The health benefits of coconut are popping up everywhere. Various studies show that this tropical food, rich in natural plant based saturated fats can ease thyroid issues, boost your immune system, stave off fungal infections, increase your metabolism, help you burn pudgy, control your appetite and give you super healthy, dazzling skin. However, most people might procure bored with cracking open a coconut and scraping the meat out by hand. So how can you enjoy this health food without driving yourself nuts?

Most health food stores (and many regular grocery stores) carry coconut oil as well as coconut milk. The two are extremely versatile cooking ingredients and are amazing dairy substitutes. With their rich texture and taste, you can enjoy decadent goodies without compromising your health. You don’t have to make your desserts fat free to make them healthy; just swap out butter, milk, cream and the oh-so-malicious hydrogenated oils (crisco, etc) for coconut based versions.

Coconut oil can be used in a large variety of ways. It makes an excellent substitute for butter/oil/crisco when making cookies, brownies, cakes, pie crusts and more. Coconut oil lends treats a rich, tender texture that is the perfect balance between crispy and moist. Because coconut oil has such a mild flavor, the taste will be neutralized by any other ingredients in your recipe. And in my personal experience, baked goods made with coconut oil keep extremely well, often even improving in taste and texture by the next day. Why? Coconut oil is an extremely stable fat and will not smash down at higher temperatures like other fats thus extending the integrity of whatever you decide to concoct. Coconut oil can also be used to obtain homemade chocolates and works excellently for no-bake cookies because it hardens very quickly at cool temperatures. It also is a immense choice if you want to make a chocolate hard dessert shell for your ice cream as it will harden upon contact with your frozen treat.

Coconut milk is also extremely versatile. One of the best ways to utilize coconut milk is to place a can of the milk in the refrigerator to let the cream separate. Scoop out the cream and you have a heavenly, rich dairy substitute with which you can make ice cream, cream pies and frosting. You can also replace the cream in many of your recipes with coconut cream to yield generous results. Add a puny lemon juice to your coconut cream for a cream cheese taste. Blend coconut cream and fruit and then freeze to make a creamy, delicious frozen fruit bar. Sweeten with sugar and use as a topping for cakes, pies, pancakes, waffles, or even fruit. You can use the whole milk as a substitute in any regular recipe calling for milk as well.

So go to your local grocery store, stock up, and originate experimenting! Enjoy luscious baked goods with a lot less guilt!

If you’ve just gotten back your liver enzyme test results and find that your values are elevated, you might net some significant benefit in returning them back to normal range by implementing some nutrients and herbs that are specific assisting in regaining optimum liver health. Along with a healthy diet and exercise, these substances will help to bring those numbers benefit into normal range before too long, provided your liver isn’t experiencing serious disease issues. They are as follows:

Milk Thistle- This herb is widely known for its ability to regenerate healthy liver cells even in some of the most difficult situations regarding liver health, such as cirrohsis, and hepatitis. It protects liver cell death and distress due to chemical toxin. In alternative health circles, this plant is a staple for better liver function.

Dandelion Root- The dandelion is often times thought of as such a nuisance to us, but this plant has some great benefits for helping us regain adequate liver function. It is known for its ability to thin and promote a better quality bile within the liver. Between the milk thistle regenerating healthy cell growth and thinned bile from the dandelion root, you have a really great combination to procure some ground returning good liver health. Design certain you are taking dandelion ROOT and not just the flower. The root is what you need for improving liver function.

Artichoke Root- This herb is very primary in assisting the liver to efficiently metabolize fats and therefore in a big way will help the liver, since that is one of the liver’s primary functions. It can help to lower high lipid panel numbers and is known for bile stimulation as well. Including this nutrient can only help liver function that much more.

Turmeric- This is an herb that anyone with liver issues should not be without. It is helpful with liver and gallbladder function dually, and has the ability to thin sludgy, saturated bile that is so condusive to creating gallstones. If you can prevent gallstone formation from healthy thinned bile, all the better for your liver and gallbladder function. Often times, gallbladder dysfunction due to stones that have been formed by saturated bile will be a big contributing factor to liver dysfunction, including elevated enzyme levels. As a gallstone sufferer myself, I wouldn’t be without this important herb.

As a side note, you could also include lots of foods containing sulphur in addition to these supplements, sulphur is very nourishing to the liver and will be a very positive addition in combination with these herbal suggestions.

Through the years I spent in alternative health, I learned the benefits of these nutrients for better liver function over and over again. Consider using these supplements for at least a good 3 month period before seeing some substantial results.

As a whole health practitioner I never hesitated to point people in the direction of these herbal remedies because of their significant impact on improving elevated liver enzyme levels over time. As stated earlier, you’ll need to give the situation time for improvement, but eating well and better lifestyle choices along with these herbs will eventually achieve the desired results.

Eat well, live well, enjoy!

Alright, I am going to be a little focused here on ranch dressing. It’s my favorite, but You can try your accepted type of dressing for these food and snack ideas I am sure it will be just as sterling. I was bored one day, and an idea popped into my head and it was a large one. Here are the ones that I tried and other innovative ideas for the use of dressing.

Toast
Make some toast and butter it, and spread a little ranch dressing over that

Sandwiches
You can get a little wild with this one. Instead of mayonnaise, use one type of salad dressing on one half of the sub roll, and another type of dressing with the other half of the roll.

Deviled Eggs
Again, instead of Mayonnaise, use ranch dressing.

Crackers
Use it like a dip

Potato Chips
For a dip

Biscuits
Spread it on the biscuits, or when you make your maintain, put some in the dough before baking.

Greens
Pour some on dark vegetables, like collard greens.

Scrambled eggs
Put a dollop or two in your egg mixture

A Gravy Substitute

A Barbecue Sauce Substitute

A Dangerous Mix
Combining Salad dressing with relish and mayonnaise

Salad Dressing As A substitute
If you’re ever out of mayonnaise, butter, you can use ranch dressing instead

Mix It Up In Vegetables
If your kids can’t stand a certain vegetable, you can mix a itsy-bitsy dressing in that to help it go down

The History Of Salad Dressing
Salad dressings are basically for, of course, salads the idea is based on mayonnaise and vinaigrette. Dressing have been around for many years. In China, they frail Soy Sauce for the past 5000 years. In Babylon Oil and Vinegar was put on their salads for the past 2000 years, Egyptians mixed oil, vinegar and oriental spices for their salads. Salads were special dishes back in the palaces of royals in Europe. The royal salad chefs put as great as 35 different ingredients in a huge bowl. Some of the ingredients were violets, marigolds, and rose petals. Mayonnaise was introduced to a French nobleman just over 200 years ago. Mary, the Queen of Scots loved a creamy mustard dressing over her diced celery root, lettuce, truffles, chervil and hard boiled egg.
Only in America did the salad dressing progress to oil, vinegar, or lemon juice and spices. Salad dressing were available in markets since the 1920′s.

Other Types of Dressings
There are many other types of dressings that would taste absolutely delicious on other foods, depending on your taste buds.
Russian Dressing-Mayonnaise combined chives, pimentos, ketchup and spices
Green Goddess Dressing-Mayonnaise combined with anchovies, parsley, scallions, garlic, spices, tarragon vinegar

Another salad dressing that I’ve used was Thousand Island. Ranch and Thousand Island are thick dressing, so if your favorite is of the thin type, It may or may not be as excellent as using Ranch dressing and the Thousand Island dressing. It is not a good thing to always eat the same things over and over. When you are bored, that is a sneaky diagram for unwanted fat to creep in on you. Whatever you eat, make sure that it’s different to keep life interesting. When I thought of using salad dressing to spice up plain and simple food, it made eating interesting. Another thing to do to keep food interesting is to watch The Food Network. There may be recipes you don’t like, but you can change them to suit your own tastes. Always experiment with different foods, and approach up with your own ideas to keep eating fun and intriguing.

Milk thistle is a highly beneficial supplement that comes from the daisy family of plants and can be found growing naturally in parts of North Africa, the Middle East, and throughout certain sections of Europe. Milk thistle is a tall plant with a green furrowed stem and a purple disc-shaped flower at the top.

Many studies have shown milk thistle to be a natural tonic for the human liver, providing salubrious protection and helping it function. The main protective ingredient in milk thistle is silymarin, which is a powerful antioxidant that naturally blocks toxic substances from entering the liver. Silymarin also promotes production of healthy new liver cells and is effective at regenerating badly damaged tissue. Hepatitis, cirrhosis of the liver, jaundice, malfunctioning gallbladder, these have all been treated successfully with milk thistle. Usually silymarin is given in doses of 200 to 500 milligrams, but actual data on the most effective dosage is still unknown.

Because the human liver is such an primary organ in the body, let’s digress for a moment and explain some of its functions and characteristics. The liver is a large, brownish-pink organ shaped similar to a boomerang and weighing around three pounds. It is responsible for numerous functions in the body, such as performing detoxification, regulating metabolism, storing glycogen, synthesizing plasma proteins, processing various byproducts of digestion, producing bile for emulsion of fats, and performing at least five hundred other distinguished chemical functions.

But the most amazing thing by far about the liver is that it’s worthy of regeneration, one of only a small number of organs in the body with that ability. For example, if you lose 75% of your liver, the other 25% can actually grow back into a whole liver again. The liver does this through a stem cell production process, with cells splitting in two and growing fast.

If your liver ever fails, you will die. Every minute of each day your liver detoxifies one liter of blood, and toxins in everything from cigarette smoke to prescription drugs to air pollution are filtered out for elimination. If your liver becomes scarred and blood flow is stifled, it is known as cirrhosis of the liver, and this type of hurt is not often reversible. Symptoms of cirrhossis include jaundice (yellow eyes and skin), edema (leg swelling), fatigue, nausea, and other problems. Cirrhosis can lead to liver failure and even death. Approximately 25 thousand people die each year from cirrhosis. But milk thistle, Vitamin C, and Green Tea are three important supplements you can pick to keep your liver healthy. Milk thistle is by far the strongest of the three, due to silymarin being a powerful antioxidant, which is over ten times stronger than Vitamin C, for example.

Concerning milk thistle, most health aficionados are familiar with its beneficial effects on the liver, but it is also effective for many other health problems as well. Studies have shown it can lower cholesterol, plus cleave cancer cell growth of certain types, namely prostate, breast, and cervical cancer. Milk thistle can also prevent skin conditions and fight varicose veins. Claims have even been made that it relieves unpleasant symptoms of a hangover. It also stimulates the sail of bile throughout the body, which aids digestion and fights off gallstones. Also there are very little side effects reported with taking milk thistle as a supplement, other than it can occasionally act as a unexcited laxative.

Although milk thistle has been proven effective for keeping the liver healthy, that doesn’t mean one should take it and then imbibe more alcoholic drinks. Reducing alcohol consumption is one of the best ways to protect your liver. Also cutting down on fatty and fried foods is helpful, since they overtax the liver during the digestion process.

As a companion to “Is Your Shampoo Making You Sick? …And You Don’t Even Know It? ” (read it at www.associatedcontent.com/article/44820/is_your_shampoo_making_you_sick.html), I’ve decided to expand the article with further information. Here are some homemade recipes to make your own hair shampoo:

1. Herbal Shampoo
There are many hair products on the market today that claim to contain healthy herbs. Herbs are effective in gently cleaning your hair and adding shine and bounce, for just two examples. While the store-bought products do contain a small amount of herbal extracts, making your own shampoo will ensure that your hair gets a healthy amount of natural herbs.

The types of herbs you’ll put in your homemade shampoo will depend on your hair type. If your hair is “normal”, then you can use whatever herbs you may settle. If your hair is oily, on the other hand, you should use dried Nettle leaves, Sage, Peppermint or Spearmint, Burdock, Tea Tree, Rosemary, or Lemongrass. You can use one or more of these recommended herbs.

Or, if your hair is dry and “flit away”, choose one or more of these natural, dried herbs to put in your homemade shampoo: Red Clover, Orange flowers, Elder flowers, Sandalwood, Burdock, Chamomile, Lavender, or Calendula.

Once you have chosen one or more of the herbs your hair type needs, you’ll need to win the dried herbs at your local healthfood store. (If you decide to utilize fresh herbs instead, you’ll need to double the amount needed. Chop the herbs up before you boil them with the water.)

Then, place a couple teaspoons of each natural, dried herb into a pan. Pour in a cup of tap* water, stir the mixture around, then place the pan on “medium” heat on your cookstove. Allow the water and dried herbs to come to a boil, then remove the pan from the heat. Let it set for fifteen to twenty minutes. Use a piece of cheesecloth to strain the herbs from the water. Then, mix the herb water into a cup of baby shampoo. The baby shampoo is gentle for all hair types. So, it’s a good base to exercise for your homemade hair shampoo. Use this herbal shampoo up right away for the maximum freshness. If you must store some of it for a short period of time, store it in an empty, rinsed out shampoo bottle. Or store it in another container that has a screw-on lid. Shake the herbal shampoo up a few times before each use.

spend If your tap water is chlorinated or “hard”, use spring or distilled water instead. You can even use pure rain water for added softness.

2. Add Body and Shine to Your Hair
Here’s another recipe for a natural, homemade shampoo that will add body and shine to your hair:

The ingredients are one teaspoon of mayonnaise, one teaspoon of lemon juice, and one teaspoon of baby shampoo. These ingredients will acquire enough shampoo for about two washings if your hair is short or thin. So, you’ll need to adjust the amounts depending on the length and thickness of your own hair.

Mix the ingredients together and use immediately. Or, store this homemade shampoo in a sealed container in the refrigerator.
And finally, if you’re looking for a natural dandruff shampoo that won’t harm you, try this recipe:

3. Homemade Dandruff Shampoo
You’ll need four aspirin tablets, three teaspoons of baby shampoo, and a quarter cup of apple cider vinegar. Mix the ingredients together well and use this shampoo immediately. Or, store it in a sealed container.

When you spend this homemade dandruff shampoo, apply some to your hair and lather it up. Let the mixture plot for five minutes. Then, rinse your hair thoroughly.