Check up your health at home in between doctor visits

The Reader’s Digest has put together a very straightforward list of 16 tips to be aware of how well your health is – all by yourself. The list is filled with many common-sense ways of knowing if something is wrong with you, but some are good to know if you haven’t heard of them, like taking the fall test:

Time yourself standing on one leg. Do it in shoes or barefoot, but don't hold on to anything. Try it on both legs (one at a time) three times. […] If your best leg time is less than 12 seconds, or you wobble back and forth, you have poor balance and should talk to your doctor or physical therapist about exercises to improve it.

I think the vast majority of you would like to keep yourselves healthy on your road to a new life, so it will always be a best practice to check your body behaviour regularly instead of waiting for an illness to manifest in a not-so-good way.

16 Ways to Monitor Your Health Between Checkups

Photo by ZackWilson

Get a fitness look with the MANS diet

Bodybuilding blogger Mark McManus has lots of fans thanks to what he likes to call his MANS diet. According to him, this free program is the reason why he looks like he does (combining it with a strength exercise routine, of course). McManus claims this natural nutritional strategy will give you results that mimic at a certain degree what you could get using the controversial anabolic steroids that have gotten into trouble so many athletes in the modern sports world. Words from the author:

So how can this nutritional strategy produce massive muscle gains? There is a way to increase anabolic (muscle building) hormones in the body in the same way that steroids do. The only difference is, it’s safe and natural.

After reading the program, I can’t help to make comparisons with the well known low-carb diet. I was on that one some years ago and can say it worked, but it’s very difficult to stick to it in a world full of flour and sugar. This variant is heavy on some fats, also, but if you are sure you can live without your daily piece of bread and like to pump up some weights a couple of nights per week, then you can find this helpful to build some extra muscle.

The MANS diet at MuscleHack.com