How to Green Your Home and Cash in on Stimulus Money

 

Energy-saving systems for the attic, basement, and in between have effectively gone on sale, courtesy of the United States Congress. But whether shoppers will take advantage — or even notice available discounts — remains an open question.

Tax incentives to encourage investments in energy efficiency took effect last week when President Barack Obama signed the $787 billion economic stimulus bill. That means homeowners with drafty windows, old heating systems, or other root causes of high energy bills can be rewarded in tax season if they make improvements in 2009 or 2010. Read more

Placebo Effect: A Cure in the Mind

Belief is powerful medicine, even if the treatment itself is a sham. New research shows placebos can also benefit patients who do not have faith in them..

In recent decades reports have confirmed the efficacy of various sham treatments in nearly all areas of medicine. Placebos have helped alleviate pain, depression, anxiety, Parkinson’s disease, inflammatory disorders and even cancer.

Placebo effects can arise not only from a conscious belief in a drug but also from subconscious associations between recovery and the experience of being treated—from the pinch of a shot to a doctor’s white coat. Such subliminal conditioning can control bodily processes of which we are unaware, such as immune responses and the release of hormones.

Researchers have decoded some of the biology of placebo responses, demonstrating that they stem from active processes in the brain. Read more

Eat Celery for Improved Health

The reason celery is so low in calories is because it is so high in water content. Fresh, light green celery with glossy ribs is the best for eating. Celery is truly economical; all parts of the plant are edible and one cup contains only about twenty calories. There is no waste. It’s a great food and has a number of known health benefits.

Celery can provide a sense of calmness. It can also help lower blood pressure. People with gout should be fans of celery because it lowers uric acid.

Drinking fresh celery juice is said to reduce appetite. Taken before a meal it may help with weight loss.
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Yoga Benefits Women with Breast Cancer

In a study just published in the journalPsycho-Oncology, researchers conclude they’ve found a treatment that resulted in a 50% reduction in depression and a 12% increase in feelings of peace and meaning in women with breast cancer. The successful treatment isn’t a new type of anti-depressant or anti-anxiety drug. In fact, it isn’t a drug at all — it’s the ancient healing and exercise system known as yoga. Read more

How to Save New Brain Cells

Fresh neurons arise in the adult brain every day. New research suggests that the cells ultimately help with learning complex tasks—and the more they are challenged, the more they flourish..

 

Baking Soda Boosts Athletic Performance by Alkalinizing the Body

Baking soda can indeed increase athletes’ speed, according to a pair of recent studies giving confirmation to a belief that scientists have long been skeptical of.

For years, professional athletes have sworn by “soda doping,” the practice of taking baking soda before competitive sporting event in order to improve speed and endurance.

In the first study, researchers from Loughborough University gave baking soda to nine swimmers, finding that eight of them reduced their time in a 200 meter race by an average of 1.5 seconds. Read more

Super Healing Foods

Everyone these days is looking for the magic pill that will help with weight loss, improve immunity, increase memory, help the heart, or fight off cancer. Unfortunately, there is no such thing. But wouldn`t it be exciting to know that these benefits can be achieved through eating superfoods that might be in your kitchen right now? Including these superfoods (foods that have a high nutrient content that have a positive effect on health) in your diet can affect your health today and for years to come. Read more

Where Are Old Memories Stored in the Brain?

A new study suggests that the location of a recollection in the brain varies based on how old that recollection is.

 

In the 1920s the behavioral psychologist Karl Lashley conducted a now famous series of experiments in an attempt to identify the part of the brain in which memories are stored. He trained rats to find their way through a maze, then made lesions in different parts of the cerebral cortex in an attempt to erase what he called the “engram,” or the original memory trace. Lashley failed to find the engram—his experimental animals were still able to find their way through the maze, no matter where he put lesions on their brains. He therefore concluded that memories are not stored in any single area of the brain, but are instead distributed throughout it.    Read more

30 of the Best Holistic Living Tips

 

1. Improve your posture. It is important to keep your spine as straight as possible, so that your muscle do not strain and contract unnecessarily. Also, in order to keep energy circulating throughout your body, it is important to keep your spine straight and nerves unhindered.

2. Consider” trigger point massage” for pain relief. If you are plagued by continuous pain and conventional pain medicines are not working to help eliminate it, consider this special type of massage. It will help to not only ease the pain but to eliminate it’s source as well.

3. Try Acupuncture.Acupuncture is type of holistic/Alternative medicine that has been commonly practiced in the eastern part of the world for thousand of years. Five thousand years ago, the intention of acupuncture was to prolong life. With many alternative medical techniques, the intention is to prevent rather then to cure a specific or general ailments. The oldest recorded practice of acupuncture was over 5,000 years ago. Basiclly, acupuncture is used to stimulant the nerves in the body and as a result positively affect all of the other body systems. Read more

Three Reasons to Love Coconut Oil

If you can manage to buy truly raw, unheated, unprocessed coconut oil, you will love it as if it were your own child. Granted, yes, that may be a slight exaggeration, but for a raw foodist, or somebody that likes to eat and live as naturally and healthily as possible, coconut oil is a must-have. Here are four ways in which you can successfully use coconut oil.

On your skin: Coconut oil is easily absorbed into the skin and is 100% natural. Even if you wash your face solely with water, the natural oils can still be lost from the skin, due to the various pollutants that are in the air and to extreme weather conditions. Coconut oil puts the protective oil back into the skin, and although it’s not your own oil which your skin produces, the coconut oil has its own protective qualities. Our skin needs oil to remain elastic, and normal clinical moisturizers have mainly water and only a small amount of highly refined oil, which will not have any natural protective qualities. Also, coconut oil has antiseptic qualities, warding off bacterial and fungal infections.

In your raw desserts: coconut oil is the perfect addition to many raw desserts. Because raw foodists don’t cook anything in order to bind them, they must find other ways to bind the ingredients in a raw dessert. Coconut oil is liquid at room temperature and solid below 76 degrees F (24.5 degrees C), so you can let it sit out for a few hours before making your dessert and then mix it up with whatever the other ingredients are (e.g. hazelnut meal, cacao powder and dates). Then, just pop the mixture in the fridge. The end result will be a fudgey type consistency with a faint taste of fresh coconut.

For weight-loss: most people who are aware and up to date with their nutritional facts do know that there are fats which the body needs in order to function correctly, and also that fat consumed does not necessarily lead to an increase in body fat. Saying that, fat does have more calories than protein and carbohydrates, so you have to go a little bit easy. However, it is thought that the fat in coconut oil actually behaves differently to most other plant fats and can actually lead to weight-loss. Coconut oil contains medium chain fatty acids, as opposed to long chain fatty acids, which is said to be burned up by the body for energy, instead of being stored as fat. Furthermore, study conclusions are also telling us that the fat in coconut oil may lead to an increase in metabolism.

One jar of coconut oil can have multiple uses, but make sure that it’s raw and extra-virgin coconut oil, so that it retains all of its health giving properties.

Source: NaturalNews.com

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