Perfect Portions Nutrition Scale - - Scale And Nutritional Calculator in One

This Perfect Portions Nutrition Scale measures, calculates, dissects, contemplates, tracks, converts and reports on the contents of your diet in loving detail. The database contains over 2000 foodstuffs (including pizza) and you can add up to 99 more special foods that only you know about. Or something. $49.95 just could save your life.

It’s a scale and nutritional calculator in one. It is the most intuitive, easy-to-read nutritional scale on the market because it integrates the familiar nutrition label. With nearly 2000 foods in the database and room for 99 custom foods, you can track your calories, carbs, salt, cholesterol, and more with just a few clicks…

Breakfast: The Most Important Meal of The Day - - Skipping Breakfast Leads to Increase in Heart Diseases

Ever wondered why breakfast is touted as the most important meal of the day?

Starting the day by eating a wholesome, nutritious morning meal not only gives your body a kick-start that energizes you mentally and physically but it is also the secret to staying healthy, claims a new study.

According to researchers, skipping the first meal of the day increases the odds of obesity, large fat accumulation around the waist, higher cholesterol levels, developing diabetes, all of which heighten the risk of heart disease.

Experts theorize that people who start the day with the morning meal are less likely to be hungry during the rest of the day while breakfast skippers are more inclined to nibble on high-calorie snacks to stave off hunger.

Studies have established that people tend to accumulate more body fat when they eat fewer, larger meals than when they eat the same number of calories in smaller, more frequent meals.

Link between skipping breakfast and cardiometabolic risk assessed

Researchers from the University of Tasmania carried out a study to assess the link between skipping breakfast in childhood and adulthood and cardiometabolic risk.

The researchers enrolled 2184 Australian children aged 9 to 15 years old in 1985.

As a part of the study, the weight and height of the participants was measured and they were also questioned about what they ate before coming to school.

The team revisited them after 20 years when they were around 36 years old. At that time, their adult breakfast habits were recorded.

In addition, their waist circumference, blood levels of sugar (glucose), insulin, and fats (lipids) were also measured.

Participants also reported their levels of physical activity. In addition, factors such as age, gender, education, occupation, smoking, TV viewing, socioeconomic status as a child, and diet factors were taken into account.

Revelations of the study

It was noted that 1359 ate breakfast as children and adults, 224 skipped the morning meal as kids, 515 failed to eat breakfast as adults and 86 people abstained from the morning meal both as children and as adults.

The findings revealed that people who skipped breakfast as adults had an unhealthy lifestyle.

Those who avoided the morning meal at both ages had a larger waist circumference, higher insulin levels in the blood, elevated levels of total cholesterol as opposed to those who ate breakfast during both childhood and adulthood.

The researchers concluded that “skipping breakfast over a long period may have detrimental effects on cardiometabolic health."

The study was sponsored by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, the Australian National Heart Foundation, the Tasmanian Community Fund, Veolia Environmental Services, Sanitarium, ASICS and Target.

The study findings have been published in the 'American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.'

Heavy Smoking May Raise The Risk of Alzheimer's and Dementia - - New Study Results

People who are heavy smokers in their midlife years are more than doubling their risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia two decades later, a new study shows.

While smoking has long been known to increase the risk of dying from cancer and heart disease, researchers in Finland say they’ve found strong reason to believe that smoking more than two packs of cigarettes daily from age 50 to 60 increases risk of dementia later in life.



Scientists at the University of Eastern Finland and at Kuopio University Hospital, Finland, analyzed data from 21,123 members of a health care system who took part in a survey between 1978 and 1985, when they were between ages 50 and 60.

Diagnoses of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and vascular dementia were tracked from Jan. 1, 1994, when participants were 71.6 years old, on average, through July 31, 2008.

Among the key findings:

* 25.4% of the participants, or 5,367 people, were diagnosed with dementia an average of 23 years later.
* Of patients with dementia, 1,136 were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and 416 with vascular dementia.

Researchers say that people who smoked more than two packs of cigarettes a day in middle age had an elevated risk of dementia overall and also of each subtype, Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia, compared with nonsmokers.

Former Smokers:

On the other hand, former smokers or people who smoked less than half a pack per day did not appear to be at increased risk of developing dementia. And associations between dementia and smoking did not vary by race or sex.

Smoking is considered a well-established risk factor for stroke and may contribute to the risk of vascular dementia through similar mechanisms, the researchers say.

In addition, they say that smoking contributes to oxidative stress and inflammation, which are believed to be important in the development of Alzheimer’s disease.

“It is possible that smoking affects the development of dementia via vascular and neurodegenerative pathways,” the researchers write.

Previously, a link between smoking and the risk of Alzheimer’s disease has been considered controversial, with some studies even suggesting that smoking reduces the risk of cognitive impairment, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurodegenerative conditions.

Although smoking’s ill effect on public health has been well established, the researcher say, this study shows its impact is likely to become even greater as the population ages and dementia prevalence increases.

The study shows heavy smoking was found to be associated with a greater than 100% increase in risk of dementia and its forms 20 years after midlife, and that the brain is thus “not immune to long-term consequences of heavy smoking.”

Cure of Asthma Possible With Bitter Taste - - Discovered by A Lung Specialist; Dr. Stephen B. Liggett

The sense of taste is not limited to the mouth, and researchers say this discovery may lead to better treatments for diseases such as asthma.



The bitter taste receptors are also found in smooth muscles of the lungs and airways. These muscles relax when they are exposed to bitter tastes, according to a study by researchers from the Medical College of Maryland in Baltimore, published in an edition of the Nature Medicine journal.

The discovery surprised the doctor Stephen B. Liggett, a lung specialist who identified an association between bitter taste with poisonous plants, leading humans to avoid ingesting bitter foods.

Liggett believed that the bitter taste receptors in the lungs produce a reaction of “rejection or numbness”, causing the hardness of the chest and consequent cough, so that the person leaves the “toxic” environment.

Instead, when scientists tested some non-toxic bitter components in the airways of rats and humans, the airways relaxed and open.

Liggett, who hopes to begin human trials within a year, explained that eating bitter does not help in the treatment of asthma. According to him, it is need to inhale enough doses of aerosol components.

Giving Birth to a Baby Can Brighten You! - - New Study Findings

New mothers often grumble that their brain has turned into mush.

But having a baby may actually make you brighter, a study has found.

Research shows that a woman’s grey matter grows in the weeks and months after she has given birth.

And it’s the most doting mothers who experience the biggest burst of brain cells.

t is thought that the hormonal changes associated with having a baby ‘supercharge’ the brain, helping prepare women for the challenges ahead.

And the memory lapses that plague new mothers may be explained by a simpler cause – sleep deprivation.

The finding, from a small study published by the American Psychological Association, contradicts the long-held notion that motherhood addles a woman’s brain.

Neuroscientists from the respected Yale University in the U.S. scanned the brains of 19 new mothers in the weeks after they had given birth.

The results showed that the amount of grey matter – brain cells that crunch information – had increased by a small but significant amount by the time the women were three to four months into motherhood.

Such changes usually only occur after intense periods of learning or a brain injury or illness.

The areas that grew involve motivation, reasoning, judgement, the processing of emotions and feelings of satisfaction, and are key to the mother-child relationship.

Expansion in the brain’s ‘motivation area’, said the researchers, could lead to more nurturing, which would help babies survive and thrive physically, emotionally and cognitively.

The mothers who gushed most about their newborns tended to experience the biggest amounts of growth, the journal Behavioral Neuroscience reports.

It is unclear to what extent the changes are due to rises in hormones such as oestrogen and oxytocin that occur when a woman gives birth, and how much they are caused by chemical changes brought on by cuddling and playing with their babies.

Studies of adoptive mothers could help separate the two.

Siobhan Freegard, founder of the Netmums website, said that ‘supercharging’ made sense.

She added: ‘Nature has an amazing way of giving us things that we need. Having a baby is a momentous occasion, so it is not surprising the brain gets that little bit extra to equip us for the challenge.’

She suggested that any ‘baby brain’ memory lapses could be due to changing priorities, with the newborn being deemed more important than most other matters.

The results of the study echo research from last year which concluded that, contrary to popular belief, pregnancy does nothing to dim brainpower.

Professor Helen Christensen, of the Australian National University in Canberra, showed that women did as well on tests of memory and logic when pregnant as they had in previous years.

She said: ‘It really leaves the question open as to why women – and often their partners – think they have poor memories, when the best evidence we have is that they don’t.

‘Perhaps women notice minor lapses in mental ability and then attribute it to being pregnant because that is the most significant thing in their mind at the time.

‘Or sleep deprivation could mask the positive cognitive effect.’

Kill Anxiety - - Some Useful Tips to Stop Anxiety Naturally

A certain amount of anxiety is actually essential in life, and it can even be beneficial in certain situations. But when routine stress piles up over a period of time and doesn't get released, it can be a source of a wide variety of anxiety symptoms and even panic attacks.

Studies even show that anxiety can be harmful to our physical health. Many researches have shown that anxiousness and anxiety actually deteriorate our immune systems, reducing our body's ability to fight against infection and illness. Certainly, anxiety also takes a big charge on our "mental

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Red Onions: Natural Fighter Against Heart Problems

As per Chinese researchers, regular consumption of red onions is quite effective in preventing the risk of heart disease in human body by removing the bad cholesterol responsible for triggering the fatal condition.

Commenting on the study findings, lead-study author, professor Zhen Yu Chen at the Chinese University in Hong Kong, said in a press statement that despite various studies carried out on the benefits of onions to humans “a little is known of how their consumption interacts with human genes and proteins involved in cholesterol metabolism within the body.”

So they decided to conduct this research in order to distinguish this very interaction of “onions with enzymes in an attempt to explore the underlying cholesterol-lowering mechanism.”

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