Tag: Heart disease

Importance Of Stress Management In Your Life

The more you understand about any subject, the more interesting it becomes. As you read this article you’ll find that the subject of stress is certainly no exception.

Why would you invest so exceptionally time and effort on effective stress management? If you haven’t realized the importance of battling stress just yet, here are some reasons that would convince you to prompt started on it now.

Improved Health

Stress can affect your physical, mental, and emotional health. This is why it is important to reduce or eliminate stress in your life such that you can promote better overall health. Stress has been scientifically proven to result to poor health condition and a wide range of minor to serious health conditions.

During the initial stage of stress, you might notice that you develop various minor conditions such as headaches or digestive disorders. As your body is continually subjected to stress, you could eventually suffer from more serious conditions such as high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke. You must therefore take the time to learn about stress related illnesses to purely understand the importance of improving stress management regimen.

Better Looks and Appearance

If you want to look better, then maybe you should start to think about how you can overcome stress in your life. Undoubtedly, you heard it right overcoming stress can make you even more finest. Your health and your physical appearance are directly proportional. Hence, if you are magenta, you can also look better.

You must therefore take practical measures to shorten stress and look better. Some of the things you need to do to ensure such results is to get enough sleep, eat right, get regular exercise, and manage your emotions. All of these factors combine for you to live healthier, have a more beautiful complexion, and help to keep your body fit.

Increasing Productivity

Too much stress can take away your focus. So, when you are free from stress, you further improve your ability to focus and increase productivity in whatever you do. When you increase your productivity, you are less coming up to suffer from the effects of stress due to backlogs or lack of time to complete your tasks.

There are several practical stress management habits you need to develop and overcome lack of productivity. Taking power naps during work is a great way to rejuvenate both mind and body, especially if you are starting to lose focus. You can further adapt proper time management techniques to ensure that all of your tasks are completed in a timely manner.

Happiness

The more you can combat stress, the more happiness you can enjoy! Stress will unquestionably take the fun away from your life, so it is important to acquire effective stress relievers. There are several practical stress management techniques that experts recommend so you can have more fun and eliminate stress:

Enjoying some music;
Dancing;
Sharing laughter with friends;
Maintaining a productive circle of friends;
Caring for pets;
Having sex!

Keeping Your Stress In line in Check

The ability to live life free of stress is the biggest motivator to adapting an effective stress management regimen. If you can effectively address stress in your life, you can have more energy, increase productivity, and enjoy life in general!
That’s the latest from the stress authorities. Once you’re familiar with these ideas, you’ll be ready to move to the next level.

Fish Oil: The Quantity I should Take

For people who came to know the health benefits of fish oil, the next question they ask is how much quantity does one take? Well, some would recommend at least 3.5 grams a day while others suggest a mere 2.5 grams of omega-3 fatty acids would be enough to get the whole health benefits of fish oil. To be on the safe side, it would be better to consult your doctor of nutritionist for the proper dosage of fish oil.

There are in fact a number of factors to consider. Take age for example. It has been found out that the needs of younger people for essential fatty acids are higher than the older folks. One of the possible reasons is the fact that young people are more active which makes their needs for essential fatty acids greater than old people who have gone on with their retirements.

However, this should not be misunderstood that older people do not need daily intake of fish oil. The dosage or amount only diminishes but the importance of taking fish oil does not. Nothing can stress this more than the studies that have been conducted in the past which shows that the healthy essential fatty acids in fish oil help reduce and prevent the inflammation of blood vessels which is linked to heart disease.

According to experts, the lack of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and the docoxahexaenoic acid (DHA) can result to depression and heart disease. And since EPA and DHA are the primary omega-3 fatty acids found in fish oil the significance of fish oil in ones diet cannot and should not be undermined. Plus, our body cannot produce essential fatty acids so our only hope to get them is through an outside source. Only by eating fish rich in fats and oil or taking those commercially available fish oil supplement capsules does our body get the necessary supply of omega-3.

Probably one way of determining the amount of omega-3 you take also depends on your intake amount of omega-6 fatty acids. You can find omega-6 acids from common vegetable cooking oils like canola oil, soybean oil, corn oil and sunflower oil. These are present in a lot of food available in the supermarket, most especially the processed ones.

We need to balance the intake of omega-3 and omega-6 since the latter compete for enzymes with the former. And too much omega-6 could result to inflammation which can later affect the heart. The effects of omega-6 counters the benefits omega-3 gives the heart. According to some experts, having a ratio of 2 to 1, omega-6 to omega-3, would be the best combination to have. The ratio properly balances the effects of both essential fatty acids.

Other doctors recommend taking only a minimal quantity of say 2.5 grams per day or even lower depending on how much it will take to maintain your state of health. Taking too much might result to bodily imbalance which can become harmful to your overall health. However, if you have a certain disease or existing condition like, your doctors might prescribe you a stronger daily dosage of fish oil to help you cope and regain your health.

To sum up, the quantity of fish oil you should take depends on your state of health, diet, age, among other factors. Consulting your doctors would be the best move before starting on a daily intake of fish oil.

Choosing Fish Oil Supplements

Choosing the right fish oil supplement may not always be easy. One of the things to consider is that one should know about what makes such supplements valuable to health, which is its omega 3 fatty acid content. There are various sources of such essential fatty acids. It can be easy to question if there is indeed a difference between getting this nutrient from different sources.

Three Types Of Omega 3 Fatty Acids
One of the things that people should know is that there are three known types of omega 3 fatty acids, the essential nutrient found in fish oil supplements. The three types of omega 3 fatty acids include EPA, DHA and ALA. ALA, or alpha-linolenic acid is a short chain omega 3 fatty acid that is usually found in plant sources such as flax seed, walnuts, canola and soybean oil. DHA or docosahexaenoic acid and EHA or eicosapentaenoic acid are considered as long chain omega 3 fatty acids. The latter two are those found in fish oil supplements.

The difference between short chain omega 3 fatty acids such as ALA and long chain omega 3 fatty acids has to do with how the body processes them. In order for the body to make use of such essential fatty acids, it has first to convert the short chain types into its long chain form. This does not usually happen readily. That is why fish oil supplements are considered more effective in providing the omega 3 fatty acids that it needs because it is already the long chain form which does not require any more conversion before the body can use them.

Effectiveness
One of the other things to consider when choosing between fish oil supplements and ones that are sourced from plants deals with their effectiveness and benefits. Experts believe that the long chain omega 3 fatty acids being sourced from fish oils prove to be more effective in terms of health benefits. These essential fatty acids have already been known to offer some benefit in preventing heart disease. With the short chain fatty acid ALA however, experts are not too sure if ever it does provide the same benefit because it may still require additional conversion before it can be used by the body.

Fish Oil Source
Now that one already knows the difference between omega 3 fatty acids sourced from fish as well as those from plants, it seems that fish oil seem to have the upper hand. But this time there are some other things to consider. In order to get the type of fish oil supplements that offer the best source of long chain omega 3 fatty acids, people should know where they are being sourced from.

One important thing for consumers to look at when buying fish oil supplements is the label. It should contain information of where the fish oil used in the supplement is being sourced from. Because there can be more than just one fish species to source out such supplements, it is important to clearly know what types of fishes these may be.

Certain labels may contain information of the fish oil being sourced from salmon, tuna or anchovies. This might be considered safe. But if labels on the said supplements only tell of fish oil or marine lipids, this should ring some warning bells. It may be possible that fish oils in such supplements may not be too sure where the source may come from, which might also cast some doubt on the purity of the fish oil being used

The Dark Side of Fish Oil: The Side Effects

First you need to understand that fish oil has a lot of benefits. The omega-3 fish oil belongs to the essential fatty acids which our body needs. Our body does not have any capabilities of producing the omega-3 so we rely on external sources, mainly fish rich in oil, as our main source. The fact that it is labeled essential fatty acid means that our body really needs it and the lack of which could result to a variety of health consequences.

Among the known benefits of taking omega-3 includes reducing the risks of having heart disease, can reduce the development of cancer cells, prevents pregnancy complications, improves eyesight and helps prevent depression. We can have a longer list but I wont trouble you with that, needless to say the benefits of fish oil are real. But unknown to quite few, the fish oil supplements that we all think of as friends has the dark side too, has side effects which when left uncheck can be quite harmful and can even prove to be fatal.

If our list of benefits is quite long, the side effects not as many. The side effects only manifests when one overdoses with the intake and can even disappear after a few days. Sometimes that body just needs to get used to the fish oil and once it has adjusted, the side effects would disappear. Some of the minor and immediate side effects include a fishy after taste and diarrhea.

These two often appears during the first few days of taking the fish oil. These symptoms should disappear after a couple of days but in case they dont changing brands of fish oil supplements might help. But setting up a meeting with your doctor would be the best idea.

After a couple of weeks of taking fish oil capsules, you might notice some fishy burping before and after each meal. This can just be because your body is still adjusting. Give it a couple of days and the burping might stop. Although, you should check the expiry dates of your of your supplements. You might also want to consider that what you have been taking are bad quality produce. Changing brands might help. Some suggest keeping the supplements in a freezer to prevent the various gastrointestinal side effects.

On the other hand, blood thinning is something that you cannot eliminate by just simply changing brands. You see omega-3 from fish oils is great for the heart because it is a natural blood thinner. They help coagulate the blood which helps prevent blood clots which helps prevent heart diseases.

But because omega-3 is already a blood thinner, people who are already taking blood thinning medications should avoid the intake of either the fish oil or the blood thinning drug. The possible problem with this is that people will get too much blood thinners resulting to patients bleeding out. The bleeding could be internal which can damage organs and could result to something fatal.

You should watch out for signs of internal bleeding like black stools or the presence of blood in the stool or vomiting of blood which are all signs of gastrointestinal bleeding. When you bleed in the brain the signs could be changes in your vision or speech, numbness of an arm or leg, and severe headache.

The dark side of fish oil is just that, one part of a fairly good supplement. There are ways to prevent the side effects and most of them through proper consultations before you even start taking those fish oil supplements.