People who have good emotional well-being are those who spend quality time with those who matter to them. They are people who take time to love, laugh and connect with others. Having significant relationships in your life goes a long way in maintaining your emotional balance and stability in life. Learn to communicate with others, and your relationships will improve ten-fold, as will your emotional well-being.

Find effective ways to relax and cope with the stress in your life. Meditation is one way to do this. Meditation is more complex than simply kicking back and relaxing. It is about solitude, deep breathing and focusing on your inner spirit. Once you learn how to meditate you can do it as often as you need in order to help center yourself. This is one way to take control of your emotional being and make it stronger.

When you have a problem in your life deal with it as quickly as possible. Don’t obsess over it but don’t procrastinate either. Mull it over and seek advice from others if need be. Talking it out is an important step, but you need to find a solution as soon as possible. Suffering much stress for a long period of time over a problem, whether it is personal, financial, or work, can wreck havoc on your emotional health. It also can cause sleepless nights and physical ailments. Learn to cope effectively with the circumstances and situations that come your way.

Find an outlet that brings you happiness. Some people are artistic and like to paint, dance, or write. Other people enjoy sports. Yet other people like to curl up on the couch with a good book and revel in their own peaceful, quiet time. This ties in with treating yourself. Your emotional side can get worn down and ragged sometimes, so finding a special way to reward or treat yourself will make you feel not just good but great!

According to the Mayo Clinic web site, there are general guidelines for the amount of sleep required, based on age.  Dr. Kenneth Berge recommends the following, “Infants typically sleep at least 16 hours a day. Most preschoolers need at least 11 hours of sleep a night, and most school-age children need at least 10 hours of sleep a night. By the teenage years, nine hours of sleep a night is usually adequate.”

So, if you put your 3 year old to bed at 7:30 pm, you should expect her to sleep until about 6:30 am.  Of course, different households have different schedules, so for some houses 7:30 is the perfect bedtime, while at another it may be 9:00 pm.  As long as your child is able to sleep late enough to get the required amount of sleep, the exact bedtime doesn’t matter.

Once school begins, then bedtime becomes more important.  A first grader can’t go to bed at 10:00 pm on a school night, get ten hours of sleep, and be on time for school.  When your child reaches school-age (or needs to go to daycare), bedtime can be established by working backward.  Determine what time your child needs to wake and count back the appropriate amount of hours.

A last, but important, note on this topic is that every child is not the same.  So, even though teenagers typically require nine hours of sleep, that doesn’t mean that your 16 year old son does.  He may need ten hours and has to go to bed at 8:00 pm in order to be up at 6:00 am.  Conversely, your 14 year old daughter may need eight hours of sleep and can go to bed at 10:00 pm and wake at 6:00 am without a problem.

While many kids will tell you they’re not tired and don’t need to go to bed at whatever time you have chosen, as a parent, you can determine if your child is right quite easily.  Let your daughter go to bed half an hour later than you have recommended.  Does she wake up on time in the morning, or does she sleep through her alarm?  Is she tired later in the day?  If so, she needs more sleep.  However, if you make your daughter’s bedtime later, and she awakes on time and doesn’t appear drowsy later in the day, a later bedtime may be acceptable.

As many as one in three North Americans will develop one form of cancer or another in their lives. What many people are unaware of is that cancer can be prevented in many instances by living a healthy lifestyle. It has been estimated that 75 percent of the deaths that are cancer related could have been prevented. Here we offer some preventative measures for you.

Topping the list is smoking. If you smoke, quit, and if you don’t smoke, do not start! Besides lung cancer, smoking has been linked to other types of cancer, such as throat cancer and stomach cancer. In fact, avoid all types of tobacco and steer clear of second-hand smoke at every opportunity.

Engage in as much physical activity as you possibly can. Exercise alone, with a partner, or in a group. Exercise strengthens the body and also helps to keep extra pounds at bay. All of these things taken together lower your chances of developing cancer.

Eat as healthily as possible. Consume vegetables of all different colors. Choose foods that are abundant in their vitamin, mineral and antioxidant content. Include plenty of leafy green vegetables in your daily diet, such as broccoli, kale, bok choy and spinach. Eat whole grains, low fat dairy products, seafood and berries often. Reduce your consumption of saturated fats and trans fats, as well as fried and greasy foods.

Instead of brewing a cup of java in the morning or regular tea, drink green tea. Green tea is rich in ingredients that help to fight cancer, and it is also plentiful in terms of its antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties. But don’t just drink it in the morning, any time of the day that you want a warm liquid treat, make yourself some green tea!

Get seven to eight hours sleep every night. Sleep often is not recognized as an important aspect of being healthy (and staying healthy), but it is significant. Sleep provides the body with the time it needs to rest and heal.

What do we need Vitamin A for?

What happens if we do not take in Vitamin A?
In the USA, for a person not to get enough Vitamin A is unlikely. A regular-sized carrot actually contains about four times as much Vitamin A as a person needs. However, a lack of Vitamin A eventually can lead to vision impairment, drying of the cornea, and even blindness. Unfortunately, each year hundreds of thousands of children in developing countries, primarily in Africa, become blind due to a lack of Vitamin A.

Can we have too much Vitamin A?
Just like anything else, too much of Vitamin A can be harmful. It is fat-soluble; thus, unlike when dealing with Vitamins B and C, an excess of Vitamin A cannot be disposed easily by the body. The first sign of a Vitamin A “overdose” is called carotenemia, in other words, when the person’s skin turns orange or yellow. If this discoloration is overlooked, though it is quite obvious, toxic death can occur.

In what foods (besides carrots) can I find Vitamin A?
Many daily vitamins contain Vitamin A, but it is relatively easy to find in foods that naturally contain it. In order of high Vitamin A content to low (but significant) Vitamin A content, the following foods also contain Vitamin A: liver, broccoli leaves, sweet potatoes, butter, kale, spinach, pumpkin, collard greens, cheddar cheese, cantaloupes, eggs, apricots, papayas, mangoes, peas, broccoli, and milk. (Carrots falls between the liver and the broccoli leaves.)

Kiwis are among the most nutritionally dense fruits in the world. They are packed with powerful antioxidants and are extremely rich in many vitamins, flavonoids and minerals. They have more Vitamin C than oranges do, as much potassium as bananas have, and a lot of beta-keratin as well.  Vitamin C is a water-soluble antioxidant that has been proven to protect our body from free radicals– thereby improving one’s chances of leading a healthier life without all sorts of diseases. Vitamin E is also in kiwis. This vitamin is fat-soluble, therefore it compliments Vitamin C very well.

These fruits are very high in dietary fiber content. Fiber has been proven to reduce cholesterol levels. Not only does it have overall benefits, but it has been shown that consuming fibers also helps to control diseases, such as diabetes, by maintaining sugar levels. It also helps people with colon cancer because of the properties of fiber that allow it to bind to toxic compounds in the colon that then will be expelled.

Kiwis come from the fruit species Actinidia Deliciosa. They are hybrids between this species and others in the genus Actinidia. The kiwifruit originally was known by its Chinese name, yáng táo or Mihou Tao. However, after it was introduced to New Zealand, it was known as the Chinese gooseberry, because people thought that the fruit had a hint of gooseberry flavor. The United States began to import the fruit into the US, but they needed a shorter name that did not show a connection to China and could be connoted quickly to New Zealand.

Here are some other health benefits that studies have shown to be connected to eating the kiwifruit. Eating kiwis prevents asthma and wheezing and coughing (specifically in children). These fruits also help to prevent DNA mutations from occurring.

The kiwifruit is one of the most power-packed fruits on this planet. It is the most nutritionally dense fruit that also happens to taste delicious!

The list provided by the American Red Cross does include many important supplies for wounds.  An assortment of sizes of adhesive bandages is useful for cuts, especially as most bandages have a non-adhesive pad.  Sterile gauze pads and absorbent compress dressings are useful for cleaning and padding a larger wound.  However, if you have a large open wound or a wound in a location that is difficult to cover with a bandage, you want a non-adhesive dressing to cover the wound.  The gauze pad or compress dressing will stick to the wound, which means more pain (and possibly bleeding) when changing the dressing.

Check your first aid supplies.  Make sure you have all of the recommended supplies, and add a box of non-adhesive dressings to prepare yourself for any injuries.

So, we know, for example, that donuts vary in calorie count. For instance, while yeast donuts are usually anywhere from 170 to 270 calories each, the denser cake-like doughnuts can be from 290 to 360 calories, and the cream-filled types can run from 300 to 390 calories each. While that make seem like a lot, it may be interesting to note that muffins are rarely lower in calories.

A “plain” muffin alone in today’s world could contain from 340 to 630 calories each– that is without any butter or other spread! To take things to another level,  the reduced fat options are not that slimming either. Picture a Dukin Donuts’ low fat blueberry muffin. Okay that muffin alone is worth 450 calories– 90 of which are from fat.  To give you a number to compare this reduced fat option, allow me to point out that the non-reduced fat option is 510 calories– 140 from fat. A low fat cranberry orange muffin or a honey bran raisin muffin sounds like a healthier choice, right? Well, those will run you about 390 and 500 calories, respectively.

Calories are not the only parts of a muffin that makes it unhealthy. One major concern is the amount of saturated fat or trans fat. Most contain from 11 to 27 grams of total fat; of which about 2 to 8 grams of that are saturated fat. Eating a muffin for breakfast is not usually all too different from chowing down on a piece of cake for breakfast.

Of course, there are ways to make healthy muffins– especially if you make them from scratch at your home. There are plenty of online recipes that you can search to make healthier muffins and plenty of techniques you can use to bake your own healthy breakfast foods.

In a recent study that included 146 obese adults with the average age of 52, it was found that a low-carb diet was more effective in lowering hypertension than the drug Orlistat. The 146 participants of the study were divided into two groups, one group was given a low-carb diet, the other group was given a low-fat diet and Orlistat. The participants in the low-carb diet were restricted to a carbohydrate intake of less than 20 grams per day. Those on Orlistat were given less than 30 percent of their calories from fat. After 48 weeks the participants in both groups experienced the same amount of weight loss, but those who had the low-carb diet were able to reduce or totally eliminate their blood pressure medication during the course of the study.

The study’s lead researcher, Dr. William S. Yancy, Jr., an associate professor of medicine at Duke University Medical Center, said that they “expected the weight loss to be considerable with both therapies”, but they “were surprised to see blood pressure improve so much more with the low-carbohydrate diet than with Orlistat”. One of the effects of weight loss is lower blood pressure, but low-carb diets may have an additional blood pressure-lowering effect.

*Who gets spider veins?*

Everyone is susceptible to some degree, but women over the age of fifty are most likely to develop them. According to a recent study, 55% of American women age 50+ suffer from spider veins. However, men are not immune from them; reportedly 45% of males age 50+ also experience this problem, too. Other risk factors include obesity, UV exposure, and lack of exercise. However, the biggest culprit is something you unfortunately have no control over – your genetic predisposition.

*How to treat them?*

The good news is that there are several different treatment options available. One of the most common is a procedure known as sclerotherapy; a doctor injects a solution directly into the veins to dissolve them. Although this technique has been around for over a century, during the past few years many have questioned whether or not it’s a good idea to inject such a strong chemical into the circulatory system. As an alternative an alternative, some are opting for laser skin resurfacing instead. However, the drawback is that laser skin treatments are usually rather pricey. Last but not least, the most popular removal method is probably spider vein cream.

*Will spider vein cream help?*

Like anything in life, there are always two sides to every coin. There are tons of people who swear by spider vein cream, yet there are others who feel it’s not that effective. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle; it might be able to help mild cases, but severe spider veins will probably require something different (like laser spider vein removal). Either way, it’s important to speak with a qualified doctor before you begin any kind of treatment.