Radiant, healthy skin is not impossible! Follow our great skin care tips to get soft, glowing skin every day of the week.
Drink plenty of water and eat well
There is nothing more important for healthy skin than a healthy you. Keeping your body hydrated will in turn moisturize your skin and give it that radiant look we all want. Leafy green vegetables, fresh fruit and grains will all contribute to healthy skin. And remember, eating oily foods will only make your skin oily too, so try to avoid them!
Take care of your skin
A daily beauty routine is vital for maintaining healthy skin. Whilst you should be careful not to overdo it and hence dry out your skin, ensuring that your pores are clear and your skin is hydrated should be a regular occurrence. Use a light exfoliant daily, followed by an alcohol-free toner and a good moisturizer.
Dead skin cells are what cause your skin to lose lustre and radiance. Regular exfoliation removes dead and damaged cells, revitalizing skin and bringing life back to it. Toner then acts as an antiseptic, cleaning open pores and reducing the risk of infection and a continuing build up of dirt and oil.
Moisturize
Having a great moisturizer is just about the best skin care tip you will receive. Choose one that is thick and creamy, but also contains zinc oxide and is SPF 50 to protect your skin against aging and damaging UV rays and sunburn. A slightly tinted moisturizer can be a great way to encourage a healthy glow during the summer months.
Be sun savvy
Sun damage is the number one sign of aging, especially in women. Increased exposure to the sun's harmful rays can cause irreversible wrinkles, dryness and cracked skin. Be liberal in applying a protective moisturizer or sun screen every day, even if you are not planning to be outside. UV rays are extremely penetrative and will burn your skin without you even realizing!
There is no such thing as a healthy tan. Protect your skin and stop premature aging.
Remove the day to day before bed
Leaving makeup on after a long day of perspiring and dashing about can undo all of the good work you've already done! Besides unsightly panda eyes, powder and concealer will clog pores and cause blackheads and a build up of excess oil underneath the skin, leading to breakouts and that awful shiny appearance.
Use a cleansing wipe or face wash to gently remove face and eye makeup, making sure you moisturize or apply a night cream afterwards. Voila, a perfect canvas for the next morning!
Avoid unnecessary stress and pressure on your body
Skin responds to stressful situations, responding with a tendency to break out in pimples or become dry and flaky. To ensure the health of your skin (and you, of course!) try to reduce or remove the stress in your life as quickly as possible. Your skin will also thank you if you refrain from smoking or heavy drinking. Both of these activities will rapidly increase signs of aging and cause some serious long-term damage to otherwise radiant skin.
If you can't remove the stressful situation, make sure you are doing everything else in your power to keep your skin healthy. Don't stress out about it though, that gets kind of redundant!
Sing! Get active!
I say this not only because singing is a great love of mine, but because oxygenating the skin is incredibly beneficial to its glow. In the same way that you feel run down if you don't get enough fresh air or exercise, skin suffers if the flow of oxygen is decreased and begins to look flat and unhealthy. Regular exercise will help to increase the amount of oxygen that is carried around the body, renewing skin cells more often and contributing to fresh and firm looking skin.
Make sure you get enough sleep
Similarly, your skin needs time to rejuvenate each day. Relaxing the muscles in your face during sleep gives your skin a chance to rebuild elasticity and readily renew cells.
Sleeping builds up oxygen levels in your body, and is the cheapest, easiest and most relaxing way to get great looking skin!
And remember, we all have days of less than perfect skin. Whether it's because we're pre-menstrual, run down or just feeling a bit lazy, our skin responds to changes in the weather, in routine and in our general wellbeing. It does not need to mean the end of the world. If you do have a bad skin day, just continue with your existing beauty routine and the scary ogre look will pass!
Sunday, April 12
Skin Care Tips
Thursday, April 9
becoming a good friend..
What makes a friendship important? Friendship has many health benefits, including a longer and healthier life. It also makes our otherwise boring lives more exciting and fun, interesting and relaxing. Having just one close or best friend also enhances a person’s ability to deal with stress and problems. Support from lovers, siblings, parents and children do not provide the same health benefits as that of friendship. The level of understanding and communication is different—there are things that you can tell your pal that you would NEVER say to your Mom, right? There are secrets that only she can keep, and jokes that only she can appreciate.
Although not fully understood, researchers have found out that friends can boost the immunity system. Good friends can make you feel relaxed, can comfort you and be there for you when you need somebody to talk to, even cry and laugh with! They can be a strong support network that could keep you motivated and boost your self-esteem through the hardest of times. Every person needs a friend—do you know how to be one? Here are five easy ways to become a good friend: Spend time together. You’re in Atlanta, she’s in Tokyo. How on earth can you possibly spend time together? Sometimes spending time with a her doesn’t mean that you have to be physically present.
Being miles away is no match to the World Wide Web. Send emails or have a video chat and show her your new ‘do. If your friend is only a few blocks away, you can always gossip in the bedroom. Show her that you care about the friendship. Instead of cleaning the house like you do on most afternoons, go that extra mile and go shopping with her. We all have priorities, but setting aside a chore or two for a friend once in a while will surely make her smile. Or, if the house badly needs a scrubbing, why not ask her to help you out? Be there for your friend whenever you can.
Celebrate with her on moments of joy and happiness, and comfort her on moments of sorrows and difficulties. Sometimes there’s nothing that you can really do except to be there. Your mere presence will surely make the occasion a happier or a more bearable one. Throw away your score-cards. Do you count the number of calls she has made versus your number of calls? Can’t forget the time when she didn’t give you a birthday gift? Get over it. Friendship is about give-and-take but, if you feel that you are giving more and you’re not okay with it, then be honest with her.
Tell her and get over it. Focus on her strengths, and help her enhance her weaknesses. You’re human, she’s human. Humans make mistakes. A good friend accepts you for whatever you are. Besides, you have your own strengths and weaknesses too. Avoid being judgemental and accept her as a totally different person from you. After all, differences are what make life more exciting! There are countless ways to be a good friend. It doesn’t have to be expensive or over the top, just as long you show your friends that you truly value the friendship...
okiedokie;p
Tuesday, April 7
PAID IN FULL...
A little boy came up to his mother in the kitchen one evening while she was fixing supper, and handed her a piece of paper that he had been writing on. After his Mom dried her hands on an apron, she read it, and this is what it said:
For cutting the grass: $5.00
For cleaning up my room this week: $1.00
For going to the store for you: $.50
Baby-sitting my kid brother while you went shopping: $.25
Taking out the garbage: $1.00
For getting a good report card: $5.00
For cleaning up and raking the yard: $2.00
Total owed: $14.75
Well, his mother looked at him standing there, and the boy could see the memories flashing through her mind. She picked up the pen, turned over the paper he'd written on, and this is what she wrote:
For the nine months I carried you while you were growing inside me:
No Charge
For all the nights that I've sat up with you, doctored and prayed for you:
No Charge
For all the trying times, and all the tears that you've caused through the years:
No Charge
For all the nights that were filled with dread, and for the worries I knew were ahead:
No Charge
For the toys, food, clothes, and even wiping your nose:
No Charge
Son, when you add it up, the cost of my love is:
No Charge.
When the boy finished reading what his mother had written, there were big tears in his eyes, and he looked straight at his mother and said, "Mom, I sure do love you." And then he took the pen and in great big letters he wrote: "PAID IN FULL".
Lessons:
* You will never how much your parents worth till you become a parent
* Be a giver not an asker, especially with your parents. there is a lot to give, besides money.
Advice: IF your mom is alive and close to you, give her a big kiss and ask her for forgiveness. If she is far away, call her. if she passed away, pray for her.
okiedokie;p
Monday, April 6
diabetes??
Pre-diabetes means that the cells in your body are becoming resistant to insulin or your pancreas is not producing as much insulin as required. Your blood glucose levels are higher than normal, but not high enough to be called diabetes. This is also known as "impaired fasting glucose" or "impaired glucose tolerance". A diagnosis of pre-diabetes is a warning sign that diabetes will develop later. The good news: You can prevent the development of Type 2 diabetes by losing weight, making changes in your diet and exercising.
A person with Type 1 diabetes can't make any insulin. Type 1 most often occurs before age 30, but may strike at any age. Type 1 can be caused by a genetic disorder. The origins of Type 1 are not fully understood, and there are several theories. But all of the possible causes still have the same end result: The pancreas produces very little or no insulin anymore. Frequent insulin injections are needed for Type 1.
A person with Type 2 diabetes has adequate insulin, but the cells have become resistant to it. Type 2 usually occurs in adults over 35 years old, but can affect anyone, including children.
how much water are you drinking??
Did you know that you can increase good health by making sure that you get enough water? Yes plain water that has been purified in some way. The water most of us get from the tap is full of chemicals that is bad for our health. Do not drink tap water, unless you have your own well, which you know is not contaminated.
Drinking water is essential for a healthy body. Water regulates body temperature, lubricates joints, keeps skin youthful and muscles strong.
Water is present in every cell and tissue and involved in so many biological functions: digestion, absorption,
circulation and excretion. It helps us with keeping our hormones balanced and our brain chemistry Relies on water for proper balance. Water gives us energy and strengthens the immune system.
Most people are not drinking enough water and are semi
dehydrated. Your body cannot work at optimum level without
the water it needs.
What happens when you don't drink enough water?
I won't go into all the details, but do want to mention a few things here. All the things mentioned above that water
helps keep in balance and lubricated are affected when you don't drink water. You will not feel as well as you possibly could, your body does not have what it needs for good health and so your health declines.
Here is one example of what I mean: When you do not get enough water throughout the day, your body just does not have the needed fluid and sometimes tries to pull it from where it can and distribute it to the places that need
hydration the most. One place that water is pulled from is your digestive system. When you do not drink enough water it leads to constipation.
As we all know, constipation is not a good thing. Besides the uncomfortable, sick feeling there are other things going on. Transit time slows down and some of the toxins and
poisons dumped into the digestive system begin to recirculate.
If you do become constipated, I would suggest using Natural Moves. Natural Moves is a 100% natural, safe and effective herbal remedy to stop constipation naturally without risk of dehydration,
mineral imbalance or dependency.
As these toxins build up they store in your tissues causing ill health. Kidneys separate water from the waste in the
blood, so there is a strain put on them when toxicity levels increase. Along with that the Liver then has quite a
bit more to do, trying to detoxify the system as a whole.
Drinking water is the most important drink you can consume for good health. With this being the case, I suggest that you drink one quart of water for every 50 pounds of weight. So if you
weighed 150 pounds, you would need to drink 3 quarts of water.
I also find it best if a person will actually measure the needed water out, into a container each day. Other wise
most people lose track of how much they did drink. So they usually do not drink enough water for the day.
Why not put this information to use today? No matter where your health is at this point, consuming drinking water in the required amount will aid you in reaching better health and maintaining it.
Thursday, April 2
best friends
Sunday, March 22
sleep may help clear brain for new learning
ScienceDaily (Apr. 3, 2009) — A new theory about sleep's benefits for the brain gets a boost from fruit flies in the journal Science. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found evidence that sleep, already recognized as a promoter of long-term memories, also helps clear room in the brain for new learning.
The critical question: How many synapses, or junctures where nerve cells communicate with each other, are modified by sleep? Neurologists believe creation of new synapses is one key way the brain encodes memories and learning, but this cannot continue unabated and may be where sleep comes in.
"There are a number of reasons why the brain can't indefinitely add synapses, including the finite spatial constraints of the skull," says senior author Paul Shaw, Ph.D., assistant professor of neurobiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. "We were able to track the creation of new synapses in fruit flies during learning experiences, and to show that sleep pushed that number back down."
Scientists don't yet know how the synapses are eliminated. According to theory, only the less important connections are trimmed back, while connections encoding important memories are maintained.
Many aspects of fly sleep are similar to human sleep; for example, flies and humans deprived of sleep one day will try to make up for the loss by sleeping more the next day. Because the human brain is much more complex, Shaw uses the flies as models for answering questions about sleep and memory.
Sleep is a recognized promoter of learning, but three years ago Shaw turned that association around and revealed that learning increases the need for sleep in the fruit fly. In a 2006 paper in Science, he and his colleagues found that two separate scenarios, each of which gave the fruit fly's brain a workout, increased the need for sleep.
The first scenario was inspired by human research linking an enriched environment to improved memory and other brain functions. Scientists found that flies raised in an enhanced social environment—a test tube full of other flies—slept approximately 2-3 hours longer than flies raised in isolation.
Researchers also gave male fruit flies their first exposure to female fruit flies, but with a catch—the females were either already mated or were actually male flies altered to emit female pheromones. Either fly rebuffed the test fly's attempts to mate. The test flies were then kept in isolation for two days and exposed to receptive female flies. Test flies that remembered their prior failures didn't try to mate again; they also slept more. Researchers concluded that these flies had encoded memories of their prior experience, more directly proving the connection between sleep and new memories.
Scientists repeated these tests for the new study, but this time they used flies genetically altered to make it possible to track the development of new synapses, the junctures at which brain cells communicate.
"The biggest surprise was that out of 200,000 fly brain cells, only 16 were required for the formation of new memories, " says first author Jeffrey Donlea, a graduate student. "These sixteen are lateral ventral neurons, which are part of the circadian circuitry that let the fly brain perform certain behaviors at particular times of day."
When flies slept, the number of new synapses formed during social enrichment decreased. When researchers deprived them of their sleep, the decline did not occur.
Donlea identified three genes essential to the links between learning and increased need for sleep: rutabaga, period and blistered. Flies lacking any of those genes did not have increased need for sleep after social enrichment or the mating test.
Blistered is the fruit fly equivalent to a human gene known as serum response factor (SRF). Scientists have previously linked SRF to plasticity, a term for brain change that includes both learning and memory and the general ability of the brain to rewire itself to adapt to injury or changing needs.
The new study shows that SRF could offer an important advantage for scientists hoping to study plasticity: unlike other genes connected to plasticity, it's not also associated with cell survival.
"That's going to be very helpful to our efforts to study plasticity, because it removes a large confounding factor," says co-author Naren Ramanan, Ph.D., assistant professor of neurobiology. "We can alter SRF activity and not have to worry about whether the resulting changes in brain function come from changes in plasticity or from dying cells."
Shaw plans further investigations of the connections between memory and sleep, including the question of how increased synapses induce the need for sleep.
"Right now a lot of people are worried about their jobs and the economy, and some are no doubt losing sleep over these concerns," Shaw says. "But these data suggest the best thing you can do to make sure you stay sharp and increase your chances of keeping your job is to make getting enough sleep a top priority."
