10 ways to easily boost your serotonin levels and live a happier life

What makes you happy? The answer to this question could be different for every one because happiness is relative. But one thing’s certain: Increasing your serotonin levels can boost your mood and keep you from sulking and wallowing because of a bad day. Most commonly known as the “happy hormone” serotonin does more than boost your mood. It also has other health benefits, which is why having more of this will make you happy and healthy at the same time. Here are ways to boost your serotonin levels:

1. Eat some animal protein – Feelings of sadness oftentimes feel like they’re just in our heads. Sometimes when you feel bad, you think that your brain (or heart) is responsible but know that thoughts and feelings are more than that. These are results of physiological reactions that happen inside your body. An amino acid called tryptophan help produce serotonin so you can start feeling happy. Animal protein is an excellent source of tryptophan so include more chicken, fish, eggs, beef, dairy, even lamb in your diet. Whey and egg protein are scientifically-proven to increase this amino acid in the brain.
2. Get out and enjoy the sun – Natural light have a positive effect on your mood. Sunlight triggers serotonin synthesis. The brighter sunlight you are exposed to, the more serotonin the body produces. This is a possible explanation why people feel gloomy on rainy weather.
3. Get enough vitamin D – Vitamin D helps in converting tryptophan into serotonin. You can get this from sun exposure or taking supplements.
4. Add more seafood to your diet – Cod liver oil and marine fat contain vitamin D and long-chain omega-3s that are helpful in boosting the serotonin production in the brain. Ample amounts will also help transport it to the neurons efficiently.
5. Try some more curry – Curry has turmeric, which is considered as a potent anti-depressant. This natural mood-lifter helps increase serotonin in the brain.
6. Perk up – There’s a reason why most people need coffee to jolt them out of lethargy. Caffeine, according to some research, has a positive effect on the levels of serotonin in the brain.
7. Break some sweat – Exercise is known to be effective in increasing serotonin levels because motor neurons activated during physical activity boost the release of serotonin. Furthermore, regular exercise will spike tryptophan levels in the brain, which means more serotonin for you.
8. Get a massage – When you lie down on the massage table, you feel happy not only because you finally got the chance to relax. You feel good and happy because massage therapy is scientifically-proven to reduce cortisol and increase happy hormones by as much as 28 percent.
9. Munch on more nuts – Nuts contain tryptophan, so the more of these you eat, the happier you should be. Also, nuts can help prevent cancer, heart disease and respiratory ailments.
10. Drink green tea – Drinking green tea is relaxing, no doubt. But it’s also good for the mood. It contains 1-theanine, an amino acid that boosts serotonin levels. It also has a powerful antioxidant that prevents brain damage.

Now that you know that there’s more to feeling happy, you can easily find ways to pull yourself out of a rut and start smiling.

Sources include:

MarksDailyApple.com

NCBI.NLM.NIH.gov

BestHealthMag.com

Something to consider about what you eat

The good ‘ol U S of A. The best! The richest! The most powerful! The most diseased!
Scary, isn’t it, that the most influential nation in the world leads the world in arthritis, cancer, constipation, diabetes, gout, heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, impotency and obesity, just to name a few?

Did you ever wonder why? Did you ever wonder why our doctors continually treat symptoms and never cure but only “control”?

Think about this: most research done in medical schools and virtually all the curriculum is funded (a euphemism for controlled) by the pharmaceutical industry. And since the sole purpose of the drug companies is to make money, they turn good, idealistic people, with the best intentions, into prostitutes for them. Drugs for this and drugs for that along with surgeries for this and surgeries for that make the pharmaceutical/medical/HMO alliance the biggest moneymakers in the world.

So, a person graduates from medical school where they learn what the drug companies want them to learn and then they go into “practice”. They are continually wooed by the drug companies so they don’t lose the “take a pill” mentality.

Meanwhile, the people get sicker and sicker and fatter and fatter and never get well. They go to their doctor for routine checkups to make sure that their illness is “under control”, and spend thousands in their lifetime treating a symptom while never getting to the cause.

If you were a doctor and you knew that you were always treating symptoms, wouldn’t there even be the slightest curiosity on your part to learn about what might cure your patient? No! And why is that? Because “patient” is a sophisticated word for customer! And we all know that the key to a successful business is repeat customers. What a “catch-22”. Can’t cure em cause we’ll lose em.

As you read this and reflect upon your own health situation, are you not curious to learn about what will make you well and free you from the burden of prescription drugs and their side effects? If so, why haven’t you attempted to find out for yourself?
Please allow me to give you some information that could change your life, improve your health, and save you money. The underlying cause of 95% of all illness comes from the SAD.

The Standard American Diet. It is a diet filled with fat, rancid oils, and enormous quantities of sugar. It is a diet that will and does put you in an early grave.
The fat, in the diet, is saturated fat. It is a fat that hardens at room temperature and in your arteries. Saturated fat is found in anything that walks, runs, flies, crawls or swims, dairy products and eggs.

Switching from a flesh and blood diet to a plant based diet will lower your blood pressure and cholesterol, will remove plaque and clear your arteries, get rid of constipation, and will add new meaning to your sex life. All within 30 days, guaranteed!

Fiberless foods like white flour products and white rice do nothing but add empty calories to your body and keep all the junk inside of it because it binds and clogs rather than act like “Roto-Rooter” and clean you out. The real ”Roto- Rooter” comes in the form of whole grains like brown rice, oatmeal, millet, buckwheat, quinoa, bulgur, whole-wheat flour breads, etc.

Understand something. The nature of a dead body is to rot. Whether inside or outside of your body it still rots. If it’s in your body, that rotting, putrefied, decomposing matter stays there and fills your body with poison. Flesh foods (meat, chicken, fish, pork, turkey, etc.), because of their diseases are pumped full of antibiotics. In fact, 80% of the antibiotics produced are fed to “food animals” to attempt to control their diseases which are passed on to you. The best of the best is that the FDA has allowed the flesh peddlers to inject all the dead bodies with carbon monoxide to extend the shelf life to 3 weeks. So, don’t think when you see bright red and rosey, non-smelling dead bodies in the supermarket that were just killed and processed a couple of days ago.

The chickens are the worse. Did you ever wonder why you are advised to cook chicken with a flamethrower and to boil all surfaces that the dead chicken has come into contact with? It is because that chickens, due to the way they are raised, are covered with doo doo, and our dear friends at the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture say that it’s ok to sell doo doo covered chicken as long as the doo doo can’t be seen through the clear wrap. You see, the government constantly protects the interests of the businesses that make the large campaign contributions, not the people.

Another interesting fact about the “food animals” is that their diets are anything but good. Yes, they are fed grains, but those grains, in order to save on grain costs, include the ground up remains of the dead, dying, diseased, and decaying animals that cannot be processed for “food”, road kill, blood, the feathers from the birds and of course the ever-popular GMOs. Yuuuuuuuuuuummmy

What about fish? The government is now saying that fish should not be eaten more than twice a month due to the high mercury contamination, which has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease and scores of other neurological disorders. The same mercury that is in your fillings and which the dentists have been in denial about for years.

Then where do I get my protein? From the same place that the animals and fish do – the plants, the grains, and the sea vegetables. If you go to the same source as the creatures, you will get protein without saturated fat and all the diseases that come from eating higher up on the food chain.

Did you know that a 7-11 “Big Gulp” contains 46 teaspoons of sugar and that a 20 oz bottle of soda contains 18 teaspoons of sugar? “Look ma, no teeth”! These quantities of sugar would be higher if the sugar would remain suspended in the liquid and not settle to the bottom of the container. But alas, these, unfortunately for the sugar industry, are the cut-off points.

Why doesn’t anyone ever tell you about these truths? Because money comes before anything else and enough is never enough!

Your lives and well-being are in your hands. At least now you are in a better position to be able to make a choice. We all have free will. If you are content with treating your symptoms, go see your doctor. If, however, you want to cure your illnesses, change your diet.

The choice is yours.

Aloha!

Sources:
www.asanediet.com
www.carlagoldenwellness.com
www.nutritionfacts.org
www.peta.org
“Food Forensics” by Mike Adams

Heartburn Cure; Tips to Mellow Down That Burning Heartburn Pain

Heartburn is described as a burning sensation that can be felt in the chest specifically at the lower sternum. Such pain is caused by a reflux of digestive acid that shoots up and enters the lower esophagus thus resulting in a burning sensation and acute pain.

This condition is also called as acid reflux, cardialgia, pyrosis, and GERD.

Statistically, 60 million of Americans suffer from this heartburn condition and needless to say it’s never pleasant when it occurs. That’s why this article is written. To help you alleviate the pain and ultimately achieve heartburn cure. But because of the limitations of the length of this article. I’ll be just covering some general heartburn cure.

Enough of that and let’s get to the meat.

Its already know that some substances can cause heartburn. So, by simply avoiding this “triggers” you can achieve heartburn cure before it even started. Pretty neat huh!
But what substance that usually causes heartburn? Well here’s the top 5 (1, 2). Drum roll please….

1. Caffeine – The top spot goes to caffeine and its derivatives, like colas, chocolates, and some teas. This substance can cause the esophagus sphincter muscle to relax, thus resulting in backward flow of digestive acids.

2. Fatty Foods and Oily Foods – These substances slow down digestion because they need special enzymes that can digest them. The problem with longer digestion, foods begin to pile up in the stomach increasing pressure to the sphincter of the esophagus and eventually give way. There goes the digestive acids again, burning the esophagus.

3. Tomatoes – Tomatoes and tomato-based products also cause heartburn. This kind of foods also relaxes the sphincter of the esophagus muscles.

4. Smoking – The chemicals from puffing a stick of cigarette causes to weaken the sphincter muscle of the lower esophagus.

5. Alcohol – Has relaxing effects on the sphincter muscle of the esophagus.

Now that you know what kind of foods to avoid. Let’s add some tips on how to actually achieve heartburn cure.

You should try to eat high fiber diets. Also, you can try some herbal supplements like ginger tea or ginger ale, which by the way is gaining popularity recently. Drinking lots of water also provides heartburn cure. Swallowing saliva. Saliva reduces acidity by 50%. Also, it is best done with chewing gums, coz it will stimulate to produce more saliva.

But still, these are recommendations. It’s best to ask your physician before trying anything.

1. Heartburn Cures Handbook: Easy & Fast Acid Reflux Relief Using Natural Remedies and Treatments, Aug 28, 2013 by Patricia Gardner
2. Heartburn: Acid Reflux Cure: Get Heartburn, Acid Reflux Cured Naturally in 3 Week Step by Step Program (Heartburn, Heartburn No More, Heartburn Cured, … Reflux Cure, Acid Reflux Help, Digestion), Jun 17, 2015 by Floyd Anderson

10 Steps on Improving Your Metabolism

Are you sluggish and low on energy? Do you feel like you work and work toward your weight loss goal and never seem to make any dramatic improvement?

You could be suffering from a slow metabolism (1). Even though you may have a slow metabolism, it does not have to destroy your weight loss efforts. You can dramatically improve your metabolism, and boost your energy levels without taking supplements (2).

Your metabolism simply refers to the conversion of food to usable energy by the body. It is the biological process, by which energy is extracted from food, and the net result is how fast or slowly the body burns those calories.

A few steps you can take to improve your metabolism naturally are:

Drink Water – Water is great to drink and you should be drinking a minimum of 8 to 10, glasses daily, of course, more is better. It will help increase your metabolism and flush out sodium, toxins, and fat. Drinking water before meals will fill your stomach so you feel full and prevent overeating. Avoid excess colas, coffee, teas, and sugary juices. Caffeine will dehydrate you, and the sugar will do more damage than good in the long-run.

Eat Every Three Hours – Eat a small balanced meal every three hours, including snacks. Meals and snacks should be balanced, meaning they should contain a complete protein, carbohydrates, as well as natural fat. Failure to eat consistently can lead to a slower metabolism and fat storage. Also, skipping meals slows down your metabolism. To ignite fat loss you need to be consuming the right foods in a balanced manner throughout the day.

Don’t Skip Breakfast – Breakfast is the most important meal of the day because it gets your metabolism running in high gear. You wouldn’t drive your car to work on an empty tank, and you shouldn’t start your day without adequate nourishment. Your first meal sets your metabolism for the day and keeps it going, as long as you eat every three hours. If you get up early and eat a late breakfast, you miss out on several hours of burning calories.

Don’t Fear Fat – Fat has developed a bad reputation. Many people think fat makes you fat. This is false. The type of fat and how much fat you eat impacts your body fat composition. Fat is needed by the body. Those who follow a very low-fat diet have a harder time ridding their body of fat. Choose natural healthy fats such as olive oil, avocados, various nuts, flax, and natural peanut butter to receive your necessary fats.

Omit Trans Fat – Trans fat is the bad fat, the cause of weight gain, low energy, depression, cancer, and heart disease. You will never get the body you desire by eating “healthy” fast food, frozen dinners, and other processed choices. If it’s man-made, it’s not the best choice, and will halt fat loss endeavors. Eat the foods Mother Nature has provided to meet your fat loss goals.

Be Active Daily – Stay active at least six days a week. Take the stairs when possible or park further out to get that little bit of extra movement to keep the heart and lungs working optimally. The more movement you get daily, the better you will feel overall.

Do Cardiovascular Exercise – Cardio exercise is necessary for heart and lung health. It also burns calories. Doing cardio first thing in the morning on an empty stomach can tap into fat stores, and keep your body burning calories at a high rate for about an hour after cardio is finished. If you fail to eat adequately daily, first morning cardio on an empty stomach can work against you. Doing morning cardio on very low calorie diet can burn muscle. Another good time to incorporate cardio is in the evening after your last meal. This allows you to burn calories so you are not sleeping on them. You do not have to implement a morning and evening session, choose one or the other or cycle between the two to prevent staleness and boredom.

HIIT It – Blend some High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) into your cardiovascular program from time to time to give your body and metabolism a good shock. The body is programmed for adaptation. Therefore, doing the same cardio format day in and day out can become stale really fast. Take one or two days a week and implement some HIIT to give the body an added shock.

HIIT is basically alternating low intensity and moderate to high intensity cardio training.  For example, a 20 minute HIIT session would look similar to this:

Minute 1 and 2 – Low Intensity (Walking) Minute 3 and 4 – High Intensity (Light jogging or running) Minute 5 and 6 – Low Intensity Minute 7 and 8 – High Intensity and so on…

Weight Train – Resistance training builds muscle, which is metabolically active tissue. The more muscle you acquire, the faster your metabolism will be.  Adding more lean muscle tissue to your body will put curves in the right places and allow you to eat more calories a day.

Listen to Your Body – Killing yourself with workouts is just as dangerous as not working out at all. Listen to your body and get proper rest. Don’t train if you are ill, still sore from the previous workout, or just simply too tired. Training in such a state can cause more problems than it solves.

If any of the above fails to prove results in 4 to 6 weeks, there could be an underlying problem, such as a food allergy, sluggish thyroid, hormonal imbalance, toxins, parasites, etc. (3) If so, I recommend searching for a natural healer in your area to determine the cause. and work from there. For the most part, proper diet, detoxifying, and herbs can correct any ailments.

1. http://www.naturalnewsblogs.com/thyroid-dysfunctions-obesity-epidemic-weight-loss-canary-suffering/
2. http://www.naturalnewsblogs.com/cant-lose-weight/
3. http://www.naturalnewsblogs.com/adrenal-fatigue-beat/

Dietary myth BUSTED: Eating more salt does NOT make you drink more water… you actually use LESS water as a result

Contrary to popular belief, eating foods with a high salt content do not induce thirst, a landmark study revealed. According to researchers, high salt intake does the exact opposite by retaining more water, which in turn prompts the body to use less of it. To carry out the study, a team of international researchers from the German Aerospace Center, the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, and the Vanderbilt University pooled data from two groups of 10 male volunteers. The groups were sealed into a mock spaceship and were subjected to two flight simulations. The simulations were designed to resemble flights to the planet Mars. The two groups were given identical diets with varying salt content over a period of several weeks. The first group was examined after 105 days, while the second group was assessed over 205 days.

“A long space voyage conserving every drop of water might be crucial. A connection between salt intake and drinking could affect your calculations – you wouldn’t want an interplanetary traveler to die because he liked an occasional pinch of salt on his food. The real interest in the simulation, however, was that it provided an environment in which every aspect of a person’s nutrition, water consumption and salt intake could be controlled and measured,” the researchers said in an article in GlobalNews.ca.

The study found that higher salt intake resulted in increased salt content in the urine. The researchers also noted an increase in urine volume in participants. However, the increase was not due in part to higher water intake. According to researchers, high salt diet caused the participants to drink less. The study also revealed that salt appeared to trigger a mechanism in the kidneys that promote water retention.

It has been previously believed that charged sodium and chloride ions bind into water molecules and flush them out through urination. However, the study showed that salts were retained in the urine, while the water moved back into the body’s system. (Related: Be on the lookout with the latest scientific findings at Discoveries.news).

Further experiment sheds light on baffling mechanism

The researchers replicated the experiment on mice and inferred that urea — a compound that forms in the liver and muscles to promote nitrogen elimination — might be involved in water retention. According to the research team, the compound accumulated in the animals’ kidneys and countered the water-drawing effects of both sodium and chloride. The kidneys served as a biological barrier that distinguishes osmolytes from water, thus preventing water loss, researchers said.

The study also revealed that this mechanism did not induce thirst, but instead raised the animals’ hunger levels. This effect was reflective of the experiment done in human participants, who reported being hungry throughout the study.

The findings provide new insight on the functions of urea in the body. “It’s not solely a waste product, as has been assumed. Instead, it turns out to be a very important osmolyte — a compound that binds to water and helps transport it. Its function is to keep water in when our bodies get rid of salt. Nature has apparently found a way to conserve water that would otherwise be carried away into the urine by salt,” said study co-author Professor Friedrich Luft in ScienceDaily.com.

The results also give new knowledge on how the human body processes water homeostasis. “We now have to see this process as a concerted activity of the liver, muscle and kidney. While we didn’t directly address blood pressure and other aspects of the cardiovascular system, it’s also clear that their functions are tightly connected to water homeostasis (maintaining a proper amount and balance of water) and energy metabolism,” study co-author Jens Titze added.

The findings were published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Sources: 

ScienceDaily.com

GlobalNews.ca