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Cholesterol has a terrible press to be sure, but this is because the press does not normally give the full story. It is easier and scarier to leave a few bits out. The fact is that we have to have cholesterol and triglycerides for that matter in order to live normally. The point where these fats get to be a problem is when we have too high a percentage of them in our blood.

This is a similar situation to having a lot of sugar in the blood on a regular basis, which is otherwise known as diabetes. Another word for this is hyperglycaemia and hyperglycaemia can become a cause of having too many triglycerides in the blood too, which by the way is called hypertriglyceridemia. ‘Hyper’ meaning ‘too much’.

Cholesterol and triglycerides are the two foremost fats in our blood system. Cholesterol and triglycerides come from the foodstuffs that we consume, but our own bodies make them too. Cholesterol is crucial for several fundamental bodily functions like regulating hormones and making bile.

Having said that, there are two types of cholesterol: low and high density cholesterol. The low end can go very low and the lower it goes the worse it is for you. This is a very complicated issue which is better explained in a longer piece, but all you have to keep in mind is that low density or LDL is bad and high density cholesterol is ‘good’.

This is a very simplistic description, but it is the one that we are told of in the popular press. HDL cholesterol is believed to help mop up LDL cholesterol, which is why it is called good.

If this natural process does not take place or goes out of balance, the LDL cholesterol waxy fat will stick to the walls of arteries making them thinner, narrower. This is known as atherosclerosis (furring of the arteries) and means that the heart has to pump blood harder in order to get oxygen to each part of the body.

This is known as hypertension or high blood pressure and puts the heart at danger of stress and failure – coronary heart disease and stroke are the possible results of furred arteries.

There is a lot that you can do to adjust any concerns with your cholesterol levels. Most of our cholesterol comes from eating red meat and full-fat dairy products, so merely by replacing every other steak with a salad could hugely reduce your problem. There are other ways of doing this too, like exercise.

Exercise is a good way of burning up the surplus fats in your blood stream, but it has to be carried out on a daily basis. Not that it takes much. If you think of what you eat and reduce the foodstuffs heavy in cholesterol, you might only require 30 minutes moderate exercise a day in order to become healthy.

The fact is that if you do not do something about your state of affairs, you will be placed on tablets for the rest of your life. You might think that this is a good alternative to diet and exercise, but it is not actually. It is just the easy option.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on a number of topics, but is now involved with the question: what is a triglyceride?. If you want to know more, just visit our web site at What Foods Lower Cholesterol?

We are under immense pressure not to look old, not to look our age. One of the best compliments people of more than 21 years think that they can receive is: ‘Really? You do not look it!’ To a certain extent this mania for a youthful appearance has always been with us, but the pressure has ratcheted up due to films and television.

Film stars and pharmaceutical companies unscrupulously team up to persuade us that we need this surgery too in order to become popular. What they do not tell you is that the pharmaceutical businesses have paid the film stars to have free treatment and then paid (or sponsored) the chat shows that so blatantly promote them.

And ageism is rife too, both among the young, whose worst insults normally have the word ‘old’ included and among employers who can not wait to be rid of employees at 65 after a lifetime of service. Governments or at least some governments are just as bad, penalizing pensioners with a meager salary after fifty years of paying taxes.

People used to grow old gracefully, now it is a sin. There is a long list of ‘improvements’ that you can work your way through: face lift, liposuction, hair transplants, dentures and several others, but the one that actually makes sense to me is sight improvement by whatever technique works.

We live in a beautiful world and it is a shame that whilst we are at the correct stage in our life to enjoy it – that is while we have more time, more money and have become more philosophical, we begin to go blind. At the same time as your grandchildren begin arriving, your eyesight begins to go.

There are many factors why you could begin losing your eyesight besides only old age, but old age does play a role in some of them too.

Macular degeneration is usually called age-related macular degeneration, but there is a rare kind that has an impact on the young. There are two kinds wet and dry. The dry kind is less severe, but the wet kind is more easily treated.

Cataracts are thought to be age-related as well, but I had premature senile cataracts 20 years early. Luckily these are easily treated too with merely a couple of minutes of surgery. Glaucoma is a nasty one, which can leave you totally blind, if you do not catch it soon enough and have it treated.

The trick to success with all of these sight impairments is tackling them early. If you suspect that anything is wrong with your eyes, go to a physician or optician instantly. Do not get fooled by quack cures that you might see advertised on late night television or in the small ads. They should get banned.

Eye exercises and eye drops are all right for healthy eyes, but they will not help you if you have a difficulty, only a fully qualified expert can do that. These advertisers prey on individuals who either do not have the money for surgery or who are scared of it and there are many of them about too.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on a number of topics, but is now concerned with macular degeneration glasses. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Macular Degenerative Disease

Most people do not look forward to death. They would like to live a long life and endeavour to stay eternally young. The peoples of each country spend billions every year on health care and beauty products.

Some people believe that the length of time you live is written in fate and there is nothing that you can do to change it, others think that we just have a certain number of heart beats, but most individuals think that genetics, diet and lifestyle are the major influences.

However, there might be another factor worth looking at: your town of residence. There are a few places around the world where people seem to live longer, on average, than is standard for their country or globally.

Take the city of Okinawa in southern Japan. Okinawa has more than a million inhabitants, 900 of whom are more than 100 years of age. Japan has an aging population in general, but nowhere there matches Okinawa for longevity and the percentage of centenarians is between four and five times higher than in the UK or the USA.

Not just do Okinawans live longer, but they also tend to stay healthy until their dying days, which is everyone’s dream. Diet is thought to be the main reason why Okinawans live such long, healthy lives. They eat a great deal of fish, tofu, soya and seaweed and swill it down with lots of tea.

This makes their diet low in saturated fats and pretty low in salt. However, it is also a widely-held belief in Okinawa that one should just consume until one is 80% full not 100% This may put less strain on the digestive system, but no one is quite sure yet if this has a bearing on living a longer, healthy life.

Then there is Loma Linda in California, the USA. The citizens of Loma Linda live an average of five to ten years longer than the residents of near-by towns. The town is predominantly Seventh Day Adventist, which preaches vegetarianism, no smoking and no alcohol. Some will point to these reasons as the reasons for living longer.

However, this does not account for why nearly everybody, even the smoking, alcohol-drinking, meat-eating inhabitants, lives longer. Others put the longevity down to religious belief, but researchers are mystified. Maybe going to church and relying on God relieves believers of some of the stress of daily life and stress is famous to be a cause of major diseases.

Another strange place is Owoda on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia. It is just a village of less than 2,000 residents but it has far more than the average number of 100 year olds than elsewhere. What is even stranger is that there are as many old men as old women which is not the standard anywhere else in the world.

The well-known Mediterranean diet and the pleasant climate are considered to be factors at play here, but it may also have something to do with their genes. The inhabitants were virtually isolated for hundreds of years and marriage among relatives was not uncommon. Usually this is not recommended because it can cause abnormalities. It looks like the abnormality that inter-marriage caused for the Owodans is longevity.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on a variety of topics, but is now concerned with the cause of macular degeneration. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Macular Degenerative Disease

The patient of Lasik surgery has two foremost responsibilities regarding his or her eyes: firstly to pick a responsible, skilled surgeon, which should not be very difficult and secondly, to take care of his eyes after the surgical procedure by following the advice of the surgeon on post-operative care. This second part is very necessary and should not be taken lightly.

The post-operative supervision process is not a problem, but if you are worried about it, you could enquire of your surgeon what it will entail before the operation. The physician or a nurse will be able to explain the procedure of supervision to you in detail or they will give you a pamphlet.

There might be some weird sight aberrations for a few days after the operation, some of which are fairly normal. One of the most common aberrations that are standard for a couple of days are halos around lights.

However, you ought to be certain that you understand the difference between what is standard and so no grounds for concern and what ought to be reported instantly

There are various Lasik procedures and the procedures are advancing all the time so it is not possible to give exact details in this piece. Furthermore, the shape of the eyes and the reasons for deteriorating eyesight are peculiar to each patient.

Some of the advice that your Lasik surgeon might give for your post-operative eye care may include the following, although different doctors might have their own advice.

The first thing is to remember that you have just had an operation including anaesthetic. There might not have been any blood but it was surgery all the same.

All patients are required to take it easy after an operation and you will be no exception. If you had had an operation on your knee, you would use it as little as you could for a time and the same is helpful advice for your eye.

Attempt to sleep for a couple of hours after the operation or at least close your eyes and rest. Infection is the chief anxiety, so do not poke or rub your eye and do not strain it by trying out your recently improved eyesight by reading or watching TV.

If you have to entertain yourself in this way wear an eye patch. Your surgeon will probably have given you a stiff plastic eye guard, which you should wear at all times.

Some surgeons will warn against allowing water into your eye for a couple of days, which means washing only from the neck down, no showering, no going out in the rain and definitely no swimming.

Be careful with bright light, it cannot damage your eye but it does hurt. Your world will become much brighter after the surgery and looking at a light bulb can be painful. Be wary of watching moving traffic while the sun is shining, a car window can catch the sun and reflect it back into your eye unexpectedly.

You will be given eye drops so do not forget to use them. Lasik surgery can dry your eyes out, if this happens they may be able to give you substitute or supplemental drops.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on a number of topics, but is now concerned with wet macular degeneration treatment. If you want to know more, please visit our website at Macular Degenerative Disease

A fad diet is a fashionable diet plan that purports to help you lose weight usually in a relatively short time. A fad diet usually attracts a lot of media attention, which then attracts a large number of overweight people to try it in order to get back in shape. Fad diets are often soon discredited, but they go on raising their head from time to time.

The grapefruit diet was or is an example of a fad diet. People wanted to accept as true that you could lose weight solely by eating. The food in this instance was grapefruits, but there is also a cabbage diet. The trouble with these fad diets is that their slimming effect is only temporary, because you cannot eat only cabbage or grapefruit for the rest of your life, so the weight comes back as soon as you go back to normal.

‘If you always do what you always done, you will always get what you always got’ is a true saying. But what is worse is that a lot of of these diets can be injurious to your health.

However, do not think that fad diets are a new trend. Fad diets or fad treatments have an ancient history going back to fake witch doctors, medicine men and quack doctors who doubled as barbers! Fad practitioners have a long and disreputable history and they are still alive and doing very well, thank you very much, today.

These days, medicine is too strictly regulated for them, so they have turned their attention to susceptible, desperate dieters. Most of those that take up a fad diet are overweight teens longing to look like their favourite movie star.

Fad diets usually concentrate on reducing or completely cutting out carbohydrates. It is the low intake of carbohydrates that brings about the rapid loss of weight. In fact, this rapid loss is due to the quick loss of water that these low-carb diets stimulate. Much of the fat might still be there, so that when you stop the diet, your body regains its normal amount of water and the lost weight is put back on just as fast as it was discarded.

In the normal course of events, carbohydrates are the source of energy for work and activity, but with these fad diets, the carbs are no longer there, so the body starts to break down its stockpile of fat. This may appear advantageous but it is not necessarily so. The ketones resulting from the breakdown of fat are excreted via urine and often increased volumes of urine, which can cause dehydration. People with certain medical conditions have to be very cautious too; diabetics, for example.

Fad diets are popular, but they can be very damaging to your body and when they do not have the desired result in the long-term, it can be very depressing leading to comfort eating. This is why many people begin a fad diet, lose weight and are radiant for a month or two, but then slip back when they are getting near to their ideal weight. They go back to their old ways and the weight begins to come back. They become depressed, convinced that they will never be able to lose weight; they comfort eat some more, maybe giving up any hope of regaining a normal weight permanently.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with lose weight fast and safe. If you have an interest in losing weight, too, please go over to our website now at Why Can’t I Lose Weight?