By the time people reach their 20’s, 50% have had dandruff. Believed to be caused by a fungus, the fungi live on your scalp and feed on skin oils. The following is an answer from mercola.com to this embarrassing condition.

First of all, it’s important to keep in mind that everything you slather on your skin or put on your scalp goes into your bloodstream, and can affect your overall health and internal balance. Virtually all of your regular shampoos and conditioners contain harmful chemicals that can create skin irritation, contributing to dry scalp and excessive dandruff.

I recommend buying organic personal-care products that do not contain parabens, sodium laureth or lauryl sulfate. The latter two are known eye and skin irritants, which could worsen your dandruff.

There are many solutions for this condition, but the typical strategy will be some type of medicated shampoo. However, there are safer and more effective ways of using them that do not require repetitive use.

Two shampoos that work well are Selsun Blue and Head & Shoulders. I’ve used both in the past with good results. Selsun Blue contains a form of selenium sulfide, whereas Head & Shoulders has zinc as the active ingredient. Both are toxic to the fungus.

The most effective way to use them is to lather your scalp with the shampoo at night before you go to bed, and keep it on overnight. Wear a shower cap so you don’t ruin your pillow case. Then wash it off in the morning. If needed you can repeat this treatment once a week, but typically you’ll only need one or two treatments to permanently eliminate the fungus. This seems to be a much safer alternative to using the shampoo daily for many years.

If you’re like most people, you don’t have much time to make breakfast in the morning after hitting the snooze button a couple times and racing through a shower.

But breakfast is the most important meal of the deal because it jump starts your metabolism, replenishes a body that has been devoid of food for 7-8 hours (you are getting between 7-8 hours of sleep every night right??), and keeps your brain focused on getting to work and not the hunger pangs.

Below is a guideline from Men’s Fitness.com to eating a healthy breakfast whether you’re eating at home, on the go or have zero time to waste.

IF YOU’RE EATING AT HOME, REACH FOR . . .
· 2 eggs fried in extra-virgin olive oil
· 2 slices whole-grain toast with low-sugar jam
· 1 8-oz. glass 1% milk
· 1 cup fresh berries

IF YOU’RE EATING ON THE GO, GRAB . . .
· 2 hard-boiled eggs
· 2 slices whole-grain toast with low-sugar jam
· a carton of milk
· a 1-oz box of raisins

THE NEXT BEST BET . . .
· 1 cup whole-grain cereal
· 1 cup low-fat milk
· 1 slice whole-grain toast with 2 tbsp peanut butter
· 8 oz orange juice with added calcium and vitamin D

Written by Robert Kennedy and Tosca Reno

Upon opening this book I was impressed; the foreword was written by Jack La Lanne a pioneer of health and fitness. I watched The Jack La Lanne Show as a kid; it was the first fitness show on TV; I’ve been involved in health and fitness since. This is a man who on his 70th birthday swam a mile while shackled to 70 boats carrying 70 people. He attributes his outstanding health, now at 95 years young, to clean living.

Jack La Lanne was the first well known advocate for deriving health and strength from “eating clean”, which is the premise of The Eat Clean Diet for Men. This book is an easy to follow prescription to change your health for the better with no carb or calorie counting. It’s loaded with helpful tools like: creating a game plan for grocery shopping to ensure healthy choices, eating on the road, and eating right while dining out.

Some of The Eat-Clean principles
• Eat 5 or 6 small meals a day.
• Combine lean protein with complex carbohydrates at every meal.
• Never miss a meal, especially breakfast.
• Avoid all over-processed, refined foods especially flour and sugar.
• Avoid sugar-loaded colas and juices.
• Consume adequate good fats (EFA’s) each day.
• Stick to proper portion sizes – give up the super sizing!

There are only two points made in the book that I firmly disagree with. The first is the recommendation to avoid all saturated fats. The fact is, these fats are very healthy and a necessary part of the human diet; saturated fats have nothing to do with obesity or cardiovascular disease as the media and medical community has lead us to believe. Second and probably most important, soy milk is on one of the grocery lists and included in a few recipes. Soy’s deleterious effects are indisputable and I’ve written about them several times. Among other problems with soy, twenty five grams of soy product per day is enough to disrupt your thyroid function, which is at odds with becoming leaner and healthier. Just use skim milk.

Outside of the above two concerns, I enjoyed reading The Eat Clean Diet for Men. Robert Kennedy and Tosca Reno make eating clean as fail proof as possible. I recommend this book not only to the average person just trying to lose that extra weight and improve their health, but to the experience fitness buff as well. I’m certain that anyone who reads The Eat Clean Diet for Men will take away something from this book to improve their lives.

I once had a girlfriend that asked me if I would train her if she signed up at my gym. Since she hadn’t exercised in years, I was generally excited that she was taking an interest in her health again and that she had asked me for help.

After two or three training sessions and one massive fight later, we never worked out again. That was also the last time I figure to help a lady friend out at the gym, but if you’re look for better luck than I had, Men’s Fitness.com offers these exercise tips for couples that want to work out together.

1.) Forget your own training.
“If you’re trying to show off by demonstrating how much you can lift, you’re going to have problems,” says Rachel Cosgrove, a strength and conditioning coach and co-owner of Results Fitness in Santa Clarita, Calif. “She wants you to pay attention to her.” This means concentrating on moves that she can do and enjoy (unless you want a dumbbell dropped on your foot).

2.) Say the right things.
Feed her compliments—and try to ensure that she processes them as such. “Don’t say, ‘Wow, your arms are getting so big,’ or, ‘You’re looking really buff!’” says Cosgrove. “If a woman hears that, she might never come back with you to the gym.” Instead, reinforce her work by telling her that her arms are really “toned,” or that her legs are “defined.”

3.) Know what she wants.
Her goals are to burn calories and fat, and get more “shapely.” So take it easy on the isolation exercises, use lighter weights and higher reps, and keep her moving. “Women are multitaskers,” says Cosgrove. “They want combination exercises, compound movements, and circuit sets.” In terms of body parts, she’s concerned with her legs, glutes, and—most of all—abs. “As much as guys love the bench press, that’s how much women love ab work,” says Joe Stankowski, a trainer of pageant contestants in Wilmington, Del. So grab a Swiss ball and crunch!

4.) Disguise the workout.
Women often fear weights, so hide weight training in moves like medicine-ball squats and med-ball overhead presses. You can also use those colored, plastic kettlebells for figure eights and swings. And here are always cable moves like wood chops. She will find these exercises more fun and less intimidating, and she won’t feel like she’s turning into the Incredible Hulkette.

To read the rest of MF.com’s tips, click here.

 “The constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness.  You have to catch it yourself.”

 Benjamin Franklin

The best advice I can give concerning fat consumption is to increase your intake of omega 3s, like EPA and DHA found in fish oil, and reduce your consumption of polyunsaturated fats like vegetable oil.  Polyunsaturated fats contain high amounts of omega 6 fatty acids, which in excess are detrimental to our health. Probably most importantly however, is to eliminate trans fats if your like most Americans who consume processed foods. By switching the fats one consumes you can increase your overall health, prevent heart disease, cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, ulcerative colitis, depression, Alzheimer’s, and a host of other diseases..

These two types of fat, omega-3 and omega-6, are both essential for human health. However, the typical American consumes far too many omega-6 fats in their diet while consuming very low levels of omega-3. America’s consumption of vegetable oil has increased by 437% in the past 80 years.  We evolved on a fairly high fat diet. The problem is that the types of fats we were eating back in the Paleolithic days were quite a bit different from the fats we eat now.

In the Paleolithic era, our ratio of omega 6s to omega 3s was very close to 1:1. We ate like this for millions of years. These days it has been suggested that this ratio is 30:1 up to 50:1! So why should we be concerned? The change in the ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 plays a role in pretty much every major disease that’s killing us in Western civilization. The primary sources of omega-6 are corn, soy, canola, safflower and sunflower oil. These oils are overabundant in the typical diet, which explains our excess omega-6 levels. Avoid or limit these oils. Omega-3, meanwhile, is typically found in flaxseed oil, walnut oil and some fish. 

By far, the best source of omega-3 fats are those found in wild fish. Wild caught fish like salmon is high in two omega-3 fatty acids crucial to human health, DHA and EPA. These two fatty acids are pivotal in preventing diseases as mentioned earlier. The human brain is also highly dependent on DHA. Low DHA levels have been linked to depression, schizophrenia, memory loss and a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s. Eat more salmon

How often can, or more importantly, should I train per week? Optimum recovery time between training sessions is essential if one is going to continue to make progress. Training frequency, which is determined by ones recovery ability, is often a forgotten part of most training protocols. It never ceases to amaze me how many people train for months and years experiencing little or no success, and never consider the fact they may be doing too much.

Don’t be so concerned with how many training sessions you can handle per week. Be more concerned about the optimal amount. More is not always better. In fact, when somebody comes to me for advice because they’ve stopped making progress, usually I either reduce the workout volume or add days off. There is no reason in going to the gym if you’re not going to make progress. In every workout, if you have fully recovered, and you come ready to work, you should make progress, which is gauged by your strength.

How can anyone get stronger every workout? One can only bench press so much. Eventually, you have to hit a plateau. This is true. If one stays with the same exercises, the same number of reps and the same number of sets, progress may eventually stop. If the proper changes aren’t made at the right time, eventually the body adapts to the stimulus. And this is where the “art” of program design comes to play.

It’s easy to follow a workout. The real challenge is assuring the stimulus is sufficient and more importantly, you recovery from workout to workout so that progress continues over a long period of time. Sometimes this entails having the discipline to deviate from something that is not working. If you’re not making progrss, and you’re training with all out intensity, try taking an extra day off.

Despite the years of research and mountains of data, there still is no definitive answer to whether stretching is worth your time and effort. Proponents argue that stretching prevents injury, diminishes delayed onset muscle soreness and improves athletic performance. Some go as far as to say that regular stretching can help speed recovery from workouts and improve blood flow to the area being stretched. Opponents will argue that stretching can actually cause injury, and does nothing to improve performance or prevent delayed onset muscle soreness. In fact there are many experts who not only believe stretching does nothing to improve performance, but that it can significantly hinder it. Each side can site numerous studies to support their claims.

Because there is so much conflicting data, should we even bother stretching? The answer is a resounding “yes”. Especially if you lack normal range of motion in your joints. Our bodies are a feat of engineering that man, in all his wisdom and brilliance, cannot replicate. For example, as we grow and develop into adults, we are provided with a certain degree of flexibility governed by our genetics. This flexibility allows us to have a normal range of movement around a joint. This range of movement is crucial to the health of our joints. Training, injuries and the natural aging process all will diminish flexibility and the range of movement we started with. Flexibility is not only lost or gained in the muscle, it’s also determined by tendons, ligaments and other connective tissue. It is this relationship between bones, muscles, tendons, ligaments, etc., that took millions of years to perfect through evolution. Any disturbance between the structures in our joints can lead to hindered performance or serious injury.

No matter which side you take, and no matter what the reason, the data is conclusive on one point: It’s much more effective to stretch muscles that are already warmed up. A warm-up is light to moderate activity lasting 10 - 15 minutes before the actual workout begins. Warming up drives blood into the muscles and synovial fluid into the joints, thus reducing stiffness. If you warm-up first, you’ll make much more progress than if you stretch cold.

To evaluate whether you are developing a restriction around a joint, and to see a list of stretches in their proper order go HERE.

How did our country get so unhealthy? In this second part of a series, “Our Deteriorating Diet”, I explain what caused our weight gain and its inherent health risks. Many experts claim we, Americans, just eat too much. Is it just a matter of calories in versus calories out? Are we really eating too much or is it what we eat? Do man-made substances in our food supply really make a difference in our ability to maintain a healthy weight? Find the answers to these questions, and other interesting facts you wont see anywhere else.

Humans are carnivorous animals and the Stone Age diet, Dr Voegtlin challenges, was primarily one of a meat and fat eater. Like the carnivorous dog, our jaw moves in a vertical motion. A herbivores’ jaw moves in a rotary fashion. We have canine teeth, ridged molars and incisors designed for crushing and tearing. Unlike herbivores that lack canines and have flat molars, mastication is unnecessary and we do not ruminate or chew cud. Our stomachs hold two quarts, empty in about three hours, secrete hydrochloric acid, lack bacteria and cannot digest cellulose. A herbivorous sheep’s stomach holds eight and a half gallons, never empties, digests cellulose, and bacteria are vital to its function. A herbivore’s stomach doesn’t secrete hydrochloric acid, which is primarily for the digestion of protein. Carnivores like man feed intermittently while herbivores continuously feed (graze). A herbivore’s digestive tract is five times the size of man’s relative to our body size. Unlike herbivores, man’s colons are short and our rectums are small and do not contribute to digestion. Man’s gall bladder has a vital function and is well developed. The function of a herbivore’s gall bladder is weak or nonexistent because of the lack of fat in their diet. The volume of feces from man is small because our digestive efficiency borders on 100 percent. A herbivore’s feces are voluminous because their digestive efficiency is less than or equal to 50 percent, and they must eat large quantities of food.

Americans currently pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. Canadians, Europeans, and even citizens of Mexico pay only about one-half to as little as one-tenth the price paid by Americans for the very same chemicals. Drug companies actually import many of the raw materials used in drugs from other countries, meaning that some U.S. medicines are already sourced from countries like the U.K. and Germany.

Drug companies mark up their prescription drugs as much as 569,000% over the price of the raw materials. A typical markup is more in the 30,000% - 50,000% range. Retailing pharmaceuticals is hugely profitable. There is no business in the world with more profit built into the retail price of the product. How many business owners would like to have those profit margins?

The purpose of restricting Americans from buying drugs from other countries is to enforce a medical monopoly in the United States, forcing consumers to purchase drugs at the highest prices in the world, further padding the profits of powerful and influential pharmaceutical corporations who exert strong influence over the U.S. Congress.

To learn more about how the phamaceutical industry is fleecing America go HERE.