If you are looking for an easy trick to improve your life and overall health, than look no further. Drinking lemon water first thing in the morning is a pretty simple routine to get into and will have tremendous effects on your overall health.

Since I started this simple and surprisingly healthy habit a few years ago, I definitely noticed the difference. Not only does the refreshing taste wake me up in the morning, it helps to kick start digestion and finalizes my body’s natural detoxification processes… And lemons are packed with vitamin C, B, calcium, iron, magnesium, potassium, enzymes, antioxidants, and fibers.

According to the Ayurvedic philosophy, choices you make regarding your daily routine either build up resistance to diseases or tear it down.

So what are you waiting for to jump start your day with this incredible easy morning routine. Its benefits are endless and I listed the 15 most important ones for you in this article.

1.    Improves Digestion

Lemon juice has a similar structure to your stomach’s juices and helps to loosen and flush out toxins from the digestive tract. Lemon juice can help ease indigestion, heartburn, and bloating. It also helps to move your bowels in the morning, hydrates your colon, stimulate bile production, and infuses water in your stool.

2.    Boost Immune System.

Lemon juice is rich in vitamin C, which helps strengthen the immunes system and fights cold and flu. But not only vitamin C is important for a good working immune system, iron is another important nutrient, and lemons improve the ability to absorb more iron from the food you eat.

3.    Hydrates Your Body

It is important to stay hydrated. Especially during the summer months. Plain water is best, but many people find this boring and are not drinking enough of it. That’s where lemon comes into play to make things more interesting. So feel free to not only start your day with lemon water, but drink as many glasses as you wish during the day to stay hydrated.

4.    Boost Energy

Lemon water gives you an instant boost of energy and improves your mood right at the start of your day.

5.    Promote Healthy And Rejuvenated Skin

Lemons are a rich sources of antioxidants that prevent free radical damage. These free radicals are responsible for pre-mature aging of your skin. Vitamin C helps to maintain your skin’s elasticity to prevent the formation of wrinkles and decrease blemishes.

6.    Reduce Inflammation

Lemons have the ability to remove uric acid from your joints. Uric acid built-ups are one of the major causes of inflammation.

7.    Weight Loss Aid

Although lemon water on its own is no weight loss miracle, it can definitely help you to achieve faster and long term results. Lemons assist in fighting hunger cravings, boost metabolism, and give you a stuffed feeling, making it less likely to snack in between meals.

8.    Alkalize Your Body

Although lemons have a sour taste, they are one of the most alkalizing food sources on Earth. Too much acids can cause inflammation, obesity, and major diseases like cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer’s.

9.    Cleansing Properties

Lemons help your entire body to flush out more toxins to prevent built-ups and damage to your cells, tissues, and organs. It stimulates your liver to produce more enzymes and work more efficiently. Lemon juice works as a diuretic to keep your urinary tract toxin-free and can also change the pH levels which discourage bacterial growth. This is very helpful for people who often suffer from UTI (urinary tract infection). And like mentioned before, lemons loosen and flush out waste from your digestive tract and cleanse your colon.

10.Antibacterial and Antiviral Properties

Lemons have antibacterial and antiviral properties. They help fight the flu, cold, and soothe a sore throat. Although people who drink their daily lemon water every day are less likely to get these in the first place.

11.Reduce Mucus And Phlegm

Lemon water helps to reduce mucus and phlegm formation. People who drink cow’s milk are often more sensitive for mucus production. So starting your day with lemon water can definitely help to lessen mucus if you’re not ready to go dairy-free.

12.Freshen Breath

Lemons freshen your breath and fight mouth bacteria. Although lemons are great for your overall oral health, avoid drinking or using it undiluted. The citric acid can erode tooth enamel, so don’t brush your teeth with it, but have a glass of lemon water instead.

13.Boost Brain Power

The high levels of potassium and magnesium show beneficial effects on our brain and nerve health. Lemon water can give you the boost you need to fight depression and stress. It creates mental clarity and more focus, making it a great drink for students or people with busy and stressful jobs.

14.Anti-cancer

Lemon’s antioxidants not only protect your skin from ageing, but also reduce the risk of several types of cancer. They are great in neutralizing acids as well. Cancer loves to grow in an acidic environment. Alkalizing your body may stop cancer cells to grow and may reduce the risk of getting cancer in the first place.

15.Get Of Caffeine

Many people are able to get off caffeine by replacing their morning coffee by lukewarm lemon water. It gives a similar energy boost to wake your body and boost energy as one cup of coffee would.



How To Make Lemon Water

Making lemon water is super simple. It takes less than 5 minutes of your precious morning time. Just squeeze half a lemon in lukewarm water. If you weigh more than 150 pounds, use a whole lemon.

Why use lukewarm (or room temperature) instead of cold or hot water to make this healing morning drink? Well, hot or cold water takes more energy to process, so your first glass in the morning should be lukewarm or at room temperature to slowly wake your body and kick start digestion.

If you love the taste feel free to add more lemon water to your diet during the rest of the day, cold or hot. It adds up to your daily water need, is less boring than plain water, and adds tons of benefits for body and mind.

Starbucks' new Frappuccinos contain 'as much sugar as a litre of Coke '

Cinnamon roll, caramel cocoa cluster, red velvet cake crème- and that's just to drink. But as Starbucks unveiled six new Frappuccino flavours to celebrate the chain's 20th anniversary this week, the amount of sugar in each was also revealed - and it's enough to give you a toothache.

According to MINA, the worst offender amongst the new flavours is the Cinnamon Roll, which Starbucks describes as "sweet and spicy".

It's made up of cinnamon dolce syrup blended with coffee, white chocolate mocha sauce and vanilla bean, topped with whipped cream and a cinnamon dolce sprinkle - so perhaps it's no surprise that it also contains an enormous 102g of sugar (20 teaspoons), the equivalent of drinking a one-litre bottle of Coca Cola.

It's also more than double the recommended daily allowance of sugar for adults in the UK.

Next on the naughty list is the Caramel Cocoa Cluster, with 97.3g (19 teaspoons) of sugar - made up of toffee nut syrup, blended with coffee, topped with a dark caramel sauce, whipped cream and mocha drizzle.

At three, it's the Red Velvet Cake Crème, with 87g (17 teaspoons) of sugar hiding inside its chocolate chips, mocha sauce, raspberry and vanilla syrup, topped with whipped cream. That's the equivalent of two slices of carrot cake.

Then it's the Cotton Candy Crème, which has 83g (16 teaspoons) of the sweet stuff. It's neon pink and is made up of vanilla bean crème, blended with raspberry syrup and, if that wasn't enough, is also topped with whipped cream.

Cupcake Crème is at number five, with 79g of sugar (15 teaspoons), consisting of vanilla bean crème, blended with hazelnut syrup and the obligatory whipped cream.

Lastly, the Lemon Bar Crème has 71g of sugar (14 teaspoons) making up its lemonade and vanilla flavour, topped with whipped cream and a caramel sugar sprinkle.

If you're in Britain and you're still craving something sweet after reading that, then you might have to book yourself a plane ticket - the drinks, which are being dubbed by the coffee giant as 'fan flavours', and are reportedly inspired by the 'secret' Starbucks menu, are currently only available in the US.

A spokeswoman for Starbucks told The Independent: “We offer over 87,000 drinks that can be customised to suit individual choice, including lighter options for all of the Starbucks Frappuccino range, while our new Mango Passion Fruit Yoghurt Frappuccino comes in at under 200 calories in a tall size.”  

Why drinking coffee first thing in the morning is a bad idea

Coffee has ingrained itself in the mechanisms of so many people's early morning routines. There is something romantic about brewing a carafe, or holding a freshly bought cup close, first thing. There is also something practical about it: Sipping piping hot caffeine as soon as possible prepares us for the day — or, at the very least, for the coming few hours.

But drinking coffee shortly after waking up, as it turns out, is actually a bit counterproductive. Not only does it undermine the caffeine's effect, but it tends to lead people to build a tolerance for the drug, thereby diminishing its effect down the road.

Our bodies produce a hormone called cortisol, which has been branded the "stress hormone," because it tends to appear when we are either stressed or fearful. But that same hormone is also a key component of our natural, day-long hormonal cycle, known as the circadian clock, which helps wake us up in the morning and wind us down at night. The gist is that when our body releases cortisol, we feel more awake.

There are two basic problems with consuming caffeine when cortisol production is high. First, caffeine tends to interfere with the production of cortisol. The body then produces less of the hormone and relies more on the caffeine.

Second, drinking coffee while cortisol is high leads us to develop long-term tolerances for caffeine, which is why so many habitual coffee drinkers say it has less of an effect on them. In effect, caffeine replaces the boost we would ordinarily get from cortisol rather than supplementing it.

Three times throughout the day — in the early morning, around mid-day, and in the evening–cortisol levels rise.

It's during the troughs above — between roughly 10 a.m. and noon, and 2 p.m. and 5 p.m.—when people should drink coffee if they want to get the most out of their caffeine. Between those hours, the coffee is actually most needed, and, perhaps most importantly, will not interfere with our body's own essential mechanism for keeping us alert.

Studies have shown that when people talk about developing a "tolerance" for coffee, they are often talking — albeit unknowingly — about the reality that their coffee consumption has fostered a decrease in the amount of cortisol their body produces during the day.

Google developing calorie counting robots, so that it will know exactly how much people eat

Google is developing highly-intelligent robots that can analyse the amount of food on a plate and then count the calories that people are consuming.

The company hopes that the technology will be used by people to keep closer tabs on what they’re eating, if they’re dieting or looking to restrict how much they eat. A number of similar solutions already exist, but require people either to enter the nutritional information manually or to scan in the packaging of their food and guess how much of it they have eaten.

The system is called Im2Calories, reports Popular Science. It uses machine learning to recognise the individual pieces of food, measures how big they are in relation to the plate, and then converts them into calories.

The pictures don't need to be specially-taken or high resolution, so the robots could do their analysis using only Instagram pictures.

Google already has robots that have learnt to recognise certain things in pictures, using them in its newly-released Google Photos app. Competitors including Flickr have launched similar technology, which uses “machine learning” — computers built to think and understand like humans.

That means that the system can gradually get better, as human feedback tells it what it’s got wrong or right. Machine learning means that the computers’ designers don’t need to spend time telling it how to recognise things, because its users do instead.

The company says that the system doesn’t initially need to be that accurate. As long as it’s good enough to get people using it, the AI will start learning from the corrections.

““If it only works 30 percent of the time, it's enough that people will start using it, we'll collect data, and it'll get better over time,” said Murphy, according to Popular Science.

But counting calories has repeatedly been found to be the wrong approach to understanding how healthy a diet is, as The Verge points out. Numerous scientists have said that just eating fewer calories and avoiding fatty foods isn’t a good approach.

“What you eat makes quite a difference,” the lead author of a 2011 study told the New York Times. “Just counting calories won’t matter much unless you look at the kinds of calories you’re eating.”

The Verge also points out that the machine is using food labels, which have often been shown to be inaccurate.

The company has filed a patent for Im2Calories. Popular Science reports that Murphy and Google wouldn’t say when it would be available.

But eventually Google hopes to use the same technology for wider functions.

“If we can do this for food, that's just the killer app,” Murphy told Popular Science. “Suppose we did street scene analysis. We don't want to just say there are cars in this intersection. That's boring. We want to do things like localize cars, count the cars, get attributes of the cars, which way are they facing.

“Then we can do things like traffic scene analysis, predict where the most likely parking spot is. And since this is all learned from data, the technology is the same, you just change the data.”

Google’s focus has moved towards data analysis and machine learning in recent years. At the recent Google I/O developer conference, the company focused less on its Android mobile operating system and other headline products, instead largely selling itself as a data analysis company.

But that has also made some worried, since the end goal of that analysis is selling the data it generates and using it for ads. If Google knew exactly how much and what food its users were eating, for instance, it might be able to serve special ads for local burger joints when its data indicated that you were probably hungry for one.

Three reasons you shouldn't buy almond milk

It's easy to appreciate why someone can become interested in looking for alternative forms of dairy. Conventionally raised cows have become riddled with the residue of antibiotics, hormones and GMO diets, and their milk has also been pasteurized, which removes any beneficial bacteria that may have been initially intact. Even when sourcing quality forms of dairy, milk sugars and proteins can cause gastrointestinal distress that forces people to look for something different.

Enter the advent of the nut and seed milks, which has provided a reasonable alternative to animal dairy. However, just like conventional milk, store-bought nut milks also have their downsides, and if people want to fully enjoy the benefits, they should stop buying it from the store altogether, for these three reasons.

Store-bought almond milk has very little almonds in it

Recently, it was revealed that almond milk producers are really cutting corners when it comes to the percentage of almonds that make up a carton of almond milk. In fact, it turns out that half a gallon of almond milk contains less than a handful of almonds. One analysis of European almond milk brand Alpro revealed that almonds make up a measly 2% of the total drink.

The good old USA isn't any better, which was noted by one spokesperson for the Almond Board of California who leaked that the ingredient combinations are "pretty similar" between US almond milks and those found in the UK. When more contacts were made by multiple news outlets, it was revealed by almond growers and processors that the 2% ration recipe is the industry standard across the board.

With the California drought worsening and almonds becoming even more expensive, this ratio is not likely to improve.

It contains other not-so-natural ingredients

Not only does almond milk not contain many almonds, but it also contains other ingredients primarily used as thickening agents so it appears more creamy and not watered down.

The primary additive used in this thickening process is carrageenan (extracted from red seaweed), and it is widely used in the food industry for its gelling, thickening and stabilizing properties. The FDA considers it safe, but some research shows that it can cause gastrointestinal inflammation and contribute to cancer.

More research may need to be done, but regardless of the final outcome on carrageenan, at best it is an ingredient that adds little value to the final product, aside from covering up its watery consistency.

It is not sprouted

Even if someone chooses the finest almond milk that money can buy in the store, it still shouldn't be mindlessly bought, as it won't be produced from sprouted almonds.

Almonds contain natural enzyme inhibitors, as this is nature's way of preserving the life of the nut that falls off a tree and lays on the ground, waiting for water so it can sprout and grow. The enzyme inhibitors allow the almond to survive a period of time, until it receives moisture, which then releases the enzymes so it can come to life.

Soaking almonds for eight hours helps release those enzymes and effectively "sprouts" them, which makes the almonds much more digestible and alive. This not only releases the nutrients and allows the body to absorb them correctly but also helps eliminate digestive issues that come with many nuts.

In the end, with a decent blender and a nut milk bag (or other straining device), one can make an organic homemade almond milk for roughly the same price as store-bought milks, and at a much higher quality due to more almonds (and freshly sprouted) and no unnecessary extra ingredients.

How to preserve foods using sun-drying techniques

Sun-drying is not only the oldest and simplest method of preserving food, it's also the cheapest and most environmentally-friendly choice. Humans have been using solar power to dry fruit, vegetables and meat for thousand of years, and the technique works just as well today, especially if you live in a climate with high temperatures and low humidity, such as the southwestern and midwestern United States.

These days, many people use dehydrators or oven-drying methods of preserving food, but sun-drying can preserve more of the natural flavors, making the extra time and care worth the effort. Moreover, learning how to sun-dry foods is a very useful survival skill to have if the power grid goes down.

Almost any type of food can be sun-dried, but it's best to start learning the techniques by first choosing foods that are relatively easy to dry, such as tomatoes.

Making your own sun-dried tomatoes

There's nothing more flavorful than sun-dried tomatoes, and making your own couldn't be simpler. Plum or paste tomatoes, such as Roma or Pomodoro, are generally considered the best choices for sun-drying, but any variety will work. The main thing to consider is thickness - slice paste tomatoes in halves or thirds, while plum tomatoes can be cut in half. Make your slices consistent in thickness so they will dry at the same rate.

Wash and cut the tomatoes to the desired thickness, then arrange them leaving space in between them on a frame that has stainless steel screens on the bottom and top. You can make the frame any size you want; the screen's purpose is to provide airflow and to keep insects from getting in. You can season them with herbs or sea salt if you like.

Make sure you're in for some hot, dry weather because it will take several days for the tomatoes to dry thoroughly. Place your racks in direct sunlight in a location that gets as much breeze as possible.

The tomatoes are ready when they no longer feel "tacky" to the touch.

Sun-dried tomatoes can stored in sterile canning jars with olive oil or in vacuum-sealed plastic bags.

Sun-drying fruit

Because they are high in sugar and acid, fruits are easy to sun-dry; the sugars and acid help to retard spoilage while drying. You'll need to do a little preparation with most fruits before drying them.

Apricots and peaches should be cut in half and pitted before drying. Fruits such as apples, apricots and pears should be soaked in lemon juice or an ascorbic acid solution for around five minutes before being placed on the rack to begin drying. This will keep them from browning.

Cut the fruit into slices of uniform thickness and choose a hot, dry spell (85 degrees Fahrenheit or higher) for the drying period.

Bring the racks inside at night or cover them with cloth to prevent moisture from being reabsorbed.

Once the fruits are thoroughly dried, you should condition and pasteurize them for safe long-term storage.

To condition the dried fruits after they have cooled, place them in sealed glass jars for one week to ten days, shaking the jars daily to distribute the remaining moisture.

Once the fruits are conditioned, remove them from the jars and either pasteurize them in the oven on trays in single layers at 160 degrees Fahrenheit for half an hour or in plastic freezer bags in a zero-degree Fahrenheit freezer for 48 hours.

Sun-drying vegetables calls for basically the same method as fruits, but they should be cut in smaller pieces due to their lower acid content.

Why not give sun-drying a try this summer, especially if you have a surplus of garden fruits and vegetables?

The benefits of growing nutritious, medicinal bitter greens

When I was a youngster growing up in Southeast Texas, my family ate a lot of what is considered Southern cooking or "soul food." My father grew up on a Depression-era farm, and he liked to cook a lot of the same foods they grew back then -- foods that were the staples of Southern-style cooking. If you've never had a good Southern meal, you have missed out on something special -- this is comfort food at its finest.

Nowadays, however, many of those traditional dishes are considered unhealthy, and although it's true that a lot of the high-fat and high-carbohydrate Southern foods should probably not be eaten on a daily basis, there are several notable exceptions, such as bitter greens.

In the South, the more popular bitter greens are typically mustard, collard and turnip greens. I love all three, but there are many other "bitter" greens to choose from. All are highly nutritious and have numerous medicinal and health-boosting properties -- bitter greens can rightly be considered as being among the "superfoods" we hear so much about.

So what makes bitter greens so special?

Here's a short list of some of the beneficial effects of including bitter greens in your diet:
Improved liver function
Better digestion
System cleansing
Clearer skin
Lower blood pressure
Blood purification
Lower cholesterol
Improved vision
Improved nervous system function
Better blood clotting
Nutritionally speaking, bitter greens are high in protein and rich in vitamins A, C and K. They're also a great source of minerals such as potassium, calcium and magnesium. They are high in fiber and folates, and they help overall digestion while reducing acid indigestion.

Nadya Andreeva from MindBodyGreen.com writes:

Eating bitter food activates taste buds that simultaneously stimulate enzyme production and bile flow, which promotes digestion. The better your food is digested, the more nutrients you'll absorb from your food. It doesn't matter what you eat, if you can't absorb it, it won't be of much benefit to you. The high fiber content in bitter greens also helps to eliminate waste through the digestive tract.

How to add greens to your diet

Bitter greens include dozens of varieties. Among them are arugula, amaranth, beet, chicory, kale, dandelion, nettles, radicchio, rucola, watercress, curly cress, mustard, turnip, collard and more...

Each type of bitter green has its own unique flavor and texture.

There are many ways to prepare and consume health-enhancing bitter greens. They can be used in soups, sandwiches and salads, can be eaten raw or cooked and can be served as stand-alone dishes (cooked or not).

In general, the more bitter the taste, the better the health benefits. Some people (including myself) love the bitter taste; others do not. If you'd like to include them in your diet but don't like the bitterness, there are ways to take the edge off. When mixed with other milder greens in a salad, for example, the bitter taste can be toned down a bit.

Salt, fats or oil (in moderation, of course) also help downplay the bitterness. One of my father's favorite ways to serve mustard, turnip or collard greens was to simply wilt them with a small amount of hot bacon fat, although I realize that method will not appeal to vegans and others. If you don't want to use animal fats to mitigate the bitter taste, use some high-quality olive oil instead.

Growing bitter greens the easy way

Most bitter greens are very easy to grow and are particularly well-suited to our own Health Ranger Mike Adams' revolutionary Food Rising growing system. Mike is the founder of Natural News, and he has recently developed and shared his ingenious Food Rising Mini-Farm Grow Box system in an effort to help feed the world. This simple and effective plant-growing method has been made available to everyone, free of charge.

The Food Rising Mini-Farm hydroponic grow system has 3D-printable components that can be easily fabricated using the plans Mike has shared with the world. Visit the non-profit FoodRising.org website to find out more about this amazing (and free) food production technology and get started growing your own healthy foods using the Food Rising method

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/049974_bitter_greens_medicinal_plants_Southern_food.html#ixzz3cJdCbzVY