Retune the Body with a Partial Fast

by Patricia Neighmond

For thousands of years, beginning with philosophers like Hippocrates, Socrates and Plato, fasting was recommended for health reasons. The Bible writes that Moses and Jesus fasted for 40 days for spiritual renewal.

To understand how the body reacts to a lack of food, you could start by looking at what happens to newborns. Newborns can’t sleep through the night because they need to eat every few hours. They don’t produce enough glycogen, the body’s form of stored sugar, to make energy.

“Glycogen is necessary for thinking; it’s necessary for muscle action; it’s necessary just for the cells to live in general,” says Dr. Naomi Neufeld, an endocrinologist at UCLA.

Neufeld says most adults need about 2,000 calories a day. Those calories make energy, or glycogen. Neufeld says it doesn’t hurt — it might even help the body — to fast or stop eating for short periods of time, say 24 hours once a week, as long as you drink water.

“You re-tune the body, suppress insulin secretion, reduce the taste for sugar, so sugar becomes something you’re less fond of taking,” Neufeld says.

Eventually the body burns up stored sugars, or glycogen, so less insulin is needed to help the body digest food. That gives the pancreas a rest. On juice diets recommended by some spas, you may lose weight, but your digestive system doesn’t get that rest.
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22 Ways to Never Feel Tired Again

by Nancy Rones

Every day, 2.2 million Americans complain of being tired. Most of us chalk it up to having too much to do and not enough time to do it in, especially during extra-busy periods. But often the true culprits are our everyday habits: what we eat, how we sleep, and how we cope emotionally. Read on for some simple, recharging changes that can help you tackle all of the energy stealers in your life.

Energize Your Diet

Why is it that filling up on pasta or Chinese food for lunch leaves us snacky and sleepy an hour later? Or that falling short on fluids makes us forgetful and foggy? Fact is, eating habits play a powerful role in how well we function on every level. Below, six top fatigue-fighting nutrition strategies to chew on.

1. Have breakfast… even if you don’t feel hungry. You’ll be a lot perkier: Studies show that people who eat breakfast feel better both mentally and physically than those who skip their morning meal. British researchers at Cardiff University even found that spooning up a bowl of breakfast cereal every morning is associated with lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol.

2. Eat every three to four hours. Having three smallish meals and two snacks throughout the day can keep your blood sugar and energy levels stable all day long, says Roberta Anding, R.D., a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association (ADA). Note the word “smallish.” Supersized meals demand more of your energy to digest, which can leave you feeling lethargic. Read more

Tap Water vs. Bottled Water – Which Should You Drink?

Glug, glug, glug–that’s the sound a ginormous number of us make as we sip bottled water in our cars, at the gym, behind our desks. The sound you DON’T hear is the thwack of 60 million bottles a day being tossed into U.S. landfills, where they can take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade.

If that’s not enough to turn your conscience a brighter shade of green, add this: Producing those bottles burns through 1.5 million barrels of crude oil annually–enough fuel to keep 100,000 cars running for a year. Recycling helps but reusing is even better. Invest in a couple of portable, dishwasher-safe, stainless steel bottles like Klean Kanteens that won’t leach nasty chemicals into your water. (Don’t get into the habit of refilling the water bottle you just emptied; the polyethylene terephthalate it’s made of breaks down with multiple usings.)

4 REASONS TO TURN ON THE TAP

1. Tap water is tested daily
Under the Safe Drinking Water Act, water suppliers are required to provide an annual report on the quality of your local water and to test tap water daily. By comparison, the FDA examines bottled water only weekly, and consumers can’t get the agency’s results. You can easily get the lowdown on your state’s drinking water quality at http://www.epa.gov/safewater/dwinfo/index.html

2. Tap water is a bargain
Bottled water costs about 500 times more than tap. If you’re into really fancy labels, up to 1,000 times more.
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The Secret Behind the Secret

The Vedic Viewpoint and Other Spiritual Perspectives

By Jayasri Radha

So many people including the Hollywood stars are into The Secret. For those of you who haven’t heard of The Secret, it is pertaining to the” law of attraction.” The idea is whatever your thoughts are or mind meditates on you will attract that to you. You just have to desire it fully and picture yourself having it and feel yourself enjoying it fully and it will come to you. Though this idea sounds very attractive (no pun intended) there are a few major glitches in the idea of The Secret.

According to the Vedas, this idea is partially true depending on the time, place and circumstance and of course ones karma. (Reaction to one previous activity) The result also depends if one is working with the material energy or the spiritual energy of The Creator.

It is a bit childish to think that all one has to do is think of something they want and eventually it will manifest. Chances are that if one wants something bad enough, they will do what is necessary to attract that to them. There are also chances that one may not have to do much of anything and that thing or person will also manifest. But there is just as much of a chance that nothing will come of it at all. It is really all up providence and karma if one is to receive something. That is why this process works for many, but it also doesn’t work for many. Those whom it does work for will just tell the ones that it did not work for that they didn’t focus properly or hard enough or long enough or fully feel themselves having that thing. The fact is it could be lifetimes until you are qualified to get that thing which you desire so deeply for. Don’t be fooled by this Childs play of The Secret.
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