Secret Weapons To Bodybuilding And Weight Loss

Supplement companies never run out of compliments for their own offerings. Some of this bias is justified. Their products are up-to-date, in keeping with the newest information about the human anatomy and the ways supplements influence your training, growth and recovery.

In the process, what’s “in” today may be “out” tomorrow. Many vitamins and herbal extracts, once so trendy, have been sent to Coventry.

Your secret weapons to weight loss and bodybuilding are these supplements. Just because they are no longer relevant does not mean they are any less effective or safe. If anything, they hold more value for your hard-earned money. Consider the following supplements:

Cayenne

As it were, cayenne is like the nuclear bomb of these supplements. It can suppress appetite, force thermogenesis, and increase metabolism with equal aplomb.

It is also good for the cardiovascular system as it can help manage hypertension, prevent blood clotting, alleviate muscle aches and headaches, and reduce risk of heart disease. It combats fatigue by increasing circulation and decreases bad cholesterol levels by thinning the blood.

Take cayenne in pill form, lest you want a nuclear bomb in your mouth. Guzzle more water as you do. Before long your body will be inured to this explosive supplement.

Some of the most effective and proven to work weight loss pills that contains pepper as one of the main ingredients include Capsiplex and Meratol.

Capsiplex is a fat burning weight loss pill that is clinically proven in studies to burn up to 278 more calories. Read Capsiplex full review here!

Meratol is a carb blocker weight loss pill made to pharmaceutical standards, guaranteed to reduce calorie intake, block 82% carbohydrates, speed up the metabolism and burn 12 times more calories. Read Meratol full review here!

Ginger

What is a very powerful thermogenic supplement, capable of burning plenty of fats; increasing muscular ATP; boosting immunity; guarding liver function; lowering cholesterol; and reducing high blood pressure? Just a little “lethal weapon” called ginger.

Take 2.5 gm of ginger daily, in capsule form if you want to spare yourself from the spiciness. Should you insist on bulk powder, be a little more discriminating in your purchase. Plenty of fakers await your money.

Guarana

Once an “it” thing in bodybuilding supplements, guarana has fallen down from its pedestal. A shame: Guarana has always been known to stimulate lipid migration, facilitating the conversion of fat into energy, and suppress appetite. Yet it has been relegated to astringent products and anti-cellulite creams.

Guarana temporarily lifts body temperature and compels metabolic thermogenesis by stimulating your body’s receptor pathway. This action leads to the simplification of fat deposits in the body into energy.

Your metabolic rate should increase if thermogenesis is spurred by nutritional supplements like guarana. Guarana is partly made up of theobromine and theophylline, compounds associated with raising metabolic rate, to say nothing of suppressing hunger, fighting fatigue, and improving the body’s overall performance.

Guarana can be a good substitute for caffeine because it gives a slower spike in energy.

Vitamin B-9

Also known as folic acid, this vitamin has been pushed to the periphery over the years in bodybuilding. Yet vitamin B-9’s potency has not changed all along, an essential nutrient for cellular repair and function. You see, folic acid is not just for mothers and infants.

It helps the bodybuilder mainly in two ways. First, it aids in the utilization of amino and second, the utilization of sugars. Put another way, this vitamin can aid you in gaining muscle and metabolizing carbohydrates at the same time.

Most people only appreciate the utility of folic acid when they lack it. Folic acid deficiency impairs cellular division and alters protein synthesis. The body’s fastest-growing tissues, e.g. muscles, often take the brunt.

According to Dr. Atkins, you need more than the Recommended Daily Allowance of folic acid, set at 400 micrograms. Both recommendations should be taken cautiously though, because any dose higher than 15mg could lead to difficulty sleeping, stomach upset, skin disorders, and even seizures.

Vitamin C

You probably already know vitamin C as one of the best immune system strengtheners in nature. Taken in hyper-doses, i.e. more than 1000 mg, vitamin C may exhibit reductive properties on cortisol.

This compound hinders the muscle-building properties of testosterone and even compels catabolism, tearing down muscle tissues. You would want to be in an anabolic or muscle-growing condition rather than a catabolic one. To that end, you may consider ramping up your vitamin C intake.

Conclusion

You need to reassess your arsenal against fat and catabolism, foes that never back down for the world. You can emerge triumphant in the battle by putting on a take-no-prisoner demeanor and arming yourself with these secret weapons. Soon the war’s scales will tip on your side.

Learn When Not To Pay Your Medical Bills

These are dark times for healthcare, or more to the point, the people who rely on them. People are getting sicker, fatter by the minute. On average, an American will use his or her health insurance plan 10 times this year. You will in fact probably see a doctor four times this year, more if you have children.

A price tag is attached to all these.

It does not mean you have to pay your medical bills right off the bat. Often, doctors do not bill your health insurance company properly. So they bill you directly. They probably would not take the initiative to give you back the overcharge until you ask for it.

So what to do when you get a bill from your hospital or doctor?

1. Don’t pay it.

At least not right away. It may sound counterintuitive, but just because someone has a stethoscope and an air of authority does not mean you have to fork out money, stat. Most insurance companies usually take 60 to 90 days to process claims – longer if your doctor does not submit bills electronically. Even so, it is not unheard of insurance companies to take 120 days, even five years, to process claims, notwithstanding the mode of submission.

2. Review your Explanation Of Benefits (EOB).

That is, if you had the foresight to hold on to it and keep it somewhere. An EOB tells you upfront what part of a bill your insurance can foot.

Call your insurance company if you can’t place your EOB. Find out what portion of the claim has been paid. Afterwards, settle only the sum that your company has estimated that you are obligated to.

3. Jot everything down.

Make sure to put in writing the names and numbers of anyone you phoned from your insurance company and the time of your call. You’ll never know when you’d be asked to reference it.

4. Contact the provider.

Following a call to your insurance company, contact the provider and query them about the bill. If they appear puzzled, just bring up what the representative from the insurance company told you. Writing down details of this phone call makes great sense. You wouldn’t want to seem reckless with details later, saying, “I talked to someone in your office and she said…”

5. Call insurance company again.

You would also appreciate later that you committed names and other details if this call.

6. Contact the state board.

Once a dispute becomes obvious and you sense that you are being ripped off, it’s time to contact the medical board and the state insurance commissioner.

7. Confirm the mail you send.

Fill out appropriately any letter you receive from your insurance company thereafter. Have it copied and send it back to them ASAP. Then contact them after 10 days to ascertain its receipt.

Who Answers To Whom

State boards keep watch over healthcare professionals. Hospitals, on the other hand, are under the watch of state hospital boards. Insurance companies are policed by the state insurance commission. The Attorney-General has oversight over all.

Glossary

Balance Billing – when a contracted provider charges you the full amount for their services.

This is unlawful. If you can sniff out this activity, give a heads-up to the fraud department of your insurance company. You may also send missives to medical, chiropractic, osteopathic, and other concerned boards about what happened. Your letter, along with many others, is enough to build a case against this provider. Try informing the Attorney-General too.

Quick Billing – when a provider sends you a bill for their services immediately and does not wait for the insurance company to process your claim.

Dual Fee Billing – generally refers to charging varying amounts for otherwise one service.

Capitation – refers to an amount of money that your employer established as the highest payment for any particular benefit. May also refer to the act of giving a fixed amount of money for a doctor to see a certain number of patients. The doctor may even get additional incentives by closing their clinics for a period of time and ignore diagnostic protocols.

ICD-9 – international codes of diagnosis. They convert common diagnostic terms into digits.

CPT – codes for procedure terminology. Doctors charge for these.

Co-payment – amount you are obliged to pay for every visit to a certain provider. It may be immediately related to UCR or the “usual, customary, and reasonable” fees established by insurance companies.

Deductible – amount you should pay before getting the insurance company’s payment. This amount is relative to UCR fees.

Enlighten yourself

Not every doctor is unscrupulous. Many times they are just as unenlightened as you in terms of insurance. So are insurance companies.

Problem comes when doctors and other healthcare professionals bill you improperly. Most patients imagine it is their insurance companies deliberately holding up payment.

Educate yourself and learn to justify your bill before paying it.

8 Simple Nutrition Rules You Should Stick To

Your looks bespeak the kind of food you take. Unhealthy food are known to deprive you of muscle mass and energy while giving you much fats, digestive problems, and skin conditions. A lot has been said about what you should eat and reasons for doing so but you can whittle them down to eight. Here are eight rules that can help you bulk up, lose fat, and grow stronger.

1. Eat breakfast

If you energize yourself at your waking hour, you’d find yourself less ravenous throughout the day. So get into the habit of eating breakfast. It sets a trend for the day as it compels you to choose healthier meals thereafter. Go for omelets, cottage cheese, and smoothies. Here are a few more healthy breakfast ideas and tips.

2. Eat every 3 hours

In addition to your three square meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner), eat two meals, one after workout and one before bed. Eat two snacks in between too. Be sure to stick to a schedule for these meals, to train your body to become hungry at the appointed time. Example: 8 am, 11 am, 2 pm, 5 pm, 7 pm, 8 pm, and 10 pm.

Consequently, you’d be less hungry and have fewer cravings. Unlike taking in a few large meals, plenty of small meals can slim down your waistline. You’d be satisfied faster. Overlong intervals between meals tend to make you overeat.

3. A protein for each meal

To build and keep muscle, you need protein. It is also a great weight loss aid because it has the highest thermic effect and makes you feel full longer.

“How much protein should I eat?” you ask again. Aim for a gram per pound of your body weight. If you weigh 200 lbs, then eat 200 g daily.

To meet your requirements ever day, choose whole protein sources for your meals. Good choices include red meat like beef, lamb and pork; eggs; poultry like chicken and turkey; fish like tuna, sardines and salmon; and dairy like milk, cheese and yogurt. Whey is not really needed but it makes for a good post-workout shake. If you’re vegan or vegetarian, you can research for other protein sources.

4. Never forget fruits and vegetables

Incorporate fruits and vegetables into every meal. Calories are the least you have to worry about; fruits and vegetables are most certainly low in them. eat them to the hilt without having to worry about weight gain. They will help you gain vitamins, minerals, fiber, and antioxidants instead.

Great fruit and veggie choices are apples, bananas, beans, berries, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, oranges, pineapple, pumpkin, roman lettuce, spinach, and tomatoes chicory.

5. Only eat carbs after workout

You cannot completely boot out carbs from your diet. You still need it for energy. Just don’t exceed what you need. Eat whole grain and avoid white carbs. The best carb blocker is non other than Meratol – blocking up to a massive 82% on carb intake. If you’re scrawny, eat carbs not only immediately after workout but also post-workout, more if necessary.

6. Eat healthy fats

Fats of the nutritious kind hasten loss of fats and improve your fat loss dividends. As they are slow to digest, fats can be satiating, not to mention affordable. Stay away from margarine and trans fats.

Conversely, go for saturated and monounsaturated fats. The former, e.g. real butter, red meat, and whole eggs, is known to improve levels of testosterone, which is needed for muscle building. The latter, e.g. extra virgin olive oil, olives, and mixed nuts, guards you against cancers and cardiovascular ailments.

Polyunsaturated fats may also help you raise testosterone levels, lose fat, and reduce inflammation. Fish oil and ground flaxseeds are best choices.

7. Hydrate

Since weight training gets you to lose so much water from sweating, interrupting muscle recovery, make sure to drink water. Other than preventing dehydration, drinking water can also avert hunger since it fills your stomach somehow.

Strive to drink a gallon of water daily. Drink a cup first thing upon rising from bed. Have two more cups in every meal. Also drink lots in the course of the workout.

Then again, you should be on your guard against water intoxication. Don’t go overboard like guzzling three gallons of H₂O in 20 minutes.

8. Almost all of the time, eat whole food

Eat whole food 90% of the time. Whole food refers to unrefined, unprocessed fodder or one close to its most vigorous state. On the contrary, processed foods are what they are, usually with sugar, trans fats, sodium, corn syrup, and chemical additives. Example: fruit bars, pizza, sausages, and frozen meals.

You need not eat healthy 100% of the time. The difference in health benefits between eating healthy 90% of the time and all the time is middling. So feel free to eat 4 unhealthy meals out of 42 meals every week, for the same reason you can down sweet beverages and alcohol 10 percent of the time.

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Physical Activity Can Make You Cancer-Free Longer

Ficklest of all fickle diseases, cancer has a nasty way of recurring long after you’ve believed yourself to be free of the affliction. Physical activity may just stop it in its tracks however.

Mounting evidence has found a link between physical activity – any movement using muscles that improves fitness level – and reduced risk of cancer recurrence. In consequence then, physical activity may increase your cancer survival rate. If anything, ramping up physical activeness may help you cope with adverse effects attendant on cancer treatment, e.g. depression and fatigue. It may even reduce your risk for other conditions like heart disease and diabetes.

UK-based cancer organization Macmillan has recently enlisted the support of BAFTA-winning actress and comedian Jo Brand for Move More, its campaign to get cancer patients moving.

“People will look at me and go, why’s that fat, unfit, menopausal, middle-aged woman telling us what to do? She surely never takes any exercise. Well you’re wrong there, because I do!”

Brand is joined by no less than the National Cancer Institute in America and the American College of Sports Medicine in promoting physical activeness during and after cancer treatment. Whereas in the past doctors would tell you to rest in excess following treatment, times have changed. Lately, the two organizations have advocated the resumption of daily activities as soon as possible after treatment and slowly increasing to recommended levels of physical activity.

“I’m just trying to spread the word and upturn the myth that actually you should be resting after cancer treatment. You shouldn’t, you should be getting out and doing any kind of exercise you can. You don’t have to run a marathon, but you just have to up your activity levels,” Brand said.

Some evidence suggested that taking up physical activity and retaining a leaner body may cut the risk of a cancer returning after remission. In the US, a study showed that breast cancer patients who walked for 3-5 hours on a weekly average cut their risk for recurrence. In another research, brisk walking for a minimum of three hours weekly has been shown to cut the risk of developing early-stage prostate cancer.

These researches are inconclusive and wanting of more duplicable evidence however. Even so, there are some telling indicators that physical activity has an unsubtle effect on cancer. Even the smallest raise in your physical activity can make all the difference.

Benefits of physical activity

Latching on to physical activity may compel cancer to remit and help you recover from its oft-stressful treatments. Physical activity holds significant health corollaries against cancer, many of which you may hitherto have not heard of. If you knew about these benefits, you would truly be motivated to move more like Jo Brand.

Done regularly, physical activity can help manage, if not thwart, adverse effects that may arise from cancer treatment. It is just as recommended thereafter, seeing as some side effects emerge as late as years following treatment. Some side effects are even permanent.

Cancer therapy is notorious, among others, for leaving you fatigued for months after treatment. Moderate or even just light physical activity, e.g. short walks, yoga, and tai chi, can help you pick up energy. However, start slow and slowly increase intensity, lest you end up tiring yourself even more.

Physical activity can also help control stress, anxiety, and depression: ever-present problems resulting from cancer therapy. It does so by compelling the secretion of mood-enhancing hormones, i.e. endorphins, in the body. At the same time, it helps hold back the body’s stress hormones, making for a better night’s sleep, if anything.

Endorphins also help alleviate joint pain caused by certain hormonal treatments prescribed with chemotherapy. Physical activity of itself can help relieve joint pain by strengthening your muscles and improving your range of movement, which may be limited by certain kinds of cancer surgery. The more flexible joints are, the less likely they are to be painful.

Walking, dancing, resistance training, and other weight-bearing activities can help strengthen your bones, especially when they’re at their frailest. Osteoporosis or bone thinning is known to result from hormonal treatments for prostate and breast cancer as well as chemotherapy-induced menopause.

Resistance training, on the other hand, is the solution to making your muscles stronger during and after cancer treatment. Muscle strength declines during this period because of longer hours of bed rest and steroids given with chemotherapy.

Steroids in chemotherapy can conspire with your sedentary lifestyle to make you gain weight, exacerbating the situation. Obesity and overweight heightens your risk for breast, bowel and womb cancers. In light of this, being more physically active can decrease your risk of developing a new type of cancer, while maintaining a healthy weight can slash the possibility of a cancer coming back.

Being more physically activity may help you regain your pre-treatment appetite too. Take short walks every day, and you would see for yourself. In addition, physical activity alongside a high-fiber diet helps counter constipation caused by particular chemotherapy drugs.

Regular exercise, particularly aerobic activities, may hold positive dividends for your heart. It preempts the risk of developing heart-related conditions, usually brought about by chemotherapy agents (e.g. epirubicin and doxorubicin) and radiotherapy administered too close to the heart. Furthermore, regular physical activity can decrease your susceptibility to other deadly conditions like high blood pressure, kidney disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes.

Taking up physical activity today

Should you choose to become more physically active during or after treatment, you should be the arbiter of the amount of activity you can realistically do. Talk to a cancer specialist about appropriate physical activities for you concurrent with and subsequent to treatment.

An activity may simply be a question of lessening periods of rest. You may choose from a range of activities involving anything from walking to gardening to weightlifting. It is up to you how much of these you should do. Take into account your likes, fitness level, and other circumstances.

You may consider taking up physical activity with other individuals, e.g. family members and exercise group mates.  Also consider being active outside an enclosed space, as in a park or a forest trail.

Whether you are living with or are in convalescence from cancer, physical activity is relatively safe. At first, you may feel testy about taking your physical activeness to another level, especially if you have been leading a sedentary lifestyle for a long time. You may feel overwhelmed, with not so much an idea as how to start.

Remember that any amount of physical activity is light years better than not moving at all. Physical activity offers infinite, hitherto-unknown opportunities for cancer recovery. If Jo Brand can do it, her pounds and all, so can you.