To have incredible health, it’s important that you are always on a good diet and that you are always eating the right food that are good for you. The best way to find the best diet is by reading diet reviews that are located online and help people out with their goals of losing weight or getting over health problems that they are facing. If you have been trying to find a great resource to all your health questions, then the internet can sure be your friend.

If you are new to dieting and living right - eating healthy, exercising well, etc. - then you may not know a whole lot about what you can do for your health by regular diet and exercise that works well. If you have health questions, make sure to do your research and do your homework so that you know you are doing the right things. By doing the right things for your body, you will be optimizing your health for increased longevity in life and a better sense of overall well-being. Try out a new way to diet if the current way you are dieting is not working out for you too well.

If you need motivation, you are not alone. Most people who start a diet often run into certain things that take them off course and prevent them from succeeding in their diet. This is why you should read some important health tips so that you can benefit from proper diet and exercise like you should be!

Having been a bit slow on health tips, I’ve decided to do a post on things I’ve found useful in preventing malaria.  

One obvious one is to buy a net.  I had a lifesystems net for my last trip, which was pretty good and only about £15 so not bad value.  It was easy to fasten to places both as a box net and as a wedge shape where only two corners are supported.  I also bought a hanging kit, which was beyond useless as the suckers in it didn’t work.  It would have been useful to have them, but I managed without, just using a bit of ingenuity to find high enough places to hang the net - its not essential the hanging kit but useful if you get one that works.

Secondly, as repellent I used some lifesystem roll on, which was ok but not brilliant, but also Geranium Oil, which I have found is far and away the most effective repellent.  You can get it from holland and barret for about £5 a pot, which is expensive, but definitely worth it.  I put some on sweatbands and a handkerchief near me and a drop on my feet, chest and neck and then just leave the bottle open to gradually emit its fragrance.   It works very well on the first night spent somewhere, ad is even more effective if you are staying in a room for several days on the bounce as you can leave the bottle open and I found there was never a mosy in within sight or sound.  I’m told citronella is similarly effective, but I have never tried it myself, but would get a bottle for my next trip to try out.

Third thing is, if you are in a hotel with a fan, turn it on.  I’m not sure how this works, but the mosies don’t seem to like windy places - I remember a hotel owner on Lamu telling me that where he stayed he was generally safe from malaria because the sea breeze stopped the moises coming to him.  Again when I have had the fan on, it has always kept the mosies away, as well as keeping me cool through the night.

As for drugs, I didn’t use any for this trip - malerone was too expensive I had been told not that effective, especially if you miss a day or two here and there, and the other treatments all have possible side effects.  I had been told of a homeopathy treatment and took that, which was a little pill once a day and a booster twice a week.  Many people don’t like ‘alternative’ therapies, which is fair enough, but homeopathy had helped me with other things in life so I decided to try it out and it worked.

For now that’s all the advice I can think of, hope it helps - definitely did for me as I remained malaria free for my whole trip.

I wonder if I have reached the point where I’d be considered a cougar. Nothing is funnier than the Ask.com commercial where the guy is sitting at the gym and he is asking himself (through the person following him) “…where can I find cougars?” Hilarious to me - or maybe it is the voice.

Do you have to be in your 40’s to be a cougar and love younger men…or can you be approaching 40, be in your sexual prime and have a fond appreciation for men? I guess that is my question for today…

Well, because I do have an appreciation for men & what they have to offer…

I will share some tips that have been generated from the minds of men that I think we all could use…thanks to Men’s Health Magazine.

1. Strengthen your core. Save your back, lift more, run more: it all starts in the middle!
2. Tilt up your mirror just far enough to force yourself into an upright sitting position to see behind you, which is good for your posture and aching back.
3. Never eat out of the original container. How many times have you dipped into a pint of ice cream only to find yourself staring at the bottom of the container 15 minutes later?
4. LDL Cholesterol does not mean much as a stand alone stat because it doesn’t take your HDL or “good” cholesterol into account. A better gauge of heart disease risk: your ratio of total to HDL cholesterol.
5. Don’t check in for surgery in July. If you’re scheduling elective surgery in a teaching hospital, shoot for late spring when the residents have more experience.
6. Drink the green tea, the wonder liquid. It may help lower your heart disease risk.
7. Don’t blow your nose when you have a cold. It can force mucus and germs back into nasal passages and prolong the cold. Use antihistamines…and please wipe.
8. The bicycle crunch is the greatest abs exercise ever (based on a test done using an electromyograph machine measuring muscle activity)
9. Use the stall nearest to the door. It has the fewest germs and the most toilet paper because everyone walks past it.
10. Stress reducers! Spending time with a pet is more effective at reducing stress than spending time with friends, mates or alcohol.
11. Lose your gut because belly fat kills. Visceral fat (the stuff that settles in your abdomen) lets toxins seep into your vital organs. Which is why round-bellied people die sooner than flat-belllied people. So eat six small meals a day instead of 3 big ones - you’ll stave off hunger and avoid overeating.
12. Drink chocolate milk…it’s a nearly perfect postworkout drink.
13. Hard and fast is best! The quickest way to burn fat and build fitness is working out using intense bursts of activity with short rests in between.
14. EAT THE BACON!!!! Fat doesn’t make you fat. Too many calories does, especially when you are not active enough to burn them off. Fat is good. Just not too much!

Vitamin C may blunt effect of chemotherapy

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vitamin C supplements may undercut the effectiveness of cancer drugs including Novartis’ Gleevec, a U.S. study published on Wednesday showed.

When used on human cancer cells treated with a form of vitamin C in lab dishes, chemotherapy drugs killed 30 percent to 70 percent fewer tumor cells than usual, the scientists wrote in the journal Cancer Research.

Dr. Mark Heaney of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and colleagues also implanted human cancer cells into mice, and found that when mice got vitamin C supplements two hours before chemotherapy, the tumors grew more quickly.

They tested five common chemotherapy drugs including Gleevec, also known as imatinib.

“The vitamin C didn’t neutralize the effects of the chemotherapy drugs, but it blunted their effects,” Heaney said in a telephone interview.

The other drugs were doxorubicin, cisplatin, methotrexate and vincristine. They work in different ways to combat tumors.

“Vitamin C is something everyone needs to have in their diet or you develop scurvy. But I don’t recommend taking supplemental vitamin C during that period of time that my patients are receiving chemotherapy,” Heaney added.

Heaney said it did not appear that the antioxidant properties of vitamin C were the culprit. Rather, it may be the protective effect vitamin C has on mitochondria — which generate energy for a cell — within cancer cells, he added.

Chemotherapy drugs damage mitochondria in cancer cells.

“When mitochondria are damaged, they can send signals to the cell to die. And that’s, we think, one of the ways that the chemotherapy drugs exert their beneficial effects. And vitamin C helps to preserve the health of the mitochondria,” Heaney said.

By protecting the mitochondria, vitamin C prevents chemotherapy agents from working to their full potential.

Heaney acknowledged that a study looking at cancer cells in laboratory dishes or in mice is not the final word on the subject, and said more research is needed.

The findings are the latest development in the controversy over vitamin C and cancer. The notion that vitamin C, also known as ascorbic acid, could be used to treat cancer was advanced in the 1970s by American scientist Linus Pauling, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1954.

Studies in which vitamin C pills were given to treat cancer failed to show a benefit.

But a study at the U.S. National Institutes of Health published in August showed that injections of high doses of vitamin C greatly reduced the rate of tumor growth in mice.

By Will Dunham

(Editing by Maggie Fox and Xavier Briand - Reuter UK)

When talking about skin problems, nine times out of ten you will discover that the topic is acne. Acne is one of the most common skin conditions, mostly in teens but also with adults, acne can prove to be a very serious problem.

One of the products that have been swiping the markets is acne soap, almost every cosmetics and dermatology company that respects itself has some kind of acne soap out there for the public to use, many soaps may cause irritation to some of its users, some soaps are scented and some users are irritated by them too. Soaps have become the number one product to fight acne.

These anti acne soaps come in two different forms, in liquid or in classic bar shape, most of the soaps have a similar version in bar or liquid so it is really the preference of the user if he or she likes this form or the other better. Cleansers are used to fight and remove oil and dirt from the surface of the face thus cleaning and “opening” it. this is not a one step procedure, the cleaning is a first step, allowing the active topical acne cleaner to treat the acne and decrease it.

One major problem with teens using these soap and anti acne treatments is that they are too eager to eliminate their acne that they overuse the products, this may cause other problems, as the use of soap on the face skin creates dryness and irritation. In this case there should be a regular, and steady use of the treatment products, and not an acne blitz to try and eliminate acne immediately, this simply does not work.

Another important factor is the kind of skin the user has, it is important to know and understand what kind of skin you have before you even buy your acne treatment products, soaps or cleansers. Dry or oily skin require a product that will treat the face skin accordingly, otherwise the user may make his problem worst than better, this is very important, and this should not be left for the salesperson to deiced. Users with dry skin should gentle cleansers and soaps, as they will feel an aggressive one immediately and it would not help their condition. Synthetic detergents are sometimes recommended for dry skin, they should not be used often and have been known to work well on that skin type.

One skin type that needs to be most careful of all is a sensitive skin type, if you have sensitive skin you should be very careful with what you use, try and make sure well in advance that the product is fro sensitive skin and that it will not hurt your skin face, try not to use any products that require scrubbing or aggressive washing, look for gentle soaps and liquids, cleansers and special sensitive skin products.

It is important to know what you are shopping for and what kind of skin you have, before you even go out to the shop. You should put some thought into the acne treatment that you are going to use, and think about a long term fight against acne and not a one day effort, find a product you like and that is good for you, and use it every couple of days, always read the instructions and use common sense when looking for new products.