Natural Health Solutions

In part one of this series on How to Have Clear and Healthy Skin, we reviewed the makeup and functions of human skin, and presented 9 natural ways to promote healthy skin.

This article looks at the powerful influence that your emotions have on the health of your skin.

Before we take a close look at how to use principles of natural skin care to promote clear and healthy skin, please consider the following facts about your skin:

Many years ago, a patient of mine who had traveled extensively around the world told me about a group of people he encountered that ate red beets, carrots, and sweet potatoes almost every day to help protect their skin against sunburn.

If you are underweight for your body structure, it's possible that you could experience significant improvement in your health by gaining and maintaining healthy weight.

A healthy body weight often indicates that your major organ systems - including your muscles and bones - are well developed. Of course, being at a healthy weight for your structure doesn't guarantee that your major organ systems are functioning well, but a healthy body weight does decrease the likelihood that you might have or develop osteoporosis or problems with regulating your blood sugar and insulin levels.

Before we take a look at some of the best and worst foods for your heart, let's make one point clear: a healthy heart is useless without several other well functioning organ systems.

A strong heart can only keep you healthy if the following parts of your body are functioning properly:

• Nervous system (cerebrum, midbrain, spinal cord, vagus nerve, and sensory fibers)
• Respiratory system (nasal passageway, nasopharynx, oropharynx, trachea, bronchi, bronchioles, and alveoli)
• Digestive system (digestive tract, liver, gall bladder, and pancreas)
• Blood vessels (arteries, arterioles,capillaries, venules, and veins)

Assuming that all of the above components in your body are functional, some of the best foods for your heart and blood vessels are:

Before you use a conventional lice-treatment shampoo for yourself or your children, consider this: Many lice-treatment shampoos contain ingredients that have been banned as agricultural insecticides and are extremely toxic. For instance, the insecticide lindane, once used to protect crops such as barley, wheat, and corn from pests, is no longer used by farms in Canada, and has been banned in over 50 countries around the world. But it can probably still be found at your local drug store, in bottles of lice shampoo.

In 2002, the state of California in the United States banned lindane from being used in pharmaceutical products due to reports that the chemical was causing skin irritations, dizziness, headaches, convulsions, and even death.

Before I share a great little tip on how to stop a sore throat from progressing into a week-long cold, please know that periodically experiencing a cold or the flu can actually be helpful to your health. If you have no idea why this is, please view the following popular article that I wrote on this topic:

What Most Doctors Won't Tell You About Colds and Flus

You just won't get this information on why colds and flus can help you stay healthy over the long run from medical textbooks and mainstream media - please consider sharing it with family and friends.

Based on my work experiences over the past several years, I'm convinced that osteoporosis is one of the most misunderstood health conditions that we know of. The purpose of this article is to help you identify the essential choices that you must make on a regular basis to minimize your risk of developing osteoporosis.

If you're male and over the age of 20, the best time to get serious about taking care of your prostate gland is now. Conventional medical guidelines recommend annual digital (finger) rectal examinations to screen for prostate enlargement and cancer, beginning in your 41st year. In recent years, I've observed an increasing number of men in their 20s and 30s exhibiting symptoms of prostate gland dysfunction.

If I could choose just one exercise to do regularly to prevent low back pain, it would be the yoga pose that you see in this picture. This simple pose - often called a form of "Warrior Pose" - combines two actions that I have found to be critical for preventing chronic low back pain.

The first action is to stretch your hamstrings. Your hamstrings are the thick muscles that line the back of your thighs. When you do Warrior Pose, the leg that you have rooted on the ground experiences an effective hamstring stretch as your other leg rises behind you.