Archive for the ‘Health and Fitness’ Category

Pimples can make you feel awful about yourself.Whether it’s one or several together, pimples have the ability to make the sufferer self-conscious and miserable.  All you can think about is finding a way to get rid of the pimples and go back to having clean, clear, smooth skin.

It is important to understand what causes pimples before you try and get rid of them. 

What causes pimples?

To begin with, it is important to know about the day to day workings of your skin.Millions of very difficult to see pores cover the surface of your skin. Some of these pores can have small hairs growing out of them, breaking out onto the skin surface.  Deep down in each of these pores are to be found several tiny glands which produce natural oils.  These glands are known as the sebaceous glands and the oil they produce is called sebum.

Sebum is produced by your body as a natural moisturizer for your skin.  Sebum is crucial to a healthy skin as it carries everything from dirt to bacteria up onto the skin’s surface from where it can easily be removed.  This is how your body naturally keeps your skin healthy and moist; by removing this dirt.

The arrival of puberty is a difficult time with your body starting to produce a variety of different hormones and other chemicals.  Because it is rather new at this process, it takes a while to get things all working in balance; during this time your hormone levels will rise and fall a great deal, sort of like a roller coaster. Your skin has trouble dealing with such extreme fluctuations which provide an ideal environment for acne and pimples to flourish. 

Much more sebum than normal is produced by the sebaceous glands, due to the hormonal changes happening in your body.  Your skins pores ability to get rid of dead skin cells can be adversely affected by hormonal changes.  Bacteria love the environment of a clogged pore.  All that extra sebum with an endless supply of dead skin cells means that infection and inflamation will very soon follow.  Unfortunately, we have now created a pimple.

Help for your acne pimples:

Whilst your bodies natural hormonal changes will happen anyway, the amount of pimples you get, to a large extent, are down to decisions you make.

  1. Keep your skin clean – It helps to keep your skin clean by using a mild cleanser each morning and evening.  If your skin is irritated you are more likely to develop pimples. Therefore, choose a gentle facial cleanser and refrain from scrubbing your skin too harshly.
  2. Use medication – The function of anti-acne medication is to help reduce the amount of sebum produced and also make it easier for your skin to get rid of dead skin cells.Two very good over the counter medications are benzoyl peroxide and salicylic acid.
  3. Keep your skin moist – If your skin dries out, more pimples are very likely. Using a very light moisturizer on your face can pay dividends.  It is best to choose an oil-free moisturizer for optimum results.

Once you understand what causes pimples it is much easier to understand the best way to treat and prevent them in the first place. You have taken the first step by finding the correct information to help yourself. The second step is to make sure you apply the information. Your skin won’t become pimple free until you do!

29
Sep

Bodybuilding Diet Mistakes

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We will discuss some common mistakes in bodybuilding concerning diet. We will discuss what to do about these mistakes.

Not giving one diet enough time – Don’t expect to change your diet and then make great gains in a matter of a week. It can take 3 weeks for your body to get used to your new diet. Think of your diet as helping your bodybuilding workouts, not a means to an end in itself. Meaning, if you have a perfect diet, that alone won’t do it. The laws of muscle building still apply. You will have to lift weight and recover before your muscles will grow. And this takes time. So don’t keep changing your diet because you are not getting quick results.

Not counting calories – This applies most to those competing in bodybuilding. If this is your job or you just want to be the best you can be when competing, then you must track everything. This includes tracking your food intake. Carbs, fats and proteins. You might not be meeting your bodybuilding goals because you are not eating the right amount of carbs, fat or protein.

Relying on supplements too much – Supplements are just that. They supplement your diet and it is your training, diet and with rest, which will give you your success for packing on muscle.

Inconsistent eating – You need to be consistent in how often and how much you eat. Stick to your plan and don’t alter it. Missing meals is going to hurt your goal of muscle growth. You made the plan for a reason, now stick with it.

Judging success by your Scale – If you are trying to trim down your fat, don’t just rely on the scale. Scales are deceiving as you can lose muscle and think you are on the right track or gain muscle mass and think you did not lose fat.

9
Sep

HIV

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Because there is no vaccine for HIV, the only way people can prevent infection with the virus is to avoid behaviors putting them at risk of infection, such as sharing needles and having unprotected sex.

Many people infected with HIV (AIDS) have no symptoms. Therefore, there is no way of knowing with certainty whether a sexual partner is infected unless he or she has repeatedly tested negative for the virus and has not engaged in any risky behavior.

Abstaining from having sex or using male latex condoms or female polyurethane condoms may offer partial protection, during oral, anal, or vaginal sex. Only water based lubricants can be used when using a condom.

Even though there is some evidence to show spermicides can destroy HIV, it is not proven as a prevention system.

Recently, NIAID-supported two studies that found adult male medical circumcision reduces a man’s risk of acquiring HIV infection by approximately 50 percent. The studies only pertain to heterosexual forms of transmission. As with other prevention strategies, male circumcision is not completely effective at preventing the transmission of HIV. Circumcision will be more effective if it is a part of a more complete prevention strategy that includes condoms.

Vaccines help the body’s immune system to recognize a harmful organism and kill it when the body sees the real thing. Despite extraordinary advances in understanding both HIV and the human immune system, a fully successful HIV vaccine continues to elude researchers. This is why we primarily reley on HIV medications like Kaletra (Lopinavir, Ritonavir), and Combivir.

HIV attacks CD4+ T cells, the most important part of the immune system that coordinates and directs the activities of other types of immune cells that combat intruding microbes. In order for a vaccine to be effective it would need to be able to activate these cells- a hard feat if they are being infected and destroyed by the HIV virus.Scientists have not identified the correlates of immunity, or protection, for HIV and are still trying to design vaccines to induce the appropriate immune responses necessary for protection.

Unlike other viral diseases for which investigators have made successful vaccines, there are no documented cases of complete recovery from HIV infection. So, HIV vaccine research has no actual human model of recovery from an infection and subsequent protection from re-infection to help it. HIV will continually mutate in an infected person while it recombinds to evolve into brand new strains. This extensive diversity of HIV poses a challenge to vaccine design as an HIV vaccine would need to protect against many different strains of the virus circulating throughout the world. Vaccines in the past have only had to fight off a small number of strains, even one.