Billions are spent each year on cosmetic products that promise to delete wrinkles, lighten age spots, and eliminate itching, flaking, or redness. But the simplest and cheapest way to keep your skin healthy and youthful looking is to stay out of the sun.
Sunlight is a major cause of wrinkles, dryness, and age spots. Your skin does change with age. For instance, you sweat less which leads to increased dryness. Aging skin becomes thinner and loses fat, so it looks less plump and smooth. Underlying structures, veins and bones in particular, become more prominent. Your skin can also take longer to recover when injured.
These changes can be drastically delayed by staying out of the sun. Although nothing can totally undo sun damage, the skin sometimes can restore itself. So, it's never too late to protect yourself from the harmful results of the sun.
5 Ways to Slow the Aging Process:
1. Wear protective clothing. A hat with a wide brim shades your neck, ears, eyes, and head. Look for sunglasses with a label saying the glasses block 99 to 100 percent of the sun's rays. Wear loose, lightweight, long-sleeved shirts and long pants or long skirts when in the sun.
2. Check your skin often. Look for changes in the size, shape, color, or feel of birthmarks, moles, and spots. If you find any changes that worry you, see a doctor. The American Academy of Dermatology suggests that older, fair-skinned people have a yearly skin check by a doctor as part of a regular physical exam.
3. Avoid artificial tanning. Don't use sunlamps and tanning beds, as well as tanning pills and tanning makeup. Tanning pills have a color additive that turns your skin orange after you take them. The FDA has approved this color additive for coloring foods but not for tanning the skin. The large amount of color additive in tanning pills may be harmful. Tanning make-up products are not suntan lotions and will not protect your skin from the sun.
4. Use sunscreen. Sunscreens are rated in strength according to a sun protection factor (SPF), which ranges from 2 to 30 or higher. A higher number means longer protection. Buy products with an SPF number of 15 or higher. Also look for products whose label says: broad spectrum (meaning they protect against both types of harmful sun rays(UVA and UVB) and water resistant (meaning they stay on your skin longer, even if you get wet or sweat a lot). Remember to reapply the lotion as needed.
5. Stay out of the sun. Avoid the sun between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. This is when the sun?s UV rays are strongest. Don?t be fooled by cloudy skies. Harmful rays pass through clouds. UV radiation also can pass through water, so don't assume you?re safe if you?re in the water and feeling cool.
Showing posts with label anti-aging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anti-aging. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Anti-Aging Facts & Myths
Every single one of us begins aging the moment we are born -
If you’re alive, you’re aging - you can’t avoid it. But there are a number of things that you can do to keep yourself healthy and active, and to eliminate or at least slow down many of the factors that contribute to aging.
Ever since Ponce de Leon went searching for the Fountain of Youth, people have been looking for ways to slow down the aging process. Medical science has made great advances in keeping people alive longer by preventing and curing diseases, and helping people to live healthier, happier lives. Average life expectancy keeps increasing and most of us can look forward to a much longer life than our ancestors.
Our bodies were actually designed with the ability to fix themselves, as long as you take care of yourself properly. Your body is made up of about 100 trillion (100,000,000,000,000) living cells, which keep themselves strong and healthy with the proper food. Each and every one of those trillions of cells dies off and is replaced with a new cell at regular intervals. Your entire body is literally completely replaced every few years – you really aren’t the same person you used to be!
What happens with your cells is the key to anti-aging -
When a cell dies, one of three possible things must happen:
A) If the cell has not been receiving proper nutrition, its replacement will be a weaker version of the cell. In this scenario, your body is degenerating.
B) The replacement cell may have the same strength as its predecessor. In this case, your body essentially remains in the same place.
C) The third possibility is that the new cell is stronger than the previous one. Now you’re actually regenerating the body, and reversing the aging process. This can only happen if you give your cells plenty of the right kind of food energy to work with.
Sometime, usually in our late twenties or early thirties, many of us start noticing those first signs that we aren’t kids anymore – a few gray hairs appearing, facial wrinkles, skin starts sagging. As more time goes by, other signs gradually appear – it’s a little harder getting up in the morning, our vision and hearing aren’t what they used to be, our sex life isn’t as lively as we remember. As we look around, we see the same things happening to our friends and family. Most of us generally accept what we see as an inevitable process of nature.
You’re only as old as you feel -
And if you feel and think that you’re getting older – well, then you are! Your mindset does influence what goes on in your body. Meanwhile, you see your body getting older, so you feel older, which reinforces the aging processes in your body. It becomes a vicious circle.
You can turn things around -
As you notice your body looking and feeling younger, your mindset will improve, which motivates you to continue your anti-aging practices, which sets up a positive feedback loop, instead of a negative one. And so the process accelerates.
People are living longer than ever nowadays, due to advanced medical breakthroughs, increased awareness of the importance of a healthy lifestyle, and other related factors.
The human body can take an awful lot of abuse and neglect -
We don’t always think about our bad habits, since it may take years or decades for the effects to become apparent. But neglect yourself long enough and you may one day find yourself suffering through the late period of your life with a wide range of ailments and complaints - from difficulty seeing and hearing to cancer, heart disease, brittle bones, and many other problems.
Yet it only takes knowledge and a little bit of work to prevent most, if not all, of these common old-age problems from manifesting. There’s no magic pill or instant cure, and it will take some effort on your part. But the results will be well worth it. How much would it be worth to you to enjoy your final years as a healthy, active adult, able to continue doing many of the things you most love?
Find lots of Tips and Tricks about Anti-Aging at http://www.anti-aging-trix.com
If you’re alive, you’re aging - you can’t avoid it. But there are a number of things that you can do to keep yourself healthy and active, and to eliminate or at least slow down many of the factors that contribute to aging.
Ever since Ponce de Leon went searching for the Fountain of Youth, people have been looking for ways to slow down the aging process. Medical science has made great advances in keeping people alive longer by preventing and curing diseases, and helping people to live healthier, happier lives. Average life expectancy keeps increasing and most of us can look forward to a much longer life than our ancestors.
Our bodies were actually designed with the ability to fix themselves, as long as you take care of yourself properly. Your body is made up of about 100 trillion (100,000,000,000,000) living cells, which keep themselves strong and healthy with the proper food. Each and every one of those trillions of cells dies off and is replaced with a new cell at regular intervals. Your entire body is literally completely replaced every few years – you really aren’t the same person you used to be!
What happens with your cells is the key to anti-aging -
When a cell dies, one of three possible things must happen:
A) If the cell has not been receiving proper nutrition, its replacement will be a weaker version of the cell. In this scenario, your body is degenerating.
B) The replacement cell may have the same strength as its predecessor. In this case, your body essentially remains in the same place.
C) The third possibility is that the new cell is stronger than the previous one. Now you’re actually regenerating the body, and reversing the aging process. This can only happen if you give your cells plenty of the right kind of food energy to work with.
Sometime, usually in our late twenties or early thirties, many of us start noticing those first signs that we aren’t kids anymore – a few gray hairs appearing, facial wrinkles, skin starts sagging. As more time goes by, other signs gradually appear – it’s a little harder getting up in the morning, our vision and hearing aren’t what they used to be, our sex life isn’t as lively as we remember. As we look around, we see the same things happening to our friends and family. Most of us generally accept what we see as an inevitable process of nature.
You’re only as old as you feel -
And if you feel and think that you’re getting older – well, then you are! Your mindset does influence what goes on in your body. Meanwhile, you see your body getting older, so you feel older, which reinforces the aging processes in your body. It becomes a vicious circle.
You can turn things around -
As you notice your body looking and feeling younger, your mindset will improve, which motivates you to continue your anti-aging practices, which sets up a positive feedback loop, instead of a negative one. And so the process accelerates.
People are living longer than ever nowadays, due to advanced medical breakthroughs, increased awareness of the importance of a healthy lifestyle, and other related factors.
The human body can take an awful lot of abuse and neglect -
We don’t always think about our bad habits, since it may take years or decades for the effects to become apparent. But neglect yourself long enough and you may one day find yourself suffering through the late period of your life with a wide range of ailments and complaints - from difficulty seeing and hearing to cancer, heart disease, brittle bones, and many other problems.
Yet it only takes knowledge and a little bit of work to prevent most, if not all, of these common old-age problems from manifesting. There’s no magic pill or instant cure, and it will take some effort on your part. But the results will be well worth it. How much would it be worth to you to enjoy your final years as a healthy, active adult, able to continue doing many of the things you most love?
Find lots of Tips and Tricks about Anti-Aging at http://www.anti-aging-trix.com
Monday, January 4, 2010
Berry Good!
Long before winter comes, black bears in the forest spend all their time eating everything they can sink their teeth into. During the summer, bears eat and eat and eat, trying to get as fat as they possibly can, and when the weather turns cold, they look for a place to curl up and then they sleep the winter away.
Now, the habits of bears might not seem like something you should try to follow. After all, doctors are always warning us humans that we shouldn’t overeat, and that we shouldn’t spend all of our time lying around, doing nothing.
But there is one part of the black bear’s habits that you should actually try to imitate, because it would be good for your health.
Black bears eat a lot of berries, of many different varieties, such as raspberries, strawberries, and blueberries.
Berries contain natural sugars and wonderful flavors. Unlike many other foods that are really good for you, but which don’t taste good, berries taste great.
And unlike many foods that taste great but which aren’t good for you, berries are among the most health friendly foods you can eat.
It’s only been within the last decade that scientists have started to pay a lot of attention to the health benefits of berries. And what researchers are learning about the health benefits of berries has a lot of exciting potential for human diets.
One of the first major experiments on the health benefits of berries took place at Tufts University about ten years ago.
Researchers were working with a group of aging rats. They fed them diets of various foods to see what the effects would be. Among the foods they tested were strawberries, blueberries, and spinach.
Now these rats were fairly old in terms of “rat years”. In fact, their age was equivalent to humans about 70 years old.
The foods the scientists tested were all very high in beneficial antioxidants, so the scientists wanted to see if any of these foods would boost the physical and mental capabilities of these aging rats.
The researchers found that while several of these foods seemed to offer some antioxidant protection, the rats that had been fed blueberries were the only ones that actually improved in their abilities.
In fact, the rats which had been fed blueberries were able to perform like much younger rats!
This was a very exciting find, and the scientists then wanted to find what it was in the blueberries that produced this very beneficial effect.
It turns out that the chemicals responsible for making these aging rats act mentally younger and perkier were the pigments in the skin of the blueberries.
The compounds that give ripe berries their beautiful colors are the very substances that have such strong anti-oxidant powers. And antioxidants are compounds that help repair some of the damage that happens to our body cells every day.
Scientists have discovered that the darker the berry, the more health benefits it has! Eating two thirds of a cup of blueberries will give you as much anti-oxidant protection as five servings of apples or squash.
The dark pigments in these berries seem to offer protection against cardiovascular disease, degenerative eye disease such as cataracts, and may offer some help in preventing some cancers, and bladder infections.
If the exciting results of the rat studies turn out to also hold true for humans, it may mean that compounds in these dark berries may help protect brain cells from the degenerative diseases of aging.
You can get this fantastic antioxidant protection whether you eat your berries fresh, frozen, or dried.
You can eat berries raw, add them to your favorite cereals, or make a smoothie drink with various berries, fruits, milk and yoghurt. Get creative and find ways to mix berries into your favorite recipes.
In North America, blueberries are available fresh or frozen year round. If you can’t get fresh berries, dried berries are also filled with very concentrated levels of the valuable antioxidants.
If you live in a place where blueberries are not easily available, look for other fruits and berries that have very dark red or dark purple colors.
Foods such as pomegranates, bilberries, cherries, black raspberries, saskatoons or serviceberries also have high levels of these very beneficial dark pigments. These foods offer benefits similar to the benefits of blueberries.
So, think about incorporating at least one habit of bears into your lifestyle – and make berries a frequent part of your diet!
Now, the habits of bears might not seem like something you should try to follow. After all, doctors are always warning us humans that we shouldn’t overeat, and that we shouldn’t spend all of our time lying around, doing nothing.
But there is one part of the black bear’s habits that you should actually try to imitate, because it would be good for your health.
Black bears eat a lot of berries, of many different varieties, such as raspberries, strawberries, and blueberries.
Berries contain natural sugars and wonderful flavors. Unlike many other foods that are really good for you, but which don’t taste good, berries taste great.
And unlike many foods that taste great but which aren’t good for you, berries are among the most health friendly foods you can eat.
It’s only been within the last decade that scientists have started to pay a lot of attention to the health benefits of berries. And what researchers are learning about the health benefits of berries has a lot of exciting potential for human diets.
One of the first major experiments on the health benefits of berries took place at Tufts University about ten years ago.
Researchers were working with a group of aging rats. They fed them diets of various foods to see what the effects would be. Among the foods they tested were strawberries, blueberries, and spinach.
Now these rats were fairly old in terms of “rat years”. In fact, their age was equivalent to humans about 70 years old.
The foods the scientists tested were all very high in beneficial antioxidants, so the scientists wanted to see if any of these foods would boost the physical and mental capabilities of these aging rats.
The researchers found that while several of these foods seemed to offer some antioxidant protection, the rats that had been fed blueberries were the only ones that actually improved in their abilities.
In fact, the rats which had been fed blueberries were able to perform like much younger rats!
This was a very exciting find, and the scientists then wanted to find what it was in the blueberries that produced this very beneficial effect.
It turns out that the chemicals responsible for making these aging rats act mentally younger and perkier were the pigments in the skin of the blueberries.
The compounds that give ripe berries their beautiful colors are the very substances that have such strong anti-oxidant powers. And antioxidants are compounds that help repair some of the damage that happens to our body cells every day.
Scientists have discovered that the darker the berry, the more health benefits it has! Eating two thirds of a cup of blueberries will give you as much anti-oxidant protection as five servings of apples or squash.
The dark pigments in these berries seem to offer protection against cardiovascular disease, degenerative eye disease such as cataracts, and may offer some help in preventing some cancers, and bladder infections.
If the exciting results of the rat studies turn out to also hold true for humans, it may mean that compounds in these dark berries may help protect brain cells from the degenerative diseases of aging.
You can get this fantastic antioxidant protection whether you eat your berries fresh, frozen, or dried.
You can eat berries raw, add them to your favorite cereals, or make a smoothie drink with various berries, fruits, milk and yoghurt. Get creative and find ways to mix berries into your favorite recipes.
In North America, blueberries are available fresh or frozen year round. If you can’t get fresh berries, dried berries are also filled with very concentrated levels of the valuable antioxidants.
If you live in a place where blueberries are not easily available, look for other fruits and berries that have very dark red or dark purple colors.
Foods such as pomegranates, bilberries, cherries, black raspberries, saskatoons or serviceberries also have high levels of these very beneficial dark pigments. These foods offer benefits similar to the benefits of blueberries.
So, think about incorporating at least one habit of bears into your lifestyle – and make berries a frequent part of your diet!
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