10 ways to live to be 100

What are the secrets to longevity? Dr Maoshing Ni has an answer, or ten, in his new book

1. Take long walks for a longer life
Most centenarians walk for at least thirty minutes a day. Walking can considerably reduce risks of stroke and heart disease, according to research. It can also boost levels of good cholesterol.

2. Slim down with soup
Eat nutritious soup at least once a day. Low salt soup re-hydrates as it nourishes and flushes waste from your system. Lose more weight than those who eat the same number of calories but don't eat soup. Avoid canned soups which are loaded with salt and chemicals.

3. Drink pure filtered water
Hundreds of pollutants are regularly found in drinking water from various sources. Your safest bet is to use a wide-spectrum water filtration system.

4. Clean your fruit and vegies thoroughly
Scrub your produce in a mixture of salt and hot water to remove external layers of pesticides, fungicides and wax. Go for organic-grown produce whenever possible.

5. Speed up your metabolism
An amino acid ‘L-carnitine’ manufactured in your liver can promote fat loss, increase circulation to the brain and boost energy production in muscle cells. The following foods are rich in L-carnitine: meats, fish, poultry, wheat, avocado, milk and fermented soybeans.

6. Protect your eye-sight with spinach
Studies show that spinach really does help you see better. It contains special antioxidants that protect the eye from age-related macular degeneration.

7. Look and feel younger with nuts and seeds
A handful of nuts and seeds everyday is fantastic for improving circulation and muscle tone. They contain the amino acid ‘arginine’ which is useful in fighting heart disease, impotence, infertility and high blood pressure.

8. Eat more during the day and less at night
Research suggests that if you eat your daily protein and fat at breakfast you will have more energy and tend to lose weight. If however, you eat those same things at dinner time you might tend to gain weight, increase blood pressure and risk of heart disease.

9. Be a vegetarian on weekdays, a carnivore on weekends
Generally, vegetarians suffer fewer degenerative diseases than carnivores. For a perfectly healthy and balanced approach, limit your intake of red meat to only weekends.

10. Stimulate the brain with mental fitness
Fickle memory, diminishing concentration and slowed response time are caused by decreased blood flow to the brain and the loss of brain cells. To stimulate brain cell activity you could find new hobbies, learn new things and attempt cross-word puzzles.

(Source: Blackmores)

Give up sugar to live longer

Passing on sweets and avoiding vitamins could help you live longer, German researchers have discovered.

They found that restricting glucose - a simple sugar found in foods such as sweets that is a primary source of energy for the body - set off a process that extended the life span of some worms by up to 25 per cent.

The key was boosting the level of ``free radicals'' - unstable molecules that can damage the body and which people often try to get rid of by consuming food or drinks rich in anti-oxidants such as vitamin E, they said in a study published in the journal Cell Metabolism.

Restricting glucose first spurred the worms to generate more free radicals, but then they quickly built up long-lasting defences against them, said Michael Ristow, an endocrinologist at the University of Jena and the German Institute of Human Nutrition, who led the study.

``During the process, the worm generates more free radicals, which activates defences against free radicals within the worm,'' he said in a telephone interview. ``The bad thing in the end promotes something good.''
The body needs glucose, but taking in too much was unhealthy, Ristow said.

Scientists have long known that restricting calorie intake in worms and monkeys increases longevity, and the study narrowed that idea further, to glucose.

The study also for the first time points to a possible reason why antioxidants - long thought to promote health - might do more harm than good, Ristow said.

The German team used a chemical that blocked the worms' ability to process glucose in a treatment that extended their life span by up to 25 per cent, the equivalent of 15 years in humans.

The worms unable to depend on glucose increased energy power sources in certain cells for fuel. That activity produced more free radicals, which in turn generated enzymes that strengthened long-time protection against the harmful molecules, Ristow said.

However, antioxidants and vitamins given to some worms erased these benefits by neutralising free radicals and preventing the body from generating the defences, Ristow said.

``These latter findings tentatively suggest that the widespread use of antioxidants as human food supplements may exert undesirable effects,'' the researchers wrote.

(Source: smh.com.au)

Apple juice may protect against asthma in kids

A daily dose of apple juice could keep the wheeze away in children, according to a report from the UK

A large-scale study in the UK suggests that kids drinking a daily a serve of apple juice might be at lower risk of asthma.

Involving 2,640 children aged five to ten years, the study, by researchers including Dr Seif O Shaheen, from the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London, analysed fruit intake and asthma symptoms.

While apples alone were not associated with lower asthma symptom incidence, apple juice – specifically made from concentrate – was a different matter. Those drinking apple juice daily were shown to have a 47 per cent lower risk of wheezing than those who only drank a serve less than once a month.

The researchers surmised that the antioxidants contained in fruit may ease inflammation, the trigger to asthma, and also counteract oxidative damage caused by toxins such as pollution.

As Shaheen stressed, though the results do not show a definite link between apple juice and lowered risk, the findings do reveal an association, which her team intend to further investigate through clinical trials.

(Source: Blackmore website)

CANCER UPDATE FROM JOHN HOPKINS HOSPITAL, US (1)——A Must Read One!!!

Useful Information on one of the deadliest diseases of our time: CANCER

(PLEASE READ AND FORWARD IT TO PEOPLE YOU CARE ABOUT)

1. Every person has cancer cells in the body. These cancer cells do notshow up in the standard tests until they have multiplied to a fewbillion.When doctors tell cancer patients that there are no more cancer cells in their bodies after treatment, it just means the tests are unable todetectthe cancer cells because they have not reached the detectable size.

2. Cancer cells occur between 6 to more than 10 times in a person's lifetime.

3. When the person's immune system is strong the cancer cells will bedestroyed and prevented from multiplying and forming tumours.

4. When a person has cancer it indicates the person has multiplenutritional deficiencies. These could be due to genetic, environmental,food and lifestyle factors.

5. To overcome the multiple nutritional deficiencies, changing diet andincluding supplements will strengthen the immune system.

6. Chemotherapy involves poisoning the rapidly-growing cancer cells andalso destroys rapidly-growing healthy cells in the bonemarrow,gastro-intestinal tract etc, and can cause organ damage, likeliver,kidneys, heart, lungs etc.

7. Radiation while destroying cancer cells also burns, scars and damageshealthy cells, tissues and organs.

8. Initial treatment with chemotherapy and radiation will often reducetumor size. However prolonged use of chemotherapy and radiation do not result in more tumor destruction.

9. When the body has too much toxic burden from chemotherapy andradiationthe immune system is either compromised or destroyed, hence the personcansuccumb to various kinds of infections and complications.

10. Chemotherapy and radiation can cause cancer cells to mutate andbecomeresistant and difficult to destroy. Surgery can also cause cancer cellstospread to other sites.

11. An effective way to battle cancer is to starve the cancer cells by notfeeding it with the foods it needs to multiply.

CANCER CELLS FEED ON:

a. Sugar is a cancer-feeder. By cutting off sugar it cuts off one important food supply to the cancer cells. Sugar substitutes like NutraSweet, Equal,Spoonful, etc are made with Aspartame and it is harmful. A better natural substitute would be Manuka honey or molasses but only in very small amounts. Table salt has a chemical added to make it white in colour. Better alternative is Bragg's aminos or sea salt.

b. Milk causes the body to produce mucus, especially in the gastro-intestinal tract. Cancer feeds on mucus. By cutting off milk and substituting with unsweetened soya milk cancer cells are being starved.

c. Cancer cells thrive in an acid environment. A meat-based diet is acidic and it is best to eat fish, and a little chicken rather than beef or pork. Meat also contains livestock antibiotics, growth hormones and parasites, which are all harmful, especially to people with cancer.

d. A diet made of 80% fresh vegetables and juice, whole grains,seeds, nuts and a little fruits help put the body into an alkaline environment. About 20% can be from cooked food including beans. Fresh vegetable juices provide live enzymes that are easily absorbed and reach down to cellular levels within 15 minutes to nourish and enhance growth of healthy cells. To obtain live enzymes for building healthy cells try and drink fresh vegetable juice (most vegetables including bean sprouts) and eat some raw vegetables 2 or 3 times a day. Enzymes are destroyed at temperatures of 104 degrees F (40 degrees C).

e. Avoid coffee, tea, and chocolate, which have high caffeine.Green tea is a better alternative and has cancer-fighting properties. Water-best to drink purified water, or filtered, to avoid known toxins and heavy metals in tap water. Distilled water is acidic, avoid it.

12. Meat protein is difficult to digest and requires a lot of digestiveenzymes. Undigested meat remaining in the intestines become putrefiedandleads to more toxic buildup.

13. Cancer cell walls have a tough protein covering. By refraining fromoreating less meat it frees more enzymes to attack the protein walls of cancer cells and allows the body's killer cells to destroy the cancercells.

14. Some supplements build up the immune system (IP6,Flor-ssence,Essiac,anti-oxidants, vitamins, minerals, EFAs etc.) to enable the body's own killer cells to destroy cancer cells. Other supplements like vitamin Eareknown to cause apoptosis, or programmed cell death, the body's normalmethod of disposing of damaged, unwanted, or unneeded cells.

15. Cancer is a disease of the mind, body, and spirit. A proactive andpositive spirit will help the cancer warrior be a survivor. Anger,unforgiveness and bitterness put the body into a stressful and acid ic environment. Learn to have a loving and forgiving spirit. Learn torelax and enjoy life.

16. Cancer cells cannot thrive in an oxygenated environment. Exercisingdaily, and deep breathing help to get more oxygen down to the cellular level. Oxygen therapy is another means employed to destroy cancercells.

10 tips for a happy heart

One of my ex-colleague died of a heart attack last November. He was only 30 and about to get married at the time. What a shock to everyone who knows him!
People always ignore the importance of health until some tragedy happens…

So from now on, let's start to look after our own health for ourselves, for the ones we love, and the ones who love us.

10 tips for a happy heart

1. Choose fish. Cold-water fish which contain protective omega-3 fatty acids has been shown to reduce the risk of cardiovascular health problems. Among the best choices are wild salmon, sardines and herring.
2. Get in your exercise. Aerobic activity helps maintain heart health. Walking is inexpensive and a popular way to stay fit –– all it takes is a little motivation and a comfortable pair of shoes.
3. Control waist size. Make sure you have more low-fat, high-fibre and low sugar foods than other types, and choose more low-fat and fat-free dressings, condiments, sauces and table spreads instead of full-fat ones.
4. Take vitamin E, a well-known protective nutrient for the cardiovascular system that may reduce the risk of serious cardiovascular complaints.
5. Also consider taking CoQ10 and fish oil for their antioxidant and vessel protecting qualities.
6. Get Smart About Smoking. Smoking is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease, but that risk can be reduced by stopping smoking at ANY age.
7. I'll drink to that. Red wine contains antioxidants and flavonoids, and has been associated with heart protection.
8. You can have your chocolate and eat it too! That is, if it's dark chocolate. Pure dark chocolate contains a very high amount of catechins (a heart healthy antioxidant). Enjoy it with black grapes and wash it down with a beverage containing natural cocoa powder or tea, additional excellent sources of these heart healthy compounds.
9. Have a hearty laugh. Very few things in life are better than a good laugh and it turns out that laughing heartily is good for the heart. Enjoy the lighter side of life with family and friends.
10. Manage stress well. Be proactive and address issues as they arise. Try exercise such as yoga, which gives you both a mental and physical lift.

(source from Blackmores)