With the advancement of technology nowadays, the more kids are fond of spending too much time in front of a T.V., P.C. or playing computer games.

Such fondness has shown studies that they may be related to many cases of obesity, substance abuse or even alcohol addiction. Addictions and vices like that are related to the contents of the programs they watch or games they play.

For one, T.V. programs are like the internet; they are source of information, both good and bad. So parents and children should have agreements in terms of watching T.V.; studies have shown that the stricter the rules, the less likely they will watch T.V… That is according to an article:”Stricter Rules Can Steer Kids Away From TV”.

Some tips? While communication in a parent-child is important, great respect for one another can place communication at its premium. Having developed that, physical activity enjoyed by the family seems to be the solution.

Not only will it avoid obesity to some extent, it will also develop good social and communication skills within the family.

Also establishing rules regarding content within this media available is important. Having to be there to guide them is a plus because it establishes authority, respect and communication from the parents and vice versa.

There are many sports and physical activities also emerging in line with the new technology. Explore them with your kids. Not only it is less likely to have access to TV, it can also create a good atmosphere in the family.

Now that is healthy.

reference : yahoo news

Electricity costs are rising, but the need of air conditioning units and heaters are so much needed. Climate change has brought not only sudden changes in weather, but also we experience extreme weather conditions, be it hot or cold. Using such units is a must because we need to cope up to such weather changes. Our bodies may not be enough for maintaining balance of the temperature around us.

Forever we would be grateful for the inventions of air conditioners and heaters because we can be sure that our families will experience convenient indoor temperatures, whatever hot or cold it may be outside. But with the rise of electricity costs, will we be able to cope up?

Taking care of our air conditioners and heaters can guarantee that money used in electricity is money well spent. Regular cleaning and check up is a must especially in changing weather conditions. How often? It may be as often as needed. Some air conditioning units and heaters are used frequently, so maintenance and cleaning may also be frequent.

Although regular cleaning of the units may mean lower electricity costs, cleaning and checking up may also equate to money. How would you really save money?

Regular cleaning may not only mean the units themselves, but it may also include the area in which the air conditioner and heater are located. Keeping the place clean and tidy makes less clutter in the filters, which translates to less maintenance by your friendly service person.

Another tip is to use as needed and not lavishly. There are times that you can do with just a well ventilated room, open windows and electric fan.

Some of the tips to make sure money is well spent in such appliances. Enjoy the benefits without having to worry too much of bills.

Forget eating right and exercise. That can only get you as far as 130 years or so. Can’t medical science find a way to make us live forever? To reverse aging and “cure” death?

Maybe it already has. Here are some far-out theories, backed by serious science, that may one day lead to immortality.

Replacement Organs

From heart attacks to kidney failure, many of the causes of death come from one or more of our organs not working properly. One way to solve that problem is to clone replacement parts from your own cells ahead of time, so if you need a new lung, it’s ready to go. And since you’re implanting something made from your own DNA, there’s no risk of tissue rejection.

The technology for this already exists: heart valves, ears, and fingers have been successfully grown in a lab, and replacement bladders have been transplanted into patients in the United States. The doctors behind that triumph are awaiting full FDA approval for more operations. Human lifespans gained about 30 years when most infectious diseases were wiped out; ending tissue failure as a cause of death could add 30 more.

Nanotechnology

Aging is a cellular process, so the only way to stop it (or reverse it) may be on the cellular level. That’s where nanotechnology comes in. The term describes microscopic devices, materials, or even robots, that can revive cells, attack viruses, repair organs, even deliver precision drug or gene therapies. Nanorobots would also destroy cancer cells more effectively than any current treatment.

For example, in 2004, researchers at Rice University sent gold “nanoshells” after tumors in mice. The shells bonded to the cancers and, when heated by a laser, were destroyed — taking the cancer cells with them. If nanomachines can be shrunk to the size of molecules, they could theoretically medicate and repair a body indefinitely, which means immortality. Research into various forms of nanomedicine is taking place all over the world, at a cost of $4 billion a year.

Computer Brains

Why all this effort to save the body, when all you really need to save is the brain? That’s the seat of your consciousness, after all. If your body gives out, you could just implant your brain into a new one, cloned from your cells and kept in cold storage until it’s needed. The problem is that our delicate cerebral nerve tissue doesn’t do well after it’s been scarred by surgery. Paraplegics and quadraplegics only have some nerve damage; a brain transferred to a new body would mean all of its connections are severed and reattached.

A more achievable goal is to only transplant the sections of the brain that maintain memory, consciousness, and “identity.” A person would wake up in a new body with full control of their motor functions. At the University of Pittsburgh, over a dozen stroke victims have regained control of paralyzed limbs by receiving injections of brain cells — and not even from their own bodies. This means that the brain might be resilient enough to endure some kind of transplantation.

Cryonics

This technology exists right now. You can arrange to have your body frozen to -321° Farenheit shortly after death in the hope that scientists in the future will be able to revive you and reverse whatever caused your death. Unfortunately, you can’t get frozen while you’re still alive and try to be revived, say, a week later; US law states that a person must be declared officially dead before they can legally be frozen. Otherwise you enter the tricky territory of assisted suicide (since the freezing process will kill you). Oh, also it runs around $150,000. But in the Utopian future, you won’t need money, right?

There are a number of exciting breakthroughs coming in the next few decades that may lead to much longer lifespans and even, possibly, immortality. Let’s just hope we’re all still alive when these discoveries happen!

Being healthy should not be the most daunting task for anyone, as it should be simple, livable and fun. People who has too much information overload may find it stressful because thinking it may be hard and unsustainable.

Living a healthy lifestyle can be brought in to several words: Have good/balanced food choices and move around more. Although it may be more to it in several levels, those who ride the healthy highway built their diet and physical activities around this two concepts.

Another reason why being healthy should be fun because kids can live this way, and parents have a great influence on them. If they see their parents loving exercise and healthy food, they would not find it hard to be inspired by their parents actions.

Kids and parents can enjoy physical activities if they do it together. This alone has many advantages, more bonding time and a deeper relationship. This comes true also in discussing diet issues, the more good food is shared, the more it can be a habit for the family.
Living healthy may not be expensive or time-consuming, but it can be a family habit and most importantly, fun. If you cannot enjoy one thing, the greater probability you will not do it in the long run.

With the availability of fast food and ready-to-eat meals rampant nowadays, no matter how your body composition is, you can be classified as malnourished if you do not have a daily doses of much needed vitamins.

Good thing there are many vitamin supplements that are readily available nowadays to give the much needed vitamins and nutrients the body needs to functions.

Diseases and virus get into our bodies if we lack certain nutrients that our immune system needs to fight off external toxins. Taking in multi-vitamins and other special vitamin supplements like fish oils, calcium and other supplements has now been a habit to be active and sick-free.

Although it is convenient to have nutrients and vitamins in a bottle, there may be no comparison in getting vitamins and nutrients from the food we eat. Making sure we have a healthy dose of fruits and vegetables is still better in many levels. In ancient times, people get most of the nutrients from fresh fruits and vegetables that grow from their backyard.

Make sure you get a diverse set of vitamins, be it from supplements and the food you eat. Tablets in bottle are “supplements”, a better source of most of your vitamins is still your food.

One of the things people seldom find hard to do is to start something. They may have different reasons for starting a habit or activity, but it falls short from the start. Beginnings are like crossroads, it is a transition from one part of you to a realm of the unknown… well at least for you.

Living healthy may indireectly mean living longer, living happier or living with more options. A life of health-awareness may make life longer because:

- avoiding/limiting bad vices or bad habits

- more options means there are lot of things/activities to do unlike being sickly or bed-ridden.

- happier because studies have shown the relation of a sound body to a sound mind, and more exercise and healthy food choices mean better mood. Compared to people with high choloesterol, blood sugar and many more others.

Now that we know that there are more good reasons to live life healthier, where do we begin?

The conflict of beginning something is the overload of infomation. Many people give up because they think the information they are getting is larger than them, or they just can’t handle it. A tip to overcome such procrastination is to learn a new thing about being healthy every day. Whether it is in the food we eat, or a habit you want to develop like jogging or taking a sport.

There are also many things that can hinder a healthy lifestyle. Is there anything keeping you from it?

Read an article on wellness everyday. Not about diseases or illnesses, just a new thing about fruits, or exercise and just be interested in it. If you are really decided to live life this way anyways, being interested comes naturally.

Little by little, day by day, you can live life to the fullest if you take baby steps. No baby has learned to run before crawling. Beginnings should be exciting, not feared.

Remember Santa in his red attire, white hair and big belly? Those are one of the characters that may seem cute, and sometimes having a big belly in adults may seem normal, but studies have showed it can relate to many of disease we run from.

One of the factors that can relate to big bellies is high cholesterol. Obviously this means heart attack, stroke and many more related diseases are not so distant anymore.

Some studies also have shown a big relation between bellies and dementia or Alzheimer’s. In an article, “Big Belly in Middle Age Linked to Higher Risk of Dementia”:

“In a new study, US researchers confirmed the known link between obesity and lower total brain volume and also found that abdominal fat in otherwise healthy middle aged people is associated with lower total brain volume, suggesting a greater risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s later on in life.”

(Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/189302.php)

This has to do with the total brain volume which relates to memory and brain functions. There are about 24 million people here in the world living with dementia. Not to mention 4.6 new cases every year, and that was 2005 data from the World Health Organization!

Keeping a healthy lifestyle has its perks after all. If we want to see and remember our grand children, even our own children, I guess it is still best to avoid having a big belly and more of that health lifestyle.

Diseases and toxins in our environment mutate at a faster rate than most think. So new diseases or even past ones evolving into more powerful ones and are the main concern of many of the population today. Although science and medicine has come a long way, there are situations where we just cannot fight the wide spread and evolution or new diseases or worse, incurable ones.

This generation is a generation of health aware citizens, and the wellness and medical industries dramatically increased through the years. Some may say that this is caused if the increased number of the baby boomer generation that there is an increased attention to their health.

It is sad that not all people are health conscious. Combining an aging population and ever increasing toxins and mutated diseases, it maybe a formula for many deaths other than reasons of age. Work and the fast paced technology may cause the stress that makes us prone to such diseases.

But who would have thought that the answer is a timeless tip: Prevention is better than Cure. The earlier a disease is detected, the more actions can be taken to lessen the impact of it or cure the disease completely. It can also save time and money from chronic diseases.

The tests to be taken can depend on many things:  Age, family health history and gender to name a few. Family health history is an important factor because although one may seem healthy, but his/her genetics may indicate risks factors in some diseases.

One of the most common group of diseases that is not known before are called lifestyle diseases. Consultations are important because some can go for years undetected, better be updated if you are at risk or your family is.

“Better safe than sorry” applies in our health and for our family’s as well. There are many options in early detection customized for your needs. Make sure to have a check with your doctor once in a while.