The Many Health Benefits of Selenium Will Amaze You

The importance of trace minerals in the body cannot be overstated, especially when talking about the benefits of selenium. Your bodys immune system must have the right vitamins and minerals to work, and they all have their importance. But selenium is one of the special trace minerals, that can really help you if it's adequately in your system, or can lead you to illness and death if it is not.

Selenium is found in nearly every cell of your body, pancreas, spleen and kidneys and insures normal liver function. Like other essential minerals, selenium acts as an antioxidant that destroys free radicals that roam the body like little devastators. More and more, this super mineral is being linked to its role in combating a number of human diseases and illnesses.

Major benefits of selenium include heart and cancer protection

Seleniums role in protecting the heart is an incredible one. This mineral helps prevent your blood from sticking to the inside of your arteries, decreasing the risk of clotting, heart attack and stroke. How's that for a triple-threat? And, benefits of selenium include elevating levels of good cholesterol, another advantage in keeping your heart healthy.

Cancer has a natural enemy in selenium. According to the Office of Dietary Supplements, high levels of selenium in the blood decrease many forms of cancer including prostate, colorectal and lung. The antioxidant properties of selenium actually prevent the formation of some cancer cells and tumor cells. And because selenium effectively raises the fighting levels of the immune system, studies show that the development of blood vessels, that support and grow tumors, is suppressed! Needless to say, medical research is conducting ongoing selenium testing against many other forms of cancer.

This essential mineral is important in overall body health, too. For instance, it's been shown to help increase male potency and fight arthritis. Its antioxidant quality helps defend the body from the effects of alcohol and other toxins. And like copper, it has an important maintenance role in your skin and your hair. Selenium supplementation helps improve asthma symptoms and helps patients recover quicker from pneumonia and bronchitis.

Certain foods, supplementation can give you the benefits of selenium

If you can find produce that has been grown in selenium-rich soil, improve your diet with nuts, oats, brown rice and leafy greens. However, most foods that used to contain beneficial levels of selenium don't have those levels, anymore. That's because farm soil has been worked so many times, that selenium levels have plummetted.

So, keep eating as healthy a diet as you can, but know that most doctors today recommend that you take a selenium supplement, so that you can maintain a healthy selenium level. The prescribed selenium dosages are 55mcg daily for women, and 70mcg daily for men. However, for cancer patients or patients with a larger risk of cancer, doctors recommend dosages of up to 400mcg to get the full benefits of selenium.

As you can see, selenium is an all-around super trace mineral that can help your body in so many important ways. Trace minerals like selenium prove the old adage that good things really do come in small packages. Your body must have selenium, so if you do not take a multi-vitamin, chances are you're shorting yourself on this essential mineral. Get some selenium into your diet just as soon as you can, so that you can start getting the healthy benefits of selenium.


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Expert Tips for Childhood Tics

Childhood tics are quick, repetitive movements or sounds that your child feels like they have no control over. Tics often appear suddenly, most often in young boys. They are common, affecting up to 25% of children, although some kids appear to be unaware of them. Tics also seem to run in families along with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), suggesting a genetic link between these conditions.

Tics in children are divided into four categories:

Simple motor tics: These movements are the most common tics in kids. Examples include eye blinking, facial grimacing or jerking movements of the body.

Simple vocal tics: These simple sounds can include coughing, sniffing, throat clearing or grunting.

Complex motor tics: These complex movements (which can appear deliberate) include actions such as smelling objects, twirling, jumping, walking or mimicking the behaviour of others.

Complex vocal tics: These are generally words or phrases although might be said out of context or in a way that echoes what has just been said.

Tics in kids can change over time. For example a child who at first has a shoulder jerking tic might have an eye blinking tic instead a few weeks later. And while tics in children tend to occur many times each day, they can also come and go, disappearing for days or even weeks before returning.

While tics occur quite commonly in children, the percentage of kids who go on to have a chronic tic disorder is much lower. Diagnoses of Chronic Motor or Vocal Tic Disorder are made when children have had EITHER motor or vocal tics which have lasted for at least one year. Rarer still is Tourette's Disorder in which children have had BOTH motor and vocal tics (although not necessarily at the same time) for at least one year. Compared with common childhood tics, only about 4-5 in 10,000 children will go on to develop Tourette's Disorder.

How you can help with your child's tics:

While most kids with tics report that they have no control over them, occasionally children can suppress their tics for a few seconds or even minutes. Sometimes parents mistake this to mean that their child can stop their tics if they try hard enough. Unfortunately the attention, stress and frustration which sometimes accompanies this belief tends to make the tic worse.

Instead, it's more useful early on to draw as little attention as possible to a child's tic. Tics usually occur less often when the child is relaxed, absorbed in an interesting activity or asleep. In contrast, stress, illness, fatigue and boredom seem to increase tics for many children.

Other useful strategies include educating the child about tics, reassuring them that tics are common and often short-lived and teaching relaxation strategies to lower baseline levels of stress. Sharing information about a child's tics with their teachers and friends can also be useful.

For some children with persistent tics, a behavioural therapy technique known as 'Habit Reversal Therapy' has been shown to be helpful. This involves teaching the child to become aware of the sensations that arise when a tic is imminent. Once the child has learnt to identify these warning signs, they are taught to deliberately perform an alternative sound or action which appears more socially appropriate and which interrupts and reduces the tic. These techniques are usually taught by a Psychiatrist or Psychologist and are then practised at home.

When to seek help for tics in children:

While most tics in children will disappear as suddenly as they appeared, some will come back at times of stress. A small percentage of children with tics will go on to be diagnosed with a chronic tic disorder. Unfortunately there's no way of predicting which of these future outcomes will eventuate.

If any of the following are present, seek the advice of your Family Doctor or Child Health Specialist:

if your child is particularly self-conscious, anxious, distressed or having difficulty functioning as a result of their tics

if your child's tic has been present for longer than 12 months

if other symptoms are present. Childhood tics can also occur in the context of a genetic or neurological condition, as a side-effect of medication or following an infection.

if you're worried. After all, parents know their children best and if you're concerned, this is reason enough to seek expert advice.

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Test Your Own Stress Level with Holmes-Rahe Quiz

Stress! We all know what it is - the pressure of life and work, the strain of keeping ahead of the game, the emotional and physical effects of having too much to do with too little time to do it in, and, above all, the result of believing we have no control over what happens to us. But is there any way to predict how much stress we're under, and what effect it might have on us?Indeed there is!

Many years ago, Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe at the University of Washington interviewed 5000 people in detail about their lives and then followed them through the next few years to see how their health changed. What they found has gone down in the history of stress research as a classic piece of work.It turned out that you can rate the chances of someone becoming ill in the next year on the basis of the events that happened to them up to twelve months ago. And the more stressful the event, the higher the chances of them becoming ill. Nothing has changed since Holmes and Rahe did their research: the things that made people stressed back in the 1960s still threaten our health. It's just that nowadays we face many more stressful things than people did in the 1960s.If you want to know if you're at risk of developing a stress-related illness in the year ahead, look at this list of events and see if any of them have happened to you in the past twelve months:

Death of spouse; divorce; marital separation; jail term; death of close family member; personal injury or illness; marriage; fired at work; marital reconciliation; retirement; change in health of family member; pregnancy; sex difficulties; gain of new family member; business adjustment; change of financial state; death of close friend; change to different line of work; change in number of arguments with spouse; mortgage over £100,000; foreclosure of mortgage or loan; change in responsibilities at work; son or daughter leaving home; wife begins or stops work; begin or end university; change in living conditions; revision of personal habits; trouble with boss; change in work hours or conditions; change in residence; change in university/schools; change in recreation; change in church activities; change in social activities; mortgage or loan less than £100,000; change in sleeping habits; change in number of family get-togethers; change in eating habits; vacation; trouble with in-laws; outstanding personal achievement; minor violations of the law.

Broadly speaking, the lower down the list, the less stressful an item is. The higher up the list, the more stressful. Although of course this is in no way a complete list of stressful events, these are the most important ones - the ones most likely to make us ill.Holmes and Rahe gave points to each item on the list and then discovered that the total number of points a person scored was closely related to the chance of them becoming ill in the next twelve months. You can see the complete list of stressful events and how many points each is worth at the website listed in the resources box. You can also work out your chance of becoming ill through a stress related problem.What's the lesson here? We all have to live in a world where there are real challenges like the ones above. There's no escaping stress, and in fact some experts have said it's good for us - but only in moderation! It's when we can't control what happens to us that we develop stress-related problems.So, if you think you might be at risk of stress, the answer is to act now. Find something that acts as a counterpoint to your stress levels - relaxation, holistic therapy, a hobby, quality time with your loved ones. It might just be the difference between a serious illness and a happy, healthy life.

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Protection from Autumn's Viruses

    Autumn couldn't come at a better time. With the beginning of the fall season comes cooler temperatures and a welcome change from summer's heat waves.

However, these changing temperatures also bring germs that cause allergies, colds and the flu. Do you ever wonder how doctors and teachers stay healthy when they're in constant contact with sick patients and children? They have to make a conscious effort to keep themselves healthy even though they are surrounded by germs in their classrooms and offices. The same goes for massage therapists, who are also at an increased risk of catching airborne germs due to the nature of their business. There's no sure-fire way to prevent catching a cold, but taking a few extra precautions will help ward off germs heading in your direction.

A healthy immune system will help stave off an impending illness. Obviously, a healthy, nutritious diet and plenty of sleep will protect your body from becoming stressed and worn down, making you more susceptible to catching a cold. Other behaviors can also affect how likely you are to get sick, such as drinking and smoking. Regular exercise, something as simple as walking a few times per week, has been proven to help strengthen the immune system. In addition to eating healthy foods, consider supplementing your diet with vitamins. Another important step is to make sure you allot yourself enough time for sleep and other fun activities, because when you're happy and well rested, your body will be healthier. Making these simple changes to your everyday lifestyle will help bolster your immunity.


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Why Lose Weight? Here Is the Answer

Each year millions of people think about dieting to lose some weight only to have the thought stopped with the question, "Why Lose Weight?" After all, as most of us probably know, you torture yourself for 3 or 4 months to drop 15 or 20 pounds and before you know it the weight is back, plus a few extra pounds. So, naturally, the question of why lose weight wins out and we decide to stick with our current lifestyle of over indulging and manipulating the TV remote.

In general, the thought of the process of dieting overshadows the reason for weight loss. The thought of the miles of walking, the eating healthy, and in a lot of cases, the fasting to lose fat, blurs what should be our ultimate goal. That goal should not be to look good but to give us a healthy body. In a lot of cases, we may meet our weight loss goal and be happy with ourselves. The doubt jumps into our head when we don't maintain that goal. It then becomes, in our mind, the diet's fault. Thus comes the question, why lose weight, we're only going to gain it back again.

So, why is it important for us to drop a few pounds? Think about this. Every year, nearly 112 million people die due to being overweight. If you're an adult between 30 and 65 years of age, being 10 to 20 pounds overweight dramatically increases your risk serious illness or even of death. In general, people who are dramatically overweight are more likely to die from their unhealthy lifestyle than people of the same age living their lives at a healthy weight.

Coronary heart disease and heart attack can be directly linked to obesity. It's a fact that people who are overweight or obese suffer more heart attacks than those who are not overweight. High blood pressure and high cholesterol are also more prevalent in those who are overweight. We can also add diabetes to the list of health risks associated with obesity. Facts show that obesity is prevalent in over 80 percent of the people who suffer with diabetes. If you were compiling a list of health problems associated with obesity, you could also add cancer, sleep apnea, asthma, and even arthritis.

Taking into consideration the health risks mentioned above, the question of "Why lose weight?" should be answered. Instead of asking "Why lose weight" maybe the question should be "Why Can't I lose weight?". Keep in mind that anything worth having is worth working for. Our health is one of the most precious possessions we have. So, get back to eating healthy to lose the fat, and walking to firm the muscles, and most of all, make a pledge to keep the weight off. Set your goals beyond just meeting your weight loss goal. Make your goal to be to live healthy and maintain a good weight for a set period of time. Better yet, why not set it as a lifetime goal. That way, the question of "Why lose weight" never comes up again.

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