Healthy food choices and exercise are the key to a long, careless life. They will induce a state of welfare and energy and will reduce the risk of high blood pressure, diabetes, osteoporosis, high cholesterol and cancer. You can set your own healthy food choices and decide what you want to eat and what you want to get out from your daily menu. This is in fact the easiest way for you to hold on to a good health for a very long time.



The advantages of healthy food choices are: they give you all the substances you need in order to have all the vitamins your body needs to have, they prevent and cure diseases like cancer and cardiovascular diseases, they give you a lot of energy, and they keep you fit. The secret of a healthy body weight is the lack of cuisine excess.

But how can you be sure that you have a healthy diet? The secret is timing: you have to eat the proper food in the proper time of the day. Eat cereals, especially low grain, and always choose the most colored vegetables you can find, because they are rich in vitamins and antioxidants. I also suggest that you squeeze in broccoli, sweet potatoes, salad, and if you can not eat the raw fruit or vegetable, make a fresh juice out of it. Eat a lot of fruits, preferably fresh or canned and also include in your fruit list exotic fruits like papaya, mango and avocado. Do not avoid diary products, especially the ones with a low fat content.

Do not forget about meat, I strongly recommend the white meat (chicken, fish) gave against red meat, like pork or beef, which contains unsaturated fats. Do not avoid all fat types; the body needs to be able to extract fat from the oil you ingest. The best oil types are olive oil and corn oil. It is known that people living by the Mediterranean Sea, the land of the olive trees, live a longer and healthier life, and they say that they use to drink a small glass of olive oil every day before breakfast.



One big mistake that most people do is skipping breakfast because we are in a hurry, or because we prefer to sleep half an hour more or simply because we can not eat that early in the morning. Our bodies starve during the night, so, if we do not feed them breakfast, our sugar blood level will lower a lot, so we will feel the urge to eat something sweet to counterbalance the lack of food. And if we will not eat a big fat juicy donut, then our next meal will be very large, for sure. And this kind of behavior can cause indigestion or even ulcer.

We all like sweets, cheese and fruits. But are we all able to eat in such a manner that our mouth will remain healthy? In the last ten years the doctors have discovered three main reasons that cause the tooth decays: the germs that can be found at any time in our mouth, substances found in the composition of the food we eat and the actual structure of the tooth. The food compounds that cause the apparition of decay are carbohydrates and the structure of fats and proteins.



The bad effects of the carbohydrates on dental health has been studied on people that eat only fruits and vegetables (like the natives from Polynesia) or only meat (like the Eskimos) and which have perfect teeth, as long as they do not start eating carbohydrates. The tooth decays started bothering these people once they started changing their food habits, after the settling of military camps and ports. The number of the tooth problems was also low during the Second World War, when, due to the lack of food and the restrictions installed by the government, people had little access to this sort of food, so the carbohydrates percentage in the daily meals was very low. Once the war stopped and people got back to their normal food habits tooth decays appeared in a larger number that before.



The bad effect of the carbohydrates over dental health depends also on the period that the tooth has been in contact with this substance. Regarding this aspect, the studies revealed the fact that the soft dishes are more harmful than the crispy ones, and that the powder is more harmful than the liquid. In addition to this, if the sweets that you use to eat are tacky and they stick to your teeth (like toffees for example) they prove to be more harmful than the other ones, because they remain in places of your mouth that can be hard to clean.



If you want to rank the food types and establish which one is more harmful than another you can do it taking into consideration the percentage of sugar found in their structure. For example, the raw starch from the vegetables and fruits is not that harmful, but if you mix it with sugar (as you found it in bread and cookies) it proves to be very dangerous for the teeth.

The counterattack to all these bad habits is washing your teeth at the end of each meal. If it is not possible to wash your teeth, that chew gum after each meal for about fifteen minutes. Raw fruits and vegetables have the same cleaning effect, and, of course, do not forget about the visits to the doctor and the check-ups you should do at least twice a year.

There are two kinds of health products: the regular ones and the ones that pretend to be made from natural products only. There are a lot of products that pretend to be made only from natural ingredients, but if you look closer on the label you will find all sorts of additives and compounds that have nothing to do with nature, but are of industrial origin. This applies very much to the cosmetic health products. You will find a wide range of products like this in the so-called “natural products shops” which have increased very much their number these days.



They are indeed different from the classical products, but no one will be able to guarantee that they are better or more effective than the other products you will find on the market. It is quite a fashion these days to chase the natural products when it comes to food, but when it comes to health products, too. If you are able to find a range of products that are really made out only from natural ingredients stick to it, because they are great and they work really well, but watch out for the fake ones, which have filled the shop windows and are most of the times more expensive than the classical ones.



Watch out for the label that lists the content of the body lotion or face mask you intend to buy and you will see there the entire composition of the product you are going to buy. The real natural health products usually have a very short validity period, because the ingredients that they are made from can not last in their original shape for a very long period of time. I mean, you can not put cucumber juice in a face mask and expect it to be ready to use for a whole year.

It is ok to use these types of products but make sure that they are the real thing, and try to get information, on the internet or at the drug store about their origin. You will find reviews on most of the products on the internet, and user opinions, too. You can also get informed on the exact type of product you have to buy, because they are not divided into categories like regular products (dry skin, normal skin or oily skin face cream).



If the natural product you bought is good for you, then you can use it for a long time without changing it because skin does not react to natural products as it does in the case of regular cosmetics. The classical cosmetics need to be changed after a few years or even a few moths, because the skin stops reacting to the chemical ingredients.

Eye sight problems influence in a bad manner our activities, and we must struggle for keeping eyes healthy because we need them in just everything we do. Healthy eyes are clear, with a bright iris and a clean cornea, and you should not see the small blood vessels. Eye health is not an easy objective because eyes can be affected by all sorts of external and internal problems: dust, gas, cold weather, wind, light, tiredness and nervous breakdowns. A light that is to weak tires the eye but so does a light that is too strong. Solar radiations and ultraviolet radiations are bat for eyesight too, and so are smoke and crying, which will inflate your eyelids.



Too much cigarettes, alcohol, coffee, sugar, refined salt, cans, spicy sauces, fermented cheese may affect your liver and kidneys and this may lead to eye health problems, too. You have to be very careful when you choose your sun glasses because not all of them offer protection against the sun rays, and having sun glasses that do not filter sunlight properly is worse than not having them at all. This is because your eye will act just as if you had protection, so it will not protect itself anymore. This might lead you to serious problems, even glaucoma.



The habit of watching TV and staying at the computer for a long time will lead you to eye problems too, because during this action you are tempted to blink very rarely, so your eyes will dry. This is an occupational disease for people working in the IT sector, and can be easily solved with the help of eye drops which are called artificial tears. There are a few diseases that can lead to poor eyesight; generally the eyes are influenced by the liver and the kidneys. Take for example the fact that diabetes can lead to blindness. The eye problem can not be fixed without curing the problem which caused it, so it is useless to ingest pills and pour eye drops into your eyes , because until the disease that started your eye trouble will not be fixed your eyes will not respond to any kind of treatment.



Many patients go to the doctor when the problem is more severe and thus not that easy to treat. Many people kind of neglect their health, and instead of having routine check-ups they go to the doctor only when their problem gets very serious and they are in great pain, or when the affection prevents them from doing something in particular. In this case, they are not able to see well anymore. You should do these check-ups before the problem gets very serious because the healing time will be shorter this way.

In 1946 the International Health Organization proposed a definition for health witch described it as being not just the absence of disease and infirmity, but the state of physically, mentally and socially welfare. There are situations, actions, or precisely the lack of action that can easily direct us to disease: sedentary life, unbalanced food diets, and psychical stress with its results: obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular problems, cancer and so on.



To fight these problems we must adopt a healthy lifestyle, which includes healthy food, physical exercise, the right amount of sleep and wakefulness, regular check-ups with the doctor, the safety belt and all the things we do in order to stay healthy and sane. At the first glimpse these rules may seem logical and easy to follow, but the truth is that very few of us apply them totally, not bearing in mind the fact that these simple directions to a healthy lifestyle might save them from conical disease, that they would improve our individual lives and raise our life expectation.

The reason why the nutritionists insist on educating people on the benefits of a healthy lifestyle is that in the past years they seem to neglect their health condition and became sedentary, acquired very bad food habits and a very big part started smoking and drinking. The reasons for these bad habits come fro a very wide range: physical stress at the job, the society that promotes bad examples (smoking, fast food) and the lack of places where people can exercise, the high price of natural and healthy food.

The food and energetic balance changed over the years. In ancient times, people got their food hunting, and searching it in hidden places, just like the animals did, so people used to consume a lot of energy for gathering it. The food supplied about the same amount of energy that people used to consume to gather food. Nowadays, the food can be found everywhere and we do not have to make any efforts in order to obtain it, so this is the reason why we have to replace that effort with physical exercise.



Physical exercise is very important because it determines weight loss; it keeps your muscles in good shape, reduces the risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, keeps control of the blood sugar level and blood pressure, and fights with the worst enemy of the century, stress. This is the reason for which we have to practice sports. In order to have an effective exercise program you should go to the gym or run in the park at least four times a week, for forty minutes. You have to carefully monitor your body reactions and pay attention if you have leg problems, a poor heart condition or back bone problems.

I was reading some health articles the other day that described some alternative treatment methods, not related to the traditional medicine, experimental. They talked about the power of the mind, and the wonders it does when talking about the effects of treatment for any kind of disease. There is a famous example related to this thing, the first proof of the placebo effect. During the Second World War, there were a lot of patients with severe injuries which were administrated morphine. Because the number of the wounded was very large, there was an acute crisis of morphine, so the doctors needed to invent something in order to solve the problem. The patients were in great pain, so the doctors replaced morphine with sugar and told the patients that they were administrated the drug that could ease their pain.



To the doctors’ amazement, almost all the wounded soldiers felt a relief in their pain, so the plan worked out very well. This example is representative when talking about the power of the mind and its effect on our bodies. And you will be able to observe it every day. They say that if you really wish for something, in the end your wish will be granted. People have built a whole theory around this subject and some doctors, mainly psychologists, believe that the power of the mind is stronger than medication and surgery. There were a few health articles that told an interesting story. Two people, suffering from the same disease were operated by the same doctor. One of them thought of it as a routine procedure and claimed that everything was going to be ok; the other was very scared and worried about the result of the surgical intervention.



The one that was optimistic had a very easy recovery and soon got back to normality, the pessimistic one started feeling bad, got complications from the surgery and suffered twice as much from it. You will pretend that it was a coincidence. I will not argue and say it was not, but the situation is not an isolated example, these things happen all the time.



Another example is the one regarding the patients that have problems which detain them from walking and are stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of their lives. They have a lot of check-ups and analysis done, and each and every doctor that sees them tells them that there is no chance for them to walk again. But they do not give up, start a recovery plan, and after a period pf time they are able to run in the park. To me, this is a proof that mind works its ways, and has a bigger influence on the body that we can imagine.

Being healthy is very important for all of us and we all get, at some point advice on how to maintain a healthy lifestyle. This is not as easy as it seems because there are a lot of things that we need to bear in mind, starting with the food we eat and the times of the day when we eat, the exercise we are supposed to do every day and the daily schedule, the working hours and the sleep hours.



Amongst these, there are a few things that we can control. We can not determine our working hours (excepting the situation that we are self employed), and we do not have always enough time for exercises or get enough sleep. But what we can easily control is the food that we eat.

We have to try and eat the food as natural as possible and, if time runs in our favor, try and eat home cooked meals, not semi processed food from the supermarkets, that we only put in a microwave for a few minutes, because that type of food contains ingredients that are very bad for our health.

Most of the products we buy from the supermarket contain additives, the “E”-s that you can read on the labels of the things you buy. Most of these proved to be dangerous for the human health, and eating them for a long time proves to be very dangerous for the health. About 70 percent of the human diseases are somehow related to the food habits. These additives are substances usually used as ingredients : salt, vinegar and sugar are additives and they are never absent from our meals. In the last thirty years, a lot of chemical substances appeared in the content of the food you find on the market and most of these chemical substances do a lot of damage if they are constantly introduced in our body. Doctors believe that the increase of cancer is strongly related to the additives found in food because they increased in direct proportion. They are “guilty” for the cardiovascular diseases, for the alimentary canal’s faults and for the food allergies.



It is our job to avoid these products, because everything you buy nowadays has a label on which is written the content of that particular product. The additives are marked on the label with the E letter followed by a three digit number. There are good “E”-s and bad “E”, but unfortunately most of the people can not make the difference between them. Most of the times, the products that contain bad additives are cheaper that the ones that contain more natural substances, so the buyer is tempted to choose the bad ones.<

So, my suggestion on how to  maintain a healthy lifestyle is to carefully choose the food you eat.

It is proved that the four seasons of the year affect our body in different ways. In winter we eat more, because we have to burn more energy to warm our bodies, in spring we suffer from asthenia, we are dizzy and suffer from the lack of vitamins (this is because winter does not offer us the chance to eat many fruits and vegetables, so our diet is poor in vitamins), in summer we usually lose weight because it is very hot and we can not eat that much, but we are always thirsty and drink a lot of liquids, and in autumn we start preparing for the season that is about to come. They say that most of the hair we lose during our life time is in the autumn.



I am going to give you some summer health tips that help me to stay healthy during this season. Our health and welfare should not be neglected at any point of our life, and it should not be affected by the chemical additives found in the food that we eat. So do not forget about natural, raw food. Fruits and vegetables feed our whole body with their vitamins, and in the summer we have to try and use them as much as possible.

Try and avoid eating fat food during the summer. Fats produce heat and are not very easy to digest. Drink as many liquids as possible, the amount of water that you are supposed to drink during a day is about 2 and a half liters, in fact you should not leave the house without having a small bottle of water in your purse.

Be careful when and what you buy. Food alters rapidly because of the heat, check the warranty period, ask about the place where it had been stored and try and avoid cakes, cream, mayo, and other products that might alter very easy. Choose aliments that are easy to digest, like fruits and vegetables because they prevent dehydration. Eat a lot of raw products but do not avoid cooked meals at least once a day in order to avoid digestive problems.



You also have to keep these healthy food habits during the holidays, too. When you do in holiday you eat in restaurants or fast foods. Try to avoid the last ones, choose to eat more cooked meals than sandwiches or fried meat with chips, and do not be ashamed to ask the waiter about the composition of one particular dish. Eat less meat, or at least eat low fat meat, like chicken or fish (white meat) and as a side dish choose vegetables and salad instead of  fried potatoes. These are my summer health tips. It should not be very hard for you to follow these simple rules.

I have been thinking lately of starting to eat more healthy, not only to lose weight, but to feel better, and to try and eat “by the book” so I made up a seven day healthy food list, and after trying this menu for a week I lost about 3 kilograms, although I felt I have been eating more than before. Above is my menu for that week:



Try and keep this healthy food list for a week do a weight check before and do it after, too. You will be surprised to see that you have lost weight, although, as you can see for yourself, this is not a starve to death menu.



It is very important for everyone to become aware of the necessity of eating healthy. There are all sorts of aliments which can be considered in this respect and everyone of us should be willing to pay more attention to what kind of food he/she consumes.



Every person can decide his/her own diet to follow and in this way everyone can become healthier by paying more attention to the type of aliments that he/she consumes in a way in which it might not seem too difficult by not choosing to follow too difficult diets.



It is not necessary to starve yourself in order to lose weight and neither is it recommended as this can lead to illness. By choosing the proper diet everyone can succeed in living healthier by eating healthier. There are numerous ways in which a healthy food list can be established by us and we should all at least take this idea into account.

Wine is a beverage obtained by the alcoholic fermentation if the grapes. There are a lot of types of wine, and they can be classified after their color (white, red and rosé), after their alcohol percentage, after their sugar content. Wine has a very long history that dates back about 6,000 years ago and it is believed to be original from the region of Iran. In Europe it appeared about 4,500 years ago, in the region of Bulgaria and Greece and used to be a very common beverage from ancient times until now.

The wine is a very famous type of drink that is included nowadays in the European and Mediterranean cuisine, not just as an alcoholic drink, but it is also used for cooking different types of dishes.



But wine is also important for health and is commonly used as an alternative medication. The medical world has acknowledged in time the benefits of the moderate wine consumption. In ancient Greece, Hypocrites recommended wine for the lowering of fever, as a disinfectant and as a supplementary nutrient. The first book written about wine and health was that of a French doctor’s and it spoke about the miraculous properties of wine. He even suggested that it is better to drink wine that water, due to its septic qualities.

Two centuries later, the American National health Institute wrote a health treaty on cardiovascular problems in which the American doctors demonstrated that wine, drunk in limited quantity reduces with 50 percent the risk of heart stroke.

In the south of France, people eat a lot of high cholesterol products, like cheese, eggs, meat and a lot of fat food. In spite of these, there are very few people that suffer from cardiovascular disease because they use to drink a glass of wine almost at every meal.



Sometimes wine can be used in weight loss diets due to its inexistent content of fats and fibers and because it has a large energetic value. It is also used as a digestive. The most suitable wine to be drunk during diets is the white wine because of the very low content of calories.

It has been demonstrated that red wine prevents cancer and has a very high percentage of antioxidants and stops the bad effect of the free radicals. Another component that is to be found only in red wine, black grapes and forest berries is the one named quercetine. This substance is believed to increase the body’s response to bad influences, which means that it raises its immunity. Quercetine lengthens by 80 percent the life of the body cells, stimulates the heart muscle and helps it work properly.

So you can drink wine, it is good for your health.