Is Milk Really Healthy for You?

Is Milk Really Healthy for You? Learn the Facts

"Milk is a deadly poison," according to the Dairy Education Board. In fact, you'll find dozens of articles about the purported evils of this popular beverage. One claim, for example, is that milk from cows contains cancer-causing hormones and dairy industry dollars have kept that fact bottled up. All of which may leave you second-guessing your next sip.

However, I've found that most men thrive on milk, whether their goal is to lose fat or build muscle. So to be sure it's safe, I've investigated all the anti-milk claims, sifting through the research while also turning a critical eye to pro-milk propaganda. After all, The result: all your milk questions, answered

Is Milk a Fat-Burning Food?

Maybe. In a 6-month study, University of Tennessee researchers found that overweight people who downed three servings a day of calcium-rich dairy lost more belly fat than those who followed a similar diet minus two or more of the dairy servings.

In addition, the researchers discovered that calcium supplements didn't work as well as milk. Why? They believe that while calcium may increase the rate at which your body burns fat, other active compounds in dairy products (such as milk proteins) provide an additional fat-burning effect.

Of course, the key to success is following a weight-loss diet to begin with. After all, downing your dairy with a box of doughnuts is no way to torch your gut.

Does It Build Muscle?

Absolutely. In fact, milk is one of the best muscle foods on the planet. You see, the protein in milk is about 20 percent whey and 80 percent casein. Both are high-quality proteins, but whey is known as a "fast protein" because it's quickly broken down into amino acids and absorbed into the bloodstream. That makes it a very good protein to consume after your workout.

Casein, on the other hand, is digested more slowly. So it's ideal for providing your body with a steady supply of smaller amounts of protein for a longer period of time—like between meals or while you sleep. Since milk provides both, one big glass gives your body an ideal combination of muscle-building proteins

Skim or Whole?

It depends on your taste. While you've probably always been told to drink reduced-fat milk, the majority of scientific studies show that drinking whole milk actually improves cholesterol levels, just not as much as drinking skim does.

One recent exception: Danish researchers found that men who consumed a diet rich in whole milk experienced a slight increase in LDL cholesterol (six points). However, it's worth noting that these men drank six 8-ounce glasses a day, an unusually high amount. Even so, their triglycerides--another marker of heart-disease risk—decreased by 22 percent.

The bottom line: Drinking two to three glasses of milk a day, whether it's skim, 2 percent, or whole, lowers the likelihood of both heart attack and stroke—a finding confirmed by British scientists.

If you're dieting, the lower-fat option is an easy way to save a few calories. When it comes to building muscle, though, whole milk may be your best choice: Scientists at the University of Texas medical branch in Galveston found that drinking whole milk after lifting weights boosted muscle protein synthesis—an indicator of muscle growth—2.8 times more than drinking skim did.

 

By: Aruzu Khan

Health Benefits of Masturbation

A new survey from adult product peddler AdamandEve.com reveals that 27 percent of Americans admit to masturbating once or twice a week.
That number seems suspiciously low to us, especially since
science has shown that being master of your domain can provide additional feel-great benefits. (Also because the people surveyed were browsing an adult toy website.) “Masturbation is part of a healthy sex life,” says Gloria Brame, Ph.D., a clinical sexologist. “It’s totally safe and harmless. It’s healthier than brushing your teeth every day.”
And just as brushing your teeth should be a regular occurrence, so too should be cleaning your pipes. Here are 5 reasons to take matters into your own hands right now. (You’re welcome.)

It prevents cancer.
A 2003 Australian study found that men who ejaculated more than five times a week were a third less likely to develop prostate cancer. Disease-causing toxins build up in your urogenital tract and when you rub one out, you flush the bad guys out of your system, says Brame.

It makes you harder.
As you age, you naturally lose muscle tone … even down there. Regular sex or masturbation works out your pelvic floor muscles to prevent erectile dysfunction and incontinence. “It keeps the angle of your dangle perky,” says Brame. Aim to (ahem) arrive 3 to 5 times a week for rock-solid results.

It helps you last longer.
Taking yourself to palm prom may help you stretch your sack sessions. “[Masturbating] an hour before a date will give you more control,” says Brame. Train yourself by timing how long it takes you to orgasm, suggests Ava Cadell, Ph.D., founder of loveologyuniversity.com. If it usually takes two minutes solo, try for three next time. Or count how many strokes you need to get to your happy place. If you’re spurting after 50, shoot for 60. “Most men can double the number of strokes and the time within one month,” Cadell says. Practice makes perfect, right?

It ups your immunity.
Ejaculation increases levels of the hormone cortisol, says Jennifer Landa, M.D., a specialist in hormone therapy. Cortisol, which usually gets a bad rap as a havoc-wrecking stress hormone, actually helps regulate and maintain your immunity in the small doses. “Masturbation can product the right environment for a strengthened immune system,” she says.

It boosts your mood.
Masturbating releases a slew of feel-good neurochemicals like dopamine and oxytocin that lift your spirits, boost your satisfaction, and activate the reward circuits in your brain. “An orgasm is the biggest non-drug blast of dopamine available,” says Brame. “A brain scan of someone having an orgasm looks like a heroin addict

By: Aruzu Khan (Kariaz)

Advice to Gay men Testing Positive for HIV!

Dear All,

Guys this article is Extract of GayBombay listserve. This is a piece of fantastic advice that was posted by Vikram Doctor and therefore I am resending it for everybody's benefit:
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Now That You've Tested Positive...

Now that you have tested (and been confirmed) positive you will need to find at least three kinds of support:

1) A counsellor with some understanding of gay/bi issues and HIV who can help you with the consequences of this for you and your family. Whether you are out or not, or have a supportive environment or not, will all affect your interaction with HIV, and it is best to be prepared for both practical and emotional issues, and a counselor can help with these.

2) A really up to date and knowledgeable HIV/AIDS specialist. This is harder to find than one might imagine despite the large organisational structure for HIV/AIDS. Most private doctors, quite frankly, know nothing about it and the ones with most experiences are in public hospitals. But these are not the easiest of places to visit and in any case their focus is, rightly, on mass treatment, and not quite geared towards someone who is middle class and able to bear some of the expenses of the treatment. In other words, the government/NGO system focuses, as it must, on large scale, free treatment and cannot be adjusted that much to each individual patient. But ideally with a disease like HIV, where each person's prognosis can be very different, this individualised treatment is needed and if you are in a position to get it, you must.

3) A physician who will treat your regular illnesses with some knowledge of your HIV status. While the physician should treat your illnesses for what they are, it is possible that it might be best if it is known that HIV is a background factor, so you need a doctor with some knowledge of this. This may not be that critical at the moment, since you are most likely quite healthy now and will be for a while, and this will not be an issue. At some point in time though it might, but hopefully by then you will be better networked with the HIV support scene. Getting in touch with a HIV support group is also a good option to consider at a later point.


OK, but for now, you need to relax. What's happened isn't wonderful, but its not the end of the world. The problem with HIV is that it comes with all the stigma and fear and in your case this will be multiplied by concerns about your family. But you need to remind yourself that:

a) It is just a disease, it is not a moral judgment on you.

b) It is not fiercely contagious. The saving thing about HIV is, in fact, that it is a virus that is quite hard to get. You need direct contact of certain kinds of bodily fluid - blood, semen, precum (it is there in saliva but at such low levels you don't need to get worked up about it). The virus also dies quite fast outside the body. So you are not risking infecting people by just being around them. (I need hardly say that you have to be careful about sexual partners and if you have had unprotected sex with anyone recently then you might need to consider telling those partners).

c) You can have a quite normal lifespan. One way to look at it is that you have acquired a medical condition like diabetes. This can be serious and cause all kinds of complications if it is not treated, but it is quite possible to treat it and build that treatment into your life.

At some point you will probably need to start taking the drugs and yes, in the past the side effects were not great. But newer treatment regimens have reduced this to a large extent and if you find a good specialist you should be able to increase the chance that you will get a fairly problem free treatment regimen.

As to when you will have to start treatment that is harder to say and it is why a specialist is needed. Please don't listen when doctors says, as they often do, that you only need to start starting treatment when your CD4s cells drop below 200. This is the norm set by the government in connection to administration of free medicines, and it is no surprise that they have chosen a level that makes optimum sense for them (in terms of total cost) as well as the patient.

But you don't have to be bound by this and can decide what will be the optimum point for you. The tendency in the West now is to start treatment much earlier - specialists may recommend starting when CD4s fall below 350, or if they show a rapid decline. Please don't believe one myth that floats around which is that after starting treatment you only have that many years to live. Such claims are based on mass studies, with people who often don't have access to healthy food and living conditions, and this should not apply to you. I hope I don't need to say that you need to focus very strongly on maintaining your health in general. (Alternate healing practices like yoga can't cure HIV, but they can help here, in improving your general health and reducing stress).

What you will have to start doing now and this unfortunately does involve real costs, far more than that of the drugs themselves, is to start monitoring yourself more often. This involves going to a good path lab - I think its best to stick to the large national chains like Metropolis if that's there where you are - and doing a HIV package which will show two things: 1) virus levels and 2) CD4 levels (and other white blood cells). These will vary inversely, but its not easy analysing them - virus levels in particular can vary alarmingly without it meaning much. This is where the specialist is vital.

The cost of the testing package is around Rs4500 and this is an expense you HAVE to find money for, at least in this initial phase as your body gets used to the presence of the virus in it. I would suggest you do tests every 2-3 months for the first year and then, as you get a sense of how the virus is settling down in your body you can do them less, but once every six months is a minimum. The cost of these tests is the real financial blow with HIV and while there has been some work being done on bringing them down or providing free tests at government hospitals, this is all still a problem.

All this is a lot for you to process so please take your time to go through them. Please consider seeing a counsellor to help you deal with personal issues, as well as a good doctor. You will be surprised, once these are in places and you are taking good care of your health and being aware of, but not obsessing, about your condition, how routine it can come to seem. Never entirely routine, of course, but manageable and certainly no reason not lead a normal life.
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