Health And Fitness

Health and fitness product creators have a habit of working by themselves. This is not unusual, and may be partly due to the fact that many of them get their start offline working directly with their clients to help them meet their health and fitness goals. But eventually it dawns on the product creator that they may be able to significantly expand their business by taking their product online and reaching out to the huge consumer base that it represents.

It is usually at this point that they get a bit of a shock and discover that working online is a whole lot different than working offline. Instead of the one-on-one interaction that they are used to dealing with when meeting with their clients, now they are broadcasting into the void and often finding that the void is not responding. The internet, they discover, can be a lonely place for a health and fitness marketer.


Whereas offline they may have built up a client base that trusts them, when they go online they are effectively starting over from scratch. Now they have to prove their worth all over again, one customer at a time. For many, it is enough to drive them offline again. The thought of having to master article writing, web site building, and the art of site monetization are enough to make one wonder whether it is all worth the effort.

But it need not be as difficult to pull off as you might imagine. Not if you can find the right people to help guide you. Perhaps even the right people to take some of the work off your hands in exchange for a piece of the pie. Sure, you can pay people to do the work for you if you can afford it. But many cannot afford to go that route, and instead they look more closely at the idea of joint ventures. The joint venture, or JV, is a collaboration of two or more parties who share the workload of a project, preferring to concentrate on just that part of the work that they are able to do more easily, either because they have the experience, or because they have the natural talent for the work.

The joint venture can achieve what the work of a single party cannot achieve on its own.

So, if you are an exercise video producer who has no trouble creating good exercise videos, but you are terrible when it comes to putting together a website that can actually convince people to buy the videos, then a joint venture might be the way forward. You might think that you can simply outsource the design work, but the reality is that if you work with someone who has experience in the niche that you are selling to, your likelihood of success will be a good deal higher.

This means that you may want to try to team up with someone in the same exercise niche as yourself, but who might be marketing a completely different product - exercise clothing, for example, or an information product that relates to losing weight through the same exercises that appear in your own videos. If the other party already knows how to build a web site and get clients, but they have never had any experience producing video, then a joint venture between the two of you might make sense. You can each achieve something that neither party might have succeeded with alone.

This is the idea behind Carolyn Hansen's joint venture membership database for vendors in the health and fitness industry. If you would like to learn more about joint ventures in this area, and get to know other health and fitness professionals, get yourself across to Carolyn's site and join up today. Admission is free.

Health and Yoga

Yoga certainly can help improve flexibility, but there are other benefits as well. It can help sooth stress in the body, improve joint mobility, boost glands in the endocrine system, increase stamina and much more. Those with chronic health conditions, such as joint pain may find relief from these pains, as yoga has the ability to strengthen and ease tensions in these regions of the body. It may be an avenue to consider if all other methods have failed. Those it is wise to see a doctor before engaging in these activities. It is usually a good idea to check with a doctor in rare cases to ensure no additional harm will be done. Yoga also has bonuses to the individual's mental state. It assists boost body awareness, relieves stress patterns in the body, helps sharpen concentration, relaxes the body. It also helps develop self-discipline, which may be a great assist in our day-to-day lives.

Yoga can be learned in a gym environment by a yoga (yoga sutras) instructor, or at home from yoga manuals. No accessories are required other than maybe a mat to sit on. There should be plenty of flat floor space to stretch out on and enough room above the head to raise your arms. Yoga should be performed before eating while wearing comfortable clothing. The health advantages of yoga are numerous. Yoga improves sleep and digestion. It can make people feel younger. It increases overall well being and helps the brain achieve a point of relaxation. It can make the body more flexible. It may also strengthen the immune system and decreases recurring suffering. Yoga stimulates and massages the internal organs, which helps keep away disease. The flexing of muscles encourages ideal blood flow to all of the internal organs, which in turn has the action of flushing out toxins.

To the amateur, yoga might appear to be a series of almost impossible free hand exercises performed in silence. Yoga is actually an archaic art that goes back more than 5000 years. Yoga plays a vital role in moving a person to a healthier state of consciousness. Exercise operates on the body by improving flexibility, internal blood circulation and the working of the internal systems. Breathing techniques not only assist the lungs but also ready the begin for the next step - Meditation.

Most people should begin with what is referred to as Hatha Yoga. This is the most commonly practiced kind of Yoga all over the world and uses on a selections of Asanas as they are called. It is also know as the Yoga of Postures. This type of yoga is ideal for beginners who want to experience the benefits of yoga in general without any spiritual aim. Yoga also improves your endurance, circulatorysystems, pain tolerance, and muscle strength. Yoga also has the ability to improve your weight, posture and quality of rest.

Cognitive benefits of yoga come from the synchronization of the body and the mind through meditation. Most folks use yoga to decrease stress, increase relaxation, gain emotional balance, and improve concentration. Yoga also prevents panic attacks, blood problems, and muscle tension while increasing self-esteem, joy levels, and strengthening your immune system. So, go grab your yoga mat and begin on the path to a better you. Although there are yoga classes all over the United States, you can also practice yoga right in your own home. Yoga DVDs, books, and home programs are readily ready for those who don't have sufficient time or flexibility to make it across town for consistent classes.

The Best Fitness Food

Fitness is so much more important than most people imagine. Fitness isn't just about looking good, but about feeling your best and being able to dig in and enjoy life. Diet fitness is probably the most important element to success and being able to reach your personal goals.

The food you eat accounts for up to 80% of your fitness efforts. This truly puts a different spin on the way we should be looking at food and how it applies to our fitness goals. If you've ever heard the phrase "Garbage In, Garbage Out", it should be particularly important when it comes to our bodies on a daily basis. It's impossible to feel your best when you fill your body with food that amounts to nutritional garbage.

Become a food snob! Exercise your right to a healthy and beautiful body by refusing to purchase or eat inferior overly processed food. Demand fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains and lean meats at every meal. Aim for as much as 85% of each day's diet to come from raw, whole, unprocessed food as close to it's natural state as possible.

By embracing raw, whole and unprocessed foods as the major portion of your daily food intake, you will go a long way in achieving diet fitness and a healthy body.

An exercise diary is the place to document your exercise program and goals. Your goals will determine the type of exercise program you will want to pursue. Starting a new fitness program is quite different than a fit athlete working on marathon training. Both, however, benefit from coming up with a plan for how they will meet their exercise goals. Someone new to exercise will want to start slowly, doing short sessions of cardiovascular training, strength training and stretching. A marathon athlete might spend a great deal of time on improving cardiovascular fitness and endurance, and less on strength and stretching.

There are nutritional supplements available, however, that are indispensable for enhancing muscle-building and fat loss.

1.glutamine

How Glutamine works: glutamine is known as a "conditionally essential" amino acid; it becomes "essential" during intense exercise such as weight training or cardiovascular exercise, as the need for glutamine is greatly increased. During bouts of intense activity (or stress), glutamine enters the bloodstream and travels into the liver where it is converted into glucose; this newly synthesized glucose helps to fuel the working muscles. This process is known as gluconeogenesis-the process of turning a non-carbohydrate substance (glutamine and some other amino acids) into glucose which can be used for energy.

2. Branched chain amino acids (BCAAS)

How BCAAs work: Unlike glutamine, BCAAs, consisting of leucine, isoleucine, and valine, are essential amino acids, meaning that the body cannot synthesize them from precursors-they must be obtained from the diet. Like glutamine, there is a greater requirement for BCAAs during intense exercise such as weight training and they are derived primarily from catabolized muscle tissue.

Creatine monohydrate:

How creatine works: Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is the primary energy source to fuel intense muscular contractions, such as those during sprinting or weight-training. ATP contains a high-energy phosphate bond, which is broken down into ADP (adenosine monophosphate), releasing the energy necessary for muscles to contract. Every muscle cell has a store of phosphate, from which ADP is recycled back into ATP to continue fueling contractions.

Quick Weight Loss Basics

We are quickly becoming a world consumed with our weight. The fact is there are now HUNDREDS of millions of people who are OBESE causing multitudes of health problems that lead to negatives consequences for themselves and their family not to mention the strain it places on our healthcare system.

One of the main problems that people face when trying to lose weight is that they simply don’t UNDERSTAND how the body works. Our lack of understand comes from so much BS that is thrown at us from all sides of the media. We are too busy looking at the latest weight loss programs to understand the basic fats of fat loss.

Calories make you fat, not fat
Oftentimes when folks are looking to lose fat, they begin to cut fat out of their diet. They buy fat free and low fat product assuming this will help them lose fat. The fact is, it is not the fat, but the amount of calories that we consume that is the enemy. While it is true that a gram of fat has more calories than a gram of protein, many people eat MORE proteins and carbohydrates because they assume that fat is the enemy.

Eating 3 meals per day can make you gain weight
We were always taught to eat 3 meals per day. Actually, this is wrong. The way to keep your metabolism moving quickly is to keep eating. Now, you want to gorge yourself all day, but spread out smaller, healthier meals throughout the day and keep your metabolism burning fat all day long.

The scale is NOT always right
Have you ever been working out hard, running, lifting weights, I mean REALLY working out? Maybe you have been on the program for a few weeks. You feel better than ever and you are sure you are making fantastic progress. You decide to step on the scale and test your theory and, much to your surprise, BAM, you have gained a pound of weight! What the heck? How is that possible? Well, you may be in better shape than you thought. You see, muscle weight more than fat, so sometimes, the muscle we build working out causes our weight to level or even be a bit higher, BUT we have actually lost fat and are in much healthier condition. It is important for you to pay attention to how you look and feel, not just your weight.

Not eating at all is the WORST thing you can do to lose weight
Ok, the last and perhaps most important fat loss basic we will talk about here is the idea that exists that if we don’t eat at all, we will lose weight. Well, to SOME degree, this is true. If you don’t eat, your body WILL begin to burn fat, but first of all, you will quickly become unhealthy. Your body needs a constant supply of nutrients and if it doesn’t get it, you will quickly become unhealthy. In addition, when your body is restricted of calories, it begins to enter into survival mode. This means that any calories it DOES get it will try to store as fat for later use. This is why some people who don’t eat for several days eventually end up gaining MORE weight once they begin eating again. Starvation is NOT a good fat loss technique.

Natural Health

The words in the title about statistics are well known, usually in a slightly different version, but I feel it is a little unfair on statistics. However it is true that most of us don't know how to interpret statistics and even if someone does know it might take a few minutes to sit down and decode what the figures are actually saying.

I have spent a good amount of time looking at research articles over the last couple of decades and have become interested in the question of when or whether one should take the drugs recommended by doctors. I have been asking people how effective they expect a drug to be that is prescribed by their doctor. Most of them expect the drug to be 90 - 100% effective, a few drop the figure to 80% or more and only one person has thought that it might be as low as 70%.

This is in stark contrast to the fact where there is often less than 5% effectiveness and drugs with a proven effectiveness of less than 0.4% are regularly prescribed to the tune of billions of dollars a year for the drug companies. Doctors often talk about patients being unrealistic in their expectations. But who is being unrealistic?

A good case in point is a paper I looked at about Herceptin, a much hyped drug for women with hormone positive breast cancer. It sounds absolutely great when the advertising says "the treatment group has only 62% of the risk of recurrence, metastasis or death." It sounds at a quick reading that things are 62% better.

Well not quite... Not at all in fact. - The 62% of the risk of recurrence or spread of the disease or death is... - An improvement of 37% against what it would have been without treatment which means an improvement of 37% of 22% (deaths which could have happened) which is - An absolute improvement of just over 8% for disease free survival - But if we look at overall survival it is only a 0.9% improvement - that is, out of 1000 patients only nine extra survive two years, or less than 1 in 100 - Or if it is averaged out over the life of everyone, an increase of just under 3 months of disease-free survival and four to five months of additional time till death.

Somehow one life saved out of 100 or an extra five months of survival doesn't sound so great - nothing like the 62% in the advertising. And when you take into account the suffering due to side effects during treatment and the reduction of quality of life during that time you might like to think of much more fun ways to use up the last years of your life.


When a doctor wants you to take some drugs, especially when it is a life and death issue you don't want to know the advertising figures, you want to know how much disease free survival time the studies show and how much overall survival time there is. And if the doctor waffles on about a few more months, work out whether months of suffering during chemo is worth the few more months that you might or might not get.

So, with all this in mind - is the problem one of statistics? Or is it that the marketers, the drug companies, are just doing the best they can for their shareholders by promoting their products in the best way they can.

One of the problems is that most doctors wear rose tinted spectacles when it comes to interpreting the figures. At best the doctors are intensely caring, want to do the best for their patients and are incredibly busy, too busy caring to delve into the vast swamp of biomedical literature. It is much easier to read the guidelines provided by the drug companies, or their medical associations which are sponsored by the drug companies.

You deserve better than that. You deserve to know the facts of actual effectiveness. As an example, the average survival time for women with breast cancer is 20 years. In Australia and elsewhere in the developed world between 78% and 85% of women survive 5 years (depending on where I get the figures). Chemotherapy only contributes 1.5% to survival at five years. That isn't a typo. Only 1.5% of the 78% to 85% survival is due to chemo.

If it is going to cost you a lot of money for your drugs, of any sort, then work out whether you could do better by taking regular exercise, eating more raw and lightly steamed fresh vegetables, fruit and use the money to improve your overall quality of life than to take a drug with little effect.

Swine Flu

Swine flu also known as pig flu influenza of the “A type” is caused by a mutated form of virus. There is no vaccine for this disease and till a vaccine is discovered all dependency is on anti viral drugs.

It has been noted that the swine flu virus does not respond to older anti viral drugs and quickly turns resistant to newer ones. Doctors’ advice that patients should not be administered anti viral drugs for mild symptoms of the flu for fear that the virus may develop resistance to the drugs in the event of an actual swine flu infection. On the other hand, there is a strong view that the anti viral drug must be administered within 48 hours of the swine flu infection for it to have any effect on the disease. Unfortunately, it is impossible to identify the onset of swine flu, for up to four days from the date of incubation of the swine flu virus.

Currently the drugs oseltamivir and zanamivir seem to have some effect on the flu virus. Oseltamivir, sold under the brand name Tamiflu and Zanmivir sold as Relenza act on the neuraminidase part of the flu virus, inhibiting the swine flu virus from proliferating. It should be administered to patients who have been confirmed to be suffering from the medical condition.

These drugs can reduce the symptoms of the disease, shorten the duration of suffering and reduce the risk of complications in patients who have been administered the drug beyond 48 hours and have been hospitalized. The medication regimen however, will have to be limited to ten days. The patients may experience side effects such as nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, sore throat and cough.

Doctors recommend that high risk patients, who have been in close contact with a person confirmed to be suffering from the disease, should be treated immediately. High risk patients are those who have cancer, HIV/AIDS and serious heart disease. Health care workers who have handled patients with swine flu should also be categorized as first responders and should be treated for the condition. Persons traveling to Mexico and parts of the world affected by the disease should also be considered as first responders and treated accordingly.The world stock of Tamiflu and Relenza is currently sufficient to meet the demand from countries affected by the disease. However, the sufficiency to meet world demand will depend on how fast the disease spreads across the continents and the number of persons who will be affected by the disease.

Diet, Exercise and Vitamin D the New Prescriptions at Thai Cancer Centers

Cancer is the third leading cause of death in the entire world, accounting for around 12% of all deaths worldwide. The disease has become prevalent in our society so rapidly, growing with robustness and vigor. However, scientists have long been at a loss to explain why cancer rates have jumped so rapidly in the last century or so. Increased identification of the disease was thought to play a part - however, a more satisfying and scientifically sound explanation recently emerged.

The World Cancer Research Fund, based in the UK, recently released its second Expert's Report, which says that up to 90% of cancers could easily be prevented with a healthy diet, sufficient exercise, and sunshine. Thai medical centers, especially international hospitals in Bangkok, are now focusing just as much on cancer prevention for well patients, and natural therapies for current cancer sufferers, as they do on high-tech treatment and drug therapies.

With Thailand's relatively natural, agrarian lifestyle, cancer rates in the country are somewhat lower than the rest of the world. Hospitals in Bangkok now have expert proof that a lifestyle closer to nature can help slash cancer rates by amazing amounts. "Studies consistently show that patterns of cancer change as...countries become increasingly urbanized and industrialized", notes the report by the WCRF. The percentage of cancer that could be prevented by simple lifestyle changes like healthy eating, exercise and sunshine is staggering, leaving doctors in international hospitals in Bangkok reeling. Almost 40% of pancreatic and breast cancers, 60% of mouth cancers, around 36% of lung cancers, 45% of bowel cancer and a quarter of kidney cancers could be prevented by diet and exercise alone.

The combination of these statistics would give a huge 33% drop in cancer numbers as a whole. Heart hospitals in Bangkok also know that these changes can slash huge numbers of the patients that they see for heart-related conditions, also. Simply following the food pyramid for recommended food proportions, and getting 20 minutes of exercise per day, can make a huge difference to Thailand cancer center patients, according to the WCRF study.

Vitamin D was also a major factor in the study, with sufficient levels of Vitamin D alone shown to be able to prevent up to 77% of all cancers, in a large study of women in the US. The results of this study, which have amazed Thailand cancer centers like Bangkok and Wattanosoth Hospital, are even more potent considering that a low dosage of non-natural vitamin D (pill form, not sunlight), was used.

The mechanism by which Vitamin D helps prevent cancer was demonstrated in a recent study on breast cancer. New Jersey Medical School researchers based their work on earlier studies that showed that Vitamin D could inhibit breast cancer growth, and went further, to identify the actual protein responsible for suppressing the cancer cell growth. Vitamin D has also been recently shown to play a critical role in supporting the immune system throughout life, and maternal exposure to the vitamin has an enormous effect on the future health of a baby. Thai medical centers are prescribing 10 minutes of sunshine on the face and arms every day for expectant mothers, in the face of this research.

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