Psoriasis is a recurring, non-contagious skin disease with symptoms that include patches of rough, dry and scaly skin surrounded by a red, inflamed border. The areas affected often become cracked and painful with severe itching.
Psoriasis outbreaks can occur in various places on the body and over 6 million people in the USA are believed to be sufferers.
Eczema is a skin condition that leads to irritated and inflamed skin, often with severe itching, blisters and red rashes on the areas affected.
Eczema is particularly difficult to live with when it appears on the face. Other common areas for outbreaks include knee and elbow creases, wrists and ankles, chest, back, neck and scalp.
While scientists aren’t certain of the exact causes of eczema, it’s believed to be the combined effect of various dietary and environmental triggers, along with a genetic susceptibility leading to problems with normal skin barrier function.
Cold pressed avocado oil is highly beneficial for your skin when used as a natural moisturizer.
Ahead is a look at why an increasing number of people are finding avocado oil much more effective for moisturizing their face than those petrochemical-based face creams.
Avocado oil skin benefits include very high levels of healthy monounsaturated fats, phytosterols and antioxidants like vitamin E. All of these nutrients can help better your skin tone over time when added to your diet regularly.
Avocado oil benefits your health in 3 main ways — because of its superior fatty acid profile, high in monounsaturated fats; through its phytosterols, particularly the good levels of beta-sitosterol; and with its strong antioxidant content.
Ahead is a look at these 3 main health benefits of avocado oil and how it affects your body when you use it regularly, particularly as a replacement for harmful polyunsaturated cooking oils.
Avocado oil has a fatty acid profile weighted heavily towards monounsaturated fats. Typically, testing shows approximately 76% of the fat in avocado oil is monounsaturated, in the form of oleic and palmitoleic fatty acids.
The remainder is around 12% linoleic and alpha linolenic acids fatty acids (polyunsaturated and omega-3) and 12% palmitic and stearic saturated fats. Research studies suggest that monounsaturated fats are some of the healthiest to have in our diet.
Excessive levels of the hormone dihydrotestosterone (DHT) is a common cause of both hair loss and prostate problems for men.
Pumpkin seed oil contains many beneficial health nutrients and two in particular that are believed to provide protection against DHT damage.
Here’s how taking pumpkin seed oil regularly can help maintain healthy hair and prevent male prostate enlargement.
If you’re a man, regularly producing too much dihydrotestosterone in your body can cause hair loss and eventually male pattern baldness.
Pumpkin oil is most commonly taken for preventing hair loss and prostate problems, due to its reported DHT blocking properties.
This page has 5 more important pumpkin seed benefits and how taking it regularly can help improve your skin, treat joint problems, maintain health vision, alleviate bladder problems and much more.
Like the seeds, raw pumpkin seed oil can help improve skin tone and may be a beneficial supplement for many skin problems like acne, dry flaky skin, eczema and psoriasis.
Alongside the powerful antioxidant content, the high levels of natural fats would appear to be responsible for this effect.
Flaxseed oil is a deep, golden oil with a light and nutty flavor. Made from flax seeds, which have been used medicinally for thousands of years, there are many flaxseed oil benefits for your health.
Flax oil is the highest known source of omega-3 alpha linolenic acid, an incredibly important fatty acid that combats inflammation and prevents many diseases within your body.
While it can provide an excellent source of omega-3 fats for everyone, there are different reasons why flaxseed oil is important for both women and men, especially a popular new kind known as high lignan flax oil.
Here are 7 flax oil benefits and great reasons to take it regularly for better health.
Deep green and delicious, pumpkin seeds are a nutrient rich snack that offers many benefits for better health.
Here’s 6 reasons why pumpkin seeds are so good for you, including preventing hair loss and prostate enlargement, kidney stones and bladder problems, treating arthritis and improving your skin.
These benefits of pumpkin seeds also include high levels of nutrition and the end of this article has the best Styrian and USA grown, raw and organic pumpkin seeds I’ve found if you’d like to start including them in your diet.
Dihydrotestosterone (DHT) is an important male hormone but excessive amounts circulating in the body can cause problems, particularly later in life for men. High levels of DHT are implicated in both hair loss, resulting in male pattern baldness, and an enlarged prostate, also known as benign prostatic hyperplasia.
Pumpkin seeds are a highly nutritious food with many health benefits. You can eat them all year long if you get bags of the hull-less pepitas, but what about eating fresh pumpkin seeds straight from the pumpkin when they’re in season?
It is quite simple to prepare deliciously crunchy yet healthy homemade pumpkin seeds with the low heat frying method recommended ahead.
There’s also other ways of eating pumpkin seeds and the best raw pepitas I’ve found for the rest of the year.
Pumpkins are one of the most overlooked foods in terms of health benefits and nutrients. It seems many people’s only exposure to this extremely healthy food is sugar laden pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving or Christmas.
Even worse, millions of pumpkins are hollowed out for carving at Halloween, with the pumpkin meat and seeds, probably about the healthiest thing in the kitchen at the time, never used.
Pumpkins deserve better. In fact, with the incredible array of health nutrients in pumpkins, they should really be considered a superfood. And one we’d do well to eat a lot more often.
Aside from being incredibly addictive, diet cola has some strange ingredients that can damage both your digestive system and longer term health. Let’s have a look at those ingredients ahead.
Right at the top is the phosphoric acid that gives both regular and diet cola their high levels of acidity.
Alongside its potentially damaging effects on your digestive tract, phosphoric acid tends to reduce hydrochloric acid secretion in your stomach.
This can lead to impaired digestion and has the potential to be one of the causes of flatulence, along with many other health problems.
How exactly did so many of us come to be pouring highly acidic cola down our throats over and over again each day?
And what kind of effect is this acid drink having on our digestion and general health and well-being?
Short of drinking undiluted vinegar, cola is about the most acidic thing you can buy to drink. The pH level of soda is approximately 2.5 (testing seems to come up with results ranging from 2.3 to 3.5 but a pH of 2.5 is commonly cited for the most popular brand name cola).
In the way these the pH of liquids are ranked a pH level of 2.5 is about 10,000 times stronger on the acidic scale than water.
To get an idea of the scale of the acid in soda, by comparison, battery acid that will eat away your skin has a pH of 1.
If you would like to give up diet soda for good, here are five big reasons why diet sodas can be so damaging to your health and energy.
Hopefully this list can provide the motivation needed to follow through with the 10 Step Plan for Giving Up Diet Soda coming up next.
The artificial sweetener aspartame, found in most diet sodas, is made from two free-form amino acids, phenylalanine and aspartic acid, and the toxic alcohol methanol.
Without the usual slow digestion and other competing amino acids, free-form phenylalanine can hit the bloodstream very quickly and potentially cross the blood brain barrier in unnaturally large amounts.
Something I’ve recently started drinking for their health benefits are superfruit concentrates of high antioxidant fruits and berries.
It struck me, while researching these posts on diet soda, that these superfruit concentrates, that are usually diluted with plain water like cordial, would actually be great mixed with sparkling water.
They really are. And in this form, they make a special kind of healthy diet soda alternative. One that’s close enough to the experience of drinking soda pop, while actually being good for you.
Here’s how I make them and how I’d suggest they’d work as an effective cola replacement or soda alternative.
Most cola and other sodas are packed with staggering amounts of unhealthy high fructose corn syrup or fattening sugar.
With this in mind, is it worth making the switch from regular soda to diet soda with aspartame to help reduce health problems? This page has the answers.
Both regular and diet cola share phosphoric acid, sulfite-ammonia caramel color 150d and caffeine as ingredients. Given this, there is no reduction in the potential damage done to your digestive processes by these chemicals to be had in switching for regular soda to diet soda.
Both have been shown to be very acidic in testing with regular cola having a pH of around 2.5 and diet cola usually testing at a slightly better 3.2 pH.
The main difference, if you were to switch from regular soda to diet soda, would be swapping out the very high amounts of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) or sugar for the artificial sweetener aspartame.
Regular consumption of either high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) or the artificial sweetener aspartame can lead to sugar cravings for simple carbohydrates.
Coming off a major source of HFCS or aspartame, like regular soda or diet soda, will be likely to increase these cravings and corresponding withdrawal symptoms.
Alongside caffeine addiction, sugar cravings are likely to be a big reason why so many people find it so hard to break a cola habit. The sugar or high fructose corn syrup in soda has had them on the insulin roller coaster for so long, they find it difficult to get off.
A common, but still relatively unknown cause of digestive problems is fructose malabsorption.
More and more people are becoming aware of the dangers of high fructose corn syrup to their health, but fewer would know that excess fructose can also lead to bloating, intestinal cramps and excessive gas.
Ahead is just what fructose is, why so many people are experiencing fructose malabsorption and a list of both high fructose foods, drinks, sweeteners and fruits and fructose free or low fructose alternatives for better health.
When I decided to give up coffee recently, I believe I was able to stop drinking it quite easily because I had the three things from my previous post on how to replace coffee with healthier alternatives in place.
Firstly, I knew I’d been addicted to coffee for many years and admitted that to myself.
To my mind any addiction is a problem because you don’t have control of it – it has control of you. Once you understand how caffeine addiction works you can start to do something positive about it.
Legal or not, coffee is an addictive drug that affects both your body and brain chemistry. Anyone who drinks coffee regularly and cannot go more than a couple of days without ‘really feeling like’ (needing) a cup is very likely addicted to it.
I was. I drank a cup or two a day most days of the week for many years. In researching all different effects drinking coffee can have on your health, I simply came up with too many reasons to find an alternative to coffee to continue drinking it.
There were two things that particularly surprised me with coffee replacement.
Giving up caffeine often leads to withdrawal symptoms, including irritability, fatigue, difficulty concentrating and caffeine withdrawal headaches.
Ahead are 2 little known supplements you can use to greatly reduce caffeine withdrawal symptoms when giving up coffee or cola.