Top 5 Exercises for a Healthy Heart

Top Health Benefits of Honey

A completely natural sweetener, it dates back more than hundreds of years, yet the health benefits of honey are still not widely known even today. Healthier and more pure than artificial sweeteners or sugar, honey provides more than a taste for the sweet tooth; honey benefits your health and your body inside and out.
History of Honey
Records can not definitively state how long honey has existed. Some believe honey dates back farther than 20 millions years, but honey bee fossils cause reason to believe that date could extend to over 150 millions years. Cave paintings in Spain suggest that beekeeping began approximately around 7000 B.C. and Egyptian records from 2400 B.C. provide evidence of their culture keeping bees in hives.
The Egyptians used honey in more ways than one. As well as its common use as a sweetener, Egyptians gave honey as a gift to their gods and used it as a component of their embalming fluid. The Romans also gave honey to their gods and were known to cover physical wounds in honey to cure and promote natural healing. The Romans and Greeks both utilized honey as a form of cooking but around the turn of the seventeenth century, honey became primarily used as a sweetener.
Honey Production
So, how do bees produce honey? The process begins at the flower as the bee gathers the flower's nectar. The majority of nectar is water and a minority is complex sugars. Bees need to store and make the sugar usable, so the bees alter the nectar changing it into honey. To complete this task, a worker bee that has a full stomach of nectar flies to the hive to regurgitate the modified nectar for a hive bee. Then, the hive bee ingests the nectar to break down the sugars. Once the hive bee has completed that task, he regurgitates the nectar into a cell of the comb. The hive bees are responsible for beating their wings in order to evaporate any remaining water; once complete, the sugar converts to honey. In a lifetime, a worker bee produces 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey, but when bees in a colony work together, more than 200 pounds of honey are produced within one year.

Honeybees' hard work provides us with a healthy and beneficial food. All in all, it consists of 80% natural sugars, 18% water, and 2% vitamins, minerals, and pollen. Keep in mind, honey does not expire because it does not harbor bacteria, so you can keep it on your shelf for as long as necessary!
Health Benefits of Honey
It is nature's energy booster due to its carbohydrates; these carbohydrates provide energy, as well as strength. Athletes, in particular, benefit from honey due to its ability to create endurance and decrease fatigue. The glucose found in honey plays a role, also, as the body rapidly absorbs it to give immediate energy. On the other hand, the fructose in honey is absorbed at a slower rate to give sustained energy. As opposed to refined sugar, honey keeps the body's sugar levels somewhat constant, instead of spiking the blood sugar which causes an energy crash.
It is anti-bacterial, anti-viral, and contains antioxidants to help boost the body's immunity. Raw honey has approximately 5,000 enzymes and numerous vitamins, amino acids, and minerals. Honey helps fight respiratory problems and has increased the quality of life in cancer patients.
Unlike refined white sugar, it contains no empty calories. Use honey in place of white sugar to reduce blood sugar spikes and to fill those empty calories with vitamins and minerals. In addition, honey has been noted to suppress appetite. One teaspoon of honey contains approximately 21 calories and is sweeter than sugar, which means you are able to use less for the same sweetening effect potentially promoting weight loss.
When applied topically, the properties of honey have the ability to heal wounds including burns and ulcers. The two sugars found in honey, fructose and glucose, attract water so that when honey is applied to a wound, honey absorbs the water into the wound. This action dries out the wound to inhibit and deter bacterial growth.


Top Ten Ways to Cook and Eat Honey

1. Use in your hot tea as a healthy sweetener.
2. Mix into your plain yogurt instead of buying a less healthy, pre-sweetened yogurt.
3. Spread a slice of toast with peanut butter, honey, and cinnamon to jumpstart your morning routine.
4. Instead of sprinkling sugar over your cereal, drizzle it with honey.
5. Substitute it for sugar in cookie, bread, and muffin recipes.
6. Use it as a seasoning for meat. Apply honey to chicken or pork chops before cooking to give the meat a unique flavor.
7. Create a dressing with olive oil, vinegar, and honey to use on top of salads.
8. Drizzle it over vanilla ice cream for a decadent dessert.
9. Add honey and lemon with hot water as a refreshing, soothing drink.
10. Eat it straight from the comb! Take a bite out of the comb and chew it like chewing gum. The more you chew, the more honey will come out of the honey comb. When all of the honey is out of the comb, spit out or swallow the wax; the wax is safe to eat and is non-toxic.

Take Caution
Although it is a healthy addition to any diet, certain individuals should take precautions. For instance, children under the age of one should not ingest honey; it contains spores that can cause a life-threatening and paralyzing disease called infant botulism.
Persons with pollen allergies should take caution when eating it; although, serious reactions are rare. Most honey sold in stores is filtered and pasteurized, which lowers the amount of pollen in the honey. If one does have a pollen allergy, eating it straight from the comb should be avoided, as it is in its natural form.
How to Choose Honey
To reap the full benefits, choose raw honey. The raw version has not been filtered or pasteurized, which means that it has not been striped of its powerful vitamins and minerals. To choose the highest quality and gain the full health benefits of honey, look for one that states, "100% Raw" and enjoy your path to nutritional sweetness!

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10 Tips For Choosing a Gym

If you've decided that you need to find a gym, perhaps to lose weight, or to gain muscle, then you might know which gym you'll join and why. Alternatively, you might not know what to look for when choosing a gym.
Here's what you need to consider.
1. You'll want your gym to be local to you, either near home, or near to work. If you're the sort of person to make excuses for not going to the gym then you won't want to a gym that's not nearby. Also, a local gym will allow you to make the most of your early mornings, or lunch hours, as well as your evenings after work.
2. You'll want to choose a gym that's popular enough to show that it's good, but not so busy that you won't be able to get on the equipment or weights you want to.

3. Why not ask your friends or colleagues, and see which gym they go to, if they have any suitable experiences or recommendations.
4. You'll want to make sure that your gym has modern machines and plenty of weights. This shows that the gym knows the importance of investing in equipment. Is there a personal trainer available?
5. The machines will need to be clean, and in good condition. If some of the machines aren't working, and the others look broken, then it's possibly not the gym you want to go to.
6. Speak to the staff, and see if they are friendly and knowledgeable, and what they recommend for you. If you know that you want to lose weight, or get fitter, or supplement your sports training, then you'll want to make sure that your gym staff will be able to help you reach your goals.
7. It's important that the opening times are suitable for you. If you're planning to go the gym early in the morning, you'll want a gym that's available when you are.
8. Depending on your expectations, and what you're going to the gym for, you might want a gym with a swimming pool. Swimming is a fantastic non weight bearing exercise that can help you lose weight and build muscle fast.
9. In addition to weights and machines, you might benefit from going to fitness classes. Why not see how aerobics, spinning, marital arts, or yoga could make your weight loss or strength training even more effective? What about seeing if there are fitness activities for kids too?

10. Although you'll want value for money, you might not be better off with the cheapest gym. Even though it's cheap, if it doesn't meet your needs, then it's money wasted. Choosing more expensive gym that's open for longer, and has more facilities that you'll use, will be better for you, mean you're likely to stay motivated, and help you to reach your weight loss or fitness goals sooner.
Now you why it's so important to get it right, you'll be able to find the right gym for you.

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Secret Tips to Healthy Living

Healthy living is something most of seek. Many of us already exercise and try to eat right, and that is a great start to healthier living. Here are two great tips that will take you to a new level of healthy.
#1 Take Your Vitamins
Every day you should take a multivitamin and mineral supplement. Eating health is essential but we don't always get everything we need from our foods, and so taking a daily multivitamin makes sense. Research has shown that when you use good quality nutritional supplements it can help you in achieving optimal health.
A recent study by Wyeth Consumer Health found that older adults taking a daily multivitamin was an inexpensive but powerful way to stay healthy. The group also studied the how taking a multivitamins affected five diseases: diabetes, coronary artery disease, prostate cancer, osteoporosis, and colorectal cancer.

The researchers estimated that giving a daily multivitamin to the elderly potentially save in health care cost of approximately $1.6 billion in a five year period, as well as avoidable hospitalization for heart attacks of approximately $2.4 billion.
#2 Take the Time to Connect With Others

We are social beings by our very nature. We create families, nurture our young, and identify ourselves with social groups we are part of. Connection with others and forming important bonds of communication, spiritual health, intimacy, and emotional well being are as important as eating a healthy diet, when it comes to nourishing our bodies.
The world we live in connects us in so many different ways at a technical level. However, the closeness we find with people in our day-to-day lives is actually diminishing. Many spend their days surrounded by people but little communication occurs, and there are many feel isolated.

Physical touch is very important, and you cannot get that from your cyber friends. Studies dating back to the 1930s showed infants who are touched grow faster than those who just left lying in the cribs. Being touched affects our brains and our nervous system.
That's just two great tips that many people are not aware of that can a major role in improving your life and longevity. When it comes to your health, always think outside the box. While nutrition and exercise are two very important components to healthier living, there are many other things that can ensure you remain healthy now and for years to come.

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