Almost 108 million Americans were overweight or obese in 1999. Until now, obesity continues to be a serious problem and is predicted to reach epidemic levels by the year 2020.
One way to prevent this scenario is to make people aware of the risks of being overweight or obese.
Here are some diseases that you are putting yourself in risk of if you are carrying a lot of extra pounds:
1. heart disease
2. stroke
3. diabetes
4. cancer
5. arthritis
6. hypertension
Losing weight helps to prevent and control these diseases.
The quick weight loss methods which have spread like fire these days do not provide lasting results. More often than not, dieting methods which involve dietary drinks, foods and supplement or pills do not work. If they do, the results are just temporary.
It is better to rely on a healthy weight loss option which will provide lifetime results. You have to set realistic goals and not expect to lose a lot of pounds in a short span of time.
Here are some tips on how you can lose those unwanted pounds the healthy way:
1. Do not starve your self.
The key to a healthier way of losing weight is: Do not diet.
You may seem happy and feel that you are losing those unwanted flabs on your belly and thighs by skipping meals. But remember that this would not last long. Your body cannot tolerate having insufficient food to fuel the energy that you use up everyday.
If you get used to skipping one or two meals a day, your stored calories will be used up instead of the energy that should have been provided by your meals. So if you just eat one huge sandwich in one day, it will end up straight to your problem area (i.e. highs, buttocks, hips).
2. Start your day right.
Mothers always say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Have a healthy meal in the morning to jump-start your metabolism.
Your food intake after you wake up will be used to burn fat all day long.
3. Eat small, healthy meals frequently.
Five small-serving snacks per day is better than three hearty meals. Eating more frequently, and in small servings, can prevent over-eating. This will also increase your metabolism and make calories burn faster.
4. Decide on how much weight you want to lose.
Keep your goals realistic. In the long run, it is virtually impossible for you to lose 40 pounds in 2 weeks. Have a mindset that you want to eat healthy to stay healthy for the rest of your life.
Once you have decided on a weight loss plan or program, stick to it and make sure that you follow your own set of dieting rules.
5. Drink lots of water.
Your body needs sufficient water to burn fat and keep your cells hydrated and healthy.
6. Avoid too much sugar.
Plan your meals around lots of fruits and vegetables, some bread, rice or pasta for that carbo fix that you need, plus lean meat and protein rich-foods. Sweets, sodas and pastries should be once-in-a-while indulgences only.
7. Watch your fat intake.
Fat is not the culprit to being overweight. You need this to keep your weight at the proper level.
There is such a thing as healthy fats. Olive, peanuts and canola oil have them. Tuna, salmon and mackerel have omega-3 fats which is good for the heart.
8. Exercise.
Leave your car if you are only going a few blocks from home, take the stairs instead of the elevator, jog, cycle or skate. Use these activites and other home chores if you are too lazy to go to the gym and take exercise classes. Make sure that you do this regularly and you will not even notice that you are already shedding pounds with these mundane activities.
It does not matter how much weight you plan or need to lose. What is important is that you set realistic goals for yourself.
Go slow. If you have already lost 5 or 6 pounds, give yourself a break then try to lose the next 5 pounds.
Eat healthy, drink lots of water, have enough sleep and exercise. This will give you a higher chance of losing weight and improving your health, which would result to a new, healthier you.
"Losing Weight the Healthy Way"
All about Facial skin care
‘Facial skin care’ is more a matter of discipline than anything else. A facial skin care routine is what you need (and you need to follow the facial skin care routine with complete seriousness). So let’s check what comprises an effective facial skin care routine. Well, very simply, a facial skin care routine can follow the following 4 steps:
* Cleansing
* Toning
* Exfoliating
* Moisturising
Cleansing is the first thing in facial skin care routine. Cleansing helps in removing dust, pollutants, grease and extra oil from your skin, thereby preventing damage to your skin. Just spot your face and neck with a good cleansing lotion or cream and gently massage it into your skin using upward strokes. Use a soft face tissue or cotton wool to wipe your face in a gentle patting fashion (do not rub). Cleansing should be done at least twice a day i.e. morning (as part of complete facial skin care routine) and evening (on a standalone basis). Water soluble cleansers are the best for inclusion in your facial skin care routine.
Toning is the next in a facial skin care routine. However, this is the optional part of the facial skin care routine. Mostly, proper cleansing can compensate for toning. Toning helps remove all traces of dirt, grease and excess cleanser. Instead of making it part of your daily facial skin care routine, you can using toning occasionally i.e. when you have been exposed to particularly harsh environment/pollution.
Exfoliation is again, kind of, optional step in everyday routine for facial skin care. However, exfoliation is necessary at least once a week (or twice, depending on the skin type and the environmental conditions). Exfoliation finds its place in facial skin care routine because of the natural tendency of skin to replenish the skin cells every 3 or 4 weeks. As a facial skin care technique, exfoliation helps in removing the dead skin cells that block the pores, thus assisting the skin in the natural process. However, excessive or harsh exfoliation can cause damage to your skin; so you need to balance it out.
The next thing in facial skin care is moisturising. In fact, moisturising is the most important part of facial skin care routine. Moisturisers prevent your skin from getting dry. Dry skin is really undesirable since it cause the upper layer skin to break, leading to dead skin cells. Again, use light upward strokes to make the moisturiser more effective. Moisturisers work the best when applied on warm and damp skin. So do not try to remove all the moisture in the previous steps of facial skin care routine.
Besides the normal facial skin care routine, you should also exercise the following for facial skin care:
* Use proper make-up remover instead of just washing it away
* Pay heed to your skin type and the environment, when choosing facial skin care products.
* Before you start using a new facial skin care product, test it by applying it on a short patch of skin e.g. ear lobes.
* Never rub your skin too hard.
* Use sunscreen lotions for protection against sun.
CloneDVD Mobile 1.6.1.0 Final
CloneDVD mobile converts your DVD movies quickly and easily into a format that your mobile equipment (Sony PSP, Apple iPod Video, iAudio X5, Creative Labs ZEN Vision, etc) can play. Using CloneDVD Mobile you can also convert your DVDs to other file formats, such as XviD, DivX, MP4, AVI, etc.
Watch your movies on the go
With CloneDVD mobile you can put your favourite movies or TV series on your mobile video equipment and watch them wherever and whenever you want. Let the kids watch their favourite cartoons in the car.
Incorporating the user-friendly interface of Elby's CloneDVD and the well-engineered open source project FFmpeg as the conversion engine makes CloneDVD mobile a fast, easy-to-use and quality product that is very reasonably priced.
Copying a DVD to your mobile video machine is achieved in a few mouse clicks and without the need to rip it to your hard-disk. Note that copying protected DVDs also requires AnyDVD.
Version 1.6.1.0: 2009 06 14
- fixed 3-pass encoding
- audio is only encoded in last pass
- new: stream is now completely processed by the chameleon engine completely reclocked, realigned, resegmented, refit
- FFmpeg no longer demuxes, parses or damages the stream in any way FFmpeg still decodes video/audio/subtitles and encodes video/audio,mixes video, audio (scale, crop, deinterlace, subtitle harddup,resampling)
- FFmpeg still multiplexes streams (avi, mpg, mkv, 3gp, mov, ...)
- fix: header synchronization (as found in AVP Requiem)
- new: added profiles for Mio DigiWalker c720
- new: added .dump file to investigate sync/transcoding issues
- new: added support for audio copy, video copy (lossless transfer)
- new: added support for 3gp v2
- fix: accept 3gp/3gps as alias names for tgp/tg2
- change: added correction in case audio starts later than video
- change: switched ac3 decoder to aggressive mode
- some minor fixes and improvements
- new: added MPEG2 re-encode/passthrough profiles
- change: Framerate setting (NTSCFrameRate/PALFrameRate/...) now allow exotic values, like 30 FPS.
- fix: resync issues with certain long-running movies
- change: improved x264 encoding quality
- change: improved handling of stage files (multi-pass encoding)
- fix: some issues with subtitle decoding
- fix: some minor issues with SVCD
- new: x264 featuring patch Psy-RD 0.6 by Jason Garrett-Glaser
- new: added option to save encoder log
- several minor fixes and improvements
- transcoding speed should be greatly improved especially on multi-
core systems now.
- fix: previously selected multi-pass encoding could cause another "multipass" encoding when selecting passthrough mode, where it made no sense and only took up extra time.
- fix: selecting all angles from a multi-angle title would cause no output to be generated. Transcoding of multiple angles into a single video file is pointless, so now selection of multiple angles is disabled.
- fix: Any lipsync issues sould be resolved now - please post any problems in the appropriate area at http://forum.slysoft.com
- change: after initial installation of CloneDVD mobile the default output folder is now changed to the user's "My Documents" directory to ensure write privileges are available.
- fix: several profiles optimized.
- several minor fixes and improvements
- Updated languages
ATI Catalyst 9.6
AMD released version 9.6 of their ATI video card driver package.
Performance Improvements:
* Company of Heroes – performance improves up to 25% with HD 4600 series products and below as well as improvements of up to 10% on HD 4800 series
* Crysis – performance improves up to 13% in multi-GPU configurations
* Crysis Warhead – performance improves up to 11% in multi-GPU configurations
* World in Conflict – performance improvements of up to 30% can be seen in settings that were previously CPU limited
Resolved Issues for the Windows 7 Operating System:
* Some systems with both a component video display and a secondary display, it is now possible to duplicate the displays using the display settings
* Catalyst Control Center: Graphics corruption no longer visible when updating the ATI Graphics Power settings
* Catalyst Control Center: System no longer fails to set the Component Video modes
* Catalyst Control Center no longer shows Crossfire as disabled
* Catalyst Control Center: Default HDTV modes can now be enabled properly
* Enabling CrossFire under specific system configurations no longer causes Catalyst Control Center to stop responding
* Intermittent corruption no longer visible throughout Enemy Territory Quake Wars levels
Healthy Joints for a Lifetime
Remarkable advances are being made every day in the world of orthopedic health and disease treatment—our bones, muscles, tendons, ligaments, and related connective tissues. From reducing the crippling pain of arthritis to the miracle of knee and hip replacements, "musculoskeletal" research is changing how well—and how long—we can live an active, healthy life.
Most people take their bones and joints for granted—until something goes wrong with one or more of them. The human body has more than 200 bones and more than 200 joints that connect the bones.
"Almost every household in America is affected in some way by diseases of bones, joints, muscles, and skin," says Stephen I. Katz, M.D., Ph.D., director of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS). It is NIAMS that is the nation's research arm on these challenging conditions.
"Joint damage can happen to anyone at any age," says Dr. Katz. "In fact, many of the diseases related to joints and bone problems affect women and minorities more severely. But there are steps you can take to help prevent or lessen the effects of joint damage."
One of the most amazing options now is surgery to replace damaged joints. Almost half a million such hip or knee replacements occur in the United States each year. Here is an overview of the most common challenges and treatments.
Fast Facts
* The most common joint problems come from arthritis and injuries. Arthritis literally means joint inflammation. Although joint inflammation describes a symptom or sign rather than a specific diagnosis, the term "arthritis" often refers to any disorder affecting the joints. These disorders fall within the broader category known as rheumatic diseases, of which there are more than 100 kinds, and are characterized by inflammation as well as loss of function of one or more connecting or supporting structures of the body.
* More than 46 million people in the United States have arthritis or other rheumatic conditions. By the year 2020, this number is expected to reach 60 million. These diseases more frequently limit activity than do heart disease, cancer, or diabetes.
* The most common form of arthritis is osteoarthritis. It is seen especially among older people and is sometimes called degenerative joint disease. In osteoarthritis, the surface layer of cartilage (the hard but slippery tissue that covers the ends of bones) breaks down and wears away, causing pain, swelling, and loss of joint motion.
* About 435,000 Americans have a hip or knee replaced each year. Because of its structure and weight-bearing capacity, the knee is the most commonly injured joint. In the case of hip joint damage, osteoarthritis is the most common cause.
* Young adults who have had a previous joint injury are more likely to develop osteoarthritis. Researchers are looking for ways to prevent cartilage breakdown after injury.
Source : http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/magazine/issues/spring09/articles/spring09pg10-11.html
