The world has given a network of high technology. We sit before computers for hours and we become more sedentary. Both these intake of over calorie food and sedentary life-style ended in the epidemic of overweight people. So now it is up to you to make up your mind to burn more calories than you consume and this guide is going to give you some tips to make this possible.

The first thing is the modifications in eating habits:

1. To boost your metabolism to burn the fat, take 3 regular meals and 3 small snacks in between.

2. Eat lean meats, skinless chicken and fish.

3. Eat smaller portions.

4. Eat slower.

5. Eat more fruits and vegetables.

6. Avoid cookies and chips.

7. Drinking 1 glass of water before taking every food will help you eat less.

Increasing the activity is the second important thing:

Exercising for at least 30 minutes a day is a must and failing which you may try to do the following simple things.

1. Park your car farther away from the spot where you have lot of work.

2. Use staircase than going in elevator.

3. Keep away the TV remote and get up to change the channels.

4. Do dancing simply.

5. Join water exercise instead of walking who do have trouble in their joints with stress while walking.

6. For your heart health and reduce weight, you may ride in a stationary bike for a while.

7. Get a good partner, who will keep you to give support.

8. Always do warm up and cool down your body before and after doing physical exercise to protect your heart and muscles. Better to have contact and guidance always with your doctor to do any change in your lifestyle which reduces your body weight.

9. Losing weight is not because of dieting or starvation. But all because of the changes in the lifestyle you make.

10. Commit your self to eating better and exercising more.

United States – Private system

Private sector funded, with more than half from private sources. Private health insurance available through employer, government or private schemes.

15.3% of population (45.7 million people) do not have health insurance.

Federal government is largest healthcare insurer – involved in two main schemes, Medicaid and Medicare, each covering about 13% of population.

Medicaid – joint funded federal-state programme for certain low income and needy groups – eg children, disabled.

Medicare – for people 65 years old and above and some younger disabled people and those with permanent kidney failure undergoing dialysis or transplant.

Most doctors are in private practice and paid through combination of charges, discounted fees paid by private health plans, public programmes, and direct patient fees.

In-patient care is provided in public and private hospitals. Hospitals are paid through a combination of charges, per admission, and capitation.

UK – Universal, tax-funded system

Public sector funded by taxation and some national insurance contributions.

About 11% have private health insurance. Private GP services very small.

Healthcare free at point of delivery but charges for prescription drugs (except in Wales), ophthalmic services and dental services unless exempt.

Exemptions include children, elderly, and unemployed. About 85% of prescriptions are exempt.

Most walk-in care provided by GP practices but also some walk-in clinics and 24-hour NHS telephone helpline. Free ambulance service and access to accident and emergency. In patient care through GP referral and follow contractual arrangements between health authorities, Primary Care Trusts and the hospital.

Hospitals are semi-autonomous self-governing public trusts.

France – Social insurance system

All legal residents covered by public health insurance funded by compulsory social health insurance contributions from employers and employees with no option to opt out.

Most people have extra private insurance to cover areas that are not eligible for reimbursement by the public health insurance system and many make out of pocket payments to see a doctor.

Patients pay doctor’s bills and are reimbursed by sickness insurance funds.

Government regulates contribution rates paid to sickness funds, sets global budgets and salaries for public hospitals.

In-patient care is provided in public and private hospitals (not-for-profit and for-profit). Doctors in public hospitals are salaried whilst those in private hospitals are paid on a fee-for-service basis. Some public hospital doctors are allowed to treat private patients in the hospital. A percentage of the private fee is payable to the hospital.

Most out-patient care is delivered by doctors, dentists and medical auxiliaries working in their own practices.

Singapore – Dual system

Dual system funded by private and public sectors. Public sector provides 80% of hospital care 20% primary care.

Financed by combination of taxes, employee medical benefits, compulsory savings in the form of Medisave, insurance and out-of-pocket payments.

Patients expected to pay part of their medical expenses and to pay more for higher level of service. Government subsidises basic healthcare.

Public sector health services cater for lower income groups who cannot afford private sector charges. In private hospitals and outpatient clinics, patients pay the amount charged by the hospitals and doctors on a fee-for-service basis.

It is thought that the high level of silicon in beer slows down the thinning that leads to fractures and boosts the formation of new bone, the journal Nutrition reports.

Beer is also rich in phytoestrogens, plant versions of oestrogen, which keep bones healthy.

Bones are made up of a mesh of fibres, minerals, blood vessels and marrow, and healthy ones are denser with smaller spaces between the different parts.

The researchers asked almost 1,700 healthy women with an average age of 48 about their drinking habits. They then underwent ultrasound scans of their hands, which showed the bones belonging to beer drinkers to be denser.

The women’s hands were chosen because the bones in the fingers are among the first to show signs of osteoporosis, a disease of bone that leads to an increased risk of fracture.

Those who had less than a pint a day, whom scientists classed as light beer drinkers, fared just as well as those in the moderate bracket, suggesting that even small amounts can boost bone health.

The Spanish researchers said: “Silicon plays a major role in bone formation. Beer has been claimed to be one of the most important sources of silicon in the Western diet.”

Three million Britons are affected by osteoporosis. It is most common in women after menopause.

During a trial, the poisonous chemical in a bee’s sting, melittin, was attached to tiny molecules or “nanoparticles” that then attack and destroy cancer cells, leaving healthy cells intact. The carrier particles, dubbed “nanobees”, were also effective in targeting pre-cancerous cells.

Nanobees could eventually replace conventional therapy for certain types of cancer, according to scientists behind the study, which is published today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. They said that the treatment would have fewer side-effects than chemotherapy.

“The nanobees fly in, land on the surface of cells and deposit their poisonous cargo,” said Professor Samuel Wickline, a specialist in nanomedicine at Washington University in St Louis, who led the research.

The treatment was tested on two groups of mice with cancerous tumours. One group had melanoma skin cancer, the other had been implanted with human breast-cancer cells. After four to five injections of the nanobees, the breast-cancer tumours were 25 per cent smaller, and the melanoma tumours were 88 per cent smaller, compared with untreated mice.

The carrier particles used in the study have already been approved for clinical use in various other medical applications. The team plans to begin human trials with the nanobees next year.

They predict that the treatment could be effective in treating a wide range of cancers and that it would have fewer side-effects than chemotherapy. They say the treatment could also be more effective than chemotherapy, because it is more targeted. With chemotherapy, patients are given the largest tolerable dose of medication, but because nanobees specifically attack tumours, doses could be much lower.

Melittin works by attaching itself to the surface of cells and ripping holes in the membrane. “In high enough concentration it can destroy any cell it comes into contact with,” said Professor Paul Schlesinger, a cell biologist at Washington University and a co-author of the paper.

Most cancer treatments target DNA, but cancer cells are frequently able to adapt and develop resistance to DNA damage. It is much harder for cells to defend against damage to the membrane, however, making melittin an attractive treatment.

Despite the high toxicity of the bee venom, the mice suffered few side-effects and there appeared to be little damage to non-cancerous cells.

Leaky blood vessels around tumours mean that nanoparticles build up there in high enough quantities to do damage. A chemical tag enhanced this effect by increasing nanobees’ affinity for cancerous cells compared with normal cells.

“It’s like molecular Velcro,” Professor Wickline said. “The toxin doesn’t come off the bee until it finds its target.”

If the melittin had been injected into the bloodstream in its normal form it would lead to widespread destruction of red blood cells. But following the nanobee injection, the blood count of mice was normal, and they showed no signs of organ damage.

A concern with some nanomedicines is that nanoparticles are left circulating in the body after treatment. They are biologically inert, meaning they are do not get metabolised and cleared from circulation in the normal way.

The spherical nanobees, which are about six millionths of an inch in diameter, are, however, quickly cleared from the system after treatment. They are made of perfluorocarbon, an inert non-toxic compound used in artificial blood. Once the melittin has been removed from the nanobee, it dissolves and is evaporated in the lungs.

The results indicate that cognitively normal adults, 75 years or older, who are moderate drinkers are 40 percent less likely to develop dementia over 6 years than are their non-drinking peers. By contrast, alcohol use appears to offer no benefit, and possibly harm, for adults who already have some degree of cognitive impairment.

“We were pleased to see that the beneficial effects of moderate alcohol intake reported in middle-aged adults also extend to cognitively normal older adults over 75,” lead author Dr. Kaycee M. Sink, from Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, told Reuters Health.

Dr. Sink noted that her team’s study is not the first to look at the association between alcohol use and the risk of dementia, but said that several factors make it unique.

“It is one of largest, longest studies of older adults living in the U.S. to examine this question; the participants are older than most previously studied; and we were able to look at the effects of alcohol consumption in both cognitively normal older adults as well as those who had mild cognitive impairment.”

The subjects included 3,069 adults who were enrolled in the Ginkgo Evaluation of Memory Study (GEMS). Based on extensive testing, the subjects were classified as having normal cognition or mild impairment at baseline. Alcohol use was categorized as none, light, moderate, or heavy, based on having 0, 1 to 7, 8 to 14, or more than 14 drinks per week, respectively.

At the start of the study, 2,587 subjects had normal cognition and 482 had mild cognitive impairment. In terms of alcohol use, about 40 percent were either none or light drinkers, and about 10 percent each were moderate or heavy users.

More than 500 cases of dementia developed in the entire group over the period of the study. As noted, among those who were cognitively normal at the start of the study, moderate alcohol drinkers appeared to be protected against dementia.

In subjects with mild cognitive impairment, however, heavy alcohol users half nearly doubled the risk of dementia relative to non-use, Dr. Sink said.

“Since every individual has different medical conditions and family history, alcohol consumption may not be appropriate for everyone wanting to limit their risk of developing dementia,” Dr. Sink noted. “What we can say, based on this study, is that our results support current guideline recommendations for alcohol intake into old age and do not necessarily support the need for people with normal cognition who drink moderately to change their drinking habits.”

Endocannabinoids interact with canniboid receptors the same way the chemical THC in marijuana does. According to a study published this afternoon in Science, the endocannabinoid system is more complex than previously believed. Sometimes a spike in endocannabinoids in the spinal cord releases neurotransmitter chemicals that make people more likely to feel pain.

A release about the article from Science puts it this way:

Often, in cases of chronic pain, neuron-to-neuron communication is bumped up in a specific area of the spinal cord. Endocannabinoids (which are the body’s version of the THC in marijuana) have been thought to suppress this type of pain signaling, but Alejandro Pernía-Andrade and an international team of colleagues now show that the opposite may be true. They found that in rats and mice, painful stimuli can release endocannabinoids in the spinal cord, which act on a group of neuronal receptors called the CB1 receptors. This action reduced the release of key neurotransmitters that shuttle from one neuron to another, with the overall effect of making the neurons more excitable and thereby sensitizing the animals to certain forms of pain, or even to simple touch. In another experiment, on human volunteers, the authors found that the drug rimonabant, which blocks CB1 receptors, decreased pain sensitivity that had been induced in patches of the volunteers’ skin.

We’re a long way from being able to control this pain/not-pain system, but knowing that it’s there means more research into it is inevitable. Already endocannabinoids are a target for a lot of hopeful pharmaceutical companies, who hope to manipulate the substance to treat everything from chronic pain to obesity.

My question is whether this substance could also become the target of military research too, since being able to control whether a person feels pain or not is a classic torture technique. And doing it cleanly, with drugs, could be classified as “humane” under many systems of regulation. Plus, what’s a better way to play pharmaceutical good cop/bad cop than to administer a drug that causes pain – then eases it?

1. If you’re thinking of going vegan. A gradual transition is always best, eliminating meat, then chicken, then fish, while at the same time incorporating into your diet vegan protein-rich foods such as wheat meat (seitan), tempeh, and tofu. If you go slowly this well help to lessen your cravings and reduce the failure rate.

2. Chew your food. It’s one of the most important things you can do for good health. Chew 25 to 50 times each mouthful at a minimum. If you are trying to heal yourself from a particular condition, increase the chews. Remember, good digestion starts in your mouth.

3. Choose brown rice. It’s simple, nutritious, and one of the most balanced foods to eat on a regular basis. To cook it: wash and drain the rice, and then soak the rice for at least two to three hours before cooking (this will aid with digestion). Remember, one cup of brown rice to two cups of water; add a pinch of salt before cooking. Cook in a covered pot by bringing the rice to a boil and then simmer for 50 to 60 minutes, depending on how wet or dry you desire your rice.

4. Promote good circulation. Scrub your entire body with a hot, wet, squeezed towel until the skin becomes pink. Do this every morning or every night before resting. If that’s not possible, at least scrub your hands, feet, fingers, and toes.

5. Live each day happily without being preoccupied with your health, and try to keep mentally and physically active.