Gum disease, bleeding gums, gum pockets, do you have any of these? Have you ever been told that you need a ‘scaling and root planing’ by your dentist?

I’ve been told that. I said no. I did my research. What I found convinced me that I definitely did not want a ‘scaling and root planing’.

The dentist and hygienist tried to convince me that I was in danger of losing my teeth and that I needed this procedure. They were partly right. Gum disease is definitely something that can make you lose your teeth. It is a serious condition.

Gingivitis or worse, periodontal disease, is actually dangerous to your overall health. Bacteria can get into the blood stream via infected gums.

That is scary. It really is.

I have good news. The next time I went to the dentist they were impressed. They even said I didn’t need that ‘scaling and root planing’ anymore. I was also warned that I needed to ‘keep up’ what I was doing.

What did I do? I bought and started using a Hydrofloss. This device is nothing short of amazing in my opinion. I use it daily and I love how it takes care of my gums. My gums don’t bleed anymore. My gums are happy and it shows.

If you have gum disease or bleeding gums, you are not alone. If you were told you need a gum treatment, such as a ‘scaling and root planing’, you are also not alone.

The truth is that a key piece of preventive oral health care is not commonly known by many people. It is actually important to ‘wash’ the neck of the tooth daily. Brushing doesn’t do the job and flossing may not be enough for many or even most people.

It is important to wash around the neck of the tooth. I’ve even heard that it was important to do it with salt water. I don’t use salt water, but I do use a jet stream of water to do the job.

I’ve also found that just using water was not enough for me. I add an oxygenated mouth wash. I add one capful to my Hydrofloss tray on the second pass. It works great, in my opinion.

I didn’t mind spending money on a Hydrofloss, especially if it meant that I was going to keep my teeth. One misconception is that tooth loss is caused by cavities. In most cases, a cavity will not cause the loss of a tooth. Gum disease is primarily responsible for tooth loss in most instances.

The Hydrofloss is the only oral irrigator that I have tried. It worked for me and I will continue to use it.

The Hydrofloss uses magnetized water to clean around the neck of the tooth. Some dentists say that it isn’t necessary to use magnetized water. I read the research and felt that the Hydrofloss was built on sound principles that had been tested.

Whether the magnetized water makes a difference or not doesn’t matter. I know that the Hydrofloss works based on my experience. Therefore, I’m going to keep on using it.

How much does the Hydrofloss cost? It frequently retails for 129 dollars. However, you can purchase the Hydrofloss for only 99 dollars including a bonus oxygenated formula.

Taking care of our gums is something that is very important both for the health of our bodies and for keeping our teeth. With the Hydrofloss, I feel much more confident about my dental health.

This article is for information purposes only. If you have any health problems, including gingivitis or gum disease, see your dentist or doctor for proper diagnosis and treatment.

David Snape writes for ToBeInformed.com You can read more about the Hydrofloss there. ToBeInformed.com is a site about all kinds of health related topics including gingivitis. copyright 2006 all rights reserved.

Tags: irrigator, oral irrigator, gum disease, gum pockets, gum infection, gingivitis, periodontal disease, hydrofloss, waterpik

I’ve recently created a new page on fat loss as opposed to weight loss. Don’t get me wrong, I think weight loss is fine but I want to make a subtle distinction.

Weight Loss and Fat Loss can be two different things but they don’t have to be. For example if you lose water weight, that is the kind of weight loss that has nothing to do with fat loss.

So it is possible to lose weight without losing body fat. Unfortunately, what we want to lose is fat and not much else.

Water weight loss is temporary, it will come back. Fat weight loss is entirely different.

There are so many concepts that go along with fat loss that it would be hard to discuss them all here. You can sign up for my weight loss email list to learn more about fat loss.

One major concept to fat loss is that you want to be aware of your body’s short term energy supply. When it is full to the brim, there is little chance of burning off fat.

Therefore, you want to deplete that short term energy supply before working out. Once you have depleted it, the body will look to its fat reserves for energy. That is exactly where you want to be.

However, if you eat carbs before working out, your body will have plenty of short term energy reserves and will see not reason to tap into your fat storage supply.

Consistently tapping into the fat storage supply is one key to fat weight loss. Here are two simple ideas to help. After sleeping all night, your body has used much of its short term energy up, it will be easier to get it to burn fat at that time. The second idea is to walk for about 45 minutes before a workout. That will help burn through the short term energy supply.

No time for walking? How about getting out in the yard and raking leaves or something like that? There are plenty of alternatives. I think you get the idea.

There are many aspects to weight loss, this is just one of them. The more you learn, the better equipped you will be to succeed. It may not be enough to get a gym membership. If you have a burning drive to lose weight, just getting a membership may be enough. But, most of us need to know why we are doing something to get motivated in the first place. Once we know the why, we can do it from there. Spend time finding your why.

The reason I think you should join my fat loss / weight loss email list is that you will get a daily dose of fat loss / weight loss talk in your email. You can read a little every day. The key concepts will be hit upon day after day until you are able to burn them into your long term memory.

You can save the emails in a file and refer back to them for motivation or inspiration. You can also revisit your favorites that way. Once you go through the whole series you could resubscribe and go through the series again.

This is a good opportunity for you to get started. Best of all the cost to join the email list is FREE.

This article is for information purposes only. It is not intended to provide advice on weight loss. See your doctor for advice on weight loss and before you change your diet or take up any form of exercise.

David Snape – copyright 2006 all rights reserved (no copy)

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One of the key concepts in weight loss is that one wants to lose fat and not just weight. Losing fat is the goal while preserving other types of body tissue. In particular, we want to maintain as much of our muscle tissue as possible.

One reason to conserve muscle tissue is that it burns the most calories in the resting state. So if we are sitting around and have good muscle mass we will burn calories or energy off at a higher rate than someone with less muscle mass or tone.

The second reason is that weight loss causes a loss of muscle tissue, so we want to counteract that as much as possible by actually lifting weights or doing muscle taxing activities such as isometric resistance or something of that sort.

Again, we want avoid a lot of weight loss at the expense of muscle tone or tissue. If we want to lose weight, we also want to look great. So losing muscle tissue could cause us to look gaunt or under nourished and we don’t want THAT look, do we?

We need to pay attention to our muscles. There are two things that can help our muscles during weight loss.

One is the intake of enough protein or amino acids. The reason for this is that our bodies need a fresh source of amino acids (in combination they are called proteins) once every 8 hours or so. If the body does not have this amino acid supply once every 8 hours, it will start to take the protein straight out of our muscles, causing a loss of muscle mass.

The other consideration with this is that if we do take in a protein, it needs to be a complete protein. A complete protein is one in which all of the essential amino acids are present.

‘Essential’ in nutritional terms means that it is something our body cannot synthesize on its own. In the case of amino acids, a human body uses 22 amino acids, 13 of which it can produce on it’s own from other sources. The other 9 are essential, meaning they absolutely have to come into the body via eating. ( or intravenously, but we aren’t there, are we? ) If they aren’t in our food, our bodies will not be able to build new muscle proteins.

Technically speaking there are only 8 truly essential amino acids. One is semi-essential in adults. That means that there are only certain conditions when it becomes ‘essential’.

Anyway, you need a complete protein, one that has all of the essential amino acids in it. I mention this because we can’t just look at a food label and think we are getting what we need just because it says it has protein in it.

Animal meat and milk, including skim milk, have all of the essential amino acids in them. Soy milk does NOT have all of the essential amino acids. Keep that in mind. It is not a true replacement for cow’s milk for that reason.

If one is a vegetarian, he need not fear. There are food combinations that can help one get all of the essential amino acids at one meal. (I know some people don’t think they all need to be present at one meal, I disagree.) Anyway, as vegetarians, we ought to already know about food combining.

Weight bearing or strengthening exercises are necessary during weight loss to maintain muscle tone and mass. All of the essential amino acids must be present in our food approximately once every 8 hours. Eating should actually be more frequent than that for another reason.

Here are two additional sources for weight loss information aside from my free weight loss list:

Weight Loss E-Book         Weight Loss on Audio

This article is not meant to give advice. It reflects the author’s opinion only. Consult your physician if you need advice on weight loss or any other health issue.

David Snape writes for ToBeInformed.com. You can join his weight loss email list to have more weight loss articles sent to you.

Copyright 2006. All Rights Reserved (do not copy)

 

Tags: weight loss, weightloss, fat loss, complete protein, amino acids, essential, nutrition, muscle mass

I ran into a person at work who told me he lost 100 pounds in about 10 months. Since weight loss is something that interests me a great deal, I asked him to tell me his story.

Bill, not his real name, told me that when he left the military he weighed 210 pounds which wasn’t bad for his height and frame. The problem came in when his civilian work became a more of a ‘desk’ job. Working at a desk causes one to get less calorie burning exercise.

In a short period of time, Bill weighed over 300 lbs. Much like Morgan Spurlock’s experiment with eating nothing but fast food for a month, Bill’s ‘bad’ cholesterol level was through the roof. His doctor told him he needed to do something immediately. The doctor gave him a basic diet to follow. The diet was a common sense, low fat, nutritious diet.

Bill doesn’t remember everything that was on the list, but basically he learned to look at food labels and stay away from foods that were high in fat. He also ate a lot of lean meat like chicken as well as salads, fruits and vegetables. He was on a mission. He quickly dropped weight, so much in fact that his doctor told him he needed to eat an occasional piece of pizza.

Bill said that he got down to about 175 pounds eventually, which was too thin for his height and frame. At that point he began eating foods with a little more fat. But he also promised himself he would never get that bad again.

Today Bill is at a healthy weight with healthy cholesterol levels. Weight loss is not impossible, others have managed it. Let this story serve as a bit of motivation. It can be done!

Bill didn’t need a magic formula, he just got an ‘eat and do not eat’ list from his doctor and followed it. He said that he even continued to drink beer during that time.

One key component to this story is that Bill worked out like crazy. He didn’t do any traditional weight lifting but got lots of aerobic activity in. Bill was in three bands and he would play drums for 3 or 4 hours straight per night. That was his exercise. And it worked for him.

Exercise doesn’t have to be what you traditionally think of as exercise. Typically, people think that exercise has to be boring and tedious. Things such as weight lifting, running, treadmill, and exercise machines are what come to mind when I think about working out. As Bill’s example shows, exercise can be something you love to do, like playing drums. He just did more of what he already liked to do.

There is one thing that should be considered here. It is indeed great to engage in calorie burning exercise, but you will lose some muscle mass while losing weight and to counteract that it is a good idea to do some form of weight lifting or muscle working exercise. Doing something that is constructive to muscle growth is a really good idea anytime that you are losing weight.

See your doctor before taking up any form of exercise or attempting weight loss. This article is not intended to provide advice. Your doctor will provide that to you.

David writes about weight loss at ToBeInformed.com Sign up for his weight loss emails. You can also find more weight loss articles and information on his site. (do not copy)

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They come from plants. Certainly, they are much, much closer to the original plant than some synthetic version of a plant chemical made in a lab, patented and sold as a prescription drug.

Herbal remedies have been with the human race since time immemorial. Do they work? I guess it depends on who you talk to. It seems that they wouldn’t be around if they didn’t work at all.

I know that when I drink Bilberry juice, my ability to see sharply at night is enhanced. I remember noticing the same effect after juicing carrots.

Personally, I believe there are chemicals in plants that are good for the human body. I feel comfortable saying that based on my personal experiences plus a little common sense.

There are indeed all kinds of herbal remedies available both in health food stores and at large retail chain stores, including the big chain with the name that starts with “W”. Clearly, there are a lot of people out there using herbal remedies or they wouldn’t be marketed so strongly.

In fact, there are entire books devoted to herbal remedies and what they can do for the health of the body. If you are interested in herbal remedies you could pick up a few books and get some ideas from them.

My sister told me a story about going to visit a Native American Indian. When they went to visit him, they noticed there was a horse out front in a fenced in yard. My nephew noticed that the horse’s leg was bleeding.

They told the man this after they knocked on his door. He went out to the yard, crushed a leaf from a plant that he picked from the yard and rubbed it onto the horse’s leg and the bleeding stopped. I do not know what plant he used.

Many people believe that Echinacea can help fight off invading bacteria by boosting the immune system. There are similar claims about Goldenseal and other plants.

As I mentioned above, many of today’s prescribed medicines are simply synthetic copies of chemicals found in plants. They do it that way partly to control the dosages of the chemical that comes in the pill. They standardize them for prescription purposes.

However, another reason is that plant chemicals cannot be patented because they occur in nature. One cannot patent something found in nature. Therefore, they create a synthetic copy in a laboratory somewhere that can be patented. Then they mass produce the drug and sell it in the marketplace.

One argument against this way of manufacturing drugs was very interesting to me when I heard it. The idea was that plant chemicals do not come in isolated, concentrated form in nature. The speculation was that a plant may heal due to a combination of chemicals inside it, rather than simply a single chemical. This may make it more effective at lower dosages and perhaps healthier to use, since you are not getting a high does of a single powerful chemical in a pill.

This article is for information purposes only. If you have or think you have a health problem, consult your doctor for proper diagnosis and treatment.

David Snape writes for ToBeInformed.com You can read more about herbal remedies here. You can also sign up for David’s Health Line email list . ToBeInformed.com is a site supportive of health, fitness and wellness.

Tags: herbal, herbal remedies, native remedies, natural remedies