Urban living especially is full of smog and other pollutants (which contain many positive ions). So it’s nice to come home to healthy negative ionized air.

Many studies have shown that salt crystal lamps can increase the negative ion count. Negative ions benefit asthma patients, people with chronic lung illnesses, and allergy sufferers. As well, they help improve learning, memory, and emotional well being. By creating a balance of ions in the air, they stimulate natural drive and healthy energy. A low-cost method, a Solay Salt Lamp is an excellent source of negative ions and is strikingly beautiful, blending favorably with any environment.

Solay salt crystal lamps are mined in an ecologically responsible manner, and crafted by dedicated artisans into attractive and safe lamps that can be used indefinitely. Even though the crystal salt lamps and ions themselves are odorless, people can really feel the difference breathing the energized air. Complete with a 90 day money back guarantee.

Designs and Sizes Available

Solay offers a wide variety of Crystal Halite lamps. Not only can you choose from 4 sizes ranging from 5-50 lbs., they also have the following styles:

• Himalayan- The colors in Solay salt crystals lamps come from the mineral content, including reds from iron, oranges from copper, and yellows from magnesium. Within one lamp may be a combination of colors. Each lamp is unique; hand chiseled using the best 250 million year old Himalayan crystal salt.
• Polish- Polish crystal is more expensive and believed to produce more ions due to the larger surface area. Polish crystal is like a cluster of small crystals, with consistent mineral coloring throughout the lamp and an artful shape ranging from rounder to almost pyramidal.
• Persian- Solay Persian salt crystal lamps are very rare, gorgeous and work well in the bedrooms. The coloring of our lamps range: from fuchsias, magentas, lavenders and purples with some variations of white all in one lamp. These lamps get darker at night, making it a perfect choice for bedrooms to help you sleep.
• White Persian- Solay White Persian Lamps not only will gently purify your indoor air but can be used for a white healing ambiance or add any color light bulb you like for color therapy. Please note that some of our white lamps will have a light blue tint and or small parts in purple as each one is a true one of a kind.
• Shaped- Solay also shapes their Polish variety into tears, globes, flames and more! Giving your lamp a unique designed look.

Lighting Kit Included

Included with most Solay salt lamps, a free ul tested dimmer cord, allowing you to adjust your ambiance. ($15 value).

Every Solay Lamp includes Zen hardwood base, Custom UL Safety approved 4ft light unit, on/off switch and 15 watt bulb.

Salt Rock/Crystal Lamp Video

I have known for some time that the Crystal Halite Lamps are not only for decoration, but for improving air quality! This hysterical video by Mark Kaye really explains it well:

I think you will find as I do, that the Crystal Salt Lamp is the most inexpensive way to improve air quality in your home. Not only an excellent air ionizer that is completely silent- but also brings you a calming glow. We could all use as many negative ions as we can get! At this price, why not now?

Image by sarflondondunc via Flickr

The whole digestion process starts in your mouth in the chewing phase. It is really important to actually chew! We should be chewing at least 20-25 times per fork full.

The following digestive problems occur when we eat too fast:

• We delay the feeling of feeling full when we eat too fast. Therefore we tend to overeat beyond how much food we really need to feel full.
• It is harder for our digestive system to function properly resulting in poor digestion.
• It increases the chances for experiencing indigestion and heartburn.
• Causes the gut to contract, sending you to the restroom almost immediately after eating, a sign of poor digestion.
• Is a contributing factor to serious digestive diseases such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome and even colon cancer.
• Poor digestion means you are not breaking down the foods enough to absorb the necessary nutrients from your food.
• A weak digestion leads to a weak immune system which leaves you susceptible to illnesses.

Improve your Digestive Health by Eating Slower

Eating is supposed to be Leisurely and Relaxing. Those that eat fast are missing the point of eating. Eating is supposed to be a fun leisurely activity allowing us a time out for the day to relax.

How to enjoy eating as a leisurely relaxation session:

• Stop and take a deep breath before eating a meal. Be mindful and remind yourself to pay attention to your breath and the pace at which you eat.
• Eat at a table away from the TV (which tends to make us pay attention to how we are eating and it is bad for our digestion to be watching TV as we eat)
• Eat in a quiet relaxing environment and never eat when you are upset or after and argument, or during!
• Make sure you chew and swallow your food before putting the next fork full in your mouth. Set your fork down between each bite to train yourself.
• Make sure you are tasting the food. Try to notice how the taste changes from beginning durig and after chewing/swallowing. What is the aftertaste? How is the initial taste?
• Take smaller bites. Try to count to 30 while chewing.
• Try to figure out why you overeat. For example, many fast eaters grew up competing with a sibling for food. Eat it now, or it’s gone later. Many carry this with them into adulthood.

Benefits of eating slower:

• You will begin to enjoy and favor healthier whole foods as most commercial processed foods are engineered in such a way to only taste appealing in the first few bites.
• All the stomach aches or things that “didn’t agree” with you should disappear.
• A trimmer waistline.

Eating slower is a healthy habit that can easily be learned and our health and disease prevention factor can be improved ten fold by this simple act. If you are recovering from life as a fast eater or could use a little help in your digestion, Probiotics are a very valuable supplement for your digestive aid.

By eating slower and taking a digestive aid such as probiotics, we can correct our poor digestion and return to good digestive health.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Improving Your Digestive Health

Image by on2wheelz via Flickr

All they ask for you to do is sign up for their newsletter, and they will donate $1 to breast cancer research.

Subscribe HERE

Heather Ashare has been a dedicated practitioner and instructor of Ashtanga yoga for several years. As the yoga expert at DietsInReview.com, she shares simple and effective ways to make yoga a part of your life for greater fitness and wellness. DietsInReview.com also provides healthy recipes, weight loss tools, nutrition and health guidance in the Diet Blog and reviews of more than 475 diet plans.

Whether or not you roll out your mat to practice yoga, we all can learn a lot about our relationship to food by applying some of the principles of this ancient Indian practice to the foods we eat and how we eat them.

One of the great misnomers about yoga is that you must be a vegetarian to practice yoga. Nothing could be farther from the truth. What is more important is how do we use food? Do we use it solely to nourish us? For enjoyment? An escape?

Hatha yoga teaches us to tune our ears and eyes inward and listen to what our mind (the ego), our heart and our body is telling us. Rather than mindlessly reaching for that fifth piece of pizza or reacting immediately to a fight with our spouse by racing to the fast-food drive-thru, yoga tries to teach us to cultivate patience and observe our thoughts first, rather than quickly reacting to them.

Yoga’s ability to help heal the body and the mind is garnering the attention of medical and mental health professionals. A few years ago, a notable study showed that women who practiced yoga had greater body satisfaction, less body objectification and fewer symptoms of eating disorders than women who regularly practiced cardiovascular forms of exercise like jogging or aerobics.

Yoga is probably not the panacea to all eating disorders but its underlying message which teaches us to become more sensitive to our thoughts, feelings, and cravings opens up more pace for us to simply observe them, notice their fleeting nature and allow them to pass.

“This heightened sensitivity and responsiveness to bodily sensations is associated with less preoccupation of physical appearance, more positive views of the body, and more healthy regulation of food intake,” says the lead author of the study, Jennifer Daubenmier.

This is not to say that all of us need to assume the stance of a detached monk when a warm plate of rich chocolate brownies is placed in front of us. Who can or should resist that? But yoga tries to help us to slow down and enjoy our food, whether we’re indulging in one brownie, one bite or merely the smell of them.

The yoga of eating works its way from the inside out. Rather than focusing on the behavior of what we eat or how eat, yoga tries to get us to connect with what is going on emotionally that enables us to make food choices. In this manner, we become more aware of the actual feelings of hunger, the internal chatter in our minds that may drive us to make unhealthy food choices, and a clearer recognition of how our food choices affect us physically and emotionally. Do I really “need” that Krispy Kreme donut, or am I rather in need of something else that feeds me in a far deeper manner than fried and sweetened dough?

By applying some of these principles of patience, observation and introspection, you too can begin to alter your relationship with food for the better.

The following post is from a girlfriend of mine, whom decided to do a Raw Juice Fast. She is also regularly practicing yoga. The following is a personal journal about what she experienced while fasting.

Trying to fall asleep the last few hours my mind just keeps flashing images of art that I have a deep desire to put out. Paintings or sculptures of my unconscious thoughts and feelings of recent events
and experiences that have not yet been expressed or made sense of.

I have been experiencing so much change and evolution, and much experimentation primarily with my diet. Aside from the idea of sparing a few more animal lives my vegetarian/vegan diet was about feeling whether there was a shift in me. In my energy or my body’s energy if I seized eating meat. Truthfully there wasn’t. Sure my mind raced back to images of innocent animals being slaughtered for the pleasures of humans, and felt good about not contributing to the meat industry; but it still wasn’t hitting home.

Last week I suffered a severe allergic attack and was not able to breath. I became overwhelmed with a feeling that my body was full of poisons and the allergy a reaction of my body trying to fight it out
the infestation. I decided to detox on pure fruit and veggie juice for a few days and see if it made a difference, and it did.

My mind resisted it because of the pleasure and psychological habit of chewing food. However, I felt alive when drinking the juices and I felt a surge of energy and life entering my body. I also had two
physical reactions to the new diet.

• On the one hand my allergy was gone and I was able to breath again within the day.
• My skin on the other hand developed an infection on my chin and upper lip area, Which I find the placement of the infection interesting, considering it is around my mouth. I can assume two things. one that the infection is a result of toxins exiting the body or that my body is rejecting the dietary changes.

Either way the infection is impossible to hide and left me feeling exposed and self conscious, which set off another train of thoughts dealing with perception and desire for acceptance, and wanting to feel attractive on the outside, realizing if there is inner balance it radiates out but that i have to keep sifting through the shit to allow the good to gain more confidence.

I am beginning to come to an agreement between my body and mind’s emotional reactions. Understanding that it is not whether or not I eat animal products that make the difference, but rather giving my body what it needs while harming my environment and surroundings as less as possible. In other words, what are my intentions? Am I killing in order to survive or for selfish reasons of enjoyment?

I do feel more firmly about the energy of food and its powerful effects on the body, and feel strongly that through nutrition I can cure many of the imbalances both physical and mental. such as my skin sensitivity, chronic knee pain caused by jointal/artheritic causes and release of tension and energy from food/and surrounding experiences that the body retains.

A few more powerful things also came to me tonight. An image of a dark red core surrounded by a bright light. Perhaps a core surrounded by truth and allowing it to enter. Maybe symbolizing my spiritual growth or release of pain and emergence from a darkness. Perhaps its the work I’ve been putting in to shine more light so I can follow my path. I was also visualizing figures of nude women which according to Feng Shui images of solitary women symbolize being alone- perhaps expressing to me that I need to remain alone right now while I’m on my spiritual journey, and that although my mind may desire a partner my heart is not ready yet. I once again saw images of roots digging deep into the ground and a headless figure with a chest wide open and an exposed heart. Perhaps symbolizing that I follow my heart and not my mind, or a vision of how I want to see the world. Rooting deep into the earth as I grow on my personal spiritual journey and wanting to share more love.

As I continue to heal and find balance physically, it is opening up more room for the spiritual inner growth I’ve been seeking. I feel my mind is becoming less occupied with finding solutions to physical imbalances and shifting inward to find more inner peace a higher intellectual development which will allow the physical to work its self out in time. Whatever shift is occurring it is allowing me to find more peace and balance and lead a happier life. It truly amazes me how much tuning in to the body and the surroundings reveals. The more I am able to quiet the mind the more i am able to learn and grow intellectually. Gaining insight of my self and my surroundings and the cause and effect.

I think the Hatha yoga I’m doing is tuning me in with the gift Jnâna yoga offers the soul.

I thank my friend, whom also works at The Yoga Shelter based out of Detroit for sharing her experiences and soulful discoveries invoked by her raw juice fast. From her personal journal entry one can gain insight on some experiences the juice fast can bring.

Image via Wikipedia

• Essential Fatty Acids: Not all fat is bad for the body, and this one is certainly good for your brain. Omega-3 fatty acids are an essential part of the EFA family whose members are miracle workers when it comes to boosting brain power, upping your learning capacity, enhancing problem solving skills, and keeping depression at bay. Foods rich in EFA include cold water fish like salmon, tuna, halibut and others, nuts like walnuts, peanuts, hazelnuts and others, seeds like flaxseed and pumpkin seed, and eggs.
• Choline: This chemical helps protect against degenerative diseases, improves cognitive functions, helps brain development and slows the memory loss process as we grow old. Soy beans, soy milk, tofu and other soya products are rich sources of choline as is the yolk in eggs. However, soy can also be linked to negatively affect your body, so it should always be consumed in moderation.
• Lecithin: helps your brain by preventing the formation of plaque (yes, your brain does generate plaque like your teeth, and no, it’s not good here either) and is found in foods rich in protein like eggs, soya, meat, milk and whole grains.
• Antioxidants: The best known protection against free radicals, antioxidants provide us with a whole lot of goodness. Besides battling the effects of age and preventing the formation of cancerous cells, antioxidants also play a vital role in preventing your brain cells from deteriorating. Fruits, especially the ones that come in bright colors and citrus flavors, and pulses and beans are rich sources of antioxidants.
• Flavanols: Chocoholics, get ready to hear some good news. Dark chocolate is now officially good for you because it’s packed with flavanols (in the cocoa) that help boost your cognitive skills and improve concentration power. Chocolate is also a natural mood enhancer because it stimulates the production of endorphins that are responsible for the feel-good factor.
• Folates: are found in most leafy green vegetables and have been proven to delay the onset of cognitive decline as we get on in years. Nuts, seeds and whole grain cereals are also good sources of folate.

This post was contributed by Kelly Kilpatrick, who writes on the subject of top nursing schools. She invites your feedback at kellykilpatrick24 at gmail dot com.

Why is bread bad for you?

There are different schools of thought at work here. Some may say yes indeed it (whole wheat commercial bread) is better, it’s with fiber and it’s glycemic index is lower. However, what I’m concerned about in processed bread is a pretty nasty ingredient- bromide- and the fact that all the naturally occurring nutrients have been stripped out in the factory process.

One argument is that commercial/processed bread is still healthy because all the vitamins and minerals (calcium, iron, vitamin e, etc) are added back to flour as part of the process. However this is no match to the naturally occurring nutrients that were there in the first place and they are using them in their synthetic form which is not able to properly adapt to our bodies. The countless other nasties that get passed into processed bread can include:

• fertilizers
• insecticides
• fungicides
• benzoyl peroxide or chlorine dioxide (known to cause cancer)
• methyl bromide
• nitrogen trichloride
• alum
• ammonium carbonate
• nitrogen peroxide

It’s logical to innocently believe that whole grain bread then is left unharmed by this stripping process, but think again! Most still strip out and add back in. Also sneaking in bromide.

How it effects you

Well all those “nasties” I listed above make us sick and too much of them can cause serious health problems including:

• allergies that manifest as bloating, diarrhoea, eczema, asthma, headache or general malaise or lack of energy
• Leaky gut syndrome
• Undigested gluten enters the colon where it slows transit time, putrefies to produce toxic material and can cause toxic material to be in persistent contact with the bowel
• Promotes the growth of unfriendly toxin generating bacteria in the gut
• Causes slowing of transit time, so toxic substances are in contact with the bowel for longer

So it sure makes me crazy that someone would buy a refined processed “whole wheat plus fiber” bread at their grocery store hoping it is what they need to support the gastrointestinal tract and help flush out toxins. And they are getting the opposite!

What is Bromide?

Well basically at the end of the day, it slows down your metabolism.

Bromides disrupt endocrines. It is found in most flours as potassium bromate. It came into use in the 1960’s as an “improved” replacement to it’s former postassium iodate. It is a dough conditioner.

Because bromide is also a halide it competes for the same receptors that are used in the thyroid gland (among other places) to capture iodine. This will inhibit thyroid hormone production resulting in a low thyroid state.

Why do they use it?

Some commercial bakers claim they use bromated flour because it yields dependable results, and it makes more elastic dough which can stand up to bread hooks and other commercial baking tools.

The UK banned bromate in bread in 1990.
Canada banned bromate in bread in 1994.

Back in 1999, the Center for Science in the Public Interest petitioned the FDA to prohibit the use of potassium bromate, charging that the FDA has knownfor years that bromate causes cancer in lab animals, but has failed to ban it.

As of September 2007, the US FDA responded to Breast Cancer Choices inquire with the statement, ” Potassium Bromate is still listed as a safeadditive.”

Who’s not using it?

I prefer non baked breads, known as “live bread”. Not only are the enzymes, minerals and vitamins (all the “goodies”) in it, but no bromide is added and it is more filling, energizing and nourishing.

There are many brands, my personal favorite being Ezekial Sprouted Bread. I also heard some manufacturers are starting to advertise their bread as “Bromide FREE”. I’ve heard on the net mentioning they found this in Wal-Mart.

The healthiest options is to look for “Sprouted Bread”. This is bread that hasn’t been baked but still retains a very bread like state. It’s packed with all the naturally occurring nutrients and enzymes. Other healthier options is to look for or make your own bread from grains such as spelt, quinoa, rice, etc.. You can easily make your own at home with a vitamix blender. View this link for a closer look.

So that my friends, is the whole story on why bread is bad for you and how to find or make your own healthy bread.