Cellulaze Zaps Cellulite for Good
Cellulite treatments are a dime a dozen: creams, lotions, massage, diet, weight loss, exfoliation, coffee grinds… the list goes on. But for all the cellulite cures on the market, many women plagued by the nuisance of the dimpled, puckering skin on their legs and bottoms find that none of these treatments totally gets rid of cellulite.
Learn more about the only single-treatment solution to getting rid of cellulite. Forever.
Green Tea: Miracle Infusion?
First cultivated in China as long as 5000 years ago, today tea is one of the most widely consumed beverages in the world, second only to water. Enjoyed by hundreds of millions of people around the world, there has been a great deal of research surrounding the effects of drinking this steaming hot infusion, and studies suggest that drinking green tea offers many health benefits.
The three main varieties of tea (Camellia sinesis) are black tea, oolong tea and green tea, and the differences lie in the processing of the leaves. Green tea is made from unfermented tea leaves, and contains the highest concentration of powerful antioxidants called polyphenols. Antioxidants are agents that combat free-radicals, damaging compounds in the body that alter cells, damage DNA, and cause cell death. Many scientists believe free radicals play a major role in aging and the development of many serious health problems, including cancer and heart disease.
Check out the diseases and health problems that drinking green tea can help fight.
Detox Your Body and Revive Your Skin with Dry Skin Brushing
Looking for a way to smooth cellulite, get radiant skin, and detoxify your body without dropping a few C-notes at your favorite spa? If your budget won’t allow the extravagance of regular visit for body scrubs at the spa, and you can’t quite stomach another detox diet, consider adding dry skin brushing to your daily routine.
Dry skin brushing is an ultra inexpensive and effective way to pamper, detoxify and invigorate your body, from the outside in.
The Skin’s Role in Detoxing the Body
More than just a beauty treatment, dry brushing may be the single most important (and least expensive) ritual you add to your daily personal care regimen.
Learn how to dry brush your skin for a healthier body and more beautiful skin.
Is Pretty Skin Giving You a Sore Throat?
Got a sore throat that just won’t quit? Your acne meds could be the culprit.
A recent study from the Perleman School of Medicine at that University of Pennsylvania reports that oral antibiotics commonly used to treat acne are linked to symptoms of sore throat; patients using these acne medications were three times more likely to suffer a sore throat than if they didn’t use antibiotic acne drugs.
Kick the Can(ned Foods)
If you think you’re safe from the effects of BPA (Bisphenol A) because you tossed your old Nalgene bottle and traded it in for a newer, toxin-free model, think again.
BPA Gets the Boot…. Kind Of
It’s been a few years since BPA was flagged as a potentially toxic, hormone-disrupting chemical, prompting many retailers to withdraw products containing polycarbonate plastics containing BPA. In a sweeping response to consumer concern of BPA’s potential endocrine-disrupting effects on infants and young children — including adverse negative developmental and neurological effects — and its association with obesity and diabetes in adults, manufacturers pulled plastic baby bottles containing BPA, and its use in baby bottles was officially banned in the European Union and Canada.
In 2010, a report from the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) amplified these concerns regarding exposure of fetuses, infants and young children, and in that same year, Canada became the first country to outright declare BPA a toxic substance.
But that doesn’t mean you won’t find it in a grocery store near you. Or in the linings of the canned goods in your kitchen. Or in your body.
Learn how to protect your family from the potential harmful health effects of BPA.
Some Like It Hot: Moksha Yoga
In years gone by I was what you would call a yoga enthusiast… maybe even a yogini, attending ashtanga, power, hot yoga, and vinyasa flow yoga classes on a pretty regular basis. The result? I felt strong, supple, and relatively balanced.
And then life got busy — we had a baby, and then twins 18 months later (yadda, yadda, yadda), and my visits to my little haven on the mat grew more and more infrequent, until they ceased altogether.
Today, for the first time in over two years, I slipped into my yoga pants and top, grabbed my rolled-up mat (which has been expectantly slung on a hook next to the front door, buried under coats, bags, and children’s snowsuits all this time), and went to a yoga class at the local Moksha Yoga studio.
Get the scoop on Moksha Hot Yoga next.
6 Steps to Softer Lips
Dry, cracked or sore lips are more than just a beauty blunder. In addition to detracting from an otherwise healthy complexion, chapped lips can also interfere with talking, smiling, eating and kissing comfortably.
Lip skin is unlike skin anywhere else on the body: it’s is exceptionally thin (revealing the capillaries below creating a rosy hue) and has no oil glands (skin’s natural barrier), making the lips especially delicate and prone to dryness and chapping.
Although anyone can find themselves with dry lips from time to time, there are specific things you can do to avoid the irritating condition.
Soften your lips for a more kissable pout with six easy steps!
False Negative Pregnancy Tests
If you suspect you might be pregnant, you should learn about the possibility of getting a false negative pregnancy test result; that is, when a pregnancy test comes back negative when you are actually pregnant.
Find out what causes false negative pregnancy tests and how common they are.
How Do Pregnancy Tests Work?
Home pregnancy tests indicate pregnancy through the detection of a hormone called Human Chorionic Gonadotrophic (hCG) in a woman’s urine. hCG is secreted by the embryo to control the mother’s reproductive system, maintaining secretion of progesterone and estrogen by the ovaries and promoting the changes in the mother’s body required to sustain pregnancy; this includes acting as a hormonal override to prevent menstruation and spontaneous abortion of the embryo during the first trimester.
When to Take a Pregnancy Test?
Within a few weeks of conception, hCG levels in the maternal blood are so high that some is excreted in the urine, where it can be detected in pregnancy tests. When you pee on the pregnancy test stick (or dip the indicator into a cup of your urine) the test will indicate pregnancy only if there are sufficient levels of hCG present in the urine to cause the “positive” reaction.
Knowing when to take a pregnancy test is key to avoiding false negative pregnancy test results. Both doctors and makers of home pregnancy tests recommend that you wait until a missed period (or 19 days following unprotected sex) before taking a pregnancy test. However, if you can’t wait that long and have an idea of when you may have conceived, the earliest you can take a pregnancy test and get an accurate result is 14 days from possible conception.
Keep in mind that the sooner you take a test — especially if you’re testing before a missed period — the more likely you are to get a false negative pregnancy test result. With each day past conception, the hCG levels in the blood of a pregnant woman increase, making it more likely that a pregnancy test will be able to accurately detect pregnancy.
How Accurate Are Home Pregnancy Tests?
Nowadays, the urine-based pregnancy test you’d take at your doctor’s office is pretty much the same as the various brands of home pregnancy tests available online or at your local drugstore; both work the same way and have the same level of accuracy when used correctly.
While accuracy varies slightly from brand to brand, on average home pregnancy tests are 97-99% accurate, depending on when you take the test and provided the instructions are followed properly. Many kits now come with two tests in the event that you’ve made a mistake taking the test. When testing for both of my pregnancies, I always used Clearblue Easy Digital Pregnancy Tests ($16) which come with three tests in one box.
Possible Reasons for a Negative Pregnancy Test
There are a few scenarios that can cause a pregnancy test to deliver a negative result:
You Aren’t Pregnant
The first (and most obvious) reason is that you are not actually pregnant. Non-pregnant women do not produce hCG, so if you are not pregnant there would be absolutely no hCG present in your urine for a pregnancy test to detect unless you recently gave birth, miscarried, or had an abortion; hCG can take up to three weeks to disappear from the bodies of women who’ve recently had a baby, and up to nine weeks to be removed from the body following a miscarriage or termination.
You May Get a False Negative Pregnancy Test Result if You’ve Taken the Test Too Early
Most false negative pregnancy tests occur when a test is taken too early. As mentioned, if you are pregnant but have taken a pregnancy test before the levels of hCG in your blood and urine are past the threshold required for a pregnancy test to detect it, you will get a negative pregnancy test, and in this case, it will be a false negative pregnancy test. Try taking the test again in three days.
I actually had a false negative when I took a pregnancy test way too early when I was expecting my twin girls! When I took the test a couple of days later, the test was then able to detect the hCG being produced by my two little embryos and gave a positive result!
False Negative Pregnancy Test Due to Diluted Urine
It’s also a good idea to take the pregnancy test first thing in the morning or wait several hours after urinating, when your urine is least likely to be diluted. If you’ve been drinking a lot of water or urinating a lot during the day, your urnine and therefore hCG levels might be too dilute for a home pregnancy test to detect.
False Negative Pregnancy Test Due to Irregular Technique & Missed Reaction Time
Home pregnancy tests give very specific instructions on how to take the test and when to interpret the results for optimal accuracy. It is possible when taking home pregnancy tests to get a false negative result if you have not followed the correct technique; either you did not tip the stick well enough in your urine or did not hold it well in your urine stream.
It is also critical that you read the results during the window of time specified on the box. If you wait too long to read the pregnancy test result, the test will become invalid and may show a false result.
A negative pregnancy test can mean that you are not pregnant, you took the test too early, the levels of hCG in your urine have been diluted, or you took the test incorrectly. If you have taken several different types of pregnancy tests and received different results, it is recommended that you have a (more accurate) blood pregnancy test done to get a definitive answer to the question, “Am I pregnant?” These are available at your doctor or you can get Blood Pregnancy Tests at JustGetTested.com
Here are some of the other common early signs of pregnancy as well as conditions (other than pregnancy) which might be responsible for the pregnancy-like symptom you’re experiencing.
