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First we had the Mad Cow Disease. Then we had Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. Now, we even have toxic Melamine in our milk. Wave after wave of food and health scare! When will it be safe to trust our food, water and air ever again?

Even without these major health scare, we still have to struggle with daily health and food inadequacies - there are pesticide in our vegetable, micro-organism in our water, altered DNA in our poultry and polluted environment of our fishes - as farmers and businesses seek to maximise their profit dollars from our daily food supply!

That’s why modern scientific health experts chant the same mantra:

1. Eat lightly, eat widely
2. Exercise regularly
3. Get plenty of fresh air

In addition to scientific health experts, those of us who believes in alternative health will want to add:

1. Detoxify regularly
2. Meditate
3. Avoid or eat less meat

I personally believe in detoxification and practise it as much as I can. If you too believe in detoxification but do not know where to begin, whom to trust or how to go about, let me recommend this excellent body detox website by Dr Janet Starr Hull.

Dr Hull website is full of articles and research materials on scientific detoxification. Just reading from her website will put you in a good stead on how and why you should go about detoxing your body. Her website is chockablock of diet guides, detox books, vitamin and supplement information.

You can even order a personal hair analysis toxin test and a personal detoxification kit via her website. This is what she says of the detoxification kit:

The Detox Kit teaches you how to remove toxins using your body’s water, urine, fecal waste, skin and blood. The Detox Program is natural, and can be used for your lifetime as a “maintenance program” or if future health concerns develop. The Detoxification Program is safe for all ages and health conditions because it is a natural process using the simple nutrition techniques and information in Dr. Hull’s 10-Step Detoxification Program.

Dr. Hull is not just a nutritionist. She’s also a geologist and international geographer, a licensed Environmental Hazardous Waste Specialist and Toxicologist, a former fire fighter and college professor. She had a change in career after she “cured” herself from an “incurable” thyroid disease, Grave’s Disease in 1991. She was told she would die if she didn’t agree to drastic and expensive medical procedures; yet, her doctors didn’t know what caused her “fatal” thyroid disorder, or why she was suddenly deathly ill, or how to cure her disease. They only knew how to suppress her symptoms - destroy her thyroid with radiation - and keep her alive using medications for the rest of her lifetime.

She applied her environmental skills to help find the “cause” of her disease instead of having her thyroid destroyed. She discovered the cause of her illness - aspartame. She removed aspartame from her life and was healed within thirty days. She has been perfectly healthy ever since. No surgery, no medications, and NO aspartame!

The personal detoxification kit includes a DVD, a audio CD, a guidebook, pH test strips, diet and eating charts, suggested detox schedules and even a toxin guide. If you are serious about personal detoxification for better health, you should seriously consider this kit.

You can check out the detoxification kit at Dr Janet Starr Hull website.

Even if you have not reach a serious consideration about personal detox, you should still visit her website for generic health and toxin information. With today’s food and health crises coming one after another, you never know when you need a handy detox and diet guide in quick time!

Yet another food calamity! Did you read about the recent massive baby milk contamination crisis in China? A deadly chemical - melamine - was added to infant milk formula to increase profit for unscrupulous milk merchants, resulting in 4 babies’ death and thousands of affected babies to date.

Milk derived products such as biscuits, candies, ice-creams, chocolates, cakes and even coffee sachets were affected too!

Due to the gloablised nature of business nowadays, countries such as Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia were affected as well!

What is the world coming to with regards to food? Increased use of pesticides. Chemicals in fertilizers. DNA alteration to induce growth. Contaminated water and air. Will our food ever be safe?

A healthy life-style means regular exercise, stress-free living and the right food. However, even the healthiest tomato or lettuce could be contaminated without anyone’s knowledge nowadays.

Isn’t the best solution then to grow our own food nowadays? However, many of us are city dwellers and many of us lead busy professional and working lives. Where and how do we have the time and space to grow our own healthy food?

The solution may be easier than you think. Hydroponics - the science of growing plants without using soil - require little space, care and skills. Yet, you can grow your own green and healthy vegetables and herbs in your apartment crop after crop. Interested in more information about this modern modern of growing your own food? Hop over to my newest hobby and interest blog on DIY Hydroponics!

A personal home massage chair has suddenly become a vogue item to have at home.

A few years ago, some people would have purchased a massage chair at home because they may be suffering from back pain, neck pain, buttock pain, headaches, and even leg pain and stress and hence would want a chair to release some discomfort at home.

In those days, most chairs would be made from artificial leather and offer only one or two mode of massage - mostly vibration and kneading. Most of these chairs cannot fully recline and to be honest, most were not good-looking and may not blend well in a home if you are a fussy home maker.

Most chairs would have cost about US$1,500 to US$2,500, and were mostly bought by children as a gift to their elderly parents or by the elderly themselves.

Fast forward to today - and you’ll find that the trend of buying massage chair is not a one-time fancy or fad but instead, massage chair has almost become a vogue item to buy for the home.

No longer is the massage chair bought by children for their elderly parents but most likely by the children for themselves or for their new homes. The new massage chairs of today are likely to be made from real leather or suede, are good looking, can fully recline, has multiple massage functions and can even massage or vibrate in accordance to music or a movie!

Hence, some people will simply want a nice massage chair that looks good in their living room or office so that they can relax and just listen to their surround sound movie or music system! For others who are still keen on ‘real massage features’, new massage chairs today can perform all of these massage functions: -

Kneading – also known as “shiatsu”, kneading rolls outward from the spine and feels much like 2 hands alternately rubbing your back.

Percussion/Tapping – this is the light “karate chopping” on a client’s back that you’ve probably seen before on TV. Increased blood flow and muscle stiffness relief is the benefit gained. It feels wonderful.

Rolling - Basically, wheels just roll up and down the muscles on either side of your spine. Here are the benefits: 1.) gentle moving of the spinal bones, and 2.) stretching of the spine and the muscles around it.

Foot and calf massager - many of the new chairs have an attached ottoman that has a calf and foot massage feature administered by an airbag system. This feature is a real “must”, especially if you spend a good portion of your day on your feet.

Full recliner – if you want your massage to be as deep as possible, you need to get a massage chair that has a reclining feature. And the further back the recline, the greater the intensity of the massage.

Prices has not only not fallen over the years but have gone steadily up especially with a number of new features and are generally between US$1,500 to US$8,000 depending on leather quality and number of fancy mechanism. Most of these chairs are manufactured in Japan or China under a few big Japanese brands such as Sanyo and Panasonic. In other parts of Asia, local brands such as Osim, Oto, VGO, Omega has sprung up and are active sellers of the home massage chair and other home health products.

If you live far away from shopping malls or prefer to shop online, you can buy new massage chair recliners at a good price at this massage chair online site. This company offers a 90 refund policy, ships internationally, is managed by a doctor and carry most of the major and reputable brands. By far, this is one of the best on-line website for massage chairs I have seen.

I do Yoga regularly and try to practise at least twice a week at the gym. I spend another two days practising Yoga on my own at home because I find that I am spending too much time running back and forth to the gym and that Yoga is basically something you can practise alone at home.

If you are keen on doing Yoga at home as well, here’s the basic items you’ll need to start off:

1. A good non-slip Yoga mat
2. Tight gym clothes
3. A TV and a good instructor-led DVD or VHS video on Yoga so that you can practise along
4. Aromatherapy or fragrance burner to enhance the ambiance (Optional)
5. Soft music (Optional)

I normally rest for about an hour after dinner and then start my Yoga session at home. First, I’ll light up an aromatherapy candle or burner and then tone down the lights a notch or two. I find that building up the mood and ambiance contribute a lot to an enjoyable Yoga session.

Then, I’ll run the Yoga DVD video disc and follow along with the TV Yoga guru for an hour or so. I’ll next rest for half an hour or so before running a nice, warm hot shower. Then, I’ll drink down two glasses of plain water before turning in for the day.

I find that drinking two glasses of water at the start and end of the day help me flush off the toxins in my body. I also find that a round of Yoga practice followed by a hot shower let me fall asleep easily nowadays compared to a time prior to starting Yoga when I was always having a hard time falling asleep at night.

So, if you’re thinking of picking up a non-strenuous exercise or have insomnia problems at night, why not pick up my idea of doing an hour or so of Yoga at home. Home Yoga is completely a sustainable form of self-exercise for home and it does not take up a lot of space, equipments, time nor need a sporting partner.

Yoga is not as strenuous as a lot of other sports and is just the right exercise to do at home alone or with another family member. Yoga is both a therapeutic exercise for the mind - for it leaves you relaxed and serene after a session, and at the same time it is a also an exercise for the body for it tones up your muscle and loosen your ligaments.

If you need help in starting Yoga training or will feel more confident with a good instructor-led Yoga DVD video to follow along, you can pick up these video VHS tapes or DVD disc or even a Yoga exercise mat at this website!

Are you a Spa and Massage enthusiast too? Do you have your independent opinion on what makes a good spa or massage? Love to write but too lazy to start a website or blog?

Guess what? I am looking for fellow spa and massage enthusiasts to help write articles on fitness, massage therapies, holistic lifetyle, alternate treatment methods or to provide reviews on spa resorts and establishments.

You must be able to write in English. If you want to provide spa and massage reviews, you must have visited the venue yourself. You can write a favourable, neutral or even non-favourable review but they must be true and not made-up or dependent on the hearsay or opinion of a third party. Your self-taken pictures of the spa/ massage establishment and a link to their website will be highly appreciated.

We want to be a genuine and fair spa and massage review and blogging site. Hence, we will reserve the final rights to edit your submission or not to publish your article(s). Of course, if we do use your submission, we will provide full credit to your name and if you have a website or blog, we’ll provide a link too.

So, pick up that mouse and send us your best reviews and articles!

Let me tell you more about the new club that I joined a month ago. It’s a gym. It’s a spa. It’s a studio. It’s a cafe. It’s a cozy hang out corner.

Well, I don’t really know how to categorise it. First and foremost, it’s a gym club but it’s really more than that. Let me explain.

What caught my eye about this club in the first place was it’s location. It is located in a shopping mall near the sea in the southern part of Singapore. Hence, the entire club has a fabulous view of the sea - whether you are jogging, doing Yoga, getting a massage or having a drink.

Secondly, the club was being marketed and ran like a lifestyle club more than a gym club. Yes, there are state-of-the art exercise machines but at the same time, equal or more emphasis was laid on a full range of popular exercise programs, the good and healthy food at the cafe, the nimble fingers of the masseurs at the spa, the soft, fluffy cushions at the lounge, the large screen movies on Sundays and the concierge services at the counter . Overall, you feel like going to a social club that happens to have a large gym rather than going to a common gym.

I also like the fact that the exercise studio runs a gamut of programs ranging from Yoga to Pilates to Boxercise to Aerobics to Latin Jam. I particularly like it that there was also a cozy spa managed by two sweet Filipino masseurs that were ready to massage my tight muscles right after a good gym workout. No change of gears needed. No getting in and out of cars or buildings.

I normally just grab a quick drink after working out in a gym and then look for real food elsewhere - Gyms are never known to serve ‘real food’. However, in this club, I can tuck into good real food right at the cafe - wraps, sandwiches, pastas, meat dishes - prepared the delicious and healthy way, all with extra doses of vegetable. I hear that the chef was from a 5-star hotel and prepares each dish as if he was going for a round of culinary competition. Check out his killer tiramisu!

What I really like best about the club is that it has a small membership in the low hundreds rather than the thousands in a mass-market gym. The small cozy environment means that there is a ever ready smile from the staff, always clean floor in the changing room and no one to fight over your favorite exercise machine.

Life is already hectic and busy in Singapore as it is. I simply hate to go to a gym where the gym owner tend to squeeze as many members as they can into the gym - turning it into a yet another noisy, sweaty busy gym.

I think this club will be able to give me my exercise need without the hustle and bustle of a mass-market gym. Why not join me too? Check out the next article where i reveal the identity of the club!

I want to share with you my joy in finding the right club recently. As you can read from my blog, I enjoy visiting spas, practising Yoga and doing a bit of gym work. Hmmm…I also enjoy good food after a good workout too!

However, these places happen to be in different physical locations - and the time spent running from one spot to another can be tiring. Like any other Yuppie in Singapore, I started to look for a club that had all the necessary facilities under one roof to join.

However, unlike many Yuppies, I do not have a lot of money to burn! Country and social clubs were out because some of them can cost tens of thousands of dollars to join and hundreds of dollars to maintain monthly. Besides, I don’t play golf nor do I feel like subsidising these clubs with their grand auditoriums and golf courses which I am unlikely to use at anytime.

I then look at spa clubs. Many spas has very good value for money spa membership but other than jacuzzi and steam bath, they don’t have other facilities such as a gym or even an exercise studio. No value for money there.

Because I recently joined a Yoga studio, I knew that a Yoga studio was not value for money too. True, it has a gym but there were no spa and massage facilities and besides Yoga, there were only Yoga. They don’t teach any other classes such as boxercise, aerobics, pilates, kickboxing or dances. Haven’t they heard, variety is the spice of life…

I then checked out one of those mass-market gyms but I didn’t like it either. Many of these gyms were very hard-selling and many of them were packed with people at all hours. Besides, there were nothing but weight and exercise machines and it was not like I was trying to build muscles!

I then found this club. It has a well-equipped gym, a mass exercise studio, a cafe, a lounge and get this…. a spa! Not to mention that this club is brand new, had a window view to die for …. and it’s membership price was even cheaper than a mass-market gym or a downtown Yoga studio! Ha! Ha!

Now, I get to run on a treadmill, do kick boxing, sip a milkshake, surf the net, enjoy a massage, entertain friends, all in the comfort of one club. No more running around. And no more squeezing with a hundred and one other people in a mass-market club!

Interested to join me? Hmmm…perhaps I may just reveal the club’s identity in my next post… Stay tuned!

One of the oldest massage technique still in popular practice today is the Chinese Tui Na method. Some say that the art of Tui Na or Acupressure gave forth to the modern Japanese Shiatsu massage which most spa and massage goers are familiar with today.

Tui Na is a hands-on-body treatment using acupressure whose purpose is to bring the body into balance based on the Chinese Ying Yang principles. Tui Na has no side effects compared to modern drug-based and/or chemical-based massage treatment methods.

The words ‘Tui Na” literally means ‘Push Pull’ - a realistic description of what’s involved in a Acupressure massage. Tui Na is not just pushing and pulling your muscles and flesh but a holistic body treatment method of the acupoints or meridian points of your body based on Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) Meridian principles.

Tui Na is actively practised as part of traditional Chinese medicine for thousand of years for a wide repertoire of medical treatments. It has been used to treat or complement the treatment of many conditions; musculo-skeletal disorders and chronic stress-related disorders of the digestive, respiratory and reproductive systems.

Tui Na is also popular in martial arts and athletic schools where there is a greater chance of muscular or skeletal injuries. Many teachers of such training schools are skilled in Tui Na massage which they used regularly to treat injured students or participants.

Because of the holistic therapeutic power of Tui Na, a new branch of massage known as ‘Bao Jian An Mo” or Healthy Tui Na massage had came about so that even normal people like you and me can undergo a dose of Tui Na massage for it’s therapeutic effects. Many elderly people in China get a regular treatment of therapeutic Tui Na massage just so to remain healthy; very much as in an apple a day keeps the doctor away.

However, if you do suffer from modern society sick syndrome such as strained neck, back pain, carpal tunnel pain, painful heels and ankles from too much sitting down in the office or too much computer work, then, a dose of therapeutic Tui Na massage targeted for your specific pain area is just the right recommendation!

A couple of decades ago, Asia’s Spa and Massage industry used to be a small cottage industry but it has certainly grown tremendously in the last decade or so and is now widely recognised as one of exotic Asia’s key tourist attraction. In a recent gathering of Asia’s spa industry key stakeholders, recognition awards were handed out to the spa’s industry key contributors.

Many of the award winners are from traditional spa resorts in popular Asian countries such as Thailand, Bali, Philippines and Maldive but there were also significant newcomers to the spa scene such as India, Hong Kong, Malaysia and China. Do you recognise any of these winning spas? Would you not like to try them out at least once?

Or if anyone ever ask you to recommend a good spa in Asia for a break again, simply refer them to this winning list and your recommendation certainly won’t go wrong!

At an initial glance to a beginner, pilates and yoga seem to have a lot in common. They are both mind/body conditioning routines that rely on smooth, precise movements and measured breathing. In fact, the similarities between pilates and yoga work are not entirely coincidental. Joseph H. Pilates, the founder of the Pilates Method, studied yoga and martial arts extensively and sought to integrate the mind/body aspects of these practices into his new body conditioning exercises and routines. Hence, it is not surprising to find the influence of Yoga in Pilates. Now, if pilates and yoga have so much in common, what are the major differences between these two very similar mind/body conditioning routines?

Perhaps the most obvious difference between pilates and yoga is that yoga is an ancient mind/body practice that originated in India over 5,000 years ago while pilates is a relatively new phenomenon. Pilates was developed and popularized by Joseph H. Pilates and his wife Clara in the early to mid-twentieth century. Pilates created his famous method while working as a nurse during the First World War in Great Britain. He developed his series of exercises and routines to help rehabilitate injured and immobile soldiers. Pilates was inspired by the ancient asana (movements and postures) of yoga, and tried to incorporate this aspect of yoga into his own routine.

Another main difference between pilates and yoga is the underlying philosophy of each. Although they are both described as mind/body exercise routine formats, pilates is generally considered to be more of an exercise than lifestyle choice. Yoga is not meant to operate merely as a simple exercise and body conditioning routine but instead as an entire lifestyle philosophy. Pilates was first adopted as a physical conditioning routine by professional dancers and gymnasts. Like yoga, pilates also seeks to unite the mind, body, and spirit but does not delve into the meditation and relaxation aspects like yoga does.

Another main difference between yoga and pilates has to do with the strength training aspect of pilates. Pilates focuses strongly on building the core strength of the body. The core of the body refers to the deep abdominal muscles, also referred to as the torso area. Pilates has long been known as a powerful tool for building core strength and for lengthening the spine. Some of the specific goals of pilates are to improve postural symmetry, increase circulation, improve posture, and create long and lean muscles. Yoga, on the other hand, is not promoted as a strength training or body conditioning practice. Both yoga and pilates do indeed help participants deal with stress and cultivate relaxation, although only pilates is geared specifically toward building all-over body muscle and tone.

Pilates also has a strong rehabilitation component that yoga practice does not. Another functional difference between pilates and yoga is the way in which breathing is treated. Both practices place an important focus on breathing. However, breathing is more fundamental in yoga practice than in pilates. In yoga, breathing is taught as an important and integral part of practice and yoga generally instructs that participants breath primarily through the nose. In pilates practice, participants are generally taught to breath through nose and exhale through the mouth.

Article courtesy of: http://www.beauty-fitness-secrets.com

Pick up Pilates at the comfort of your home: The Pilates Power System