5 ways to dodge the hiccup attack

As I wrote in my last post, I had a hiccup attack a few days ago. It made me think about my health condition, because there was posted on the web a vast list of diseases and health condition problems and I got scared and I have tried to get rid of the hiccup.

Theoretically, it sounded very well, but it got a bit tricky when I began to fight against this annoying, but still funny, at least for the others, sound. I tried numerous methods to stop the hiccup, some heard from my friends, some seen on the web, but there was at least one good thing I have learned, and that is that there aren’t any universal methods.

There are few people that react in the same manner to the same method of hiccup annihilation. Our bodies are different, and each person has a perfect way to stop a hiccup attack. It took me a while to find mine. Here is what I have tried:

1. Eat a slice of lemon. The lemon will create a strange sensation that the body can’t understand, and the acid from the lemon will make your stomach reduce its size, making the diaphragm relax. It should stop the hiccup in most of the cases, even for a short while.

2. Crouch and hold your breath as long as you can. Although it can cause dizziness and you can pass out if you push yourself to the limit, still it is a good way to relax the diaphragm and suppress the hiccups.

3. Drink water. This one has a lot of variables, because there are many techniques to drink. You can drink in repeatedly small sips, or drink when you feel like hiccup, or drink slowly but continuous.

4. Eat a spoon of sugar. This method has something to do with the action of sugar upon the stomach, and it also give a boost of energy to the body cells, helping them to carry away faster the surplus of carbon dioxide that causes the hiccup.

5. Apply to your both ear lobes pressure with your thumb and index together for approximately 40 seconds. This is the most surprising tip regarding the hiccup that I ever heard and it has nothing to do with breathing in a certain way or eating certain things, it is all about pressure points. With a background in acupuncture, I think this can be the most efficient advice.

Related posts:

• The hiccup terror
• Stop biting your nails by identifying and eliminating the stress factor
• How to work and live a healthy life
  

So how well did you do against the hiccups? Do you know others ways to lose the hiccups?

Written by: Liviu Moldovan

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The ultimate fattening factor - Stress

You can gain weight by exposing yourself to a stressful situation, or by working, studying or living in a stressful environment. As shocking as it sounds, this is a certain fact. I’m sorry to shatter your illusion, but you aren’t going to lose any weight by pushing yourself to the limit and letting the stress to take over your life.

Beside the fact that stress is ruining your social life by making you gloomy and tempestuous, and that is interfering with your thinking capacity, unfortunately, the stress is also messing with your body like an one-eyed painter.

It has been proven by a series of lab research that a stressful situation triggers the release of cortisol, which is a stress hormone. This hormone can slow the metabolism, causing you to gain more weight than you would normally do. It will also mess with your current diet, if you are trying to lose weight.

Prolonged stress affects your blood sugar level, causing fatigue or even hyperglycemia. On a long term bases, it can cause heart diseases or diabetes. It also affects the location of the fat storage, because if you are a stressed person, you will surely start to develop a fluffy tummy, and beside the unaesthetic look, it can also cause serious sanity problems.

A stressful way of life can also influence the quantity and the quality of your meals. Although food can unleash chemical reactions, for a short period, that make you feel calm and confident, stress eating will trigger the guilt feelings and you will request for more food. That can be the disastrous start of a long road of weight gaining and you must avoid it.

Another problem of the stress eating is the fact that you eat even though you are not really hungry, just to compensate other things that you should to, like taking a walk in a park, or going to swim, because you get stressed at work, and you can’t run away from there to the park, so, you reach for a cookie, or a box of cookies, depending of the gravity of the situation.

The quality of the food is actually related to an old modern people problem – fast-foods. Most of the people are too stressed and busy to choose a healthy dinner in their family, then they refuge themselves in a shack with a big sign that says McD’s, to eat a big bowl of grease and drink a 3.5 pH coke. Then they will wine all night of stomach aches.

The last but not least of the problems is the lack of exercise, because many people state that they are too busy to work out, they work from 9 to 5 and spend another one or two hours on the way to and from work, so, by the time they get home, they are too exhausted.

In conclusion, if you are living a stressful life, and you are too busy (in translation too lazy), you will develop an oversized tummy (like me).

Related posts:

• Unleash the positive thoughts!
• Do we use water and it’s benefits the proper way ?
• Relax, take it easy!
• Think positive, act positive!

Did you encounter stress as a fattering factor ? Tell us your story, and ask us questions, so we can clear things that you are not clear with !

Written by: Liviu Moldovan

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Crispy Cinnamon Apple Saute

This is a season recipe, and since Christmas is almost here I decided to post some recipes, beginning with this one, recipes that are easy to make, good for your health, without too many ingredients.

Ingredients:

2 large Golden Delicious apples, cored and cut into 1/3 – inch thick slices
2 teaspoons of butter
2 teaspoons of sugar
150 gr raisins
100 gr orange juice
50 gr apricot jam (or you can use peach jam)
1 teaspoon grated orange peel
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (which gives the Christmas flavor that I love)
1/8 teaspoon allspice

The way to do it right:

Melt the butter over medium heat in a large nonstick skillet; then add the apple slices.Cook, tossing occasionally, about 10 minutes or until the apples get golden brown.Stir in remaining ingredients (all but the sugar – you don’t need that sugar with the other ingredients now); cook, stirring, about 3 minutes until sauce thickens slightly.

Here comes the interesting part:

After your sauce thickens, get a nonstick skillet, and put the sugar in it, cook for 3-5 minutes stirring until the sugar melts, and becomes caramelized. When the caramelized sugar is still hot, dress your apple’s with it (poor caramel on top of the apples)

Serve warm over pancakes, waffles, French toast or hot cereal. Bon apetit !
Do you like this recipe ? Have you tried it yet ? Try and make Crispy Cinnamon Apple Saute for your guests or friends. Did they liked it ?

Written by: Alexandru Hategan

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