Flax

If you’re looking for a vegan protein powder, you might want to think about ground up flaxseeds. They contain up to 30 proteins, which works out to around 10 grams per 1 ounce scoop. Although they don’t have all the essential amino acids – they're missing lysine which is important for connective tissue – they have a good amount of both arginine and glutamine, which are youth promoting and build amino acids.

At $2.00 or so a pound (and that’s for the organic type), the price is certainly right.

Flaxseeds are chock full of other nutrients, including Omega 3 fatty acids, thiamine, manganese, magnesium and potassium. They’re also good sources of selenium and zinc, important for prostate health and the health of the male reproductive system. Selenium and zinc also make flaxseeds the perfect anti-diabetic food. In my opinion, using flaxseed fiber after meals or even just once a day as a supplement can be a powerful way to keep blood sugar stable.

Relaxation

“Americans are so restless that they have invented a rocking chair in which they move while they sit!”

-Anonymous French writer quoted by Norman Vincent Peale in “A Guide for Confident Living

Relaxation!

Babies, puppies and kitties are experts at it, professional athletes practice it, health care professionals advise it and all of us require daily doses of it for a long, illness-free life. Intelligent eating habits, abundant nutrition, hydration, and regular exercise are all crucial for good health, but when it comes to wellness, keeping it, increasing it and restoring it, nothing is more important than simple rest, repose and relaxation.

We all love to loaf, but to experience the full health benefits of relaxation, it’s important to practice a more active form of repose. I call it “deep relaxation”. When done correctly, it helps our minds stop racing and liberates our bodies from tension.

A daily , deep relaxation practice requires focus and intention; we have to really want to relax. While it may seem ironic, this kind of active relaxation has been shown to have many profound and lasting benefits, most notably, reducing stress and its symptoms by:

Yoga

When most of us hear the word yoga, we visualize super bendy, gooey-muscled gurus and impossible contorted poses. If we know a little more, we may think of relaxation or centering and strengthening. While it’s true that yoga can be all of these things, just 5 or 10 minutes of daily yoga can relax both body and mind, releasing tension that accumulates in the muscles, and pacifying an overworked brain. In actuality, yoga is so much more.

The term “yoga” comes from the Sanskrit word for unification, as in to “yoke” or connect. Yoga was originally intended to describe a complete physical, emotional, mental and spiritual practice that linked of these four aspects of being. Historically, this connection was solidified by activities that consisted of 8 fundamental elements which, when they were exercised regularly and consciously, were said to support and promote a joyful and actualized life through moral and ethical conduct and self-discipline. This eightfold path, called Ashtanga – which literally means “eight limbs” (ashta=eight, anga=limb) – directs our minds toward our health and well-being, while helping us acknowledge all aspects of our nature and the nature of others.

Can Cheese Increase Your Lifespans?

These days, most folks are aware that there are good and bad fats. Avocadoes, olives, nuts and seeds containing healthful Omega 3s and 6s are widely recognized as beneficial, while we've been told to avoid fried, hydrogenated and processed fats. For many, dairy is also verboten; Often patients are advised to stay away from milk and cheese, which are considered fodder foods for clogged arteries and heart disease. They are, we're told, high in so-called “saturated fat” (the “bad” kind), and they’re loaded with sodium, blamed for circulatory issues, hypertension and kidney problems.

But, as with all subjects that are “common knowledge”, things are not always so simple. Sure, it’s true that homogenized saturated fats are considered a cause of heart disease, the salt they contain may throw off electrolyte balances and swell blood volume burdening microscopic renal capillaries, but these foods also contain quality protein and beneficial minerals that are important for building muscles, bones and blood vessels, for strengthening the immune system, and for optimum functioning of the brain and nervous system.

Now, as it turns out, there’s a new dairy nutrient kid on the block. It’s found to be particularly abundant in cheese. According to a recent article published in the December 2016 edition of the journal Nature Medicine, eating enough of this nutrient may improve heart health and help you live longer too!

Health Warnings in Fingernails

We humans love our nails. We spend nearly 8 billion dollars a year on those hard dead shell like materials on the tips of our fingers and toes. While adorning them with polish, varnish and even art may imply “cosmetic” and “superficial”, as it turns out, their condition, for better or worse, is a function of the entire body, and if you’re observant you can tell a lot about overall physical health by looking at the nails.

Technically speaking, nails are an extension of the skin. They’re a modified version of the epidermis, the top layer that composes about 10 percent of the body’s largest organ. Although it may look like one uniform structure, in reality, the nail (like the skin) is composed of numerous layers lying atop of each other. In fact, the average fingernail is composed of 25 of these ultra-thin slices that fuse into a firm, slightly elastic form by the action of microscopic threads called keratin. This is what gives them remarkable resilience and horse-hoof like strength. Keratin is a hard, flexible protein substance that is a common feature of hooves, horns, antlers, as well as the outer sheath that coats human hair. In addition to keratin, nails contain lots of minerals too, including: Iron, Carbon, Magnesium, Selenium, Silica, Calcium, Potassium, Phosphorus, Sulfur and Oxygen, all of which contribute to their characteristic qualities. Interestingly the nail appendage (technically called the “nail organ”) also contains small amounts of the well-known cosmetic ingredient called glycolic acid, which acts to trap water and assure hydration.

Because of their rapid growth (healthy fingernails grow up to 4mm a month) the nails are an accurate portal into the inside of the body. While the eyes may be the window to the soul, the nails can be thought of as windows to your biochemistry. There’s a lot of information a good health care professional can glean from their appearance.