Why is it important to drink at least six 8-ounce glasses of water every day?

You have probably heard these water facts before, but I think it is important to add them again:  Water is vital for good health and a long life. In fact, our bodies are made up of about 60 - 70% water. Although you can live for days without food, your survival depends on drinking water. Each and every cell needs water to perform its essential functions.

Here are some of the benefits of drinking an adequate amount of water each day:

• Your body needs to stay hydrated. If you become dehydrated your body can’t carry out normal functions. Even mild dehydration can drain your energy and give you a feeling of fatigue.

• Your body temperature is regulated.  Drinking water reduces cardiovascular stress and improves performance. This is particularly important if you work out, jog, or work strenuously. And water reduces body temperature, making the exercise and other activities safer and more effective.

• Your skin looks more youthful and healthier. Water hydrates and irrigates impurities from the skin, keeping it healthy and glowing.  It is almost like cleaning your skin from the inside.

• Helps your body absorb nutrients. Water transports essential nutrients, minerals, vitamins, proteins and sugars through your body for assimilation.

• Water helps flushes wastes and toxins from your body. Water aids in circulating and excreting waste products and cleansing the interstitial tissues, helping us to flush toxins out of your system. Your body can process and eliminate some of the chemicals that enter it, but the rest get stored in the liver, lungs, kidneys, fat cells, intestines, blood stream, and skin. Without enough fluids to flush out your system, these accumulated toxins in your body will slow down your organ function, possibly causing premature aging or resulting in chronic illness.

Five Great Phone Apps Suggested by “Hungry Girl”

If you are still working your new year diet and/or exercise program or you are restarting (like me), here are fun apps suggested by Hungry Girl for your phone.

Fitbit Ultra Wireless Tracker is a handy doodad that tracks your daily activity and calorie burn. It even monitors your sleep patterns. This is a good option for those willing to make a bit of an investment.

HealthRally is a website that allows your friends and family to invest in YOU. You set a goal (anything from weight loss to quitting smoking), and your support system can pledge money or other contributions as incentives -- but you only get the rewards if you meet your goal.

 GymPact lets you earn or lose money depending on whether you make it to the gym. If you don't check in and work out, you lose whatever amount you've wagered. At the end of each week, the accumulated cash gets divided among those who met their attendance goals.

Fit Freeway is another helpful app; it's an arcade-style race-car game... but you control the speed of your "car" by how fast you pedal your exercise bike or elliptical. Click here to try the free Lite version.

 Instant Heart Rate app will check your pulse using the camera feature on your phone.

Why you can buy your Happy Meal today and eat it in 2015!!!

In the week's Natural News Newsletter by Mike Adams (The Health Ranger), the editor of NaturalNews.com, reports on every kiddies favorite meal, the McDonald’s Happy Meal.  Here’s the low down: “McDonald's Happy Meal hamburgers and fries won't decompose, even if you leave them out for six months.”  This story has recently been picked up by CNN, the Washington Post and many other mainstream news outlets.

Why don’t McDonald’s Happy Meals (and to be fair ALL fast food restaurant burgers and fries) decompose?  Part of the story is that they are so loaded with chemicals, preservative and high concentrations of sodium that not even bacteria, insects or mold will touch them.

 

This high sodium content is a good explanation why the meat doesn’t decompose, but why don’t the buns mold?  They can sit around for weeks (or months and in one study, years!) without deteriorating while my healthy homemade 12 grain bread is gone in days.  The answer once again is “better living through chemistry.” 

You can barely read the chemical list contained in the hamburger bun (see the McDonald’s site for the full list of ingredients), but some of the better known culprits to our health are: high fructose corn syrup, partially-hydrogenated soybean oil and the long list of chemicals such as ammonium sulfate and sodium proprionate.

Mike Adams concludes his article by saying: “Now here's the truly shocking part about all this: In my estimation, the reason nothing will eat a McDonald's hamburger bun (except a human) is because it's not food! No normal animal will perceive a McDonald's hamburger bun as food, and as it turns out, neither will bacteria or fungi. To their senses, it's just not edible stuff.”

As I said before, McDonald’s is used as the example for this article, but the facts are true for all fast food chains.  I think Mike used the Happy Meal as an example because that is what people feed their kids.  Can you imagine the amount of toxins that these little bodies are going to contain even before they reach high school???  I hope the little plastic Shrek toy was worth the health risk.

Learn more from Mike Adams and Natural News, or subscribe to his newsletter go to: http://www.naturalnews.com/030074_Happy_Meal_decompose.html#ixzz1jMm6FUYF

Another FDA Warning: This Time Orange Juice

This article comes from the Associated Press.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Coca-Cola Co. said Thursday it alerted the Food and Drug Administration after it discovered via testing its own and competitors' products that some Brazilian growers had sprayed their orange trees with a fungicide that is not approved for use in the U.S.
The FDA had said Monday that an unnamed juice company alerted it in December after detected low levels of the fungicide in orange juice products after testing its own and competitors' products.
Most orange juice products made by Coke and other companies contain a blend of juice from different sources including Brazil.
Atlanta-based Coca-Cola did not say which of its own and others' products it tested contained the fungicide. Its own orange juice products include Simply Orange and Minute Maid.

Another Reason to Eat Organic: McDonald's Warning Label

Jillian Michaels & Arthur Wornum posted this photograph on their FB pages.  Evidently the state of California is requiring this warning label be put on McDonald's food.  Pretty scarey when you stop to think about all the french fries and hash browns people consume over a lifetime.  Please note that this warning doesn't just apply to McDonald's french fries etc., but to all fried or baked potatoes. (See my articles on the importance of detoxing).