1. Always read and follow all label warnings and cautions.
2. Keep oils tightly closed and out of the reach of children.
3. Never consume undiluted oils. Cook only with those oils approved for food use.
4. Don’t use undiluted oils on your skin. (Dilute with carrier oil).
5. Skin test oils before using. Dilute a small amount and apply to the skin on your inner arm. Do not use if redness or irritation occurs.
6. Keep oils away from eyes and mucous membranes.
7. If redness, burning, itching, or irritation occurs, stop using oil immediately.
8. Avoid use of these oils during pregnancy: bitter almond; basil; clary sage; clove bud; hyssop; sweet fennel; juniper berry; marjoram; myrrh; peppermint; rose; rosemary; sage; thyme; and wintergreen.
9. These oils can be especially irritating to the skin: allspice; bitter almond; basil; cinnamon leaf; cinnamon bark; clove bud; sweet fennel; fir needle; lemon; lemongrass; Melissa; peppermint; tea tree; wintergreen. In addition, angelica and all citrus oils make the skin more sensitive to ultraviolet light. Do not go out into the sun with these oils on your skin.
10. Sweet Fennel, hyssop, sage and rosemary should not be used by anyone with epilepsy. People with high blood pressure should avoid hyssop, rosemary, sage and thyme.

Astigmatism is a deflection error of the eye defined by a shape that varies slightly from a true sphere of the cornea. It occurs when one axis of the corneal slope is greater than the vertical axis. Astigmatism is the cause of poor vision in regard to comprehending small details and is often corrected with glasses, contact lenses, a cylindrical lens or refractive surgery.

It can be broken down into types including simple hyperopic astigmatism, simple myopic astigmatism, compound hyperopic astigmatism, compound myopic astigmatism and mixed astigmatism.

Almost everyone has some degree of astigmatism because it is very rare to come across a perfectly rounded cornea and is only apparent to those who have more than just a slight irregularity. This happens when either the cornea or the lens of the eye does not have a perfectly rounded shape and as a result, the eye has different focal points in different degrees.

The images a person sees will be distorted with conflicting images and will often see blurred images, headaches and even tiredness. Luckily for those who have it, corrective lenses in glasses or even contact lenses can provide clear vision.

For those who have a more pronounced irregularity in their eye, it will cause distorted vision with potential blurring from a number of angles depending on the kind of imperfection in the eye. When vision is impaired to any extent, vision correction is necessary mainly by using either eyeglasses or contact lenses.

A person who is born into a family that has astigmatism is genetically likely to inherit some degree of irregularities. It can also form as the result of an eye injury or from scar tissue.

Astigmatism can be seen in young children or can come about when a person reaches adulthood. One of the most common signs of a person who should have their eyes looked at for possible astigmatism is if he or she must squint their eyes in order to see something more clearly.

An eye doctor can properly diagnose and put the patient on the correct path to enjoying clearer vision with vision correction usually through eyeglasses or contact lenses. Doctors have also has success in improving vision in those with astigmatism through new technological advancements in surgery to eliminate or postpone the need for corrective lenses.

Seven Can’t Miss Strategies…

Getting older is a fact of life and shouldn’t be anything to be worried over or feared. Most traditional communities treat their elders with great respect. Modern Western societies seem to do the opposite. It’s east to get the impression that life is over at forty, at least judging by TV and the movies, and often women feel the pressure to keep looking young. That’s unfortunate, and we should examine our attitudes, rather than damaging our health in an effort to look younger.

There’s certainly nothing the matter with wanting to look as good as you can, while avoiding behaviors or conditions that result in premature aging. Looking older than we are is oftentimes related to our heritage, but it is more often caused by bad habits and choices. You can’t change your heredity, so work on what you can do to stay young. Staying informed and making decisions that start you on the best possible track early is vital to every aspect of health!

Looking and feeling as young as you can isn’t complicated. Take heed of these easy ways to keep from premature aging — seven simple steps to deal with the things under your control.

Nix the tanning beds this winter. Over use of tanning beds may lead to excessive wrinkling and related skin problems. If you want a tan, acquire it naturally, by sunning in moderation early in the day or late afternoon, when the sun is not at its peak. It’s fine to look pale during the colder months.

Eat less. Limit snacks. Our bodies expend more energy digesting food than on any thing else. Food is intended to fuel our bodies. It should be enjoyable, but not a form of entertainment. Carrying all the excess weight from overeating stresses and stretches the body even more. Your body will tell you what it needs if you will let it. It has been demonstrated that periodic fasting is beneficial for one’s system.

Exercise. We were made to move. Ever notice how animals don’t show indications of their age until late in life? So don’t be lazy. Start a regular walking program, or start toning, or get a Pilates DVD and use it often and you’ll delay the aging process. Join a tennis club, or find a friend to walk with you. If you have some restrictions in what you can do, don’t give up. There are many programs created for those with physical limitations. Contact your local hospital for a recommendation. Not only will you look better, the improvement in your energy level will be an even greater benefit.

Do not be satisfied until you determine ALL the side-effects of the prescription drugs you take. Pharmacists and other practitioners can assist you, and don’t neglect online forums where others are discussing this topic.

Get lots of rest. Sleep is where our body rejuvenates (”restores youth”) itself. Your body was designed to follow a sleep cycle. Don’t rob yourself of sleep. Get enough sleep and keep on a regular schedule.

If you smoke, quit. Smoking is a leading cause of premature aging in women — to list just one consequence. Smoking will load up your system with toxic chemicals that build up over time, and the effects will show in your skin.

Let water be your beverage of choice. Most of us don’t drink enough water. Fluids move nutrients into the system and take toxins out. Do not underestimate the necessity of water for maintaining health and vitality.

We must endure the ravages of time and nature, but we don’t need to accelerate them. Employing a bit of common sense early on can pay off big in the long run.

Debra Thompson is the founder of the Natural Health Co-op an online health co-op designed to bring together people who want to take back control of their health - one simple step at a time. If you are involved in any aspect of natural or alternative health, you are invited to join our online health co-op.

Debra is also the host of a weekly podcast titled A Healthy New Year. She interviews people involved in all aspects of natural health, from providers to those working through health challenges.

Headaches are one of the most common of medical complaints. Most people experience headache pain at one time or another. Everyone, young and old, male and female, suffers from headaches from time to time. These may range from minor, nagging headaches to full-blown, incapacitating neurovascular migraines. Most headaches are not caused by serious medical conditions.

The most common classifications of headache pain are tension, cluster, and migraine. Another disturbingly common type of headache is the rebound headache, which appears to be the result of taking prescription or non-prescription pain relievers daily or almost daily.

The good news is that there are a growing number of natural alternatives to treat headache pain. Aromatherapy is one of the choices a growing number of people are turning to for effective relief of primary headache pain.

The powerful effects of your favorite essential oil seeps deep in to the nervous constitution to reduce the pain emanating from different lobes of brain. Head aches are known to originate out of many internal and external influences; deep strain inflicted in your mental constitution is known to be a major cause.

Several aromatic oils have the capacity to prevent and/or reduce the throbbing pain caused by emotional stress and rigors.

The following aromatherapy recipes can also be used as a preventative measure, and can even help ease your pain. Once you’ve guessed what is triggering your migraines, prepare the appropriate recipe mixture by pouring the oil essences into a 10-ml bottle, and adding vegetable oil to fill. Make sure that you are mixing this concoction very well.

If the pain persists even after trying the suggested remedies above, you are suggested to visit your physician for further consultations.

Aromatherapy Blend #1 – Head aches due to negative emotions
3 drops Roman Chamomile
8 drops Lavender

Aromatherapy blend #2 – Head aches due to muscular tensions
4 drops Lavender
5 drops Peppermint
Massage the forehead, temples, neck and shoulders.

Aromatherapy blend #3 – Head aches due to nervous tensions
3 drops Roman Chamomile
3 drops Neroli
5 drops Marjoram
Massage the forehead, temples and solar plexus very gently. Breathe it in deeply and slowly. Pour 15 drops of this aromatic blend into the bathtub and soak for at least 15 minutes.

Useful Oils for Headache:
Lavender and Sweet Marjoram will both help to relieve the intensity of pain, while Roman Chamomile is generally soothing and very relaxing. For sinus congestion related head aches, add Eucalyptus and/or Peppermint for their decongestant properties. Sweet Marjoram is particularly useful for headaches association with menstruation, while True Melissa or Rosemary can help to relieve a migraine.

Inhalation: This method can bring relief to headaches and migraines if used as soon as symptoms begin to appear. Add 2 drops each of Sweet Marjoram, Lavender, and Peppermint onto to a tissue; for a migraine, add 1 drop of True Melissa. Inhale deeply three times. Symptoms should subside with in minutes.

Application: To relieve a tension headache, moisten your forefinger with 2 drops of Lavender and rub gently over your temples, behind your ears, and across the back of your neck. Apply two times, if necessary.

Massage: Dilute 3 drops each of Lavender and Eucalyptus in ½ fl oz (15ml/2½ tsp) of carrier oil and use the mix to massage your forehead and behind your ears, pausing to apply gentle pressure around the hollows on the outer corners of the eye bone.

Bath: Add 3 drops each of Sweet Marjoram, Roman Chamomile, and Lavender to a bath to help relive tension headaches.

Aromatherapy oils bring a refreshing change in treating head ache and migraine related pains; the biggest advantages of using these oils lie in its magical properties of healing power.

I am sure that you might have taken at least one new-year resolution in your life. Needless to say, you might have broken that vow, at least once. You might have resolved all your energy for achieving a goal and one fine moment, some negative thoughts might have shattered your ideas. Many of us have. Have you ever thought of this seriously? Where do we go wrong?

Nothing is permanent in this world except change…
Why do we resist change?

There is no reason to panic here. This is because it’s the most natural thing to happen. Just like a villain who pops up to counter the lead role in a film, there is a villain in your mind to resist your new decision. If you watch closely, you may discover that this has happened in your life many a times.

Now to overcome this villain, you need to be very clear about your goals. Let me make it clear that, if you are absolutely confident that this change in your life is going to serve you, there is nothing that can impede your path to success. As the first step, try to answer these questions.

Why Should We Change?
Look at it this way. There is a stream of water flowing downwards, maybe over a hillside. Imagine that there are a lot of tiny fishes that live in this stream. It would be the easiest thing in the world for the fish to move along with the water current.

They needn’t bother about which direction they are going, because they are moving along with the stream. What they do not know is that this stream of water is in reality taking them along with it to be emptied into the deep and perilous ocean. In this ocean there are many bigger fishes with ravenous appetite that consider small stream fishes to be special delicacies.

What I want to convey to you is that, living with the same lifestyle, what you have been undergoing will be the easiest task for you. But this will not take you anywhere.

One of the main hindrances towards the goal will be a deep strong feeling of nostalgia. This could be a desire to get back to those familiar territories where you were born and where you grew up. A man can get used to any thing and once you get used to something it is very difficult to give it up. But then life goes on and all of us have to forsake things, which we loved during our younger days.

Losing weight is indeed a worthy goal. If you have failed previously in your weight loss attempts, what happened was that the effort you put into losing weight was not in balance with your longings for your weight loss goal.

Your fitness is related to your body fat. Higher the fat, it’s less likely that you are fit and the harder it is to maintain higher levels of physical stamina and endurance. The likelihood of developing heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes are greater.

In order to plan a healthy diet, we must know how to read a food label. They show us if a food has a little or a lot of certain nutrients. Just look on the side of a product to find the Nutrition Facts title.

However, The biggest reason that people don’t have clear, consistent information on this topic is because, unfortunately, there are a lot of food and supplement companies on the market who don’t want you to know fact from fiction.

They want you to believe that constantly buying “low fat” foods is going to somehow speed up your metabolism.

While, yes, some low fat foods can play a role in an overall eating program that is designed to speed up metabolism, merely eating foods that come from packaging that screams “LOW FAT!” won’t do anything.
In fact, believe it or not, but many people actually gain weight when they eat too many “low fat” products. Many of these products are laden with calories from carbohydrates or proteins (which are still calories and still must be burned off or they turn into body fat).

As you can see, and probably feel from years of trying to unravel this whole metabolic mystery, this is a confusing, stressful, and indeed, potentially depressing situation.

Each year, tens of millions of people attempt to retake control over their health and the shape of their body; and each year, tens of millions of people feel that they’ve “failed” because, try as they might, they just can’t speed up their metabolism.

The failure is with the medical and nutritional sector as a whole, which has simply not provided people with the information that they need to know in order to speed up their metabolism.

And given the size of the nutritional field and the fact that so much of it is influenced by money-making enterprises (not all of the field, of course, but enough of it to make a difference), there’s really no sense in playing a “wait and see” game for when clear, consistent, and helpful information starts to flow out to people like us.

There are a lot of people who would give a lot to increase their metabolism. Having a high level of metabolism enables one to maintain burn fat and lose weight fast with the least amount of activity. Metabolism is the rate by which the body produces and consumes energy and calories to support life.

There are several factors that affect the metabolism of a person, such as the amount of muscle tissue, the frequency of the meals one consumes, genetics, stress levels, personal diet and activity levels. Metabolism slows done due to the following: loss of muscle because of not enough physical activity, the tendency of the body to cannibalize its own tissue because there is not enough food energy to sustain it, and the decrease of physical activity that comes naturally with old age.

Here are several ways to fire up one’s metabolism:

1. Build up on lean, mean body mass. It is only natural that metabolism decreases along with age, but it is possible to counter the effects. The amount of muscle a person has is a very strong determinant in the ability to burn calories and shed fat. So it goes without saying that exercise is essential. Build strength and resistance by working out at least twice a week, preferably with weights. Do easy exercises in between workouts. Simple tasks such as walking the dog and using the stairs in place of the elevator can already take off calories. The key is to match the amount of eating to the amount of activity one has. Here are some guidelines in getting the right exercise:

For strength training:

For cardiovascular training:

2. Eat breakfast. A lot of people are ignoring the fact that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Surprisingly, the ones who eat breakfast are thinner than the ones who do not. Metabolism can slow down considerably if breakfast is taken during mid-morning or if one waits until the afternoon to eat.

3. Avoid sugar. Sugar enables the body to store fat. It is recommended that a person consumes food that helps sustain an even level of blood-sugar. Additionally, progressive execerise 2-3 times a week should be in order to stabilize blood sugar.

4. Eat spicy foods. Hot cuisine with peppers can increase metabolism.

5. Sleep more. According to research, it is riskier for people who do not get enough sleep to gain weight. Also, muscles are regenerated during the last couple of hours of slumber.

6. Increase water intake. Water flushes out toxins that are produced whenever the body burns fat. Majority of bodily functions involves water, and lack of water causes the body system’s operations to decrease its speed, and produces unneeded stress as a result.

7. Eat smaller meals. It is advisable to consume 4 to 6 small meals that are timed 2 to 3 hours apart.

8. Never skip meals. People tend to skip meals in order to lose weight, which is a big mistake since it slows down metabolism.

9. Plan meals in detail. Always prepare the right amount of food to be consumed at the designated intervals. Do not commit the mistake of eating meals in sporadic patterns.

9. Ditch the stress! Stress, be it physical or emotional, triggers the release of a steroid called cortisol, which decreases metabolism. Also, people tend to eat excessively when stressed.

10. Guzzle up on green tea. It can be used as a substitute for coffee. Tea has the ability to stimulate metabolism, and unlike coffee, it has no undesirable side effects when too much is consumed.

11. Include more energy foods in the diet, such as fruits and vegetables, beans and whole grains.

Achieving the desired body weight is never impossible if one has the determination and patience needed to stabilize the metabolism level, which plays an important role in weight loss. A person needs to realize that eating right and working out is not just a passing fancy, but a way of life.

I was reading the book Meatless Menus And Recipes and found the chapter on over eating very interesting you can read it below and give me your thoughts.

‘VERY pennyweight of food taken into the body that it cannot use in the form of heat and energy must be thrown off through the excretory channels at the expense of energy. If the excess, however, is digested it is stored up in the form of excess fat or converted into toxic or carbondioxide poisons which manifest themselves in various abnormal conditions we call disease.

The great majority of colds start at the dinner table. All colds come from two causes, viz., exposure and over-eating. When one is exposed to a draft or violent cold the pores of the skin through which body poisons are continually passing off close, and these poisons are then taken up by the circulation and carried to the lungs for oxidation—that is, to be burned with oxygen we breathe.

As a rule the lungs are always pressed to their fullest capacity to oxidize the normal amount of body poisons brought to them by the circulation, hence they cannot take care of the excess and Nature causes suppuration in order that these poisons may be cast out of the body in another way.

When one over-eats, the food matter that cannot be used and is not stored up in the form of fat is converted by the body into poisons or waste matter in exactly the same way as in the case of exposure, and these poisons are carried to the lungs by the circulation and disposed of by the body in the same identical way.

Coming into New York a few days ago from a neighboring city I occupied a seat on a sleeping car with a gentleman whom I took to be an up-to-date business man. He took me for a minister or a politician. I was right but he was wrong. However, we became acquainted.

He ventured the assertion that money was a little “panicky,” but his business would boom very soon. Being a little curious to know what business he was in and wishing to use a little refinement in finding out, I began around the corner by asking him what times of the year his business was best, thinking that he would reveal his vocation in the meantime, but he didn’t; he merely answered, “Our business is very good in mid-summer and excellent just after Thanksgiving, but we are literally snowed under with orders just after Christmas and New Year.” Having had a pretty wide business experience and training, I hurriedly reviewed everything that supplied human want, and for the life of me I couldn’t think of any business that could employ a drummer as clever as my companion seemed to be that would be good during a hot summer and splendid just after Thanksgiving and booming just after Christmas and New Year.

My friend enjoyed my perplexity with a display of cruelty for which he ought to have been arrested. I could stand it no longer, but bluntly asked, “What is your business?” “The coffin business,” answered the shrewd business man. “Oh,” I said, and I guess I looked it. “Grand Central Station, all out!” yelled the trainman. This is a true story.