Health Benefits of Honey

Nothing goes hand in hand with autumn like ‘comfort food’. The temperature begins to drop, our bodies begin to adjust to the chill and we seek warn, nourishing comfort food. Honey is often added to comfort food to enhance its taste. It’s placed on cereal, crème of wheat, toast, bagels, pancakes, tea, waffles, fruit, etc. Truth be told, honey is far more than a taste enhancer; it’s extraordinarily healthy and one of the original superfoods.

Honey is one of the oldest medicines known to man. For thousands of years it has been used as a natural remedy for gastrointestinal diseases, wounds, psoriasis, eczema, skin ulcers, respiratory diseases, yeast infections and arthritis. Honey’s a thick, sweet and rich golden brown liquid that’s produced by honey bees from the nectar of plants or secretions of living parts of plants. It comes in a variety of colors including brown, red and amber. Darker honey tends to be stronger in flavor and higher in antioxidants.  In a study that analyzed 19 samples of honey from 14 different floral sources, University of Illinois scientists found that honey made from nectar collected from Illinois buckwheat flowers (darker honey) packs 20 times the antioxidant punch as that produced by bees that lap up California sage (lighter honey).

Honey contains over 180 known substances including minerals, phenolics, organic acids, peptides, vitamins, trace elements and enzymes.

Let’s take a further look at the multiple health benefits of honey:

Honey for sore throats. Let’s start with the obvious. Honey is outstanding for treating a sore throat. It has strong antibacterial properties that soothe the throat and destroy the bacteria causing the infection. Honey has antibiotic effects on a number of infectious diseases including UTIs (urinary tract infections), sinusitis, anthrax, impetigo, anthrax and respiratory infections. The thick consistency of honey is soothes even the worst ‘scratchy’ throat. It can mix into tea, hot water or lemon juice and consumed. If you want a truly health ‘one-two punch’, add honey to antioxidant rich Green Tea.

Honey for energy. Honey is a natural source of carbohydrates that provides the body with a boost of energy. It provides about 65 calories per tablespoon. The sugars in honey are easy to digest and effortlessly converted into glucose. Maintaining optimal blood sugar levels can have tremendous heath benefits. Honey can assist in this goal. Studies have shown honey can keep blood sugar levels consistent compared to other type of sugar.

Are you an athlete or workout warrior? You should try Bee Pollen. It increases endurance, strength, energy and speed. Millions of people consume energy and endurance drinks to enhance their workout. These products are laced withcaffeine, taurine and guarana. A teaspoon of honey prior to a workout is a far better option. Your body will maintain energy throughout the workout without the artificial ingredients that will tax your heart. If you’re searching for a chiseled physique, bee pollen will increase muscle growth and definition.

Honey for cuts and abrasions. Honey has a long history of natural method for treating cuts, abrasions, diabetic ulcers, abscesses, etc. It inhibits the growth of bacteria, soothes the skin, absorbs moisture from the air to expedite thehealing process and keeps the wound clean from infection. The most potent form of honey used to treat cuts and abrasions is Active Manuka Honey. Honeybees produce Manuka Honey by pollinating Manuka bushes, typically indigenous to New Zealand. This form of honey contains an efficacious mix of antimicrobial and antibacterial properties.

Honey for the immune system. Honey can significantly boost your immune system due to its powerful antioxidants and anti-bacterial properties. It stimulates the immune system into action and promotes a healthy digestive system which acts as 70% of the body’s immune system. In many cases, the antibacterial properties of honey have been more than effective warding off streptococcus and staph aureus in the human body.

Are you hungry for a desert that’s an immune boosting machine? Mix one or two teaspoons of honey with Greek yogurt. You will reap the benefits of honey and add beneficial protein and probiotics to your system.

Note of caution: 10% of honey contains dormant Clostridium botulisum spores, which can cause botulism in infants. You should avoid giving honey to children younger than a year old.

http://healthnutritionandwellness.com/blog/nutrition/health-benefits-of-honey/325/

Happy Holidays

Amidst all the madness of shopping, gift wrapping, visiting, cooking, cleaning and the hustle and bustle of preparing for Christmas, why not take  just 10 minutes of your day to restore your spirit with this beautiful video.

The video is ”dedicated to our shared broken-heartedness amidst the world’s suffering and our common desire to meet that suffering with courage, service and great compassion”.

May its spirit touch all those who watch and listen to it today with deep peace, love, compassion and happiness.

Joy to the world!

http://beyondbreastcancer.wordpress.com/2010/12/22/a-song-for-all-beings/#comment-6392

Planning Positively During Breast Cancer Treatment

Dec 22, 2010 Vivien McKnight

You don't have to give in to breast cancer - Yvonne Bogdanski

Some ideas for positive actions you can take to help you through chemotherapy, radiotherapy or surgical treatment for breast cancer.

How to plan positively

A diagnosis of breast cancer is devastating. The life you had tight control over suddenly disintegrates and you feel totally helpless. Your doctors have a plan for you and you need to let them do their work of making you well again. Once you know that someone has a plan for your medical care, you should leave this side of things to them and allow yourself to move on and decide what to do with your time and energies whilst this treatment is taking place. Follow their instructions – after all, they are the ones who have spent years studying how to do this. Trust your doctors. Ask your doctor questions that are relevant to you and your immediate treatment by all means. Any reputable oncologist is more than able to provide you with all the details of what is going to happen to you over the coming weeks. Don’t start to wonder if your doctor has got it right. Don’t surf the internet until your eyes hurt. There is a lot of information there but you are you and things you read may not be relevant to your case and may worry you unnecessarily. Everyone’s case is different and just because X happens to one individual doesn’t necessarily mean it will be the same for you.

A lot is talked about positive attitude but actually you need to transform this into positive action which, in turn, will help you doctor to help you. You can play your part by having your own plan of action to get you through the long, difficult road through treatments to recovery. Deciding that you will create a positive environment in which your treatment can take place is the starting point.

There has been much debate about dealing with a diagnosis of breast cancer and moving beyond the shock and disbelief. What follows below is just one person’s way of looking at it.

Ten Point Positive Action Plan

1. Stay independent. Don’t allow others to make you into an invalid. Drive yourself to and from your chemo and/or radiotherapy sessions. You can rest when you get home.

2. Make plans. This is a time when you could learn a new skill like writing poetry, cooking, painting, caring for house plants – the list of possibilities is a long one.

3. Do an on-line course that will give you some kind of qualification at the end. It might take longer than normal but keep chipping away.

4. Set yourself a plan for each day. You may not spend the time you would have liked but don’t just take to the sofa. Keep active within your limitations.

Read on 

• Cancer Therapy
• Tykerb Gets New Breast Cancer Therapy Indication
• Breast Cancer Screening Enables Better Treatment

5. Get up at your usual time each day, get dressed and put on your make up every day. Maybe you will go to bed early in the evening but give your day structure.

6. Start to meditate. Meditation is not a mysterious or difficult as many would have us believe and it can have a very soothing effect at such a stressful time.

7. Change your vocabulary (and that of others). People might tell you that you are ‘brave’ but is wanting to survive brave? Avoid words like victim, battling, fighting. These suggest an outside influence. What is going on is going on inside you. Changing to words like resistance, overcoming, curing is much more positive. Tell people how you are when they ask by all means but don’t give them every detail of your treatment. They care of course but it doesn’t benefit you to keep rehashing how ghastly you might feel on certain days. This does not serve you. In the long term your treatment will be of benefit for you, so see it as such.

8. Keep a sense of humour if you can. This is not to make light of what is happening to you but rather to switch the focus if only for a few moments to something lighter. If you’ve lost your hair, start to plan how you will wear it when you have a full head again. Consider yourself fortunate to have this opportunity to start from zero!

9. Read all those books you’ve been promising to read. Take a book with you to your chemo or radiotherapy sessions. It may feel as though you are hiding behind a book but try not to get involved in other people’s stories when you attend sessions. Each case is different and yours is not like anyone else’s so don’t let listening to their experiences colour your own thinking. You will be amazed at the number of books you can get through.

10. Look forward. Think of all the things you are going to do when treatment is complete. Writing your list down makes it much more real and you will be delighted in the months following your treatments by how many things you are achieving and enjoying.

Why be positive during breast cancer treatment?

Treatment for breast cancer may mean chemotherapy, surgery and radiotherapy or some combination of these. Let’s not pretend that the road is easy but thinking positively and backing it up with action allows you to maintain some power over your life and feeling powerful is a very good feeling. So, you are not battling with cancer or fighting it, you are quietly taking back control and doing your part while your doctors do theirs

Read more at Suite101: Planning Positively During Breast Cancer Treatment http://www.suite101.com/content/planning--positively--during-breast-cancer-treatment-a323880#ixzz18sfkD9gh

5 Reasons to fall in love with fish

Healthy meals made easy: 5 reasons to fall in love with fish

Published on December 21st, 2010

 

Topics : 

Food Guide , Health Canada , University of Guelph , Canada

Look no further than fish for proof that nutrition can go hand-in-hand with taste and convenience. Fish is a tasty and convenient way to serve up nutritious meals that align with Canada’s Food Guide recommendations.

In addition to being rich in healthy omega-3 fatty acids, fish and seafood provide a number of important nutritional benefits. Health Canada recommends eating at least two servings of fish or seafood each week. Unfortunately, not even half of Canadian adults do, with children consuming even less.

About a year ago, Clover Leaf Seafoods launched their popular Take 5 recipes, which use five ingredients to help consumers come up with easy, healthy meals in only five minutes. Recently, they asked Dr. Bruce Holub, Professor Emeritus, University of Guelph and founder of the DHA/EPA Omega-3 Institute, to do some digging to identify the top five health benefits of eating canned seafood. The result is what Clover Leaf is calling their Take 5 Top 5:

Heart health – 23 per cent and 38 per cent reduction in coronary heart disease mortality for those consuming two to four, or at least five fish servings per week, respectively.

Brain health - DHA omega-3 (docosahexaenoic acid) is recognized as physiologically essential for optimal brain development, cognitive performance including memory and learning ability. There is substantial evidence to indicate that increased fish consumption over several years in the elderly can reduce age-related cognitive decline and protect brain function.

Vision health - DHA omega-3 is also required for optimal visual development and acuity in the retina of the eye. Studies have clearly indicated that a higher intake of DHA from fish during pregnancy has long-term benefits for childhood visual processing.

Cancer prevention - Omega-3 fatty acids can reduce the risk of various types of cancer, including colorectal cancer, prostate cancer mortality and breast cancer in women.

Reduced Risk of Stroke – 31 per cent lower risk of stroke mortality for those consuming five or more fish servings per week as compared to those who ate little or no fish.

In addition to these top five benefits, eating fish and seafood may lower blood pressure and circulate blood fat as triglycerides as well as reduce the risk of inflammatory disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis. Seafood is also a rich source of protein, vitamins, and minerals including vitamin D, iodine, calcium and selenium. Many varieties of seafood are also low in sodium and cholesterol.

The Clover Leaf product line offers a wide variety of low sodium and flavoured tuna, as well as skinless, boneless salmon products which boast a nutrition profile that is high protein, low in fat and a good source of essential vitamins and minerals. While both fresh and frozen fish deliver the same health benefits, canned fish and seafood offer the added benefit of convenience.

For more information on Clover Leaf’s “Take 5 Top 5” nutritional benefits please visit:http://www.cloverleaf.ca

Cancer in Ancient Times?

October 14th, 2010

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How the ancient world dealt with cancer

Cancer is widespread today, but it doesn't appear to have been in the ancient world. Why not?

Researchers are learning more about the history of cancer and how civilizations have treated it.

A study in the journal Nature Reviews Cancer suggests that cancer has become a more common disease only recently, because of modern lifestyle.

Rosalie David, professor at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom and Michael Zimmerman, professor at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, explored the evidence of cancer in the fossil record of early humans, in ancient Egypt and in ancient Greece. They argue that modern carcinogens - such as tobacco and pollution - may have contributed to the apparent rise in cancer in the last several hundred years.

However, there are many reasons why this is a tenuous conclusion: No one can conduct a survey of ancient populations. The risk of cancer rises with age, and people only started living longer more recently. Cancer is also highly genetic. To say that pollution has helped make cancer prevalent is highly controversial, said James Olson, historian at Sam Houston State University in Texas.

But certainly smoking, poor diet, and lack of exercise all contribute to cancer in the modern world, Olson said.

Still, the paper makes some interesting points about the historical record of cancer, he said.

There are very few indications of cancer in early human remains, and possibilities that have been found have been disputed, the analysis said. In Egypt, out of hundreds of mummies only one case of cancer has been confirmed: Zimmerman's experiments on modern mummified tissue suggest that mummification does not destroy evidence of the malignancy - he and colleagues found colorectal cancer in a mummy.

The ancient Egyptians wrote about many magical spells they used to treat cancer-like illnesses, a few of which are described in papyri. Here's one particularly gruesome remedy for what may have been cancer of the uterus: Break up a stone in water, leave it overnight, and then pour it into the vagina. Another treatment described was fumigation: The patient would sit over something that was burning. Still, it's not certain that any of the maladies described were actually cancer, David said.

Ancient Greece first identified cancer as a specific illness, the analysis said. It appears that the Greeks had a better knowledge and awareness of cancer than their predecessors, which is a more likely explanation than an increase in cancer, David and Zimmerman said.

In Ancient Greece, cancer gets referenced in the Hippocratic Corpus- texts said to have been written by the "father of medicine" Hippocrates between 410 and 360 B.C.
These texts say that an excess of black bile causes cancer. "Hippocrates used thecarcinos (crab) and carcinoma to desribe a range of tumours and swellings," David and Zimmerman wrote. The Roman physician Galen of Pergamum said around 200 A.D. that this was because some cancers appeared crab-like.

Ancient Greeks knew that a mastectomy would help a patient with a lump in her breast, but they also recognized that cancer can recur and spread to other parts of the body.

"They recommended an unbelievable variety of potions, and plant extracts, and combinations to see if they couldn’t kill the cancer in other places," Olson said. "None of those worked."

It can be argued that since life expectancy was lower in the ancient world, most people didn't live long enough to develop cancer, David said. But the lack of evidence of childhood bone cancer suggests that perhaps overall rates were lower as well, she said.

From about 500 to 1500 A.D. there was little advancement in understanding cancer, the analysis said. Then, in the 17th century, Wilhelm Fabricus described operations for breast and other cancers. Cancer rates appear to have increased since the Industrial Revolution, David said. In the past 200 years, reports of specific cancers such as scrotal cancer and Hodgkin's disease have emerged.

http://pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/14/how-the-ancient-world-dealt-with-cancer/?hpt=C2

NO LEFT TURNS ... WISDOM FOR LIFE

This is a story of an aging couple, told by their son who was President of NBC NEWS.

This is a wonderful piece by Michael Gartner, editor of newspapers large and small and president of NBC News. In 1997, he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing It is well worth reading, and a few good chuckles are guaranteed. Here goes...

My father never drove a car. Well, that's not quite right. I should say I never saw him drive a car.

He quit driving in 1927, when he was 25 years old, and the last car he drove was a 1926 Whippet.

"In those days," he told me when he was in his 90s, "to drive a car you had to do things with your hands, and do things with your feet, and look every which way, and I decided you could walk through life and enjoy it or drive through life and miss it."

At which point my mother, a sometimes salty Irishwoman, chimed in: "Oh, bull shit!" she said. "He hit a horse."

"Well," my father said, "there was that, too."

So my brother and I grew up in a household without a car. The neighbors all had cars -- the Kollingses next door had a green 1941Dodge, the VanLaninghams across the street a gray 1936 Plymouth, the Hopsons two doors down a black 1941 Ford -- but we had none.

My father, a newspaperman in Des Moines , would take the streetcar to work and, often as not, walk the 3 miles home If he took the streetcar home, my mother and brother and I would walk the three blocks to the streetcar stop, meet him and walk home together.

My brother, David, was born in 1935, and I was born in 1938, and sometimes, at dinner, we'd ask how come all the neighbors had cars but we had none. "No one in the family drives," my mother would explain, and that was that.

But, sometimes, my father would say, "But as soon as one of you boys turns 16, we'll get one." It was as if he wasn't sure which one of us would turn 16 first.

But, sure enough , my brother turned 16 before I did, so in 1951 my parents bought a used 1950 Chevrolet from a friend who ran the parts department at a Chevy dealership downtown.

It was a four-door, white model, stick shift, fender skirts, loaded with everything, and, since my parents didn't drive, it more or less became my brother's car.

Having a car but not being able to drive didn't bother my father, but it didn't make sense to my mother.

So in 1952, when she was 43 years old, she asked a friend to teach her to drive. She learned in a nearby cemetery, the place where I learned to drive the following year and where, a generation later, I took my two sons to practice driving. The cemetery probably was my father's idea. "Who can your mother hurt in the cemetery?" I remember him saying more than once.

For the next 45 years or so, until she was 90, my mother was the driver in the family. Neither she nor my father had any sense of direction, but he loaded up on maps -- though they seldom left the city limits -- and appointed himself navigator. It seemed to work.

Still, they both continued to walk a lot. My mother was a devout Catholic, and my father an equally devout agnostic, an arrangement that didn't seem to bother either of them through their 75 years of marriage.

(Yes, 75 years, and they were deeply in love the entire time.)

He retired when he was 70, and nearly every morning for the next 20 years or so, he would walk with her the mile to St. Augustin's Church. She would walk down and sit in the front pew, and he would wait in the back until he saw which of the parish's two priests was on duty that morning. If it was the pastor, my father then would go out and take a 2-mile walk, meeting my mother at the end of the service and walking her home.

If it was the assistant pastor, he'd take just a 1-mile walk and then head back to the church. He called the priests "Father Fast" and "Father Slow."

After he retired, my father almost always accompanied my mother whenever she drove anywhere, even if he had no reason to go along. If she were going to the beauty parlor, he'd sit in the car and read, or go take a stroll or, if it was summer, have her keep the engine running so he could listen to the Cubs game on the radio. In the evening, then, when I'd stop by, he'd explain: "The Cubs lost again. The millionaire on second base made a bad throw to the millionaire on first base, so the multimillionaire on third base scored."

If she were going to the grocery store, he would go along to carry the bags out -- and to make sure she loaded up on ice cream. As I said, he was always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she was 88 and still driving, he said to me, "Do you want to know the secret of a long life?"

"I guess so," I said, knowing it probably would be something bizarre.

"No left turns," he said.

"What?" I asked.

"No left turns," he repeated. "Several years ago, your mother and I read an article that said most accidents that old people are in happen when they turn left in front of oncoming traffic.

As you get older, your eyesight worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said. So your mother and I decided never again to make a left turn."

"What?" I said again.

"No left turns," he said. "Think about it. Three rights are the same as a left, and that's a lot safer. So we always make three rights."

"You're kidding!" I said, and I turned to my mother for support. "No," she said, "your father is right. We make three rights. It works." But then she added: "Except when your father loses count."

I was driving at the time, and I almost drove off the road as I started laughing.

"Loses count?" I asked.

"Yes," my father admitted, "that sometimes happens. But it's not a problem. You just make seven rights, and you're okay again."

I couldn't resist. "Do you ever go for 11?" I asked.

"No," he said " If we miss it at seven, we just come home and call it a bad day. Besides, nothing in life is so important it can't be put off another day or another week." My mother was never in an accident, but one evening she handed me her car keys and said she had decided to quit driving. That was in 1999, when she was 90.

She lived four more years, until 2003. My father died the next year, at

102.

They both died in the bungalow they had moved into in 1937 and bought a few years later for $3,000. (Sixty years later, my brother and I paid $8,000 to have a shower put in the tiny bathroom -- the house had never had one. My father would have died then and there if he knew the shower cost nearly three times what he paid for the house.)

He continued to walk daily -- he had me get him a treadmill when he was 101 because he was afraid he'd fall on the icy sidewalks but wanted to keep exercising -- and he was of sound mind and sound body until the moment he died

One September afternoon in 2004, he and my son went with me when I had to give a talk in a neighboring town, and it was clear to all three of us that he was wearing out, though we had the usual wide-ranging conversation about politics and newspapers and things in the news.

A few weeks earlier, he had told my son, "You know, Mike, the first hundred years are a lot easier than the second hundred." At one point in our drive that Saturday, he said, "You know, I'm probably not going to live much longer."

"You're probably right," I said.

"Why would you say that?" He countered, somewhat irritated.

"Because you're 102 years old," I said..

"Yes," he said, "you're right." He stayed in bed all the next day.

That night, I suggested to my son and daughter that we sit up with him through the night.

He appreciated it, he said, though at one point, apparently seeing us look gloomy, he said: "I would like to make an announcement. No one in this room is dead yet"

An hour or so later, he spoke his last words:

"I want you to know," he said, clearly and lucidly, "that I am in no pain. I am very comfortable. A nd I have had as happy a life as anyone on this earth could ever have."

A short time later, he died.

I miss him a lot, and I think about him a lot. I've wondered now and then how it was that my family and I were so lucky that he lived so long.

I can't figure out if it was because he walked through life, Or because he quit taking left turns. "

Life is too short to wake up with regrets.

So love the people who treat you right.

Forget about the one's who don't.

Believe everything happens for a reason.

If you get a chance, take it & if it changes your life, let it.

Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would most likely be worth it."

ENJOY LIFE NOW - IT HAS AN EXPIRATION DATE!