Yogurt... Another Beauty Food

Quick Tip from Julyne Derrick,Your Guide to Beauty.

Five Reasons Why You Should Stock Up on Yogurt

1. Just one cup of yogurt will help blemishes clear up thanks to the zinc it contains. Look for varieties that do not contain a lot of fat or sugar. Yes, they do exist and they offer lots of taste.
2. For menopausal women, it offers more calcium than milk, which is a good thing to know for those who don't care for the taste.
3. Plain yogurt is often used as a facial mask. I would avoid the flavored varieties, for obvious reasons, but plain yogurt will cleanse the skin quite nicely. Skin however needs to be free of makeup. Yogurt is good... but it's not that good!
4. It is also often used to soothe an itchy scalp. And while it is soothing the scalp, it is also working on your dandruff. Apply, wrap hair in a towel and then rinse after 15 minutes.
5. Your hands and nails can also benefit from yogurt. Simply combine 8 ounces of plain yogurt with the juice of one lemon. Return to the refrigerator for several hours and then use to massage your hands and nails. Rinse and pat your hands dry and you should notice the difference. Hands should be soft and supple. *Keep mixture in refrigerator and use within 2 weeks or so.

Besides, the others benefits of yogurt such as:

• Lose weight. Michael Zemel, a researcher at the University of Tennessee , found that obese people who added three servings of low-fat yogurt daily to their diets lost 22% more weight and 61% more body fat than did non-yogurt eaters. Zemel mainly credits yogurt's high calcium with melting fat while preserving lean tissue mass.

• Ease arthritis. Yogurt may be an anti-inflammatory and a treatment for arthritis, Israeli research finds. Rats fed yogurt before injections with arthritis-causing chemicals developed no arthritis or only mild symptoms. In arthritic rats, yogurt lessened symptoms, producing a "remarkable ... curative effect," researchers concluded.

• Cut risk of colon cancer. In a French study, people who ate the most yogurt had half as many pre-cancerous colon polyps as those who ate no yogurt. In animals, yogurt blocked the progression of colon cancer, and DNA damage from meat chemicals that can initiate colon cancer.

• Fight bacteria. Yogurt may suppress H. pylori infections, a cause of peptic ulcers, chronic gastritis and possibly stomach cancer, according to new research from Taiwan . After 59 infected people ate a cup of yogurt twice a day for six weeks, bacteria concentrations dropped more than 35% and the severity of infections significantly lessened.

• Help your gut. Anyone with lactose intolerance, constipation, diarrhea, inflammatory bowel disease or even food allergies probably could benefit from eating yogurt, concludes a new review of dozens of previous studies. Example: Giving children yogurt may reduce the duration of diarrhea.

Tips for buying yogurt:
Check labels for "live and active cultures."
Buy plain low-fat yogurt and add your own fruit. This saves money and calories. Try kefir, a fermented "milkshake" with the same expected benefits as yogurt.