Building a physique that's muscular and chiseled is not just for aesthetically pleasing, it helps you obtain an optimal posture and body stability as a whole.  When building the chest muscle with the right ways, you will also strengthen other muscles that assist the pectoralis major and minor muscles of the chest.  When you strengthen those muscles along with the chest muscles, it naturally creates a stronger push-pull effect, and the body will maintain a good posture as a result.  For people who are the skinner type, you may notice that sometimes it's difficult to keep that good posture where you constantly have to remind yourself to lift your chest slightly and draw in your abdominal. Many back pain is actually caused by a bad posture where the back has to work extra to hold your upper body weight.  The reason for that is not that you used to have the bad posture, but it is because you have a weaker push-pull force among the muscle groups.  Once you strengthen those muscles, your posture will be naturally better.  

Let's look at what right exercises can help us build a better chest and how the body will correct your body's alignment naturally.

1. Push Ups
Yes, the good old push ups can help you build your chest fast regardless what body condition you have or your age.  For the beginner, you can do a knee push ups.  For average people, you can do a regular push up, and an incline push up, and for the advance people, you can do a decline push-up where your feet are in a higher position than your hand.

2. Bench Press
I would say the bench press with weights are the most efficient ways to build good chest muscle fast and strong. There are three ways to do a bench press: flat, incline, and decline.  Due to the gravity force direction, with different positions on the bench, different muscles are involved in compensating the pushing and lowering of the weights. So when you do an incline position, your upper chest muscles require more, and when you do a decline position, you rely on your lower chest muscles more.  So what's the main difference between incline and decline position do regarding the look on the chest?  When you do a decline position bench press, you will see the chest look more defined and chiseled especially in the area of the lower chest and your rib cage area.  When you do an incline position, your upper chest looks fuller, and it also targets the front shoulder muscles as well.

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3. Dips and Flys
This exercise is done on a set of dip bars, hoist the body up by the arms and tuck your legs.  It is a more advanced exercise, but it's an effective chest exercise to do.  If you are out of shape, this can be a tough exercise to do since before you can work out with your chest, you need to have strong triceps and abdominal to stabilize the whole body to lift yourself up on the dip bars.  

4. Strengthen the rotator cuff muscle
The secret of a strong chest lies in the smaller muscle called rotator cuff muscle located between the shoulder blade (scapula) and upper arm.  This rotator cuff muscle group is very delicate!  You need to strengthen this group before you can add weight to the bench press.  If you feel uncomforting or pain in this area, you need to stop immediately.  In the next workout day, you can do a lower weight or do an incline bench press preferably.  Yes, this is that serious. You should not rush on the chest development.  Learn to listen to your body and do exercise with the correct position are the right ways to do.

5. Stimulate Grow with Maximum Intensity
Whether you are doing a bench press or push up, the growth phase is the last few reps that you felt the most difficult to do or painful reps in the entire workout.  For muscles to grow, the muscle fiber down to the microscopic level must break apart, and this results in muscle cells repairing or the muscle growth.  However, over-training must be avoided and a proper period of recovery is a requirement.

6. Sleep
Well, sleep is not an exercise, but this is the actual time your muscle is growing. You need to have an adequate sleep period to reach that goal.  Oversleep is not good as well since your body will start breaking down protein in the muscle to fuel your body energy.  

7. A Good Stretch Before, In-between And After Chest Exercises
When stretching, you should do it slowly.  Why it matter?  When pulling the muscle slowly, you will incorporate the maximum number of muscle fibers to perform the stretch since not all muscle fibers are identical, and there are fast and slow twitch fiber types that the body uses for different purposes. With the proper stretching, you are likely to build your chest muscle to the fullest potential and prevent possible injuries from happening. 

8. Incline Dumbbell Flyes Exercise
When doing an incline dumbbell, do a lighter weight is preferred to avoid injury on your shoulders.  While lying back on the bench, extending those arms straight over us, out to the side slowly, and pause when you are about parallel to the floor, and back in, and you are going to stop over your shoulders and no further.  At this time, the dumbbell should be directly in front of you.  Do this for 12 reps if you can.  

If you can digest the information presented here and begin a routine of once a week chest workout.  You are surely on the way to build your chest fully and enjoy the benefits of good body posture bring to you every day.  One more tip to the chest workout, you can skip a whole week of chest workout for every 10 or 15 weeks of non-stop workout routine depending on your body condition to allow it to have a full recovery period. If you ever skip your workout for a few weeks, be sure to do lighter weight for the first week and do longer stretching time to let it adjust.   

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There is a rumor being circulated online since 2013 and has been translated into many languages and it tries to explain the colors of squares at the end of tubes of various toothpastes.  It said that different colors represent the chemical content of the product.

Green = Natural
Blue = Natural + Herbal
Red = Natural + Chemical Composition
Black = Pure Chemical

At first, this is really believable since you see it everyday, and you never question about it.  How could it be?
Believe it or not, you will go check out your toothpaste right away if you are at home.

However, the colored squares at the end of the tube was actually NOT used to identify the formulation of the toothpaste inside, but rather to be used by the packaging machine.  Since depending on the color on the design of the tube, there is a different color light shines on it and its reflection is picked up by a light beam sensor so that the machine can identify the position of where to clamp and cut.  The colored squares are also called "eye marks" or "color marks" in the packaging industry.

Remember the composition of a toothpaste is available on the tube itself, where the ingredients information is shown.

But is this the end of the story?

May be so, but have you ever thought about why people want to believe it and some still do after knowing this online information is a hoax?  Nowadays, we've heard overwhelming information about some products may cause cancer or unhealthy due to certain chemicals used in the products or even fake products out in the market.  Consumers are losing their confidence and feel helpless on identifying what is really good for them and for their families.  A simple coloring codes seem so easy to understand and as if you were wearing a special x-ray glasses that you can see through the product and its composition and feel rest assure that you can tell whether the product is safe or harm.  It is just too good to be true.

I guess we don't have that special power to identify what is good or harmful in our daily used products or groceries, and we end up in the game of probabilities.  However, I still believe that our wonderful body can play a big role of detoxifying the toxins surrounding by us if we treat our body well.  Let's have a good and healthy lifestyle to begin with and not worry too much about something you cannot control.  Healthy body starts with a healthy and strong mind!
 

Statins are a group of drugs used to lower cholesterol levels in the blood stream.  It helps to lower the risk of atheroma or a plaque build-up inside the blood vessels.  As a result, statins help to reduce the risk of having a heart attack.  

Recently, there is a 20 years study on people who taking Statins had concluded that there are many unforeseen effects to statin users.  It's not the drug itself has the main problem, but it's the behavioral and psychological problems associated with the taking the drugs. 

Here are the findings that have negative impacts on people's health:

• Calorie and fat intake increase
  
• License to eat more
  
• Increased 29 percents to have diabetes - since the known side effects of statin are diabetes and muscle aches 
  
• Eat less healthy food
  
• Slack off on exercise
  
• Average body-mass has increase from 29 to 31
  
• Statins provide a false reassurance
  
• Lead to abandon healthy lifestyles
  

People should really listen to their body more closely and don't treat the body like a machine.  Don't just take the medicine and stop thinking about the root cause of problem (why it caused at the beginning).  Medicine like statins do not really treat the cause of why your level of cholesterol increases at the first place, it only lowers it by interrupting the cholesterol production pathway in the body.  Researchers should shift their focus on researching on the reason why the body wants to increase it at the first place, and not just blindly reduce it without examining other causes.  From the recent research results, we can see that the body still craves for fatty unhealthy foods.  I think there must be some connections or biological explanations behind it to cause this behaviors.  This phenomenon is really similar to how diet soda actually triggering your body to start craving for sweet things, and then you end up eating more cupcakes or craving for more carbohydrates.

So if you are taking statins, you should re-examine your lifestyles seriously.  Think ways to improve your overall health and not just depending on doctors to take care of you.  It's your body and give yourself a plan or timeline on how to take care of yourself.

Here are some changes you should consider making include:

• Eating a healthy diet that's low in fat, cholesterol and salt
  
• Exercising 30 minutes a day - light exercise is fine
  
• Managing stress - find the root causes of why they are stressing
  
• Stop bad habits such as smoking or heavy drinking or super size soft drink

In my book (shown on the right), it also has a section describing how statins reduce the production of cholestrol in the body.  

Examples of statins:  
Atorvastatin, Simvastatin, Rosuvastatin, Pravastatin, Lovastatin, Fluvastatin, Ezetimibe/simvastatin, Pitavastatin, Cerivastatin, Mevastatin, Atorvastatin/Amlodipine, Niacin/simvastatin, Simvastatin/sitagliptin, Niacin/lovastatin

Note: Don't stop taking a statin without talking to your doctor first.

Bench press exercise is a must exercise if you want to build upper-body strength especially for men since it utilizes a great deals of major muscle groups.  Many studies have shown it can improve cardiovascular health and reduce common diseases. 

However, one of dangerous workout exercises is bench press.  For one, it is obvious when there is no spotter to hold the weight if needed. Another thing is that bench press motion can easily cause joint problem from wrist to rotator cuff on shoulder or pec tears on the chest muscle.

So how do we do the bench press safely from scratch?

There are two parts to it. One is to setup the essential equipment if you are working out by yourself. Another part is how to do the exercise correctly and safely.

Let's talk about how to set it up.  You will need 3 main items.

1) A Bench Press Stand that equipped with strong safety bar that can catch the weight if it dropped.

2) Olympic barbell and Weight plates

3) Weight Bench

4. Optional: Gym Mat or Interlocking Mat 

Brand Name: Tenormin

Therapeutic Type: Beta Blocker, Beta1 Selective

This medicine is used to treat high blood pressure, chest pain, or pressure from the heart or called angina.  In addition, it normalizes the unusual heartbeats or arrhythmias.  This is available only with doctor's prescription.  In the book, A Quick Understanding on What Doctors Are Prescribing, I explained how it works in details with detail graphical illustration on why the beat is off in time.

Just give me a few minutes, you will remember how it really works.

It's recommended to take some food with this medicine in order to avoid upset stomach. It is possible to have liver damage with this drug.

Try not to drive when taking this medicine. Do abruptly stop this medicine without consulting your doctor.  This drug may take 1 or 2 weeks to have effect, but once your body gets used to it, do stop taking it unless you slowly reduce your dosage according to the direction of a physician.

So do not just stop it since you felt better and immediately switch to another blood pressure drug, they work differently.  Again, before starting any new medicines, please be sure to talk to your healthcare provider. 

Acarbose or (Precose in US, Glucobay in Europe, Prandase in Canada) is prescribed for treating Type 2 diabetes. It can be combined with other diabetes medicines and it is used for lower blood sugar since it can prevent the breakdown of starch into sugar when eating food.  

In book, A Quick Understanding on What Doctors Are Prescribing: Pharmacology for Everyday People & Finding Alternative Medications , it described that acarbose works by competiting against carbohydrates found in food supposedly binding to enzyme in order to be digested, but now the place of binding is blocked by acarbose.  As a result, less carbohydrate will be broken down into glucose molecules and sugar level in the blood will not be dramatically increased.

However, the side effect occurs when undigested carbohydrates were left in the colon and other bacteria will digest them which then caused gastrointestinal side effects.  In addition, it is possible for patients to experience hypoglycaemia (low blood sugar) if their food do not have monosaccharide.