Silver Crosshair

When you purchase a vehicle like a car or a motorbike, a tailor-made model, instead you’re presented a selection of well designed and engineered machines that have required years of design and development. However, when it comes to websites it seems to be different. Most businesses assume that their site will be designed and developed to their exact specifications. This is perfectly natural, and in a lot of business plans it’s utterly necessary.

And all the same - is that genuinely the best way to go about things for all situations? Consider this question : how can I create an e-commerce website? Consider content managed websites as an example : feature-rich websites, with demanding security requirements, a backoffice area so the website proprietor can update the content on the site. All of this, while requiring the website to be easy to browse and buy items for website visitors. Answering all those needs is no insignificant chore, and if anything goes wrong, you have to go back to the developer to ask for fixes. Custom-built websites in this way have a large weight to carry.

All the same, there’s another option to this method which is much more money saving, potentially gives you a lot more facilities, and gives more stability,reliability and security - website templates.

People acknowledge nowadays that bespoke websites frequently aren’t necessary and that in a lot of cases, it’s best to adjust your goals even ever-so slightly so they match a robust, popular and proven website template than to gamble with a custom website design to fit your goals. Why? Due to the complexity a contemporary website asks for. You want a secure, tried and tested template that powers your site, not recently written code that hasn’t been tested. Not only that, but templates commonly are updated often and these updates patched to your website, so your website is following all the present-day technologies showing your latest tweets online.

But maybe the greatest selling point is this however: website templates are a lot more cheaper than bespoke websites. Why pay £7000 on a site when you can acquire a ste with many more features for only £350, for example?

These issues should cause you to think twice about your plans and whether to opt for a custom-made site or a templated one.

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Copyright 2006 Mark Hyman MD

What’s the greatest threat facing our civilization? (No, it’s
not the Islamic jihad.) It’s obesity. Due to its attendant
health and economic costs, scientists predict that obesity alone
will topple economic and social structures, induce a wide range
of dire diseases, and drastically cut short Americans’ life
spans.

These are more than another set of statistics — they predict
things that can and will affect you, your family, your health,
and your pocketbook. If you are among the two thirds of adult
Americans struggling to escape escalating weight gain, (or even
if you’re teetering on the edge with ten persistent pounds you
can’t seem to lose), as a physician, I recommend that you take
action to lose weight and protect your future health.

And I have good news for you. I’ve developed a simple plan to
help you lose weight automatically based on a new scientific
breakthrough.

Despite the abysmal failure of conventional medical approaches,
this plan is different because it’s based on recent,
groundbreaking scientific research, research that I predict will
totally revolutionize weight loss and change the landscape of
medicine as we know it.

Many of the answers to our weight and health problems are buried
in thousands of research papers. With the aid of a number of
very brilliant thinkers and scientists, I’ve gathered and
synthesized the greatest advances in medical science over the
last 20 years — advances that usually take decades to get
incorporated into medical practice. Translated into a simple
program that has brought easy, sustainable weight loss to
thousands of people, you can access them today.

In the recent past, many pundits theorized that society-wide
weight gain was due to our genes. In a sense, they were right,
but genes only tell half the story. We share the same genes as
our hunter- gatherer forebears who foraged in the woods and
hunted wild game 20,000 years ago. What’s changed is the
environment within which our genes operate.

Up until modern times, man’s natural environment supplied the
foods we were genetically programmed to eat. But with the advent
of industrialized agriculture and food production, we began
eating mass-produced and processed foods that genetically
program us to add pounds.

Here’s how:

Food is information — not just calories — and food information
speaks to our genes, turning some genes ON and other genes OFF.
That’s why it’s genes, not calories, that count.

Until recently, scientists believed that the critical mechanism
for weight loss was caloric intake and expenditure — you eat
little and exercise hard to lose each pound. But that’s hard to
do and harder to maintain, recent scientific studies reveal (and
no doubt not surprising to anyone who has tried repeatedly and
unsuccessfully to lose weight).

Using the caloric mechanism for weight loss is a bit like
manually cranking a lever to open your garage door inch-by-inch
and then having to hold the door open. Wouldn’t you rather push
the button that activates the circuitry to open your garage door
automatically?

To do that for weight loss, you have to access the master
biological mechanisms controlling weight loss and weight gain.
Using those mechanisms opens the door to automatic weight loss.
The recent scientific discoveries I’ve assembled decode the
instruction manual of our basic biology. At last, we can control
the master mechanisms: our genes themselves.

The new genetic science (called Functional Medicine) teaches
that our genes interact intimately with our environment. Every
bite of food we eat, every thought we think, every stress we
experience, or toxin we inhale carries a specific message to our
genes, turning them on (or off), and telling them how to behave.

As a result, our genes are programmed moment-by-moment to
actively create either weight loss or weight gain. Scientists
have tracked exactly how all the different foods trigger the
messages sent to your genes. With that knowledge, you can give
your body the foods that work in your favor — and avoid ones
that don’t.

For instance, for decades, people were warned to avoid fats at
all costs, but now we know that the type of fat you eat is more
important than the amount of fat you eat. The new science traces
the biological impact of good fats, like the omega-3 fatty acids
(contained in fish, fish oils, certain nuts and many other
foods) and bad fats like the trans-fats contained in many
processed foods.

What researchers found is that good fats turn on your body’s fat
burning genes and bad fats turn off the fat burning genes. When
you consume EPA or DHA, both omega-3 fatty acids, they access a
metabolic gateway called the PPAR receptor, to activate genes
that increase your metabolism, help you burn fat, and assist you
in processing bodily glucose more effectively so that foods
won’t get stored as fat.

It’s as if the EPA and DHA opens up an extra lane on your
hormonal superhighway, making for a smooth and easy route
towards slimness and health. That’s why, for automatic weight
loss, I recommend adding EPA and DHA (both found in fish oil) to
your diet, beginning today. On the other hand, unhealthy
transfats (such as found in many processed and fast foods) act
as a metabolic roadblock to weight loss, and if you eat them,
you may find yourself crawling along at a snail’s pace, going
nowhere.

These are just two of the hundreds of ways that you’ll learn to
awaken the fat-burning code hidden in your DNA. In my new book,
UltraMetabolism, due out in March, 2006, you’ll discover a wide
range of foods that tell your genes to shed pounds, while
learning to avoid the many other foods that tell your genes to
pack on the pounds. Eating the foods right for your genes allows
you to literally program your body to lose weight automatically,
even as you sleep!

And that is the key: be simply learning to eat the foods that
ignite your body’s fat burning engines, and avoiding the foods
that snuff out these engines, you finally begin the process of
working WITH your body, instead of against it — something that
all fad diets fail to do, which is why they all fail in the
long-run.

But, because UltraMetabolism teaches a simple plan to harness
your body’s own powerful fat burning forces — ones that have
evolved over millions of years — you are actually programming
your body to lose weight, automatically.

Why struggle and suffer with ineffective diets when you can
actually teach your body to be slim and healthy? With the simple
two-step plan I’ve developed, you can program your body to lose
weight automatically. In the first step, you eliminate all of
the bad foods that slow your metabolism, make you feel lethargic
and lead to disease; in the second step, you add the good foods
that crank up your metabolism, boost your energy and revitalize
your health.

Twenty-first century weight loss is easier than you’ve ever
dreamed. And it’s something that I am confident about since I’ve
treated over 2,000 patients, many of whom have experienced the
very same automatic weight loss that I’ve described here.

My message to you is simple: If you want to fit into your jeans,
you have to learn to fit into your genes!

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To an uninformed onlooker what happens in a kinesiology session
seems beyond belief. Because many of the techniques and
procedures used interact with the body’s subtle energy system
rather than the physical body, they often appear bizarre and
even laughable. When they come back for their second
appointment, some clients tell me that they left the first
session feeling that they had totally wasted their money, but
that the improvement in their health and sense of well being
speaks for itself.

The basic tool - kinesiology or muscle testing - allows the
practitioner to access information about the client that neither
the practitioner nor the client may know at a conscious level.
Kinesiology is in a unique position amongst alternative and
complementary therapies. It can be practiced as a unique
discipline in its own right with its own protocols and
therapeutic techniques, or else it can be used as a tool to help
practitioners in other disciplines, such as aromatherapy or
chiropractic, hone their treatments more accurately.

The word kinesiology means ‘the study of movement’ and was
originally used to describe a field of science concerned with
the working of joints and muscles. There are still people known
as kinesiologists who work like this, but another type of
kinesiology evolved from this. A process of muscle testing to
monitor the effects of disease on muscle response was developed.
It was noticed that seemingly healthy muscles would become weak
for no apparent reason.

It was during the 1960s that American chiropractor Dr. George
Goodheart found that massaging specific points on the body not
only improved related disease conditions but also improved the
response of related muscles. He recognised the relationship
between a disturbed muscle response and a disturbance in the
related organ or system. He began to use muscle testing to
monitor this relationship. He also used earlier work by Frank
Chapman and Terence Bennett to identify a system of specific
points on the body for correcting imbalances. On the basis of
this discovery he developed the system of applied kinesiology.

He discovered that muscle response might be affected in ways
that can only be explained by the traditional acupuncture theory
of how the body works. According to this model there is a system
of pathways or ‘meridians’ running up and down the body through
which flows a ‘vital energy’ or ‘life force’ which drives and
informs all the cells and functions of the body. If this energy
system is in balance, health can be maintained. If it is
disturbed, then physical or other disturbances may be produced
or sustained. These energy disturbances also have an effect on
muscle response, and the term kinesiology has come to mean
muscle testing.

Muscle testing is a painless procedure involving the
practitioner applying gentle pressure to specific parts of the
body (often arms and legs) to test the response of the
underlying muscle. The particular part of the body involved is
placed in a specific position, in order, as far as possible, to
isolate the muscle that is being tested. The muscle will either
easily be able to resist the pressure from the practitioner or
will give way, at least slightly. The kinesiologist uses this
response to access information about what is happening and what
is needed. Because of the inter-relationship between muscles,
meridians and body systems, this information can apply not only
to the muscle being tested but also give valuable information
about other imbalances within the body and the necessary
procedures to correct them.

Kinesiologists generally focus on the acupuncture meridian
system to restore the client to good health: they stimulate
points lying on the meridians to overcome a disturbance and
rebalance the energy system. Acupuncturists put needles into
these points, but kinesiologists hold or rub combinations of
points instead. Sometimes treatment consists solely of touching
or rubbing these points, but often it will involve the person
thinking specific words or about a particular event or person.
The practitioner may place magnets on the body or use sound and
colour to help re-establish harmony in the body. Sometimes
homeopathic or flower remedies are placed on the body or given
to the client to take. The possibilities are endless. The exact
treatment is determined by the muscle testing. No two treatments
are alike even for people with identical problems.

All the different branches of kinesiology have originated from
the work of George Goodheart. Because of its origins in physical
therapy applied kinesiology has tended to concentrate on
structural problems and solutions. Other branches of kinesiology
have been developed, such as health kinesiology, educational
kinesiology, classical kinesiology, creative kinesiology and 3
In 1 kinesiology. All use the basic muscle testing skills, but
each kinesiology very much reflects the interests and
personality of its developer.

Some branches of kinesiology, such as health kinesiology, make
extensive use of verbal muscle testing. The response of a
correctly positioned muscle to light pressure can be either to
lock or unlock. The kinesiologist uses this to ask verbal
questions: the locked response of the muscle indicates “yes” and
the unlocked or spongy response indicates “no”. The practitioner
will then use systematic questioning with the muscle testing to
establish what technique or techniques are needed from the many
possible procedures that the practitioner learnt during
training. The practitioner can also use verbal questioning in
conjunction with muscle testing to establish an exercise or a
diet and supplement programme for the client. Because of the
ability to access information through muscle testing, this
programme will be tailored specifically for the individual
concerned.

Some kinesiologists do not use verbal questioning at all or only
in a limited way. Instead they rely on accessing information by
testing a muscle whilst touching specific points on the body or
using a finger mode. Finger modes are specific combinations of
finger positions, which relate to specific body systems,
correction procedures, and so on.

Kinesiology techniques have also been incorporated into other
therapies, so, for example, homeopaths, Bowen practitioners,
chiropractors and aromatherapists may use muscle testing to
confirm their judgement about the correct course of action. An
aromatherapist might use muscle testing to establish precisely
the best oil or combination of oils for a massage treatment.
Some therapists will test the whole range of oils they have at
their disposal and other therapists will only use kinesiology
testing when they feel that several oils are clinically
indicated and there is no one obvious over-riding reason to
choose one oil rather than another. A homeopath may use muscle
testing in a similar way to choose between several equally
indicated remedies or to establish which is the best potency for
this particular client. Chiropractors sometimes use muscle
testing to confirm their diagnosis as to the exact location for
an intervention procedure.

Kinesiology has been successful in helping people suffering from
physical problems such as eczema, psoriasis, acne, dermatitis,
asthma, sinusitis, hay fever, allergies, stress, tinnitus,
vertigo, oste- and rheumatoid-arthritis, headaches and
migraines, back ache and old painful injuries, periodontal
disease, IBS, hyperactivity, ME, tiredness, , epilepsy, PMS and
problems associated with the menopause, etc. It also helps
people in psychological ways by increasing self confidence and
motivation, reducing anxiety, fears and obsessive behaviour and
lightening depression. It can also help people function better
intellectually, reduce clumsiness, improve memory and help
dyslexia. Kinesiology has been used to help people find their
path in life, to establish new and more relevant goals and to
improve their potential in sport, the arts and education.

Bringing about healthy and lasting change involves re-balancing
the person’s energy system, re-locating them in a balanced way
within their physical, emotional and energy environment. This
means that the person is not divorced from their symptoms: the
symptoms are seen as imbalances embroidered onto the tapestry of
the person’s physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual
lives. Each individual has a past that influences the present
and a physical and social environment that modifies how the
symptoms are presented. Kinesiology can be a vital tool to
restore harmony and well-being in a person’s life. It does not
impose from the outside or follow rigid rules about what is
correct. Kinesiology allows the energy system to speak for
itself: this combination of innate wisdom and kinesiology
know-how has transformed many people’s lives.

Here are three short case studies to illustrate the power of
kinesiology:

One client got off the couch and said to me: “I didn’t feel
anything.” I explained that some clients do not experience
anything while they are lying on the couch but that does not
mean that they will not get better. She said: “No, I didn’t mean
that. What I meant was that I experienced no pain when I got off
the couch.” She had had a hip replacement operation seven years
earlier and told me, when I was taking the case history, that
she had just changed one constant pain (from her damaged hip)
for another constant pain (the artificial hip). She was
extremely surprised and excited that she had been able to get
off the couch without experiencing any pain.

A client with severe vertigo came to see me. He needed several
sessions spread over several months. Each lasted about 10
minutes. This disjointed treatment schedule was established by
muscle testing. His energy system wanted a small change made and
then time to absorb and process it before the next change.
Fortunately the client was very patient. He came to see me the
required number of times and his vertigo disappeared completely.

I was seeing a client who had been sneezing so much that her rib
cage had started to hurt. We were making progress when she
phoned me and asked if I could help her: she had been to the
dentist for an extraction and was now in excruciating pain, in
spite of taking antibiotics for a week before and after the
extraction. She now had to resort to pain killers and was
extremely distressed. I arranged an emergency appointment for
her and quickly established that the pain was because the energy
system had not recognised that the tooth had been removed. I did
two simple procedures established by muscle testing. The first
one was a simple phantom sensation correction where she had to
place a finger against the tooth while acupuncture points were
rebalanced. For the second procedure a magnet was placed on her
cheek and other acupuncture points were rebalanced. When I next
saw her, she told me that the pain had gone very quickly after
the session. She said “Thank you for coming to the rescue … I
couldn’t believe it.”

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