Antioxidants are substances that protect our cells from damage caused by unstable molecules known as free radicals.
Free radicals are already a resident of our bodies and is actually a normal part of our lives.

Antioxidants control or stabilize free radicals, which are responsible for a great deal of damage within the body.
These free radicals are destabilized because they lack an electron. In seeking to stabilize themselves, they attack other molecules in an effort to take what they need from them, which results in those molecules becoming destabilized as well.
If a cell accumulates enough free radicals, cellular damage can occur, which can lead to tissue damage as the free radicals roam, increasing their population.

According to Pat Kendall, a Food Science and Human Nutrition Specialist from Colorado State University, the body’s defense mechanism systems prevents these bad, bad, free radicals to cause damage to the structure and function of the body’s cells.

But because we are exposed to pollution, UV-radiation, alcohol and other chemicals and elements bad for our system, the human body’s ability to patrol and eventually stop these free radicals are overpowered.

When this happens it will lead to numerous illnesses including the dreaded cancer and the number one killer of people in the United States the heart disease. And damage to the body’s cells leads to the more dreaded and unfortunately inevitable aging.

Antioxidants act as defense soldiers and provides the body with tools to neutralize these harmful free radicals. Several metabolic enzymes produced by the body are extremely effective antioxidant scavengers. Unfortunately, the body’s ability to produce these enzymes fades dramatically in our late twenties.

Examples of antioxidants include beta-carotene, lycopene, vitamins C, E, and A.
Cutting edge research is continually uncovering new antioxidants.
Dr. Kendall also wrote that antioxidants ward off heart disease to slowing degeneration of the brain and eyes.

Suffice to say, antioxidants are indeed lifesavers.

But are antioxidants also the missing key in preventing aging?

It is thought that antioxidants do have a role in slowing down the aging process. But this idea is yet inconclusive and studies are still ongoing to prove the concept a hundred percent accurate.
It can be noticed however, that beauty products have already started adding antioxidants in their products already – products like night cream, eye cream and even make up.

But no matter, antioxidants prove to be helpful in fighting certain illnesses. And you can either buy antioxidants supplements from your regular drugstore (no prescription required!) or do your regular exercise and stretching routine coupled with eating 5 servings of any of your favorite fruit or vegetables every day.
Doing these things will ensure that you are developing your body’s inherent antioxidant systems and that your diet is providing the necessary components.

The use of antioxidant supplements at a maintenance level may provide the ultimate defense against premature aging and a compromised immune system.
At therapeutic levels, antioxidants may actually play a significant role in reversing many of the effects of aging and disease.

Unfortunately antioxidants are specialists, not generalists. No one antioxidant works on all free radicals and in every area of the body.
You have to use an antioxidant complex that provides a full-spectrum defense. This is the only real defense against free radical devastation.

Here are some examples of antioxidants.

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Are antioxidants ‘Life-Savers’? is a post from Self Help Gems.

Most women start their lives as afresh mommy with an additional 8 to 15 pounds that they didn’t have before their baby was born. Some even more.
That excess of weight should be lost in the postpartum period.

Part of that weight that you put on during pregnancy was meant to nourish your baby AFTER birth.
An extra 300 calories a day is called for to maintain with the nutritional demands of your baby during pregnancy.
A breastfeeding mother needs at the least 500 additional calories per day to stay healthy and produce enough milk. Your body stacks away a bit of extra nutrition for after the birth just in case there isn’t sufficient food for its needs when it’s time to feed the new little critter.

If you’re breastfeeding, you will automatically be burning an extra 500 calories a day – which makes losing the extra weight substantially easier. As a matter of fact, you may not need to do anything extra at all to slim down. Just concentrate on eating a well-balanced, healthy, normal diet.

You won’t find losing weight quite as easy if you’re not breastfeeding. While still focussing on healthy eating, you should also do moderate exercise to burn extra calories.

Here’s more good news for new mothers.
Exercising is easier. Actually, that’s not quite right. Burning more calories is easier. Walking only for an hour burns off 200 calories. Doing so while pushing a stroller increases that figure substantially. It’s even higher when pushing a stroller uphill. You’ll get additional duty out of things you never thought about like  just plain carrying the baby, carrying the baby up and down stairs and lifting the stroller and car seat in and out of the car.

Still. If you find yourself with obstinate pounds that simply won’t chip off, exercise and a moderate reduction in calories is the way to go. Just like pregnancy isn’t the time for weight loss, just after pregnancy isn’t the time to strain your body further with dangerous dietetic limitations. Aim for dropping off about a pound per week, although chances are you’ll find it coming off faster than that. Being a mom is a high-energy proposition!

PS
If you, after all, need a little bit of extra help, then try this.

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Postpartum Weight Loss is a post from Self Help Gems.

Most people tend to forget how powerful and important this can be. The reasons are likely the nutritional field was too contradictory and confusing. This sort of thinking will eventually lead to pollute your body and your physiology will be unstable.
One way you can overcome this is to understand how your body works, respect it, take care of it and it will take care of you. It’s just simple as that. Eventually there are several tips you can get started to get your desire health and most importantly you physiology state.

Eat water rich foods such as apple, pear and even vegetable are consider water rich foods.
Eighty percent of our body is made up of water, studies shows, if our body has eighty percent less of water, our blood circulations might get clogged with toxic that needed to be flush out. Plain water is good but you can get all the minerals and vitamins with water rich foods.

The combinations of food that we eat are no less important.
The simple rules for this never mix carbohydrate food such as bread or potatoes with protein food such as steak. Carbohydrates foods are alkali base and will not mix well with protein food which is acidic base. This is the law of chemistry that two contrary medium (acid and alkali) cannot work at the same time. This pretty much disturbed your digestive system and will make you stomach uncomfortable. This again will affect the state of your physiology.

There’s an old saying ‘you are what you eat’. It only takes a little discipline and change – not much, because once you break your old habits, you’ll never go back. For every disciplined effort there is multiple rewards.
So, if you like what you see, do it.
Start change your life to the way you always dreamed of.

romico iqbal

PS
Check this out:
How You Can Improve Your Health Almost INSTANTLY …
And Add 5, 10 or even 20 Healthy Years To Your Life With Superfood!

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Fuel your health and physiology with healthy diet is a post from Self Help Gems.

One study looked at almost 10,000 adults. Out of smoking, drinking, income and weight, they found weight was the highest risk factor in those who suffered from chronic disease. Losing weight will help you increase your life expectancy and to live a healthier life.

Plus, when you lose weight, your quality of life will improve.
How would you love to have more energy?
Just losing 10% of your body weight will help. This loss will help you to become more mobile so getting around will be easier. You may also experience easier breathing and a better night of sleep. Even your joints will begin to feel better since you won’t have as much weight pushing down on your body.
Another benefit is, of course, your self esteem. Often we perceive our self by the way we look. A healthier body will help with a healthier attitude.

By losing weight, you will decrease your blood pressure, improved blood sugar levels, and lower cholesterol levels. People who take off those excess pounds enjoying lower chances of developing illnesses such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer and a host of other diseases.
Start losing that weight today, it can add years to your life.

Bruce Hopkins

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Health Benefits of Losing Weight is a post from Self Help Gems.

The law of attraction encompasses both the physical and the metaphysical. It keeps things in place or draws things together. Attraction is both an action and a reaction. It is the underlying force for the world we live in and also the life we live. Attraction in the physical sense can be charted and scientifically plotted. The power of attraction that our minds create is also, finally, being documented and verified by science. This mind power is directly responsible for everything we receive in life.

So what is this mind power? Thought. The substance of our being, how we perceive ourselves and the world around us. Thoughts have no mass or weight and they take up no volume or space yet they are proven to be energy and like all energy cause all things around them to be influenced.

Simple thoughts or daydreams in themselves may not have much power without the added influence of our human emotion. Give any thought an emotion and feel its power grow noticeably. Try it. Think of something you dislike or hate and then feel the emotion while you think of it. The power of that thought becomes so strong you can feel it physically. Now think about a success you are trying to achieve and then add the emotion you would feel upon reaping that reward. Very powerful.

Knowing you can create this great attracting mind power with your thoughts needs now to be made productive and constructive. You do this with the tools of concentration and discipline. Using concentration you now take control of how and what you think. Focus on the positive and the result you want. Feel the accomplishment and teach your mind to receive the reward. You feel the benefits of concentration as you are doing it. The trick is to keep up with it until it becomes a habit, part of the way you think naturally. That is where some discipline comes in.

So, you want more money. Think positively about deserving the money, completing what it is that will result in receiving the money and how much money. Add your emotion. See yourself with the money. Feel the success of having reached your goal. Now discipline yourself to come back to these positive feelings and thoughts each time you catch your mind wandering into it’s old “less than rewarding” ways.

Mind power is the key to attraction of all you want in life. Thought is the tool you will train. Emotion will charge your magnet. Concentration will keep your focus and discipline will make success a habit. Mind power can attract abundance to your life. Also, remember to have a little patience. Once you take charge of your mind power things will begin to change for you rapidly, however, keep your focus and do not let discouragement or any negative thinking creep in to derail your attraction process.

Dedicate yourself to attracting what you want. You were born with a mind and that mind taps directly into the universal which is waiting to answer your requests. Mind power and attraction are the way you send your requests and truly you will receive what you ask for. Charge up your mind power attraction levels and hang on for the ride of your life.

Louis Roggio

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Your Mind Power Attracts Your Rewards is a post from Self Help Gems.

According to research, most of our memory is short term. We lose about 50% of what we receive either by seeing or hearing almost immediately and about 20% after a day. On the other hand, long-term memory can last for years and even decades. Think about it. How long do you remember the names of your parents or your childhood address? How about your best friend’s name from 3rd grade?

Here are 3 simple tips that you can use to help you improve your memory.

Tip #1: Paying Attention
It’s important to get things right the first time. Tell yourself what is important to you to remember.
Then try to condense what you want to remember into a short sentence or a phrase that you can easily recall.

Tip #2: Use Mnemonic Devices
You can use mnemonic devices as a memory aid.
Using an acrostic is one example of this. When you were a child, I’m sure you’ve heard of this technique to remember the colors of the rainbow – “Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain” – where the first letters of the words in the sentence represents the colors of the rainbow. In this case the colors are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

Tip #3: Using External Devices
Put your PDA to good use. You can record notes to remind yourself of the things you need to do.
You can also get a cheap voice recorder and make voice notes to help you remember names, dates, facts or anything else that is useful to you.
Review the recording a few times each day and this should help you remember better.

Hock Ng

Tired Of Forgetting The Simplest Things? Click HERE!

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3 Tips for Improving Your Memory is a post from Self Help Gems.

There’s a good chance that life itself is causing you to be stressed out, and you feel helpless when it comes to finding something to do to fix the problem on your own. The problem that we often face in life is the fact that there seems to not be enough time in the day to handle all of the things that come up, and that demands are immediate attention. Between handling finances, dealing with bosses or employees, or our relationships – such as those that deal with our spouses, significant others, and children – we just can’t seem to be able to come up for air.

If that description strikes a chord with you, and seems like something that you need help with don’t feel alone. Most people struggle with this, and some don’t reach for help soon enough.

The Symptoms of Stress!
Some physical symptoms of being stressed are fatigue, headaches or migraines, indigestion or other stomach pains, tight achy muscles, rashes or other skin problems such as acne, and not getting enough sleep. As well, you’re probably an emotional wreck being easily irritated by the slightest thing, as well as often sad and depressed for no reason, and lacking motivation.
You may not have even realized that stress was causing these symptoms but likely it is.

What a Life Without Stress Could Feel Like
Imagine waking up in the morning feeling completely rested, knowing that most of what the day throws your way will be easily handled and deflected without any sort of ill feelings and anxiety. You breeze through your day in good spirits and feeling healthful because all the stress that you’ve felt in the past isn’t taking its toll on your body any longer?
Feel impossible. It may feel that way now but it certainly doesn’t have to.

A Solution to Your Stress!
So what the heck do you do about all of this, and how do you overcome your stress?
Well, it’s simple in theory but not as simple in practice however it is doable if you’ll just take sometime to work at it, and change your thought habits a little bit.
A simple two-step process can cut down on a great majority of your stress.

First you need to realize that if you have no direction then that mere fact alone causes you to be stressed, simply because the brain is one organ that does not like to be left floundering.
So the first thing that you want to do is some planning. Just give yourself some simple goals to shoot for and figure out exactly what it is that you need to do to get to that goal.

Second, learn to shut out yesterday and tomorrow and live in the very present day.
You can’t change yesterday, so worrying about it is ridiculous really and as far as tomorrow goes, you’re not there yet so you really can’t do anything about that either.
You can however do everything in your power to make sure that today is the best you can make it. Focus on today’s activities, and live everyday to its fullest while living in the moment, and watch your stress levels fall dramatically.

Troy Boyd

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A Two Step Solution To Stress is a post from Self Help Gems.

Improvement in your self-esteem begins with you believing that you can do something about it. You need to recognize which aspects in your life are causing you to have a low self-esteem and to take steps to have victory over these feelings.

We are winners not losers.

Many people I speak to compare their worst achievements with those of other people’s best achievements. Don’t do it, you will always look bad.
Stop believing that you cannot achieve anything. If you believe you can’t, then you can’t. You are the only person that stands between what you can and cannot achieve.

Isolate the aspects that are causing the low self-esteem and take positive steps to improve the situation. If you think people don’t like you, go out and make the first move to build a new friendship. This can be a frightening experience in itself, but the rewards are worth it.
Determine not to let setbacks drag you down into the gloom.
Failures are a part of life and we need to deal with them. Learn from your failures but don’t become, or see yourself as a failure.

Start to develop a high self-esteem.
Every day tell yourself that you are better than you think

Begin your process of self-esteem improvement. Change your thinking and belief in yourself. See yourself as a winner. Focus on your successes. Associate with people that see you as a winner. Set goals that you can achieve quite easily to begin with.
Experience what success feels like.

A high self-esteem changes your life. You are able to give to others instead of crying for help.

It all starts with you and the way you see yourself.
Look at yourself and see potential, lots of potential.

Eddie Scotten

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Improving your self-esteem is a post from Self Help Gems.

That single ‘flaw’ is this: the human brain does not know the difference between reality and fiction. It doesn’t know whether or not something is actually real. In other words, it can’t tell the difference between something you’re thinking about and something that’s actually happening.

As incredible as that sounds, it’s absolutely true. And I’ll prove it to you. Do this now:

Think about a time when you were really scared. Picture in your mind the images of what made it so scary. Feel what you felt at the time, think what you thought while you were there. Blow the images up really big and make them life-like. Keep running it through your mind over and over while you do this, reliving the experience.

Now if you’ve done it properly you’ll be feeling a little nervous. A little scared at reliving that experience. Not as scared as you were at the time, but certainly you’ll be feeling rather anxious about it.

So how is it that, even though you’re sitting comfortably reading this and feel safe and secure while doing so, that replaying that scary incident over again in your head rekindles the feelings and worry you had when the actual experience was physically taking place?

Quite simply, it’s because your mind doesn’t know the difference between what’s real and what isn’t.

Try it a different way. Relive, in the same way as above, ways in which you felt overjoyed or incredibly successful, or really clever and pleased with yourself. Follow the same steps to intensify the experience.

You’ll get those feelings back, too. Those euphoric, amazing feelings of happiness will come flooding back as if you’re right there now, doing what it is you’re thinking about.

So how can you use this fact to improve your life? Let me give you an example:

Many, many people loathe the thought of speaking in public. They fill their minds with the scariest thoughts they can muster up with everything going wrong, fluffing their lines and facing a hostile audience.

But it is, quite literally, all in the mind. Instead of thinking that way, picture the performance going exactly as planned with the audience loving everything you say. Imagine them laughing at your jokes and seeing faces light up when you reveal a secret or two. Picture everyone listening intently to every word you say because your information is vastly important to them.

While reading this you can easily see the difference it makes. All you need to do is apply the same strategy to other areas of your life as well. You’ll be amazed at the difference it can make when you simply use your mind to see things going well instead of wrong. Most people are full of negativity and it’s actually the way they think about things that does this to them.

Change the way you think and you can change your entire life.

James Simpson

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The Flaw of the Human Brain is a post from Self Help Gems.

“The mind of man is like a clock that is always running down, and requires to be constantly wound up.”
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) British essayist.

You could take the most powerful supplements available to boost your mind but if you don’t do these 7 suggestions for a good night’s sleep you will never realize total improvement to your memory, mood and focus and will never gain the full benefits of a supplement. So if you could benefit from a deep sleep then follow these 7 suggestions …

First, stick to drinking anything that has caffeine like coffee, tea or soda to as early in the days as possible. Caffeine in any form, yes even chocolate, can effect some people for half of the day. It is really best avoided after dinner time to include, any stimulants known to promote energy.

Second, keep your physical workouts to the late afternoon and early evening. Make sure you don’t exercise within 3 hours of bedtime as this can cause your body to be too aroused and might delay sleep or cause your sleep to be too light.

Third, do eat a small amount of food before going to bed. Contrary to popular belief a light to moderate snack about 2 hours before bedtime can actually help you sleep better. It is suggested that you eat something that includes bread or pasta or things that have carbs in them.

Fourth, avoid any kind of violent shows and such because violent situations can enter your dreams. But do stop the mental activity about an hour or so before bedtime by watching a comedy or reading a good but lighthearted book.

Fifth, the use of earplugs or earmuffs can help a lot in achieving a deep and uninterrupted sleep. Do you recall how hard it was last time that cat fight or dog barking made it on your much deserved night’s rest? And for the eyes wear some soft eye shades because there isn’t any reason to wake up at the crack of dawn just because your curtain isn’t enough to keep the early morning light out.

Sixth, when you are in bed, try some relaxation moves. Deep and slow belly breathing while shaking the legs, feet, arms, shoulders, and neck can help you drift off to sleep. Just lay on your back, relax and remember to breath in between each relaxation of the muscles groups and don’t forget all those muscles in the face too.

Seventh, now after you wake up make sure you get at least 20 minutes of early morning light. This will help regulate your sleep cycle and allow you to fall asleep more easily.

Once you have had a good nights sleep you will be much more able to focus, and nothing seems to help with a cranky mood more than a good nights rest. A deep sleep will greatly improve your overall cognition and lead you to a much improved state of mind.

Tina Garvin

PS
You may want to check out this great resource. It will help you get a good night’s sleep!

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7 Ways To Get A Good Night’s Sleep is a post from Self Help Gems.