Kids love spaghetti, and you should too. Studies have shown that the major ingredient of spaghetti – tomato sauce – helps fight cancer. If you eat 10 or more tablespoons of tomato sauce per week, you significantly decrease the risk of developing cancers such as prostate and breast cancer. Now that’s delicious news!

The active ingredient in tomato products is lycopene, a carotenoid that has antioxidant properties. Lycopene becomes more readily available for absorption by the body when tomato products are cooked.

Aside from the powerful tomato sauce, you may add more antioxidant boost with vegetables like broccoli, to go with your spaghetti sauce.

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One of the benefits of stretching is that it reduces the risk of injuries. Stretching needs to be done properly in order maximize its benefits. Here are some tips on stretching:

1. Stretch slowly and gently. Avoid bouncing, and stretch only to the point when you feel mild tension on the muscle. If you feel pain, slightly release the stretch. Over-stretching will lead to small tears in muscle fibers.

2. Hold a stretch for 15 – 20 seconds. Repeat two to three times on each side.

3. Relax and breathe regularly. Do not hold your breath while stretching.

4. Stretch by muscle groups. You can start with your legs and gradually go up your body. It will take about ten to fifteen minutes to stretch the major muscle groups.

Read Part 1 – Stretching: Why is it Important?

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Stretching is one aspect of a fitness regimen that some neglect. Warm-up and stretching exercises done at the start and end of a workout are just as important as the rest of the workout.

Stretching improves flexibility. And with good flexibility comes good posture. By promoting muscular balance, stretching helps prevent injury during physical activity. When we stretch after a workout, we are increasing the flow of blood and oxygen to our muscles. This helps to significantly reduce muscle soreness.

Keep these benefits of stretching in mind. And on your next workout, don’t skip, but savor the stretching exercises.

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Writing articles for a living sometimes make you drink and eat the weirdest things. In order to research and write more, you have to be awake; and you know what that means…yes, coffee multiple mugs of it. Caffeine is supposedly a writer’s drug of choice. However, it isn’t healthy. One more problem it causes is that once you’re done, you can hardly fall asleep. And when that happens to you, you tend to feel hungry.

Luckily, we found an article just right for anyone who has the same problems as the ones listed above. Here are the tips:

Sleepy but need to be awake?
Eat dark green salads, chopped veggies, a and some walnuts. Carbs in the veggies will provide energy and walnuts provide omega-3s, thus helping brain recovery after sleep.

Can’t sleep?
Microwave a potato, eat some brown rice, or toast a muffin. The carbs and sugar affects your serotonin levels, allowing your eyes to finally droop down naturally.

Hungry but on a diet?
Eat lean turkey, rice, or egg-white omelet. Lean protein and some calories will help burn the calaroies while you sleep.

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Proper information and awareness on weight management will save you a lot of time and effort, and will definitely benefit your health. Nowadays, a lot of fitness centers have been claiming that you can lose so and so amount of weight in a very short period. Others even have money back guarantees.

The question is do you want an easy and fast weight loss program, or do you want to lose and maintain weight at the healthy levels?

Here are some of the weight loss myths that are surprisingly still being followed by a lot of people.

Myth: Some healthy foods, like celery and grapefruit, can burn fat.
Fact: There are no such foods that can burn fat. Some foods only stimulates your body’s metabolism.

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Every time I catch a cold, people advise me to do water therapy instead of relying on medicines and antibiotics. Several articles and online materials encourage water therapy as a daily regimen to maintain good health and avoid certain diseases.

Water therapy is a form of alternative medicine where an individual drinks around 1.5 liters of water upon rising in the morning. This amount of water may be partially taken in within a few minutes’ interval. Some people react to this negatively, saying it is uncomfortable for the gut to take in too much water, but those who have been practicing it confirm that the body will eventually adjust to the regimen.

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The primary advantage of water therapy, as claimed by people who have been practicing it, is regular bowel movement. The intestines are cleansed and constipation is avoided. Other benefits include cure for certain conditions such as hypertension, anemia, rheumatism, arthritis, sinusitis, gastroenteritis, headache and cough. The following diseases are also claimed to be cured by or avoided through water therapy: obesity, tuberculosis, meningitis, breast cancer, leukemia, cancer of the uterus, diabetes, eye diseases, kidney stones and urogenital diseases.

However, skeptics are questioning the validity of these claims. People are encouraged to drink enough water, but do not “over-drink”. The recommended daily water intake is 8 to 10 glasses, containing 8-ounce of water for each glass.

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Too much of a good thing is bad.

There’s a fine line line between eating health and obsessing over the matter. Add to this the “paranoia” regarding eating particular foods and advising them to totally deleting them out of the kitchen for good, and you have orthorexia. No, it’s not yet part of the manual for psychiatrists, but an alternative physician, Dr. Steven Bratman, phrased it in one of his books.

“Once you’ve reached a certain point, the rigidity demanded by orthorexia makes it truly difficult for you to eat anywhere but at home,” Dr. Bratman writes. “Most restaurants won’t serve the right foods. … Even your friends inexplicably fail to cater to your personal preferences (or, as you see it, they willfully choose to ignore the one right way of eating).”

It’s a condition when people focus too much of their time thinking about the virtue of what they eat rather than if it tastes good or not. Not only can they be irritating to the people around them, but also they pose a danger to themselves by pushing themselves to disordered eating.

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If you’re a teenager, and you heard the word “exercise” , it may just not register. However, besides toning up your muscles, it also does other good things to you. Remember, you only need 60 minutes of vigorous exercise to be healthy.

Here are the rewards for doing the deed:

Exercise benefits every part of the body, including the mind. Exercising causes the body to produce endorphins, chemicals that can help a person to feel more peaceful and happy.

Exercising can help you look better. People who exercise burn more calories and look more toned than those who don’t.

Exercise helps people lose weight and lower the risk of some diseases. Exercising to maintain a healthy weight decreases a person’s risk of developing certain diseases.

Exercise can help a person age well. This may not seem important now, but your body will thank you later.

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Mixing different food groups during breakfast may make you smarter, according to a research study done by Telethon Institute for Child Health Research in Perth, Australia.

The main researcher, Dietitian Therese O’Sullivan said,

“For each additional food group that teenagers consumed for breakfast, there was an incremental increase in mental health,” she said.

The research says that the this may be because of the brain’s absorption of different nutrients, including calcium, iron and B group vitamins. It also says that kids who do take breakfast pay more attention and retain more of what they learned compared to those who don’t take any breakfast.

This applies to both kids and adults, so start mix and matching your breakfast.

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