Manual toothbrush vs an electric one

Which is better to use, a manual toothbrush or an electric one? I think either kind is fine. You just have to spend the right amount of time brushing. I think with an electric toothbrush, two to three minutes willd do. Manual brushers may average less than one minute. Whichever you use, what’s important is you choose one with soft bristles because others may be too abrasive and could lead to receding gums. No matter what kind of brush you choose, be sure to floss daily.

Do You Need to Take a Multivitamin?

If you eat a well-balanced, healthy diet, should you take a multivitamin? Most experts agree that it can’t hurt and it might help. Most multis are packed with all the major vitamins and minerals and can give a little boost to your daily diet. Look for ones with nutrient levels at or close to 100 percent of the RDAs.

Movie Theater

The best pick when you are out to watch a movie is a child-sized popcorn (about five cups). With eight grams of fiber, it will satisfy your urge to munch and keep you feeling full. It’s only 300 calories if you skip the “butter” (actually butter-flavored oil).

The worst pick is anything jumbo sized or called a value combo. For instance, that large popcorn (20 cups) with extra “butter” and a large (44-ounce) soda add up to almost 2,000 calories.

Get Enough Sleep

How do you make sure that you get enough sleep?

• Say no to caffeine at night! Get your fix earlier in the day - caffeine is a stimulant and will keep you awake.
• Don’t eat late - when you eat your body has to work to digest to eat food.
• Don’t watch TV in bed - your mind will still be too stimulated to sleep.
• Forget the day’s worries. If you do something like have a bath before bed every night, your body will soon get used to it and start to feel sleepy every time you have a bath.
• Exercise to get rid of any left-over energy from the day that might keep you awake. Around half and hour of exercise a day should be enough to do the trick.
• Go to bed at a similar time every night, your body will soon get used to it and will know when it’s time to start winding down.

Bad Sleep Habits

Many teenagers get into bad habits of watching DVDs or playing games before bed time, this keeps the brain stimulated and makes it difficult to wind down. This is because when the brain and body are stimulated it produces less of the hormones that help people fall asleep, a hormone called ‘melatonin’.

In most adults melatonin is produced around 10pm, but keeping the mind stimulated can cause melatonin to be produced much later. A recent study showed that most teenagers only begin to produce melatonin at 1am! It seems teenagers are often kept awake by their own bodies.

Drinking Alcohol

Alcohol can be deceptive.  It might seem like it makes you feel confident but when you’re drunk you can lose your inhibitions and do things you’ll regret later. Is it really worth waking up the next morning and thinking - ‘what have I done?’
Drinking alcohol, even occasionally, could even affect your future.  Alcohol can also ruin your looks.  Researchers have found that those who drink alcohol especially alcopops and cider tend to have worse teeth than those who don’t.  The alcohol contributes to dental erosion which ruins your pearly whites.
Drinking too much can even cause you to gain weight, give you really bad breath and bad skin.
 

Stop Smoking!

If you’re a smoker but want to wave goodbye to the dreaded weed, here are a few tips to kicking the ciggies for good.

If you’re not a smoker but have thought about it, you shouldn’t start. Smoking can be hard to quit and you might think it looks cool or sexy but it doesn’t. It’s pretty smelly and nobody wants to kiss an ashtray or date somebody with fingers stained a minging shade of yellow from nicotine.

If you’re going to try and stop smoking, you really have to want it. If you’re not fully committed and not prepared to give it a decent try, you’re likely to fall back into the habit pretty quickly.

Think about the reasons you want to stop smoking. Maybe it’s a drain on your cash or people have noticed the smell of it on you. Perhaps a relative of yours has become ill through smoking. Whatever your reason is, when you’re preparing to stop, try not to lose sight of why you’re giving up.

Set yourself a date and time to stop and stick to it, no matter how many cigarettes you have in your packet. If you put it off then you’re less likely to give up.

A good way of both realizing how much you spend on cigarettes and also giving yourself an incentive to stop is to put aside the money you would be spending each day on cigarettes. Doing something useful with the cash will benefit you much more than smoking it all away would do.

Low-Fat Foods

Foods that are described as ‘low-fat’ or ‘fat-free’ aren’t automatically low in calories or calorie-free. In fact, some low-fat products may actually be higher in calories than standard products, thanks to them containing extra sugars and thickeners to boost the flavour and texture.

Some people also mistakenly believe they can eat more if they’re choosing low-fat products. But this is rarely the case. In reality, two low-fat biscuits, for example, will probably contain more calories than one standard biccie!

Always check the calorie content of low-fat foods, especially for things like cakes, biscuits, crisps, ice creams and ready meals. You might be surprised to find that there’s little difference in the calorie content when compared to the standard product.

Don’t be fooled by foods that claim to be a certain percentage fat-free either. If a product says it’s 90% fat free, this means it still contains 10% fat or 10g fat per 100g – and that’s a fair amount!

Is organic food healthier than non-organic food?

It’s easy to think a diet based on organic foods is healthy, but this isn’t automatically the case. The term ‘organic’ refers to the farming methods used to produce a food, not its nutrient content. So while organic foods might be better for the environment, eating more of them doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll have a lower-calorie diet. For example, organic biscuits, chocolate and cakes normally contain just as much fat, sugar and salt as their non-organic counterparts – and it’s often harder to find ‘healthier’ alternatives.

If you prefer to buy organic, you still need to remember the basic rules of healthy eating and, if you want to lose weight, stick to your daily calorie allowance. That means checking labels for calories, fat, sugar and salt.

Kimchi

Kimchi is a traditional Korean dish made of fermented chili peppers and vegetables such as cabbage (most common), radish, garlic, red pepper, onion, some kind of seafood (oyster or seafood are common), ginger, salt, (and sometimes a little sugar). Besides containing such great vegetables, kimchi is always fermented which means it’s loaded with healthy bacteria. It’s a potent source of “probiotics” like lactobacillus, which have been found to support and improve immunity, and which help control inflammation (an essential feature of so many degenerative diseases, including heart disease). Probiotics like those in kimchi help maintain a healthy digestive system, so critical to good health as we age.

Next Page »