By Jacob Maslow

It is possible to be active and stay healthy, even when you're living with asthma. The key to living with asthma successfully is to keep it under control. Limit contact with asthma triggers by controlling your environment, monitor your condition with a peak flow meter, and follow your treatment plan strictly.

Develop goals that relate to your quality of life. Being able to measure your success gives you greater motivation to follow asthma plans consistently.
 
Develop an asthma plan with your doctor. The plan describes which medicines to take every day to help delay the long-term effects of asthma and the steps to treat asthma attacks. It helps you better control your asthma attacks by keeping you aware of symptoms and of how to make quick decisions about medicine and treatment. Emergency and doctor’s phone numbers should be included.
 
Keep an asthma diary of your meter readings and circumstances surrounding good and bad days so you can adjust accordingly. People often underestimate the severity of their symptoms. They may not notice symptoms until their lungs are functioning at 50% of their personal best measurement.
 
Take your medicines as your healthcare professional prescribes. It is important to keep track of the inhaler doses and discard the inhaler when you have used the number of doses indicated on the package labeling. This not only prevents you from having an empty inhaler, but it also prevents you from inhaling only propellant after the medicine has run out.
 
Reduce your dietary fat intake.  Researchers at the University of Newcastle in Australia have recently discovered a link between high fat foods and asthma inflammation.
 
Natural herbs, vitamins, and botanicals can help as well. For example, in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, asthma herbal medicine intervention has shown benefit to asthma sufferers in recent studies.  In a study of Japanese schoolchildren, vitamin D supplements taken during the winter and early spring helped prevent seasonal flu and asthma attacks.
 
In a recent study, there was a significantly greater improvement in the weekly number of asthma attacks, scores for drug treatment, and peak flow rate, in the group who practiced yoga. Deep abdominal breathing and massage therapy may help you breathe easier by increasing relaxation, and destroying a common trigger, stress.
 
If you are currently struggling with asthma symptoms, consider these tips; it just might make a big difference.

Jacob Maslow runs the Allergy Blog for an online retailer of Allergy Control Products

Each new trend that surfaces across the planet ranging from fashion to health is mostly patterned or attributed to a celebrity. And one of the most celebrated things about the life of a “celebrity” is that healthy looking, seemingly ageless body they use to rock the red carpet come awards night.

So how do they do it? Healthy lifestyle is the key especially in the aspect of maintaining the right body weight. Trimming fats around the waist, sophisticated diet plans, extreme physical activities, and fitness trainers nevertheless, these are just some of their regimen. A complicated system isn’t it?

One question remains: “Can the average Joe pattern their weight loss plans from these celebrities and escape with a much lighter weight and slimmer waistline?”

There are thousands of research concerning weight loss and dieting. The problem is what suits the average Joe? Ordinary people don’t fit well in the realms of celebrity lifestyle. It’s is paramount for celebrities to consult every single professional, spend millions of dollars, and dwell in extensive amounts of rejuvenating activities because their job is to look good in front of the camera. Bottom line is, YOU can do it too in a simpler and more accommodating manner.

The average person needs to be healthy and look good also. It’s not an exception. So here is some advice for losing weight that can actually work for all people:

1.) Eat in moderation-. Overindulgence when it comes to eating food is the main culprit in weight gain.. According to Jane Harrison, a registered dietician and nutritionist, mini-meals or an eating pattern of having 4-6 small meals a day is enough to maintain blood sugar levels, thus, preventing food cravings that lead to additional consumed calories by controlling you appetite.

2.) Maintain physical activity- We all know that exercise is something we should do. A person doesn’t need a gym or a walk in the park to do this. One must manipulate their environment so that it benefits them a good amount of exercise. An office job doesn’t require you to sit all the time, walk around the desk at times if possible. Hollywood celebs may have bikini bodies and hard-rock abs but the main objective here is to sweat it out and not to instantly achieve that superb anatomy. Gradual increase in activity and endurance is the key. It’s a long painful process but we will ultimately get there. Also, take time to consider more rigorous activities if you do have a spare time. It provides more cardio and melt away calories faster.

3.) Choose Healthy Foods- Hollywood A-Listers are conscious about what they churn down every meal. Some celebrities have extreme diet/food plans made for them or transform themselves into vegetarians. The above-mentioned lifestyle is way too much for a regular person. However, it is very achievable. Handling one’s financial budget and knowledge of healthy eating could lead to a disciplined-pattern of healthy food selection. By this, one must bear in mind to minimize consumption of junk foods, fatty foods, carbonated drinks, chocolates, etc. Knowledge is power in this case. Knowing the right foods to eat and actually practicing it takes discipline and will power.

4.) Drink reasonably- It’s definitely a no-brainer that celebs party all the time but the more health-oriented ones always watch what they drink. Beer and most alcoholic drink contain empty calories that don’t give any kind of nutrition to the body; they almost certainly add up weight. So, act like a rock star when the partying out but remember to do it only occasionally. It’s is good to party once a week but grab only a few drinks and don’t get wasted.

5.) Treat Yourself- Celebrities always pamper themselves and so could you. Treating yourself with healthy meals all week is equally important to indulging yourself with your favorite food every once in a while.(at the end of the week perhaps). It gratifies your ego for a job well done and doesn’t deprive you psychologically, emotionally and physically from the finer things in life. Pig out a little. It’s healthy, it’s fun and best of all, it motivates you to shed those calories the next day.

From now on, you can live a celebrity lifestyle and loss weight at the same time. Stay fit and healthy!

This is a guest-post by Christopher Govender (Diet and Nutrition TV)

How do birds manage to fly so high? How do they manage to fly across continents, in a matter of days? I put it down to seed power. Smart animals from parrots to people eat seeds. Every time I reach for my seed jar in my fridge, I smile as I remember big seedeaters, like the character Fox Mulder from the X-Files series and Ace Ventura Pet Detective. Seeds are rich in essential fats, minerals, vitamin E and protein.  All you need is a tablespoon a day for optimum health. I encourage all the athletes I work with to follow the tips I will share with you today. Here is my magic formula:

My Daily Seed Jar

What you will need

500g of flax seeds (also called linseeds)

150g of pumpkin seeds

150g of sesame seeds

150g of sunflower seeds

A mixing bowl

A glass jar with a tight seal

1. In your mixing bowl, mix the flax seeds, which are rich in omega 3 with the pumpkin, sesame and sunflower seeds, which are rich in omega 6.

2. Pour the seed mix into the glass jar.

3. Keep the jar tightly sealed in your fridge until you use it.

4. Put a tablespoon in your coffee grinder, grind them up and add them to a soup, salad or cereal.

Important tips to remember

a. The best seeds are flax, hemp, pumpkin, sesame and sunflower. You get more goodness from them by grinding them first and sprinkling them on cereal, salads and soups.

b. Use cold-pressed seed oils for salad dressings, in pasta dishes and on steamed or raw vegetables. The best and most flavorsome are pumpkin and sesame.

c. Use pumpkin seed butter as a spread, instead of butter, mayonnaise or margarine.

I always find it exciting to whip up a batch of pumpkin seed butter. You are welcome to try out this recipe:

My pumpkin seed butter

What you will need:

Two cups of raw shelled pumpkin seeds

Six tablespoons of pumpkin seed oil

Four tablespoons of maple syrup

A quarter teaspoon of allspice

A quarter teaspoon of salt

Lightly roast the pumpkin seeds in the oven at no more than 160 degrees Fahrenheit for no longer than 20 minutes. Take them out and let them cool completely.

Pour the seeds into a blender and grind them into a fine powder. Then add the rest of the ingredients. Blend it all until you get a smooth paste. The longer you blend it the smoother it will become.

Pumpkin seeds are quite dry with less oil than nuts, so the butter will be drier than what you are use to, but using pumpkin seed oil has produced me the creamiest (and healthiest) results. Do not refrigerate your pumpkin seed butter; instead put it into a butter holder and place it next to your bread bin.

So there you have it - the secret to how birds can fly so high and across continents. Get yourself some seed power today.

Yours in health and peak performance,

Christopher Govender (Diet and Nutrition TV) http://dietandnutritiontv.com

People develop belly fat for a number of different reasons. Some people have belly fat because of their genetic predisposition to store extra calories as body fat in the abdominal area. Others develop belly fat because they consume too many simple carbohydrates. It does not really matter why we have belly fat, what matters is what we do to lose it.

I am not sure how this got started, but there seems to be a pretty strong belief out there that the most effective exercise to lose belly fat is an abdominal crunch. Is it true? The short answer is no, it is not true. An even bigger question, however, is this: Do you need any kind of exercise to lose belly fat? The short answer to this question is also no, but first let's go over why you do not need to do abdominal crunches to lose belly fat.

The reason for this is simple: It does not really matter how many crunches you can do and how often you do them, the reason why abdominal crunches are useless has to do with the fact that they do not burn a lot of calories. Compared to other muscle groups, abdominal muscles are pretty small, and because of that they do not burn a lot of calories.

Doing barbell squats and deadlifts, on the other hand, engages large muscle groups, which burns a lot of calories. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but if you want to have great abs, you need to focus on exercises that work your abdominals indirectly. In other words, forget about doing crunches and focus on multi-joint, compound movements that involve large muscle groups.

Of course, one might argue that you do not need to exercise at all to lose belly fat. Huh? Yes, it sounds rather peculiar, but it is true. Since you cannot spot-reduce belly fat with exercise, your diet is actually more important than any exercise program you can come up with. Why? Because it is much easier to reduce your daily calorie consumption by controlling how much you eat than by trying to burn a certain number of calories with exercise.

You can only lose belly fat when you lose your overall weight, which means that losing belly fat really means just losing weight. When you lose weight, your overall body fat percentage decreases, and when that happens, the amount of belly fat goes down as well. Do not get me wrong, I am not saying that following a great exercise program does not have any benefits. Exercise is very important for your overall health; it is just when it comes to losing belly fat, it is more important to pay a very close attention to your daily calorie intake and the composition of your diet.