Recent Blog Posts

  All About Absinthe: Its History, Effects, Laws and More in Brief   In late 19th-century Europe and early 20th-century United States, absinthe was all the rage. This 140-proof, bitter-tasting green liqueur was fancied by artists, poets and intellectuals alike. Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gaugin, Pablo Picasso, Oscar Wilde, Charles Baudelaire, and Edgar Allan Poe all fondly partook in "the green fairy." Absinthe is traditionally prepared by pouring 1 ounce of the spirit into a glass, placing a slotted spoon over the top and slowly pouring ice cold water over it. This turns the mixture a milky color. Sometimes a sugar cube is placed on top of the spoon and allowed to dissolve into the mixture as well. Ernest Hemingway was also a notable absinthe drinker, and his now famous cocktail recipe, "Death in the Afternoon," which he contributed to a collection of celebrity recipes in 1935, has been widely circulated. Hemmingway wrote: "Pour one jigger absinthe into a Champagne glass. Add iced Champagne until it attains the proper opalescent milkiness. Drink three to five of these slowly." First made [...]

  Rip Currents & Other Hidden Hazards That Everyone Who Swims and Plays In Oceans or Lakes Needs to Know   Most trips to the beach are pleasantly uneventful with visitors taking in the sun, sand and surf, and maybe searching for a seashell or two. Assuming you know how to swim, choose a day when the weather is good and the water is calm, and don't stay out in the sun for too long, the beach hardly looks like a place full of potential hazards … but in this case looks can be deceiving. More than 50,000 people were rescued in past year from the nation's beaches. Oceans and lakes are home to powerful currents, tides and waves that can come up seemingly from nowhere and quickly devastate the life of someone who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. What makes this issue so crucial is that these potentially hazardous conditions can, and do, exist in seemingly innocent water, and often not far from shore. Dangers at the Beach Minor to severe injuries occur [...]

  The Four Most Common Hormone Disorders in Women Hormones play a major role in how well your body functions and how you feel from day to day. If your hormones are in balance, you likely sleep well and have lots of energy, a strong sex drive, and well-functioning immune and digestive systems. "The healthy body is equipped to produce all the hormones a woman needs throughout her life," said Dr. Christiane Northrup, author of The Wisdom of Menopause. But those hormones can easily become pushed off kilter -- even with too much stress or an unhealthy diet -- leaving room for a wide array of hormonal disorders to surface. As many as one in 10 women may suffer from the most common hormonal disorder among women, PCOS. Hormones are proteins or steroids that are secreted directly into your bloodstream. They are responsible for the body's metabolism of minerals, regulation of fluids, reproduction, sexual function, and responses to stress. The endocrine system, which includes glands such as the pituitary, hypothalamus, thyroid, parathyroid, pancreas, adrenal cortex and medulla, and ovaries, produce [...]

  How to Keep Your Kid’s Mind Active This Summer… and Why You Should Summer vacation -- a little over two months of free time and fun for your kids -- but that doesn’t mean they should lose everything they learned over the school year. If your kids don’t keep their minds active over the summer, they can lose 2.6 months of grade level equivalency in math skills and nearly a whole reading level! The long, lazy days of summer pose a risk for school-aged children and it’s even been coined as “summer brain drain.” Research has shown that if your child’s brain remains stagnant without challenge over the summer months, they could lose, on average, 2.6 months of grade level equivalency in math skills and nearly a whole reading level. Other studies have shown that on the average students will score lower on standardized tests at the end of summer vacation compared to the same tests they took at the beginning of the summer. Parents can make a big difference in the knowledge their kids retain by setting examples [...]

  10 Riskiest Foods Revealed Which Foods are Most Likely to Make You Sick? Massive egg recalls in past years, prompted by thousands of cases of Salmonella poisoning, is now safely behind us, but there are still foods lurking in your supermarket that have the potential to make you sick. About 76 million Americans are stricken with a food-borne illness every year -- often when they least expect it. Food-borne diseases cause an estimated 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths in the United States each year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In all, about 200 diseases can be transmitted through food, including via viruses, bacteria, parasites, toxins, metals and prions. Most deadly, however, are bacteria, which account for 72 percent of food-related deaths, followed by parasites (21 percent), and viruses (7 percent). And though there are countless organisms that can make you ill, just five pathogens are responsible for 90 percent of food-related deaths each year. These include: Salmonella (31 percent) Listeria (28 percent) Toxoplasma (21 percent) Norwalk-like viruses (7 percent) Campylobacter (5 [...]

  Hydrogen Peroxide vs. Bleach: Which is the Better Household Cleaner? And is There an Even Better Option? Chlorine bleach household cleaners are often the most toxic chemicals found in homes yet most popular in America. Bleach is added to everything from toilet bowl cleaners and counter sprays to dishwashing liquid and laundry detergent. Of course, it’s also often used straight out of the bottle for an endless array of cleaning purposes. That old cleaning standby, a bucket of bleach water and an old rag, may not be the best choice for your family’s health. The benefit to chlorine bleach is that it’s very effective in killing germs like viruses, bacteria and fungi. But the benefit does not come without a price. It resides as residue on all surfaces you use it to clean, it goes into your home’s air that you breathe, affecting your lungs, and it’s absorbed very quickly into your skin and your family members’ skin by everything you touch that was cleaned. Chlorine is extremely poisonous and was actually used during World War I as a [...]