The Money Mistake You’re Probably Making

Suffering from credit card bill-induced panic attacks? You may be setting yourself up for a lifetime of debt. Younger Americans rack up more credit card debt than their parents and are slower to pay it off, according to a recent study in the journal Economic Inquiry.

Researchers at Ohio State University used monthly surveys to look at the credit card habits of 32,542 Americans between 18-85 years old. They found that Americans born between 1980-1984 will rack up over $ 5,000 more debt by the time they’re 45 than people born between 1950-1954 had at that same age. Plus, they’ll pay off 24% less every month, when compared to their parents’ generation. “It’s a simple calculation to show that they’re never going to pay off that debt,” says co-author of the study, Lucia Dunn, Ph.D., professor of economics at Ohio State University.

But this younger generation isn’t necessarily reckless with their money. “They’ve racked up enormous amounts of student debt,” says Dunn. “There are also many things that people consider necessities today—like a car—that others didn’t think of as necessities before.”

Need another reason to curb your spending? Women are more likely to stress about debt than men, according to a follow-up study by Dunn and her colleagues. So whether you’re deep in debt or working hard to avoid it, use these tips to stay on top of your finances:

Double your minimum payment
Here’s some good news: Research showed that when the minimum monthly credit card payment is raised just a little, it causes people to pay back even more, which means you’ll get out of debt quicker. “It has a psychological impact on people,” says Dunn. “It makes them take repaying more seriously. In the end, everything costs less if you pay off faster.” Since you can’t control what the bank asks for, make your own rule and stick to it. If your bill says you owe a minimum of $ 50, make it $ 100.

Forget your friends’ finances
When it seems like everyone is suffering the same money woes, it can make you less serious about taking control of your spending. “It’s still not the norm to carry credit card debt, but many think it is,” says Liz Weston, financial expert and author of The 10 Commandments of Money. “Don’t take comfort in thinking everyone else is in debt.”

Pick the right plastic
Those fancy reward cards are great, but their rates can be higher than normal. If you’re paying your bill in full every month, go for it. “But if you’re carrying a balance on your card, look for one with a low rate instead,” says Weston. And read the fine print—some cards are made for really big spenders.

Check out these tools
Websites like Mint.com let you track your spending so you can figure out where you budget needs some work. You can also set up helpful text alerts from your bank. Need to save for a big purchase? Set up an online account somewhere like Ally or ING Direct, says Weston. They’ll let you set up free sub-accounts that will automatically subtract savings each month.

Don’t forget the future
It may seem way too far away, but the best time to start saving for retirement is in your twenties and thirties. Even if you’re paying down student loans and credit card debt, keep a little money stashed away in savings so that it gains interest. “People think, ‘I have my whole life to save,’ but that’s not how the math works,” says Weston.

Know when to wave the white flag
Unfortunately, if your debt becomes unmanageable, it’s better to get help sooner rather than later. “If your debt is equal to half or more of your income, it’s time to talk to a credit counselor or bankruptcy attorney,” says Weston. Check out the National Foundation for Credit Counseling at NFCC.org for help.

photo: Hemera/Thinkstock

More from WH:
8 Money Tips to Avoid Credit Card Debt
Money Secrets Couples Keep
Quiz: Are You Wasting Your Money?

Discover surprising walking tips, tricks, and techniques to melt fat fast and get a tighter, firmer butt with Walk Your Butt Off! Buy it now!

javahut healthy feed

Buzzkill: Booze Gives You Wrinkles

All those happy hours may leave you with more than just killer hangovers. A new app claims to show how your drinking habits will mess with your looks over time, and the result isn’t pretty. The Scottish government released the free app, Drinking Mirror, as a part of their new health campaign to curb excess drinking.

Brave users can upload their picture, enter how many cocktails they have per week, and check out their future face. So what will too many martinis do to your skin ten years from now? According to the app, you can look forward to puffiness, redness, and deeper wrinkles. Of course, the tool doesn’t consider your other lifestyle factors and genetics, but it may cause you to think twice about that third glass of wine. “The app is a fun way to see the long-term effects of binge drinking,” says Drinking Mirror’s developer Auriole Prince, age progression artist for ChangeMyFace.com.

So should you cut down on your cocktails for your skin’s sake? It certainly couldn’t hurt. “Alcohol is essentially a toxin to the body,” says New York City-based dermatologist Michele Green, M.D. “It dries you out, it dehydrates you, and it prematurely ages you.” The result: A less-than-flawless complexion.

Want more tips on keeping your skin looking young and fresh? Check out more anti-aging solutions here.

photo: Comstock/Thinkstock

More from WH:
The Surprising Connection Between Alcohol and Exercise
Is Your Drinking Habit Deadly?
The Health Benefits of Alcohol

Discover surprising walking tips, tricks, and techniques to melt fat fast and get a tighter, firmer butt with Walk Your Butt Off! Buy it now!

javahut healthy feed

6 Totally Gross Health Treatments

Talk about stomach-turning: Last week, a study from the New England Journal of Medicine found that transplanting excrement from a healthy person into the gut of someone with an intestinal infection cured the infection more successfully than antibiotics did. As disgusting as a fecal transplant sounds, it’s not the only appalling medical remedy some experts currently recommend to cure certain ailments. Check out these six below—you won’t believe the seemingly effective things some docs suggest you put inside your body.

Yogurt to cure a yeast infection
Yogurt contains Lactobacillus acidophilus, a type of bacteria naturally found in healthy vaginas. Snagging yogurt’s body benefit, however, isn’t as simple as snacking on a cup of the fruity stuff. To ease and even cure the killer itching and burning, Mary Jane Minkin, M.D., clinical professor of Ob-Gyn at Yale University School of Medicine, suggests inserting a dab or two of plain, unsweetened yogurt containing live cultures inside the vagina just as you would insert drugstore-bought anti-yeast cream. This introduces the healthy bacteria on site where it can kill yeast more effectively.

Hemorrhoid cream for reducing under-eye circles
Hemorrhoid creams soothe and shrink delicate rectal tissues by constricting blood vessels. Put a little under your eyes, and some dermatologists say it’ll work the same way, de-puffing eye bags and getting rid of dark circles around the thin skin of your under-eye area. That said, this is a home remedy that hinges on whether you can handle the smell, as hemorrhoid cream doesn’t exactly have the most fragrant odor.

Maggots to heal a wound
This ancient remedy has experienced a resurgence in modern hospitals in the past decade, according to an article in the March 2009 issue of the Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology. That’s thanks in part to the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria finding their way into bed sores, post-surgical wounds, and foot ulcers commonly found in diabetics. How it works: Doctors place creepy, crawly fly larvae onto a patient’s wound. Immediately the squirmy maggots start feeding on bacteria-laden tissue, clearing it out and allowing healthy tissue to grow in.

Leeches for dissolving blood clots
It’s another old-school cure that modern docs are bringing back, CBS News reported last year. Leeches are slimy, eel-like critters usually found in lakes, where they attach themselves to a host and feed by leeching blood through your skin. To treat a blood clot or boost blood circulation in an injured body part, MDs might put one of these blood suckers on the skin for 15 or so minutes, where they bust clots and reestablish optimum blood flow. The FDA approved the sale of leeches for medicinal purposes in 2004, so at least docs don’t have to wade through ponds to find them.

Horse urine for hot flashes
Short-term hormone-replacement therapy has helped many women deal with the discomfort of menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes. But the hormones in one type of HRT, known by the brand name Premarin, come from a pretty icky source: horse urine, specifically that of a pregnant mare, who produces excess estrogen in her urine.

Chia seeds to score nutrients
These are the gritty, unappetizing little seeds that when mixed with water and slathered on a terra cotta figure sprout into a green ‘fro of hair. Now they’re a trendy superfood, with nutritionists touting their high levels of antioxidants, omega-3 fatty acids, and fiber, according to an article in The New York Times. Native to Central and South America, the seeds are finding their way into stir-frys, cereal, juices, even cookies.

photo: iStockphoto/Thinkstock

 

More from WH:
Troubleshooting Your Vagina
Cures for Common Stomach Pains
How Different Things Impact Your Body

Discover surprising walking tips, tricks, and techniques to melt fat fast and get a tighter, firmer butt with Walk Your Butt Off! Buy it now!

javahut healthy feed

The Depressing Truth About Sugary Drinks

Want to smile more? Swallow this: People who drink regular or diet soda, iced tea, or fruit punch are more likely to suffer from depression, while coffee drinkers are less prone to the blues, according to a new study presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s Annual Meeting.

Researchers asked 263,925 people about their drinking habits and whether they’d been diagnosed with depression since the year 2000. Those who drank more than four daily servings of regular soda or fruit punch were up to 38 percent more vulnerable to depression than those who shunned the sweet stuff. Meanwhile, diet soda, diet iced tea, and diet fruit punch drinkers were even more likely to be depressed. The one beverage that doesn’t bring on the blues is coffee: People who downed four or more cups of Joe per day were 10 percent less likely to suffer from severe sadness.

While guzzling sugary and artificially-sweetened drinks have historically been linked to poor health, it’s not yet clear whether these beverages directly cause depression. That said, the benefits of coffee come as no surprise: Coffee is chock full of caffeine, a well-known brain stimulant, and rich in antioxidants and phytochemicals, which may also be responsible for the drink’s depression-fighting power, according to study author Honglei Chen, M.D., Ph.D., a tenure-track investigator at the National Institute of Environmental Health Science.

To decrease your odds of depression, top off your coffee mug and quench your thirst with water. And when your sweet tooth strikes? Slurp down this no-sugar-added java smoothie:

Java Breakfast Smoothie

What You’ll Need:

1 cup brewed coffee
1 cup low fat milk
1/2 cup nonfat Greek yogurt
2 T pitted dried dates, chopped
1 banana
2 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp vanilla or coffee extract
1/4 tsp cinnamon or cardamom
1 Tbsp peanut butter or almond butter

How to Make It:

1. Pour brewed coffee in an ice cube tray, let cool to room temperature and freeze.

2. Place milk, yogurt, dates, banana, cocoa, extract, cinnamon, and 5 coffee ice cubes in a blender container. Turn blender onto its low setting and process for 20 seconds.

3. Switch to the high setting and blend until dates and ice cubes are pulverized, about 1 minute.

4. Drop peanut or almond butter into the liquid and process for 10 seconds more.

Makes 1 serving. Per serving: 450 calories, 13 g fat (4 g sat), 97 g carbs, 275 mg sodium, 10 g fiber, 22 g protein

photo: iStockphoto/Thinkstock

More from WH:
The Best New (Healthy!) Java Recipes
Thai Iced Coffee
The Perks Of Coffee Drinks
Espresso Granita Recipe

Discover surprising walking tips, tricks, and techniques to melt fat fast and get a tighter, firmer butt with Walk Your Butt Off! Buy it now!

javahut healthy feed

Should You Stop Eating Fish?

You might want to think twice about feasting on seafood. A whopping 84 percent of fish samples taken from around the world contain unsafe levels of mercury, according to a new report from the Biodiversity Research Institute and the International Persistent Organic Pollutants Elimination Network. It isn’t safe to eat fish with such high levels of mercury more than once a month, according to the findings.

And that’s not all. Researchers also took hair samples from 152 people from around the world. What they found: More than 82 percent contained mercury levels greater than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s recommended level. Translation: People are exposed to more mercury than is good for them.

So what’s the big deal? Consuming mercury can affect your nervous system and your brain, and this can be especially dangerous for children and women who are pregnant, according to Lisa Moskovitz, RD, CDN, CPT, owner of Manhattan-based practice Your New York Dietician. “Mercury acts like a neurotoxin which, even in low doses, can impair a baby’s development and cognitive function. In some cases it can lead to mental retardation, cerebral palsy, and loss of sight and hearing,” she says. “In non-pregnant adults, mercury affects fertility, blood pressure, memory, and eyesight.”

Pretty scary stuff, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to cut fish out of your diet altogether. “Because fish is an important nutrient source, it’s more about being smart with what you are eating vs. avoiding eating fish,” says David Evers, PhD, chief scientist of the Biodiversity Research Institute who specializes in research on ecotoxicology. He suggests consulting your doctor and checking out the EPA’s recommendations to lower your risk.

Here, excepted from the EPA’s website, three guidelines for reducing your exposure to mercury found in fish:

1. Do not eat Shark, Swordfish, King Mackerel, or Tilefish because they contain high levels of mercury.

2. Eat up to 12 ounces (2 average meals) a week of a variety of fish and shellfish that are lower in mercury.

  • Five of the most commonly eaten fish that are low in mercury are shrimp, canned light tuna, salmon, pollock, and catfish.
  • Another commonly eaten fish, albacore (“white”) tuna has more mercury than canned light tuna. So, when choosing your two meals of fish and shellfish, you may eat up to 6 ounces (one average meal) of albacore tuna per week.

3. Check local advisories about the safety of fish caught by family and friends in your local lakes, rivers, and coastal areas. If no advice is available, eat up to 6 ounces (one average meal) per week of fish you catch from local waters, but don’t consume any other fish during that week.

Click here for more info. on fish safety from the EPA.

Click here to see the Consumer Guide to Mercury in Fish from the Natural Defense Council.

Pregnant or planning to become pregnant? Click here for the NRDC’s Mercury in Fish Wallet Card.

photo: iStockphoto/Thinkstock

More from WH:
How to Cook Seafood
Seafood Safety Tips
Frankenfish and the World of Genetically Modified Food

Discover surprising walking tips, tricks, and techniques to melt fat fast and get a tighter, firmer butt with Walk Your Butt Off! Buy it now!

javahut healthy feed

Should You Stop Eating Fish?

You might want to think twice about feasting on seafood. A whopping 84 percent of fish samples taken from around the world contain unsafe levels of mercury, according to a new report from the Biodiversity Research Institute and the International Persistent Organic Pollutants Elimination Network. It isn’t safe to eat fish with such high levels of mercury more than once a month, according to the findings.

And that’s not all. Researchers also took hair samples from 152 people from around the world. What they found: More than 82 percent contained mercury levels greater than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s recommended level. Translation: People are exposed to more mercury than is good for them.

So what’s the big deal? Consuming mercury can affect your nervous system and your brain, and this can be especially dangerous for children and women who are pregnant, according to Lisa Moskovitz, RD, CDN, CPT, owner of Manhattan-based practice Your New York Dietician. “Mercury acts like a neurotoxin which, even in low doses, can impair a baby’s development and cognitive function. In some cases it can lead to mental retardation, cerebral palsy, and loss of sight and hearing,” she says. “In non-pregnant adults, mercury affects fertility, blood pressure, memory, and eyesight.”

Pretty scary stuff, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to cut fish out of your diet altogether. “Because fish is an important nutrient source, it’s more about being smart with what you are eating vs. avoiding eating fish,” says David Evers, PhD, chief scientist of the Biodiversity Research Institute who specializes in research on ecotoxicology. He suggests consulting your doctor and checking out the EPA’s recommendations to lower your risk.

Here, excepted from the EPA’s website, three guidelines for reducing your exposure to mercury found in fish:

1. Do not eat Shark, Swordfish, King Mackerel, or Tilefish because they contain high levels of mercury.

2. Eat up to 12 ounces (2 average meals) a week of a variety of fish and shellfish that are lower in mercury.

  • Five of the most commonly eaten fish that are low in mercury are shrimp, canned light tuna, salmon, pollock, and catfish.
  • Another commonly eaten fish, albacore (“white”) tuna has more mercury than canned light tuna. So, when choosing your two meals of fish and shellfish, you may eat up to 6 ounces (one average meal) of albacore tuna per week.

3. Check local advisories about the safety of fish caught by family and friends in your local lakes, rivers, and coastal areas. If no advice is available, eat up to 6 ounces (one average meal) per week of fish you catch from local waters, but don’t consume any other fish during that week.

Click here for more info. on fish safety from the EPA.

Click here to see the Consumer Guide to Mercury in Fish from the Natural Defense Council.

Pregnant or planning to become pregnant? Click here for the NRDC’s Mercury in Fish Wallet Card.

photo: iStockphoto/Thinkstock

More from WH:
How to Cook Seafood
Seafood Safety Tips
Frankenfish and the World of Genetically Modified Food

Discover surprising walking tips, tricks, and techniques to melt fat fast and get a tighter, firmer butt with Walk Your Butt Off! Buy it now!

javahut healthy feed

The Depressing Truth About Sugary Drinks

Want to smile more? Swallow this: People who drink regular or diet soda, iced tea, or fruit punch are more likely to suffer from depression, while coffee drinkers are less prone to the blues, according to a new study presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s Annual Meeting.

Researchers asked 263,925 people about their drinking habits and whether they’d been diagnosed with depression since the year 2000. Those who drank more than four daily servings of regular soda or fruit punch were up to 38 percent more vulnerable to depression than those who shunned the sweet stuff. Meanwhile, diet soda, diet iced tea, and diet fruit punch drinkers were even more likely to be depressed. The one beverage that doesn’t bring on the blues is coffee: People who downed four or more cups of Joe per day were 10 percent less likely to suffer from severe sadness.

While guzzling sugary and artificially-sweetened drinks have historically been linked to poor health, it’s not yet clear whether these beverages directly cause depression. That said, the benefits of coffee come as no surprise: Coffee is chock full of caffeine, a well-known brain stimulant, and rich in antioxidants and phytochemicals, which may also be responsible for the drink’s depression-fighting power, according to study author Honglei Chen, M.D., Ph.D., a tenure-track investigator at the National Institute of Environmental Health Science.

To decrease your odds of depression, top off your coffee mug and quench your thirst with water. And when your sweet tooth strikes? Slurp down this no-sugar-added java smoothie:

Java Breakfast Smoothie

What You’ll Need:

1 cup brewed coffee
1 cup low fat milk
1/2 cup nonfat Greek yogurt
2 T pitted dried dates, chopped
1 banana
2 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp vanilla or coffee extract
1/4 tsp cinnamon or cardamom
1 Tbsp peanut butter or almond butter

How to Make It:

1. Pour brewed coffee in an ice cube tray, let cool to room temperature and freeze.

2. Place milk, yogurt, dates, banana, cocoa, extract, cinnamon, and 5 coffee ice cubes in a blender container. Turn blender onto its low setting and process for 20 seconds.

3. Switch to the high setting and blend until dates and ice cubes are pulverized, about 1 minute.

4. Drop peanut or almond butter into the liquid and process for 10 seconds more.

Makes 1 serving. Per serving: 450 calories, 13 g fat (4 g sat), 97 g carbs, 275 mg sodium, 10 g fiber, 22 g protein

photo: iStockphoto/Thinkstock

More from WH:
The Best New (Healthy!) Java Recipes
Thai Iced Coffee
The Perks Of Coffee Drinks
Espresso Granita Recipe

Discover surprising walking tips, tricks, and techniques to melt fat fast and get a tighter, firmer butt with Walk Your Butt Off! Buy it now!

javahut healthy feed

6 Totally Gross Health Treatments

Talk about stomach-turning: Last week, a study from the New England Journal of Medicine found that transplanting excrement from a healthy person into the gut of someone with an intestinal infection cured the infection more successfully than antibiotics did. As disgusting as a fecal transplant sounds, it’s not the only appalling medical remedy some experts currently recommend to cure certain ailments. Check out these six below—you won’t believe the seemingly effective things some docs suggest you put inside your body.

Yogurt to cure a yeast infection
Yogurt contains Lactobacillus acidophilus, a type of bacteria naturally found in healthy vaginas. Snagging yogurt’s body benefit, however, isn’t as simple as snacking on a cup of the fruity stuff. To ease and even cure the killer itching and burning, Mary Jane Minkin, M.D., clinical professor of Ob-Gyn at Yale University School of Medicine, suggests inserting a dab or two of plain, unsweetened yogurt containing live cultures inside the vagina just as you would insert drugstore-bought anti-yeast cream. This introduces the healthy bacteria on site where it can kill yeast more effectively.

Hemorrhoid cream for reducing under-eye circles
Hemorrhoid creams soothe and shrink delicate rectal tissues by constricting blood vessels. Put a little under your eyes, and some dermatologists say it’ll work the same way, de-puffing eye bags and getting rid of dark circles around the thin skin of your under-eye area. That said, this is a home remedy that hinges on whether you can handle the smell, as hemorrhoid cream doesn’t exactly have the most fragrant odor.

Maggots to heal a wound
This ancient remedy has experienced a resurgence in modern hospitals in the past decade, according to an article in the March 2009 issue of the Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology. That’s thanks in part to the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria finding their way into bed sores, post-surgical wounds, and foot ulcers commonly found in diabetics. How it works: Doctors place creepy, crawly fly larvae onto a patient’s wound. Immediately the squirmy maggots start feeding on bacteria-laden tissue, clearing it out and allowing healthy tissue to grow in.

Leeches for dissolving blood clots
It’s another old-school cure that modern docs are bringing back, CBS News reported last year. Leeches are slimy, eel-like critters usually found in lakes, where they attach themselves to a host and feed by leeching blood through your skin. To treat a blood clot or boost blood circulation in an injured body part, MDs might put one of these blood suckers on the skin for 15 or so minutes, where they bust clots and reestablish optimum blood flow. The FDA approved the sale of leeches for medicinal purposes in 2004, so at least docs don’t have to wade through ponds to find them.

Horse urine for hot flashes
Short-term hormone-replacement therapy has helped many women deal with the discomfort of menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes. But the hormones in one type of HRT, known by the brand name Premarin, come from a pretty icky source: horse urine, specifically that of a pregnant mare, who produces excess estrogen in her urine.

Chia seeds to score nutrients
These are the gritty, unappetizing little seeds that when mixed with water and slathered on a terra cotta figure sprout into a green ‘fro of hair. Now they’re a trendy superfood, with nutritionists touting their high levels of antioxidants, omega-3 fatty acids, and fiber, according to an article in The New York Times. Native to Central and South America, the seeds are finding their way into stir-frys, cereal, juices, even cookies.

photo: iStockphoto/Thinkstock

 

More from WH:
Troubleshooting Your Vagina
Cures for Common Stomach Pains
How Different Things Impact Your Body

Discover surprising walking tips, tricks, and techniques to melt fat fast and get a tighter, firmer butt with Walk Your Butt Off! Buy it now!

javahut healthy feed

5 Totally Gross Health Treatments

Talk about stomach-turning: Last week, a study from the New England Journal of Medicine found that transplanting excrement from a healthy person into the gut of someone with an intestinal infection cured the infection more successfully than antibiotics did. As disgusting as a fecal transplant sounds, it’s not the only appalling medical remedy some experts currently recommend to cure certain ailments. Check out these five below—you won’t believe the seemingly effective things some docs suggest you put inside your body.

Yogurt to cure a yeast infection
Yogurt contains Lactobacillus acidophilus, a type of bacteria naturally found in healthy vaginas. Snagging yogurt’s body benefit, however, isn’t as simple as snacking on a cup of the fruity stuff. To ease and even cure the killer itching and burning, Mary Jane Minkin, M.D., clinical professor of Ob-Gyn at Yale University School of Medicine, suggests inserting a dab or two of plain, unsweetened yogurt containing live cultures inside the vagina just as you would insert drugstore-bought anti-yeast cream. This introduces the healthy bacteria on site where it can kill yeast more effectively.

Hemorrhoid cream for reducing under-eye circles
Hemorrhoid creams soothe and shrink delicate rectal tissues by constricting blood vessels. Put a little under your eyes, and some dermatologists say it’ll work the same way, de-puffing eye bags and getting rid of dark circles around the thin skin of your under-eye area. That said, this is a home remedy that hinges on whether you can handle the smell, as hemorrhoid cream doesn’t exactly have the most fragrant odor.

Maggots to heal a wound
This ancient remedy has experienced a resurgence in modern hospitals in the past decade, according to an article in the March 2009 issue of the Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology. That’s thanks in part to the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria finding their way into bed sores, post-surgical wounds, and foot ulcers commonly found in diabetics. How it works: Doctors place creepy, crawly fly larvae onto a patient’s wound. Immediately the squirmy maggots start feeding on bacteria-laden tissue, clearing it out and allowing healthy tissue to grow in.

Leeches for dissolving blood clots
It’s another old-school cure that modern docs are bringing back, CBS News reported last year. Leeches are slimy, eel-like critters usually found in lakes, where they attach themselves to a host and feed by leeching blood through your skin. To treat a blood clot or boost blood circulation in an injured body part, MDs might put one of these blood suckers on the skin for 15 or so minutes, where they bust clots and reestablish optimum blood flow. The FDA approved the sale of leeches for medicinal purposes in 2004, so at least docs don’t have to wade through ponds to find them.

Horse urine for hot flashes
Short-term hormone-replacement therapy has helped many women deal with the discomfort of menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes. But the hormones in one type of HRT, known by the brand name Premarin, come from a pretty icky source: horse urine, specifically that of a pregnant mare, who produces excess estrogen in her urine.

Chia seeds to score nutrients
These are the gritty, unappetizing little seeds that when mixed with water and slathered on a terra cotta figure sprout into a green ‘fro of hair. Now they’re a trendy superfood, with nutritionists touting their high levels of antioxidants, omega-3 fatty acids, and fiber, according to an article in The New York Times. Native to Central and South America, the seeds are finding their way into stir-frys, cereal, juices, even cookies.

photo: iStockphoto/Thinkstock

 

More from WH:
Troubleshooting Your Vagina
Cures for Common Stomach Pains
How Different Things Impact Your Body

Discover surprising walking tips, tricks, and techniques to melt fat fast and get a tighter, firmer butt with Walk Your Butt Off! Buy it now!

javahut healthy feed

Buzzkill: Booze Gives You Wrinkles

All those happy hours may leave you with more than just killer hangovers. A new app claims to show how your drinking habits will mess with your looks over time, and the result isn’t pretty. The Scottish government released the free app, Drinking Mirror, as a part of their new health campaign to curb excess drinking.

Brave users can upload their picture, enter how many cocktails they have per week, and check out their future face. So what will too many martinis do to your skin ten years from now? According to the app, you can look forward to puffiness, redness, and deeper wrinkles. Of course, the tool doesn’t consider your other lifestyle factors and genetics, but it may cause you to think twice about that third glass of wine. “The app is a fun way to see the long-term effects of binge drinking,” says Drinking Mirror’s developer Auriole Prince, age progression artist for ChangeMyFace.com.

So should you cut down on your cocktails for your skin’s sake? It certainly couldn’t hurt. “Alcohol is essentially a toxin to the body,” says New York City-based dermatologist Michele Green, M.D. “It dries you out, it dehydrates you, and it prematurely ages you.” The result: A less-than-flawless complexion.

Want more tips on keeping your skin looking young and fresh? Check out more anti-aging solutions here.

photo: Comstock/Thinkstock

More from WH:
The Surprising Connection Between Alcohol and Exercise
Is Your Drinking Habit Deadly?
The Health Benefits of Alcohol

Discover surprising walking tips, tricks, and techniques to melt fat fast and get a tighter, firmer butt with Walk Your Butt Off! Buy it now!

javahut healthy feed