Herbs are nutritional foundation nutrients and good alternative medicine to nourish the body’s deepest and most basic elements. Medicinal herbs have been used safely and effectively since the time of recorded history for an endless list of reasons from health, healing, weight loss/gain/maintenance, to survival and more. Herbs can offer the body nutrients it does not always receive, either from a poor diet, or environmental deficiencies in the soil and air. They are great body balancers that help regulate body functions.
The benefits of herbs are many and varied. Even the once skeptical traditional medical community is starting to embrace alternative medicine practices using herbal remedies and healing philosophies and practices incorporating herbal medicine and medicinal herbs. Chinese herbs have been used by the Chinese for over 4,000 years to promote health and as healing agents.
Chinese Herbs are taken as tonics to enhance physical and mental well being. Since the dawn of man, herbs have been used for healing purposes and to promote wellness. Today, herbs are still the alternative medicine and primary source of health care for 80% of the world.
Here are some of the more well-known herbs and plant products and their modern uses.
Herbs Modern Uses
Bilberry Fruit Extract, Vaccinium myrtillus Various microcirculatory conditions. Night blindness and poor ability to adapt to bright light.
Cranberry Fruit, Vaccinium macrocarpon Prevention of urinary tract infections.
Dong Quai Root, Angelica sinensis Various menstrual disorders.
Echinacea Herb, Echinacea purpurea As supportive therapy for colds and chronic infections of the respiratory tract.
Evening Primrose Oil, Oenothera biennis Conditions related to deficiency of essential fatty acids (e.g., chronic fatigue syndrome) and alcoholism.
Feverfew Leaf, Tanacetum parthenium Treatment of migraines, fever, menstrual disorders..
Garlic Cloves, Allium sativum Elevated levels of cholesterol in blood and as a preventative measure for age dependent vascular changes.
Ginger Root, Zingiber officinale Modern Use: Prevention of the nausea and vomiting of motion sickness, dyspepsia, stomachic.
Ginkgo Biloba Leaf Extract, Ginkgo biloba Memory deficits, dementia syndromes. Improvement of distance and pain-free walking in peripheral arterial occlusive disease. Vertigo and tinnitus.
Asian Ginseng Root, Panax ginseng Tonic for invigoration and fortification in times of fatigue and debility, physical or mental exhaustion, stress, inadequate resistance to infections.
Siberian Ginseng Root, Eleutherococcus senticosus Tonic for invigoration and fortification in times of fatigue and debility, also during convalescence.
Goldenseal Root, Hydrastis canadensis Catarrhal conditions of the upper respiratory tract associated with colds and flus. Mucosal inflammations.
Gotu Kola Herb, Centella asiatica Improved memory. Venous insufficiency.
Grape Seed Extract, Vitis vinifera Microcirculatory maldistribution of blood flow. Altered capillary fragility and permeability. Anti-inflammatory.
Green Tea Leaf Extract, Camellia sinensis Chemopreventative. Hypercholesterolemia.
Kava Kava Root Extract, Piper methysticum Conditions of nervous anxiety, stress, and restlessness. Sedative and sleep enhancement.
Licorice Root, Glycyrrhiza glabra For catarrhal conditions of the upper respiratory tract and gastric/duodenal ulcers. Bronchitis. Adrenocorticoid insufficiency.
Milk Thistle Seed Extract, Silybum marianum Toxic liver damage, and for supportive treatment in chronic inflammatory liver disease and hepatic cirrhosis.
Saw Palmetto Berry Extract, Serenoa repens Urination problems in benign prostate hyperplasia stages 1 and 2.
St. John’s Wort Herb Extract, Hypericum perforatum Mild to moderate depressive states.
Valerian Root, Valeriana officinalis Restlessness, sleeping disorders based on nervous conditions. for more visit: www.consistenceonline.com
I have a feeling most of you hear are familiar enough with dieting that you don’t buy into all the hype, but I perhaps this information will be valuable to some of you. I’ll start by talking about a current set of events. I’m sure all of you have heard of the “acai berry” diet pills that have been spreading across the internet like wildfire lately. If any of your email addresses happen to have been sold to a diet pill salesman, you’ve probably gotten a few emails trying to promote these acai berry pills.
How did this acai berry craze get started and why is there so much hype? It got it’s big boost when Oprah featured the acai berry on her show as the #1 “superfood”. Some clever yet deceitful marketers thought they could use this to their advantage by selling a diet pill centered around the acai berry and advertise it as being “featured on Oprah” and “endorsed by Dr. Nicholas Perricone”.
The truth is that neither Oprah nor Dr. Perricone ever said anything about the acai berry having any weight loss properties. But that didn’t matter. They knew that it would still sell. But having this fake “endorsement” from Oprah wasn’t enough. They also decided to give away “free” trials of the diet pill to get more people to try it. The problem with that though, is that since it doesn’t really help you lose weight, nobody would order again after their free trial.
How did they get around this?
They got around it by using another deceitful marketing trick. If you read the fine legal print on the page where you sign up for your free trial, you’ll see that by getting a free trial, you are agreeing to sign up for an automatic rebill each month for a resupply of the product, unless you cancel before the free trial period is expired. Not many people read the fine legal print, I know I don’t, so most people didn’t think to call up and end their free trial. Then, when their credit card was billed for the $80 resupply, it was too late to do anything about it. Not only that, but even if you did try to call and cancel your order, you were often met with a busy signal or sent straight to voice mail. It was very hard to get through to an actual person on the phone.
But EVEN THAT wasn’t enough.
To promote the diet pill even MORE, they started an “affiliate program”. They paid “affiliates” (who are basically the same thing as salesman) up to $30 or more for each person who the affiliate got to sign up for a free trial. Anyone can become an affiliate for these acai berry diet pill manufacturers. All you have to do is sign up for the program and then start sending out links to their webpage with your account name attached to the end of the link so they can track it. That way they know, anyone who visits their site from a link that has your account name comes from you, so if they sign up for a free trial, they know to pay you the commission. Usually salesman only get a % of a sale. When you buy a car, the salesman might get 2-3% of the price. But these acai berry manufacturers were paying salesman 600% of the sale price! (free, but $5 shipping) This high of commission is practically unheard of because usually companies can’t make a profit by giving their salesman MORE money than the company is getting paid for the product. BUT, because each customer is automatically signed up for a monthly rebill that very few people cancel from, that’s why the commissions are so high. And these high commissions draw salesman like crazy. There are literally tens of thousands of affiliates (or salesman) trying to sell these acai berry diet pills. And since there is so much anonymity on the internet, these salesman are willing to do anything to get that commission, including lie and deceive. Let me show you a few examples.
You can find sites like these by just guessing. Just type in some girls name followed by “weightloss.com” or “dietblog.com” and you’ll find hundreds of sites like these. They are all made by salesman who found out that these are effective ways of playing on peoples emotions by trying to get people to trust them to get them to sign up for a free trial. Anyway, I think I am beginning to rant. I’m sorry this post is so long, I just feel like I have to let people know the truth. I have an insiders view into this industry and it makes me sick to see what all goes on.
And it doesn’t stop with diet pills either. It happens with every product sold online. Belkin makes internet modems and routers. They were PAYING people to write fake positive reviews about their products on sites like Amazon.com. Really the only way to get honest reviews online is to visit heavily moderated forums and listen to people who have built up a longstanding reputation with the site.
The only way to find honest reviews of diet products is to visit a heavily moderated forum with a close-nit community. Visit .org and submit your own reviews of any diet pill or plan you’ve tried so that we can build a community focused on weeding out spam and advertising and get straight to the facts about dieting and weight loss.
I hope this article has opened your eyes to the tricks employed by online marketers. It’s a sad state of affairs, but when it comes to online product reviews and suggestions, caveat emptor (let the buyer beware) has never rang more true.
Take part in spreading the truth about diet pills. Submit and vote on diet pills and diet pill reviews at
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We get almost everything at east, then what are we lacking? I get this question when I think about that we live in a place that offers abundant food, transport entertainment, and easy access to the electronic age.
Had this affected the connection between people? We don’t lack anything, we get cars, buses, fast food, movie theaters and golf courses are everywhere. No, here I’m not speaking with a short conversation we have say with a server when go to a hotel. Actually I’m speaking about relationships between people say how we handle the salesman who sells us the car.
Does our community and close relationship we share with the family has been affected? If so then what effect does it has with our health.
Luckily, there are many number of popular researchers who also think of the same questions. And they do also have the fire to find the answer.
This community had similar eating habits as of their neighbors, this study has been conducted for nearly 30 years in 1950′s. In a town called Roseto, Pennsylvania a study has been conducted among an Italian-American community and this is called “The Roseto Effect”.
In short, the study found that these people had longer life spans and were overall much healthier than their neighboring counterparts. This was true in spite of the aforementioned risk factors including smoking and lack of regular exercise.
But the younger generation of this group saw their health declining. In the initial stage they maintained close relation within family and community and they also maintained good health. But once they came out of the family and community their health started to deteriorate.
Close personal connections, especially feelings of love and perhaps care taking directly and positively affect our health even when habits traditionally considered bad for us are still present. This is further supported by something I philosophized on in a previous article relating to how pets lead to these same feelings of love and in return positively affect our health.
We do not have to be part of a large family to inject ourselves into a community. We may just have to be a little more creative and open in order to acquire the sense of community. Watching a movie can be great entertainment, but it is a very solitary activity which requires no interaction with anyone else.
You can even ask the server where he worked before when you go to hotel etc. Other than simply inquiring about the special food you can interact with him in a friendly way. Alternatively we can also discuss about a book recently read or a movie recently watched all these will create a connection.
Being self entertained can still be good and force some internal reflection in understanding who we are as people. But denying these very important family or community ties will ultimately shorten our lives unless we tend to them the way we might tend to our cars insuring they are clean and running properly.
It also recommended to all of us to treat our relationships inside the family with utmost care and love. Regular exercise and food with less fat is always advised.
I am pleased to share my all natural alternative health programs as well. All programs involve easy to implement exercises and can be done with someone you love who might be struggling with certain health issues.
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Christian Goodman is a well known famous health researcher and writer of several unique natural methods to cure. One of his recent breakthroughs is his program that . You can know more about Christian on his Natural Health Alternative Blog.
Though you may know it simply as a “low carb” diet, ketogenic diets are the hottest properties on the market right now. As a matter of fact in the last few years there have been “over 1500 low carb/ low glycemic products introduced into the marketplace” that will account for “over $30 billion dollars in expected sales this year alone”. That’s staggering support for a diet concept that, not so long ago, was lambasted and demonized as totally unhealthy! But even more staggering, is the fact that “26 million Americans are currently on a hardcore low carb diet right now”.
In the past, the medical community balked at this sort of diet. They claimed that while it was beneficial for those who were diabetic and forced into watching insulin, and useful for some who were epileptic and required seizure control through dietary means, it was hardly beneficial for all people. But can 26 million Americans be wrong about the benefits of ketogenic diets? Time will certainly tell, but the results seem already to be far more positive than anyone expected.
Okay, now let’s get real…
The bodybuilding community has been able to say one thing, for sure, for many years: Ketogenic diets do work and produce some spectacular results. We’ve been able to say this for years and years—ever since the days of Joe Gold, Bill Pearl and others drank cream by the pint, along with tuna from a can, to get ripped—because the competitor’s physique cannot tell a lie.
But while bodybuilders aren’t anti-carb like many who understand ketogenic diets only in the sense that carbs = bad foods and fats = good foods that deliver them from obesity, or at least that they don’t mix well within an isolated day, it is becoming increasingly sophisticated in the way it’s implemented for aesthetic purposes in our sport. Hopefully, after a few years of experience with ketogenic diets, the general public will begin to understand how to make it work as a mainstay in their lives. We think it’s probably one of the most pivotal, meaningful and important discoveries of 20th century nutrition.
Net Carbs
A certain amount of how these ketogenic diets can be utilized as a means for actual ongoing maintenance, has been introduced to the public, but only in a rudimentary manner that supports a general disinterest in hardcore discipline and actual lofty physique goals. Enter “net carbs”. That’s something that bodybuilders just don’t think about. Sure, it’s important to understand how the body actually reads carbohydrates and which ones count and which ones don’t, but mostly, these Spartan goal-driven folks could sit down to a meal of plain tuna and steamed broccoli, every 2 hours, day in and day out, and rarely complain. That’s because food is a means to an end, not the end itself or a reason for living. It’s all about input, output, and causing the body to act in a way that you want it to, when you want it to.
Net carbs are a way for the general public to include some carbs in their diets, depending upon their maintenance tolerance, and feel like a normal person. What counts as a net carb is anything that is sugar or starch in a particular food. What doesn’t count is sugar alcohol and fiber. One is naturally occurring and one is not. These engineered foods are enabling the general public to maintain their 20-30 pound weight loss, while feeling like real human beings.
How Bodybuilders Have Used Ketogenic Diets
Early pioneers of bodybuilding knew that fat and protein definitely did mix and used it to their advantage during the beach blanket bingo hey-day of bodybuilding. Arnold was a part of that, and then ushered in a new era where carbohydrates were king of the jungle gym and were seen as more important to a bodybuilder’s ultimate growth—along with protein—than fat ever could be. Neither were wrong, exactly, but carbs were always a point of trickiness in terms of depletion and loading and many more mistakes were made as a result of manipulating carbohydrates than fats. Still, we saw incredible conditioning in both eras.
When diets like Dr. Barry Sears’ glycemic based “Enter The Zone” became popular in 1995, and Atkins revamped his earlier book into a combination ketogenic diet called “Atkins New Diet Revolution”, ketogenic diets made a comeback and resurgence onto the scene, and bodybuilders slowly began adopting the theory once again. But this time, it was more livable and adapted to the needs of an aesthetic athlete who wanted to drop just fat, not muscle, and take it to the nth degree! It was no longer the old 4:1 ratio of 1930’s ketogenic diets—where 80% of calories came from fats and 20% from proteins. It was more like a balance of 2:3 (40% fat and 60% protein).
But in this day and age, ketogenic diets are much better understood and are used much more correctly than in the days of meat and lettuce and cream. Ketogenic diets can be implemented in a healthy manner, provided the person understands what it’s all about, what the various forms accomplish, and how to use ketogenic diets to best serve dietary and physique goals.
Types of Ketogenic Diets
Ketogenic diets are a Godsend to those who must get their body into cosmetic shape relatively rapidly. By rapidly, we don’t mean within 3-5 days. However, a strict induction phase—the likes of which you would find in Atkins or the South Beach Diet—could actually make an appreciable difference in anyone’s weight within 10-14 days.
But within the scheme of things and given how overweight many bodybuilders began to be in the off season in the early 90’s, it was just in the nick of time that ketogenic eating came back into the picture and to the rescue. Truth is, as a result, we don’t really see many truly fat bodybuilders in the off season any longer. We may see bloated ones, but that’s an entirely different issue and cause.
The whole point of starting a ketogenic diet, as a bodybuilder, is to kick off a diet by bringing you from insulin resistance more into the realm of insulin sensitivity, depending upon your initial condition. Once you begin returning to more normal responses to food, it’s essential to change your game. Luckily, there are a few options within the ketogenic realm to satisfy this need…
There are three types of ketogenic diets:
SKD (Standard Ketogenic Diet) – This is the sort of diet that Atkins represents in its first induction phase, and to some extent, in the sense that only products with low “net carbs” are eaten to maintain. This is still low carb as a lifestyle and doesn’t include days where carbs and high, then low, then high again.
CKD (Cyclical Ketogenic Diet) – This type of ketogenic diet loads and unloads carbs in a cyclical pattern. This can be done one of two ways. The most common is to go low carb (unload carbs and glycogen) for 2-3 days at a time, then load with carbs for one to two days and repeat the cycle. Or, it can mean a cyclical pattern over the course of one whole day, where carbs are loaded until 2pm and then unloaded the rest of the day and evening.
TKD (Targeted Ketogenic Diet) – This type of ketogenic diet targets specific times during the day when carbs can be consumed. That means that carbs are usually only ingested around the time of exercise only so that they are quickly utilized and not allowed to spike insulin or be circulating within the body to cause fat storage.
The SKD is the type of diet that most of those 26 million Americans are following, to some degree, according to Time Magazine. It’s the most sensible for the average person who is prone to insulin resistance, has obesity or high body fat levels in their history, or is fairly realistic about their eating habits and knows that a low fat lifestyle isn’t for them.
But is a low fat lifestyle good for anyone? Some who follow it might say that it is, but studies have proven that fat, provided it doesn’t originate from a source such as trans-fatty acids or purely saturated fat, is beneficial to body function, metabolic health and overall well-being. The side effect, if eaten in healthy proportions is both energy and weight loss/ maintenance.
How a Ketogenic Diet Works
The aim in a ketogenic diet is to switch the primary fuel used by the body from carbohydrates (sugar, breads, etc) to fats (such as olive oil, fish oils or flax oil, preferably). When this happens within certain ratios of fat to protein to carbohydrate, the body is thrown into a state of ketosis.
Ketones are the by-products of fats being metabolized. In fact, when fats are metabolized, they throw off 90% ketones and 10% glucose. When carbohydrates are eaten, 100% of the by-product becomes glucose. With protein, it’s 46% ketones and 54% glucose. Protein, then, is the neutral macronutrient.
When ketones begin circulating in the blood, their presence interrupts the normal Krebs energy cycle (which relies heavily upon glucose) and forces the body into choosing stored fat as a source of energy to burn, rather than glucose in the diet as a by-product of having just eaten carbohydrates, or glycogen stored in the muscles, or even muscle tissue.
The body also begins to rely upon dietary fat as the mainstay of its energy. Because it is twice as calorie dense, and therefore twice as efficient an energy source, and doesn’t stimulate the release of insulin [which signals the storage of fat], the body adapts well to fat as its source of energy. Nothing is lost in mental capacity and levels of well-being are high. If you still think it’s odd, just remember, man evolved by eating this diet from the dawn of time. There was no white flour, no grain of any kind, no sugar, no processed foods—just high protein, fatty animal flesh, and legume shoots and berries.
But switching from carbs to fats sounds scary to most people unfamiliar and inexperienced with the diet. They fear that their arteries will clog overnight and they’ll die of a heart attack. But recent studies done on excessive carbohydrate and sugar intake indicate that they are just as likely, in abundance, to cause a build up of unhealthy (LDL-Low Density Lipoproteins) blood lipids and elevated levels of cholesterol. There’s also a choice between good and bad fats. If you were to eat a slab of salmon, a green salad with olive oil and vinegar and 8 spears of asparagus for dinner every night, or chicken breast, broccoli and a half an avocado for lunch, you’d be lean and healthier than any human you could ever imagine. Understanding this is half the battle.
Can Fat Make You Fat?
What makes people fat, is not fats themselves. What makes people fat in this day and age is complex. Most of all, in the U.S. portion control is the real culprit. Whole populations in other countries that are unfettered by a “big” complex (bigger house, bigger car, bigger portion) can eat just about anything, in moderation, and seem to maintain better health and a more appropriate weight-to-height ratio than we do here in America. But the processing we’ve come to rely upon for preservation, longer shelf life, better taste and increased convenience also contributes to the staggering rates of obesity in this country.
Ketogenic diets can help in this effort, and are aiding, many millions of people who currently have adopted some form of the ketogenic diet. Fat never made anyone fat. In fact, the body burns its own fat in the presence of fat. That is what ketogenesis is based on. But if that’s true, how can we demonize carbohydrates? No one is demonizing them, just being selective about which ones to eat in certain phases where they are allowed, and being exclusive of them in phases where it’s called for.
Here’s How to Use Each Type of Ketogenic Diet
The SKD is the sort of diet that anyone who hasn’t been dieting should adopt in the first phase of any diet, only because it’s so capable of jump-starting and putting the body back into a place where it reacts more normally, believe it or not. Just as one may switch routines in the gym, or change things up in terms of exercises, intensity or rep and set schemes, so too can the dieter shake things up by using phases to cause change within the metabolism of the body.
Technically, like Atkins induction phase of 2+ weeks, carbohydrates should number about 20 grams daily. That’s hard to do, considering that even high fat nuts have carbohydrates. It usually represents about 2 servings of green vegetables and two moderate sized green salads over the course of one day, along with protein. Sound appealing? Probably not so much. But an SKD isn’t the sort of diet you should remain on for long periods either. Physically, it’s deficient of the important low-glycemic carbohydrates that you may be able to have in the future, depending upon your body type and history, and is boring and difficult to follow mentally for much longer than a few weeks.
Many on Atkins would identify this as their diet, but it really isn’t. In fact, Atkins doesn’t really fit into any of these categories in its next phase. But once it reaches the phase of maintenance, it’s much more like a CKD than anything else, though it may be isolated into one day as opposed to a 3 days on/ 1 day off cycle as bodybuilders tend to follow.
The CKD is probably the most interesting diet because it leaves a lot of flexibility for many different kind of approaches. The first is a true cycling of carbs over the course of a few days, as we mentioned. The second would be to cycle the carbs within one given day. For example, only eat low glycemic complex carbs until noon, and then eat only green vegetables for the remainder of the day. This is for people who have sorted out just how many carbs they can tolerate throughout any given day, and how much fat is necessary to keep things in balance. Too much of one and not enough of the other can throw things off kilter.
Some even use the CKD as a means to dip in and out of an SKD for weeks at a time. The CKD/SKD connection is the most logical, of course. That’s when you go for 2 weeks on the SKD, then gradually introduce personally ‘safe’ lower glycemic carbs into the mix in some form, on a regular basis for another few weeks, and then go right back into the SKD again. This is truly effective body manipulation for bodybuilders, and probably what most do during a contest phase. After a long food-abusive off season, the metabolism starts out poor and sluggish, gets better when the metabolism begins to burn like a wildfire, carbs are reintroduced, and then are removed again to shock the body into even better condition by delving deep into ketosis for about a week. The final days are typically a filling period where carbs and fats are coupled for maximum muscle fullness and a tight skinned, ripped to the bone look.
The final ketogenic diet is the TKD and is used by some bodybuilders in the off season or pre-season, to support training while weaning themselves off heavy carb meals. This can be an effective pre-induction phase, or for those who burn calories fairly easily through activity, can act as a way to boost workouts with glucose, then resume a low glycemic carb ingestion schedule. Personally, we would say this is the least effective type of ketogenic diet for most people because it’s really not allowing the body to ever dip into ketosis at all. Truly, this is just carb control, rather than ketogenic.
How to Know if You Are in Ketosis
There are these neat little test strips that you can purchase at any pharmacy, that tell the tale of whether you are in ketosis or not. They are extremely useful because they not only can tell you if you are in ketosis, they can tell you if you are too far, not far enough or just where you want to be. They are a scientific, quantifiable means by which anyone can determine where they are and where they need to be, and enable anyone to tweak their diets to meet their needs. They are used during urination and are run through the stream quickly. They read out in seconds.
If you find that you are following an SKD and are not getting the fast results you expect (which you ought to using an SKD) then you should buy some test strips and monitor yourself throughout this first phase. It’s essential to allow yourself to dip fairly far into ketosis during an induction phase.
Is Ketosis Right for You?
That depends who you are and why you’re using it, but in general, we happen to believe that it can be useful for anyone who needs to shed pounds. If you look at most theories of diet and training, and you treat them as tools by which you can achieve what you’re after, then you’ll use them correctly by adapting them to your individual needs. Nothing says you have to follow an induction phase of an SKD type for just 2 weeks. Maybe you need 2 months of it! Some people who are extremely overweight do actually need a lot more metabolic repair as a result of months or years of reckless eating practices.
Whatever you choose, the reality is, ketogenic diets are highly useful for many different purposes. And let’s face it, we could never say that about low fat diets or high fiber diets or any of the rest of the diets that we saw come and go in the 90’s.
Dane Fletcher is the world’s most prolific bodybuilding and fitness expert and is currently the executive editor for BodybuildingToday.com. If you are looking for more or information on weight training, or supplementation, please visit , the bodybuilding and fitness authority site with hundreds of articles available FREE to help you meet your goals.
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