Benefits of Less Salt

According to www.SaltHealth.org, salt is an important element to all humankind. Salt plays various roles in human's biochemical body system. Why is salt so important to us? For one, salt is an important electrolyte in our body, and it lives up its role to maintain the critical osmotic balance in our body cells. Other than that, salt is also functions especially in nerve impulse signaling.

Generally, salt consists of two common components which you've probably know about it, namely sodium and chloride. Sodium regulates many biochemical processes in human body, for example, human hydration and pH level. While chloride enables the blood to carry carbon dioxide from out tissues to lungs.

Though salt has various functions in our body, but salt, generally is only needed for a minute amount. According to American Heart Association, dietary sodium allowed for intake per day is about 3,000 miligrams (which is 3 grams). Regarding to a recent study done by US researchers from the University of California, a small reduction in daily salt intake could reduce heart attacks, strokes, as well as deaths in Americans.

Based on the American population, the researchers suggested that by reducing a small amount of salt intake for about one half teaspoon (approximately 1,200 mg of sodium), discoveries such as these: 11 per cent fewer new cases of heart disease, 13 per cent fewer heart attacks, 8 per cent fewer strokes, and 4 per cent fewer deaths; were found.

Prolonged Period of Sitting

When we are tired after a day's work, we would like to sit down on a comfortable chair, resting and chilling out before continuing with our daily work again. Surprisingly to notice that, sitting was once the third biggest killer in the United States, it used to kill some 300,000 Americans annually.

How can sitting be so hazardous to mankind? By merely sitting, it can be so fatal that it kills people? That is a true statement, according to a recent issue which is published in the Journal of Sports Medicine, many specialists argued that a prolonged sitting period is truly detrimental, and it does not bring any significant benefits to humankind.

According to the study, by comparing lack of exercise as well as sedentary lifestyle, where individuals are just sitting there, promoting inactivity, the state of inactivity proves to be deadlier than lack of exercises.

Such "sedentary behavior" can also be considered as muscular inactivity. Such inactivity, if compared to excessive smoking, prolonged sitting period appears to be worse than that. Researches showing that by sitting inactively, risk of getting various diseases such as obesity, diabetes and cancer is increased tremendously. But by just doing some moderate activities in our daily lives, such risk can be reduced dramatically.

The researchers are doing further investigation on this study, and looking for the real roots of the problem. Thus far, some underlying mechanisms are identified. An enzyme called lipoprotein lipase, which has an essential role in regulating blood fats seems to be one of the main causal factors.

Induced Tumor

Stress, is a dreadful word for every single person. Perhaps it is not so apparently seen among the children and adolescents, but it is a very strong word especially to majority of the working people and individuals who has a career.

According to http://www.kidshealth.org/, Stress is a feeling that's created when we react to particular events. When a challenging, tough situation is met with focus, strength, heightened alertness as well as stamina, stress emerges as the body's way of rising to the occasion.

The human body responds to events which cause stress by activating certain specific hormones as well as the nervous system. Firstly, hypothalamus gives way to adrenal glands to produce more adrenaline hormones as well as a handful of cortisol. These hormones are like energy boosters, where they increase your breathing rate, speeds up your heart pumping rate, blood pressure, and of course, your metabolism rate is also elevated.

In a recent study which was conducted in Yale University, researchers found that stress could induce signals that cause cells to develop into tumors. But firstly, we need to understand how a tumor grows. According to most researchers, they believed that the growth of tumor is caused by more than one cancer-causing mutation to take place in a single cell.

However, researchers at Yale found that these mutations did not need to co-exist in the same cells to cause tumors, and a finding in regard to this, suggesting that it is much easier for a tissue to accumulate mutations in different cells than in the same cell.

The study which they conducted by using fruit flies, found that stressful conditions, for example a wound, can already afford to trigger cancer formation. The leader of the Yale Team, Xu Tian, reckoned that a lot of different conditions can trigger stress signaling, among those included in the list are physical stress, emotional stress, infections as well as inflammations.

To curb the outburst of such undesirable consequences, GT&F products undoubtly is your best partner. Other than its effective ability in preventing various metabolic syndromes, its original nature of milk could calm and tranquilize your mood. Drink a glass of GT&F Milk a day, keep the doctor away!

Sleep Early

Kids are told to sleep early especially when these kids have grown up to a state that they start to step into the school's compound. Why are parents instructing their kids to do so? Are they afraid that their kids would not wake up on time for their schooling sessions? Or worry that they will not able to concentrate during the classes? There seem to be many factors, but now, another factor might attract the attentions of the parents, or even the adolescents themselves.

A study in January issue of the journal Sleep, suggested that adolescents with bedtime set earlier by parents were significantly less likely to suffer from depression and the inclination of committing suicide.

A shocking result reveals that for children whose sleeping time which were set at midnight or later, the risk of getting depression is increased by 24% while the thought of committing suicide will be increased by 20%, compare to the sleeping time set by parents which is at 10pm or earlier. Those are the statistics for sleeping time, but you would of course wondering does the time duration for a good sleep affect as well?

The answer is ---yes. There are also statistics which prove this from the same study. For those adolescents who sleep for merely five hours or fewer, the chances of developing depression is 71% more likely, while it is 48% more likely to have suicidal thoughts.

Thought this study only targeted the young ones, but of course, for adults, especially working people, a good night sleep is equally important too. There are also studies which show that suicidal thoughts could be developed if an adult do not get enough sleep each day. Other than suicidal thought, other complications such as high blood pressure, heart diseases would also occur should one's biological clock goes haywire.

What Makes Wrinkles?

As we get older, several unwanted lines, whether you like it or not, will gradually appear on your face. When the period passed is increasing, do not be surprised that these lines are quickly adding up in numbers. Yes, it's wrinkles! Ever wonder how and why they form across your face?

Wrinkles do not necessarily only appear due to aging factors, it also tend to appear when you immerse some of your body parts, for example, hands or legs into the water for a certain period. But what we are concerning over here, is not how it forms as a result of water immersion, but due to inevitable natural aging process.

Our skins have the ability to protect themselves naturally. But as we get older, this ability is also reduced and get lessen as the time goes by. Consequently, our skin becomes thinner, drier and the elasticity also being reduced. Apart of appearing naturally, there are also all sorts of external catalysts out there which are able to increase the appearance of wrinkles. These catalysts include sun exposure and cigarette smoking.

Among the most effective treatments used, including laser treatment as well as Botox treatment. These treatments are famously regarded as expensive treatments. But do you know that there's another treatment out there which could save you hundreds of ringgit?

GT&F Products, apart from being able to effectively curb diabetes and other relating metabolic syndromes, it is also effective in slowing down the aging process as there is a handsome amount of antioxidants in the products. Besides that, GT&F Milk Powder particularly, can also be used to apply on your skin, just like how you apply your facial mask on your face. The result is very encouraging and convincing.

Barefoot is Good

Quote an example here, that you were to invite one of your friends for a jog in a rush, and it happened that the friend of yours was so willing to join you for the run. And so, he or she rushed downstairs, opened the door and getting ready for the jog by wearing that beautiful and nice conventional sport shoes which he or she just bought a few days ago. Under normal circumstances, what would you do? You would just wait for that friend of yours to tie the shoelace up, and then start keeping your feet busy would you not? But a latest study says otherwise.

Lately, researchers had conducted a study on the consequence on running with sport shoes as well as running with barefoot. The effect in running with shoes shown was that it actually exerted more stress to joints such as hip, knee and ankle joints compare to running with mere barefoot.

Dr. D Casey Kerrigan from Virginia had recruited 68 young healthy adults from general population in order to carry out the research. These 68 healthy young adults were consisted of 31 women and 31 men. These participants had no history of musculoskeletal injury and who often ran 15 miles a week with conventional shoes.

Researchers gave the participants pairs of running shoes, and they were instructed to run on a treadmill. Thye were also told to run on the treadmill with barefoot. The treadmill used had motion analysis system installed. From what they had analyzed, it appeared that when the recruited individuals were running on the treadmill with the shoes, there were increased torque at the hip, knee and ankle.

As a conclusion, the researchers suggested that though running shoes can protect and support the feet quite well, but on the downside, it added tensions toward hip, knee as well as the ankle joints, thus directly causing knee osteoarthritis.

Happy New Year!

The new year has come, and that's the strong reason why you should celebrate and welcome the coming of the Year 2010! In addition to that, let's celebrate the 101st post of GTF Infozone! Now that the year of 2009 is passed, have you made your annual dream came true? Or your old resolution just did not seem to be achievable in the past one year? And how about this year? Have you make yourself a brand new, new year resolution of 2010?

If you don't already have a new year resolution, open up your mind to consider this very good suggestion from Peter Brubaker, professor of health and exercise at Wake Forest University. He mentioned that simply adding 30 minutes extra into the length of the time of daily exercise would be a very good new year resolution.

He suggested that, an extra 30 minutes of daily exercise does not need to be carried out continuously, which means, you can very well exercise 5 minutes, 10 minutes there, then perhaps another 15 minutes later on. It is not necessary to carry out a straight-30-minute exercise in a day. Instead, the intensity of this 30-minute exercise is the essential point of all.

Apart from that, Professor Brubaker also suggested that actually, walking is one of the easiest, and efficient activity, which could burn a lot of calories. But there are a lot of people too rely on excuses such as "walking around inside the house can be considered a type of exercise". Technically, yes, because it is still considered as walking, but practically, that kind of walking only burn a very insignificant amount of calories, where these amounts of calories can be compensated very easily. The type of walking we should apply in our daily lives, would be, for example, use the stairs instead of the lifts.

Instead of, walking, Brubaker also pointed that wearing a pedometer would be a very good motivator psychologically. Where he said that if you wear a pedometer while exercising, you could increase you activity level by 25 percent. But the most important thing is, find the calorie-burning activity which you enjoy the most, so that you'll have fun while doing those activities.

Lastly, GTF Team Members is hereby again, wishing you a very Happy New Year in 2010, nice prospects ahead, and have a healthy year ahead!