susiej/reviews

I have this theory, that if the kids eat more protein, they will whine less, sleep better, and be more relaxed. My kids don’t eat enough protein. Still, I’m teaching them what protein is, how much they should eat, and the wide variety of ways there is to find protein. For example, I just learned from the Yoplait Kids website, that if your child weighs 44 pounds, he needs 19g of protein per day. If you’re wondering, Yoplait Kids provides 5 grams of protein per cup of yogurt and 2 grams of protein per bottle of yogurt drink.

Yogurt is the one stand-by high-protein food I always have in the fridge so the kids can give themselves a quick burst of protein whenever they need one. Yogurt is such a great, easy convenient snack food for kids.

I just learned from the Parent Bloggers Network that Yoplait Kids yogurt contains 25% less sugar than other kids’ yogurts, and it contains that vital omega-3 DHA brain-power combination nutrients. DHA can be found in fish and eggs; but whenever I serve that, the kids run away. Now, serving those high-quality nutrients to my kids is as easy as dipping a spoon. Plus, yogurt contains live and active cultures to help kids maintain a healthy digestive tracks.

My kids are very picky about lumps in their yogurt; nor do they want their yogurt to be too watery. Yoplait Kids is creamy and thick enough to stick to the spoon without a dripping mess… and no mess.

PBN asked me to try out Yoplait Kids and they also sent me a Yoplait Kids cooler, a My First Brain Quest game, and a coupon for a free six-pack of Yoplait Kids. If you’d like to win this, just leave a comment here, and I’ll draw the winner on September 8, 2008.

Plus right now, you can go to the Yoplait Kids website and print off your very own $1.50 off coupon — go click, and see.

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Filed under: food, health, kids by SusieJ - 8 Comments →

It only took one traumatic cavity, that cost my son two teeth, that inspired me to invest in this toothbrush, Oral B S-320 Sonic Complete Rechargeable Power Toothbrush. (No one, unfortunately sent my anything for free, I’m just writing this review because I love this product, and teeth are so important.) This is the same one my dentist uses. I looked at the dental bill for the tooth pulling, the costs of the spacers, the trauma, and at four mouths, and I realized this was a great investment. An investment, truly, in a good night’s sleep. Don’t even bother with those character-battery operated ones; they can’t even touch this workhorse.

In the 3 years we have owned ours, we’ve had perfect check-ups. And that laborious, nerve-wracking tartar scraping procedure is almost “nil,” as the toothbrush does such a great job of keeping it off the teeth.

A two-minute timer, is great for the kids, and sets a habit. Plus, this tool gets you’re teeth gloriously white.

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Filed under: dental, health, kids, products, teen by SusieJ - 1 Comment →

Health-care insurance premiums have never been higher. Yet despite our governments claim to “do something about it,” no one has yet to come up with a viable plan. One company, www.ehealthhelp.com, is a voice of reason to the myriad of health insurance options available. ehealthhelp was created to assist patients in understanding how their own Health Insurance Plans work.

For over 25 years, the company has worked with insurance, managed care, and provider organizations in addition to working with consumers of health care services. The ehealthhelp website has easy to navigate tabs that can direct you to your specific question: claim tips, Medicare, enrollment tips, tracking and even the top questions as they pertain to state and national health care regulations.

Regardless of what health care plan you have, ehealthhelp can help you. ehealthhelp does not recommend any one particular health-care provider, broker, or supplier. The purpose of this site is provide the consumer with basic knowledge and some useful organizational aids. For example, some medical practices are no longer filing claims for their customers. Now, the responsibility is on you to make sure you are reimbursed for the coverage you’ve already paid for ehealthhelp outlines how to do this, step by step, as well as information to help you follow-through to make sure your claim is processed in a timely manner. So, the next time your parents need help filling out Medicare forms, or you need help with an insurance claim, check out http://www.ehealthhelp.com.

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When it comes to sex, that is… according to the book Sex Detox: Recharge Desire. Revitalize Intimacy. Rejuvenate Your Love Life, by New York Times bestselling author Ian Kerner, a well-known sex and relationships counselor. He says the best way to put the fire back into the bedroom is to just turn off the fire… for 30 days.

When I mentioned this to my husband, he responded with the obvious, “Didn’t we already do that four times… after the birth of each of our sons?” True, but this is a little different.

Ian Kerner makes a valid argument in Sex Detox to stop and pay attention to where you are, how you got there, and where you’d like to go.

The “replacement” for sex is hours spent instead in solitary contemplation, and the art of mindfulness. Kerner provides a daily agenda of questions to ponder and journal about, starting with that one element that keeps popping up in so many self-help books: your childhood. He asks you to delve into your past and remember what triggered your current perceptions of sex, and how those beliefs are still operating in your life today.

The book is for married couples, as well as singles. If you’re single, Kerner says, the program will lead you to a coupled romance. The Sex Detox program will require a large investment of your time, as the exercises will take up to an hour a day. That said, Kerner does have a step-by-step daily plan to guide you through the end. If you are looking for a way to ignite the fire in your bedroom, heal past hurts and improve your marriage… or your chances of marriage, Sex Detox can help.

During Detox, you will begin the process of reOrdering:

1. Observation
2. Recognition
3. De-Coupling
4. Engagement
5. Regulating

This will help you to discover,

…Our “love maps” represent the blueprint of our erotic desires, shaped by previous positive and negative sexual experiences and explaining everything from why we gravitate to a particular physical type to what feeds our private fantasies and actual practices.

I’m impressed with Kerner’s candor in revealing the intimate secrets of couples who have worked through many painful issues in their relationships. (Anonymous of course.) Sometimes, when you’re lost, the best thing to do is to stop right where you are and wait.

More reviews are at PBN, and Dr. Kerner himself will appear on the Motherhood Uncensored Podcast 2/20 from 9-9:30pm EST! Get your copy of his new book, Sex Detox.

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Filed under: book, health, products, self-help by SusieJ - 3 Comments →

I’ve been postponing my trip to the optometrist, because a new prescription usually means I need new lenses, and then of course, I want to replace my outdated frames. And then, inevitably, the bill comes way over $300. Buying glasses is like buying tires for your car — they are so expensive.

Now that I spend so much time on the Internet, I learned about Zenni Optical.com, and for $8, I found a frame that I truly love. Zenni Optical Sells Stylish Prescription Glasses Online, with a huge selection, including single vision lens, sunsensor (photochromic) lens, tinted sunglasses lens, bifocal lens and progressive lens.

At this price, I might buy one or two pair to keep as a spare!

The Secret to the low prices of the $8 Zenni Optical Rx Eyeglasses is that they sell only their own manufactured frames direct to the customer, with no middlemen and virtually no advertising budget. And no fancy show room to maintain.

Once you have your eyeglasses perscription, optometrist will give you this, you can work with Zenni Optical to have your frames and lenses made. Once you visit the website, you’ll see how easy the process is. The categories on the left hand column allow you to easily choose the type of frame, based on personal preferences — half rim, full rim, titanium, and fashion frames. The product descriptions on each frame are inclusive, with lots of detail regarding frame weight, and size so that your optometrist can determine if this frame is “technically” right for you.

Check out this site… it will, thankfully, revolutionize the way you think about and buy Optical Rx Eyeglasses frames.

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Filed under: fashion, health, products by SusieJ - 1 Comment →

but that’s not the only reason to drink this ancient beverage. (See below for your chance to win your own copy of this book.) Full of scientifically-based research, Mark Ukra’s new book, The Ultimate Tea Diet: How Tea Can Boost Your Metabolism, Shrink Your Appetite, and Kick-Start Remarkable Weight Loss explains how tea fights cancer, helps you stay mentally focused, and reduces stress, among other things. Just the justification I needed to pour myself an extra cup of the beverage I’ve always loved the most, tea. Thees benefits apply to ANY tea — green, black and white teas — as long as the tea comes from one plant - the Camellia Sinenis plant. Herbal teas that do not contain leaves from this plant are called tisanes. If you have an herbal tisane you love, simply add a green/black or white tea bag to the cup to reap all the benefits of tea.

The Tea Diet gives you important how-tos for brewing tea (never boil the water) and how to use flavored teas as a substitute for many of your food cravings. There’s even a tea flavor called Dr. Tea’s Candy Bar Black Tea. He also explains how to re-use tea leaves, several times, which washes away much of the caffeine (water soluble), while maintaining all of tea’s health benefits.

You don’t like tea? Then try one of the many yummy recipes in the The Ultimate Tea Diet, like Frostea. Mr. Ukra shows you how you can use tea leaves, much like herbs, to create marinades and rubs for meat, and other foods, such as tea oatmeal, creating a dramatic boost in the food’s nutritional component.

Here are 13 more facts I’ve learned about tea’s benefits from The Ultimate Tea Diet.

1. Straight caffeine will arouse the nervous system and speed up your heart rate and an increase in calorie burn. When you drink tea, there is a protective ingredient in the tea (L-thenine) that prevent an increase in your heart rate, while still burning calories. (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1999.) This fat burning process is called thermogenesis, the biochemical process by which fat in the body is burned to produce energy.
2. Tea’s L-thenine naturally relieves stress, anxiety and tension, and activates neurotransmitters in your brain to promote a state of calm relaxation. (Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University College of London, January 2007.)
3. Tea contains EGCG (Epigallocatechin-3-gallate). a chemical compound that cleanses the blood of additional triglycerides before they’re deposited into the fat tissues, which gets more oxygen into your blood, and more energy.
4. EGCG reduces Insulin production, (Journal of Biological Chemistry, April 2006), a critical factor in weight loss.
5. Tea is not dehydrating. Dr. Carrie Ruxton (lead author of the 2006 European Journal of Clinical Nutrition tea-based studies) says you should fill up your water bottles with tea, as “drinking tea is actually better for you than drinking water. Water is continually replacing fluid. Tea replaces fluid and contains antioxidants…”
6. Tea drinkers, not coffee drinkers, had an increased of important disease-fighting protein on their T-Cells. Tea acts as sort of a natural vaccine that “teaches” immune cells to recognize markers on the surface of invading toxins. (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2003).
7. Arthritis-prone mice, when given the human equivalent of four cups of green tea a day, halved their risk of developing arthritis.
8. Tea lowers bad (LDL) cholesterol. (Archives of Internal Medicine, 2003 study.)
9. Drinking as little as a half-cup of green or oolong tea per day may lower the risk of high blood pressure by nearly 50 percent.
10. Tea’s antioxidant power is about 100 times greater than Vitamin C and twenty-fie times greater than vitamin E in protecting DNA from free radical damage — the kind that increases cancer. (University of Kansas, 1997.)
11. Women who consumed 26 ounces of green tea leaves each year (less than one cup per day) had a 39-percent reduced risk of breast cancer compared to non-drinkers.
12. A 2005 Swedish study of more than 61,000 women showed that women who consumed two or more cups of green of black tea everyday lowered their risk for ovarian cancer by 46 percent.
13. Preliminary studies have shown that tea enhances the results of some chemotherapy drugs by preventing cancerous cells from rejecting the drugs after the drugs have entered the tumor cells. Also, tea helps to minimize the side effects of these drugs.

To win your own free copy of The Ultimate Tea Diet. Simply leave a comment below stating why you’d like to read this book, and create a link back to this post (click on the post title to get the html code for this post in the address bar above. If you don’t have a blog — don’t worry about that step.) Then, using Random.org, I’ll select a winner on January 31, 2007.

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Filed under: fitness, food, health, products by SusieJ - 9 Comments →

When our elementary school installed triclosan antibacterial soap dispensers in the school cafeteria, my son’s hands, already dried out from eczema, became rough, raw and painful when he started using this soap. Then I learned that Allison Aiello of the U-M School of Public Health found

that many antibacterial soaps can cause some bacteria to become resistant to commonly used drugs such as amoxicillin, and e-coli bacteria bugs adapted in lab experiments showed resistance when exposed to as much as 0.1 percent wt/vol triclosan soap.

When The Parent Bloggers Network offered to send me CleanWell’s new line of antibacterial hand soaps, made from essential plant oils, rather than chemicals, I jumped at the chance. I actually had been making my own versions by using thyme and lavender essential oils. It was a pain mixing them all the time — but I couldn’t deny the fact that Essential Oils have been used by thousands of years as an antiseptic by the Greeks and Romans.

Clean Well has finally developed both a hand sanitizer and anti-bacterial foaming handwash that are alcohol, triclosan and paraben-free, all in a conventient inexpensive bottle — so I don’t have to keep mixing my own, and they’re available at Target. The secret ingredient is Thyme. It’s that little herb you may (or not) have growing in your backyard.

Thyme’s “essential oil” is so volatile that it can fight staph infections, E-Coli, and tuberculosis. As a disinfectant, thyme is more powerful than phenol. More importantly, thyme, unlike antibiotics, fights these infections without building an immunity to the very germs they are trying to kill.

CleanWell, a small company inspired by a little boy with an immune system disorder, has harnessed thyme’s antibacterial properties to create Ingenium, a blend of thyme oils that kill 99.9 percent of the germs that can make you sick, without harmful chemicals and drying-out your hands. It’s safe enough to use around your food. And, the best part is, these soaps are easily available, inexpensive, and because they’re available at Target, you don’t have to make a special trip to the health-food store to find them.

In addition to providing a safe way to kill germs, The CleanWell Hand Washes have 2 little luxuries that will keep these soaps on our own bathroom counters. First, the scent. It is not artificial. It contains real essential oils to create three beautiful fragrances: Orange Vanilla, Lavender Absolute, and Ginger Bergamot. Suddenly, I feel as if I’m in an expensive aromatherapy shop — and not a bathroom shared by five boys.

Second, is the texture. The foam is bouncy and light. This makes it easy for the kids to spread it around the palm of their hands and in-between their fingers. And they use it. It comes as a pump, and it’s easy even for my 4-year old to use.

The handwash soap does not come with added moisturizers — so it does not cure my son’s overly dry hands, but it doesn’t make the dryness worse. He still faithfully applies moisturizer after every hand-washing.

CleanWell products are also sustainable, and good for the environment. Thyme is a hardy herb that grows throughout the world, without the need for pesticides or chemical fertilizers. The process of harvesting and cultivating thyme for products like CleanWell provides important local jobs.

I’m giving away two 1 ounce bottles of Clean Well’s Hand Sanitizer. Just like the washes, this is gentle on sensitive skin, and uses Ingenium to kill the germs . (We’ve tested this on my son’s sensitive skin.) Don’t let the little 1 oz size fool you — you can get 4x per uses per ounce than alcohol. To win, just comment below and I’ll use www.random.org to pick a winner on January 21. (Continental-US only.)

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