IMPROVING YOUR HEALTH LIFE

How much water should I drink a day? By  Kerry Torrens - Nutritional therapist What are the benefits of drinking water, how much should you drink per day, and what are the symptoms of dehydration? Discover the facts in our expert guide. When it comes to the optimum amount of water to drink each day, everyone seems to have a different opinion. So should we be drinking 6-8 glasses, two litres, or even more? Do other liquids besides water count? And what are the warning signs that you're drinking too little water? We asked registered nutritionist Kerry Torrens for her expert opinion.   What are the benefits of drinking water? When you stop to think that more than two thirds of your body is water, it's obvious how important it is to stay well hydrated. Hydration is needed for digestion, for our heart and circulation, for temperature control and for our brain to work well. Water is, without doubt, the single most essential component of the h...

We all need food every day, but our changing relationship with it through the years can have a big impact on our health. Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Reddit Share on LinkedIn Share on Google+ Share by Email By Alex Johnstone   From  The Conversation Do you eat to live or live to eat? We have a complicated relationship with food, influenced by cost, availability and even peer pressure. But something we all share is appetite – our desire to eat. While hunger – our body’s way of making us desire food when it needs feeding – is a part of appetite, it is not the only factor. After all, we often eat when we’re not hungry, or may skip a meal despite pangs of hunger. Recent  research  has highlighted that the abundance of food cues – smells, sounds, advertising – in our environment is one of the main causes of overconsumption. Our appetite is also not fixed, it changes across our lifespan as we age. As Shakespe...

New generation of deodorants 'on the way' Image copyright GETTY IMAGES Experts believe they have found a better way to tackle body odour (BO). The key, they say, is understanding how skin bacteria create the smell from virtually odourless armpit sweat. Two teams, at the Universities of York and Oxford, say they have now deciphered the first step in this molecular process. It could pave the way for a new generation of deodorants designed to block this unpleasant chain of events, the journal  eLife  reports. Sweat Sweat is made by two types of glands on the skin: Eccrine glands, all over the body, produce sweat associated with exercise, which helps us keep cool and does not smell Apocrine glands, in the hairy armpits and genital areas, produce sweat containing a number of complex molecules - including proteins - that are odourless when secreted but can be turned into BO by bacteria Even very small traces of the BO chemicals these bacteria produce can smell ...