Internet Marketers are waking up to the reality that having a business on the Internet is a matter of a lot of long hours despite the hype  floating around that almost no time is necessary.  They are also finding out that this new lifestyle of sitting in front of the computer is not real conducive to weight control. Many are fighting the battle of Internet “spread” by revamping exercise programs.  Is the new improved routine enough, though?

If you are working at home on the Internet, or even if you just use the Internet frequently, chances are you move much less during the average day than you used to.  You now walk to your home office and sit down instead of getting ready for work and leaving the house.  You may shop for items at your computer that you used to go out to find.  You may have stepped up your exercise program, but studies now show that people who move more, generally -  not just exercise regularly but move more – during a day have higher metabolisms and control their weight more easily. While that new exercise program isn’t going to hurt you by a long shot, it will not be enough to replace movement lost during a day of working at home in front of the computer.

By incorporating more movement into your day you can avoid the pitfall of Internet “spread” and keep yourself more product while online, too.  School systems have long understood that the average attention span is 50 minutes.  By planning a ten minute break every 50 minutes, you can not only aid in boosting your metabolism back into normal condition, but will probably find your work time more productive as well.  By taking ten minutes every hour to go outside and walk you will solve many problems exacurbated by long intervals of sitting.  First,  the movement will boost your fat burning processes.  Walking will also help to tone and stretch  your muscular structure.  Being in sunlight for ten minutes at a time will also give you exposure you need to keep your vitamin D3 levels at their optimum without giving you time to burn.  Without vitamin D3, you are not going to control your weight or any other system or organ in your body.

Walking outside every hour also gives your mind the break it needs to assimilate information and formulate new ideas.  Just one more benefit is that getting out and away from a planted position will make you less likely to snack haphazardly.  If you find the walking does not curb your desire to snack while working, keeping a plate of sliced vegetables such as celery, carrot sticks, and cucumber slices nearby will allow you to snack in a method that will not encourage weight gain or other forms of ill health.  The vitamins and minerals provided by the vegetables will work with the increased movement to allow you to achieve maximum levels of benefits  frequent movement will provide.

While working at home can entice you to move much less frequently it is important not to think just about an exercise program, but rather to think about avoiding a sedentary lifestyle.  If you are used to jobs outside of the house that kept you sitting for long periods, working at home can allow you to make very positive strides toward optimal health and fat burning in ways you could have never achieved while being tied to a desk at the office.  Isn’t it time that you focused your freedom to choose your work and lifestyle toward the choice of optimal health and weight control?

©2010 Sally Taylor

After I published my articles about soap, I received a question/comment about soap stripping the skin of natural oils. I thought this was an important issue, so here’s my answer to that one.

Will Soap Dry Your Skin Out?

There seems to be some information floating around about the danger of soap drying out skin.  The issue can be a confusing one because of all the propaganda that the skin and hair care product industries have distributed in their attempts to sell their products.  Unfortunately, much of the information out about soap drying out skin is not real helpful to those who want to keep youthful skin or returned damage skin to health.  A quick look at the issues involved with soap use should clear up your skin questions pretty quickly.

Our bodies produce and coat our skin with natural oils.   These oils are important in the functioning of our skin cells, but it can cause a few problems for skin health, too. This fact is more important to understand today than ever before.  At one time our earth was natural and pure.  Today we are exposed daily to over 6,000 toxins in our food, air, water, and living environments.  Today we are seeing increases of bacterias and viruses which continue to become more dangerous as they become more immune to our efforts to kill them.  As these elements keep hammering our skin to gain entry to our bodies, our skin’s health becomes more and more important to, and more difficult to,  maintain and optimize.

Just as oils in our cupboards become rancid, so will the oils on your skin due to exposure to harmful elements. While the oil on our skin is vital to our health, it also makes a great adhesive for environmental toxins and germs.  Many toxins do not merely adhere to skin, they actually soak into the body from it and thus gain entry without being filtered through our liver and other detoxifying organs.  Toxins that gain entry to the body via skin are therefore much more toxic than those we ingest through our food and water.  Germs also adhere to skin oils and multiply, some finding entrance through areas in which the skin integrity is compromised and through our pores.  As long as oil which has collected these elements stays on the skin, your body is in a very compromised state. Skin oil needs to be washed off frequently to get rid of the collection of these toxins.

It is also, at this point, important to understand the purpose of soap.  The purpose of soap is not to moisturize.  It is to clean. A good soap made without toxins will do just that.  Anti-bacterial ingredients are not necessary, and actually are poisonous and can cause much havoc to your liver and other vital organs.  You do not need anti-bacterial agents.  Soap should merely be a tool to help wash away oils contaminated with toxins and bacteria.   Choose your soap very carefully and make sure you know what every ingredient in the soap does and make sure it has no toxic chemicals.  Wash your skin with a wash cloth, soap and water.  Once you are done, you need to moisturize and you need to do that without fail.

Do not fail to realize that skin needs moisture to stay supple, too.  Moisture and oil must not be confused. Right after washing you skin will feel and look just a little plumper from the water used to wash.  That water will evaporate rapidly though, leaving skin dry and tight. By adding a layer of moisturizer right away after washing, you can avoid that dryness. If you have dry skin, you may want to use a bit of oil after washing, but it is best to let the skin breathe naturally and replace the oils from your own metabolic process.  If your skin is dry, that is a signal that you need to fix what is wrong with your metabolism.  If your metabolism is running smoothly your body will replace the oils you washed off fairly quickly.  Eating enough of the essential oils for your body goes a long way to maintaining the correct flow of oil to coat your cells.  Omega 3 oils from krill oil and raw, ground flax seeds will provide vital oils for your body to use to replace skin oils.

Another issue with washing skin is that it takes time for your skin to metabolize Vitamin D3 you get from sun exposure. If you know you can get more sun exposure daily to keep a layer of this vital vitamin/hormone on your skin, washing will not set you back on your supply.  If you know you are going to be unable to replace that layer daily, you might have to choose between hearty washing and just a light wash with plain water for a day or so until you can get more sun exposure so as to get rid of as many toxins as you can without disturbing your Skin’s vitamin D resources.  If you have been exposed to a lot of toxins, you might well decide to wash heartily and take a Vitamin D3 supplement that day.  Make sure you study the facts about your needs for this vitamin and how to take it for maximum absorption.  Skin without enough Vitamin D will not stay healthy very long – and neither will any other part of your body.

Natural skin oil is vital to good skin, but once those oils become polluted, they do nothing more than harm your body.  Washing your skin with non-toxic soap is a very important part of any skin care regime.  It’s not a non-toxic soap that hurts your skin, it is not continuing with a good after wash care regime that will cause any negative long-term effects that you would see from washing alone.

©2010; Sally Taylor:  Sals Secrets Revealed

There are many ways in which water can help your body maintain a healthy weight system. Unfortunately, what many of us are drinking these days is NOT just water. Many healthful water laws are just ignored and our water can often qualify for entry on lists of toxic sludge.

While toxic chemicals and bacteria are usually just inadvertently not cleaned from our water before it is piped into our homes, there are some additives dumped into our water purposely, and even in the name of “health benefits”. Fluoride is one of these toxins, and fat retention is just one of the many health disasters that can result from the addition of this substance to water.

The use of fluoride in water began many decades ago when tests showed that fluoride could be good for teeth. While natural fluoride can be beneficial in small doses such as the .04 ppm that you find in mother’s milk. There are many facts about fluoride, though, which have been kept from public knowledge for the many decades we have been encouraged to faithfully drink our toxic waste. The most devastating of these facts is that the fluoride being dumped in your water is not natural, that is calcium/magnesium fluoride, but rather is a by-product of industry and is in the form of silica/sodium fluoride – which is poison at all concentrations. It has been recently revealed that tests done on fluoride used natural fluoride, yet that there is a difference between natural and industrial fluoride seemed to be left out of the material used to seduce many officials to approve water fluoridation programs. After all, silica/sodium fluoride was too toxic for the EPA to approve to be dumped, so industries had to find a way to dispose of it. It seems that they found one.

Another fact about fluoride, both natural and industrial, which is urgent for people to understand, especially considering the ever increasing obesity problem in the US, is that fluoride was used for a long time in Europe as a sedative. Fluoride is known to be an endocrine disruptor. The NRC has warned that doses of fluoride as low as 0.01-0.03 mg/kg/day can adversely effect thyroid functions – especially in those with reduced iodine intake. Without proper functioning of the thyroid, the metabolism will slow, the person will feel less energy and it will become more difficult to burn calories, which will be stored as fat instead of used for energy. Since fluoride is hard for the system to remove, as you continue to drink it, it builds in your body causing increased metabolism dysfunction, increased inability to burn fat, and increased disability to lose weight. Because of the recent popularity of foods which block iodine from the thyroid, such as soy and peanut butter, these risks are even more pronounced since the soy craze became popular in the US.

There are many effects of fluoride that is being dumped into our water besides increasing the weight of our population. Earlier I posted an article which tells about how fluoride can quickly make you look years older. These two problems with our poisoned water supply are just the tip of the fluoride scandal but are two great beginning reasons that you need to get rid of fluoride in your water immediately.

Now is a very good time to call your local water supplier and ask about the amount and source of fluoride in your water. Be sure to ask the source, as natural fluoride does occur in water in some locations. and even if your municipality does not actively medicate your water you will be exposed. You might need filters even if you can convince your water suppliers not to actively poison your water.

Not all water filters will remove this toxic substance from your water. Reverse osmosis is the best of these filters. Be sure to make it very clear when you buy a filter that you are interested only in filters which remove fluoride, and check the statistices on the amount of fluoride you can count on each to remove. Remember that when you bathe, fluoride can be absorbed through the skin where it will go around your filtering organs to cause even more havoc to your health.

If you find that your water is being polluted with industrial fluoride in your area, there is now an organization that can help you organize and fight to have this toxin dumped into your water. You will find more information at http://www.fluoridealert.org/ about the health effects of fluoride and about fighting fluoridation in your own water supply.