Time to Take Responsibility For Your Own Health

Here is the bottom line. Health is full of vested interest and information can be easily selected to support a particular view. We need to be questioning of the pronouncements of governments and experts. They do not always know what is best for your health even if they are well meaning.

The person primarily responsible for your health is you. You are best placed to make decisions about your health based on your own circumstances. There has been a tendency over the last 30 years to see governments as having the primary responsibility for our health. This is seen in calls for the government to “do something” about problems like obesity and smoking to name but two.

Personally I do not have a huge amount of faith in the recommendations of government departments and some of the “experts” that they draw on. Regular readers will be familiar with my view on the response to the advent of the H1N1 (swine flu) virus and how billions of dollars were wasted and needless fear was generated. As it turned out many of the experts recommending mass vaccination of the population had financial ties to manufacturers.

There is now a push to vaccinate boys against the H.P.V. virus. This vaccine has been approved for use in girls. Whilst it has been promoted as a vaccine against cervical cancer, it is in reality a vaccine against four strains of a virus, which is implicated in the development of cervical cancer. The push for extending the use has come from the manufacturer (as is their commercial right) but it is easy to whip up fear when one plays the cancer card in any health story. At this point rational assessment can go out the window.

Against this backdrop two circulars from government health departments crossed my desk in the same week. The first from the W.A. health department was about a plan to get women who missed their third dose of H.P.V. vaccine to have it. The dosage schedule was zero, two and six months.

This is from the circular ” While the optimal schedule is to administer Gardasil * at 0,2 and 6 months, the Australian Chief Medical Officer has stated that delayed administration especially of the third dose is expected to give at least comparable and most likely superior immune responses…”

Run that by me again! If delaying the dose gives a better response then how can the current schedule be optimal? Or if the current schedule is optimal then how cannot sticking to it give a better result? Go figure!

The other interesting piece of advice came from the Federal Health Department. A new campaign has been launched to encourage smokers to quit. Readers of my website will have seen my article on how a major analysis of over 800 studies showed that 70% of people quit with no aids or assistance. It also highlighted that most studies compared stop smoking aids with each other rather than against no aid and that manufacturers funded many of the studies. Questions were raised as to why this information was not promoted more widely to encourage and empower people to stop smoking.

Yet the letter from the Chief Medical Officer tells me “… smokers are about twice as likely to quit with smoking cessation drugs than cold turkey alone” and quoted one study, which had shown this. So here we have the government urging use of drugs when for at least 70% of people none are needed.

Exactly why this is the case is a mystery to me. The key point is that government recommendations may or may not be in your best interests.

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Multivitamins and Exercise: Discover the Magic Combination Here

Multivitamins and exercise is like a match made in heaven. Both apart are good, but together they work better! Jogging for hours can’t improve your health in as much as indulging in a strict multivitamin regimen without regards for your lifestyle can make you all peachy inside and out. Everything you do must work out in perfect balance, if you want better results.

Multivitamins as you may already know, works by filling in the nutritional gaps that your regular diet has. It also helps to nourish or replenish your body of the nutrients that is used up daily for you to function efficiently and effectively.

Exercise, on the other hand, aids your body to be fit and toned. It helps in shedding of the extra pounds and it also makes you feel better.

If you practice these two together, you are well on your way to a better state of health. A good multivitamin starts its work on the cellular level up to the major organs. Exercise starts by working those muscles to keep those organs up to your cells to function more actively.

Potassium for example is a mineral that helps in muscle strength, calcium and magnesium aids in bone health and vitamin D aids in the better absorption of calcium. Those four alone can give you a good head start for a good fitness routine.

Vitamin A, C and E are antioxidants that prevent cellular damage from free radicals which is produced in larger amounts when you exercise. Free radicals can also cause muscle soreness after an intensive workout, but antioxidants can help in relieving it.

B vitamins are also good for exercise because it helps convert proteins and carbohydrates into energy and it also enables you to keep up with high-intensity exercises. They also help build muscle mass or repair damaged ones. It is understood that a strict exercise regimen goes hand in hand with a certain diet. By limiting calories you can are also decreasing the levels of vitamin B in your system that is why supplementation is very important.

Good brands that are in the market also incorporate L-carnitine and L-carnosine into the list of ingredients. These are actually very good because these help in improving your endurance. A study has also shown that L-carnitine aids in burning abdominal fats. Making your trimming and toning exercises more effective.

A healthy lifestyle is not a one-handed approach. As they say, it takes two to tango – this is why you should nourish your body well, as you tone it up. Get a good exercise regimen and a complete multivitamin to complement that, this will put you on your way to optimum health.

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Reducing Wrinkles Effectively

Skin can reveal many hidden facts about a person, since many diseases can be identified from the skin. However, skin often hides someone’s age with its freshness and texture. This is why many people are into skin treatment by using natural or chemical treatment, consuming certain vitamins, going to spa, and there are so many more to mention. However, the earliest sign of aging is actually the wrinkles on the face especially what is known as birds’ claw on the cheek bone when someone laughs. These wrinkles are what many people try to avoid or slow down. There are many factors that can make skin lose its moisture, such as exposure to sunlight over a long period of time each day, smoking, drugs, coffee, bad diet low in fiber from fruits and vegetables, staying up late extensively, and sleep deprivation.

While wrinkles naturally appear when a person reaches the age of mid thirties, some people manage to have smooth skin until they are in their forties somehow. The goal of the treatments is to maintain the moisture for skin’s flexibility for those in their twenties, and to slow down the appearance of the wrinkles for those in their thirties, and to reduce wrinkles for those in their forties. Whether the treatment is performed from the inside by consuming certain vitamins or from the outside by applying some cream enriched with vitamins and minerals. If you are interested in having such smooth skin whether as an anticipation treatment or as a skin care, then you really should pay attention to several things beforehand.

The first thing you should pay attention to is whether it has the license from the authorized health institution. The health institution must have done the laboratory test to a skin care product before it is launched to public. Secondly, check whether it has clinical test and allergy test which is important as skin allergy can be really annoying and it can even damage the texture of the skin, too. Thirdly, browse the web for people’s opinion and experience on certain product. This browsing is even more advantageous than consulting a dermatologist since the review expressed by other customers are always genuine and based on their own experience. This way, you can avoid disappointment resulting from allergy or even from being overcharged. Careful study or research prior to choosing a skin care is not to be ignored since you will benefit from it, and you will be satisfied with the results.

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