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A short-cut to clear, smooth and healthy skin!

It is a daily fight to keep your skin healthy and smooth. But help could come from an unexpected quarter. Welcome to the world of glyconutrients!

You are 25 but look 35. Blame it on your skin! The skin is the largest organ in the body, and the most exposed. Pollution, ultraviolet rays in the Sun’s light, stress, lack of essential vitamins, all contribute to wear and tear your skin.

Most people don’t take proper care of their skin – either due to hectic work or due to pure ignorance. Lack of proper skin care can result in more skin-related diseases and allergies. Proper skin care is important for avoiding cold sores, spots, and skin cancer. Beauty therapies and skin care lotions are only effective up to a point when it comes to keeping your skin soft and smooth.

Exposure to sunlight causes loss of water in our body which leads to dryness of the skin. This results in the skin losing its elasticity and ‘sagging.’ This loss of elasticity normally happens with ageing. However, changing climatic conditions and atmospheric conditions such as ozone depletion cause the harmful ultraviolet B rays to cause more damage to our skin. This is where nutrition comes in.

In order to get the right skin, it is important to look at the part played by nutrition in skin care. That translates as getting more nutritional food into your diet. Lack of proper nutrition may result in the loss of natural oils present in your skin. Fresh vegetables, fruits, fresh juice, cereals, etc. contain vitamins essential for a healthy skin.

Vitamin E is said to be a skin-care vitamin. Apart from vitamin E, vitamins such as A and C are also essential for a healthy skin. These vitamins contain antioxidants which help the skin to maintain its natural oils. These antioxidants help to reduce the tendency of the skin to age. Ultimately they help fight the punishing effect that the climatic changes have on our skins.

But where do you get the vitamins and nutrients necessary for your skin’s health? Not from your daily diet. For various reasons, people cannot get the right quantity of vitamins and other nutrients into the body through their normal diet. And synthetic vitamins are out.

Enter glyconutrients. Eight essential sugars have been discovered to be the essential building blocks for our body cells recently. There is a lot of research going on about these essential sugars and the larger group of saccharides of which they are a part, called glyconutrients. These eight simple sugars are responsible for cell-to-cell communication necessary for keeping the body’s glands and organs, including the skin, healthy.

Skin care ointments and lotions containing glyconutrients are the best alternative to any beauty therapy. The intake glyconutrients is equally important for health care as well as skin care.

Consult your doctor or dietician, exercise, and drink a lot of water. And give your skin its daily dose of glyconutrients!

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Superfoods for Healthy and Natural Conception

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot about this topic, because I’m now 39 and want to have a family. I have been trying all kinds of things over the years and have done a lot of research. What I’ve found across the board is that super-foods are where it’s at for ultimate health whether you are trying to conceive or not.

In both the
female and male body, the balance of hormones has to be just right for
conception to occur and for pregnancy to proceed. Nutrients that are in excess
or that are in depletion can throw off balance and disrupt the pregnancy
process. When we can choose whole foods for our diet, we are increasing our
chances of obtaining the most nutrients we need. Whole foods include fruits,
fresh vegetables, unrefined grains, beans, nuts, seeds, eggs, and small whole
fish.
 It’s important to make sure
you’re choosing healthy whole 
super-foods that have an abundant supply of each
of the following vitamins and minerals.
 


B-complex vitamins need to be replenished all the time, as they are water
soluble and passed out of the body with urination. Vitamins B6 and B12 are
particularly important for fertility and hormonal function. Fortified cereals,
fortified soy-based meat substitutes, baked potatoes with skin, bananas,
light-meat chicken and turkey, eggs, and spinach are all great sources of B6
and beef, clams, mussels, crabs, salmon, poultry, soybeans, and fortified foods
have healthy amounts of B12.


Folic Acid, also known as folate, is essential for the production of genetic
material in conjunction with vitamin B12. The body cannot store Folic Acid so
it must be replenished regularly. It is found naturally in dark green leafy
vegetables, apricots, avocados, carrots, egg yolks, liver, melons, whole
grains, and yeast’s.


Zinc is an essential component of genetic material and plays an important role
in the fertility of men (affecting sperm count) and women. Zinc is vital to
healthy cell division, so healthy zinc levels are essential at conception. Zinc
occurs naturally in oats, rye, almonds, pumpkin seeds and peas.


Essential Fatty Acids (EFA’s) work on every system of the body and are
essential for healthy hormone production. EFA’s can prevent blood from clotting
inappropriately which can be helpful to women who have suffered from recurrent
miscarriages (if clotting was an issue). They are primarily found in fish oils.


Vitamin E is an antioxidant. Low vitamin E levels can be a
cause for sub-fertility in men and women. Found in wheat germ cereal, sunflower
seeds, dark green leafy vegetables, nuts, brown rice, eggs, milk, organ meats,
soy beans and sweet potatoes. Be careful with Vitamin E as well because too much can be harmful.

Vitamin C is an antioxidant, helpful to sperm production and may play a role in
healthy ovulation. Vitamin C is essential to the normal healthy functioning of
many systems in the human body. Excellent sources include black currants, raw
red peppers, guavas and citrus fruits such as oranges and grapefruits. Other
good sources include strawberries, kiwifruit, broccoli and brussel sprouts.

Iron aids in the production of red blood cells and carries oxygen around our
bodies. The body can lose iron through periods, childbirth or blood loss (including blood donation). Leafy green
vegetables, beans, shellfish, red meat, poultry, and soy food products are all
good sources of iron.

Vitamin A is an antioxidant essential at conception for the
developing embryo. Natural sources include carrots, tomatoes, cabbage, and spinach.
I recommend going to a naturopath to have your levels tested to see what you are deficient in before adding any unnecessary supplements. If you are adding extra natural food to your diet however, there should be no harm in that. 
If you simply do not have the time to be planning and eating perfectly all the time, a great insurance is to supplement with Athletic Greens. They have taken all the high quality super-foods and freeze dried it into a powder. It tastes delicious, gives you the instant energy you would get from a freshly squeezed juice, with no mess, for less than $2 per day. 
Here’s to your health!

Easy & Tasty, High Protein Veggie Nuggets | www.4hourbodygirl.com
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