Fixing the Body's Immune System

The main function of body’s immune system is to protect our body from any subject such as virus and bacteria. This system can protect our body from infection caused by them that entered our body.

Body’s immune system can detect any intruder substances that harmful to our health.

It’s not only the virus and bacteria that can be detected by the body’s immune system but also the abnormal cell growth.

Body’s immune system can get rid of virus and bacteria and also prevent our body from the same infection from relapse again.

The best way to protect our body from being infected is using a vaccine. Vaccination makes Body’s immune system react with the infectious agent and help our body increase its self-defense towards the infectious agent. Vaccine is made of dead bacteria or virus.

When someone is getting older, the body’s immune system will also decrease. It means when your age is increasing, you need external mechanism to recover and maintain the body’s immune system.

To get better immunity, it’s necessary to consume vitamins and mineral from daily meal. Food supplement sometimes is needed when vitamins and minerals intake from usual daily meals is not enough.

The symptoms (what you may feel.) Feeling weak, no energy and exhausted. Repetitive cough, fever or flu indicated that someone is sensitive to certain substances.

Suggestions

-Balance your diet; make it consist of carbohydrate, protein, fat, vitamin and mineral).
-Get enough sleep and rest.
-Exercise regularly in a moderate level
-Make sure that the food intake can recover these nutrition: Zinc, Vitamin A, Vitamin B6, Vitamin C, Vitamin E, Folic Acid, Selenium and Iron.
-Don’t consume food supplement more than it’s needed. Overdose intake can cause greater danger than it’s benefit.

Boosting your body immune system will give you more advantage in maintaining a healthy body!

Ally Wied of thevitamania.com Pharmacist Balancing Healthy Living with Happy Eating http://www.thevitamania.com Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ally_Wied

Soy & Cardiovascular Health

Today, we find so much information about what is good for us. Many are finding that drugs are not the only method to good health, but is what we eat and the maintenance of weight.

Some Facts
1. In the United States, we tend to think of heart diseases as a "men's disease."
2. In reality, while a man's risk of heart disease increases after age 45, women of that age who have heart attacks are twice as likely as men to die from it.
3. In fact, heart disease is the number one killer of women in the United States.
4. More than 50% of deaths after age 50 in women are due to some form of cardiovascular disease.
5. Many more women die each year from heart disease than from any other form of cancer including breast cancer.
6. Fortunately, many of this death are preventable. While some risk factors (genetic factor, ethnic factor) cannot be changed, others can be controlled or modified to create a more heart-healthy life style (i.e., quit smoking, regular exercise, control of high blood pressure, cholesterol and triglyceride, weight control, and reduction of stress).
7. Most deaths from heart disease are caused by the build-up of substances (plaque) in the lining of coronary blood vessels (blood vessels in the heart). When the artery is completely blocked, a heart attack occurs.
8. There are ways that we can help our cardiovascular system in postmenopausal years.
9. In addition to altering life style, there is evidence that supports the use of prescription estrogen may reduce the risk of heart disease by as much as 50% (ref). Although, the true level of benefits may not be known until several major on-going research studies are completed.
10. Estrogen provide these benefits by lowering LDL (bad cholesterol), by raising HDL (good cholesterol), and by reducing the rate of growth of fatty deposits in blood vessels. It also helps to keep blood vessels open.
11. Soy contains isoflavones, a phytoestrogen with enormous health-related possibilities for women approaching menopause.
13. For the past 60 years, scientists have known that soy would prevent arteriosclerosis and that it lowers cholesterol while being known as a health food. Now, interest in the health benefits of soy has accelerated because of recent research of soy's value as a functional food that actually can improve our health. Based on epidemiological data, researchers have suggested that as little as one serving of soy products per day can protect against diseases such as cardiovascular disease.

14. Research continues to point to the positive role that soy protein can play in controlling blood cholesterol. High cholesterol is one of the major contributors to coronary heart disease. Yet for all the mounting evidence, soy still remains a very small part of the diet for the majority of people in the Western world. Ironically, that is the population which needs it the most because coronary heart disease is a leading killer.
15. Researchers at the University of Illinois in Champaign and Wake Forest University in North Carolina have shown that ingestion of soy protein significantly reduces both total and LDL cholesterol levels. At the same time, levels of beneficial HDL cholesterol increased.
16. Postmenopausal women are at a greater risk for elevated cholesterol because, as estrogen production decreases, cholesterol level tends to increase. It is thought that the isoflavones in soy protein mimic the effect of estrogen, thus counter balancing the loss of estrogen in postmenopausal women.
17. Recent studies found that the higher the dose of soy protein, the greater the cholesterol lowering effect. The doses given in these studies ranged from 20 to 40 grams of protein per day. A greater lowering effect was observed with subjects with the higher initial cholesterol levels.
18. Without direct intervention to reduce coronary risk factors, an estimated three million Americans between age 35 and 64 will develop coronary heart disease by 2005.
19. Aside from the clear implication that the isoflavones found in soy protein can lower cholesterol, there is an interesting footnote to consider when only dietary cholesterol is reduced. That is, subjects had high cholesterol despite following a low-fat, heart-healthy diet. The recommended next step to a heart-healthy diet is to reduce total dietary fat further. One draw back of a very low-fat diet is that it reduces "bad" cholesterol and also lowers HDL cholesterol -- the "good" cholesterol that can help unclog arteries. Soy protein containing isoflavones reduces the LDL level as much as a low-fat diet does without raising triglyceride or lowering HDL.
20. Studies seem to suggest that soy could play a major supporting role in getting low-fat dieters over the cholesterol "hump".
21. In the same way that "cholesterol" became part of the food vernacular in the 1980s, isoflavones are gaining more widespread recognition.
22. Soy's role in American foods is changing steadily, partly due to increased recognition of its healthful qualities and partly because of its versatility and functionality in food formulation.
23. "25 grams of soy protein a day, as part of a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol, may reduce the risk of heart disease.

"Important Note from Dr Soy: This is meant to educate and help you eat well to achieve optimum health. The information should not be used as an alternative to appropriate medical care.

A Little TLC Goes a Long Way toward Reducing High Cholesterol

A Little TLC Goes a Long Way toward Reducing High Cholesterol
September is National Cholesterol Education Month — New Consumer Booklet Has Lifestyle Tips to Reduce Heart Disease Risk
If you're one of the nearly 65 million Americans with high blood cholesterol, National Cholesterol Education Month (September) is a perfect time to read a new publication designed to help you make the lifestyle changes needed to reduce cholesterol and, with it, your risk for heart disease.

Your Guide to Lowering Your Cholesterol with TLC (Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes) from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health details a three-part program of diet, physical activity, and weight management designed to bring cholesterol levels down.

“Lifestyle is crucial for lowering cholesterol but it’s not enough to tell people it’s important – you have to help them do it. This guide offers a set of tools to help people get started and to embrace a heart-healthier way of living,” said the NHLBI’s James Cleeman, M.D., coordinator of the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP).

The 80-page easy-to-read booklet is based on the NCEP’s guidelines on cholesterol management. These guidelines emphasize the importance of therapeutic lifestyle changes (TLC) — intensive use of heart-healthy eating, physical activity, and weight control — for cholesterol management. TLC is the cornerstone of treatment, according to Cleeman, even if someone also has to take a cholesterol-lowering medication.

As the booklet explains, following a TLC diet means reducing saturated fat, trans fat, and cholesterol in order to lower LDL, the “bad” cholesterol. How do you know how low your LDL cholesterol should be? Your goal LDL level is determined by your risk for developing heart disease or having a heart attack. To help you determine your risk, the new guide includes the NCEP 10-year coronary heart disease risk calculator. Once your LDL goal is determined, you and your doctor can use the new booklet to implement TLC and reach your goal.

To help reduce saturated fat, trans fat, and dietary cholesterol, the guide offers tips on choosing and preparing low fat meals, selecting healthy snacks, reading nutrition labels, and dining out while staying on the TLC diet. The booklet includes sample menus for different types of cuisine (traditional American, Southern, Mexican-American, and Asian).

The LDL-lowering power of the TLC diet can be boosted by adding soluble fiber and plant stanols and sterols, substances derived from plants that help block cholesterol absorption. The guide suggests ways to add fiber to the diet and discusses the value of plant stanols and sterols and which food products have them.

In addition to what you eat, how much you move is also important for heart health. Lack of physical activity is an important risk factor for heart disease. Inactivity contributes to weight gain and raises LDL as well as lowering HDL, the “good” cholesterol. The booklet offers a step-by-step program to get people moving and includes a chart of calories burned in common activities.

Overweight and obesity increase a person’s LDL level and can also raise triglycerides and lower HDL. To help people lose those extra pounds, the guide includes calorie-cutting strategies, ideas for substituting lower calorie foods for high calorie favorites, and a handy chart of portion sizes based on NHLBI’s Portion Distortion Interactive Quiz: http://hin.nhlbi.nih.gov/portion/. There are also sample menus for TLC at different calorie levels.

A special section of the booklet is devoted to the metabolic syndrome, a cluster of risk factors for heart disease and diabetes that is associated with obesity and overweight. Having one risk factor increases a person’s risk of heart disease, but having several as in metabolic syndrome increases risk even more. The lifestyle changes recommended in the TLC program — especially weight control and physical activity – are the main treatment for metabolic syndrome.

The last chapter of the guide, Learning to Live the TLC Way, offers suggestions for how to make the needed lifestyle changes — and get back on track if you fall off the program. A key strategy is to follow TLC with family and friends. Those closest to you can provide support – and help you plan heart healthy meals and physical activities. They can also benefit as the program can help them prevent high cholesterol and/or other risk factors.

“TLC is more than a diet. It’s really a change in your way of living to help you stay heart healthy,” said Dr. Cleeman.

The new guide is the latest in the NHLBI Your Guide to Better Health series. The series provides easy-to-read science-based health information and features compelling testimonials from people about their real-life health issues. Other Guides include Your Guide to Lowering Your Blood Pressure With DASH; Your Guide to a Healthy Heart; Your Guide to Physical Activity and Your Heart; Your Guide to Living Well With Heart Disease; and Your Guide to Healthy Sleep

To interview Dr. Cleeman about cholesterol, heart disease prevention, and the TLC diet, contact the NHLBI Communications Office at 301-496-4236. For an online version of the new booklet, go to: http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/public/heart/chol/chol_tlc.htm. Printed copies are available for $4.00 through the NHLBI website or from the NHLBI Information Center at P.O. Box 30105, Bethesda, MD 20824-0105, or at 301-592-8573 or 240-629-3255 (TTY).

For more information on cholesterol and heart disease, check out the following NHLBI resources:

What is High Blood Cholesterol? http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/dci/Diseases/Hbc/HBC_WhatIs.html.

High Blood Cholesterol, What you Need to Know http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/public/heart/chol/hbc_what.htm.

Live Healthier/Live Longer http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/chd/index.htm.

Part of the National Institutes of Health, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) plans, conducts, and supports research related to the causes, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of heart, blood vessel, lung, and blood diseases; and sleep disorders. The Institute also administers national health education campaigns on women and heart disease, healthy weight for children, and other topics. NHLBI press releases and other materials are available online at: www.nhlbi.nih.gov.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) — The Nation's Medical Research Agency — includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov

Healthy Tide

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Healthy Tide

Hi: Health is becoming a bigger concern with the so called baby boomers, will we are no longer babies so our health well...needs a boost. Here a Healthy Tide we will have articles about health concerns that effect us baby boomers. Along with these articles we will have health vendors to meet your needs from A to Z. Watch us grow and let us fill your health care through medications, supplements and natural care and/or remedies.