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On your next trip to the grocery or drugstore, you might notice that the majority of soaps on the shelves are labeled as anti-bacterial. We have been bombarded with propaganda about these soaps and most of us believe they are better for us. But, truly, we need to ask what bacteria an antibacterial soap kills - because it isnt what you think. In fact, an antibacterial handwash is a bad idea.

Surprisingly, scientific research these soaps actually boost our risk of allergies, and other illnesses. Anti-bacterial soap not only kills off harmless bacteria but it actually allows left over bacteria to grow stronger.

Most bacteria are harmless and we don't need to protect yourself from them because our body's immune system has the power to fight & destroy most harmful bacteria. The end result of these anti bacterial soaps is that were killing off the harmless bacteria - while leaving the unfriendly invaders the space to thrive.

A double-blind study by researchers at the Annals of Internal Medicine found that those who use anti-bacterial soap enjoyed no preventive benefit over those who used regular soap. Furthermore, the conservative American Medical Association rejected the idea that these soaps are good for you.

Here's what Myron Genel, chairman of the AMA's Council on Scientific Affairs said: "There's no evidence that they do any good and there's reason to suspect that they could contribute to a problem by helping to create antibiotic-resistant bacteria."

In fact, using anti-bacterial soap regularly can cause the following health problems:

* Runny nose
* Cough
* Sore throat
* Fever
* Vomiting
* Diarrhea
* Boils
* Conjunctivitis

So remember: your skin is the largest organ in your body. It will absorb whatever you put on it - including the chemicals and antibiotics you get from anti-bacterial soaps.

Instead of wasting money and time on anti-bacterial soaps, try using soaps with natural ingredients, instead of chemicals and dyes. You'll find the best ones at health food stores, but they're available everywhere.

The benefits of natural honey are well documented but one of the most ... suspicious ... is that it can heal sores. I was getting a tiny sore at one corner of my mouth and decided to put raw honey on the sore to see what happened. I am happy to report that the sore was entirely gone in less than 24 hours! Ive had equal success with salt but I have to say that the honey tastes better.

I've read about folks putting honey on open sores that wouldn't heal so I'm glad to know that there's something to this folk cure. Those old wives really did know something! :-)

I read some comments about the Hot Sauce Diet recently and at first I thought itwas a joke. Well, no, it isn't - at least, not intentionally. The notion is that eating a lot of hot sauce & peppers, which are loaded with capsaicinoids, will somehow reduce body weight. There's even a book about this plan, written by a doctor named Spiro Antoniades.

Apparently, the idea is to put hot sauce on just about everything so that you won't eat as much. The part that bothered me is all the advice about what to do with a burning mouth, which isn't a pleasant notion to me.

I consider myself to be open minded and I know perfectly well that there are all kinds of ideas that aren't endorsed by the medical establishment yet are perfectly valid. However, I think Im going to give the Hot Sauce Diet a pass. However, if anyone out there has a different perspective, I'd be delighted to hear it???

And by the way ... since warm weather is passing away, I'm getting more interested in cold food, naturally. Go figure. Some of us are just contrary!

Back to my strawberry sorbet recipe: I use frozen, organic strawberries for my sorbet recipe. I simply dump a handful in my Vitamix, along with some maple syrup, cinnamon and a dab of chocolate. Wow, what an awesome strawberry sorbet! And you can vary these ingredients endlessly. I can't tell you how much of anything to use - just kind of eyeball it.

Of course, you can use other berries. Actually, cherries are my favorite berry so that's tonight. And I adore raspberries, although I usually get a couple of seeds stuck in my teeth, which isn't so cool.

And can you guess the Magic Ingredient that makes this one my favorite? Chocolate, of course!

One thing, though ... I'm not sure that an ordinary blender would have mushed all this together. My Vitamix* has enough power but I'm not sure about a smaller motor?

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My favorite breakfast is a tortilla recipe (or tortilla recipes since it can be made in so many different ways) that evolved into a tortilla wrap. Its a collection of yummy - and healthy - goodies wrapped in a tortilla. My favorite tortilla is from Ezekiel. The ingredients are:

* Organic sprouted wheat
* Filtered water
* Organic sesame seeds
* Organic sprouted soybeans
* Organic sprouted barley
* Organic sprouted millet
* Organic sprouted lentils
* Organic sprouted spelt
* Sea salt

Sounds healthy, doesnt it? Loaded with vitamins and fiber. Yes, its all of that, but equally important, its delicious! If it weren't, I wouldnt be eating it. :-)

So, what goes into my tortilla wrap? Well, it varies, but some ingredients are pretty much constant:

* Chipotle mustard
* Chipotle cheese - my one slice of the day
* Lettuce

The variants are:

* Avocado or guacamole, whenever theyre available
* Some kind of salad - like lentil or quinoa
* Beans
* Tomatoes
* Whatever else I can think up

These tortilla recipes - or tortilla wraps, depending on how you put them together - are quick, easy to put together, supremely healthy and mucho delicious! What can be better than that?

Deepak Chopra is one of my greatest teachers and he has a terrific sentence in his book Grow Younger, Live Longer. Here it is:"... it is possible to have increased vitality, creativity and mental and physical capacity as the years unroll."

What an awesomely powerful statement! In one sentence, he contradicts thousands of years of human attitudes. Attitudes that claim we must decline as we age, we must grow weak, we must become dependent, we must either die fairly young or be doomed to a miserable and horrible aging and death.

Think I'm exaggerating? If you look carefully, you will find that much of this fatalism is indeed in YOUR thinking, just as it is in mine. We live in a youth-obsessed culture and we see people willing to have part of their intestines cut out just to become thin. We see women like Joan Rivers who have ... strange ... looking faces due to the vast amount of plastic surgery. We see fear and dread of getting old.

Yet, it doesnt have to be this way. There have been many cultures who honor age and respect its wisdom. And if the religious beliefs we say we believe in are what we truly think, then death should be a celebration. Yet, obviously it isnt.

So here is Deepak promising that as we age we can have:

* More vitality and energy, rather than less

* More creativity and mental capacity, meaning our minds can become richer and more fertile and our accomplishments can blossom, rather than wither

* We can become stronger, more fit and exceedingly healthy.

What a gift Chopra has given us! Permission and validation to claim an increasingly wonderful life.

Is this inevitable, though? Certainly not. So my purpose is to figure out how to claim such a glorious and wonderful promise. Is that of interest to you? If it is, we have an interesting journey ahead of us. No rocking chairs for us! And by the way, Deepak Chopra books will help you keep this powerful attitude.

Aloe vera skin care is a decades-old tradition in my family. I remember burning my hand as a kid and as I was yowling, my grandmother ran out in the back yard and broke off a piece of aloe vera plant. The results rather spectacular, compared to any other pain relief on the market. Since that time, I've always been a huge fan of aloe as a beauty cream.

Humans have been using aloe for centuries although much of the skin care products on the market use a synthetic version which absolutely does NOT have the same effect as a plant in the yard like my grandmother used.

Verdict: you are much better off making your own all-natural aloe vera products as I do. Learn more about aloe vera skin care here.

Most every woman who is interested in the health and beauty of her skin knows about body scrubs. They've most likely been around since the first cave woman found out her skin would glow if she scooped some sand out of the stream and used it on her face.

The fact is that you can pay a pile of money for such treasures as a sugar body scrub - like the picture on the left. But there's NO REASON to pay extravagant prices when you can make your own for a fraction of the cost.

Learn more about body scrubs that are safe for your face right here ...

Gastric band surgery is an abomination! Cutting up your stomach and risking terrible health issues, even death, is the ultimate in alienation from the body and its natural beauty. But performing gastric banding on kids is beyond contemptible.

Among adults, there were 12,775 to 70,256 surgeries in the U.S. from 1998 to 2002, according to the monthly Archives of Surgery Journal. Recently, that number has increased to more than 120,000 a year.

In 2004 there were 350 gastric band surgeries performed on kids. Doctors have been hesitant to do the surgeries for more than one reason: for one, most stomach surgeries cut the stomach to make it operate as smaller pouch, which has unknown health risks to a developing child - the death rate among kids who do the surgery is around 1 in 50, which is twice the death rate than among adults who have bariatric surgery.

According to a federal government body, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 40% of all surgery patients develop complications within a mere six months! Further, this maiming costs an average of $29,000 !

Subjecting our kids to this kind of barbaric cruelty is astonishing. Heaven forbid we should take the vending machines and pizza bars out of school and invest the time and energy to teach our kids good eating habits. Play after school? Run around, chase a ball and scream with sheer exuberance?

Nonsense! Plop them in front of the TV or computer.

Simply unbelievable.

Do you know about the 6 meals a day diet? Actually, there isn't a single diet that recommends 5-6 meals/day {usually three meals, two daily snacks & dessert at night}. One eBook I received insisted that every half hour was critical! Whew, that's a lot of chow.

The rationale for all this eating is that frequent meals keep our metabolism stoked. And perhaps that is true. But what if I'm not hungry? Does it make sense to shove food down our throats when we don't want to eat? What about the signals from our bodies?

As an experiment, I decided not to eat until I am truly, really, genuinely hungry. Its been approximately 18 hours since my last meal and Im just now starting to get those hunger pangs that mean I need food so when I finish this entry I'm heading off to eat.

But the important question is ... who or what can I trust?

a) Some diet guru in a book?
b) My own body?

We have been taught - yes, taught - to distrust our own biological signals. Watch small children who haven't been corrupted by all kinds of ideas and notions about our bodies. They respond with total trust to their biological messages - unless they're so busy playing they don't want to quit.

After all, we weren't born with an eating problem. In fact, it's possible that the entire multi-billion diet industry would collapse almost overnight it we learned to simply trust the cues of our body, which surely ought to know when it needs fuel. Perhaps the entire answer to overweight is as simple as becoming reacquainted with ourselves. And as for the 6 meals a day diet ... if it feels good to you and your body, do it; if it feels awful (me!), then forget it!