut Health - Your gut is much more than a food processing tube — it houses about 85 percent of your immune system. This is in large part due to the 100 trillion bacteria that live there, both good and potentially harmful, that can stimulate your immune response. When your GI tract is not working well, a wide range of health problems can appear, including allergies and autoimmune diseases. If you suffer from any major illness, you simply will NOT be able to fully recuperate without healing and sealing your gut. Balancing the menagerie of microorganisms that occupy your GI tract is a key part of maintaining your immune health, and one of the best ways to do this is by consuming fermented vegetables. Fermented vegetables are potent chelators (detoxifiers) and contain much higher levels of probiotics than probiotic supplements, making them ideal for optimizing your gut flora. Beneficial gut bacteria play important roles in vitamin production, mineral absorption, and helping prevent diabetes, digestive issues, neurological problems, cardiovascular disease, and even acne. Creative Ways to Get More Veggie Superpowers Into Your Diet - Keeping veggies on hand is the first step to eating more of them. Fresh, non-genetically-modified and organic is best, but even frozen will work in a pinch. Make it a point to include vegetables with every meal – a salad, a side dish, or a pre-meal snack – or make veggies the main focus of your meals. You’ll easily work your way up to seven or more servings a day. When preparing your veggies, use quick, gentle cooking methods (only cooking to a tender-crisp, not mushy texture) to preserve the most nutrients. Also try to eat a good portion of them raw, which will allow you to receive beneficial biophotons. Now that it’s springtime in the US, consider growing some of your own veggies at home. You can plant an organic veggie garden even in small spaces, and this will provide you with a readily available source of the freshest, most health-boosting foods around. Source: mercola.com, 4/14/14.

New Blood Pressure Guidelines May Take Millions Off Meds

About 5.8 million American adults may no longer be prescribed drugs to treat high blood pressure under recently revised guidelines, according to a new study. In February, the Eighth Joint National Committee released controversial guidelines that relaxed blood pressure goals in adults 60 and older from 140/90 to 150/90. The guidelines also eased blood pressure targets for adults with diabetes and kidney disease. In this study, researchers used blood pressure data collected from more than 16,000 Americans between 2005 and 2010 to assess the impact of the revised guidelines. The proportion of adults considered eligible for medication to treat high blood pressure would fall from about 41 percent to 32 percent, the authors concluded in the study published online March 29 in the Journal of the American Medical Association and presented Saturday at the American College of Cardiology annual meeting in Washington, D.C. The researchers also said that 13.5 million adults -- most of them older than 60 -- who were considered to have poorly controlled blood pressure would now be viewed as having adequately managed blood pressure. That includes 5.8 million adults who would no longer require blood pressure pills. "The new guidelines do not address whether these adults should still be considered as having hypertension. But they would no longer need medication to lower their blood pressure," study lead author Ann Marie Navar-Boggan, a cardiology fellow at Duke University School of Medicine, said in a Duke news release. One in four adults older than 60 currently receives treatment for high blood pressure, according to the researchers. "These adults would be eligible for less intensive blood pressure medication under the new guidelines, particularly if they were experiencing side effects," Navar-Boggan said. "But many experts fear that increasing blood pressure levels in these adults could be harmful." Even under the new guidelines, about 28 million U.S. adults still have uncontrolled high blood pressure and more than half of them don't receive treatment, said Navar-Boggan, who noted that uncontrolled high blood pressure is a risk factor for heart attack and stroke. Source: HealthDay News, 3/29/14.

10 Rules to Build a Wildly Successful Business

Seth Goldman and Barry Nalebuff built Honest Tea from scratch into a $100 million enterprise. In my recent article on Forbes, you get a few lessons and a compelling story of their journey. Goldman and Nalebuff share 10 must-follow rules on how to start and build an equally impressive empire. You can find these rules in the back of their book; ‘Mission In A Bottle’. 1. Build something you believe in — because that’s the first step to building a great brand. Just like Goldman and Nalebuff, I learned a powerful lesson in tenacious passion from 30 plus years of entrepreneurship. When you’re all alone, sitting in a dark room wondering why your business is failing, there is only one true thing to power you forward — you believe in your purpose. 2. Don’t aim for 10% improvement. Make it radically better and different. Yes — in today’s society we collectively create amazing products, services and companies through entrepreneurship. World changing at times and Honest Tea was radically different when first introduced. But, if you look around, we also live in the land of ‘me-too’ businesses. Don’t fall for it. Dig deep and decide right now to build something radically different and radically better. 3. Prepare to be copied. Don’t start unless you’ll survive imitation. If your idea is truly radical and takes off, you can count the minutes before the copy-cats arrive. How will you survive competition from the big 800-pound gorillas on the block? Or even from the upstart little guys? Your key is a system of ‘continuous innovation’. Although you could also take the road of Honest Tea — make friends with one of the gorillas and let them buy you out. Coca-Cola Company acquired Honest Tea in 2011. 4. Build up reserves of money and energy for bad luck and mistakes. Great advice — but sometimes extremely difficult to do. What startup or growth company has reserves of cash sitting around? But Goldman and Nalebuff make a good point — run as lean as you possibly can and do not waste money or energy. You will endure mistakes and bad luck along the way, so having a good war chest full of capital and energy can help handle it. 5. Never, ever give up control — until you sell. Some high-impact entrepreneurs will readily give up control in exchange for the lure of high-growth through venture capital — but I am not one of them. Relinquish control and you risk losing the culture and vision of the company you set out to build. Even though Honest Tea raised investment capital from the beginning, the co-founders always remained in the driver’s seat. And yes — Goldman can still drive his vision as CEO of Honest Tea, but his boss at Coca-Cola can say ‘no’ at anytime. Thus, true control is now forever gone. 6. Don’t compromise on the big things — compromise on everything else. Vision. Purpose. Core values. Write these things in stone and never budge. But flexibility in the value propositions, products and services you build to execute your purpose is vastly important. Many entrepreneurs I see fail to ‘bend to the market’ by adapting to what their customer’s are telling them. 7. Figure out how to achieve your goals on a tiny budget — then cut that number in half. Yes — you’ve heard it said before — it will cost twice as much, and take twice as long as you think. My recommendation is you apply the principles of lean to your business from day one. No fancy offices. No fancy full color brochures. Your goal is to stay alive until you can nail your secret formula for success. Blowing the budget will insure nothing but a quick death. 8. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Is it ever. Building a business is neither for the faint of heart or the speed demon. Climbing Mt. Everest is not done in 3 easy steps: 1.) decide you want to do it, 2.) fly to Nepal with zero preparation, 3.) sprint straight up the mountain in 12 easy minutes. Build systems for the long-haul and focus on small-connected steps. It takes 26,364 steps to climb Mt. Everest, and that’s starting from half way up at Basecamp. 9. Take care of your family, personal and spiritual health — if you aren’t laughing or smiling on a regular basis, recalibrate. Imagine the path to a wildly successful business: founder working at a feverish pitch for 18 hours each day, for at least 5 years straight. True? No, it’s not. In my private conversation with Goldman, he flat-out told me two reasons he made it through the rough years: first — he believed in his purpose, second — his drive for personal balance. The notion we need to kill our family relationships, personal health or level of sanity to build our own business is sadly misaligned. Take it from me — don’t go there. 10. Build the enterprise and the brand as if you’ll own them forever. Will you sell your business someday? Maybe. Should that be the sole reason you are building it? Probably not. When you start and build a business based on passion and purpose, with a burning desire to solve the pain of your customer through the deliverance of value, you build a far more valuable enterprise. Those in it for the short-term quick buck rarely succeed. Plaster these 10 rules from Goldman and Nalebuff to your mirror, live by them every day of your life as an entrepreneur and you might end up as successful as they are. Honest. Source: Eric T. Wagner | Forbes, Dr. Dan Thibodeau - 3/19/14

10 Interesting Facts About Chiropractic

Spinal manipulation has existed for at least 2500 years and chiropractic care as we know it today began over a hundred years ago in Davenport, Iowa by Daniel David Palmer. D.D. Palmer and his son B.J. Palmer went on to start what is now Palmer College of Chiropractic. Since that time, it has gained recognition worldwide as an effective form of health care. Patient satisfaction is typically very high and studies have shown that, compared to conventional medical care, chiropractic is more safe and financially feasible for many ailments. It’s no surprise that people enjoy chiropractic coverage through their insurance and it’s even offered to men and women serving in the military. Clearly, chiropractic is accepted, widely used, and familiar to most people. It’s also a profession in which a number of interesting footnotes have come to exist. Let’s take a look at a few of the lesser-known facts about chiropractic. 1. May Help Torture And Trauma Survivors - Torture and trauma are real horrors that can cause survivors to experience pain, depression, PTSD, and other horrible long-term problems. Could a wellness approach help to make them well? It seems so. The Boston University School of Public Health reports that some forms of complementary and alternative medicine such as meditation, massage, acupuncture, and chiropractic may be effective as part of a comprehensive approach for treating survivors of torture and trauma. 2. Chiropractic Is Worldwide - Chiropractic is popular all over the world. Although the chiropractic profession was founded in the United States in 1895, spinal manipulation has a long history of use in China. By the 1960′s it spread to Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa. It’s more recently extended across Asia, Europe, Latin America, and Australia. In fact, in Australia, one in four adults have consulted with a chiropractor and nearly 40% of the elderly population rely on complementary and alternative medicine like chiropractic. 3. The Face Paper Sheet Really Works - If you think about it, the average chiropractor’s table probably comes in contact with as many people as the average park bench. As such, hygiene standards are important to make sure the facilities do not become a petri dish of disgusting pathogens. In 2011, the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College evaluated the cleanliness of area chiropractic clinics and found that, while bacteria was a valid concern, most chiropractors were proactive with disinfection and the face paper sheet used to cover the table headpieces was an effective barrier to germs. 4. The Amish Like Chiropractic Too - The Amish may reject many of the modern “conveniences” many of us enjoy, but there is no denying that they have somewhat of a reputation for embracing a robust, natural approach to maintaining good health — an approach that is quite similar to wellness. It’s no surprise that this has lead to an acceptance of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in the Amish community. A few years ago, the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine conducted a survey of Amish women concerning their use of CAM and reported that thirty-six percent used nutritional supplements, herbal therapies, and chiropractic medicine. 5. Chiropractors Do It Better - It’s not uncommon for an adjustment to produce an almost orgasmic moan of relief. If you’ve ever had a kink in your neck that a chiropractor was able to remedy, you know what I’m talking about. It begs the question, why does it feel so good? Well, in addition to unpinching pinched nerves, realigning the misaligned, and generally guiding things back where they need to be, manipulation stimulates muscular and tendon sensory receptors to produce an excitatory effect on the central nervous system and often times a release of endorphins. 6. Sometimes The Healers Need Healing - Being a chiropractor can be physically demanding and there are times when performing an adjustment requires you to throw your back into it. Unfortunately, chiropractors aren’t immune to throwing their back out. In 2006, the Los Angeles College of Chiropractic surveyed 1000 United States chiropractors to determine what work-related injuries they’ve experienced. Respondents said that the most common affected their hand, shoulder, and lower back and occurred while performing an adjustment or positioning a patient. Giving credence to experience, it was also found that most injuries occurred in the first five years of practice. 7. Female Chiropractors Can Hold Their Own - As said, being a chiropractor can present physical demands and performing an adjustment can require a lot of thrust. This has led some to squint their eyes and wonder if smaller-framed male and female chiropractors can cut the mustard. Well, fear not. When researchers at the University of Victoria pitted the abilities of 14 male chiropractors against 14 female chiropractors, they found that female chiropractors are just as able as their male colleagues. 8. A Little More Diversity Would Be Nice - The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality reported that the average chiropractic patient in 2008 was white, female, of higher income, and residing in a small metro area. And, although Medicare covers chiropractic care, the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice found that from 2002-2008, 97% of Medicare-covered recipients of chiropractic care were white. Why is this? Everyone can benefit from chiropractic. I would really love to hear some feedback — what can the chiropractic industry do to attract a more accurate sampling of our diverse American population? 9. Don’t Let Your Untrained Friend Adjust You - “Hey dude! Will you pop my back?” Have you ever heard someone say that? Worse, have you ever said it? Worse yet, have you been the one to do the popping? Stop it! Proper chiropractic care involves more than a few simple motions and manipulation is only safe when performed by someone who has received the necessary training. Chiropractic is not monkey-see, monkey-do! Do you need proof? In 2001, a man in India developed severe spinal cord and brainstem problems after receiving an adjustment from his barber. That’s just one example. Bad idea. 10. One Of The Most Successful Chiropractors Ever Was Blind - Vision impairment does not make a person incapable, and a fantastic example of that was Dr. Charles Robinson Johnson. In 1918, when he was 39, Dr. Johnson graduated from the Palmer School of Chiropractic and became the first blind chiropractor, and one of the most successful. For over 25 years he practiced in Peekskill, New York and had a well traveled reputation as a miracle healer, seeing hundreds of patients each week. The newspapers even called him, “The Man Who Made Peekskill Famous.” Quite an achievement for someone blind and born in a mining camp! Source: Dr. Edward F. Group III, www.globalhealingcenter.com, 3/5/14.

What Little Girls Wish Their Daddies Knew

I'm spending the morning waiting for my car in the repair shop. Four men in flannel and I sit around smelling tires and inhaling exhaust fumes while an enchanting little fairy is in constant motion around her daddy. She climbs on him, giggles, turns around, and then she's back to twirling on the tile. She's bouncing and spinning around in her pink frilly skirt. Her black cable knit tights are sagging around her tiny knees, and her puffy coat makes her arms stand out further than is natural. To top off the ensemble is a shiny crystal tiara. It's been tacked down to her head with what appears to be about 60 haphazard bobby pins. She's probably 4 years old. So little, so vulnerable. She doesn't seem concerned about it as she sings about teapots and ladybugs in her black Mary Janes. I feel myself tear up as I watch her. I tear up as I watch him watch her. She could not possibly know at 4 what impact this man, his character or his words will have on her for years to come. And, maybe he doesn't know either. So, to all the daddies with little girls who aren't old enough yet to ask for what they need from you, here is what we wish you knew: 1. How you love me is how I will love myself. 2. Ask how I am feeling and listen to my answer, I need to know you value me before I can understand my true value. 3. I learn how I should be treated by how you treat my mom, whether you are married to her or not. 4. If you are angry with me, I feel it even if I don't understand it, so talk to me. 5. Every time you show grace to me or someone else, I learn to trust God a little more. 6. I need to experience your nurturing physical strength, so I learn to trust the physicality of men. 7. Please don't talk about sex like a teenage boy, or I think it's something dirty. 8. When your tone is gentle, I understand what you are saying much better. 9. How you talk about female bodies when you're "just joking" is what I believe about my own. 10. How you handle my heart, is how I will allow it to be handled by others. 11. If you encourage me to find what brings joy, I will always seek it. 12. If you teach me what safe feels like when I'm with you, I will know better how to guard myself from men who are not. 13. Teach me a love of art, science, and nature, and I will learn that intellect matters more than dress size. 14. Let me say exactly what I want even if it's wrong or silly, because I need to know having a strong voice is acceptable to you. 15. When I get older, if you seem afraid of my changing body, I will believe something is wrong with it. 16. If you understand contentment for yourself, so will I. 17. When I ask you to let go, please remain available; I will always come back and need you if you do. 18. If you demonstrate tenderness, I learn to embrace my own vulnerability rather than fear it. 19. When you let me help fix the car and paint the house, I will believe I can do anything a boy can do. 20. When you protect my femininity, I learn everything about me is worthy of protecting. 21. How you treat our dog when you think I'm not watching tells me more about you than does just about anything else. 22. Don't let money be everything, or I learn not to respect it or you. 23. Hug, hold, and kiss me in all the ways a daddy does that are right and good and pure. I need it so much to understand healthy touch. 24. Please don't lie, because I believe what you say. 25. Don't avoid hard conversations, because it makes me believe I'm not worth fighting for. It's pretty simple, really. Little girls just love their daddies. They each think their daddy hung the moon. Once in a while when you look at your little gal twirling in her frilly skirt, remember she'll be grown one day. What do you want her to know about men, life, herself, love? What you do and say now matters for a lifetime. Daddies, never underestimate the impact of your words or deeds on your daughters, no matter what their age. Source: HuffingtonPost.com, 02/04/2014

Rules to Build a Wildly Successful Business

Seth Goldman and Barry Nalebuff built Honest Tea from scratch into a $100 million enterprise. In my recent article on Forbes, you get a few lessons and a compelling story of their journey. Goldman and Nalebuff share 10 must-follow rules on how to start and build an equally impressive empire. You can find these rules in the back of their book; ‘Mission In A Bottle’. 1. Build something you believe in — because that’s the first step to building a great brand. Just like Goldman and Nalebuff, I learned a powerful lesson in tenacious passion from 30 plus years of entrepreneurship. When you’re all alone, sitting in a dark room wondering why your business is failing, there is only one true thing to power you forward — you believe in your purpose. 2. Don’t aim for 10% improvement. Make it radically better and different. Yes — in today’s society we collectively create amazing products, services and companies through entrepreneurship. World changing at times and Honest Tea was radically different when first introduced. But, if you look around, we also live in the land of ‘me-too’ businesses. Don’t fall for it. Dig deep and decide right now to build something radically different and radically better. 3. Prepare to be copied. Don’t start unless you’ll survive imitation. If your idea is truly radical and takes off, you can count the minutes before the copy-cats arrive. How will you survive competition from the big 800-pound gorillas on the block? Or even from the upstart little guys? Your key is a system of ‘continuous innovation’. Although you could also take the road of Honest Tea — make friends with one of the gorillas and let them buy you out. Coca-Cola Company acquired Honest Tea in 2011. 4. Build up reserves of money and energy for bad luck and mistakes. Great advice — but sometimes extremely difficult to do. What startup or growth company has reserves of cash sitting around? But Goldman and Nalebuff make a good point — run as lean as you possibly can and do not waste money or energy. You will endure mistakes and bad luck along the way, so having a good war chest full of capital and energy can help handle it. 5. Never, ever give up control — until you sell. Some high-impact entrepreneurs will readily give up control in exchange for the lure of high-growth through venture capital — but I am not one of them. Relinquish control and you risk losing the culture and vision of the company you set out to build. Even though Honest Tea raised investment capital from the beginning, the co-founders always remained in the driver’s seat. And yes — Goldman can still drive his vision as CEO of Honest Tea, but his boss at Coca-Cola can say ‘no’ at anytime. Thus, true control is now forever gone. 6. Don’t compromise on the big things — compromise on everything else. Vision. Purpose. Core values. Write these things in stone and never budge. But flexibility in the value propositions, products and services you build to execute your purpose is vastly important. Many entrepreneurs I see fail to ‘bend to the market’ by adapting to what their customer’s are telling them. 7. Figure out how to achieve your goals on a tiny budget — then cut that number in half. Yes — you’ve heard it said before — it will cost twice as much, and take twice as long as you think. My recommendation is you apply the principles of lean to your business from day one. No fancy offices. No fancy full color brochures. Your goal is to stay alive until you can nail your secret formula for success. Blowing the budget will insure nothing but a quick death. 8. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Is it ever. Building a business is neither for the faint of heart or the speed demon. Climbing Mt. Everest is not done in 3 easy steps: 1.) decide you want to do it, 2.) fly to Nepal with zero preparation, 3.) sprint straight up the mountain in 12 easy minutes. Build systems for the long-haul and focus on small-connected steps. It takes 26,364 steps to climb Mt. Everest, and that’s starting from half way up at Basecamp. 9. Take care of your family, personal and spiritual health — if you aren’t laughing or smiling on a regular basis, recalibrate. Imagine the path to a wildly successful business: founder working at a feverish pitch for 18 hours each day, for at least 5 years straight. True? No, it’s not. In my private conversation with Goldman, he flat-out told me two reasons he made it through the rough years: first — he believed in his purpose, second — his drive for personal balance. The notion we need to kill our family relationships, personal health or level of sanity to build our own business is sadly misaligned. Take it from me — don’t go there. 10. Build the enterprise and the brand as if you’ll own them forever. Will you sell your business someday? Maybe. Should that be the sole reason you are building it? Probably not. When you start and build a business based on passion and purpose, with a burning desire to solve the pain of your customer through the deliverance of value, you build a far more valuable enterprise. Those in it for the short-term quick buck rarely succeed. Plaster these 10 rules from Goldman and Nalebuff to your mirror, live by them every day of your life as an entrepreneur and you might end up as successful as they are. Honest. Source: Eric T. Wagner | Forbes – Thu, Jan 30, 2014

The Top Things Dying People Regret.

Everyone goes through life experiencing enough mistakes and resulting damage that, by the time they are old enough, they have regrets. When you look back at your life you will know what moments you should have changed. We’ve compiled a list of the things you must not do or else you will regret them at the end of your life. Just read through these and trust us. It’ll be worth it. 1.) Not traveling when you had the chance. Traveling gets harder as you get older, as more people depend on your presence, day-to-day and it ends up becoming more expensive to bring more people with you. 2.) Not learning another language. You probably took another language in high school. You should put it to good use. 3.) Staying in a bad relationship. It may feel hard to get out of a bad relationship, but it’s not worse than staying in it and wasting everyone’s time. 4.) Sunscreen. It may not seem like much, but sun damage adds up over the years, causing wrinkles and discoloration. 5.) Missing the chance to see your favorite musicians. You never know when the band might break up, so seize the day. 6.) Being afraid to do things. Fear can paralyze us, but we can’t let it. 7.) Failing to make physical fitness a priority. As you get older you’ll realize how important it is to take care of your body. 8.) Letting yourself be defined by gender roles. Define yourself, don’t let society do it. 9.) Not quitting a terrible job. You may need to pay rent or provide for a family, but you can’t force yourself to be miserable every day. 10.) Trying harder in school. Grades are important, but what’s more important is applying yourself and being dedicated. 11.) Not realizing how beautiful you are. There are many definitions of beauty and you shouldn’t think you’re unworthy of someone’s attention. 12.) Being afraid to say “I love you.” Loving another person is a precious gift, even if that same love wasn’t returned. 13.) Not listening to your parents. They have a lot more experience than you want to give them credit for. 14.) Spending your youth being self-absorbed. There is more to the world than just you and eventually you’ll realize that. 15.) Caring too much about what other people think. When you’re older, you’ll realize that the opinions of others don’t factor into your true happiness. 16.) Supporting the dreams of others over your own. Being nice is one thing, but sacrificing your happiness isn’t worth it. 17.) Not moving fast enough. Don’t hesitate to make decisions; you’ll end up regretting wasting time. 18.) Holding grudges, especially against those you love. Choose to let go of your pain, instead of dwelling on it. 19.) Not standing up for yourself. Just because others may disagree with you, it doesn’t mean you have to abandon your principals. 20.) Not volunteering enough. There are countless reasons to help other people, especially when they are needy. 21.) Neglecting your teeth. Flossing and brushing may seem annoying, but it’s much better to take care of your teeth while you’re young instead of losing them later. 22.) Missing the chance to talk to your grandparents before they die. They hold a lot of knowledge and they will only be around for a little while. 23.) Working too much. You’re going to miss the good parts of life, or be too stressed to enjoy them, if you do. 24.) Not learning how to cook one good meal. It’ll add to your family and friend get togethers more than you can ever imagine. 25.) Not appreciating the moment. Quit texting or taking pictures and realize what you are doing when you are doing it. 26.) Failing to finish what you start. Every day is an opportunity that shouldn’t be squandered. 27.) Never mastering one awesome party trick. This seems silly, but just think of how many amazing memories you can create. 28.) Letting yourself be defined by cultural expectations. If your family or country thinks you should do something for a career, you’re not forced to. 29.) Refusing to let friendships run their course. Sometimes people drift apart. Forcing that connection could do more damage than good. 30.) Not playing with your children enough. Kids are joyful and innocent. You should be choosing to fill your life with this joy, not avoiding it. 31.) Never taking a big risk (especially in love). Taking a bigger risk can pay off more than taking a smaller one. 32.) Not taking the time to develop contacts and network. It may seem like schmoozing, but it’ll help your career in the long run. 33.) Worrying too much. Worrying, especially about things that haven’t happened yet, is useless. 34.) Getting caught up in needless drama. Drama can be addictive, but there is no point. Don’t get off on how bad your day is. 35.) Not spending enough time with loved ones. We are on this earth for a limited time, don’t take that for granted. 36.) Never performing in front of others. This may not be your true calling, but trying it at least once is an important life experience. 37.) Not being grateful sooner. Learn to say thanks and learn to mean it. So many parts of your life will improve if you do. It’s never too late to change your life, so start by avoiding these things. You won’t regret it. Share this article with your friends so they can have the same advice. Source: Viralnova - Trending stories on the web, 1/10/2014

Chiropractic is the Best for Back Pain

12 Reasons Why Chiropractic is the Best Choice for Back Pain. Chiropractic is a great way to naturally and safely improve your health. Over the last few years, many studies have been published in the medical literature and have shown that chiropractic is the best choice for patients who suffer from acute or chronic back pain: 1. The American Medical Association Recommends Chiropractic Before Surgery. Surgery always carries a certain amount of risk and should be avoided, if possible. This landmark article from the Journal of the American Medical Association says that patients should try Chiropractic before resorting to surgical intervention. 2. Chiropractic Helps You Avoid Surgery, Too! This study from the journal Spine found that patients who used chiropractors were less likely to have surgery for their back pain. 3. Chiropractic is Better than Drugs. Another study from Spine found that chiropractic patients had better outcomes than patients who used medications for their back pain. 4. Chiropractic Prevents Future Cases of Back Pain. In this study, researchers found that chiropractic helped prevent back pain in patients with work-related injuries. 5. Chiropractic Saves You Money. A study that compared chiropractic to medical care found that chiropractic patients spent less on health care than medical patients. 6. Chiropractic is More Effective than Epidural Injections for Disc Herniations. This 2013 study found that back pain patients had better outcomes and lower health care costs with chiropractic than those who had epidural injections for spinal disc herniations. 7. Chiropractic Best Option for Sacroiliac Joint Pain. Dysfunction the sacroiliac joint can cause severe back pain and sciatica. This study reports a 72% success rate for patient who use chiropractic for SI joint pain. 8. Chiropractic Best Option for Sports-Related Back Pain. Back pain is a common sports injury, and this study from the journal Sports Health found that chiropractic was the best option for treatment of back pain. 9. Chiropractic is Safe. The prestigious medical journal Spine found that chiropractic is a safe choice for back pain patients. 10. Chiropractic Beneficial for Back Pain During Pregnancy. Many pregnant women suffer from back pain, and regular medical treatments or drugs can be unsafe. This 2006 study found that chiropractic is a safe and effective way to relieve the symptoms of back pain during this important time. 11. Chiropractic Helps Older Patients with Back Pain. As we get older, our spine loses flexibility and we’re more likely to develop back pain. This 2013 study found that chiropractic is safe and effective at reducing back pain in older patients. 12. Chiropractic Best for Teens with Back Pain. A recent British study found that for teens with back pain, chiropractic offered the biggest improvements. Source: ChiroHosting, Dr. Dan Thibodeau, 1/13/14.

7 Worst Ingredients in Food

More than 3,000 food additives, preservatives, flavorings, colors and other ingredients are added to US foods, and this is why I recommend avoiding most processed foods. While many well-meaning nutritionists teach you the importance of reading food labels, the easiest way to eat healthy is to stick with foods that need no food label at all. When was the last time you saw an ingredients list on a steak or a bunch of broccoli? There’s a good chance, though, that you do eat some processed foods, and if this is the case reading the label is invaluable. There are literally thousands of ‘red flags’ to watch out for in the foods you eat, but a handful are the worst of the worst. Let’s look at each in detail: 1. Artificial Sweeteners - Experiments have found that sweet taste, regardless of its caloric content, enhances your appetite, and consuming artificial sweeteners has been shown to lead to even greater weight gain than consuming sugar. Aspartame has been found to have the most pronounced effect, but the same applies for other artificial sweeteners, such as acesulfame potassium, sucralose and saccharin. Yet, weight gain is only the beginning of why artificial sweeteners should be avoided. Aspartame, for instance, is a neurotoxin. As a result of its unnatural structure, your body processes the amino acids found in aspartame very differently from a steak or a piece of fish. The amino acids in aspartame literally attack your cells, even crossing the blood-brain barrier to attack your brain cells, creating a toxic cellular overstimulation called excitotoxicity. 2. Synthetic Trans Fats - These are common in foods that contain partially hydrogenated oil, such as crackers, chips, most store-bought baked goods, and any fried foods. Synthetic trans fats are known to promote inflammation, which is a hallmark of most chronic diseases. In a 2010 study, post-menopausal women who consumed the most daily synthetic trans fat had a 30 percent higher incidence of ischemic strokes. Synthetic trans fats have also been linked to: cancer, diabetes, decreased immune function, problems with reproduction and heart disease. 3. Artificial Flavors - What’s particularly alarming when you see a word like “artificial flavor” on an ingredients label is that there’s no way to know what it actually means. It could mean that one unnatural additive is included, or it could be a blend of hundreds of additives. Strawberry artificial flavor can contain nearly 50 chemical ingredients. The artificial flavoring called diacetyl, which is often used as a butter flavoring in microwave popcorn. Research shows diacetyl has several concerning properties for brain health and may trigger Alzheimer’s disease. Genetically engineered flavor enhancers can also be listed under the artificial flavor or natural flavor label. 4. Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) - This flavor enhancer is in countless processed food products ranging from frozen dinners and salad dressing to snack chips and meats. MSG is an excitotoxin, which means it overexcites your cells to the point of damage or death, causing brain dysfunction and damage to varying degrees -- and potentially even triggering or worsening learning disabilities, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, Lou Gehrig's disease and more. Part of the problem is that free glutamic acid (MSG is approximately 78 percent free glutamic acid) is the same neurotransmitter that your brain, nervous system, eyes, pancreas and other organs use to initiate certain processes in your body. 5. Artificial Colors - Every year, food manufacturers pour 15 million pounds of artificial food dyes into U.S. foods and that amount only factors in eight different varieties. Nine of the food dyes currently approved for use in the US are linked to health issues ranging from cancer and hyperactivity to allergy-like reactions and these results were from studies conducted by the chemical industry itself. 6. High-Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) - It’s often claimed that HFCS is no worse for you than sugar, but this is not the case. Because high-fructose corn syrup contains free-form monosaccharides of fructose and glucose, it cannot be considered biologically equivalent to sucrose (sugar), which has a glycosidic bond that links the fructose and glucose together, and which slows its break down in the body. Fructose is primarily metabolized by your liver, because your liver is the only organ that has the transporter for it. Since all fructose gets shuttled to your liver, fructose ends up taxing and damaging your liver in the same way alcohol and other toxins do. And just like alcohol, fructose is metabolized directly into fat – it just gets stored in your fat cells, which leads to mitochondrial malfunction, obesity and obesity-related diseases. The more fructose or HFCS a food contains, the worse it is for your health. As a standard recommendation, I advise keeping your TOTAL fructose consumption below 25 grams per day. For most people it would also be wise to limit your fructose from fruit to 15 grams or less, as you're virtually guaranteed to consume "hidden" sources of fructose if you drink beverages other than water and eat processed food. 7. Preservatives - Preservatives lengthen the shelf-life of foods, increasing manufacturers’ profits – at your expense, since most are linked to health problems such as cancer, allergic reactions and more. Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) and butylated hydrozyttoluene (BHT) are preservatives that affect the neurological system of your brain, alter behavior and have the potential to cause cancer. Tertiary butylhydroquinone (TBHQ) is a chemical preservative so deadly that just five grams can kill you. The preservative sodium benzoate found in many soft drinks, fruit juices and salad dressings has been found to cause children to become measurably more hyperactive and distractible. Sodium nitrite, a commonly used preservative in hot dogs, deli meats and bacon, has been linked to higher rates of colorectal, stomach and pancreatic cancers. US Processed Foods May Be Even Worse Than Those in Other Countries Many of the food additives that are perfectly legal to use in US foods are banned in other countries. The banned ingredients include various food dyes, the fat substitute Olestra, brominated vegetable oil, potassium bromate (aka brominanted flour), Azodicarbonamide, BHA, BHT, rBGH, rBST and arsenic. When foods are processed, not only are valuable nutrients lost and fibers removed, but the textures and natural variation and flavors are also lost. After processing, what's left behind is a bland, uninteresting "pseudo-food" that most people wouldn’t want to eat. So at this point, food manufacturers must add back in the nutrients, flavor, color and texture to processed foods in order to make them palatable, and this is why they become loaded with food additives. If you live in Europe, you may have more options than Americans, as you may be able to find some processed foods that do not contain any synthetic additives. Still, swapping your processed food diet for one that focuses on fresh whole foods is a necessity if you value your health. Remember, people have thrived on vegetables, meats, eggs, fruits and other whole foods for centuries, while processed foods were only recently invented. If you want to eat (and be) healthy, I suggest you follow the 1950s (and before) model and spend quality time in the kitchen preparing high-quality meals for yourself and your family. If you rely on processed inexpensive foods, you exchange convenience for long-term health problems and mounting medical bills. Source: mercola.com, 12/30/13.

Future MDs Unprepared to Manage Pain

Chronic pain affects 100 million Americans – that’s more than the number impacted by diabetes, heart disease and cancer combined. Most suffering from pain turn to their family doctors for help, but many leave the office with a prescription for painkillers in hand. Many physicians do not know how to help their patients manage or eliminate chronic pain, and this trend is going to continue for the future unless a radical change occurs. As it stands, most new physicians are learning little about how to treat pain, despite it being one of the most common, and most debilitating conditions around. Just 12 Hours of Pain Education in Six Years of Medical School - The study, which surveyed undergraduate medical schools in Europe, found that even when compulsory pain courses are in place, they represent just 0.2 percent. Most of the schools have no required courses on pain that all students must take. This means that 12 hours of pain study represents a best-case scenario; at 82 percent of medical schools without compulsory pain courses, the students may be receiving even less… or no pain training at all. Also there is no consistency in what topics are covered, and most of the schools included only classroom based teaching, with no practical or hands-on experience. The researchers called for a major overhaul to address the urgent public health need to adequately manage chronic pain. Pain Education in North American Medical Schools ‘Limited’ and ‘Fragmentary’ - Though the study took place in Europe, it echoes a similar trend in the US and Canada by a separate study published in The Journal of Pain. Most of the schools offered pain education as only a part of general education courses. Less than 4 percent of the schools had a required course in pain and many offered no dedicated courses at all. Even at those schools offering pain curriculum, the education amounted to less than five hours. Those researchers similarly concluded: “Significant gaps between recommended pain curricula and documented educational content were identified. In short, pain education [in US and Canadian medical schools] was limited and fragmentary. Innovative and integrated pain education in primary medical education is needed.” This is clearly out of sync with the needs of Americans. So many are suffering daily with pain that surveys show seven in 10 Americans believe pain research and management should be one of the medical community’s top priorities! Instead, it receives barely a passing mention. What Happens When Physicians Don’t Know How to Treat Pain? - MDs resort to the only treatment they know: prescription drugs. And now we’re facing another epidemic on top of chronic pain: prescription drug abuse. The latter has been called the fastest-growing drug problem in the US by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as the number of deaths from opioid painkillers like hydrocodone and oxycodone rose nearly four-fold between 1999 and 2009. The overdoses now kill more people than cocaine and heroin combined. As USA Today recently reported, more US states are now taking action to try and stop this growing problem: • Alabama has instituted three new laws that give more medical personnel access to the state’s prescription monitoring program database, as well as tighten regulations on pain management clinics and making ‘doctor shopping’ to get multiple prescriptions punishable by jail time • Indiana instituted new oversight powers to the state attorney general on pain management clinics and is considering mandatory annual drug screening of people prescribed opioids • Kentucky now requires pain clinics to be licensed and mandates that physicians check electronic prescription records before writing opioid prescriptions • Washington state has set dosage limits for physicians who prescribe pain medications, and prescriptions over a certain amount must be approved by a pain specialist • New York has a requirement that physicians and pharmacists check the state’s drug-monitoring program database before prescribing opioids Prescription Painkillers Are Addictive and Often Deadly - Painkillers (opioids) like morphine, codeine, oxycodone, hydrocodone and fentanyl are one of the most commonly abused drug classes. These drugs are not only addictive, they can lead to slowed breathing and death if too much is taken, and the risks are compounded if you add alcohol to the equation. Hydrocodone, a prescription opiate, is synthetic heroin. It's indistinguishable from any other heroin as far as your brain and body is concerned. So, if you're hooked on hydrocodone, you are in fact a good-old-fashioned heroin addict. Worse, pain-killing drugs like fentanyl are actually 100 times more potent than natural opioids like morphine, making the addictive potential and side effects associated with prescription drug use much higher. Americans consume 80 percent of the pain pills in the world, and once you start, they set off a cascade of reactions in your body that make it extremely difficult to stop. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, associate chief of neurosurgery at Grady Memorial Hospital and CNN's chief medical correspondent, reported: “ … after just a few months of taking the pills...The effectiveness wears off, and patients typically report getting only about 30% pain relief, compared with when they started. Even more concerning, a subgroup of these patients develop a condition known as hyperalgesia, an increased sensitivity to pain…all of this creates a situation where the person starts to take more and more pills. And even though they are no longer providing much pain relief, they can still diminish the body's drive to breathe. If you are awake you may not notice it, but if you fall asleep with too many of these pills in your system, you never wake up. Add alcohol, and the problem is exponentially worse...” Try Natural Options Before Considering Painkillers for Chronic Pain - At the top of this list should be an explanation of why dietary changes are so important for long-term pain relief. If you suffer from chronic pain, there’s a good chance your physician has neglected to tell you this: • Take a high-quality, animal-based omega-3 oil. • Reduce your intake of processed foods, they contain sugar, additives and omega-6 fats, which contribute to inflammation. • Reduce most grains and sugars (especially fructose) from your diet. • Optimize your vitamin D by getting regular appropriate sun exposure. • Chiropractic adjustments on patients with neck pain who used a chiropractor and/or exercise were more than twice as likely to be pain free in 12 weeks compared to those who took medication. • Massage releases endorphins, which help induce relaxation, relieve pain, and reduce levels of stress. • Acupuncture has a definite effect in reducing chronic pain - more so than standard pain treatment. • Icing a painful area for 15 minutes on and 30 minutes off can greatly reduce pain, inflammation and muscle spasms. • Nutritional Supplements that may include: Astaxanthin, Ginger, Curcumin, Boswellia, Bromelain, Cetyl Myristoleate (CMO), Evening Primrose, Black Currant, Borage Oils and Cayenne. *Ask the doctors at Beck -Thibodeau Chiropractor which pain relief options are best for you and your family. Source: mercola.com, 10/30/13, Dr. Dan Thibodeau.