We all have seen in these end days, the loss of finances around the world. We have seen the poor, becoming poorer, and the rich losing much wealth. Man has put it into his heart that money will see him threw all problems. There are many ministers that tell everyone that God will provide for His Children, and this is true. But we have seen many in a panic, and troubled, this is the Adam nature in man. We are not of those that will panic, nor be afraid, of what is happening around the worlds financial markets.

As it is written; “And the loftiness of man(his pride.) shall be bowed down(Bent; crushed; subdued), and the haughtiness of men(their pride mingled with some degree of contempt for others; arrogance.) shall be made low: and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.”
Since the days of Noah, there has been an arrogance in man.

He has left his first love, and has taken to the idols of wealth, pride, and vanity.
This is what has caused this financial crisis in the world.
Men in their foolishness, bought and sold without taking in consideration the repercussions of their actions. This is not the fault of God, but of man.

“And the idols he shall utterly abolish.” Man has created idols of, gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble, And cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots(Automobiles.), and slaves, and souls of men.

The love of money is the root of all evil, it bring forth wars, conflicts, robbery, and even slavery, to all that succumb to its power of greed. As believers, we do not lust after money, gold or silver, we see things in a different light a different perspective. We put our trust in the promises of God and His Christ. We look to God for our daily needs and are satisfied with those things that God provides for us. The Bible tells us that; “With food and raiment, therewith be content.”
And what is mans future?

“And they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth. In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which they made each one for himself to worship, to the moles and to the bats; To go into the clefts of the rocks, and into the tops of the ragged rocks, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth. “

Will you then put your money into gold, silver, or shall you rest with peace knowing that, no matter what happens to your finances, the Lord will supply you with your daily needs. Men, who put their trust in money, do not sleep well, they are always, worried that someone, or some happening, will cause them to become poor. This was a tragedy in the fall of the stock exchange in earlier times and will be again. Men have killed themselves, murdered others and stolen because of money.

“And having food and raiment let us be therewith content. But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”

As many men panic in these troubled days, we as believers in Christ, have a secure source, and supply, of those things which are needful for our life. We exist because the Lord wills it, we survive because the Lord has provided, we shall prosper for the Lord supplies us His riches from Heaven.

What is panic; A sudden fright; particularly, a sudden fright without real cause, or terror inspired by a trifling cause or misapprehension of danger. Will you still panic at each trouble? Don’t you know that before tribulation comes, the Lord is already aware? Don’t you believe that God knows the causes and effects of such matters? Don’t you believe in Him to supply food and clothing, to His Children, when others are in famine?

Believers in Christ must not panic or despair, for there is no real cause for this. We have been made, Kings and Priest before the Lord, by the willing sacrifice of His Son Jesus. We have no reason to be frightened, we have no cause to be apprehensive of the things to come, for we all have been warned, in the Scripture, of these things, so there is no reason to wonder why these things are coming upon this earth.

Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy;. ars

Isa 2:17- 22 Rev 18:13 1Ti 6:8 1Ti 6:9 1Ti 6:10 1Ti 6:17

IS THERE AN END TO THE LIFE LONG DIET?

A recent conversation I had shocked me into putting pen to paper (or rather fingers to keys) to write this article. The conversation concerned dieting, a subject that always fascinates me, as the majority of women I know are obsessed with their eating and drinking habits due to their never ending diet! My colleague rambled about the many dieting regimes she had tried and how they seemed great initially but eventually failed miserably. She sighed deeply and seemed resigned to the never ending struggle of the continuous life-long diet, an arduous chore for anybody!

However before I could offer advice or support, my colleague piped up, with hope in her voice, “Maybe I will try that hypnosis thing.” Now that was music to my ears! As a qualified hypnotherapist, I am always amazed how many people turn to hypnosis or hypnotherapy as a last resort. They will have tried every conceivable way to overcome their weight issues, smoking habits, phobias etc and turn to hypnotherapy when all hope is lost – this is their first mistake!

It is a well known fact that over 90% of diets fail and what’s worse is that 30% of people who do manage to lose the weight, put it all back on plus more, after they have worked so hard to lose it! Diets may work in the short term, but once the old eating habits are re-established weight gain is inevitable. In order to lose weight successfully, unhealthy eating habits need to be changed long term and no amount of dieting is going to do that.

Furthermore, as human beings we are driven by the ‘pleasure and pain’ principle and it governs all areas of our lives from the job we chose to the way we spend our weekends. We are driven to seek pleasure (comfort from chocolate or a glass of wine) and strive to avoid pain (the arduous struggle of eating what we really don’t want to eat and not eating what we crave!). So we ‘attempt’ to lose weight with minimal commitment as we fear the struggle and pain that it will ultimately cause us.

Of course this is not the case for everyone. Some individuals have a positive and healthy approach to eating which means that they eat what’s right for their body and this knowledge is what brings them pleasure. Pain to them would be a diet laden with fat and sugar etc.

So why do some of us struggle daily with eating healthily and maintaining an ideal weight, whilst others go through life with no conception of what a diet involves?

Well emotions play a large part in our relationship to food – the ‘comfort eater’ (compulsive eater) will eat to keep whatever negative emotions they are experiencing at bay, whether it be the feeling of not being good enough, or feeling unappreciated. How many of you, after a bad day at the office or with the kids, have taken comfort, literally in a glass of wine, some chocolate or other nibbles? And after comforting ourselves, we then feel the ‘pain’ or guilt when we have overindulged, forcing us to seek out pleasure once more to overcome this pain. And so the cycle of comfort eating begins.

Some people simply have poor eating habits which they have either learnt in childhood or adopted themselves later in life. Like any habit, unhealthy eating practices can be difficult to overcome and replace with more positive healthier ones. Poor, unhealthy eating habits literally need to be rewritten and positive, healthier ones reinforced in order for individuals to lose/maintain a healthy weight and body.

So how can both the comfort eater and the habit eater lose weight successfully, effortlessly and naturally and furthermore, maintain the weight loss? Most diets (especially those that offer supplements to actual meals) whilst they work in the short term do not attempt to alter an individual’s eating habits and as mentioned earlier, once we stop the diet, we revert back to our old eating habits which caused our weight gain in the first instance. So no surprises that the weight we struggled to lose, creeps back on.

If you could alter your eating habits permanently then there would be no further need for dieting or the diet industry. So we can see why some dieting methods have no interest in helping the individual overcome their poor eating behaviour, as ultimately it affects their business and their profits! However this is not the case for all diets – some diet clubs set out specifically to help us change our eating habits, offering support along the way, in order for us to, once and for all, eat healthily and maintain an ideal weight.

So if you are serious about losing weight and keeping it off, then the only way to do this is to change your eating habits. So how do you do this?

You can use one of the many dieting clubs which provide healthy eating plans and advice on how to lose weight naturally, positively and long term. Not only do you learn to adopt healthier eating patterns but you get much needed support from the representatives and other members too which is crucial, especially in the initial period when you are struggling to change what may be a life-long habit.

You can take the journey yourself – relying on your will power and determination to become a healthier, slimmer and fitter person. Ensure that you have plenty of support from friends and family along the way and if like me, you are a mother, incorporate new healthier meals into the family mealtimes, so the whole family can benefit too.

If you lack the will power to change your eating patterns and have tried and failed in the past, then hypnotherapy is an excellent way to lose weight effortlessly without struggling on and losing motivation. Hypnotherapy is a new and successful weight loss method which does not incorporate a diet and does not involve will power. So how does hypnotherapy work and why is it so much easier to lose weight by this method than it is through dieting?

Compulsive and habit eaters can both successfully and effortlessly lose weight with hypnotherapy by reprogramming the unconscious mind to adopt a healthy and positive eating pattern. However, for the compulsive eater, the cause of their overeating needs to be established first and resolved before any change can be made to their eating habits. This compulsion to overeat usually has its origins in childhood/early teens and can be something simple as associating food as a treat, when a child is rewarded with food for being good or working hard at school.

For both the compulsive and habit eater, weight loss can only be achieved by an alteration in their eating habits and hypnotherapy overwrites their old negative eating habits and replaces them with positive healthier ones. Habits are rooted in our unconscious mind and run automatically in the background without us consciously being aware of them. So in order for us to permanently alter our eating habits, this change needs to take place in the deepest part of our mind – the unconscious mind. Hypnotherapy opens up communication with the unconscious mind, enabling us to overwrite the existing eating patterns and replace these with positive, healthier eating behaviour.

Once these new eating patterns have taken root in our unconscious mind, our struggle with dieting comes to an end. We consciously chose healthy foods and smaller portions and feel less desire to eat between meals as we feel pleasantly full after each meal time.

So whatever your eating habits are, whether they involve large portions, sugary foods, snacking etc hypnotherapy can help you overcome and replace them with more positive patterns which enable you to lose any excessive weight and maintain the weight loss too.

If you have been struggling for years on one long diet, then hypnotherapy is for you. Compared to the many years battling the bulge, hypnotherapy is a quick and easy way to lose weight and usually takes six sessions. Furthermore, eating a healthy balanced diet not only helps you lose weight, but it can also help with overall health and vitality, as well as confidence too. It may even assist in lifting your mood too.

So next time you check out what diets are available on the web, think twice. Do you want short term or long term gain?

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More people are concerned about their weight and body fat than ever and unfortunately the number of overweight people is still continuing to rise. There are many reasons for this increase in obesity, such as lack of exercise, poor nutritional habits, lack of sleep, and increased stress levels. Changing these or other lifestyle habits can significantly impact your health and physique. This article will focus on the nutritional component; specifically the negative effect that beverages can have on fat and weight gain.

In can be easy to forget that many beverages contain a significant amount of calories. For example a 12oz can of soda contains about 150 calories, so if you have just 3 cans per day or possibly even a singe large soda from a convenience store or fast food restaurant, you are adding almost 500 calories to your daily total. Over the course of a week, this can add an extra pound of fat to your body.

Adding a large number of calories to your daily total is bad enough, but when these beverages are consumed at mealtimes, the negative effects on fat storage and weight gain become even greater. After you have consumed enough calories to satisfy your body’s energy requirements, any extra calories, including calories from beverages, will end up being stored as fat, regardless if they are calories from fat, carbs, or protein.

Plus, if you are drinking beverages contains alcohol, the effects on fat storage are even worse. Alcohol is essentially a toxin and when you drink alcohol, your body reprioritizes how it handles the calories you consume. Normally, your body will break down some of the proteins, fats, and carbs to use as energy for various physiological functions. Then whatever is left over will generally be converted into fat or stored as glycogen.

When alcohol is consumed with the other calories, your body’s first priority becomes to process the alcohol (toxin) and get it out of your body as fast as possible. The problem is the normal process of breaking down the other carbs, fats, and proteins becomes less important and more of these calories end up being stored as fat while the body is processing the alcohol.

This is not to say that having a small glass of wine with your meal will make everything you eat turn to fat. Instead, higher amounts of alcohol consumed with food will cause your body to store a higher percentage of the calories as fat. Plus, since alcohol has a dehydrating effect, if you don’t drink enough water, it will be more difficult to detoxify your body. This is also important, because when it takes longer to process the alcohol, more of the other calories will be stored as fat.

The physiology can become confusing, but simply stated, large meals combined with alcoholic beverages will cause your body to store a lot of unnecessary fat. Of course, you will have to get rid of this newly added fat before making positive progress towards your original fat loss goals, so you have to ask yourself what’s more important, losing fat or consuming excess amounts of alcohol or other high calorie beverages?

If you are truly serious about you health, fitness, and fat loss, the choice is obvious. Plus, if you are putting forth the effort to exercise and develop healthy eating habits, you should be experiencing some positive results. Just be sure to choose drinks that are low in calories and alcohol (water is ideal), because losing fat is difficult enough without beverages sabotaging your success.

The trick to weight loss is the right kind of foods that are taking inside your body. It is a big thing that you bring the best of your body by extending your choices for foods. Losing weight does not mean cutting a great deal of your food diet. Rather, weight loss is the science of using foods to lose weight.

It is very important to have the right kinds of nutrients and minerals that will keep your body working. But you cannot get the best of nutrients by just eating certain kind of foods or limiting yourself to a set of food diet. The best nutrients that you can bring into your body provides body support; nutrients keep your body in the right track without much problems in health.

Fruits can give you the needed nutrient requirement that you need. If you can eat five kinds of foods a day, you are assured to have an almost complete nutrient need. However, choosing the right kind of fruits for your weight loss program is an important matter that must not be disregarded.

The benefits of fruits for weight loss:

The low level of calories in fruits help your body to control its weight for the best. Yes, the lesser calories your body intakes, the better your way to success in losing weight. With fruits, your body will have the right kinds and supply of vitamins and minerals without giving you a problem of weight gain.

On the other hand, the load of vitamins and minerals in your body will give you a far better energy to use for body exercises. Doing exercises can greatly help your body to lose weight but you need the energy to do it. Instead of depending on fats and carbs for energy, vitamins and minerals in fruits can help you that much.

Moreover, with fruits you will be assured to have a perfect body health. It will reduce the risk of cardio vascular problems. It will enhance your body and give you a stronger immune system to fight harmful radicals from the environment and other factors.

Here are some practical tips to gain the advantages of eating fruits:

Instead of eating junk foods, it is good to have a slice of apple a day. It is a great way to suppress your appetite for other foods. Or instead of satisfying yourself with ice cream, it is good to eat fruits alone without the fatty dairy products that are added to the ice cream.

If you really want to drink some sweets, it is good to go for low- sugar fruit juices that you can get in the market. Fruit juices contain fiber and acid which helps to digest food. It will be a great help for your body to lose weight. You should not go for beverages and wines.

The craving for food will always be there. You need to add fruit factor to you diet. Say, if you can’t stop yourself in eating meat, then try to eat yogurt or granola. It is a big thing to complement fatty foods with healthy fruits snacks or fruits.

Losing weight can be very hard to reach. But if you know what foods to eat and what to avoid, you will surely make things easy. It is very important for you to make things for the best by extending your best way in eating fruits as part of your diet.

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Are you getting enough sleep?

When you start studying sleep, the first thing you learn is that the experts don’t seem to know too much. Not as much as you’d think anyway. There is one thing they do seem to agree on: most of us are chronically sleep deprived. And chronic sleep deprivation can destroy your health.

Generally speaking, most of us need between 7-9 hours of sleep each night. A few need less, and a few need more. For the sake of this discussion, let’s say that you in particular need 8 hours of sleep each night. What happens if you don’t get it?

This is where the concept of sleep debt comes in. Every night that you get less sleep than you need, you go into what’s called “sleep debt.” You know how years of credit card debt can kill your finances? Well, sleep debt can pile up and really drain your body.

We’ll come back to sleep debt in a second. But before we do, what exactly makes sleep so important?

The experts don’t know much.

I don’t really know. Neither do the experts. As always, theories abound. Some of them make more sense than others. The best one in my opinion goes a little something like this:

When you sleep, your body can divert the energy that it’s usually spending on consciousness to other functions. These functions include (among other things) tissue repair, hormonal balancing, neurotransmitter production, and immune function. Immune function is the one that I’m most concerned with.

I touched briefly on this in the article “My Skirmish with Cancer” Here’s a quote:

“… a lot of people get cancer. While the experts still don’t agree why that is, there is much they do agree on. The prevailing theory these days is that all of us are constantly fighting malignant changes to cells in our bodies. Usually, your immune system can keep up and kill off cells that are turning bad.

You should minimize exposure to carcinogens, eat quality foods, work to reduce stress, and get sleep. I’ll have much more to say about this in the future. Once you get a cancer, you have to be checked for the rest of your life to see if it’s coming back. I plan to make sure it does not…”

So really, you’re only as healthy as your immune system. While you sleep, your body fights off invaders, replaces immune cells that are spent, and generally undoes the damage that you exposed yourself to during the day.

When you’re around the sloppy sneezer at the grocery store, some of that person’s cold virus flew through the air, went up your nose and ended up in somewhere in your upper respiratory tract. The rest of that day, your body started to ready its defenses. Later that night, while you sleep, the immune system brought out the big guns.

If you get a good night sleep, and you should be fine. Your immune system has the chance to devote the proper resources to finding and destroying the viruses as they start to copy themselves. You’ll wake up the next day with no idea anything even happened.

But if you don’t get a good night’s sleep, the virus may get the upper hand. It starts making copes of itself faster than your immune system can kill those copies off. You probably won’t notice it the next day, but the day after that, you have a headache. Maybe you feel a little tired and indifferent. You head home that night, and it hits. The sneezing, the aches, the fever. What do you want to do? Nothing but go to sleep.

Sleeping your way to athletic greatness?

Tissue repair seems to be another important sleep function. This is particularly relevant to the athletic types, or those of you with chronic injuries.

Let’s say you’re someone who goes to the gym. After a hard workout, your muscles are beat up. There may be micro-tearing in the fibers, their local pH may be off, etc.

If you get a good night’s sleep, your repair cells can do their jobs. It may take a couple of nights until the soreness goes away, but then you’re ready for more.

If you don’t get that rest, you move closer to over-training You may actually get weaker. You’ll feel fatigued, and the nagging injuries start to pile up. If it goes on long enough, you may weaken your immune system, setting the stage for further problems.

“Make two hormones and call me in the morning… “

And what about those hormones? I can’t get too deeply into this aspect of sleep because it’s extremely complex. There are many hormones that play a part in regulating sleep, and are also regulated by sleeping (see, it’s complex). These hormones include: histamine, GABA, glutamate, acetyl choline, orexin, noradrenalin, prolactin, serotonin, and melatonin, testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, thyroid hormones, cortisol, etc.

Let’s talk about melatonin for a second, since you’ve heard about this one in the media. Again, I’m making a long story short here. When you start to fall asleep, serotonin in your brain is converted into melatonin.

Some people like to take melatonin to fall asleep. This might be a bad idea. Melatonin is involved in a hormonal “chain” that controls your sex hormones – testosterone and estrogen. So, it’s entirely possible that by taking melatonin to help you sleep, you are messing with your natural hormonal balance. Since melatonin is sold a supplement in the US, it never had to be tested the way that prescription drugs are, therefore, no one has any idea if there are negative consequences to artificially elevating your melatonin levels.

I can tell you this, altering hormonal balance by taking pills almost always has a downside. Just look at steroids (testosterone) and estrogen replacement therapy. You may want to think twice about taking melatonin to help you sleep unless a professional is supervising you.

Back to sleep debt.

So, back to sleep debt. When you don’t get enough sleep, your body falls behind on its immune functions, its tissue repairs, its neurotransmitter production, its hormonal balancing acts, and so on. And all this falling behind adds up.

Once again, for the sake of simplicity, lets assume you need 8 hours a night. On a particular Monday, you stay up until about midnight and set the alarm for 6 AM. You got 6 hours, but you just incurred a two hour sleep debt. Tuesday night, you fall asleep at 10, and wake up at 6 again. No added sleep debt, but you still haven’t paid back those two hours you missed on Monday.

Wednesday night, you have a bottle of wine and the toss and turn until about 1 AM. Up at 6 the next morning, you just added three more hours to your sleep debt.

You immune system is falling behind. Your tissue repair is falling behind. You start to feel rundown during the day, so you’re downing a lot of Starbucks. And it’s only Wednesday.

Sleep debt seems to accumulate over a two week period, as far as the experts know. No one’s really studied long-term sleep debt, so they aren’t really sure what the implications are. At some point it must level off, or we’d all die of sleep deprivation. There almost certainly are long-term consequences to chronically short changing your immune system and repair systems. Hormonal imbalances are rampant and prevalent, and are directly related to lack of sleep.

So, what are you planning to do about it?

Your best strategy is to figure out if you need seven, eight, or nine hours of sleep each night. I used to think I was a six-hour-a-night guy, but then a little malignant fibromyxoid sarcoma managed to get past my immune system, so now I shoot for seven. I admit that I don’t always get it.

The best way to estimate your sleep needs is to try to get 8 hours a night for a week. For most of us, that means getting to bed earlier. Then, you evaluate your daytime sleepiness, which is a good indicator of night time sleep deprivation.

If you get 8 hours a night and still feel sleepy, you might need nine hours a night, or you may be paying off sleep debt. Try a week of nine hours a night, and see how you feel.

If you have a very hard time falling asleep after the first few nights, you probably had sleep debt, and paid it off.

Stanford researchers also came up with a way to measure sleep debt, called the Multiple Sleep Latency Test. Basically, you measure how long it takes you to fall asleep, and use that information to estimate your level of sleep debt. Frankly, I’m not sure how accurate that concept is.

Here’s the real point I’m driving home: Once you determine your sleep needs, you must come up with a sleep strategy to make sure you get close to the your nightly quota. This may mean addressing sleep disorders.

Insomnia

Simple insomnia is probably the most common sleep disorder. We probably all suffer bouts of insomnia from time to time. There are simple ways that you can start to fight insomnia. It all starts around dinner time.

You’d be surprised how important light is to your health. In the olden days, before Edison invented the light bulb, we mostly dealt with sunlight and candle light. Sunlight is bright, candles are dim. Complex interactions between your eyes and your brain turn daily variations in light levels into daily rhythms, or circadian rhythms. Bright light hitting the eyes tells your brain it’s time to be awake.

Nowadays, we bombard ourselves with bright lights all day long. If you have trouble sleeping, this is the first thing to change.

As night sets in, don’t blast all the lights in the house. Keep the levels moderate, and reduce them as you get closer to bed time. Install dimmers. They work.

Another source of very bright light and loud noises is the television. Ideally, you should never even turn the stupid thing on. We’ll come back to that in a second.

Television is designed to stimulate you. The bright lights and loud noises actually subtly hypnotize your brain into staring dumbly at the screen by activating pleasure centers in your brain (the Limbic System). On top of that, the content of most of the crap that they put on TV is intended to cause a low-level “Fight-or Flight” response in your body.

Don’t let the bottom-feeders ruin your health.

The worst offenders are the producers of local news. You see the promos. It’s always something horrible like a kid getting attacked by a pit bull, or bird flu coming to kill us, or skyrocketing gas prices devouring your paycheck. Bottom-feeding local news shows are loaded with doom-and-gloom content intended to arouse your fears and curiosity. This may be interfering with your sleep.

The best bet is to turn the TV off at 9 PM, or avoid it all together. If you absolutely love those 9PM dramas, get a DVR and watch them at a different time. Or, watch comedies if you must watch TV. This will reduce the stress response that TV can cause. If nothing else, at least stop watching the news after 6 PM.

Many nights of the week, we don’t bother turning the TV on in my house. It’s amazing how peaceful things seem when it’s not on. Try it.

Next take a look at your sleep environment. Is the bed comfortable? Is it too warm or too cold? Does too much light get into the room? Are there noises that keep you up? If these kinds of issues are affecting your sleep, making changes can dramatically affect the quality of your sleep, and dramatically improve your health.

Snoring is a serious medical condition.

Snoring can be a serious problem, as it can cause sleep apnea. This is something that a medical specialist should evaluate. Sleep apnea is a condition where you stop breathing during sleep. It’s surprisingly common, and literally can kill you. That’s what killed former NFL player Reggie White. Some people wake up hundreds of times a night because of sleep apnea. If you snore, or someone you knows snores, talk to a doctor about it. A snoring bed-partner can also seriously disrupt your sleep, so it should really be addressed.

Drugs

Be very careful with both over-the-counter and prescription sleep drugs. These are powerful chemicals that affect your brain, often with side effects. You should always discuss these drugs with your doctor. If you take Tylenol PM every night to go to sleep, something’s wrong.

Caffeine is another drug. If you consume too much caffeine, or consume it too late (after 11 AM) it may affect your sleep. If you’re a coffee-pounding, perpetually sleepy insomniac, try cutting back to a couple of cups in the morning at the most.

Well, that’s about all I want to say about sleep for now. Here are some books I’ve read and would suggest:

The Promise of Sleep, by William Dement

Lights Out, by T.S. Wiley

Rhythms of Life : The Biological Clocks that Control the Daily Lives of Every Living Thing, by Russell Foster

Remember, quality sleep can do wonders for your health. If you want to really make a big change in how you look, feel, and live, resolve to get more of it. If you want a more personal approach to improving your sleep, our Personal Programs take a good, long look at your sleep habits. You may also schedule a 45-minute initial consultation to discuss your situation. We’ll look for the underlying causes of your troubled sleep, and you’ll get several strategies to help you get the sleep you need to live stronger, leaner, and better.

The information contained in this article is for educational purposes only. Do not use this information for self-diagnosis or self-treatment. Have any symptoms evaluated by a licensed doctor in your state.

The golden rule for weight loss is a simple numbers game: Consume fewer calories than you expend during exercise and you’re guaranteed lose weight, be more energetic and feel healthier.

Unfortunately, its simplicity does not make losing weight easy, particularly in today’s fast-paced world of hard work and high-energy junk food. Americans spend billions of dollars annually on weight loss supplements and dieting, but still we are losing the war.

A New Player
Now there is a new star player in the battle of the bulge. Resveratrol is one of the most powerful of the natural antioxidants, which are known cancer-fighters. Many people believe red wine to be rich in resveratrol, but it is in fact found in the skin of the grapes used to produce red wine. It is also found in cranberries, blueberries and other plants.

Studies have shown that resveratrol can have a positive effect on maintaining healthy cholesterol levels, insulin health, increasing metabolism and strengthening immune function. All of these factors are important for overall good health, but are also crucial for achieving healthy weight loss.

Products Available
It’s not surprising that since the discovery of resveratrol, there has been a huge influx of weight loss supplements that claim to contain it. Add to this that resveratrol has been publicly endorsed on the Oprah Winfrey Show and other media, it’s not difficult to see why.

Know that not all products are created equal. Simply containing resveratrol may not be enough. Since small amounts of resveratrol are found in many of the foods that we eat regularly, these supplements may make little to no difference whatsoever.

Will It Work For Me?
We are all different. When it comes to weight loss, the only method that is guaranteed to work for everyone is the golden rule mentioned at the beginning of this article. The only way to know whether a product will make a difference for you is to try it out for yourself.

The most risk-free way to do this is to have a read through my blog, which is linked below. There you will find various health products which are currently offering free trials, including a resveratrol-based weight loss supplement called Resveratrol Select.

In last week’s Federal Budget, the Australian government announced an extension of the anti-avoidance provisions that deal with non-commercial business losses.

First, some background.

For some years, the government and the Tax Office have been concerned about people obtaining tax deductions for what are, in effect, hobbies. For example, a person has a small vineyard from which they make small quantities of wine. There are some sales of the wine, but it is nowhere near enough to cover the costs of production. So, the “business” makes a loss and the person claims this as a tax deduction. Often, the person claiming the tax deduction has a high salary income. Hence the expression “Pitt Street farmer” (for New South Wales) and “Collins Street farmer” (for Victoria). (Those living in other states will have to make up their own phrase).

So, for a number of years now, we have had in the Australian taxation law what are known as the non-commercial loss provisions. If these provisions apply, they prevent the claiming of a tax loss immediately from what the legislation defines as a non-commercial activity. However, the tax loss can be carried forward to be set off against future income from the business activity.

In certain circumstances, even though a loss has been made, the losses can still be claimed as a tax deduction. The idea of these exceptions was to try and ensure that people who are carrying on genuine businesses are not get caught by these provisions. Broadly, you can offset losses from the business activity against other income if the business activity passes at least one of the following four tests:

1. Does the business have assessable income of at least $20,000 in an income year?
2. Has the business produced a profit in three out of the past five years?
3. Does the business use real property or an interest in real property worth at least $500,000 on a continuing basis?
4. Does the business use other assets worth at least $100,000 on a continuing basis?

Passing these tests, particularly for wealthy people, is not that difficult. So, the government has reacted to make it even more difficult for people on high incomes to be able to claim a tax deduction for losses from their business activities.

The change is that people with “adjusted taxable income” of over $250,000 will have excess deductions quarantined to the business activity. This appears to be a “blanket” exception to the four tests I mention above. For people with an adjusted taxable income of $250,000 or less, the existing rules will continue to apply.

The Treasurer has referred to the ability of wealthy people to claim tax deductions in the circumstances outlined above as a “loophole”. Accordingly, the government will move quickly to close this tax planning opportunity from 1 July 2009. It should be remembered, that this is only an announcement and the legislation must be passed by Parliament before it is effective. The exact application of the changes to the non-commercial loss provisions may be somewhat different after it has passed through the parliamentary process.

Wishing you easier business…

John Jeffreys

The most effective and successful path to avoid pain and illness of any kind, is to make healthy lifestyle choices in Six Essential areas. Contrary to popular belief, your long-term good health depends on the choices you make; not how much money you have to buy the best health insurance and to pay for the best doctors. Your path to good health choices includes: What You Eat, What You Drink, How You Exercise, How You Rest, What You Breathe, and What You Think. Here is a brief guideline to make the right choices:

o What You Eat: Your diet needs to consist of approximately 80 percent fruits and vegetables and 20 percent whole grains (except wheat), proteins and supplements. This keeps your body alkaline (it’s natural state) instead of acidic. An alkaline diet prevents injury and disease.

o What You Drink: Avoid stimulants such as coffee and alcohol–one or two cups of decaffeinated tea or coffee and one or two glasses of wine or beer and one glass of hard liquor is allowed, if you eliminate other acidic foods and drinks. Drink mostly fruit juices (avoid Citrus) and eight glasses of water a day. This helps keep your body alkaline. Overly acidic conditions are the enemy of on-going good health.

o How You Exercise: Get at least 30 minutes of whole body exercise three times a week. This helps your body stay flexible. You will be amazed at how good you feel and how the tendency to incur injuries is reduced.

o How You Rest: Eight hours of sleep (at least one hour of sleep before midnight) is essential to your body’s ability to heal and recharge itself. Avoid stimulants (coffee, tea, alcohol) and heavy meals after eight o’clock in the evening.

o What You Breathe: Clean, smoke-free air is critical to permanent good health. If you can smell the air you breathe, it is contaminated.

o What You Think: Worry, anxiety, panic, ruminating and drama are the worst types of thinking–thus creating stress and robbing you of peace of mind. Stress can cause your muscles to tighten to the point that injuries and pain become more likely. Find ways to think calming thoughts, at home and work. Calm and peaceful thoughts pay big dividends toward good health.