Monthly Archive for September, 2008

I’m Wealthy, I’m Healthy

They say that health is wealth. It’s a very true statement. Most people would give all their wealth for good health. Some take health for granted - until something goes wrong and then they regret past excesses or lack of attention to diet and exercise.

Youth has little or no time for anything as boring as health, yet our early years are very important when it comes to building a ‘health platform’ for our future. When you’re young you don’t give a second thought to health - that is until something goes wrong, but you believe that it never will.

Our attitude to health and diet and exercise in particular, is formed when we are young. Of course what we like best when we are growing up are all the things we shouldn’t eat, sugary things and sweet drinks to name but two.

Only when we reach our teenage years do we take more note of the way we look. Now we notice if we’re fatter than our friends. It starts to matter.

Eating the right food when we are children is vitally important. We don’t normally have too much say in what we eat, but children do try and intimidate their parents into giving them things they want. Sometimes this can result in a very distorted diet - a bad diet.

Arriving in early adulthood overweight is not helpful. To have so many ingrained bad habits as far as eating and exercise is concerned makes doing something about it difficult - although not impossible.

The most important thing is to break bad habits and that requires developing an awareness of what they are. Many of the bad habits will have been endorsed by upbringing. To go against this can be a challenge. What has been accepted as a family culture in terms of diet and exercise takes real resolve and determination to change.

Change can be made easier by not going against the norm, but by learning new habits - slim habits, if you like. New habits will enable change to take place without having to directly confront the past.

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Does Your Night Cream Contain Unnecessary Chemicals?Night time cr

Night creams in many circumstances have been a marketing success rather than a breakthrough in skin care. Some products, however, are quite helpful. The market is flooded with products that in essence do nothing, “You have a lot of high-priced night creams that really don’t have the bang for the buck,” according to Dr. Patricia K. Farris, a New Orleans dermatologist.

Night Cream Makers Exaggerate the Benefits

Producers hyperbolize the effects of their creams and moisturizers in order to sell, pandering to women’s self esteem issues and insecurities. Dr. L. Baumann, professor of dermatology in at a highly regarded university in Florida believes that, “Companies make all kinds of statements the skin and its night-time activities. They say that the skin does all sorts of special processes that it doesn’t do during the day. And this is just false. There’s no proof in much of what they say.”

Dermatologists Concur: Some Ingredients Have Proven Anti-Aging Effect

Retinol, Vitamin C, and certain Peptides (proteins) have been proven anti-aging compounds. “Night time moisturizers should contain retinol because sunlight renders retinol inactive,” according to Dr. Baumann. Dermatologists unanimously agree that a good night cream should contain Peptides and Vitamin C because they boost collagen production. Doing so reduces wrinkles and helps increase skin firmness.

To be effective a night time moisturizer must (a) contain the right ingredients (retinol, vitamin C, and peptides) in the right concentration and (b) be used for a long enough period of time to activate and work. Typically for at least five hours a night for eight weeks. If the creams are used inconsistently, the desired results will not be achieved. According to Seattle, Washington dermatologist Dr. Sandy Read, “A moisturizer will not do any good unless it is given enough time to penetrate the skin.”

The Bottom Line

A night cream need not cost arm and a leg but quality creams should contain Peptides, Vitamin C, and Retinol. Many reputable brands can be found online using search engines but I do recommend a quality source, http://www.nighttimemoisturizers.com . This website is devoted solely to night creams and, of course, night creams. They have a wealth of knowledge and research on the matter. Do your research, do not fall prey to advertisers that promise much and fail to deliver the right ingredients in the right proportion. A quality night cream can help you fight the effects of aging, soothe the skin, and boost collagen production.

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Salon Hair Care Products vs. Cheap High Street Hair Products

If you pride yourself on having clean and healthy looking hair, looking after your locks is a top priority. So using good shampoos, conditioners and hair care products on your hair is important. But when it comes to price and the quality of hair care products, how do you know which hair products to use?

Cheap hair products available from the average high street store might appear to be better value for money because of their lower cost, while professional salon hair care products often appear to be pricier, with the average salon hair products priced at $20/GBP10, and a similar size cheap hair care product costing $4/GBP2.

When you weigh up cheap hair care products and professional salon hair care products and compare them on price alone, cheaper hair care products seem to be far and away the obvious choice, costing 1/5th the price of salon products, giving you what appears to be 5 times the amount of product for the same money.

When you look more closely at the comparison between the effectiveness and the quality of high street hair products and salon hair products, does the comparison end up in the favour of cheap hair care products, or do the cheaper high street products turn out to be a false economy?

To see if cheaper high street hair products provide more value for money in both the short and long term when compared with professional salon hair care products, we made the decision to test them both to see how each of the hair products compare against one another in a quality test.

For our test we compared a 300ml bottle of professional salon shampoo and compared that with a 300ml bottle of your average cheap high street shampoo. To achieve the our required standard of cleaning, the professional salon shampoo needed just 10ml per application to achieve this standard, whereas the cheap high street shampoo needed 50ml per application to achieve the same standard of cleaning.

Needing 50ml per application, a 300ml bottle of cheap high street shampoo would give you about 6 applications. But using only 10ml per application, the professional hair care shampoo gives you approximately 30 applications in a 300ml bottle. Comparing the prices, the price per application of the professional salon shampoo is $0.66c/GBP0.33p per application, and the cheap average high street shampoo worked out at $0.64c/GBP0.32p per application.

Summary: at first glance, cheaper high street hair products appear to be a better buy and provide value for money, but on closer scrutiny there is but a hair’s breadth of difference in the price of salon hair products, and cheap hair products. When you add the better quality and effectiveness of salon products into the equation, the salon products turn out to be much better value for money. Q? Why would you use anything other than the highest quality hair care products on your hair?

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