The holiday season is not only a time for merriment and festivities, it’s also when most people are guilty of overindulging themselves with food. Delectable dishes are present and overflowing from each dinner table, which makes it next too impossible for people to resist the urge to eat them. It is a perfect example of a mind over matter scenario: the brain simply overrides the body’s warnings that it is already full, which allows a person to eat continuously.

Actually,...

When I was a kid, it was almost impossible to get vegetables into me. This was especially true, if they were of the stinky variety, such as broccoli, rutabagas, Brussels sprouts, turnips, cabbage, mustard greens, collards, kale and cauliflowers. I’m sure I was far from alone in my aversion to these Franken-veggies. Who would have known, that many years later as a nutritional researcher, I would become their biggest supporter.

The above mentioned foods fall under a class...

The term “Superfood” was first used in the 1990s when a cookbook that was co-written by Dr. Michael Van Straten, a practitioner of alternative medicine, appeared in the bookshops. It was titled Superfoods and it claimed to provide the reader with information regarding various nutrients to help the body improve resistance against diseases and stress. Since that time, “superfoods” is primarily associated with fruits, vegetables and any other food products that are considered...

Eyesight is one of the things that is often taken for granted by most people, until it is too late. Just like other body parts like the heart and the stomach, the eyes also deserve proper care and nutrition. Millions of people around the world suffer from various eye disorders like cataracts (blurred vision, due to the eye lens becoming progressively opaque), and macular degeneration (a deterioration of the macula, the small central portion of the retina). Diet plays an important...

Rates of allergies seem to be increasing like wildfire throughout industrial nations. In fact, according to the World Health Organization, sensitization rates to one or more common allergens in children have increased by 40–50 percent worldwide.¹ And 30–35 percent of the world’s population are expected to experience allergies at some stage in their lifetime.² With the rise in industrial pollutants and the fall in healthy eating patterns, it...

Do you remember what life was like when you were 20 years old? Vaguely, huh? Well, those were the days when you had the energy to shoot hoops for three hours for nothing more than something to do. Those were the days of a 34-inch waistline and maybe some blonde highlights in the hair that grew on top of your head (not out your ears). And “ready for action” meant “ready anytime” not just for the next 36 hours like the Cialis® commercial promises.

When one...

Researchers have long known that regular bouts of sleep loss lead to cognitive impairment like the inability to focus, learn or memorize. A ground breaking study from the University of Pennsylvania has discovered that sleep deprivation seems to negatively affect a molecular pathway in the brain’s hippocampus—the area that is needed for memory formation and learning.¹

According to Canadian sleep researchers, we live in a sleep deprived society, with almost...

Contrary to popular belief, as it pertains to your metabolism, slow and steady does not win the race. Most people are under the impression they need to spend hours upon hours in a gym running on a treadmill or flying through the air on an elliptical machine, but most of them are just wasting their time. That is if their goal is to see real results!

Luckily, the notion that your results are proportional to time spent exercising can be considered dead and gone. Have you ever heard...

Dental health is something that is often neglected in favor of more pressing health concerns like weight loss and fat loss. Dental health, however, is just as important as overall physical health. Believe it or not, poor...

It’s that time again. You’re getting excited to enter the New Year and you are wondering if this will be the year you finally stick to your goals, a.k.a. your New Year’s resolutions. In this article I will provide a few powerful and proven tips to help you mentally prepare yourself for achieving your goals in the year 2015 and beyond!

Shoot for the Stars, but Believe in Your Dreams
As the saying goes, at least as it is with the law of the...

You may have seen labels on foods and produce advertising antioxidants, or you may have heard those around you speak of wanting to have more antioxidants in their diet. So now you may be wondering if these ‘so-called’ antioxidants can live up to their hype. To fulfill your curiosity I will first have to explain what oxidation is, what happens when oxidation stress occurs, and the important role that antioxidants play in our lives.

Let’s be candid shall we? During any holiday—especially Thanksgiving—people have a lot of food put in front of them. Many times over, it is way too much food for even the best of metabolisms to handle without putting on a few. So wouldn’t it be amazing if you could still enjoy the holidays and yet never gain a pound? Of course it would, so read on.

The U.S. today is a country that is home to the highest amount of over-fat people, with close to 74 percent of the population fitting into the category of overweight or obese.¹ What is even more startling than the above stat, is that over 86 percent of Americans are estimated to become obese by 2030.²

Even though men and women seem to experience the same degree of obesity, women seem to be more affected by the excess fat as is shown by the fact that...

Who doesn’t love fruit? Whether it’s sweet, tangy, crunchy or soft, fruit is an excellent treat in all its exceptional forms — after all, they don’t call it nature’s candy for nothing. But when it comes to fruit, many a so-called expert in the nutritional (and sometimes not nutritional) realm have sounded the proverbial alarm, scaring fruit-lovers everywhere to avoid their temptations unless they want to grow an extra spare tire, or keep the one they presently have...

When one thinks of the word metabolism, it usually conjures up thoughts of either lean or obese individuals. From a scientific perspective, metabolism refers to the sum total of all the biochemical reactions that allow us to do everything we take for granted in a twenty-four hour period, however none of it would be possible without changing energy into a usable form at the cellular level and, of course, our energy comes from food.

This means we don't just feed the stomach when we...

Most people are well aware of the ever-increasing number of adults and children alike who suffer from obesity these days. It would be the understatement of the century to say we have a problem on our hands. It is also well known that there exists a strong link between diabetes and heart disease when it comes to our expanding waistlines, but new research is showing that our risk for suffering from allergies may be greatly increased with the size of our fat cells.

In 2008, the...

If I had a dollar for every not-so-pleasant discussion I’ve had over fluoride with various dentists over the years, well I’d be a lot better off than I am now. It’s not that I find talking about fluoride unpleasant,...

Thanks to a combination of new advances into natural remedies and a veritable treasure trove of time-tested information, it is more possible than ever to preserve and improve your health through holistic means. The growing popularity of such products can be witnessed both in the proliferation of the specialty stores that carry them and their emergence on the shelves of more traditional retailers. More importantly, this isn’t due to any hidden financial agenda, as these products...

In order to understand efficient exercise we need to first become acquainted with the fact that our bodies developed many thousands of years ago. Back then, we walked, ran, and climbed to get where we were going and to secure what we needed. We fought for food alongside the many animals that shared our home. Today, it’s a different story. We take our car to work, sit at a desk for hours, and then slump in front of the television each night. Boy, is life tough! It may well be...

Almost everyone at one time or another has felt that down-in-the-dumps, doom and gloom feeling. It’s as if it appears out of nowhere, only it doesn’t! It turns out that our gotta go, 24/7 lifestyles are starting to get the better of us—at least where our moods are concerned.

Low moods or depression could be caused by inadequate sleep. Whether it’s that exam you’ve been dreading, the horrible date you can’t seem to get out of your mind or the insurmountable...