Lose Weight

Low-fat living

Some of the benefits of low-fat living are the result of weight loss. Less fat in your diet means less fat on your body. If you're overweight, sensible low-fat eating combined with regular activity is a safe, natural way to lasting weight loss without starving, feeling deprived or obsessing about eating.

Here are some of the benefits confirmed by the most recent studies:

• Better self-esteem
• Less joint pain
• Lower blood pressure and cholesterol
• A lower risk of developing gout, varicose veins and work-related injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome
• A decrease in your risk of heart attack stroke, diabetes and cancer-four of the top ten leading causes of death in the United States.

But weight loss isn't the only reason to cut the fat from your diet. Even if your weight is normal, adopting a low-fat diet still reduces your risk of serious illness. It can also lead to fewer backaches and a stronger immune system to ward off colds and recover from injury. And since good eating habits are as contagious as bad ones, your spouse and children will benefit from your example. Teaching your family healthy habits is a sound investment in their future health--one that will continue to payoff for the rest of their lives.

Obesity is a complex condition with genetic, psychological and behavioral components, so there's no easy explanation for why so many people can't seem to shake the excess weight. Many of us assume that heavy people simply eat too much, but studies show that overweight people, as a group, don't eat any more than thin people do. They do eat differently, however: Thin people get most of their calories from carbohydrates and lean proteins. Overweight people get more of their calories from fat.

Replacing fats with carbohydrates or lean protein also has a terrific effect on your metabolism. Every time you eat, you initiate the thermic effect of food (TEF)-a temporary increase in your metabolism to help you digest and absorb nutrients.

The TEF is greatest following a meal or snack containing lots of complex carbohydrates and a moderate amount of protein and much lower after a high-fat meal. This is why many scientists consider complex carbohydrates and protein "heat generating" foods. And eating these "hotter" foods means you burn more calories.

As far as your metabolism is concerned, eating a high-carbohydrate snack is like tossing a load of dry, crackling leaves on a campfire: The flame leaps up and consumes the fuel quickly and efficiently. If you have a snack that's high in fat, it's like using kindling that's damp: The fire has to struggle to burn it, and you end up with more smoke than heat.

Day after day, low-fat meal after low-fat meal, that extra calorie burn can translate into slow but significant weight loss. In fact, some researchers believe that by switching from a diet that gets 40 percent of its calories from fat to one that's 20 to 25 percent fat, an average, active person can lose body fat without cutting back on total calories.

Research shows that a low-fat diet increases the number of disease-fighting white blood cells, your body's first line of defense against infection. These immune system benefits may be the reason that people who eat less fat are less prone to certain types of cancer.

Studies also suggest that low-fat eating can prevent gallstones-pebble like particles that form in the gallbladder, a pear-shaped organ located below the liver. Most common in men and women over 35, gallstones can cause jaundice and severe abdominal pain if they escape from the gallbladder - a serious condition that often requires surgery.

A low-fat diet may even be a weapon in the fight against osteoporosis, the "brittle-bone disease" that incapacitates thousands of elderly people each year. Results are preliminary, but one study shows that women who eat lean are less likely to suffer bone fractures than those who eat fat.

There is even some evidence that a low-fat diet may reduce the severity of complications associated with multiple sclerosis.

Matters of the heart and blood pressure

Perhaps the best-known benefit of a low-fat diet is its effect on your heart and blood vessels. Heart disease is the leading cause of death among men and women.

Most heart attacks are the result of gradual changes in the circulatory system that develop over many years. These changes include atherosclerosis, a gradual hardening and thickening of the blood vessels due to an accumulation of plaque, a fatty, waxy substance that builds up over years of sedentary living and poor eating. Plaque restricts the flow of blood through your arteries. At the same time, people with heart disease are more prone to forming blood clots, and in an artery that's already narrowed by plaque, one of these clots can be enough to stop blood flow entirely. The result is a myocardial infarction-what we call a heart attack.

Doctors have long known that a diet high in saturated fat is a primary cause of atherosclerosis and that cutting the fat from your diet can slow the process or even reverse it.

A low-fat diet can also reduce your risk of high blood pressure, which is another major risk factor for heart disease. If you're overweight, one of the most reliable ways for you to bring down your blood pressure is to shed some of those excess pounds of body fat.

But even if your weight is normal, trimming the fat from your diet may still help control your blood pressure. Some research shows that a low-fat diet can reduce blood pressure, with or without weight loss. Epidemiologists (those who study disease in populations of people) have observed that high blood pressure is much less common in many less-developed countries, where people generally eat less fat and more complex carbohydrates than Americans do.

People who eat a high-fat diet also have a greater tendency to form blood clots that can block the coronary arteries-another major risk factor for heart disease. This is one area where cutting back on fat brings quick results.

In a small study of young women with high cholesterol, switching to a low-fat diet for only five months reduced their chances of forming blood clots, thus cutting their risk of dying from a heart attack by about 30 percent.

Good circulation has other, less obvious benefits. Regardless of age, men who follow a low-fat diet are less likely to experience impotence than those whose arteries are gunked up with plaque. Clogged arteries have even been implicated in backaches. Autopsies show that people whose abdominal arteries are thick with plaque tend to have deterioration in the disks of the lower back, which is associated with lower back pain.

The cancer connection

Fat, whether it's marbling your steak or comfortably nestled around your waist, may also increase your risk of developing certain types of cancer.

Prostate cancer, the second most common cancer among American men, has been linked to fat intake. Researchers have known for a long time that prostate cancer is much less common in countries where the traditional diet is low in saturated fat-the kind found in animal products like meat, cheese, butter and whole milk. They also know that when men from Poland or Japan, where saturated fat intake is low and prostate cancer is rare, move to North America, their risk increases dramatically. The culprit, experts believe, is our all-American, extra-cheese-please, high-fat diet.

What's more, our let-the-good-times-roll approach to eating may even contribute to cancers with obvious environmental causes, like skin cancer and lung cancer. Two of the most common cancers in the United States, both of these are linked to dangerous behaviors--excessive sun exposure and cigarette smoking. Yet these may not be the only factors that determine who develops them.

A study of 76 people with skin cancer found that those who ate a low-fat diet were much less likely to develop new precancerous lesions than those who ate a high-fat diet.

Immune system and diabetes

Being overweight affects your immune system, your body's built-in defense against all types of illness, including cancer. A number of studies indicate that overweight people have weaker immune systems than people of normal weight. The overweight person generally takes longer to recover from surgery than a person of average weight. And most ominously, someone who's overweight may be less successful at killing off the abnormal cells that, if allowed to run rampant, develop into cancer.

And for women, abdominal fat poses a particular threat. It affects production of a protein called sex hormone-binding globulin, which binds tightly with estrogen and carries it in the bloodstream. A woman with abdominal obesity produces less of this protein, so more of her estrogen is carried on other proteins that aren't as tightly bound. The result is that more estrogen is available in the blood, which seems to increase the risk of cancer.

A low-fat diet can also be an important tool in preventing or managing diabetes, a metabolic disorder that affects over 13 million Americans. In people with diabetes, the pancreas doesn't produce enough insulin, a hormone that's needed to control blood sugar levels in your body and to convert food to energy.

While Type I (insulin-dependent) diabetes is fairly common, most people with diabetes develop it after age 40. This is known as Type II, or non-insulin-dependent, diabetes. Without proper treatment, Type II diabetes can lead to serious complications, including heart disease, kidney failure and blindness.
If Type II diabetes runs in your family, you have a greater risk of developing it. But biology isn't destiny: Experts point out that even if both your parents had type II diabetes, your risk is only about 1 in 20. In most cases, whether or not you develop diabetes is pretty much in your hands.

A growing body of research shows that besides contributing to excess weight, a high-fat diet might contribute to your risk of diabetes in other ways. Studies suggest that some people who eat too much fat are more likely to have impaired glucose tolerance, in which the body has trouble metabolizing carbohydrates. And impaired glucose tolerance increases your risk of developing diabetes.

By cutting back on fat and maintaining a healthy weight, people who already have diabetes can take an active role in controlling the condition and preventing serious complications. With the right diet, many people with type II diabetes can reduce or eliminate their need for insulin. And because people with diabetes are at increased risk for heart disease, adopting a low-fat lifestyle is crucial for protecting their hearts and blood vessels.

Fast facts on fighting fat

We usually lump fats together in a single category-and that makes sense if you're generally watching your fat intake. But in fact, there are different kinds with different health effects.

More than 90 percent of dietary fat is composed of complex molecules consisting of three fatty acids: saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated. Animal fats usually contain a high percentage of saturated fatty acids, while most vegetable fats contain mainly unsaturated fatty acids.

These three kinds of fat play different roles in our diet and definitely affect our health in a variety of ways.

Saturated fats. These come primarily from animal sources like beef, veal and pork and also from dairy products like eggs, butter and cheeses. Coconut oil and palm oil are also high in saturated fats. When you get more than about 5 percent of your total daily calories from these kinds of fats, you run the risk of elevating LDL levels (that's the "bad" cholesterol) and promoting disease. Also, a high intake of saturated fats is thought to increase the need for essential fatty acids, which can lead to the creation of excess body fat as well as other health problems.

Monounsaturated fatty acids. These are found in large proportions in canola oil, olive oil, peanut oil and sesame oil. Oils that are high in monounsaturates have been found by researchers to help lower LDL cholesterol levels while not affecting HDL (the "good" cholesterol).

Polyunsaturated fats. These fats are found in grains, seeds, nuts, soy foods such as tofu, and some vegetables. They're needed for adequate fat storage and for cellular health-but you get plenty in a normal diet. In some scientific studies of animals, researchers have linked polyunsaturated oils to the formation of cancerous tumors and the original damage in coronary artery disease.

These three types of fatty acids are in various combinations in different types of oils.

Carbs that boost fat-making

Carbohydrates provide essential blood sugar-glucose-which is the fuel used for energy production in the brain and every cell of the body. Glucose also helps maintain body temperature, digestion, movement, breathing, tissue repair and immune system functions-so it's one of the most important compounds coursing through your body.

There are three basic types of carbohydrates, labeled according to the complexity of their molecular structure: monosaccharides (simplest), disaccharides and polysaccharides (most complex). Polysaccharides consist of many sugar units, bonded together by nature to form complex carbohydrates (starches).

Starches either may be left unrefined or may be refined, as happens when we process them to make certain foods. Unrefined complex carbohydrates come associated with lots of fiber, vitamins, minerals and other nutrients. Most of us need to eat more foods like whole-wheat bread and brown rice in order to get enough of these unrefined complex carbohydrates in our diets.

By contrast, foods like white bread and white rice are both less filling and less nutritious because they have refined carbohydrates. In the process of refining, such as the milling of wheat to make white flour, the fiber and many vitamins and minerals are lost.

In general, unrefined complex carbohydrates are digested slowly and efficiently, providing a steady source of energy without the biochemical roller-coaster effect of concentrated sugars. So eating foods with complex carbs helps stabilize your sugar levels.

Refined white sugar-sucrose-tops the list of "empty calories," along with its counterparts corn syrup, brown sugar, dextrose, maltose and cane syrup. High intake of refined sugar has been linked to a variety of health problems, including elevated levels of cholesterol and other blood fats, a deficiency of chromium, a trace mineral associated with heart disease and diabetes, and development of breast cancer.

The simple sugar molecules in sucrose require very little digestion, entering the bloodstream and quickly raising blood sugar levels far above normal. In response, the body's insulin secretion mechanism is activated to remove the excess glucose from the blood, causing a downswing in blood sugar levels.

Even "natural sugar alternatives" such as maple syrup, honey and fruit juice are no panacea. The fact is, no sweetener used excessively is healthful.

Fiber

One of the other principal benefits of complex carbohydrates is fiber. The different kinds of fiber all come from the cell walls of plants. They play a major role in keeping digestion moving smoothly, making it less likely that cancer-causing toxins and other disease-promoting substances will come into prolonged contact with the digestive tract or be absorbed. High-fiber diets have been shown to help prevent heart disease, obesity and colon cancer. High fiber intake has also been shown to aid in losing excess body fat and may even help lower blood pressure by about 10 percent.

Dietary fiber encompasses all plant material that's resistant to digestion. Some people call it roughage, but fiber actually helps to produce a smooth, prompt transit through the digestive tract.

Insoluble fibers include cellulose, found in foods such as wheat bran; hemicellulose, found in whole grains and vegetables; and lignin, which is the "glue" in the walls of plant cells. These fibers absorb water, which means they swell up and add bulk, making it easier for the intestines to pass along waste products.

Soluble fibers include pectin, which is in apples, citrus fruits, legumes and certain vegetables; mucilage, found in oats and legumes; and gums, which are gel-like substances in plants. These fibers have very different activities from the crude, water insoluble fibers.

All fibers are bound to digestible carbohydrates, so they help slow down the absorption of glucose into the bloodstream. Pectin and gums slow sugar absorption from the intestines. Because these fiber properties appear to keep blood sugar levels more even, they can reduce fat-making processes in the body.

Alcohol

Whenever you drink alcohol, your body burns less fat and burns it more slowly than usual. Alcohol does something else as well: It actually increases your appetite. A study at the Mayo  Clinic in Rochester, suggests that when having alcohol at a meal, a person will consume, on average, 350 extra calories. That's a big swig of extra calories. If you're a person who usually has 1,800 to 2,000 calories a day, that would mean you're increasing your consumption by more than one sixth - just because you have some beer or wine with your meal.

A drink is usually defined, in most studies, as 1 1/2 ounces of hard liquor, 4 to 5 ounces of dry table wine, 3 ounces of sherry or port wine or 12 ounces of beer. All those quantities of different beverages deliver the equivalent amount of alcohol. Some people believe that a glass of beer or a glass of wine has much less alcohol than a whiskey sour or a gin-and-tonic. It seems like a natural assumption, since the concentration of alcohol is much higher in hard liquor than in beer or wine.

But when you compare mixed drinks with beer or wine, you realize why they're so close in alcohol content. One jigger of hard liquor is equal to about 1 1/2 ounces. So if a mixed drink has a jigger of hard liquor in it, and the rest is tonic, soda or some other nonalcoholic beverage, you're getting just about the same amount of alcohol that you get from beer or wine.

Any two drinks can have a huge impact on the way your body deals with dietary fat. In one study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers found that three ounces of an alcoholic drink reduced the body's ability to burn fat by about one-third. Alcohol can dramatically raise your blood sugar response - and insulin levels - thus revving up your body's fat-forming processes. In addition, two or more drinks may dramatically trigger high levels of insulin, which can stimulate the conversion of carbohydrate to fat and increase the gain of body fat.

For people who have more than two drinks a day, alcohol consumption has a drastic effect on the intake of calories. It's been estimated, for instance, that someone who drinks six beers a day takes in an extra 900 calories. Because drinking alcohol also leads to increased food consumption, not all of those extra calories come directly from alcohol-but many do. An alcoholic drink has 7 calories per gram-very close to fat's 9 calories per gram. That's almost twice as many calories as you get from a gram of protein or a gram of carbohydrate.

For many years, researchers assumed the calories from alcohol were similar to the ones from carbohydrates, since all alcohol is derived from sugar, fruit and grains and is water-soluble. It appears that the alcohol, while it's being burned for energy in place of fat calories, also prevents the burning of fat. So essentially, it's promoting more storage of extra fat in the body's fat cells.

Insulin

When you have low-fiber or no-fiber meals and snacks along with too much sugar and starch in your diet, the hormone insulin can begin to play a huge role in fat-making. That's because as scientists have discovered, a diet high in refined carbohydrates can trigger insulin resistance. This resistance occurs when the body responds to starches and sugars by overproducing glucose, which in turn triggers the overproduction of insulin.

This hormone generally controls glucose, but in a nimble variety of ways. First of all, it determines how much of the glucose will be used immediately as energy and how much will be converted to and stored as fat.

It also stimulates your appetite, which of course is a way of telling you that your body needs more energy. And it regulates triglycerides, which are "stored fats" in the body. Insulin also helps prevent your fat cells from breaking down stored fat and releasing it into the bloodstream, where it could be burned as fuel. And it helps turn your fat cells into "magnets" for any dietary fat that's been absorbed into your bloodstream.

Insulin resistance is linked to a wide range of factors from glucose intolerance to high blood pressure.

Obesity and bee products

When bee pollen is taken by itself, without food, it seems to work unhindered in correcting errors of metabolism that may be involved in unhealthy weight gain.

Sugars and fats are both energy-providing and carbon containing foods; when they combine with oxygen, they burn up to produce energy. Sugars are higher in carbon elements; they are flammable and produce energy rapidly. But fats are lower in carbon and oxygen elements than sugars are. Therefore, fats are metabolized slower because their function is to supply reserve energy. Fats need more oxygen to be set afire and put into reserve for future use.

When bee pollen inverted sugars are taken into the human digestive tract, there is a hasty combustion. The fats will burn with the assistance of oxygen produced by their "fire." This induces a speedy increase in the rate of calorie burning and subsequent weight loss. It is bee pollen that promotes this internal reaction. It appears to help "reset" our individual "fat thermostats" a few degrees higher; this tends to keep the body thinner most of the time.

Honey is an effective substitute for sugar for those who are dieting. The natural sugars in honey are almost totally predigested, which makes them easily absorbed into the bloodstream; this provides an "instant" energy boost. Dieters can especially benefit from this property of honey. Its double-action sugars quickly satisfy a craving for sweets and tend to maintain that sense of satisfaction for a number of hours.

Dehydration

More than 75 percent of your body is composed of water. This powerful liquid performs a crucial role in the fat-burning, fat-forming and fat-storage processes.

Water is a medium for every chemical reaction, including the burning of fat. When you don't drink enough water, your body will secrete the hormone aldosterone, which causes tissues to hold on to almost every molecule of liquid. And several researchers suggest that a decrease in water may cause fat deposits to increase.

The fatigue, simple headaches, lack of concentration and dizziness you feel at the end of a workday can result simply from not drinking enough water. It starts every day as soon as you awaken. When you open your eyes in the morning, your body is already facing a water deficit.

Sometimes we run a deficit all day without even knowing it. Dehydration occurs when you don't take in enough water to replace all that's lost through perspiration, respiration and urination. Dehydration reduces blood volume, creating thicker, more concentrated blood, which may stress the heart and is less capable of providing muscles with oxygen and nutrients. Also, thicker blood doesn't eliminate accumulated wastes as well.

Even a tiny shortage of water disrupts your biochemistry. Dehydrate a muscle by only 3 percent, and you lose 10 percent of contractile strength and 8 percent of speed. Water balance is the single most important variable in lifelong good health and top performance.

Getting used to life with less water is like getting accustomed to constant stress or tension. It can undermine your energy and weaken your health. The solution takes some getting used to, but it's well worth the effort.

Inactivity

The human body is biologically designed for movement, and when you're not busy moving, your body gets busy storing. Whenever you are inactive for more than 60 minutes or so, it's likely that your body is sending an ancient signal to your brain to decrease fat-burning and increase fat-making. And when you eat a big meal and then sit for an hour or longer, there's more chance you will end up storing calories from the meal as body fat.

The less active people are, the more overweight they are. As you age, there's an even closer correlation between the amount of time you spend sitting and the amount of body weight you're likely to gain. So daily physical activity becomes an even more important factor as we grow older.

The most effective exercise program for good health - including building up your defenses against aging - is to exercise several times a week the "lower-intensity way." You need to maintain that comfortable level of exercise for at least 30 minutes three times a week, or for 20 continuous minutes four times a week.

One of the first noticeable signs of improved aerobic fitness is a lowered resting heart rate, because your normal heartbeat slows as your fitness improves. While many nonathletes have heartbeats in the range of 75 to 80 beats per minute, elite athletes in endurance sports can become so well-conditioned that they have resting heart rates between 30 and 45 beats per minute. That change occurs because the heart that's been strengthened through regular aerobic exercise becomes more powerful and efficient.

People who have developed good cardiovascular fitness from regular aerobic exercise will generally have hearts that beat 45 to 50 times a minute when at rest. Their hearts are pumping at least the same amount of blood as an unconditioned person's heart that beats up to 80 times a minute when resting. Result: Over the course of a day, the unconditioned person's heart must beat 50,000 times more than a conditioned person's heart. In a year, that's a workload of more than 18 million extra beats that an unfit person's heart must provide.

Distress blockers

Here you'll learn a series of on-the-spot distress-dissolving techniques that let you rise above daily hassles and defuse tension and anger, thereby enabling your mind and body to sustain a higher energy level. And along with that higher energy comes correspondingly higher-efficiency fat burning and a greater likelihood that you'll be alert to turning on other fat-burners all day long.

According to research presented at the 1994 lnternational Conference on Obesity, the less distress you hold on to, the greater your metabolic power may be. That's because anxious, angry or hostile people tend to metabolize fats more slowly than others. Those who seethe with anger are slowest at getting rid of dietary fat.

People with the slowest rates of metabolism often seem to be hostile and anxious. These people report higher daily stress and sometimes suppress their anger.

Whenever you're hit with increased pressures, your body responds by secreting adrenaline, the fast-acting hormone that stimulates the release of fat from cells throughout the body. In the moments following that surge of adrenaline, though, you lapse into a period of being tense or upset.

During a stressful situation, adrenaline causes fat cells from allover the body to squirt their contents into the bloodstream. Once in circulation, those free-floating molecules can provide the body with the extra energy it needs to meet the physical demands of whatever situation you're in.

Back in our Neanderthal yesteryear, this response to danger and stress poured energy into our hairy bodies, so we could hurl stones at wild beasts and dash away from woolly mammoths running amok. This reaction was probably very appropriate for prehistoric people who needed to flee from danger or charge into battle. But in the modern world, during most daily situations these fat molecules remain unused-except when the stress hormone cortisol enters the picture.

Cortisol is released whenever you enter a tense phase. Following biological pathways that have helped preserve humankind throughout the eons, cortisol dampens fat-burning processes. Fat gets tucked away for storage (emergency use) while the cortisol stimulates carbohydrate-burning to meet the body's cry for more fuel.

Research at Yale University indicates that overweight men and women who carry most of their fat in the abdominal region produce more cortisol than those with less fat there. In one study at Wake Forest University stressed male monkeys-both those who exercised and those who were sedentary-had more intra-abdominal fat than their non stressed counterparts. The researchers say this suggests that a chronic stress-induced arousal syndrome plays a role in abdominal fat distribution.

During times when we're often tense and stressed (but notfacing life-or-death physical situations), a significant portion of the spare fat harbored in the bloodstream goes wandering off to your abdomen for storage. Thus, whenever you experience some lasting feelings of distress, there are many measurable effects on the brain and body, including slower fat-burning.

Fortunately, there's preliminary evidence that breathing techniques, meditation and other stress reduction methods may help keep cortisol levels down. And that could make a big difference in how your body handles fat when stress stalks.

Breathe away stress

Surprisingly, many of us halt our breathing for several seconds or more at the start of a stressful situation. This reduces oxygen to the brain and pushes you toward distress and feelings of anxiety, anger, frustration and panic. While all this is going on, you may have faulty reactions while feeling a general loss of control.

So whenever you feel yourself getting hit with increased stress - as evidenced by muscle tension, irregular breathing, cool hands or nervous sweating - -one of the best ways to regain calm is to change the way you breathe.

The action step here is simple: Continue breathing smoothly, deeply and evenly. When the cue of fear, threat or stress first captures your attention, you could be anywhere in the inhalation or exhalation cycle, so the first thing you need to do is concentrate on finishing that cycle. And at the same instant, say to yourself "Alert mind, calm body. "

It is the inner breathing of the (100 trillion) cells in your body that enables you to produce biological energy. To convert fuel into energy, your body desperately needs an adequate supply of the chemical that does the conversion.

We each breathe about 20,000 times every day. With that much air going in, it seems natural to assume that we take in plenty of oxygen. But the fact is that most of us breathe just deeply enough to keep from becoming unconscious. Neuroscientists have reported that although we technically remain "alive," we don't supply our brains with optimal levels of oxygen.

Studies by the National Institute on Aging indicate that the circulating blood of a 20-year-old man takes up an average of nearly 4 liters of oxygen per minute. In contrast, because of his shallow breathing and loss of lung elasticity, the blood of a 75-year-old man takes up only 1 1/2 liters of oxygen a minute. This is typical, but it isn't inevitable. Research suggests that a fit 75-year-old can take in as much oxygen as a fit 20-year-old.

But many of us get into the habit of shallow breathing throughout our lives. That means we're taking in much less breath-and giving our cells much less oxygen-than people who regularly do diaphragmatic breathing.

In diaphragmatic breathing, the diaphragm muscle moves downward, creating a natural pressure vacuum that draws air into the lower lungs. This is quickly followed by a slight expansion of the abdomen and lower ribs. Finally, as the inhalation cycle is completed, the chest expands and the upper lung area are filled with air.

Upper chest breathing automatically leaves you under oxygenated and interferes with fat-burning and other forms of energy production in the body. Diaphragmatic breathing, on the other hand, fills your lungs almost to capacity. And that's an important distinction, because the more parts of your lungs the air gets to, the more oxygen you can get into your bloodstream.

When it's traveling from the heart to pick up oxygen, blood flows to different areas of your lungs at variable rates of speed. It's estimated that blood flows to the top areas of your lungs at the rate of about one tablespoon per minute, to the middle areas at the rate of a pint a minute and to the bottom areas at the rate of about one quart a minute.

When you first try it, diaphragmatic breathing may seem like more work than shallow breathing, but that's really just because you have to concentrate to change your shallow breathing habits. In actuality, smooth diaphragmatic breathing requires only about 1 percent of the body's on going energy consumption to bring air in and out. In comparison, typical shallow chest breathing takes at least twice as much energy to accomplish the same work.

So training yourself to use diaphragmatic breathing ,is tremendously important in mastering stress and staying healthy. Plus, you get an added benefit from using your diaphragm: As it contracts, this muscular hollow gently pushes the internal organs down, massaging them and, some researchers suggest, improving circulation and digestive elimination functions.

• HERBS - THE BASICS
  • The actions of herbs
  • The chemistry of herbs
  • Preparation of herbal remedies
  • Herbs around the house
  • Herbs in the kitchen
  • Teas
  • Tonics and elixirs
  • Recipes
  • Potpourris
  • Oils in seeds
• HERBS FOR BEAUTY
• HERBS FOR KIDS
• HERBS FOR WOMEN
• HERBS FOR MEN
• HERBS FOR DOGS
• A GARDEN OF HEALING HERBS