There are different routes to opening your voice. As a voice teacher and coach for more than 20 years I have gathered many tools in my toolbox. I often combine traditional vocal exercises with improvisation. This is something that many other teachers do not offer, as most have been trained classically. I’m trained as a Jazz improviser which sheds new light on using your voice as the instrument that it is and tapping into your creative energy and letting it flow! This is great for songwriters as well and any singer who wants to make a song his or her own.Being involved in fitness in one capacity or another for over ten years, I have taken my share of nutritional supplements. When I was adding muscle and strength, I took NO products, glutamine, and creatine. When I needed to lose weight, I would consume green tea, CLA, and L-carnitine. Although my goals have changed from time to time over the past decade, there have been three supplements that have stayed in my cabinet regardless of what I wanted to do with my physique.
I have always had a multivitamin, whey protein, and the vitamin that this article covers, vitamin C. Vitamin C, also known as ascorbic acid or L-ascorbate, is an essential vitamin to the human body. It could very well be one of the safest and most important vitamins you could take on a daily basis. Vitamin C is most known as the first thing people go for whenever they have a cold. It is a water-soluble vitamin that is necessary for normal growth and development. Since it is water soluble, extra amounts that the body doesn't use leaves the body through urine within 24 hours. It is an antioxidant as well. Antioxidants are nutrients that block some of the damage caused by free radicals, which are by-products that result when our bodies transform food into energy. Antioxidants also possibly help reduce the damage to the body caused by toxic chemicals and pollutants such as cigarette smoke. Vitamin C is required for the growth and repair of tissues in all parts of your body. It is used to form collagen, a protein used to make skin, scar tissue, tendons, ligaments, and blood vessels.
It is also essential for the healing of wounds, and for the repair and maintenance of people's cartilage, bones, and teeth. C also helps with blood pressure by strengthening the walls of the arteries. It can also prevent damage to cells caused by aging as well as help reduce stress. Everybody needs Vitamin C, whether you are a hard training athlete, or an everyday person that is just trying to get in shape. C can help protect the immune system and help bodybuilders recover from intense training. It helps in protein metabolism. It not only provides our body with certain necessary proteins but also blocks the synthesis of vital proteins that cause infection and inflammation. It is also believed that vitamin C usage may support efforts to prevent heart disease, stroke, and cancer later in life. For male athletes, Vitamin C will keep testosterone levels high by supporting a lower ratio of cortisol to testosterone. This will help your body keep up that top level of performance you require on a daily basis.
In the case of women, vitamin C not only helps to protect the breaking off of the capillaries that cause heavy blood flow for women with endometriosis during menstruation but also prevents blood clotting caused by reduction of prothrombin, thrombin, and thrombokinase concentrations in the body. Also, vitamin C not only helps to improve digestive absorption, but also may support our bodies' actions in fighting against all kinds of diseases including endometriosis. Women also benefit by taking C because it helps strengthen the liver function to balance the estrogen level during the menstrual cycle. If you are pregnant or breastfeeding, you are supposed to take in more C than women that are not. Dry and splitting hair Gingivitis (inflammation of the gums) Rough, dry, scaly skin Swollen and painful joints Decreased ability to fight infection Possible weight gain because of slowed metabolism If you stay deficient for too long, you could develop scurvy.
Scurvy leads to the formation of spots on the skin, spongy gums, and bleeding from the mucous membranes. These spots are most abundant on a person's thighs and legs, and a person with the ailment looks pale, feels depressed, and is partially immobilized. Although it is mostly known to affect older adults, anyone can get it. Scurvy can be developed in as little as 90 days if you don't have enough C in your system. Now that we know you need vitamin C and why, we have to figure out how much you should take. The Food and Drug Administration set their guidelines for how much a person should take for general health. These are the FDA recommendations for each age group and gender. Now these guidelines aren't designed for athletes. Those folks that are active obviously need more C than the non-active person would. It is believed that active people can benefit from taking anywhere from 500 milligrams to as much as 3,000 mg a day, depending on the person's daily activity level. If you are sick, you may need as much as eight grams a day for the duration of your illness.
Now although it is difficult to overdose on Vitamin C since it is water soluble, it can be done if you aren't careful. How much C is too much depends on the person taking it. One thing you should not do is take it on an empty stomach. This can lead to indigestion. Also, do not take a lot at one time. Taking extra large dosages of C at one time can cause diarrhea, disturbed sleep, and nausea. Do not take more than 1,000mg of Vitamin C at one time. Hopefully after learning all the benefits of taking Vitamin C on a regular basis, you will decide to take a Vitamin C supplement and start taking it now. Regardless of whether you are looking to pack on size, get stronger, lose weight, compete, or just stay in great shape, C is one of those vitamins that will go a long way of helping you reach all of your fitness goals.Chloramine is a mixture of chlorine and ammonia, which is added to the water of many cities as a substitute for free chlorine. It is often referred to in the plural, as chloramines, because it can take on a number of
forms according to the pH and mineral content of the water. Chloramine is removed from water with essentially the same strategies that are used to remove chlorine. This means that carbon filtration is very effective, but the problem is that it takes more carbon and more contact time to do the job. That presents a challenge for shower and bath filters because there is not enough carbon or contact time, plus hot water causes carbon to expand, causing the sloughing off of chemicals and compounds which had been adsorbed. A better solution is a Vitamin C shower filter. has a lengthy history in the treatment of water and has been used by: Current research by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that L-Ascorbic acid (Vitamin-C) reacts rapidly with chlorine molecules. This reaction occurs instantly while the water passes through your showerThis reaction also occurs when the Vitamin-C molecules contact chlorine molecules in your bath water.
And according to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission's website, Questions and Answers Regarding Chloramine document, Removal from Water section, published by Water Quality and last updated on 4/12/07: Q: Can Vitamin C be used to remove chlorine and chloramine for A: Exposures via respiration do not occur from use of chloraminated drinking water. Based on personal preference, some individuals may choose to reduce exposure to chlorine or chloramine. acid) has recently been included in AWWA (American Water Works Association)Standard (AWWA, 2005b) as one of the methods for dechlorination of disinfectedSFPUC and other utilities have used Vitamin C for dechlorination prior to environmental discharges of chlorinated and chloraminated water. Since ascorbic acid is weakly acidic, the pH of water may decrease slightly (Tikkaned et at., 2001). Ascorbic acid has been used for a long time as one of the dechlorinating agents for preservation of chlorinated or
chloraminated water samples for laboratory analysis. "The removal of chloramine is not necessary from a public healthhowever, some customers may chose to remove either chlorine or chloramine for bathing purposes. There are no NSF International certified point of use devices utilizing Vitamin C, however SFPUC determined that 1000 mg of Vitamin C . . . remove chloramine completely in a medium size bathtub without significantly depressing pH. Vitamin C can be purchased on the Internet, as well as effervescent Vitamin JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING 2 (3): Urbansky ET, Freeman DM, Rubio FJ United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA), Office of Research and Development, National Risk Management Research Laboratory, Water Supply and Water Resources Division, 26 W Martin Luther King Dr, Cincinnati, In studies on the formation of disinfection byproducts (DBPs), it is necessary to scavenge residual active (oxidizing) chlorine in order to
rx the chlorination byproducts (such as haloethanoates) at a point inSuch research projects often have distinct needs from requirements for regulatory compliance monitoring. Thus, methods designed for compliance monitoring are not always directly applicable, but must be adapted. research describes an adaptation of EPA Method 552 in which ascorbic acid treatment is shown to be a satisfactory means for reducing residual oxidizing chlorine, i.e., HOCl, ClO-, and Cl-2, prior to determiningAscorbic acid rapidly reduces oxidizing chlorine compounds, and it has the advantage of producing inorganic halides and dehydroascorbic acid as opposed to halogenated organic moleculesIn deionized water and a sample of chlorinated tap water, systematic biases relative to strict adherence to Method 552 were precise and could be corrected for using similarly treated standards and analyte-fortifiedThis was demonstrated for the quantitation of chloroethanoate,
bromoethanoate, 2,2-dichloropropanoate (dalapon), trichloroethanoate, bromochloroethanoate, and bromodichloroethanoate when extracted, as the acids, into tert-butyl methyl ether (MTBE) and esterified with diazomethane prior to gas chromatography with electron capture detection (GC-ECD). Recoveries for chloroethanoate, bromoethanoate, dalapon, dichloroethanoate, trichloroethanoate, bromochloroethanoate, bromodichloroethanoate, dibromoethanoate, and 2-bromopropanoate at concentrations near the lower limit of detectionAscorbic acid reduction appears to be the best option presently available when there is a need to quench residual oxidants fast in a DBP formation study without generating other halospecies but must be implemented cautiously to ensure no untoward interactions in JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING 2 (2): Urbansky ET, Schenck KM United States Environmental Protection Agency(US EPA), Office of Research Many potable water disinfection byproducts
(DBPs) that result from the reaction of natural organic matter (NOM) with oxidizing chlorine are known or suspected to be carcinogenic andThe Ames assay is routinely used to assess an overall level of mutagenicity for all compounds in samples from potable water supplies or laboratory studies of DBP formation. Reduction of oxidizing disinfectants is required since these compounds can kill the bacteria or react with the agar, producing chlorinated byproducts. When mutagens are collected by passing potable water through adsorbing resins, active chlorine compounds react with the resin, producing undesirable mutagenic artifacts. bioanalytical and chemoanalytical needs of drinking water DBP studies required a suitable reductant. Many of the candidate compounds failed to meet those needs, including 2,4-hexadienoic (sorbic) acid, 2,4-pentanedione (acetylacetone), 2-butenoic (crotonic) acid, 2-butenedioic (maleic and fumaric) acids and buten-2-ol (crotyl alcohol).
if they (1) reacted too slowly with active chlorine, (2) formed mutagenic byproducts, or (3) interfered in the quantitation of known chlorination DBPs. L-Ascorbic acid reacts rapidly and stoichiometrically with active chlorine and has limited interactions with halogenated DBPs. work, we found no interference from L-ascorbic acid or its oxidation product (dehydroascorbic acid) in mutagenicity assays of chlorinated NOM using Salmonella typhimurium TA100, with or without metabolic activationThis was demonstrated for both aqueous solutions of chlorinated NOM and concentrates derived from the involatile, ether-extractable chlorinated byproducts of those solutions. Save 30% off MSRP Vitamin C Shower Filter contains 210 grams of pharmaceutical grade Vitamin C, capable of neutralizing chlorine in up to 15,000 gallons of water, depending on the amount of chlorine or chloramines in your water. The higher the chlorine or chloramine levels the shorter the life of the