Is drinking ice cold water bad for your health?

There is no scientific or medical study regarding the harmful or good effects of drinking ice cold water, but in alternative therapies like Chinese or Ayurvedic systems, there are some theories which say that drinking ice cold water on regular basis may harm you.

It is said that 'Long time drinking of ice-cold drinks can cause a lot of health problems, such as over weight, cough, headache, stomach problems, weak immunity, infertility etc.' and the reason is:

The average normal body temperature is 98.6°F (37°C). The ice drinks will bring down the temperature and slow down the energy and blood circulation inside the body. The coldness can be stuck somewhere in the body due to constant ice water intake, this will cause energy blockage. If the blockage occurs in the lower abdomen (which often happens to females), where uterus and ovaries are, many female related diseases and problems could appear including infertility and aging faster.

If the energy circulation slows, the metabolism slows, over weight is the result of that.
Aging and diseases are all the results of either slowing or blockage of energy inside of our body. Low temperature is one of the causes.
A cup of ice water may make you feel heavenly after a sweaty exercise or at the time you feel really hot. But that cup of water could hurt you 10 times more due to the sudden cooling inside your body especially if you quickly finish it.

According to Ayurveda, ice cold water or drinks hinder the process of digestion and slow down the Jatharagni (digestive fire). As a result, food is not digested properly, leading to the formation of sticky toxic material (ama) in the small intestine. Other effects include under nourishment and blockage of body's channels (srotas), which can further lead to hundreds of diseases.

Ice cold water is very bad for patients because their digestive fire is already weak due to low levels of immunity.

According to Ayurveda, you should always drink water at normal room temperature. If you live in very hot climate, you can drink slightly cool water. And the best is to drink lukewarm water. It helps in enhancing the process of digestion, clears the accumulated toxins, opens up the blocked channels, and balances Vata and Kapha (Ayurvedic humours representing Air and Water). If you are suffering from Pitta diseases (such as skin rashes, burning sensation, hyperacidity, etc.),

There is an urban legend that if you drink cold water, especially after eating, you’ll get cancer. The theory, which has been widely circulated via email, suggests that cold water solidifies fats you have just consumed, quickly causing toxins to create cancer in your body. Sites devoted to proving or disproving urban legends, like snopes.com, have defeated this theory quite effectively.

Useful links:

* A discussion at a health forum: Is ice water bad for u?

How to Get Happiness from Within and Get Health Plus Longevity?

Real happiness comes from inside, and we know that happiness brings health plus longevity, but how to get real happiness to stay healthier and longer? The simple answer may be to ‘be satisfied with your life as it is, and be thankful to God’. As happiness and sorrow are parts of our life we cannot choose only to be happy. But we can learn to be happy from within.

Happiness helps you bringing joy within yourself and spreading around you. This post helps you find ways to happiness and enables you to download valuable free ebooks. I have downloaded these priceless and valuable ebooks and realized that you have to pay a high price for the valuable stuff, but hats off to the authors of these books who devoted this information to mankind and shared it with all.

According to the World Health Organization, "Health is more than the absence of disease. Health is a state of optimal well-being." Optimal well-being is a concept of health that goes beyond the curing of illness to one of achieving wellness.

Fyodor Dostoevsky said: "Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it."

Read more: How to Get Happiness from Within and Get Health Plus Longevity?

How to Get Help with Herbs in Detoxification Process and Be Healthy?

Detoxification can help us stay healthy. And herbs help us in detoxification processes, as they can improve our body’s capacity to deal with it.

What is detoxification?
The whole purpose of "detox" is basically a process of getting rid of unwanted toxins from your body. This is done by only consuming natural and healthy products including only eating vegetables and herbs and removing any other forms of saturated fats or carbohydrates from your diet.

Combining herbal cleanse products with eating more fresh fruit and vegetables can be beneficial for detoxification.
Neil Levin, of Now Food says: ""the science of multiple chemical sensitivity. This is the science relating to the concept that at some point the total toxic load upon the body, which is mainly processed by the liver, may overwhelm the body's ability to detoxify and safely excrete excess chemicals, whether natural or synthetic. The use of certain nutrients to be utilized in these processes – notably antioxidants, minerals and amino acids - are ‘limiting factors' affecting an individual's detoxification capacity and chemical clearance rates. Detoxification is far more than just drinking tap water".

Simon Mills makes the point that if one of the body's elimination channels is overloaded, or not functioning as well as it could, it can affect the whole interrelated system. This is why skin problems are often dealt with by natural therapists by changing the diet of those affected, and giving them herbal cleanse supplements.

Other factors that can contribute to an overloaded body include:

• poor diet
• diet high in processed foods
• poorly functioning digestive system
• overeating, especially on a regular basis
• diet high in fat
• some medications, like antibiotics and others
• stress, especially over long periods of time
• lack of exercise

If food stays too long in the colon, it putrefies and produces more toxic by products. These can often be reabsorbed by the body, or at least produce irritation.

Erica Angyal cites these symptoms of an overburdened digestive system:

• diarrhea
• constipation
• abdominal pain
• bloating
• gas
• nausea
• vomiting
• burning sensation after eating

feeling very full after meals, especially if you haven't eaten much rumbling noises except the normal ones when you're hungry So, the benefits of an herbal cleanse, with an increase in fresh fruit and vegetables, is a great investment in your health. It's not really necessary to fast on juices or anything else. A long term, more gentle approach that encourages good eating habits and sustainable changes is better. Eating healthily, regular exercise and drinking plenty of water also helps your body become more efficient and you'll also be able to remove some of those excess fatty areas at the same time! Source article: Herbal cleanse

For more online resoruces and links:

• The 28-Day Herbal Program
• Herbal Body Cleanses
• Herbal Information and Research
• Liver cleanse recipes

First published : How to Get Help with Herbs in Detoxification Process and Be Healthy?

How Our Psychological Health Triggers Our Immune System

It is very obvious that unhappy persons suffer mentally and physically. The people with a positive approach towards life stay physically and mentally fit and healthy. But is there any relation between our mind (psychological health)and our immune system?

It now appears that immune function and psychological health may be directly related.

One recent study, for example, found that women with histories of long-term sexual abuse had lower ratios of certain immune cells, resulting in "significant immunological abnormalities." Another study suggests that the ability to express one’s distress can improve immune function.

This relationship between psychological health and immunity can have a profound effect on how the body reacts to illness. In the 1970s Carl and Stephanie Simonton began teaching cancer patients the use of visualization at the Cancer Counseling and Research Center in Dallas. Patients visualized forces coming to fight their cancer. The survival rates of their patients doubled. Some even experienced spontaneous remissions. Researchers do not fully understand this connection between psychological well-being and immune function, but there is considerable evidence that this link exists. Robert Ader and Nicholas Cohen conducted a series of experiments at Rochester University Medical School.

Beginning in the 1970s they administered a drug that lowers immune response in water flavored with saccharin to mice. They then measured the immune response of the mice. After testing, they administered saccharin alone. The mice showed the same immune suppression without being given the immuno-suppressant drug. The response came with exposure to saccharin alone – a conditioned response. This suggested a strong link between immune function and psychological learning.

Relationship between the nervous system and the immune system:

One kind of immune cells, lymphocytes, remain undivided and unchanged throughout your lifetime ö just like brain cells. One set of lymphocytes even develops at the same stages and in the same place as your brain cells. The immune system and the nervous system also share a number of features, including memory and recognition. It now appears that bidirectional pathways, two-way avenues of communication, exist between the nervous, endocrine, and immune systems. The phrase psychoneuroimmunology describes the combined study of the psyche, nervous system and immune system. Coined by Robert Adler as early as 1975, the fruits of this complex area of study have only recently begun to become available.

Yale researcher Bernie Siegel is widely known for his work on visualization. He focuses on helping patient to achieve peace of mind, and notes that when they do, diseases and illnesses often disappear. "My message is peace of mind, not curing cancer or paralysis," Siegel says. "In achieving peace of mind, cancer may be healed and paralysis may disappear. These things may occur through peace of mind, which creates a healing environment in the body."

Similarly, Jon Kabat-Zinn, who heads the Stress Reduction Clinic at University of Massachusetts Medical Center, emphasizes that use of meditation must center on healing not on cure. "In order to be effective for healing, we believe that the use of visualization and imagery needs to be embedded in a larger context, one that understands and honors non-doing and non-striving," he writes. "Otherwise, visualization exercises can too easily degenerate from meditation into wishful thinking, and the intrinsic healing power and wisdom of the simple mindfulness practice itself can remain untapped or be trivialized in the quest for something more elaborate and goal oriented." Ironically, it seems the best way to use meditation to increase healing involves letting go of the immediate goal and practicing mindfulness or meditation for its own sake. "To bring calmness to the mind and body requires that at a certain point we be willing to let go of wanting anything at all to happen and just accept things as they are and ourselves as we are with an open, receptive heart," Kabat-Zinn explains. "This inner peace and acceptance lie at the heart of both health and wisdom."

Links between the immune system and psychological well being are not yet fully understood, but they clearly exist. An integrated approach toward heath will involve not only the development of knowledge of the immune system, and learning detoxification and methods of supporting the immune system, but will incorporate some sort of spiritual orientation and practice. Unresolved psychological wounds appear to have a real impact on our health, and the work of psychological growth and healing cannot be ignored in moving toward full health. Perhaps most importantly, full health involves creating and sustaining an image of yourself as a healthy and fulfilled person. That work of visualization and imagery can be started today, at no cost, by first seeing yourself as the person you hope to be.

Source: Psychoneuroimmunology First published at: How Our Psychological Health Triggers Our Immune System ?

How to diagnose wet cough?

Cough may be dry or wet, but there is a lot of difference between symptoms and diagnose of both. This article helps you learn about cough, kinds of cough, symptoms and diagnose.

A cough is only a symptom, not a disease, and often the importance of your cough can be determined only when other symptoms are evaluated. Coughing is the body’s way of removing foreign material or mucus from the lungs and upper airway passages or of reacting to an irritated airway. Coughs have distinctive traits you can learn to recognize. There are two kinds of wet coughs, productive and non-productive wet cough. The symptoms of these cough conditions can help a health professional decide further test or go for treatment procedure.

 

Illnesses That may Cause a Cough

1. Common Cold
2. Pneumonia
3. Bronchitis  

If it is a wet, productive cough, the

• It could be pneumonia.
• Possibly bronchitis.
• It may be the flu.  

Read more: Wet Cough Diagnosis

Food Combinations That may Cause Gas

Correct food combinations are important for proper digestion, utilization, and assimulation of the nutrients in our diet. Different foods require different digestive enzymes to aid in the digestive process - some acid, some alkaline. When acids and alkalines come in contact, they neutralize each other and this retards digestion. Poor food combining or food combinations can be a cause of indigestion or stomach disorders in the body. Ulcerative Colitis, Gastritis, Acid Reflux are some of the stomach disorder examples. When wrong foods are consumed at the same time, you are likely to get digestive disorders.

The reason for these ailments is that certain food groups do not digest well together. Some foods digest primarily in the stomach, others in the small intestine. Some foods digest in minutes while others take many hours. Some foods require an acid medium to digest in and others an alkaline medium. Therefore certain foods eaten together do not digest properly and thus tend to become toxic.

Food combining is an area where everyone seems to have an opinion. One way to find out what is right for yourself is to experiment. Try it and see how you feel. Listen to your body. What works for one person may not work for another person.

By understanding the food combinations that you should avoid, you will be able to keep your digestive system in top working order and stay feeling healthier and happier in general.

Read more: Food Combinations

How to Redesign Your Diet to Deflate High Blood Pressure?

Most of us know the fact that food makes us healthy and at the same time wrong choices make us sick. Hypertension is known as the "silent killer" and is one of the most common diseases of the cardiovascular system. As hypertension in the body becomes prolonged, the risk for heart failure, vascular disease, kidney (renal) failure, and stroke increases. Mainly it is suggested that alcohol, salt and fats should be avoided to lower your high blood pressure.

Although there has been no cause identified for hypertension in 90 percent of people, dietary factors have been shown to influence blood pressure. People with hypertension can deflate high blood pressure by redesigning their diet. By changing a few simple dietary habits, including counting calories and watching portion sizes to boost weight loss, you may be able to lower your blood pressure — a proven risk for heart disease. Findings show that potassium, magnesium, and fiber may also affect blood pressure. Fruits and vegetables are high in potassium, magnesium, and fiber and low in sodium. Also, nuts, seeds, legumes, lean meats, and poultry are good sources of magnesium.

Read more: How to Redesign Your Diet to Deflate High Blood Pressure?