Administrative Note

My blog is being mercilessly ripped off by cheesy feed aggregators that are using my material for commercial gain, often without attribution. I was able to ignore them when there were only one or two, and when they appeared far down the list on Google searches. But at this point, there are 20+ rip-off sites that ride my coattails under questionable circumstances, and are getting decent Google rankings, so I've had enough. I'm changing my feed settings so that I only partially syndicate my posts, and I'm adding a short plagiarism warning to each post.

What that means is that if you're using an RSS reader, you'll have to click through to my blog to read my material in full. I apologize for the inconvenience, but I don't see any other solution.

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Hemorrhoids : Causes, Prevention and Home Remedies

Hemorrhoids also known as piles,are swollen and inflamed veins around the anus or in the lower rectum. The rectum is the last part of the large intestine leading to the anus. The anus is the opening at the end of the digestive tract where bowel contents leave the body.

The most common symptom of internal hemorrhoids is bright red blood on stool, on toilet paper, or in the toilet bowl after a bowel movement. Internal hemorrhoids that are not prolapsed are usually not painful. Prolapsed hemorrhoids often cause pain, discomfort, and anal itching. Excessive straining, rubbing, or cleaning around the anus may make symptoms, such as itching and irritation, worse.

Hemorrhoids are not dangerous or life threatening. Symptoms usually go away within a few days, and some people with hemorrhoids never have symptoms. Swelling in the anal or rectal veins causes hemorrhoids. Several factors may cause this swelling, including

.chronic constipation or diarrhea

.straining during bowel movements

.sitting on the toilet for long periods of time

.a lack of fiber in the diet

Another cause of hemorrhoids is the weakening of the connective tissue in the rectum and anus that occurs with age. Pregnancy can cause hemorrhoids by increasing pressure in the abdomen, which may enlarge the veins in the lower rectum and anus. For most women, hemorrhoids caused by pregnancy disappear after childbirth.

Any rectal bleeding needs to be evaluated by a health professional. In some serious cases, surgery may be needed. Home cures for hemorrhoids are safe and gentle and surely end up producing healthy results.

. Take a thick gruel of rice, glass of buttermilk and a ripe banana. Mix them and take it twice a day. This is very effective home remedy for hemorrhoid.

. Make juice of leaves of bitter gourd. Take three teaspoons of it, mix with a glass of buttermilk and take it early morning.

. Dab a small amount of Petroleum Jelly or Zinc Oxide on a cotton ball and apply to the swollen area.

. By applying Aloe Vera directly into the anus region you sure can get instant relief and get rid of the itching.

. Drinking green tea with the beneficial different blends can also act as the best home cures for hemorrhoids.

. Dry figs are the most important food remedy for piles. 3-4 figs should be soaked overnight in water and taken empty stomach in the morning along with the water in which they were soaked.

. Boil 20g of sesame seeds in 500 ml of water and drink it. This is another effective home remedy for hemorrhoids.

. Cold-water treatment also helps the veins to shrink and tones up the walls. The treatment should be taken twice a day by sitting in a tub filled with cold-water .

. A cup of milk boiled with mashed banana and taken thrice a day is also beneficial for hemorrhoids.

. Make a mixture of half-teaspoon fresh ginger juice, half-teaspoon fresh limejuice, a tablespoon honey, and a half-teaspoon mint leaves and take this mixture once a day. This is one of the simple and effective hemorrhoids cure.

. Cherries and berries are rich in proanthocyanidins, antioxidant flavonoids that strengthen the veins.

. Apple cider vinegar or just plain vinegar can be applied to hemorrhoids to stop the itching and burning sensations. Vinegar acts as stringent that can help in shrinking the engorged blood vessels.

. Eating fruits and vegetables that are rich in Vitamin C is important to strengthen and tone down the blood vessels.

. Pomegranate peels can be used to prepare a hemorrhoids remedy, by simply boiling the peels in water. The water must then be drunk, and this practice should be done twice a day.

. Apply chamomile ointment directly to the hemorrhoids as often as needed for relief of symptoms.

. Apply witch hazel with a sterile cotton pad, 3 times daily to shrink the swollen veins.

. Cut up two full garlic cloves and put them in 2 cups of boiling water for 25 minutes. Once the water is at room temperature, the patient should use it as a enema to help treat their internal hemorrhoids. This hemorrhoids home remedy can be used once per day.

These natural and home reliefs for hemorrhoids help in preventing hemorrhoids and easing the discomfort if you already have them. However, seek and ask for your physician�s advice if home remedies are not enough in controlling your hemorrhoid problem.



~source:home-remedies-for-you.com~

Hives : Causes, Prevention and Home Remedies

Hives are raised, often itchy, red welts on the surface of the skin. They are usually an allergic reaction to food or medicine. Allergic reactions cause your body to release chemicals that can make your skin swell up in hives. People who have other allergies are more likely to get hives than other people. Other causes include infections and stress.

Hives are very common. Hives usually cause itching, but may also burn or sting. They can appear anywhere on the body, including the face, lips, tongue, throat, or ears. Hives vary in size (from a pencil eraser to a dinner plate), and may join together to form larger areas known as plaques. They can last for hours, or up to one day before fading.

If hives or angioedema occur with any of the following symptoms, contact your doctor right away:

.Dizziness
.Wheezing
.Difficulty breathing
.Tightness in the chest
.Swelling of the tongue, lips, or face

While the condition is of no serious medical concern, it can be significantly uncomfortable and unsightly. Because of the fact that it is so common all over the world, a number of home remedies have been used over decades to fight off the condition.

. Parsley is known to inhibit the secretion of histamine that causes hives. Eat it raw or juice it up.

. If you tend to get hives on a regular basis, green tea can help. Drink 1 cup twice per day.

. Another very calming and soothing hives treatment is to apply lavender essential oil directly on the hives.

. By applying the cool compression it may help to provide some relief from the pain and itch.

. By applying calamine lotion it can grant you relief from the itchy feeling.

. Applying aloe vera gel or vitamin E oil to the affected area at least twice a day can benefit you a lot.

. Avoid food like eggs, strawberries, berries, peanuts, nuts, chocolates, cheese, tomatoes, soy products, shellfish and many more. Find out the food that is allergic to you and avoid having it.

. Consume vitamin E, vitamin C, zinc or cayenne pepper capsules for speeding up the healing process.

. Get 1/2 a tub filled with warm water, add 1/2 cup cornstarch and 1/2 cup baking soda. Soaking yourself at least once a day can make a lot of difference.

. Make a paste by mixing 2 cups of oatmeal and 3 teaspoons of cornstarch to a little water and apply the resulting paste over the affected regions. Allow the paste to harden for about half an hour before you wash it off your body.

. Add some drops of sandalwood essential oil on cotton and then apply it on the infected areas every three hours. This oil helps in calming and cooling effects of hives.

. Add a few drops of grapefruit seed extract in a teaspoon of vegetable oil or olive oil. Apply this mixture over the affected area for lessening or eliminating hives.

. Swimming in chlorine water is also good for treating hives.

. Avoid wearing tight cloths as it can rub against the affected area and cause them to spread as well.

. Make a concoction of ginger with boiling water and add this to your bath. Soak yourself in this water for 30 minutes and you will feel better. You can also take ginger as supplements to get rid of hives.

. Apply diluted cider vinegar directly to hives to get rid of itching and restore the skin�s natural pH balance.

. Drink plenty of water and fluids to flush away the toxins from the body.

. There are a lot of cortisone creams available over the counter. Apply this cream directly on to the hives to get relief from itching and swelling of hives.

If these methods do not help, then you must be suffering from chronic hives and hence you will need to seek the advice of a doctor.



~source:webmd.com/hives-treatment.com~

Ask Me a Question

On May 13th, I'll be recording a podcast with Chris Kresser of The Healthy Skeptic. Chris interviewed me about a year ago, and I thought it went well. Chris is a good host and asks interesting questions.

This time around, we're going to do things a bit differently. I'll start with a little overview of my current thoughts on obesity, then we'll answer reader questions. The show is going to be mostly about obesity and related matters, but I may answer a couple of questions that aren't related to obesity if they're especially interesting. There are two ways to leave questions: either in the comments section of this post, or the comments section of Chris's post. The show will air on May 24th.
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Acanthosis Nigricans : Causes, Prevention and Home Remedies

Acanthosis nigricans is a type of skin disorder that makes the skin poorly defined besides leaving brown to black and velvety marks on it. The skin on the neck, under the arms, groin, and umbilicus are most vulnerable to this condition.

This condition may be the result of elevation of the insulin levels. The insulin receptors in the skin grow abnormally with their activation through the raised levels of insulin. This skin problem can be improved through reduction of circulating insulin with proper dieting or medication.

A person affected by acanthosis nigricans can be found to have dark, thick and velvety skin mostly on the neck, armpits and groin. Acanthosis nigricans can sometimes affect lips, palms and even the soles of the feet. The skin changes occur gradually. In some cases acanthosis nigricans takes several months and even years to change the condition of the skin.

Diabetics are frequently found to be affected by acanthosis nigricans. People of African descent are most commonly found to be affected by it. Though condition of acanthosis nigricans is mostly associated with obesity or endocrine (glandular) disorder, it can affect person at any age and healthy persons.

There's no specific treatment for acanthosis nigricans. However, treating any underlying conditions may cause the skin changes to fade, such as:

. The most efficient treatment is acquired through weight loss and exercise.

. Making dietary changes, such as cutting back on starches and sugars. Eating a healthy diet can help decrease circulating insulin and can cause improvement, and occasionally resolution, of the skin difficulty.

. Over-the-counter creams containing vitamin A derivatives, urea, salicylic acid, alpha hydroxy acids or lactic acid may help speed up skin lightening.

. Dietary supplementation with fish oil containing omega 3 fatty acids have been reported to be beneficial.

. Flax seed oil supplement should help. Take two in the early morning and two in the late afternoon.

. Prescription bleaching creams, such as hydroquinone, are generally more effective than over-the-counter products, but these may still take years to return your skin to its normal color.

. Both dermabrasion and laser therapy can reduce the thickness of areas affected by acanthosis nigricans and improve the appearance of dark underarms.

In case of doubt always be on the safer side and consult your dermatologist or physician.



~source:mayoclinic.com~

Skin Tags : Causes, Treatment and Home Remedies

Skin tags are a common skin abnormality that can happen to anyone. These are benign skin growths that are acquired during the course of one�s life. These appear as soft, loose skin that is simply hanging from the body. Since these are benign, they do not pose any threats or challenges to a person�s health. Some skin tags may also be a little uncomfortable because of their location.

Most small skin tags may rub off or fall out on their own. However, if these are larger, they may not be so easy to get rid of. Most tags would remain in place once they are formed. Though skin tags may occur anywhere on the body, there are some characteristic locations on which these can be found. The base of the neck, eyelids, folds of the skin, behind the knee and under the breasts are some of the common locations of skin tags.

It is important to keep in mind that skin tags usually do not have to be treated. Deciding to have no treatment is always a reasonable option if the growths are not bothersome. If the tags are bothersome, multiple home and medical options are available. Removing them,even at home is very possible by employing one or more simple home remedies.

. Tie off tag at narrow base with a piece of dental floss or string and allowing the tag to fall off over several days.

. Remove small tags with scissors, with or without anesthetic. The potential disadvantage of any kind of scissor or minor surgical procedure to remove tags is minor bleeding.

. Cut a slice of garlic and press it over the skin tag's area. Secure the slice of garlic to the skin with gauze or tape. The skin tag should simply fall off.

. Combine some baking soda to castor oil until the mixture has the consistency of a paste. Apply the paste to the skin tag at least three times each day for two or three weeks.

. Dampen a small cotton ball in water and place two drops of tea tree oil on the cotton ball. Rub the cotton ball on your skin tags three times a day, or until the skin tags have fallen off.

. Soak a cotton ball in apple cider vinegar and apply it directly to the skin tag. Place a band aid over the cotton ball and leave overnight.

. Apply oregano oil to the cotton swab and gently apply to the skin, taking care not to get oil on the healthy skin around the tag. Apply a bandage over the application. Repeat daily until the skin flakes off.

. Coat the skin tag with fingernail polish up to three times a day. Repeat the process until the skin tag is eliminated, usually within three to four days.



~source:ehow.com~

Food Reward: a Dominant Factor in Obesity, Part II

How to Make a Rat Obese

Rodents are an important model organism for the study of human obesity. To study obesity in rodents, you have to make them fat first. There are many ways to do this, from genetic mutations, to brain lesions, to various diets. However, the most rapid and effective way to make a normal (non-mutant, non-lesioned) rodent obese is the "cafeteria diet." The cafeteria diet first appeared in the medical literature in 1976 (1), and was quickly adopted by other investigators. Here's a description from a recent paper (2):

In this model, animals are allowed free access to standard chow and water while concurrently offered highly palatable, energy dense, unhealthy human foods ad libitum.

In other words, they're given an unlimited amount of human junk food in addition to their whole food-based "standard chow." In this particular paper, the junk foods included Froot Loops, Cocoa Puffs, peanut butter cookies, Reese's Pieces, Hostess Blueberry MiniMuffins, Cheez-its, nacho cheese Doritos, hot dogs, cheese, wedding cake, pork rinds, pepperoni slices and other industrial delicacies. Rats exposed to this food almost completely ignored their healthier, more nutritious and less palatable chow, instead gorging on junk food and rapidly attaining an obese state.

Investigators have known for decades that the cafeteria diet is a highly effective way of producing obesity in rodents, but what was interesting about this particular study from my perspective is that it compared the cafeteria diet to three other commonly used rodent diets: 1) standard, unpurified chow; 2) a purified/refined high-fat diet; 3) a purified/refined low-fat diet designed as a comparator for the high-fat diet. All three of these diets were given as homogeneous pellets, and the textures range from hard and fibrous (chow) to soft and oily like cookie dough (high-fat). The low-fat diet contains a lot of sugar, the high-fat diet contains a modest amount of sugar, and the chow diet contains virtually none. The particular high-fat diet in this paper (Research Diets D12451, 45% fat, which is high for a rat) is commonly used to produce obesity in rats, although it's not always very effective. The 60% fat version is more effective.

Consistent with previous findings, rats on every diet consumed the same number of calories over time... except the cafeteria diet-fed rats, which ate 30% more than any of the other groups. Rats on every diet gained fat compared to the unpurified chow group, but the cafeteria diet group gained much more than any of the others. There was no difference in fat gain between the purified high-fat and low-fat diets.

So in this paper, they compared two refined diets with vastly different carb:fat ratios and different sugar contents, and yet neither equaled the cafeteria diet in its ability to increase food intake and cause fat gain. The fat, starch and sugar content of the cafeteria diet was not able to fully explain its effect on fat gain. However, each diets' ability to cause fat gain correlated with its respective food reward qualities. Refined diets high in fat or sugar caused fat gain in rats relative to unpurified chow, but were surpassed by a diet containing a combination of fat, sugar, starch, salt, free glutamate (umami), interesting textures and pleasant and invariant aromas.

Although the cafeteria diet is the most effective at causing obesity in rodents, it's not commonly used because it's a lot more work than feeding pellets, and it introduces a lot of variability into experiments because each rat eats a different combination of foods.

How to Make an Obese Human Lean

In 1965, the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences published a very unusual paper (3). Here is the stated goal of the investigators:

The study of food intake in man is fraught with difficulties which result from the enormously complex nature of human eating behavior. In man, in contrast to lower animals, the eating process involves an intricate mixture of physiologic, psychologic, cultural and esthetic considerations. People eat not only to assuage hunger, but because of the enjoyment of the meal ceremony, the pleasures of the palate and often to gratify unconscious needs that are hard to identify. Because of inherent difficulties in studying human food intake in the usual setting, we have attempted to develop a system that would minimize the variables involved and thereby improve the chances of obtaining more reliable and reproducible data.

Here's a photo of their "system":
It's a machine that dispenses bland liquid food through a straw, at the push of a button. They don't give any information on the composition of the liquid diet, beyond remarking that "carbohydrate supplied 50 per cent of the calories, protein 20 per cent and fat 30 per cent. the formula contained vitamins and minerals in amount adequate for daily maintenance."

Volunteers were given access to the machine and allowed to consume as much of the liquid diet as they wanted, but no other food. Since they were in a hospital setting, the investigators could be confident that the volunteers ate nothing else.

The first thing they report is what happened when they fed two lean people using the machine, for 16 or 9 days. Both of them maintained their typical calorie intake (~3,075 and ~4,430 kcal per day) and maintained a very stable weight during this period.

Next, the investigators did the same experiment using two "grossly obese" volunteers. Again, they were asked to "obtain food from the machine whenever hungry." Over the course of the first 18 days, the first (male) volunteer consumed a meager 275 calories per day. The second (female) volunteer consumed a ridiculously low 144 calories per day over the course of 12 days, losing 23 pounds. Without showing data, the investigators remarked that an additional three obese volunteers "showed a similar inhibition of calorie intake when fed by machine."

The first volunteer continued eating bland food from the machine for a total of 70 days, losing approximately 70 pounds. After that, he was sent home with the formula and instructed to drink 400 calories of it per day, which he did for an additional 185 days, after which his total weight loss was 200 lbs. The investigators remarked that "during all this time weight was steadily lost and the patient never complained of hunger or gastrointestinal discomfort." This is truly a starvation-level calorie intake, and to eat it continually for 255 days without hunger suggests that something rather interesting was happening in this man's body.

This machine-feeding regimen was nearly as close as one can get to a diet with no rewarding properties whatsoever. Although it contained carbohydrate and fat, it did not contain any flavor or texture to associate them with, and thus the reward value of the diet was minimized. As one would expect if food reward influences the body fat setpoint, lean volunteers maintained starting weight and a normal calorie intake, while their obese counterparts rapidly lost a massive amount of fat and reduced calorie intake dramatically without hunger. This suggests that obesity is not entirely due to a "broken" metabolism (although that may still contribute), but also at least in part to a heightened sensitivity to food reward in susceptible people. This also implies that obesity may not be a disorder, but rather a normal response to the prevailing dietary environment in affluent nations.

A second study by Dr. Michel Cabanac in 1976 confirmed that reducing food reward (by feeding bland food) lowers the fat mass setpoint in humans, using a clever method that I won't discuss for the sake of brevity (4). I learned about both of these studies through the writing of Dr. Seth Roberts, author of The Shangri-La Diet. I'd also like to thank Dr. Stephen Benoit, a researcher in the food reward field, for talking through these ideas with me to make sure I wasn't misinterpreting them.

I'd like to briefly remark that there's an anatomical basis for the idea of two-way communication between brain regions that determine reward and those that control body fatness. It's well known that the latter influence the former (think about your drive to obtain food after you've just eaten a big meal vs. after you've skipped a meal), but there are also connections from the former to the latter via a brain region called the lateral hypothalamus. The point is that it's anatomically plausible that food reward determines in part the amount of body fat a person carries.

Some people may be inclined to think "well, if food tastes bad, you eat less of it; so what!" Although that may be true to some extent, I don't think it can explain the fact that bland diets affect the calorie intake of lean and obese people differently. To me, that implies that highly rewarding food increases the body fat setpoint in susceptible people, and that food with few rewarding properties allows them to return to a lean state.

In the next few posts, I'll describe how food reward explains the effectiveness of many popular fat loss diets, I'll describe how this hypothesis fits in with the diets and health of non-industrial cultures, and I'll outline new dietary strategies for preventing and treating obesity and certain forms of metabolic dysfunction.