BLG Health-How To Prevent Hair Loss

Baldness or hair loss is one of the most
dreaded situations people can find
themselves into. This is because this will not
only affect their overall physical appearance
but can also affect their emotional status
as well.

Experts categorize hair loss into two
types—the permanent hair loss and the
temporary hair loss.

Permanent hair loss is associated with
hereditary factors. People who have a
bloodline that is prone to baldness cannot
do much anything about it since it is in
their genes.

The pattern baldness or androgenetic
alopecia can affect both men and women.
In men, pattern baldness can lead to
thinning hair and receding of hairlines even
at an early age. Eventually, this condition
may lead them to total or partial baldness.
In women, pattern baldness may come
at a much later age and does not lead
them to total baldness. Usually, the thinning
hair manifests at their temples and hairlines.

When it comes to temporary baldness, it
can be caused by certain factors such as
illnesses, taking in medications for
certain conditions, undergoing medical
treatments wherein the drug that was
used takes too much toll on the hair,
hormonal changes which can either be
caused by pregnancy or by taking in
birth control pills, hairstyles that put too
much pressure on the scalp and stops
it from growing new strands of hair,
and using hair products and treatments
that may irritate the scalp and affect
healthy hair growth.

Prevention as the key

People who have risks for pattern
baldness cannot stop the condition but
can slower the rate of hair loss through
various treatments. But for those who
are undergoing temporary hair loss,
prevention can be the key to avoid
total baldness in the long run. The
following are some of the tips that
can help prevent hair loss:

1. Proper diet.

Having a diet that is balanced is one of
the major keys to prevent excessive hair
loss. Eating foods that are nutritious
especially for the hair can be an effective
tool to fight against the signs of hair loss.
People who are experiencing hair loss
because they are under nourished should
take time to make a diet plan which can
provide sufficient nutrients not only for
the hair but for the overall health as well.

2. Developing good hair habits.

Unhealthy hair habits such as improper
handling of the hair can lead to excessive
hair loss. People—especially those who
have sensitive scalp—should ensure
that they handle their hair gently especially
when it’s wet. Proper handling to wet hair
is very important because the hair is
weaker when wet. If possible, opt for
natural air drying methods instead of
using electronic ones such as blower.

3. Stick to one hairstyle for a longer 
    period of time.

This will really help you prevent hair loss
because you are letting your hair undergo
its normal growth cycle. If possible, try to
avoid hairstyles that are tight like buns,
ponytails, or braids because these put too
much pressure on the scalp and hinder it
from growing.

4. Don’t twist, rub or pull your hair.

People who experience hair loss are those
who twist, rub, or pull their hair often. If it
has become a habit, try to break it. You
can do this by focusing on other things
instead of putting too much pressure

on your hair and on your scalp.

For more information on hair loss visit
our site at BLG Health.com

Presented by Larry Guzda

Information on this page is provided for
informational purposes only. It is not meant
to be a substitute for medical advise.
Contact your physician for diagnoses of
all health related problems as soon as
possible.Dietary supplements HAVE
NOT be evaluated by The Food And
Drug Administration and are not intended
to diagnose,treat,cure or prevent any disease.

This article mat be copied but not changed
in any way.

BLG Health-African Plant May Help Fight Fat

Lesley Stahl Reports On Newest Weapon In War On Obesity

Nov. 21, 2004 | by Rebecca Leung

CBS) Each year, people spend more than $40 billion on products designed to help them slim down. None of them seem to be working very well.

Now along comes hoodia. Never heard of it? Soon it'll be tripping off your tongue, because hoodia is a natural substance that literally takes your appetite away.

It's very different from diet stimulants like Ephedra and Phenfen that are now banned because of dangerous side effects. Hoodia doesn't stimulate at all. Scientists say it fools the brain by making you think you’re full, even if you've eaten just a morsel. Correspondent Lesley Stahl reports.

---

Hoodia is a bitter-tasting cactus-like plant. 60 Minutes was told that if it wanted to try hoodia, it would have to go to Africa. Why? Because the only place in the world where hoodia grows wild is in the Kalahari Desert of South Africa.

Nigel Crawhall, a linguist and interpreter, hired an experienced tracker named Toppies Kruiper, a local aboriginal Bushman, to help find it. The Bushmen were featured in the movie “The Gods Must Be Crazy.”

Kruiper led 60 Minutes crews out into the desert. Stahl asked him if he ate hoodia. "I really like to eat them when the new rains have come," says Kruiper, speaking through the interpreter. "Then they're really quite delicious."

When we located the plant, Kruiper cut off a stalk that looked like a small spiky pickle, and removed the sharp spines. In the interest of science, Stahl ate it. She described the taste as "a little cucumbery in texture, but not bad."

So how did it work? Stahl says she had no after effects - no funny taste in her mouth, no queasy stomach, and no racing heart. She also wasn't hungry all day, even when she would normally have a pang around mealtime. And, she also had no desire to eat or drink the entire day. "I'd have to say it did work," says Stahl.

Although the West is just discovering hoodia, the Bushmen of the Kalahari have been eating it for a very long time. After all, they have been living off the land in southern Africa for more than 100,000 years.

Some of the Bushmen, like Anna Swartz, still live in old traditional huts, and cook so-called Bush food gathered from the desert the old-fashioned way.

The first scientific investigation of the plant was conducted at South Africa’s national laboratory. Because Bushmen were known to eat hoodia, it was included in a study of indigenous foods.

"What they found was when they fed it to animals, the animals ate it and lost weight," says Dr. Richard Dixey, who heads an English pharmaceutical company called Phytopharm that is trying to develop weight-loss products based on hoodia.

Was hoodia's potential application as an appetite suppressant immediately obvious?

"No, it took them a long time. In fact, the original research was done in the mid 1960s," says Dixey.

It took the South African national laboratory 30 years to isolate and identify the specific appetite-suppressing ingredient in hoodia. When they found it, they applied for a patent and licensed it to Phytopharm.

Phytopharm has spent more than $20 million so far on research, including clinical trials with obese volunteers that have yielded promising results. Subjects given hoodia ended up eating about 1,000 calories a day less than those in the control group. To put that in perspective, the average American man consumes about 2,600 calories a day; a woman about 1,900.

"If you take this compound every day, your wish to eat goes down. And we've seen that very, very dramatically," says Dixey.

But why do you need a patent for a plant? "The patent is on the application of the plant as a weight-loss material. And, of course, the active compounds within the plant. It’s not on the plant itself," says Dixey.

So no one else can use hoodia for weight loss? "As a weight-management product without infringing the patent, that’s correct," says Dixey.

But what does that say about all these weight-loss products that claim to have hoodia in it? Trimspa says its X32 pills contain 75 mg of hoodia. The company is pushing its product with an ad campaign featuring Anna Nicole Smith, even though the FDA has notified Trimspa that it hasn’t demonstrated that the product is safe.

Some companies have even used the results of Phytopharm’s clinical tests to market their products.

"This is just straightforward theft. That’s what it is. People are stealing data, which they haven’t done, they’ve got no proper understanding of, and sticking on the bottle," says Dixey. "When we have assayed these materials, they contain between 0.1 and 0.01 percent of the active ingredient claimed. But they use the term hoodia on the bottle, of course, so they -- does nothing at all."

But Dixey isn’t the only one who’s felt ripped off. The Bushmen first heard the news about the patent when Phytopharm put out a press release. Roger Chennells, a lawyer in South Africa who represents the Bushmen, who are also called “the San,” was appalled.

"The San did not even know about it," says Chennells. "They had given the information that led directly toward the patent."

The taking of traditional knowledge without compensation is called “bio-piracy.”

"You have said, and I'm going to quote you, 'that the San felt as if someone had stolen the family silver,'" says Stahl to Chennells. "So what did you do?"

"I wouldn't want to go into some of the details as to what kind of letters were written or what kind of threats were made," says Chennells. "We engaged them. They had done something wrong, and we wanted them to acknowledge it."

Chennells was determined to help the Bushmen who, he says, have been exploited for centuries. First they were pushed aside by black tribes. Then, when white colonists arrived, they were nearly annihilated.

"About the turn of the century, there were still hunting parties in Namibia and in South Africa that allowed farmers to go and kill Bushmen," says Chennells. "It's well documented."

The Bushmen are still stigmatized in South Africa, and plagued with high unemployment, little education, and lots of alcoholism. And now, it seemed they were about to be cut out of a potential windfall from hoodia. So Chennells threatened to sue the national lab on their behalf.

"We knew that if it was successful, many, many millions of dollars would be coming towards the San," says Chennells. "Many, many millions. They've talked about the market being hundreds and hundreds of millions in America."

In the end, a settlement was reached. The Bushmen will get a percentage of the profits -- if there are profits. But that’s a big if.

The future of hoodia is not yet a sure thing. The project hit a major snag last year. Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, which had teamed up with Phytopharm, and funded much of the research, dropped out when making a pill out of the active ingredient seemed beyond reach.

Dixey says it can be made synthetically: "We've made milligrams of it. But it's very expensive. It's not possible to make it synthetically in what’s called a scaleable process. So we couldn’t make a metric ton of it or something that is the sort of quantity you’d need to actually start doing something about obesity in thousands of people."

Phytopharm decided to market hoodia in its natural form, in diet shakes and bars. That meant it needed the hoodia plant itself.

But given the obesity epidemic in the United States, it became obvious that what was needed was a lot of hoodia - much more than was growing in the wild in the Kalahari. And so they came here.

60 Minutes visited one of Phytopharm’s hoodia plantations in South Africa. They’ll need a lot of these plantations to meet the expected demand.

Agronomist Simon MacWilliam has a tall order: grow a billion portions a year of hoodia, within just a couple of years. He admitted that starting up the plantation has been quite a challenge.

"The problem is we’re dealing with a novel crop. It’s a plant we’ve taken out of the wild and we’re starting to grow it,' says MacWilliam. "So we have no experience. So it’s different- diseases and pests which we have to deal with."

How confident are they that they will be able to grow enough? "We're very confident of that," he says. "We've got an expansion program which is going to be 100s of acres. And we'll be able - ready to meet the demand.

This could be huge, given the obesity epidemic. Phytopharm says it’s about to announce marketing plans that will have meal-replacement hoodia products on supermarket shelves by 2008.

MacWilliam says these products are a slightly different species from the hoodia Stahl tasted in the Kalahari Desert. "It's actually a lot more bitter than the plant that you tasted," says MacWilliam.

The advantage is this species of hoodia will grow a lot faster. But more bitter? How bad could it be? Stahl decided to find out. "Not good," she says.

Phytopharm says that when its product gets to market, it will be certified safe and effective. They also promise that it’ll taste good.

© MMIV, CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Presented by BLG Health.com


Information on this page is provided for informational purposes only. It is not meant to be a substitute for medical advise. Contact your physician for diagnoses of all health related problems as soon as possible.Dietary supplements HAVE NOT be evaluated by The Food And Drug Administration and are not intended to diagnose,treat,cure or prevent any disease.

BLG Health-Understanding The Natural Weight Loss Process

Over the years, losing weight has been the dilemma
of many people not just in the United States but also
around the world. In fact, there are now a lot of diet
system and weight loss medicines available.
However,there have been so many negative feed
backs about most of these diet systems and weight
loss medications. Some are not as effective as they
claim to be while some even have bad side effects.
Hence, people are still seeking for the best solution.

The experts in weight loss and diet programs are
continuously struggling to give weight loss clients
the best possible answer to their weight problems.
And the latest trend introduced is natural weight loss.
So what is this natural weight loss thing? Continue
reading this article to know more about it.

Natural Weight Loss Explained

Since the procedures are natural, weight loss using
this procedure is considered healthy and will really
make you feel satisfied. Unlike the fad diets and
“almost magic” diet programs and medications
available today, natural weight loss will teach you
how to shed those extra pounds in a proper manner.
This weight loss means will tell you the opposite of
what those unreliable diet programs tell you; that
you will lose weight if you are going to religiously
follow a long term but healthy weight loss plan.

Now, don’t you think it is much easier to believe to
a weight loss procedure which does not promise
making you sexy and fit overnight? But, what can
you really do to lose weight naturally?

Here are some tips;

• Know what to eat

– It is important that you know whether a certain
food on your menu can be a potential harm to your
weight loss scheme. Learn how to be critical on
what you eat.

  Avoid too much fried and salty foods.

• Read about natural weight loss

– there are lots of published, both online and prints,
about natural weight loss. It would help you so much
to read on some of these articles. You can read
books or magazines with expert’s column about
natural weight loss. Online natural weight loss sites
are also available on the net as your reference.

• Participate on online forums

– yes, there are online communities and forums on
the Internet where members talk about natural weight
loss,its benefits and the different resources which you
can find to shed that unwanted fat naturally.

• Visit websites

– there are different natural weight loss websites and
you can visit any of them so you can get guides about
losing weight. You’d be able to get tips and
information about natural weight loss programs and
pills on such sites.

• Don’t believe in magic

– when it comes to losing weight, there is no such
thing as magic. Patience and perseverance are what
you need.

Really, there are lots of ways for you to be fit the
natural way. You just have to know the different
resources that you have. And after some time, you
will feel the difference between the commercial diet
solutions and the natural way. It is because
eventually,you will become perfectly fit while
staying healthy.Yes, healthy because you are not
restricting yourself with what you eat.

With natural weight loss, you don’t deprive yourself.
You just learn what are the right amount and the right
time to eat them. And you know what? Permanent
fitness is the promise of losing weight naturally.
That’s right; you don’t have to worry about gaining
weight again. For more information on weight loss
visit BLG Health

Presented By Larry Guzda

Information on this page is provided for informational
purposes only. It is not meant to be a substitute for
medical advise. Contact your physician for diagnoses
of all health related problems as soon as possible.
Dietary supplements HAVE NOT be evaluated by
The Food And Drug Administration and are not
intended to diagnose,treat,cure or prevent any disease.

This article may be copied but not changed in any way

BLG Health-Comparison of Obesity Between Women And Men

Male obesity has become a weighty topic...and
it's on the rise in the United States. Although
weight-loss programs and diet trends often focus
on women, the American Obesity Association
found that the prevalence to be overweight is
higher for men (67 percent) than women
(62 percent).

In fact, a recent study from the National
Institute of Health (NIH), conducted over
30 years, showed nine out of 10 men and
seven out of 10 women were overweight
or became overweight.

But despite being more prone to obesity, only
39 percent of men are on a diet or would try
a diet to lose weight, as opposed to a larger
portion of 70 percent of women.

While some men do place importance on health
and weight loss, their approach is different than
women, and therefore guys are hesitant to go on
a diet. In fact, according to the NIH, 66 percent
of men say they eat the foods they like regardless
of calories, which leaves men wondering how
can they eat what they want and still lose weight.

More weight loss information can be found at
BLG Health.

Presented by Larry Guzda



Information on this page is provided for
informational purposes only. It is not meant to be
a substitute for medical advise. Contact your physician
for diagnoses of all health related problems as soon
as possible.Dietary supplements HAVE NOT be
evaluated by The Food And Drug Administration
and are not intended to diagnose,treat,cure or
prevent any disease.

This article  may be copied but not changed in any way