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Saving calories can often be accomplished with a little creativity. For example, swapping the cream and sugar (roughly an ounce or 2 tablespoons) with a teaspoon of cinnamon could save up to 70 calories per cup-o-Joe. Looks like this special spice may change the standard coffee routine. One study found just half a teaspoon of cinnamon per day can significantly reduce blood sugar levels, triglycerides, LDL cholesterol, and total cholesterol levels in people with type 2 diabetes. But for those who don't have to worry so seriously about insulin levels, cinnamon has also been shown to have many other benefits: Cinnamon...

From heart health to brain development find out why you should up your salmon intake this summer. Wild salmon is loaded with protein and the two blockbuster omega 3s — DHA and EPA — that helps with brain, nerve and eye development. As the body can’t make omega-3 fatty acids, the best way to obtain them is through the food we eat. Certain types of salmon are sustainable. The non-profit organization Sea Choice states that a sustainable source is, “A species whose biology is capable of withstanding fishing pressure, where the status of the stock is well understood, and where the fishing methods do not...

Life has its ups and its downs, and no one is immune from the mental effects of challenging times. Fortunately, whether you’re feeling down, anxious, or just wish to maintain a steady mood, natural approaches do exist. Getting adequate sleep and a balanced diet are fundamental, and exercise also offers dramatic results. Meditation, another stress-relieving and mind-balancing tool, can hone focus and may even slow age-related thinning of the frontal cortex. Additionally, some plants and herbs, like Rhodiola Rosea, offer bio-active chemicals that support the nutritional charge for mental vitality. 1 - Encourages a Balance Mood To put it simply, the available data suggests that...

Very few of us need a compelling reason to make ourselves eat chocolate. The taste and the momentary mood lift are enough to make it a treat that doesn’t need a hard sell. But if you aren’t eating it consistently, you could be missing out on some of the most amazing health benefits of dark chocolate you never knew about, writes Will Clower, PhD, author of the book Eat Chocolate, Lose Weight. “Given the fact that healthy cultures eat chocolate all the time and research has yet to show anything but confirmatory evidence about the health effects of high-cocoa chocolate,”...

Stressful events and they don't even have to be big, just the daily hassles of life cause our cortisol levels to rise. Cortisol causes food cravings, and in women those cravings tend to be strongest for carbs, especially sweet foods, according to researchers at the University of California at San Francisco Medical Center. The more of them we eat, the worse our mood gets. As if that weren't bad enough, the cortisol then makes more trouble for us, triggering an enzyme in our fat cells (it converts cortisone to more cortisol). Since our visceral fat cells (the ones in our...