Determining the Best Workout for Your Body Type
People come in all shapes, but most can be placed into a particular category of body type, mesomorph, ectomorph, or endomorph. These body types have different characteristics, and you should tailor your [more…]
Busting the Great Myths of Fat Burning
Your body burns either fat or carbs depending on the intensity of your activity. But when it comes to losing weight, calories are calories. You burn fat even when you're in couch-potato mode. Yet, a lot [more…]
Following a Cardio Plan for Weight Loss
If your goal is permanent fat loss, you need to burn enough calories to make a significant impact. Here's why: In order to lose a pound in one week, you need to create a 3,500-calorie deficit; in other [more…]
Nocturnal Leg Cramps: Night-time Calf Muscle Pain
Nocturnal leg cramps can lead to a rude awakening: You're suddenly sleepless and in pain in the middle of the night. Symptoms of nocturnal leg cramps include excruciating contractions of the calf muscles [more…]
How Your Brain Signals Your Body's Need for Food
You may think that hunger is all in your stomach and that dieting is all in your head. But nutrition experts know that hunger is regulated by a complex system of chemicals that send signals between your [more…]
Looking at Liver Function Bloodwork
When you go for a physical, your healthcare practitioner frequently orders blood tests. Many folks first find out they have hep C after undergoing a routine blood test and finding that one or more of the [more…]
Exercising with a Fitness Ball
The fitness ball — basically a big, somewhat bouncy ball — was supposedly developed by a physical therapist in Europe who wanted injured patients to be able to get some aerobic conditioning. The therapist [more…]
The Essentials of Healthy Weight Loss
The essentials of healthy weight loss can help you take a balanced approach to losing weight and staying in shape. Getting fit and trim requires balancing diet, nutrition, and exercise, as well as considering [more…]
Cutting Hair with Lightning Speed
Enterprising stylists are always forging new paths in haircutting, whether they're experimenting with a texture technique or simply approaching the basics in a whole new way. A natural outgrowth of these [more…]
Determining Your Resting Heart Rate
In general, the higher your resting heart rate, the less physically fit you are, and the lower your heart rate, the more physically fit you are. (Some athletes have resting heart rates in the 40s.) One [more…]
Comparing Formula and Breast Milk
One of the major issues to consider when deciding how to feed your baby is the quality of the food itself. Perhaps you've heard that breastfed babies get hungry sooner than bottle-fed babies. Does that [more…]
Making the Grade with the Gleason Score
When men who have prostate cancer talk to each other, they sometimes exchange their Gleason scores or their cancer stages with an intensity that two combat veterans might use when exchanging the name of [more…]
Finding the Right Running Shoes
Your chances of landing in a comfortable, quality pair of running shoes greatly increases if you shop at a running specialty shop rather than a huge, multisport center attempting to hawk everything from [more…]
Lowering Your Salt Intake
Salt, which is made up of 40 percent sodium and 60 percent chloride, is critical to your life. You can't live without it. Sodium helps to maintain your blood's water content, serves to balance the acids [more…]
Developing Your Oblique Muscles
Your oblique muscles (side abdominals) help you bend from the side or twist your torso. Strong obliques support the lower back, warding off back pain and posture problems. Improved posture, thanks to strong [more…]
Knowing When Not to Massage
As innocuous as massage may seem, there are still times when you should refrain from giving one because it may adversely affect a health condition of the person who receives it. [more…]
Taking Your Blood Pressure Correctly
Your blood pressure can be taken with a mercury blood pressure gauge, an aneroid manometer, or an electronic device for measuring the blood pressure, as long as the device has been recently calibrated [more…]
Choosing the Right Brush for Your Hair
Hairbrushes come in thousands of styles, materials, and designs. A low-end plastic brush costs as little as $1 and a hand-tied boar brush as much as $100. The average price for a decent brush is from [more…]
Stretching Tips for Runners
A stretch is a stretch, right? Well, not really. Stretching and the different ways to stretch are topics of controversy among runners.
For the past 25 years, so-called [more…]
Practice the Full Lotus Posture Correctly
The Full Lotus Posture (Padmasana) is a wonderful Power Yoga exercise for opening up the hips and creating flexibility in the ankles and knees. Practiced in moderation, the Lotus can invigorate the nerves [more…]
Getting an Upper Back Workout
Upper back exercises fall into three general categories: pulldowns and pull-ups, rows, and pullovers. For the most complete upper back workout, perform at least one exercise from each category, although [more…]
Getting a Chest Workout
You can change the feel and focus of many chest exercises by adjusting the angle of the bench you use. Performing chest exercises on a flat bench emphasizes those fibers in the center of your chest. When [more…]
The Human Digestion Process (or, What Happens after You Eat Food)
Digestion is the process of changing food into a form that the body can absorb and use as energy or as the raw materials to repair and build new tissue. Digesting food is a two-part process that's half [more…]
Tracking How Many Calories You Eat
Before you start dieting, it helps to determine how much you do eat. Unfortunately, a magic formula for figuring out how many calories you eat is unavailable as yet — you simply have to track it. If you’re [more…]
Getting a Great Lower Body Workout
In general, work your large muscles before moving on to your small ones. So perform your lower body workouts in the following order:
1. Glutes
2. Quads
3. Hamstrings [more…]
