How to reduce bloating?

I am going to tell you how to reduce bloating, which can be pretty uncomfortable... But firstly, what is bloating? 

Bloating is a swelling in the abdominal area. It happens because you may be overeating, or eating too fast. Here is a tip from me. Try to chew your food as much as you can and take your time. If you eat too fast, you will trick your body in thinking that you are not yet full and you will be still hungry, but if you eat slowly that will not happen. Try to chew your food at least 15-20 times, before swallowing it. Do not forget that it takes about 20 minutes for the signal that you are full, to reach the brain! So, if you eat faster, your brain will think that you are still hungry. 

Also eat in a smaller plate, because again, you will trick your mind that you are still eating a plate full of food, but on the other hand the portion size is much smaller. That's it for tricking your brain. :) Now comes the difficult part... Try to avoid junk food as much as you can and eat healthy. 

1. Try to minimize the consumption of carbonated drinks, because the air bubbles in them cause bloating. Instead of soda try ice tea, which is a diuretic and cleans your body from inside out.

2. Substitute chips for a healthier alternative. Snack on something healthier.

3. Avoid overeating refined carbs, such as white flour bread. Instead try brown rice,whole wheat grain and similar.

4. Avoid table salt as much as you can. The sodium in it is not good for your body.

5.The same is valid for canned food. If you can not avoid it, opt for low sodium ones and do not eat canned food every day.

6. Try Probiotic Yogurt (like Kefir) instead of your daily dairy products. I know I can not give up on cheese, but at least I can substitute milk and yogurt with a healthier alternative. Probiotic yogurt will boost the bacteria in your gut, helping you to digest in a healthier way.

7. Always remember that a good diet reduces bloating and do not neglect drinking plenty of water! 8 glasses a day should be enough. 

8. Add some lemon to your water and drink it first thing in the morning. It helps to clean your body. 

9. Again same with salt, try to avoid refined sugar and choose a healthier alternative, such as brown sugar, agave nectar or even honey.

10. Juice often.

11. Say farewell bloating! ;)

Vinegar wash for your fruits and veggies

You can reduce to minimum your exposure to pesticides and bacteria found on fruits and veggies, with the help of a vinegar and water wash. Experts have discovered that a mixture of white vinegar and water wash kills 98% of bacteria and removes pesticides. Plus, it is really easy to make.

Just fill a bowl with water and add 1/8 to 1/2 cup of vinegar, depending on the size of your bowl and place your fruits and veggies there. Soak for 15 to 20 minutes. Rinse with water and you are done. Water will be dirty, but fruit will have no  wax or nasty film. This method is great for strawberries, too. If you wash them this way, they will last for weeks.

Simple but effective ;)

Dangerous foods for your wellbeing

Artificial sweeteners 

Trying to skip the calories of sugars with artificial sweeteners? No, thanks! This shortcut is not as safe as you may think...

Think basics... In nature there are no artificial sweeteners, so first of all it is not natural! We have invented them with the idea of skipping calories and lowering the cost of the foods. No one can say for sure how healthy these sweeteners are. There are a lot of studies that put a loads of doubts in sweeteners like aspartame. 

According to these studies aspartame increased cancer risk in animals and affected the brains of the mices. Of course, we are talking of big amounts of this chemical. I do not think that taking a coke, which is known to contain aspartam, will have any undesired effect at all, but drinking tons of it every day ... We’ll have to see what happens... 

Artificial sweeteners are sweeter than the sugars, consuming a lot of them each day will increase the level of sweetness that we’ll want to eat with our food. Instead eating honey and brown sugar in low quantity would be the ideal choice for your health. 

On the other hand I think that artificial sweeteners are a good choice for the diabetics and the guys suffering from reactive hypoglycemia.

Table salt

A little salt sprinkled on your plates won’t do a anything bad, but remember that all the foods we use already have their own salt. Try eliminate salt as much as you can, because after all, the table salt is not like the natural sea salt. It is refined, meaning that it doesent have the trace minerals found in the sea salt, even the iodine found in it, is added. We need those trace minerals, found in the unrefined sea salt, if we want to be in good health, but we don’t need too much sodium chloride (found in the table salt) because it tends to increase the blood pressure.

Margarine 

Margarine is not like butter, which is a sub product of milk (basically you take out the fats that are in the milk). Margarine is made from vegetable oils, like the one we use to fry or cook. 

Many years ago, in some parts of the world, for example the eastern communist countries, margarine was prepared even from the crude oil. This is the oil from which diesel is made and is used to run the cars! 

But nowadays the problem with margarine is that it is just too full of trans oils. Beside that, margarine has so many calories that it increases the bad cholesterol. Cholesterol and trans oils accumulate in the blood vessels, especially in the coronaries, being so the cause of a cardiovascular disease, such as a heart attack or a myocardial infarct. Margarine is vegetable, but it is not a good choice for the vegetarians.

Microwave popcorn

Before you sit down to watch your new favorite movie, pop a bowl of kernels in the stove, not in the microwave . 

The bag's liner contains PFOA, a proven intoxicant and carcinogen in animals. This chemical clings on to popcorn and studies have linked it to infertility.

Microwave food

Use your microwave oven to heat and not to cook your foods. Drinking a hot soup from the microwave, is ok, but cooking with the microwave oven is not the same. It is belived that the microwaves tend to destroy the natural shape of the food molecules, because the range of these waves is at the molecular level. This is believed to happen only if you are cooking the foods for a long time, so be confident that nothing will happen, if you use the microwave ovens to just warm up your food. 

GMO-s (Genetically modified organisms or known as genetically modified food)

World population has passed 7 billion people and is still growing. All these people are hungry at one point or another. Feeding them is not easy, because it is well known that the earth resources have a limit. Plus the crops tend to be very vulnerable to diseases and aridity, or even wetness. 

So, the need for genetically modified crop, to resist these kind of challenges, has aroused. It is difficult these days to distinguish the GMOs from the natural food. They can be found in all kinds of processed foods, used to feed the animals, whose products we consume. In some countries, it is not even obligatory to write on the labels, if the food is GMO or not. You really can’t find out the truth, but there are countries where GMOs are forbidden to enter. If you live in Europe, avoiding GMO foods is easier, since laws require labeling. In the US and Canada, however, food manufacturers are not required to label if their food is genetically modified or not. 

Genetically modified foods have been linked to toxic and allergic reactions, sick, sterile, and dead livestock, and damage to virtually every organ studied in lab animals. The effects on humans that consume these new combinations of proteins, produced in GMOs, are unknown and have not been studied.

The only negative side proven about the GMOs, is the allergenic properties that these kind of foods have, to some people, causing even death.