How many meals one should have daily?

Healthy eating and healthy living revolves around having sufficient balanced diet. 

But how many meals should you have per day? Healthy eating is a key component of weight loss and muscle building for those who want to maintain a healthy weight. Our strength and conditioning expert, Arnav Sarkar lays out the benefits of three meals versus six meals. He also tells you when you should have three meals and six meals for optimal health benefits.

As per popular belief "going more than three hours without eating anything would lead to a drop in energy levels, loss of lean muscle tissue, increased fat storing, etc," says Arnav. Hence it was always important to eat every three hours. So, three good meals in a day is a good option since fasting experts reveal that six meals is responsible for body fat and poor hormones.

"One of the major claims for three meals a day being better for fat loss is that it helps to keep insulin and blood sugar levels low and thus bodyfat is lower. In my personal opinion, however, this is where most people make a major mistake. They do not take the total caloric intake into calculation," explains Arnav.

Arnav Sarkar elaborates the benefits of eating 3 meals a day:

Easy to follow in the long term - All offices, schools and colleges give people time to have breakfast, lunch and dinner — meals that you can eat at home. There are also those who do not feel like eating first thing in the morning, and generally do not feel like eating till lunch. If this is the case, then do keep in mind that breakfast does not have be eaten immediately upon waking up. You can eat your breakfast even a couple of hours after waking up. So no need to miss breakfast altogether.

Allows you to eat bigger meals - This is where six meals a day becomes a problem for those who love to eat big and are trying to lose weight. Six small meals never make one mentally feel like they have eaten a meal, they always feel that they are snacking, and thus mentally are always craving for a meal.

Teaches you to control hunger better - In most cases, eating six times a day tends to make one eat more, since they tend to mentally crave food every 2-3 hours whether they are actually hungry or not. So when they decide to eat only three times a day, they slowly start to control their hunger better as they now go longer without food and develop better mental control.

Arnav Sarkar elaborates the benefits of eating 6 meals a day:

Ideal for eating a lot of calories - If you need to eat a lot of calories to gain weight or because you are an athlete who burns a lot of calories, then frequent meals is ideal for you.

Great to follow when trying to consume high amounts of protein - Our bodies were not designed to be able to digest 70-80 gms or more of protein in one meal easily. It's always best for most people to keep protein to about 15-40 gms at each serving, and maybe a bit more for really big guys who exercise a lot.

Great to follow when trying to consume large amounts of carbs.

Helps avoid drops in energy/sugar levels - Some people truly cannot go on for more than 3-4 hours without eating anything and still be able to perform well. For these people, smaller frequent servings work well and help to keep their energy/sugar levels stable.

Arnav has chalked out and elaborated the importance of three meals and six meals; it is up to you to decide what are your needs and which meal will supplement it.

Read more Personal Health, Diet & Fitness stories on www.healthmeup.com

Why Digestive System Doesn’t Function Properly: Reasons & Solutions

Your digestive system plays a major role in the overall health of your body. Digestive problems are particularly common in Western society and have become part of the daily routine of many of us, but in normal condition they are not supposed to appear at all. Too many people have become accustomed to living with digestive disorders such as abdominal pain and bloating, irritable bowel and constipation.

Here I would like to show you 5 factors that can affect your digestive system and cause it to function improperly. I will also suggest you solutions to overcome these factors:

1. Stress


You don’t need a doctor to know that stress plays a major role in the health of our gut. The biochemical changes that occur when we are stressed have significant and immediate impact on our gut function. When the brain feels very stressed, it releases  various hormones that cause changes to the digestive system in the short term, such as lack of appetite, heartburn, nausea, diarrhea and stomach pain. In the long term, prolonged stress can worsen chronic diseases such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and heartburn.



It not only affects existing chronic diseases, but may also lead to the development of a variety of gastrointestinal diseases such as gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), peptic ulcer disease, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and even food allergies. Stress can cause inflammation of the gastrointestinal system, and makes you more susceptible to infection. A healthy lifestyle should include stress reduction techniques that will improve not only your digestive system, but your overall well-being.

2. Enzyme Deficiency

There are many factors that can affect your body’s ability to produce a high enough enzyme level to maintain good health. These can be: unhealthy diet, air pollution, emotional stress, lack of sleep and more. Enzyme deficiency is the root of many digestion problems in our society. Your digestive enzymes, which are mostly produced in your pancreas, help you break down the food into nutrients so that your body can absorb them. Enzyme deficiency results in poor digestion and poor nutrient absorption,  and this creates a variety of gastrointestinal problems, including: constipation, bloating, cramping and heartburn.

We get many enzymes from the foods we eat, especially raw foods that directly help with our digestive process. To maintain a healthy enzyme levels it’s important to eat raw foods that are enzyme-rich. Consuming them helps your body’s to produce its own enzymes and reduces the burden on your body to produce the enzymes it needs. In addition to raw foods, read my article how to make digestive enzyme detox smoothie which contains digestive enzymes that help to ease the burden of the complicated process of digestion.

3. Magnesium Deficiency

Magnesium deficiency causes, among many other things, constipation and digestive-related disorders. Your body uses this important mineral to aid in the digestion process. Without magnesium, your body cannot properly digest foods, as it activates enzymes that let the body digest and break down food into smaller pieces for energy, and it also works to produce and transport energy during digestion.

You may not get enough magnesium in your diet. Having the right amount of magnesium in your body is important to your digestive and overall health, so make sure to include magnesium-rich foods, such as dark green leafy vegetables, nuts, seeds, whole grains, beans, lentils, avocados, bananas and dried fruits. Magnesium is also available as a supplement, but you should not take magnesium supplement without a physician’s approval as it can interfere with current medications that you take.

4. Intestinal Flora Imbalance

Our intestinal tract is full of various species of bacteria and yeasts that help digestion, kill harmful and pathogenic infections as well as helping to produce many vitamins and other chemical substances needed for our health.  These organisms that live in our intestines are called the intestinal flora. When the good or friendly flora are missing or in low concentration, it allows other harmful pathogens to multiply in the intestine. This affects the digestion of food, and can cause many other symptoms, since the pathogens create toxins that are absorbed into the body.

The causes for intestinal flora imbalance can be due to illnesses, improper diet, antibiotic use,  other medications, food chemicals and more. In these cases you may want to consider taking probiotics. You can refer in this matter to my article 9 reasons to take probiotics and why it’s so good for you. Or you can eat live-culture yogurt that often provides plenty of probiotics and is the simplest way to get them.  Make sure that the label states that it is live culture yogurt, as some companies pasteurize or kill the probiotic organisms after they have fermented the milk to make yogurt.

5. Heavy Metal Toxicity

The presence of toxic metals, such as too much mercury, aluminum, cadmium, arsenic, lead and nickel, has a damaging effect on the intestinal flora for some people. These metals flood the environment and can be found in cookware, household cleaners, cosmetics, air pollution, insecticides, herbicides and smoking that causes cadmium poisoning. They invade our body and cause or contribute to a long list of diseases.

To help fight heavy metal toxicity you can use clay to detox your body, or consume foods rich in pectin fibers (such as apples). Those fibers bind cholesterol and heavy metals to cleanse blood and intestines. Cilantro or coriander also aids our body to get rid of mercury and other heavy metals that end up in our bloodstream. Also chlorophyll rich-foods are food in this case. Chlorophyll is the green color in green leaves ,fruits and veges. It is not just a pigment, it connects with the toxins and free radicals and turns them into neutral materials. Studies have shown that chlorophyll helps in cleaning heavy metals that tend to accumulate in our body in different places, and has anti cancer properties, that specifically affect the liver. Read more about it in my article how to detoxify your body using chlorophyll. Also the green algae chlorella has been shown to help remove heavy metals, such as cadmium and mercury, pesticides and industrial pollutants from the body, thus helping to detoxify it. You can find more information in my article how to boost your health by eating seaweeds and algae. You can also prepare herbal infusion from red clover blossoms that also cleanse heavy metals and chemical toxicity, include those caused by the use of drugs.

Source of article:
http://www.healthyandnaturalworld.com/reasons-your-digestive-system-doesnt-function-properly/

Constipation: Natural Treatment

If your stomach is ill, you would be ill and if your stomach is healthy, you would be healthy. The mother of all illness is stomach and health is stomach. Healthy stomach, better personality, ill stomach, deformed personality. These are some of slogans, which express the feelings of many of the famous experienced medical practitioners about the mother of all diseases.
In case of any disease, have natural treatment of stomach with patience and sure you would get better health. Thus, naturopathy is widely based on treatment of stomach. It includes awakening of dormant umbilicus and active it as the main source of health. Stomach related ailments do not allow umbilicus to be active. The different stomach related
diseases, which have relationship with almost all the physical and mental problems are five in nature. They have been named as enemy diseases as they are the originating point of most of the diseases. They are 1) Constipation 2) indigestion 3) gastric trouble 4) old dysentery and 5) acidity.
Constipation:
The top most among the enemy diseases is constipation. Modern science does not consider it as a disease but different researches of scientists have proved that it is not a common but a very complex disease. It appears to be very common but there is no disease, where it does not play active role. Therefore, constipation is said to be the root cause of all diseases.
The treatment of constipation:
Most of the medicines meant to cure constipation are dangerous. They cause immense damage to diaphragm of intestines and other refinery system. Intestines get weaker adversely affecting their peristaltic movement. Even the medicines like paraffin and caster oil are troublesome. It ultimately affects liver, rendering it ineffective. Over-consumption of the medicines causes jaundice and malnutrition of the body. It also causes respiratory related diseases, lungs and neck related diseases. The nature has granted power to every living being so that collected stool passes out normally. But the power continues only when our food habits are in accordance with the nature. We normally take
green vegetables and fruits and still are victims of constipation. We eat lot of vegetables but after peeling off. We prepare vegetables in the manner that all its nutritious elements and water gets burnt.  One kg vegetable remains barely quarter kgs, with all nutritious elements washed away. How a person could remain healthy and even a healthier person
would get ill. Fruits or even vegetables eaten raw like cucumber, pear, sapota and others are eaten after peeling off. Even when we prepare `roti`, nutritious elements
are washed out. We prepare pulses after peeling off. And we eat all this disregarding the fact that it is akin to garbage disposing in our body. The peels of  edibles have the strength to remove constipation. All essential vitamins, dextrin, minerals and salts are present in these peels in adequate quantity. They clean-up toxic organism from the intestines.
The following food and treatment keeps a human being away from constipation and make him healthy:
Food for treatment:
Drinking limited quantity of water is also one of the reasons of constipation, after waking-up in morning drink two glass of water, kept in brass pot before going to toilet. In case of dysentery, drink two glass of warm water with lemon juice and two spoons honey along with 15 grams ginger juice. Then take a stroll after 15-20 minutes while cleaning your teeth and if urge of going toilet develops, go immediately. For first two days, eat boiled vegetables, 2 days on fruits and 2 days on juices, with lemon+water+honey combination, taking after every three hours. Drink water in adequate quantity. After restricting yourself to juice, fruits and boiled vegetables, start with one `roti and subzi` along with `salad`. In daily routine take given items in breakfast according to the financial condition of individuals. Take `belgiri`, grapes, guava, mangoes, pear, sapota, tomato, dates and wet raisins and milk. Also take germinated corn, cucumber, gourd and luffa for the treatment of constipation.
Mid-day meal:
Prepare 'roti' of little grinded flour (half of hunger) with boiled vegetable, around 350 grams in quantity along with salad, germinated corns and curd. In afternoon, take butter milk or soup or juice of vegetable or fruit. In dinner, around 7 pm take roti, vegetable and salad. Those suffering with obesity and constipation should take only fruits or raw vegetables, germinated corn and cup full milk. Take milk one hour before going to bed. For treatment, keep wet soil for half-an-hour on stomach in the morning, without eating anything. Take hot and cold fomentation on spinal chord, stomach and liver. Then take enema and take hipbath for 15 minutes. Continue the process for five days. Then ignore enema but continue rest of the process. Enema could be against used, if need arises. In afternoon, after three hours of lunch keep stripe of wet soil daily and use wrapping of wet bed sheet, hot-cold hip bath, hot vapors on stomach and cold hip-bath, alternatively. Maintain all precautions during treatment. In asans Janushirasan, Pashimottanasan, Yogmudra, Pakshi Asan, Uttanpadasan, Dhanurasan, Chakrasan, Pavanmuktasan, Shalabhasan, Bhujangasan, Sarwangasan, Halasan, and Matyasan. Proper food habit and yoga could give relief from constipation. In case of an old constipation, take cup-full juice of bitter gourd and amla. The above mentioned natural treatments, proper diet and yoga increase intestines tone, which normalizes pace of peristaitic movement. It also gives permanent treatment to the problem of constipation. In old constipation complaints, veins and
nerves of intestines and stomach grow weak and here is the sure-shot to strengthen them. Daily take morning walk for 3-4 kms. Go for toilet, soon after the urge develops. Fix a time for it and essentially go once at the time fixed. Take maximum 15-20 minutes as sitting for more time or undue pressure could cause other problems.
This article is by one the best doctor & person I have come across, Dr Nagendra Kumar 'Neeraj' from Yoggram, Haridwar.