Organic Fun! How to Start an Organic Garden...

An organic, gourmet garden in your back yard? Indeed!

From The Huffington Post is this great article on how to sucessfully start an organic garden. Highly beneficial to your health and to the environment, it's easier than most people think!

Here's more:

"...If grown properly, your organic garden will produce higher quality, healthier foods '" and will be good for the environment and wildlife.

Many people have high hopes for starting their own organic garden and reaping a small harvest from it. The problem is that many don't really know what an organic garden is. Organic gardening is more than popping some seeds in the ground and letting them grow "naturally." If grown properly, your organic garden will produce higher quality, healthier foods—and will be good for the environment and wildlife. But it will take planning and work. Here's what you need to know to get a green organic thumb.

Know the facts.

The definition of organic gardening varies among gardeners, but most agree that it means growing fruits, vegetables and flowers without using any chemical fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides, and using practices that are ecologically harmonious, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. You'll still have to get rid of weeds, fertilize your plants and stop bugs from eating them. You will still have to go out and supervise it every day, and dig just like you would with any garden.

Start with a small plot.

Begin your garden in a window box or in a few containers until you're more confident. If you want a larger site, a 4-by-4-foot garden is enough room. Don't plant too much. Plan your yield in terms of meals per person instead of some vague amount of produce."

Read the rest of these great tips here on The Huffington Post.

Dark Chocolate's Five Fabulous Benefits!

Dark Chocolate features many benefits that contribute to your well- being...

From DoctorSolve.com is the wonderful run-down containing five wonderful benefits that dark chocolate has to offer! Here's an excerpt:

"...You've probably already heard of chocolate improving the mood, but there are more health benefits to chocolate that you may be unaware of. Before you go raiding the candy jar, keep in mind that these health benefits pertain to DARK CHOCOLATE only. That is anything with a cocoa content over 65%. Milk chocolate is probably what you are used to, but if you are interested in eating healthy it might be a good idea to give dark chocolate a try.

1. Good for the Heart - Due to the presence of antioxidants in dark chocolate, studies have found that in individuals with high blood pressure, a stick of dark chocolate a day can lower blood pressure levels. In addition, dark chocolate has been known to lower cholesterol levels by up to 10%.

2. Improves Mood - Dark chocolate stimulates endorphin production which in turn provides the brain with feelings of pleasure. A substance called theobromine which provides you with caffeine-like stimulation is also present in dark chocolate. Dark chocolate contains serotonin which is known to act as an anti-depressant."

Read the rest of the list here! Delicious.

Dark Chocolate Each Day May Improve Metabolic Stress Response

Dark Chocolate is more beneficial than ever!

Here's a very interesting study found on Medical News Today - more intriguing news about how dark chocolate can help battle stress! Here's an excerpt from the study on Medical News Today:

"...A new study by Nestlé researchers suggests that eating a few pieces of dark chocolate every day may improve the metabolic response of people who report feeling highly stressed.

The study, which was published in the Journal of Proteome Research, was the work of lead investigator Sunil Kochhar, a researcher at the Nestlé Research Center in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Anxiety and stress can cause various changes in physical and emotional states in humans, and in the longer term can also lead to serious health consequences.
Other studies have already shown that diet affects human metabolism through its influence on gut bacteria, and this too can have long term health consequences.
For this study, Kochhar and colleagues investigated the metabolic response in a group of 30 healthy adult volunteers who were asked to consume two portions of 20g of dark chocolate every day for up to 14 days.

The volunteers had already filled in validated psychological questionnaires from which the researchers were able to classify them into low and high anxiety traits.
To assess metabolic response, the researchers analyzed urine and blood plasma given by each volunteer during three test days at the beginning, the middle and the end of the 14 day period.
The main measures of metabolic response they looked at were stress-related metabolic changes such as energy metabolism and gut microbial activity. "

Read the rest about this study here.

Dark Chocolate Helps to Lower Stress!

Organic, delicous dark chocolate soothes stress...

From Sarah Altshul on Health.com is this relieving article about how adding dark chocolate to your diet may help to relieve stress. Here's more:

"...The team of researchers was led by Sunil Kochhar, PhD, who heads the BioAnalytical Science Department at the Nestlé Research Center in Switzerland. He and his colleagues designed the study to see whether eating dark chocolate every day for two weeks could affect the way the body metabolizes stress hormones.

They recruited 30 healthy young people—11 men and 19 women. They tested their anxiety levels and determined that 13 of them tested as “high anxiety” and 17 tested as “low anxiety” on standardized anxiety tests. They gave the volunteers 40 grams of dark chocolate (about an ounce and a half), containing 74% cocoa, every day for two weeks and tested their blood and urine at the beginning and end of the trial.

Photo from ChistineAvanti.com

In the high anxiety group, eating chocolate reduced levels of their stress hormones, and the changes were “biologically significant,” Dr. Kochhar tells me. What’s more, people felt less anxious after munching on chocolate. The findings did not apply to the low anxiety group. “We observed improvement in the anxiety states of subjects immediately after their consumption of chocolate,” he says."

Read the rest of this article here.