So, it does pay to contact your state’s congress man or woman about issues that you feel are important. I got a request, no doubt a form letter response, from the office of Sherrod Brown, one of our state’s senators here in Ohio, and he did say that he supported the DSHEA and would oppose any intent to overrule it should it come before the senate, although he does feel that supplements should be somewhat regulated for dangerous activities.

For those of you that didn’t see it, Senator John McCain is trying to set forth a bill to be approved that would most likely severely limit your free access and free choice to the supplements and natural remedies and herbal products that you have come to know and love. It has already undergone a lot of opposition, but no doubt the pharmaceutical industry and it’s supporters are going to love if this gets passed, then they are forcing people to take more drugs instead of trying natural alternatives.

So, please do contact your state senators and let them know that you oppose this bill.  It’s bill S3002, if you would like to let them know you oppose it. After all, they are representatives of their people, and if enough people don’t agree with something, it won’t get passed, so let’s all voice our opinions on this!

Hey everyone, there is something really important that I’d like to draw your attention to. John McCain, whom I happen to admire for certain things, although I certanily don’t agree with everything he stands for, is trying to get a bill passed that could endanger many of your freedoms to purchase herbal and natural supplements. On it’s surface, they are trying to make this bill look like it’s simply asking supplement companies to list out their ingredients (which most of them do anyways, at least if they don’t just say “proprietary blend”).

However, when you dig deeper, this bill could threaten the open market for herbal supplements, make it illegal to possess and grow certain herbs, and also make it very hard for all but a select few herbal supplement makers to stay in the business, thereby limiting you to a specific set of supplements. Don’t stand for this!  It gives the FDA a lot more power to arbitrarily ban any supplement they’d like basically, and we all know how they let much more toxic, dangerous drugs on the market because of the power and size of the pharmaceutical industry. This is hypocrisy at it’s worst.

Can you imagine living without your favorite products, like herbal remedies for hair loss, or maybe being deprived of buying something that can help you quit smoking like an herbal smoking cessation product?  I certainly can’t fathom going without some of my most well loved and loyally used and much appreciated herbal and natural therapeutic supplements that I know have added so much to my quality of life, and you shouldn’t have to either.

Please go to your state’s website and see how you can ask your senators and state representatives to vote NO on this intrusive and useless bill. We should be wasting our time on more important issues, not herbal supplements, which benefit far more people than they harm.   Send a letter to your Senators now, urging them to reject “S. 3002, the Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010″.  If we don’t all band together and do something, we just might have our herbal supplements taken away or severely restricted.

It has become increasingly obvious that lowering your heart rate while at rest, or your resting heart rate, is important if you want to avoid heart disease or heart attack likelihood.  This means your heart rate while you are note exerting yourself, or even while you are sleeping. If your heart rate is above a certain amount of beats per minute, your physician should advise you to do a few things to help lower your resting heart rate to improve your heart health.

You  can try doing cardio training. While it increases your heart rate while you’re doing it, cardio exercise, and even interval training where you are lifting weights an doing cardiovascular training like running or an elliptical machine, can help lower your resting heart rate because your heart doesn’t have to work as hard simply to rest any more. That is why physical activity is so important for your heart.

I’ve noticed and mentioned before how physical activity has helped me lower my heart rate. I notice that I’m better able to improve my heart rate when I’m under enormous amounts of acute stress, whereas I find that if I’ve been slacking off at the gym (well actually I also work out at home), I cannot control my heart rate in stressful situations, and my heart rate beats out of control for several minutes at a time.

When you do cardio training, this actually trains your heart to beat more regularly and at a slower rate, thereby decreasing risk of heart attack. Oh, and fish oil or omega 3 supplements have been found to be an excellent benefit for your resting heart rate, so if you don’t have a high quality omega 3 supplement in your diet, add one today!

For those of us that chronically do not get those ubiquitous 8 hours of sleep per night, or at least a good solid 7 hours on a nightly basis, or at least the majority of the time, unlike what most of the population thinks, you cannot “catch up” on this missed sleep on the weekends like you may have thought.

I remember this used to be a common thought, especially back in college when you pulled an all nighter studying for exams or finishing that last term paper, that you could deprive yourself of precious sleep during the week and not worry too much about it because you could always build your sleep reserves back up on the weekend, or something like that.

But that thought process, which is not uncommon, nor does it necessarily stray from common sense if you ask me, is nowhere near correct. In fact, if you don’t get your regular sleep, don’t even think that getting more than enough sleep on your longed for weekends will help you pull through by building up your sleep stores again. It’s sort of like once you lose sleep, you don’t get the benefits back, you just have to make sure that from this point forward you get good sleep on a nightly basis if you want to reap it’s rewards body wise and mind wise.

It’s important to note that our bodies respond very profoundly to lack of sleep. When we even go a full 24 hours without sleep, the results are similar to us imbibing a lot of alcohol. Our motor and cognitive skills become greatly impaired. Shoot, I can remember pulling all nighters in college and directly before college, but come to think of it, I always had a little nap in there somewhere along the way.

Try asking someone who works the graveyard shift at the hospital or some other similar job. They become like walking zombies because they are basically fighting their natural circadian rhythm and are also usually not getting the correct amount of quality of sleep that they need to function optimally. I’ve seen this result firsthand in some friends and family of mine.

They openly admit that working this shift has definitely not been good for their health. So, ladies and gents, remember when it comes to sleep consistency is best. As long as we are getting that good, quality sleep every night then that is what is going to make us function at our best levels, on a physical and mental plain.

We often think of New Year’s resolutions in terms of things like weight loss, and more exercise or other habits that enhance our appearance and the way we feel about ourselves ultimately, but what of the hidden things, the personality traits of bad habits that we would like to change in ourselves, to be of better service not only to our friends and our families, but also to better serve ourselves.

For example, for myself, I’ve made a resolution to not let the little things bother me as much as they do sometimes. With me being a picky, perfectionist Virgo sign, I often tend to pick at little things like messes around the house, how we can improve things, and even picky about my own personal appearance and about things like my weight and my outlook on life. I’ve resolved to try not to pick fights with my husband about trivial things like messes around the house, but rather, reserve arguments for matters that truly are important and need to be discussed.

After all, there has to be SOME arguing in a marriage, or else you’re both dead! Another resolution I would like to make is to reserve judgment against others. I realize that judging others really just is putting them in little neat boxes, and that’s not how people were made, and by me judging people, I’m really judging myself as well. This is all stuff I’ve learned by listening to middle eastern philosophers, and believe me, listening to them can really make you a much happier, more fulfilled person.