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Before getting into what colon cleansing is, it may be better to get an idea of what your colon does. That way, you will better understand why having your colon cleansed is very important. In this article, I will be discussing the Colon’s role in the digestive function of the intestinal tract. I will also discuss colon cleansing and its benefits.
What is the Colon and where is it Located?
 The colon is probably more well known as your large intestines. It basically starts at the junction between your appendix and small intestines and ends up in the opening of your anus. The colon is about 1 to 2 meters long and is sectioned into three parts. They are the Ascending Colon, Transverse Colon and the Descending colon. These names may be better understood if you informed of how the colon is positioned in your body. Basically the colon forms an upside-down letter ‘U’, the ascending portion of it begins at the appendix and ends where the colon starts to bend. The Transverse part of the colon runs horizontally across, close to where your liver and stomach are located. The descending portion starts out at the second bend of the transverse colon and goes down to the anus.
What is the function of the Colon?
Most of the digestion and absorption happens in the stomach and small intestines. That’s the reason why when the food gets to the colon, it is mostly composed of water and waste. So the main function of the colon is for moving the waste for removal and to also reabsorb some of the excess water. The fecal matter begins it’s journey soft and watery in the ascending portion, it begins to harden slightly when it reaches the transverse portion and after re-absorbing more of the water, it is then expelled from the body by defecating.
What is Colon Cleansing?
A Colon Cleanse or colon cleansing is the process of flushing out any excess waste that may be trapped or stuck to the walls of any segment of the large intestines. It may also include cleaning out of the small intestines, but that depends on the specific product type. You can perform colon cleansing by using any number of commercially available products that help to remove the plaque and the excess debris that can be built up on your colon’s walls. Colon cleansing is considered to be very helpful in alleviating a lot of diseases and contributes to overall better health and it has even been rumored to prevent the development of colon cancer.
Is Colon Cleansing Right For You?
Well, it really depends on you and what you want. A lot of experts would probably tell you that undergoing the process would be the best thing you could do for optimal health and taking care of your body, and they are not wrong. They are, of course basing it on the many positive results that have come from lots of satisfied people who have had a colon cleansing. These individuals have come away from the treatments feeling much better and not experiencing all of the ailments and symptoms of certain health problems that they had before.
So, there you go: a look into what the colon is, where it’s at, and what it does. If you feel like you may need to have a colon cleansing procedure done, by all means you should do it. Just make sure that you are doing it safely. You should consult a physician and review the products very thoroughly before going through with it. Not all colon cleanse products are created equal.
Technorati Tags: Anus, Appendix, Ascending Colon, Cleansing The Colon, colon, colon cleanse, colon cleansers, colon cleansing, Defecating, Descending Colon, detox, Digestion Absorption, Digestive Function, Excess Waste, Excess Water, Fecal Matter, Function Of The Colon, Intestinal Tract, Large Intestines, parasites, Small Intestines, Transverse Colon, Upside Down
It’s not only professionals who know ways to lose weight fast, regular people have some pretty good ideas too.
Avoid fried meat, eat only grilled or boiled meat like steak and chicken Use a lot of spices to make it even better.
Stop drinking sodas. Those are empty calories so stop drinking them and substitute water. (Note that the average person adds 90,000 calories a year from drinking juice or soda. WOW! That’s a great tip.)
If there’s no junk food at home you can’t eat it. When shopping, make a list, stick to what’s on the list.
Give yourself a treat. When you can’t eat something you end up craving it more, and eventually binging. Enjoy a treat once a week, or even once a day in smaller quantities. Don’t go crazy, remember the rule of moderation.
Trick yourself into being satisfied with less by eating off a smaller plate. (Not only are you tricking yourself, even if the trick doesn’t work it’s easier to stop eating when the plate is empty and there’s no more food available.)
Stay away from quick weight loss fad diets. They starve you and then you eat more when the diet is over.
Exercise at every opportunity, even at the desk with some leg lifts. (That’s a great idea to increase your metabolism.)
Measure your food. If you have junk food be careful to measure and control the portion. (Portion control is a big part of a healthy diet. Most restaurants and even people at home serve portions that are way too large.)
Get really sick. After a month in the hospital I had lost 25 pounds. (Bad idea. It’s best to stick to weight loss plans while staying healthy. After all, the ultimate goal is improved health.)
Stay with something long enough to repeat it a few times, then you can coast. (It’s said that when we repeat something 21 times it becomes a habit. Sometimes the number is different, but the idea is the same. Will power is only necessary to repeat something enough times for it to become a habit.)
When you eat rapidly the body doesn’t have time to feel full. Take your time.
These are all great tips from regular Joes just like us. A lot of them also happen to be common advice given by experts on safe weight loss. It turns out ways to lose weight fast do exist, and they’re not something only doctors can know.
Technorati Tags: fad diets, junk food, lose weight fast, quick weight loss diets, sodas, weight loss ideas, weight loss plans
By Mike Geary, Certified Nutrition Specialist, Certified Personal Trainer
I’d like to start a little discussion today about carbohydrates… and in particular, “white foods” as well as potatoes. One reason I wanted to mention this is because so many health and fitness professionals trash talk potatoes about being a bad carbohydrate choice because of the high glycemic index. Some even say such ridiculous things as “avoid any and all white carbohydrates”.
 Ok, now while I certainly agree that white bread and refined white sugar are two of the worst things we can be feeding our bodies, I definitely don’t agree with avoiding any and all “white carbohydrates”. Now I know all of the buzz lately has been about colorful foods and the protective antioxidants that they contain. They tell you to focus on colors and stay away from white.
“White Foods” aren’t necessarily always the enemy
It’s true that colorful foods are great, but it is a big mistake to specifically avoid white foods! There are plenty of white foods that have specific nutrients that are hard to find elsewhere. Let’s look at a few examples…
Onions & Garlic
What about onions and garlic? They are both white and they are chock full of protective phytonutrients, vitamins, and trace minerals that aren’t easy to find elsewhere in a normal diet… such nutrients as allicin, quercetin (an important flavonoid), chromium, and other unique anti-inflammatory nutrients.
Cauliflower
Another example of something white that is great for you is cauliflower. Cauliflower is loaded with vitamin C, fiber, minerals, and special compounds such as glucosinolates and thiocyanates, which are specifically abundant in cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage. And a little-known fact is that some of the compounds in cruciferous vegetables help to combat other estrogenic compounds in our food supply and environment and can help prevent excess belly fat. So eat up on that cauliflower!
Mushrooms
Not many people realize this, but surprisingly, even white mushrooms have high levels of unique nutrients and antioxidants. White mushrooms are high in a couple types of antioxidants called polyphenols and ergothioneine.
Potatoes
Now that also leads us to another example – white potatoes (which by the way, can also be found in red, yellow, purple varieties, etc). Many health professionals claim that potatoes are a bad carbohydrate because they are thought to have a high glycemic index. First of all, if you’ve read my Truth about Six Pack Abs book, then you understand that glycemic index is not necessarily the most important factor in choosing your carbohydrates.
While a generalization can be made that most low glycemic index carbohydrate choices will help you lose body fat easier than high glycemic index choices, it is not all that it’s cracked up to be. There are many other factors that determine how your body will react-to and process the carbohydrates you ingest, such as glycemic load and also how you combine the high GI food with other foods.
For example, using glycemic load as an example… it is known that watermelon has a high glycemic index. However, the glycemic load of a normal serving of watermelon is just way too low for your body to start packing on body fat just because you ate a high glycemic index fruit. You would have to eat such an enormous quantity of watermelon just to get enough grams of carbohydrates to have any negative glycemic effect, that it is just non-sensical.
Not to mention that watermelon is also a great source of vitamins, minerals, and lycopene. There’s just no reason to avoid it simply because it has a high GI. My point is… candy bars, cupcakes, and donuts make you fat… NOT watermelons, carrots or potatoes… French fries excluded of course.
Also, as i mentioned, food combinations are important in how your body processes the carbohydrates and the associated blood sugar and insulin response you receive. For example, if you mix a high glycemic index carbohydrate with an extra source of fiber, healthy fats, or even certain proteins, many times the blood sugar and glycemic response will be slowed down considerably by the way you combined the food. Again, I talk in detail about this entire topic in my Truth about Six Pack Abs book
Alright, so back to my point that white potatoes are actually a healthy carbohydrate as long as you eat them in the right form… with the entire skin, and please don’t ruin them by deep frying them into french fries either! French fries are one of the most evil things ever invented for your health, but only because we ruin them by soaking them in a scorching bath of trans fats in the deep fryer from the hydrogenated oils that are typically used.
Keep in mind that potatoes contain so many vitamins and minerals that the list is way too long to even try. Also, as long as you eat the skins, you get a decent shot of fiber too.
Will 7-9 potatoes per day make you fatter?
On the topic of potatoes not being so bad after all, I don’t remember where I saw this referenced, but I recently saw a particular study that had participants eat something like 7-9 whole potatoes per day for several weeks.
At the conclusion of the study, the potato eaters had actually consistently lost weight! I’d venture a guess that the reason the people lost weight is that they were probably so full from eating all of those damn potatoes, that they actually consumed less calories than normal! An average sized potato only has about 100-120 calories, and I can surely imagine you’d be full constantly from eating 7-9 potatoes each day.
Now I would never recommend going to those extremes, but my point is that an occasional potato is not going to hurt your efforts to get lean, especially if you combine it with some other fibrous vegetables and maybe a healthy fat and some protein. On that note, I have one of my favorite recipes for you, using potatoes.
Geary’s Lean-Body Potato Side Dish
* Desired quantity of baby potatoes (I like to use this mixture I found recently at a health food store… it is a mixture of white, red, yellow, and purple baby potatoes)
* 1 red pepper
* 1 green pepper
* 1 yellow pepper
* 1 or 2 onions
* a couple cloves of garlic, finely chopped
* 1 or 2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil and/or coconut oil
* a little salt and pepper to taste (I like using a sea salt instead of normal commercial salt)
Cut the baby potatoes into slightly smaller pieces and place in a steamer until soft all the way through. Slice up the peppers and onions into strips and add with the chopped garlic into a pan with the olive oil. Cook the peppers, onions, and garlic until tender, and then add the steamed baby potatoes. Stir it all together and serve. This is a delicious and healthy side dish that goes great with chicken or red meat.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this little topic today about potatoes, healthy carbohydrates, glycemic index, and my killer healthy potato recipe idea!
If you enjoyed this article today, feel free to copy/paste this link and email to your friends and family that would be interested.
Sincerely,
Mike Geary
Certified Personal Trainer
Certified Nutrition Specialist
Technorati Tags: Allicin, antioxidents, Cauliflower, Colorful Foods, Cruciferous Vegetables, Estrogenic Compounds, Fitness Professionals, Flavonoid, Food Supply, Glucosinolates, Glycemic Index, Health And Fitness, High Glycemic Index, Lean Body, Little Known Fact, minerals, nutrients, Nutrition Specialist, Potatoes, Protective Antioxidants, Trace Minerals, Trash Talk, Vitamins Minerals, White Bread, white foods, White Sugar
For years we have exploited our body systems and have not bothered about the ‘junk’ food that we ingested. Knowingly or unknowingly, we have absorbed toxins in the form of preservatives, chemicals and harmful substances. Continuous and uncontrolled overdose of antibiotics has caused the friendly bacteria to die along with the harmful ones. This has led to a toxic body in which harmful bacteria and parasites thrive. The toll of this modern lifestyle on our body systems has begun to show increasingly in our society with the incidence of a large number of diseases increasing everyday.
In a normal healthy body, the detoxification system that consists of large and small intestines, urinary system, lymphatic system, skin, lungs and liver ensures that the body detoxifies itself. But heavy pressure and overuse of these systems has resulted in a break down in these mechanisms over time. The increase in the amount of toxins in the body results in stress in the immune system that eventually breaks down due to overwork.
To give you an example of how a toxic body can be extremely harmful to itself, we can take the example of cholesterol. Most people think that cholesterol in their body is caused by the food that they eat. Even though food does add to the cholesterol in the system, eighty-five percent of the cholesterol in our bodies is produced by our own liver.
By definition, body detox implies a continuous process of neutralizing and eliminating the toxins in the body. Initially known for elimination of excessive alcohol and drugs from the body, detox is now being used more extensively for the process of elimination of any kind of toxins that may be present in the body.
Short lived and temporary measures undertaken to obtain a body detox can help in making you feel more energetic and light. But these do not go a long way in providing you a complete body detox that shall ensure a healthy life afterwards. In fact, once you enroll in a detox program, you should follow up with adopting a detoxed lifestyle after the detox program has been completed.
A detox program, in most cases shall include a mental shift in attitude towards diet, improving nutrition, removing toxins, returning the desired flora in your internal system, maintaining a balanced pH level in the body and improving the overall mind and body relationship. A holistic approach towards detoxification can ensure that undesired bacteria are not regenerated in the system restarting the process of toxification.
The various mechanisms and techniques that detox programs use are fasting, diet management, colon cleansing, vitamin therapies, herbal or natural treatment, acupuncture and lymphatic drainage and much more. These methods and remedies ensure that the body detox is complete and shall enable you to maintain balanced levels of pH in your body with minimal control over your intake and exercise.
The actual and long-term benefits of a detox program are sustained energy, healthier skin, easy and regular bowel movement leading to a sound body and a mind capable of higher levels of concentration and performance. All this leads to the prevention and cure of headaches, joint pains and a higher level of immunity towards most diseases.
Taking the cholesterol example forward, cholesterol-reducing drugs may have some side effects and cause heart trouble. Instead a liver detox can ensure that the liver is cleansed of all the toxins that are the main reason for a high cholesterol producing liver. Though linked with the whole body a liver detox can immediately, ensure that it does not produce high quantities of cholesterol.
A detox program is different for different people. And though the general rules for a body detox remain the same, it is essential that you understand the areas in your body that require specific and immediate attention. This is where a good detox program comes into focus. Therefore, to ensure that you achieve a complete and holistic body detox, you must choose the right kind of detox program.
Click here to learn more on full body Natural Detox and all the contributing factors to the build up of toxins.
Source: http://thecompletedetox.com
Technorati Tags: Antibiotics, Body Detoxification, Cholesterol, Complete Body Detox, Detox Diet, Detox Program, Harmful Bacteria, Immune System, junk food, Large And Small Intestines, Liver Detox, parasites, Parasites Toxic Body, Toxic Body, toxins, Urinary System
There is a reason why comfort foods like homemade soups and aromatic herbal dishes seem to have a healing effect on the body. It is because many of the fresh herbs and spices used to create these tantalizing dishes have tons of healing supplemental vitamins and nutrients packed into them. However, you don’t have to be a chef de jour to take advantage of the healing power of herbs. Just go online to a health food store and order your favorite herbal supplement.
Herbal supplements have rapidly gained popularity among users over the past decade. Although eastern cultures have known about the healing effects of herbs for hundreds of years, the power of herbal nutrition supplements are just now beginning to be discovered by western civilization.
The timing of our new “discovery” couldn’t be better. It seems like every month there is a new initiative launched to try and wing Americans off of their dependency on over-the-counter drugs and prescription medicines. Oftentimes, people have been using these medicines so long that their immune systems have adapted to them and they are no longer effective in treating and curing the underlying illness.
However, with healing herbal supplements, your body can begin to heal itself naturally, safely, and effectively. It really doesn’t matter what type of illness or discomfort you are experiencing. There is a natural herbal supplement available to treat just about every ailment, ache, and pain that you may have.
If you are struggling with weight issues, there are safe and natural herbal dietary supplements that can help you conquer the battle with weight loss. If you are having problems with high cholesterol and are becoming a candidate for heart disease and cancer, herbal nutrition supplements such as garlic, ginkgo biloba, and turmeric have been shown to help reduce these risks and stimulate the immune system and healthy blood flow.
Herbal supplements are a natural and effective alternative method of revitalizing and reinvigorating your health. They are safe, affordable, and just flat out work. But don’t take my word for it. Ask the millions of people worldwide who have benefited from the natural healing power of herbal supplements. As always, talk to your doctor before taking on any new medical treatment.
About the author:
Tia Rodriguez is a health and wellness coordinator for an upscale sports management agency. To learn more information on healing your health naturally with herbal supplements, check out the resources at
http://www.herbal-supplement-store.info
Technorati Tags: dietary, health, health food, healthy, herbal supplements, herbs, nutrients, nutrition, vitamins
 Learn foods to avoid for weight loss in this free health video.
Expert: Brenda Thompson
Bio: Brenda Thompson is a registered dietician and professional chef with the Westlake Market H.E.B. in Austin, Texas.
Filmmaker: Drew Noah
Duration : 03:01
Continue reading Healthy Diet Tips : Foods to Avoid for Weight Loss
Technorati Tags: Austin Texas, Brenda Thompson, cooking, diary, Diet Foods, Diet Tips, diets, Duration, eating, Exercise, Filmmaker, food, free, Free Health, habits, healthy, Healthy Diet, Healthy Foods, Loss, Loss Weight, Noah, points, Professional Chef, Registered Dietician, video, Video Expert, Weight, weight loss, Youtube
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