With all the talks of obesity and America s race for thin bodies, cholesterol has suffered a beating. It is even one of the main figures in the development of hypertension, that contribute much to coronary heart disease. Often seen as the culprit in fattening America, cholesterol has become a food taboo, something that must be avoided at all costs. What people do not know though is that there are two kinds of cholesterol and one kind is actually beneficial to the body. In fact, it is one of the essential substances that our bodies need to maintain balance. What is cholesterol. Cholesterol is a substance that can be found in fats or in lipids. Lipids are important because it is used to form cell membrane, used to balance hormones and help in other bodily functions. Too much cholesterol though tends to clog the bloodstream, eventually leading to heart disease. And because...

Your life is shaped and influenced by the people that you live with, work with, and hang out with. People are definitely the single biggest source of influence in each other s lives. If you think of your life as a story, the people in your life are the characters in the story. Just like you can learn from characters in any good novel, you can learn many things from the characters in your own story. I met a woman once that kept a journal specifically about things she was learning from the people, or characters, in her life. She had just spent a summer backpacking in Europe and the pages of her journal were filled with biographies of the charcters that she met that summer. Some were more influential than others, of course, but she was intentional about learning from even characters that showed up in her story for just a few minutes. I was so impressed by her commitment to...

Back pain is one thing most likely to elicit a twinge of sympathy from the hardest of hearts. It is estimated that every person in the world will suffer from it in his her lifetime - mild to serious, chronic or temporary. You could get an attack at any point along the spine, especially the lower back area which takes on the maximum weight and stress. Most common causes: strain or bruising of muscles; sprain or injury to ligaments; and spasms when the injured muscle knots up as part of the body s attempt to immobilize it to prevent further injury. Other causes include osteoporosis, arthritis, a slipped disc, or even excessive gas, besides more serious causes like tumors, diabetes or kidney malfunctions that emerge in a doctor s clinic. Blame it on your Lifestyle An important factor and one that is entirely in you hands, is lifestyle. For instance, improper postures while...

It s easy to forget just how powerful our subconscious minds can be. We are often completely unaware of how our actions or inactions are affecting our lives. We may complain that things never work out for us, we have bad luck, or we just don t have what it takes to be successful. What we fail to realize is that we are actually creating our own circumstances through subconscious self-sabotage. In order to overcome self-sabotage we first have to use conscious awareness to explore our emotions and fears, and understand how they influence our actions. Once we have determined the cause of the destructive behavior, we can then take steps to prevent it from happening in the future. What s really happening when we sabotage ourselves. Subconsciously, we may be frightened by a particular outcome, even though we say we want it. Many overweight people have struggled for years, tried...