It's always stunning in the Virgin Islands, regardless of the occasional torrential down-pours. Not so occasional lately and this coming week. In fact according to Weather.com its “Heavy Rain and Scattered Thunder Storms” for the next 6 days. Yep, six days. (image below)

Many Virgin Island activities, attractions and other things to do are open regardless of weather, and there's lot of fun things for you to do both indoors and out!

Here's a list of some rainy-day activities to get your family out of home, enjoying some of what our islands has to offer!

Also ask about out our upcoming Watzun Aqua Massage... hey, you're going to get wet anyway!
 
#2: See a Show: St Thomas’ movie theater is a fabulous way to spend an afternoon or evening while your car sits in the parking lot getting a bath.

 #3: Indoor sections of Coral World: yes I realize you’re a local and C/W is a turist place but its still off-season (for now) so the liens will be short and plenty to do.

#4: Shop, shop, shop: Ladies you knew this would be on the list, right?! Clothes, shoes, kitchen appliances, fruits & veggies, jewelry, decor, electronics and more... the VI has tons of boutique shops and outlet stores and have it all!

#5: Do an Internal Cleanse – it’s always a great idea to cleanse the body occasionally of unwanted toxins and waste. In fact many health practitioners and many religions recommend it at least quarterly. At A Touch of Wellness, we advocate our clients do a colon or other cleanse of some other style cleanse (from light to moderate) once a quarter. There’s nothing that can compare for increased energy and vitality. And rainy days are perfect for this sort of healing activity. We can guide you easily through the progress. In fact, click here for a great video for more information and details.  

#6: App Hopping: also called appetizer crawling. One of our favorite activities. You simply select a section of the island, let’s say Red Hook, then you start hitting one place after another. The rule is one appetizer per establishment. Grab an app and a drink and move on. Next, next, next. Loads of fun and once other know what you’re doing you’ll sure to nearly always have followers along the way. Oh, for this one you’ll want an umbrella – at least for the next 6 days.   

#7: Go Extreme: Even when it's raining, it's actually a great time to go outside and do something a bit crazy. How about Zip-lining. I know, I know – touristy thing, right? (see #3 above) We’ll true but it is off season and it could be great fun. It's a completely different way to experience the beauty VI, and get a little wet in the process!

Here are a few other family-oriented Bonus activities to do while it rains buckets in the VI:    

1.       Have an Indoor Treasure Hunt

2.       Make Your Own Bubble Bath

3.       Create a Family Recipe Book

10.   Host a “Tea” Party (maybe Bush Tea)

11.   Pamper Yourself With a Skin-Softening Mud (available at A Touch of Wellness)

Hope these lists help you get past the down-pour blues. Oh and keep in mind, should you choose to take advantage of the opportunity to pamper yourself (and maybe your sweetie) we do have a great Locals-Only Special going on for a limited time. Check it out here: http://www.atouchofwellnessvi.com/specials

Have a great week and – stay dry (as best as you can anyway)

Diabetes is the 7th leading cause of death in the U.S., and doubles the risk of heart attack and stroke.1 However, type 2 diabetes is a lifestyle disease — our food choices can  either prevent or promote insulin resistance and resultant diabetes. 

Many conventional diabetes diets rely  on meat or grains as the major calorie source. However, these strategies have serious drawbacks (read more on Diseaseproof.com). High-nutrient,
low glycemic load (GL) foods are the optimal foods for diabetics, and these foods also help to prevent diabetes in the first place: 
 
Leafy greens and other non-starchy vegetables: Green and non-starchy vegetables have almost nonexistent effects on  blood glucose, and are packed with fiber and phytochemicals. A recent  meta-analysis found that greater leafy green vegetable intake was  associated with a 14% decrease in risk of type 2 diabetes.2 One study reported that each daily serving of leafy greens produces a 9% decrease in risk.3 Greens and other non-starchy vegetables like mushrooms, onions, garlic, eggplant, peppers, etc. are essential components of an  anti-diabetes (or diabetes reversal) diet.  
                                
Beans: Beans, lentils, and other legumes are the ideal carbohydrate source. Beans are low in GL due to their moderate protein and abundant fiber and resistant starch, carbohydrates that are not
broken down in the small intestine. This  reduces the amount of calories that can be absorbed from beans; plus,  resistant starch is fermented by bacteria in the colon, forming products  that protect against colon cancer.4 Accordingly, bean and legume consumption is associated with reduced risk of both diabetes and colon cancer.5,6

 Nuts and seeds: Nuts are low in GL, promote weight loss, and have anti-inflammatory effects that may prevent the development of insulin resistance.7,8 The Nurses’ Health Study found a 27% reduced risk of diabetes in nurses who ate five or more servings of nuts per week. Among nurses who  already had diabetes, this same quantity reduced the risk of heart  disease by  7%.9-11                               
  
Fresh fruit: Fruits are rich in fiber and antioxidants, and are a nutrient-dense  choice for satisfying sweet cravings. Eating three servings of fresh  fruit each day is associated with an 18% decrease in risk of diabetes.3 For those who are already diabetic, I recommend sticking to low sugar  fruits like berries, kiwi, oranges, and melon to minimize glycemic  effects.

This approach works. In a recent study on type 2 diabetics following this diet, we found that  62% of the participants reached normal (nondiabetic) HbA1C levels within seven months, and the average number of medications required dropped  from four to one.12 A diet of vegetables, nuts,
seeds, beans, and fresh fruit can prevent  and even reverse diabetes while promoting long-term health.            

Find out more by visiting our Health Center pages of YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/ATouchofWellnessVI

In our two pervious posts we cover Preventing Diabetes and Lose Weight at the Same Time and Diet Decisions that Make You Fat – which of course is totally interconnected. Now let’s cover adjustments you can make to your diet to lose weight and prevent diseases like diabetes…  

What are some of the best phytochemicals for weight loss and preventing type 2 diabetes?

Green tea extract has been studied extensively and can help you lose weight by increasing metabolism and especially, your body’s ability to burn harmful abdominal fat. Caralluma fimbriata blocks fat formation and suppresses appetite. Cayenne boosts metabolism as well. Phytochemicals also have antioxidant properties that help protect your body from disease by blocking oxidation and preventing damage to the body at the cellular level.

Ultimate Trim is made from these and 6 other all natural vital nutrients. It is designed to help you when you can’t lose weight through dietary adjustments alone. Get $10 off your next purchase of Ultimate Trim. Use promo 10THANKS at check out. 

So to get started on the road to a thinner and more vibrant you - invest in the best weight loss formula on the market today and Receive Huge Savings. Click here to learn more 

Stay Tune to this Blog as we cover all things health and wellness. 

A Touch of Wellness Massage & Health Center, Voted by the local Virgin Islands community as The Best Massage in the VI. You Don't have to be Sick, Tired or in Pain!

Located at Compass Point Marina, St Thomas U.S. Virgin Islands - Visit us by Land Sea or Air. Providing best in health & massage treatments services & products.

In our last post we cover Preventing Diabetes and Lose Weight at the Same Time – which of course is completely interconnected. Now let’s get into the role diet plays… 

Secondly, when your diet is high in all the wrong things and low in the right things, your body finds its impossible to ward off all the ill effects of the toxic things such as sugar and fat. This leads to hormonal imbalances, systemic inflammation, premature aging, disease… the list is endless!

A diet high in fat, not only helps you gain weight, it also contributes to heart disease and other
complications. Heart disease, poor peripheral circulation and a taxed renal system are the deadly consequences of type 2 diabetes, and if your diet is also high in saturated or trans fat, you are
quadrupling your risk of an early death due to heart attack or renal failure. You also run the risk of
amputation and blindness due to lack of proper circulation.

To get started on the road to a thinner and more vibrant you - invest in the best weight loss formula on the market today and Receive Huge Savings. Click here to learn more 
 
Stay Tune to this Blog because in the next installment we'll cover: Dietary Adjustments for Weight Loss and Preventing Diabetes

A Touch of Wellness Massage & Health Center, Voted by the local Virgin Islands community as The Best Massage in the VI. You Dont have to be Sick, Tired or in Pain!

Located at Compass Point Marina, St Thomas U.S. Virgin Islands - Visit us by Land Sea or Air. Providing best in health & massage treatments services & products.

Diabetes claims over 70,000 lives per year, and in the case of type 2 diabetes, it’s highly preventable and even reversible with dietary changes and weight loss. Let’s get a jumpstart and prevent diabetes while losing weight at the same time.

Simply by losing weight, you can lower your chances of ending up with type 2 diabetes. Excessive abdominal fat increases your chances of developing diabetes due to the inflammatory response it has on the body and the increased risk of insulin resistance. 

When you take measures such as adjusting your caloric intake and exercising, you can begin to lose weight easily and lower your risk of developing diabetes. If you can’t lose weight with these measures, it’s time to look deeper into what you are eating and how it’s keeping you overweight and unhealthy.

To get started on the road to a thinner and more vibrant you - invest in the best weight loss formula on the market today and Receive Huge Savings. Click here to learn more

Stay Tune to this Blog because in the next installment we'll cover: Diet Choices that Keep You Fat

A Touch of Wellness Massage & Health Center, located at  Compass Point Marina, St Thomas U.S. Virgin Islands - Visit us by Land Sea or Air or call us now at 340-779-1504
- Providing best in health & massage treatments services & products

Not long ago, a respected college anatomy lab performed full autopsies on 300 human bodies. 

The students were shocked to find that 285 (95%) of the deceased had unusually large amounts of toxic waste material backed up in their colons. 
 
But here's what was shocking...

Virtually NONE of the deceased people thought they had a problem before they passed away! 

But, how could that be, you may ask...?

Take just a few moments and watch this timely video presentation on how this sort of thing can happen and what you can do about it:

Live Longer And Leaner With This One Toxin Taming Trick <<< Watch Video

At best, failing to eliminate toxins fast enough can result in weight gain and low energy. At worst, the body’s immune system can become overwhelmed... causing you to get sicker and sicker. 
 
If you think you might be amongst the 95% who are carrying around a heavy toxic load, make sure you watch this important video presentation:http://goo.gl/g9HV1f

Last post we covered “What is Food Combining and how can it help me?” 

Now let’s give just a few simple examples: 

Fruits. Fruit digests very quickly(4) and should always be eaten alone (with the exception of pairing with greens which is fine). It's extremely cleansing and excellent to eat at breakfast, while the body
is still in cleansing mode after a night of fasting.  Always eat fruit on an empty stomach at the beginning of the day.  Otherwise, the fruit will get backed up behind another slower digesting food, and will sit in the stomach putrefying, turning what was once a cleansing, beautifying cocktail of nutrition into a toxic, aging, energy drain.  I'll go into further detail in a future post on how this resulting "toxic sludge" gets permanently baked into the body's 98.6F environment- just one reason cleansing requires an ongoing lifestyle in order to remove years of toxicity from the body.

We will continue to expand upon the applications and processes of proper Food Combining in future posts where we will  include some sample daily menu following these guidelines and even a list of basic benefits you can easily share with your family and friends. Stay tuned… 
 
A Touch of Wellness Massage & Health Center – St Thomas, USVI
You Don’t have to be Sick, Tired or in Pain!

Sources:
1. How to Always be Well by Dr. William Howard Hay
2. Fit for Life by Harvey Diamond
3. Food Combining Made Easy, Herbert Shelton
4. http://lytnyc.com/pdfs/foodComboChart_03.09.11.pdf

Proponents of food combining advocate the following principles:
 
The most important rule, is this: Don't mix starch foods with protein foods at the same meal.
 
Here are the other principles which proponents of food combining adhere to:

4. Eat proteins and acid foods at separate meals. The acids of acid foods inhibit the secretion of the digestive acids required for protein digestion. Undigested proteins putrefy in bacterial decomposition and produces some potent poisons.

5. Eat proteins and fats at separate meals. Some foods, especially nuts, are over 50% fat and require hours for digestion.

6. Eat proteins and sugars (fruits) at separate meals.

7. Eat starchy foods and sugars (fruits) at separate meals. Fruits undergo no digestion in the stomach and are held up if eaten with foods which require digestion in the stomach.

8. Eat melons alone. Melons combine with almost no other food.

9. Forget the desserts. Eaten on top of meals they lie heavy on the stomach, requiring no digestion there, and ferment. Bacteria turn them into alcohols, acetic acids and vinegars.

Food combining: chew all food close to liquid consistency. Check out next blog post

A Touch of Wellness Massage & Health Center – St Thomas, USVI
You Don’t have to be Sick, Tired or in Pain!

Proper Food Combining is important to ensure our bodies can process food efficiently and more effectively absorb the nutrients needed to remain healthy.  It's based on the theory that different food groups require different digestion times and different digestive enzymes to aid in the  digestive process: some require acid, some alkaline.  Because of this correct food combinations are important for proper utilization and absorption of nutrients.  The proper combining of foods leads to good digestion and ultimately better health.  Basically, the simpler the meal the better you feel.  

While the method is easy to follow, it's certainly a far departure from the Standard American Diet (SAD).  However, after just two weeks following the guidelines in the chart below, our general emotional outlook and appearance improves as toxins are cleared out of our system faster.
Cravings are eliminated- making it incredibly easy to stick to - while the immediate energy surge, effortless toning, melting away of excess body fat and glowing skin certainly serve as reinforcements against any ideas of going back to old habits!  

Here is where we really want to delve into the science of Proper Food Combining so you can understand the "why" behind it all.  The chart below offers an excellent summary for how to apply the results of all the science involved.  And, since this may initiate many questions we will do what we can to explain every possible poor food combination, so we've provided just two examples underneath the chart; what happens when we combine protein and carbohydrates, and how to consume fruit.  Feel free to post specific questions in the comments below and we'll be happy to answer each. 
  
In the meantime, here's a really simplified version that won't put us all to sleep:  Basically, when we improperly combine food, the environment required to digest it is compromised, for reasons such as improper levels of acidity, the wrong or inhibited enzymes, improper levels of digestive acid etc..  The result is the body's inability to digest the food, causing it to putrify, ferment, produce gas and ultimately create a digestive, toxic nightmare.  This scenario zaps our energy and turns any  preexisting nutritive benefits into an age-accelerating, weight gain producing horror.  The terrific news is, simply changing the way we eat can immediately reverse all that.  As we stressed other posts here, the best way to transition into a cleansing lifestyle is gradually, so it's perfectly ok
and normal that we'll have a learning/implementation curve.  As always, we NEVER need to be perfect :-)  

A Touch of Wellness Massage & Health Center, Voted by the local Virgin Islands community as The Best Massage in the VI. You Don't have to be Sick, Tired or in Pain!

Located at Compass Point Marina, St Thomas U.S. Virgin Islands - Visit us by Land Sea or
Air. Providing best in health & massage treatments services & products

Massage is well known for reducing stress and promoting relaxation. Attaining a St Thomas Massage from A Touch of Wellness is especially beneficial. A growing body of research and data also shows that massage therapy is effective for relieving and managing chronic and acute pain, a significant national health problem. According to the National Institute for Health, more than one-third of all Americans will suffer from chronic pain at some point in their lives, and approximately 14 percent of all employees take time off from work due to pain. Increasingly, massage therapists
are being incorporated into pain management programs of hospitals and health care organizations. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations has suggested massage therapy as one means to manage pain without use of pharmaceuticals.

the American Massage Therapy Association (AMTA) of which our Director Dr. Jill Scott is a long time member (nearly 3 decades), 91 percent of respondents agreed that massage can be effective in reducing pain, and nearly half of those polled (47 percent) have had a massage specifically
for the purpose of relieving pain.

· Massage therapy is more effective for chronic back pain than other complementary therapies. 
· Massage therapy promotes relaxation and alleviates the perception of pain and anxiety in cancer patients. 
· Massage therapy reduces post-traumatic headaches better than cold pack treatments. 
· A pilot study conducted at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles found that massage, as part of hospital-based surgery treatment, reduces pain and muscle spasms in patients who have undergone heart bypass surgery.  
· Massage stimulates the brain to produce endorphins.

How does massage relieve pain?
· A simple and direct strategy: working from the external, outer mechanisms of pain to the primary, root cause. 
· Focuses on the entire body system and its relationship to soft tissue – not solely on the site of pain.

A Touch of Wellness Massage & Health Center – St Thomas, VI are proud members of the AMTA. The American Massage Therapy Association, the professional association representing the field of
massage therapy, wants to help navigate the process of linking pain specialists with massage
therapists. Finding a qualified massage therapist is paramount; only 33 states and the District of Columbia regulate the profession of massage therapy. AMTA helps consumers and other healthcare professionals locate an AMTA member massage therapist. See Jill Scott’s AMTA professional profile here: http://www.amtamassage.org/famt/JillScott or 1-888-THE-AMTA.