Sale: 15% off Vitamins & Supplements

Puritan's Pride Sale

Purchase vitamins and nutritional supplements and save 15% off the prices! 3 Day Sale was launched yesterday on website Puritan.com and continues only until tomorrow, January 23th, so be quick and order Puritan’s Pride brand diet and lifestyle products at the best possible prices!

Did You Know That Weight Loss Supplements Have Side Effects?

Diet and weight loss supplements and super foods such as the Garcinia extract, the green coffee bean extract and the raspberry ketones became very popular in recent years among people who struggle with extra weight. Read more: Weight Loss But since no prescriptions are required for their use, are consumers really aware of their side effects and potential dangers?

Where to Buy Green Coffee Bean Extract?

The green coffee bean extract first came in the spotlight several years ago when it was found to contain a lot of antioxidants which protect cells from aging, toxicity and the damage done by free radicals. In 2012, a small study found that it helps also weight loss efforts.

Raspberry Ketones as New Weight Loss Miracle

This year, Raspberry Ketone Diet has become a national trend in America as an effective weight loss solution. The Raspberry Ketones is all over Internet and televisions, after a promotion in the Dr. Oz Show as the No. 1 miracle in a bottle to burn fat. So, it was the green coffee bean extract a while ago, but how  effective are these anti-obese products?

Research has found green coffee bean extract helps weight loss

An enormous media buzz initiated by a doctor's claim during a TV show that green coffee bean extract helps losing weight, recently brought new hope to people who are struggling with  their weight. 

Questions looking for answers popped out. Is it confirmed? Does green coffee bean extract have side effects? Where we can buy it? Can we trust what the media reports?

Green Coffee Bean: Superfood for Weight Loss

 

“Weight-loss” supplements are not really recommended by doctors, because most of them do not really deliver the promised results. Such supplements that claim “easy” weight loss or “fast” weight loss are usually not up to the result, but the fast profits. The not so hidden secret of weight loss is really a healthy diet and exercise. However, some super-foods can speed up the process. The green coffee bean, in particular, became very popular lately. An amazing research findings are to blame for this rediscovered interest.

Lack of Sunlight and Exercise increase Women's Risk of Osteoporosis

Over 40% of women in the UAE are at risk of not getting enough sunlight to source essential levels of Vitamin D and nearly 20% of this group are never exposed to the sun at all, according to results of an independent survey released today by Anlene. The “Lifestyle for Lifelong Bones” research which canvassed both Emirati nationals and foreign residents also revealed that 60% of women take only one hour of exercise or less a week, with over half of that group (31%) not taking any exercise at all.

Speaking of the results that were announced today in advance of World Osteoporosis Day, Joanne Todd, Fonterra Brands Nutritionist and Senior Health Platform Manager said: “Osteoporosis, a disease that causes bones to breakdown and increases fracture risk, is a major health risk in the UAE. Sufficient intake of Vitamin D is vital to absorb calcium and promote bone health. In fact, it’s so important that our bodies have the ability to create vitamin D when our skin (e.g. hands and face) is exposed to enough sunlight. There is no absolute guideline on an individual’s daily sun exposure due to a range of factors such as skin type, geographic location, gender and diet but for women to receive so little natural sun exposure or none at all is concerning. The results of the survey show that due to women’s extreme lack of sunlight exposure in the UAE, vitamin D deficiency could reach alarming levels with serious consequences for long-term mobility if it isn’t received from alternative sources such as food rich in Vitamin D.”

Vitamin C Fights Stress

Let's face it, the holiday season is stressful. Couple that with all the runny noses that surround you and it becomes clear – vitamin C is your ally. Aside from helping shorten the duration of a cold, fighting wrinkles, and helping absorb iron, vitamin C is a stress buster. Boosting your system with extra C before stressful events can help bring your blood pressure back to normal more quickly. Plus it can help even out your cortisol levels after a taxing situation.
Cortisol is a brain chemical that is part of our response to stress, and while it is good to have around in the short term, you really don't want it lingering in your system. Hence the importance of Vitamin C since it helps brings cortisol levels back to normal.
Tip: Winter is citrus season, so it easy to get vitamin C from food sources. If citrus isn't your thing, check out this list of citrus alternatives.

Diet Tip: Eat Protein at Every Meal

If you are trying to change how you eat and looking to lose weight, and one way to keep you on a path of good nutrition and weight loss is to eat protein at every meal.
It is said that protein is more satisfying than carbohydrates or fats, and thus may be the new secret weapon in weight control. Plus, eating enough protein helps preserve muscle mass and encourages fat burning while keeping you feeling full. So be sure to include healthy protein sources, like yogurt, cheese, nuts, beans, or lean meat at meals and snacks.
Do you know how much protein you should be eating daily?
Most women over the age of 19 need 40-60 grams depending on their weight and activity level (check this protein post to find out how much protein you should be getting).
So, how do we get the protein we need? Here's a list of some foods and how much protein is in each. Add up the amount of protein you eat in a day to figure out if you're getting enough, or if you need to add more.

Food Protein in Grams
1 cup oatmeal 6
1 cup cereal (corn flakes) 2
1 cup cereal (Cheerios) 3
1 cup cereal (Kashi Go Lean) 14
1 bagel 9
2 slices whole wheat bread 5
1 cup milk 8
1 cup soy milk 6-10
6 oz yogurt 7
6 oz soy yogurt 6
1 cup lowfat cottage cheese 28
1 oz soft cheese (mozzarella, brie, camembert) 6 per oz
1 oz medium cheese (cheddar, swiss) 7-8 per oz
1 oz hard cheese (parmesan) 10 per oz

Want to see the rest?

Food Protein in Grams
fish 7 per oz
chicken 7 per oz
beef 7 per oz
1 egg 7
1/4 cup peanuts 9
2 tbsp peanut butter 8
1/4 cup almonds 8
1/4 cup walnuts 7.5
1/4 cup cashews 5
1/4 cup sunflower seeds 6
1/4 cup pumpkin seeds 19
1/4 flax seeds 8
1/2 cup brown rice 2.5
1/2 cup quinoa 10
1/2 cup couscous 6
1 cup cooked whole wheat pasta 7
baked potato 4
baked sweet potato 2-4
1 cup cooked squash (butternut) 2
1 cup steamed broccoli 4.65
1 cup asparagus 5.31
1 cup brussel sprouts 5.64
1 cup steamed spinach 6
1 cup green peas 8.24
1 cup mixed vegetables 5
1/2 cup lentils 9
1/2 cup beans (kidney, black, pinto, adzuki) 7-10
1/2 cup split peas 8
1/2 cup tofu 20

Calcium for the over-50s prevents broken bones

Australian scientists say people over the age of 50 should take supplements of calcium in order to reduce the risk of bone damage should they fall.
The scientists from the University of Western Sydney suggest that daily calcium supplements would prevent one in four fractures in this age group.
The scientists reached their conclusion after a three and a half year study examining the combined results of 17 studies involving more than 50,000 people over 50 who were given calcium supplements.
They discovered that supplements reduced the risk of fractures by 12% but when the proper dose of 1,200mg was taken every day the risk was reduced by 24%.
A connection was also established between the reduced risk and an appropriate dosage of vitamin D.
Subjects ingesting over 800 International Units each day experienced a 16 percent risk reduction and, in comparison, people taking less vitamin D enjoyed only a 13 percent reduction.
Many medical experts maintain that vitamin D helps the stomach absorb calcium, but the study showed that calcium worked just as well with or without it.
Lead author Benjamin Tang says the advice may be optional for those who are fit, healthy and have a very good diet at 50, but those on a poorer diet who are older would gain more benefit.
Dr. Tang says they found that many people are not taking strong enough doses of calcium, or not taking them regularly enough, to reap the full benefits and most of the tablets taken are low dosage.
In older people and particularly in women osteoporosis and low bone density become major health problems, and fractures are a major cause of injury affecting as many as 10 million Americans.
Women suffer a faster loss of bone density after the menopause and osteoporosis, the loss of bone density is thought to cost health services millions each year.
Women have a one in six chance of fracturing a bone after the age of 50 and men a one in 20 chance.
Experts believe people should be able to get all the necessary calcium from a balanced diet and nowadays many cereals breads and margarines are fortified with calcium.
The researchers recommended a minimum daily dose of 1,200 mg in the case of calcium-only supplementation.
The benefit appeared to be more apparent in elderly people over 70 with a low body weight living in institutions.
Dr. Tang says the side effects of taking the correct dose of calcium were minimal with only a small number of people suffering mild stomach upsets.
Dr. Tang says most of the research he surveyed was based on women, who have a far higher chance of developing osteoporosis, and the advice would differ for men.
Experts suggest people with osteoporosis may benefit from a daily intake of 1,000 -1,200mg of calcium but also caution against exceeding the recommended limits of calcium as too much calcium can produce unpleasant side effects such as kidney stones.
They also say calcium supplements and vitamin D should be looked upon only as supplements and not as a replacement for a healthy diet rich in veggies, fruit, and grain products.
The study is published in the Lancet medical journal and was sponsored by the Australian Government. Source

Questions to ask before taking madications

Often we visit clinics and hospitals. More often we accompany our children and just pick up with relief the prescription written by the sympathetic doctor. There are pharmacies at every mall and every corner - easy to find and afford.

Often we just hand the prescription to the pharmacist who hands us back the drugs or the pills. We just pick it up and read the directions and start taking it. Some times this could be a reckless process, part of the hectic daily routine and we don't really pay a lot attention to it. Often we have no idea what is going in our bodies.

The American Health Association has come up with a list of questions we should ask the doctors and the pharmacists before start popping the pills:

What is the name of the medicine?
Is this the brand or generic name?
What is the medicine supposed to do?
How and when do we take it?
For how long?
What foods, drinks, other medicines or activities should we avoid while taking this medicine?

MoH to regulate sale of herbal products

The Ministry of Health along with the General Secretariat of Municipalities will soon start monitoring the sale of food supplements that claim to have medicinal properties in order to regulate the flow of herbal and natural products into the market.
Law No 20 of 1995 for Health and Natural products does not allow any such product to be sold until it is approved by the MoH.
There are over 100 such herbal products registered with the MoH . More than 2,000 products such as food supplements and cosmetic products are included in the General Sale List (GSL).
It was hard to determine the category of certain products because slight differences in ingredients that can alter the categories under which such products fall. “For instance, if there is an increase in the concentration of some ingredients, certain products can fall under the category of medicines.
The municipalities played an important role in monitoring products that had been categorised as food supplements. The MoH can only check if shops are selling products that are allowed to be sold as well as carry out tests to check their ingredients, dosage, labels, etc.
Regarding awareness campaigns, the MoH would soon publish booklets in English and Arabic, that will carry information on various types of herbal and natural products and explain the dos and don’ts.

Antioxidant vitamins not life savers any longer!

In the same way as Unhappy Meals articles unveil the controversies of healthy eating, recent articles are sparkling doubts regarding the use of Vitamins.

Antioxidant vitamins are not life savers!!!

People who take antioxidant vitamins such as A, C and E -- long touted as protecting against cancer, heart disease and other health problems - don't live any longer, new research shows.
Worse yet, there is actually evidence that they die younger than people who don't take vitamins.
The latest findings contradict the findings of observational studies claiming that antioxidants improve health according the Centre for Clinical Intervention Research at Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark.
The research, published in today's Journal of the American Medical Association, should be of interest to the millions of consumers who regularly take vitamin supplements.

These findings apply only to supplements containing high doses of antioxidants such as vitamins A, C, E and beta carotene.
The findings do not apply to multivitamins. There are also clear benefits to supplements such as vitamin D and folic acid for pregnant women.

Unhappy Meals (Part 2)

The continuention of Unhappy Meals:
Last winter came the news that a low-fat diet, long believed to protect against breast cancer, may do no such thing — this from the monumental, federally financed Women’s Health Initiative in US, which has also found no link between a low-fat diet and rates of coronary disease.
The year before we learned that dietary fiber might not, as we had been confidently told, help prevent colon cancer.
Just last fall two prestigious studies on omega-3 fats published at the same time presented us with strikingly different conclusions. While the Institute of Medicine stated that “it is uncertain how much these omega-3s contribute to improving health” (and they might do the opposite if you get them from mercury-contaminated fish), a Harvard study declared that simply by eating a couple of servings of fish each week (or by downing enough fish oil), you could cut your risk of dying from a heart attack by more than a third — a stunningly hopeful piece of news. It’s no wonder that omega-3 fatty acids are poised to become the oat bran of 2007, as food scientists micro-encapsulate fish oil and algae oil and blast them into such formerly all-terrestrial foods as bread and tortillas, milk and yogurt and cheese, all of which will soon, you can be sure, sprout fishy new health claims.
It's quite confusing.....isn't it???

Let the vitamin D shine in

A single nutrient that keeps bones strong, wards off diabetes, and protects against tuberculosis, cancer, colds and the flu. Sound too good to be true? There's more: It's free. But you're almost certainly not getting enough.
Research on vitamin D (Link)has flooded out the past few months, linking a growing array of health ills to low levels of the nutrient. Scientists now know that the vitamin, which is naturally produced in skin exposed to the sun's ultraviolet rays, binds to cell receptors throughout the body and that a lack can cause various systems to malfunction.
Prior to the industrial revolution, humans had no trouble getting an abundance of the sunshine vitamin; a mere 10 to 15 minutes outdoors at midday gives the average fair-skinned person 10,000 international units.
That's far above the recommendations of 200 IUs a day up to age 50, 400 IUs to age 70, and 600 IUs over 70. But most people nowadays spend little time outdoors, and food sources such as milk and salmon contain relatively modest amounts.
Vitamin D is best-known for promoting bone health. It was first added to the milk supply in the 1930s to prevent the bone-deforming disease rickets, and it defends against osteoporosis by triggering the absorption of calcium into bone cells.
New evidence indicates that many people suffering symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia actually have a painful softening of the bones caused by a D deficiency.
But having too little appears to cause the immune system to weaken.
Top Tip: 10 or 15 minutes walk to the grocery store or the supermarket daily can save you the money for a jar of Vitamin D and the pain of bone weakening.

Antenatal fish oil boosts coordination

Fish oil supplements given to pregnant mothers improve the hand-eye coordination of their babies as toddlers, reports an Australian research team. Dr Susan L. Prescott, of the University of Western Australia, and colleagues base their findings on a study of 98 pregnant women with allergies, who were either given 4g of fish oil supplements or 4g of olive oil supplements daily from 20 weeks of pregnancy, to birth. The women were participating in a larger study to investigate whether fish oil would protect their children from allergies. The results were published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.
Continue to the full story from Source (Link).

Cumin

Cumin (Link) is the dried seed of the herb Cuminum cyminum , a member of the parsley family. The Cumin plant grows to about one to two feet tall and is harvested by hand. Cumin is the key component of both Chilly Powder and Curry Powder. Cumin seeds are used as a spice for their distinctive aroma, popular in North American, Middle Eastern, Western Chinese, Indian and Mexican cuisine.
Cumin fruits have distinctive bitter flavor and strong, warm aroma due to their abundant essential oil content. In herbal medicine, cumin is classified as stimulant, carminative, and antimicrobial.
Cumin can be used to season many dishes, as it draws out their natural sweetness. It is traditionally added to curries, enchiladas, tacos, and other Middle-eastern, Indian, Cuban and Mexican- style food. It can also be added to salsa to give it extra flavor. Cumin has also been used on meat in addition to other common seasonings. The spice is a familiar taste in Tex-Mex dishes and is the lingua franca of the cuisines of the Indian subcontinent.
Historically, Iran has been the principal supplier of Cumin, but currently the major sources are India, Syria, Pakistan and Turkey.
Superstition during the Middle Ages cited that Cumin kept chickens and lovers from wandering. It was also believed that a happy life awaited the bride and groom who carried Cumin Seed trough the wedding ceremony.

Lemons

The lemon is a cultivated hybrid deriving from wild species such as the citron and mandarin. When and where this first occurred is not known. The “medicinal fruit” seems to have been the first citrus fruit known in the Mediterranean world. Depictions of citrus trees appear in Roman mosaics of North Africa, but the first unequivocal description of the lemon is found in the early tenth-century Arabic treatise on farming by Qustus al-Rumi. At the end of the twelfth century, Ibn Jami, personal physician to the great Muslim leader Saladin, wrote a treatise on the lemon, after which is mentioned with greater frequency in the Mediterranean. However, it is believed that the first lemons were originally cultivated in the hot, semi-arid Deccan Plateau in Central India.
The origin of the name “lemon” is trough Persian, akin to the Sanskrit nimbuka. They were cultivated in Genoa in the mid-fifteenth century and appeared in the Azores in 1494. More recent research has identified lemons in the ruins of Pompeii. Lemons were once used by the British Royal navy to combat scurvy, as they provided a large amount of Vitamin C (Link). Therefore lemons are the first item on my shopping list whenever I go the supermarket. We serve them sliced at home with every glass of water and every cup of tea.
Lemons are great component for cakes too and here is the recipe for a Lemon Cake (Link) that a friend gives it to me, but I am still in the preparation period.

Peppermint

Two of my favorite treats are hot mug of peppermint tea and a cold dish of peppermint ice cream. I must also say that candy canes receive an honorable mention.
Peppermint has long been grandma's answer to belly aches and you know what? She was right on target. Peppermint calms the belly and stimulates digestion. It is often taken by folks with Irritable Bowel Syndrome to lessen the syndrome's irritating symptoms like bloating, gas and diarrhea.
More than just a tonic for your tummy, peppermint is also an expectorant and a decongestant. It may offer some relief for mild asthma attacks, lessening bronchial constriction and making it easier to breathe. Peppermint promotes sweating, which could possibly help regulate body temperature during a fever, which is good news during cold and flu season. Medicinally, peppermint is available in many forms: tea, tinctures, capsules, creams, ointments, or essential oil. It is generally considered safe when used properly.