Super Health Secrets - Healthy Alternatives to Sugar

There's a good reason humans have a sweet tooth - in our ancestral environment, it's a good indicator that there's a bunch of easily used calories and fuel in a substance.

Humans are essentially designed to like sweet things. Entire species have built their survival on the fact that we (and other animals) like to eat their fruit and will spread their seeds and pips further afield.

However - this is a major health problem when food manufacturers stuff dozens of chemically and heat processed sugar variants into every food you can think of.

An average healthy human tends to have around a tablespoon of sugar in the bloodstream. Any more and the body secretes insulin, a hormone that's approximately one billion year old, common in all mammals, one of whose tasks is fuel storage for survival.

The fact that insulin can be found that far back should give you a clue that it works - insulin takes sugars (and other fuels in varying degrees) and stores them as fat for later.

Evolutionarily this makes great survival sense - you don't know where you're next meal's coming from, so you better store some for emergencies.

Only in many folks, 'for later' never comes and the body keeps on shoveling the excess into more and more, better filled fat cells. Cancer cells for example can have 17 times the receptor sites for sugar than normal cells.

Now the good news - there are now available easily online several excellent natural sweeteners (made from you know... plants!;). They are all on the low glycemic side and have different flavours.

Agave nectar - comes from a cactus that looks like a giant aloe vera bush. Also called the century plant. Agave nectar is the extracted sap, and lends a nice sweet flavour to smoothies, consistency like a runny honey with clear gold colour. Can also get a darker, stronger version.

Stevia - Paraguayan plant approximately 180,000x sweeter than cane sugar. Used in tiny quantities. Can have slightly bitter aftertaste. Used in Japan in Diet Coke because they had the sense to make aspartame illegal due to it's dubious health records. Zero calories, helpful herbally for people with sugar sensitivities and cheap to grow yourself.

Flavoured Stevia's can also now be found in little dropper bottles for easy squirting into drinks and food. Given it's sweet, totally safe, calorie free, helpful medicinally and cheap you might be wondering why it's so hard to get in the UK and has been the subject of numerous court cases in the US. (Hint - there's several billion at stake each year from sale of synthetic sweeteners)

Manuka Honey - honey is an amazing food. Manuka honey is used in New Zealand on burn survivors as it helps heal skin conditions really fast. The most enzyme rich food on the planet, honeys taste great and are easy to add to food. People with sugar problems would be better with Stevia.

Yacon root syrup - similar properties to Agave but with a lower glycemic rating. Sugar molecules range from tiny (like refined sugar and fructose in fruit) through to huge long chain poly-saccharides, which are large, branching swirly sugar molecules.

The short chains taste really sweet and the flavour changes towards bitter then longer the molecule chain gets. Yacon is right about the point between 'sweet enough to be real tasty' in things but long enough that the GI is low and the poly-saccharides have the immune enhancing effect that they do.

Super-herbs like Reishi or Gynostemna gain their power from these long chain sugars, but don't tend to taste sweet, Reishi can be quite bitter. When ingested, the polysaccharides plug into receptors in the white blood cells and basically turbo-charges them.

Reap Healthy Benefits With Yoga

Yoga, as we all know, is meant to unite the body, mind, and spirit through yoga exercises such as meditation. Yoga practitioners believe that uniting the mind, body and spirit creates inner harmony and that "we are not this body" so people ought to take care of it. Therefore, the benefits of yoga are believed by many yogists to be very therapeutic.

Yoga is also regarded to make a person aware of his or her body's alignment and movement patterns. Delving into a yoga exercise makes the body more fluid and facilitates in relaxing the mind and tired muscles even in the middle of a stressful environment. This is one of the primary reasons why people want to begin practicing yoga. It can also make them feel healthier, more energetic and peaceful, and be better persons as well.

Yoga also contains is ancient principles, theories, and observations about the mind and body connection which is now being verified by modern medicine. Extensive research has been done to look at the many health benefits associated with yoga from the yoga positions (asanas) to yoga breathing and meditation. Focus and perspicacity are the usual benefits when it comes to yoga.

The series of yoga poses known as asanas work by carefully stretching the muscles. This maximizes the range of movement and boost lubrication in the joints. The result is a sense of relief throughout the body. Yoga stretches not only the muscles but all of the body's such as tendons, ligaments, and the fascia sheath that enfolds the muscles. It doesn't matter what level of yoga a person practices, one can likely gain the healthy benefits in a short period of time.

Many of the poses, such as downward dog and tree pose, mold upper-body strength. As people get older, this becomes crucial. The standing poses indeed build strength in the abdominal muscles and hamstrings. With enhanced flexibility and strength comes improved posture. Most standing and sitting poses develop and maintain posture, letting you remain confidently erect in standing tall. Another benefit of yoga is boosted body awareness. People are more finely tuned in telling if they slouch so they can adjust their postures. Other physiological benefits of yoga include an increase in immunity, balance, and energy levels. It also improves sleep, reaction time, eye-hand coordination, and dexterity and normalizes weight, endocrine and gastrointestinal functions.

Most forms of yoga also accentuate the deepening of your inhalation. This stimulates the relaxation reaction. Because of the deep, aware breathing that yoga entails, the respiratory system often improves. This in turn can perk up endurance and athletic performance. Some yoga styles use particular meditation techniques to hush the voices in your head that often triggers stress. Other yoga techniques rely on deep breathing techniques to focus your mind on the breathing. Suddenly your mind becomes calm and relaxed when this occurs.

On a biochemical aspect, yoga points some anti-oxidant benefits and used as treatment for certain medical conditions. Yoga has been connected with decreased glucose, cholesterol, triglyceride, and sodium levels as well as heightened functions of the immune system. Hemoglobin, total serum protein, and lymphocyte counts are increased.

Yoga has been said to raise spiritual awareness. It can also help improve marriages and relationships, strengthen memory and learning efficiency, depth perception, somatic and kinesthetic awareness, and enhance social skills as well.