Amazing Banana

Did you know that bananas can make you happier?



Bananas are a versatile, sweet, tasty and healthy snack. They can help you keep fit as well as help overcome or prevent a substantial number of illnesses and conditions.Bananas contain three natural sugars – sucrose, fructose and glucose combined with fibre. A banana gives an instant, sustained and substantial boost of energy.Research has proven that just two bananas provide enough energy for a strenuous 90-minute workout. No wonder the banana is the number one fruit with the world’s leading athletes.

DEPRESSION
According to a recent survey undertaken by MIND amongst people suffering from depression, many felt much better after eating a banana. This is because bananas contain tryptophan, a type of protein that the body converts into serotonin, known to make you relax, improve your mood and generally make you feel happier.
PMS:
Forget the pills – eat a banana. The vitamin B6 it contains regulates blood glucose levels, which can affect your mood.

ANAEMIA
High in iron, bananas can stimulate the production of haemoglobin in the blood and so helps in cases of anaemia.
BLOOD PRESSURE
This unique tropical fruit is extremely high in potassium yet low in salt, making it perfect to beat blood pressure So much so, the US Food and Drug Administration has just allowed the banana industry to make official claims for the fruit’s ability to reduce the risk of blood pressure and stroke.

BRAIN POWER
200 students at a Twickenham school ( England ) were helped through their exams this year by eating bananas at breakfast, break, and lunch in a bid to boost their brain power. Research has shown that the potassium-packed fruit can assist learning by making pupils more alert.

CONSTIPATION
High in fiber, including bananas in the diet can help restore normal bowel action, helping to overcome the problem without resorting to laxatives.

HANGOVERS
One of the quickest ways of curing a hangover is to make a banana milkshake, sweetened with honey. The banana calms the stomach and, with the help of the honey, builds up depleted blood sugar levels, while the milk soothes and re-hydrates your system.

HEARTBURN
Bananas have a natural antacid effect in the body, so if you suffer from heartburn, try eating a banana for soothing relief.

MORNING SICKNESS
Snacking on bananas between meals helps to keep blood sugar levels up and avoid morning sickness.

MOSQUITO BITES
Before reaching for the insect bite cream, try rubbing the affected area with the inside of a banana skin. Many people find it amazingly successful at reducing swelling and irritation.

NERVES
Bananas are high in B vitamins that help calm the nervous system.Overweight and at work? Studies at the Institute of Psychology in Austria found pressure at work leads to gorging on comfort food-like chocolate and chips. Looking at 5,000 hospital patients, researchers found the most obese were more likely to be in high-pressure jobs. The report concluded that, to avoid panic-induced food cravings, we need to control our blood sugar levels by snacking on high carbohydrate foods every two hours to keep levels steady.

ULCERS
The banana is used as the dietary food against intestinal disorders because of its soft texture and smoothness. It is the only raw fruit that can be eaten without distress in over-chronicler cases. It also neutralizes over-acidity and reduces irritation by coating the lining of the stomach.

TEMPERATURE CONTROL
Many other cultures see bananas as a ‘cooling’ fruit that can lower both the physical and emotional temperature of expectant mothers. In Thailand , for example, pregnant women eat bananas to ensure their baby is born with a cool temperature.
So, a banana really is a natural remedy for many ills. When you compare it to an apple, it has FOUR TIMES the protein, TWICE the carbohydrate, THREE TIMES the phosphorus, five times the vitamin A and iron, and twice the other vitamins and minerals.. It is also rich in potassium and is one of the best value foods around.

So maybe its time to change that well-known phrase so that we say, ‘A BANANA a day keeps the doctor away!’

And don’t you forget that you can make your shoes shine, wiping them with the inside of banana.

Read More

The Secret Behind The mouth-Watering Maggi

What actually is Maggi?

Maggi is an international brand of instant soups, stocks, bouillon cubes, ketchups, sauces, seasonings and instant noodles. Owned by Nestlé since 1947, the original company was founded in Switzerland in 1872 by Julius Maggi.

Now, In this cases, we are talking about Maggie noodles , a brand of instant noodles manufactured by Nestlé. The brand is popular in Australia, South Africa, Brazil, New Zealand, Brunei, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Fiji and the Philippines. Meanwhile in India and Malaysia, Maggi instant noodles are very popular; Nestle have 39% of the market in Malaysia, where "Maggi" is synonymous with instant noodles; and a 60% share in India where it was the first instant noodle brand. In Malaysia, fried noodles made from maggi noodles are called Maggi goreng

Maggie mee is advertised as 2 minute noodles since 1982.It was said to be 'No MSG', 'Less Salt', and 'No Trans fat' to cater the health conscious. In mid-2008, New Zealand supermarkets introduced replacement formulations for its beef, oriental, and curry flavours. A new feature is an extra sachet containing dehydrated vegetables. Maggi claims the new range contains 88% less total fat and 86% less saturated fat than the average of top-three (unnamed) 2-minute-noodle competitors. The new Maggi range also has considerably lower fat than its own previous formulation. However, the salt content has been increased by 31 percent.

Did you know?

One serving (1 block or 100 grams) of noodles contains 1170 mg. of sodium aka salt, almost half of the USDA 2400 mg maximum.

Most of the salt would be in the seasoning packet, but the noodles probably contain some salt also.

The noodles provide 10% of your daily calcium and 12% of your daily iron requirement. Other than that the Maggi brand noodles have no nutritional benefit.

If you want to eat maggi, 

Then here’s a correct way to cook instant noodles without harming our bodies and health: 

Normally, we put the instant noodles is to put into a pot with water, throw in the powder and let it cook for around 3 minutes and then it's ready to eat By doing this every day , we will save a great time and will also might end as a dead person. when we actually boil the ingredients in the powder, normally with MSG, it will change the molecular structure of the MSG, causing it to be toxic. Also the noodles are coated with wax and it will take around 4 to 5 days for the body to excrete the wax after you have eaten the noodles.

So, To prevent it, you should cook it on the correct way.

First,Boil the noodles in a pot of water. Once the noodles are cooked, take out the noodles, and throw away the water which contains wax. Then boil another pot of water, add the cooked noodles into the hot boiling water and then turn off the stove. Only at this stage when the stove is off, and while the water is very hot, add the flavoring powder into the water, to make noodle soup. However, if you need dry noodles, remove the noodles and add the flavoring powder and toss it to get dry noodles. 

A Piece of Note: 

Only a some amount of it was washed and removed during cooking. The removed layer of coating solidified after cooled and it did not turn bad after being left overnight.

So even if the coating is not wax, it is true that it will not give us any health benefits. Most probably that is the reason of obesity and weight gaining. No matter how you cook, you will not be able to remove the coating totally.

The best way is eat less, or stop eating instant noodles.

Extra:

A large number of patients with ages ranging from 18-24 years are ending up with pancreatitis either as a swelling or infection of the pancreas due to regular consumption of instant noodles. If the frequency is more than 3 times a week, then it is very hazardous.

Read More

Weight Loss Tips: Eat Eggs

Eat Eggs for Weight Loss

Going to work on a couple of eggs might be the way forward if you want to shift those pounds. According to new research from the Rochester Centre for Obesity in America, eating eggs for breakfast could help to limit your calorie intake throughout the rest of the day, by more than 400 calories.

In the study, 30 overweight or obese women ate either an egg-based breakfast (2 eggs) or a bagel-based breakfast, containing the same amount of calories and almost identical levels of protein. The researchers recorded the women’s eating habits and found that just before lunch, the women who had eaten eggs for breakfast felt less hungry and ate a smaller lunch as a result. Better still, over the next 36 hours the group eating the egg-containing breakfast consumed, on average, 417 calories less than the bagel-eating group.

Weight Loss Resources says…

This study suggests that eating eggs for breakfast makes you feel fuller for longer so that you eat less at your next few meals. This is great news if you’re trying to lose weight as it means you may find it easier to cut calories without feeling hungry. In fact, based on these results you could expect to lose up to  lb a month, simply by eating eggs for breakfast!

Eggs are packed with a variety of nutrients including protein, zinc, iron and vitamins A, D, E and B12, but contain just 85 calories each. Old advice to limit eggs to just a few each week has also been abandoned. According to the Food Standards Agency, there’s now no limit to the number of eggs you can eat in a week as part of a healthy balanced diet. If you fancy starting the day with eggs we suggest you avoid frying them and combine them with wholemeal toast and a glass of vitamin C-rich unsweetened orange juice, which will help the body make the best use of the iron in the eggs.

More Detail:http://www.weightlossresources.co.uk/

Extra:The Truth About Eggs

Read More

The Truth About Eggs

Eggs are a nutritional powerhouse, but for a while, egg yolks have been demonized in the health-food industry as causing blood-cholesterol levels to skyrocket. Is it true? It's time to set the story straight on the nutritional benefits of an egg.

The Truth: Not only are eggs a fantastic source of lean protein and heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids, but they contain some pretty important nutrients.

One large egg has roughly 186 milligrams of cholesterol — all of which is found in the egg’s yolk. Since dietary cholesterol was once thought to be the major cause of unhealthy blood cholesterol, egg yolks have been demonized and health nuts stick to eating strictly egg whites. Now, don’t get me wrong — egg whites are a great, healthy source of protein, but there is definitely room for WHOLE eggs in a healthy diet. As long as you haven’t been advised otherwise by your doctor , you can enjoy the many nutritional benefits of a whole egg. So, yes, you can have an egg and eat the yolk too ! Here are a few reasons why.

The real threat to high cholesterol is saturated and trans fats, not dietary cholesterol. Years ago, when scientists learned that high blood cholesterol was associated with heart disease, foods high in cholesterol were thought to be the leading cause of unhealthy blood cholesterol. Now, 25 years later, scientists have come to the conclusion that cholesterol in food is not the true villain — saturated and trans fats have a much greater effect on blood cholesterol. Your body actually needs the cholesterol in meat and eggs to make testosterone, which helps to increase energy and helps to build more calorie-building muscle. In fact, one study at the University of Connecticut found that the fat in egg yolks actually helps to reduce LDL (“bad” cholesterol). So banish the old notion that an egg, specifically the yolk, is hazardous to your health. According to the American Heart Association, the recommended limit of dietary cholesterol is 300 milligrams for people with normal LDL (bad) cholesterol levels — and one egg contains 185 milligrams of dietary cholesterol. (If you have a history of high cholesterol or heart disease in your family, though, you may want to consult your doctor about how to limit your cholesterol intake.)

Whole eggs are full of beneficial vitamins and minerals. Whole eggs are a nearly perfect food, with almost every essential vitamin and mineral our bodies need to function. It is one of the few natural food sources of vitamin D and contains 7 grams of high-quality protein. Whole eggs are also full of omega-3 fatty acids and deliver many of the B vitamins and nutrients — B6, B12, riboflavin, folate, and choline — that, in fact, are believed to help prevent heart disease. L-arginine, an amino acid found in eggs, are critical to the body's production of protein and the release of growth hormones. Another amino acid found in eggs, leucine, also helps the body produce growth hormones as well as regulate blood sugar levels. The yolk itself contains most of these vitamins and minerals, plus half of its protein. When you eat only the egg whites, you’re missing out on all of these nutritional benefits and are getting only 3.5 grams, or half, of the protein.

It’s all in the preparation. If you’re frying your eggs in saturated-fat-laden butter and serving them with saturated-fat-laden bacon — they will have a negative impact on your cholesterol levels. Instead, heat olive oil on low heat in a cast-iron skillet to cook your egg the healthiest way. When cooking omelets, frittatas, or any other dish that involves a larger quantity of eggs, I like to use a mix of whole eggs with egg whites. The reason is that whole eggs do have a decent amount of fat. So, if you’re cooking something with more than two eggs, I recommend subbing in egg whites for some of the whole eggs.

The Bottom Line: Whole eggs are a power food packed with essential vitamins and minerals our bodies need — a majority of these vitamins and minerals are found in the eggyolk. Eating whole eggs in moderation is not bad for your health, but when making dishes with a large quantity of eggs, try to balance the count of whole eggs and egg whites.

More Detail:http://www.jillianmichaels.com/

Read More

Real-Life Limitless Pill "Donepezil" not NZT-48 Pill

Real-Life Limitless Pill "Donepezil" not NZT-48 Pill

The film, Limitless 2011 -- starring Bradley Cooper in which his character takes a new drug "NZT-48 pill" that allows him to learn faster, recall everything he's ever read or seen, and solve complex equations.

It may sound like something impossible, but researchers have discovered a pill that functioning as NZT-pill. the pill helps adults learn new skills as quickly as children. The pill called Donepill . In Limitless, Bradley Cooper takes a pill that opens up closed regions of his brain to boost his intelligence, motor skills and more. The drug donepezil is a cholinesterase inhibitor. This means it increases the amount of acetylcholine around nerve endings and helps boost brain function.

The pill boosts chemicals in the brain, such as serotonin and acetylcholine, which are both found in high concentrations in the brains of young children. These chemicals naturally reduce with age. Children under seven develop new skills rapidly because their brains go through what’s called ‘critical periods’ of development.

Due to high levels of certain chemicals and the fast growth of the brain, young children learn new languages, absorb information and pick up musical skills, for example, much faster than adults. In adults, these skills become harder as the brain reaches peak development and loses this ‘elasticity’. -

Children develop new skills rapidly as their brains go through ‘critical periods’ of development. This means they learn new languages, absorb information and pick up musical skills much faster than adults. In adults, these skills become harder as the brain reaches peak development and loses this ‘elasticity’.

Professor Takao Hensch gave donepezil to a 14-year-old girl called Shannon, a patient at the Boston Children’s Hospital. Shannon has a condition called amblyopia that impairs her vision, also known as a ‘lazy eye.’ Following tests with donepezil, Shannon was able to process images with her affected eye, in the same way a newborn would.

In December, Professor Hensch similarly used an epilepsy drug called valproate to teach tone-deaf adults how to pick out different musical notes. Participants who took the valproate were able to correctly identify an average of 5.09 notes, while people in a control group could only identify 3.5.

The brain is not losing its plasticity forever as we grow older,’ Professor Hensch told The Atlantic.
‘Instead, it throws on the brakes at certain times. It’s the brain’s job to be elastic, and it wants to rewire.‘But through evolution, it’s created a lot of molecules to make sure it doesn’t rewire too much.’He continued: ‘Much of our adult behaviour reflects the neural circuits sculpted by experience in infancy and early childhood.‘At no other time in life does the surrounding environment so potently shape brain function – from basic motor skills, sensation or sleep to higher cognitive processes like language.‘How this plasticity waxes and wanes with age carries an impact far beyond neuroscience, including education policy, therapeutic approaches to developmental disorders or strategies for recovery from brain injury in adulthood.’

More Detail:-http://www.theatlantic.com/

Read More

Caffeine for Your Health — Too Good to Be True?

"Coffee is an amazingly potent collection of biologically active compounds," Walter Willett, M.D., of the Harvard School of Public Health, told the National Institutes of Health's newsletter.

• Drinking up to six cups a day of coffee is not associated with increased risk of death from any cause, or death from cancer or cardiovascular disease.
• Some people may still want to consider avoiding coffee or switching to decaf, especially women who are pregnant, or people who have a hard time controlling their blood pressure or blood sugar.
• It’s best to brew coffee with a paper filter, to remove a substance that causes increases in LDL cholesterol.
• Coffee may have potential health benefits, but more research needs to be done.
• Read more about coffee and tea compared to other beverages.

1. The latest Harvard study on coffee and health seems to offer good news for coffee drinkers. What did the research find?

We looked at the relationship between coffee consumption and overall mortality in the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, which together included about 130,000 study volunteers. (1) At the start of the study, these healthy men and women were in their 40s and 50s. We followed them for 18 to 24 years, to see who died during that period, and to track their diet and lifestyle habits, including coffee consumption. We did not find any relationship between coffee consumption and increased risk of death from any cause, death from cancer, or death from cardiovascular disease. Even people who drank up to six cups of coffee per day were at no higher risk of death. This finding fits into the research picture that has been emerging over the past few years. For the general population, the evidence suggests that coffee drinking doesn’t have any serious detrimental health effects.

2. So for coffee drinkers, no news is good news? Why is this finding so important?

It’s an important message because people have seen coffee drinking as an unhealthy habit, along the lines of smoking and excessive drinking, and they may make a lot of effort to reduce their coffee consumption or quit drinking it altogether, even if they really enjoy it. Our findings suggest that if you want to improve your health, it’s better to focus on other lifestyle factors, such as increasing your physical activity, quitting smoking, or eating more whole grains.

3. Is there an upper limit for the amount of coffee that is healthy to drink each day?

If you’re drinking so much coffee that you get tremors, have sleeping problems, or feel stressed and uncomfortable, then obviously you’re drinking too much coffee. But in terms of effects on mortality or other health factors, for example, we don’t see any negative effects of consuming up to six cups of coffee a day. Keep in mind that our study and in most studies of coffee, a “cup” of coffee is an 8-ounce cup with 100 mg of caffeine, not the 16 ounces you would get in a grande coffee at a Starbucks, which has about 330 mg of caffeine.

Also keep in mind that the research is typically based on coffee that’s black or with a little milk or sugar, but not with the kind of high-calorie coffeehouse beverages that have become popular over the past few years. A 24-ounce mocha Frappachino at Starbucks with whipped cream has almost 500 calories—that’s 25 percent of the daily calorie intake for someone who requires 2,000 calories a day. People may not realize that having a beverage like that adds so much to their energy intake, and they may not compensate adequately by eating less over the course of the day. This could lead to weight gain over time, which could in turn increase the risk of type 2 diabetes, and that’s a major concern.

4. Is there any research that suggests coffee may have some beneficial health effects?

Yes, research over the past few years suggests that coffee consumption may protect against type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, liver cancer, and liver cirrhosis. And our latest study on coffee and mortality found that people who regularly drank coffee actually had a somewhat lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease than those who rarely drank coffee; this result needs to be confirmed in further studies, however. This is a pretty active area of research right now, and it’s not at the stage where we would say, “Start drinking coffee to increase your health even if you don’t like it.” But I think the evidence is good that for people in general—outside of a few populations, such as pregnant women, or people who have trouble controlling their blood pressure or blood sugar—coffee is one of the good, healthy beverage choices.

5. Why does it seem like scientists keep flip-flopping on whether coffee is bad for you or good for you?

Often people think of coffee just as a vehicle for caffeine. But it’s actually a very complex beverage with hundreds and hundreds of different compounds in it. Since coffee contains so many different compounds, drinking coffee can lead to very diverse health outcomes. It can be good for some things and bad for some things, and that’s not necessarily flip-flopping or inconsistent. Few foods are good for everything. That’s why we do studies on very specific health effects—for example, studies of how coffee affects the risk of diabetes—but we also conduct studies such as this most recent one looking at coffee consumption and mortality over a long period of time, which better reflects the overall health effect.

Coffee is also a bit more complex to study than some other food items. Drinking coffee often goes along together with cigarette smoking, and with a lifestyle that’s not very health conscious. For example, people who drink lots of coffee tend to exercise less. They are less likely to use dietary supplements, and they tend to have a less healthful diet. So in the early studies on coffee and health, it was hard to separate the effects of coffee from the effects of smoking or other lifestyle choices.

Over the several decades that coffee has been studied, there have been some reports that coffee may increase the risk of certain cancers or the risk of heart disease. But in better conducted studies, such as the one we just published—larger studies that have a lot of information about all other lifestyle factors and make a real effort to control for these lifestyle factors—we do not find many of these health effects that people were afraid of.

6. What is the latest research on the risks of coffee or caffeine during pregnancy?

For pregnant women, there has been quite a bit of controversy over whether high intake of coffee or caffeine may increase the risk of miscarriage. The jury is still out. But we know that the caffeine goes through the placenta and reaches the fetus, and that the fetus is very sensitive to caffeine; it metabolizes it very slowly. So for pregnant women it seems prudent to reduce coffee consumption to a low level, for example one cup a day.

7. Should people with high blood pressure consider reducing their coffee or caffeine intake? What about people with diabetes?

We know that if people are not used to using any caffeine, and they start to use caffeine, their blood pressure goes up substantially. Within a week of caffeine consumption, however, we see that the effect is less pronounced—there is less of an increase in blood pressure. After several weeks of continued caffeine consumption, however, a little bit of increase in blood pressure remains. In studies that look at the incidence of hypertension in the general population, drinking caffeinated coffee is not associated with a substantial increase in risk. But if people have hypertension, and are having a hard time controlling their hypertension, they could try switching from caffeinated coffee to decaffeinated coffee, to see if it has a beneficial effect.

With diabetes, it’s a bit of a paradox. Studies around the world consistently show that high consumption of caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee is associated with low risk of type 2 diabetes. But if you look at acute studies that just give people caffeine or caffeinated coffee, and then have them eat something rich in glucose, their sensitivity to insulin drops and their blood glucose levels are higher than expected. There isn’t any long-term data on coffee consumption and glucose control. But if people have diabetes and have trouble controlling their blood glucose, it may be beneficial for them to try switching from caffeinated to decaffeinated coffee. Making the switch from caffeinated to decaf may be better than quitting coffee altogether, because some research suggests that decaffeinated coffee actually reduces the glucose response.

8. How do you explain the paradoxical findings on coffee and caffeine consumption and diabetes?

It’s possible that there are simply different effects for short-term and long-term intake of coffee and caffeine. And, as I mentioned before, it’s becoming increasingly clear that coffee is much more than caffeine, and the health effects that you see for caffeinated coffee are often different than what you would expect based on its caffeine content.

For example, if you look at exercise performance, it seems that caffeine can be somewhat beneficial, but caffeinated coffee is not. Or if you look at blood pressure and compare the effects of caffeinated coffee to the effects of caffeine, you’ll find that caffeinated coffee causes blood pressure increases that are substantially weaker than what one would expect for the amount of caffeine it contains. The same is true for the relationship between coffee, caffeine, and blood glucose after a meal. It’s possible that there are compounds in coffee that may counteract the effect of caffeine, but more research needs to be done.

9.  Is drinking coffee made with a paper filter healthier than drinking boiled coffee or other types of coffee?

Coffee contains a substance called cafestol that is a potent stimulator of LDL cholesterol levels. Cafestol is found in the oily fraction of coffee, and when you brew coffee with a paper filter, the cafestol gets left behind in the filter. Other methods of coffee preparation, such as the boiled coffee common in Scandinavian countries, French press coffee, or Turkish coffee, are much higher in cafestol. So for people who have high cholesterol levels or who want to prevent having high cholesterol levels, it is better to choose paper filtered coffee or instant coffee, since they have much lower levels of cafestol than boiled or French press coffee. Espresso is somewhere in the middle; it has less cafestol than boiled or French press coffee, but more than paper filtered coffee.

10. Do tea and coffee have similar beneficial effects?

One could expect some of the beneficial effects of coffee to be similar for tea, since some of the compounds are similar. A study in China has found that drinking large quantities of Oolongtea—a liter a day—is beneficial for glycemic control in people with diabetes. But research on tea in the U.S. has not shown the type of beneficial effect we see for coffee, probably because people in the U.S.tend to drink tea that is weaker in strength and tend to drink less of it.

References

1. Lopez-Garcia E, van Dam RM, Li TY,Rodriguez-Artalejo F, Hu FB. The Relationship of Coffee Consumption with Mortality. Ann Intern Med. 2008;148:904-914. Summary for patients.

More Detail:http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/

Read More

Husband,Say No To Veggies

Husband,Say No To Veggies

Future fathers take note: A new study shows that refraining from beef might harm male fertility, so fire up the grill and get a steak on the go.

Researchers at Loma Linda University Medical School in southern California found that vegetarians had on average 50 million sperm per millilitre, while omnivores packed a more sizeable 70 million.
The study also noted that vegetarians' sperm are less active, as well. The researchers proposed vitamin deficiencies were the reason behind their findings. The most voracious consumers of vegetables had sperm that was 70% lower in quality and 68% lower in activity (or "motility," to be scientific).
Speaking to the Telegraph, Dr Eliza Orzylowska said, ‘we found that diet does significantly affect sperm quality. Vegetarian and vegan diets were associated with much lower sperm counts than omnivorous diets.’

‘Although these people are not infertile, it is likely to play a factor in conception,’ she added.

One theory behind the results is the introduction of soy to meat-free diets. The bean contains phytooestrogens, which have been shown to diminish sperm’s quality.


Researchers wanted to see if sperm quality explained why their life expectancy exceeds the average American by 10 years.In fact, it appears to have nothing to do with it. So there you go: Eat veggie, have fewer kids, live longer. I’m sure that appeals to a lot of folks

So in conclusion it turns out eating meat may be the best diet for men trying to have children.


More Detail: http://mic.com/

Read More