Family Tree - How The Symptoms Of Black Mold Exposure Often Go Unrecognized

Mold is a serious health problem, but the health risks of exposure to black mold have only recently come to light. Before, doctors thought that these were symptoms of other illnesses. The role that black mold exposure plays in these symptoms is just beginning to be fully studied. Here are some common symptoms of black mold exposure that are often mistaken. Chronic Sinus Trouble More than 35 million Americans suffer from chronic sinus trouble. This means that you have congestion, runny nose, sinus headaches and other symptoms. You don't have a cold or hay fever; you just have "bad sinuses." It's something genetic that's been passed down, or a seasonal allergy. Most people leave it at that. Recent studies have shown that sinus trouble is almost always caused by environmental factors. And, the number one environmental factor is exposure to black mold. Mold releases spores which become airborne. Everyone is allergic to these spores in varying degrees. When you come into contact with airborne spores, they irritate your sinuses and produce these symptoms. Asthma It has traditionally been accepted that asthma was genetic. It seemed that it was passed down from one generation to the next, and if it was in your family tree, you would be more likely to develop it. However, in the last few years studies have shown that asthma is due more to environmental factors than it was previously believed. There is a link between exposure to black mold in early life and the development of asthma later on. It is difficult to carry out a study on the effect of mold on the development of asthma, but the anecdotal evidence out there is overwhelming. Hopefully in the next few years, a definite link will be established. Flu Symptoms Some varieties of toxic mold can produce flu-like symptoms. This includes nausea, fever and headaches. It is difficult to diagnose as black mold poisoning, however, because it could be so many other things. Toxic mold spores can cause problems for any part of the body, including the digestive tract. We usually think of mold having an effect on breathing, but spores enter the body through the respiratory system. From there, the microtoxins can go anywhere. Mental Illness It is hard to believe that something as seemingly harmless as mold could have an effect on our brains, but it does. Exposure to toxic mold can have neurological effects, as spores enter the body and release toxins into the bloodstream. Common symptoms include chronic fatigue, hearing and memory loss, and mild symptoms of dementia. These are symptoms of the very advanced stages of toxic mold poisoning. If someone you know is suffering neurological damage due to toxic black mold exposure, you should seek medical help immediately. These symptoms are elusive, and that is why you should make sure your house is mold free. Have your house tested, either by a professional or do it yourself with a mold testing kit from your hardware store. Keeping the mold out of your house will greatly reduce the risk of developing these symptoms of black mold exposure. Learn more information on stop toxic black mold and health problems with toxic mold. ToxicBlackMoldHelp.org is a comprehensive resource to help individuals to test and inspect, identify health symptoms and removal of toxic black mold. Article Source:http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mandy_Fain

Family Tree - How To Write and Sell Nostalgia Articles

Most of us have inherited dog-eared piles of old black and white photographs, which now languish unheeded in the bottom of a draw. Well it's time to bring them out, dust them down and get them published. The past is the present trend and your photographs could form the basis for marketable articles, fillers and readers' letters. Nostalgia The over 50s market loves to remember old times. There are plenty of opportunities here for publication. In the UK, magazines like The People's Friend want first person memories of childhood, special events, people and places. Accompanied by relevant photographs from your family album, your work has an excellent chance of acceptance. Fillers and readers' letters are also a good bet. Yours magazine has a regular slot, 'The clothes we wore', and invites readers to send in illustrations of fashion through the decades. Sometimes readers are asked to contribute recollections and pictures on specific subjects such as holidays or Christmas. Social History Genealogy is big business and the wealth of family tree magazines offers many openings. Family history magazines are looking for interesting stories about readers' families that can be backed up by photographs. Pictures can also form the basis for less personal articles covering aspects of social history such as wartime, transport or housing. In the UK, The Lady will consider articles on social history, especially when tied in to timely anniversaries. If you can provide suitable photographs with your piece, your income will be enhanced significantly. Don't forget the trade press as technological advances can sometimes be best illustrated by comparison with the past. Old pictures can also emphasise the illustrious history of a product or company. A picture of granny sipping tea from a vacuum flask on a picnic in 1920 might be of interest to Thermos or to a specialist catering publication. Check out Willings Press Guide at your local library for the definitive list of trade papers. Local History County magazines constitute another market for your old pictures. How about a picture of your local High Street in the 1940s? Compare it with a recent picture and write a feature about how things have changed. Take another look at your family portraits - the background scenery might prove just as valuable as the human subjects. If your ancestors lived in several different places or took adventurous holidays you might find you have enough material to approach several different publications outside your usual locality. Heritage For UK writers, the heritage market is expanding, with much of the readership coming from a new generation of loyal expats. Articles about Britain's rich history of people, places, traditions and folklore will be welcomed. Can you remember a regular event that took place in your childhood town or a now famous person that lived nearby? Wartime memories are also popular with the older generation. Pictures of men and women in military uniform go down well with nostalgia magazines, particularly when accompanied by some lively memories or an authoritative article. Inspiration Thumbing through old photos can be an enjoyable way of stimulating new ideas. Who was that lady and why did she look so sad? Could this be the starting point for a short story? Looking at ourselves as children, or at loved ones who may no longer with us, may evoke emotions and thoughts that can be integrated into our writing. Perhaps you are working on a non-contemporary novel. Use your photographs to get the historical details, such as dress and location, just right. If you have a comprehensive collection of photographs of real historic interest, you might consider writing a non-fiction book. Do some further research to see whether your idea has real potential and remember that your chances of finding a publisher for non-fiction are higher than for fiction. If you are moved to write your personal memoirs - be warned. Unless you are famous or your life has been truly remarkable, you will hold little interest for publishers. However, as a legacy for future generations of the family, some find this a worthwhile project. Presentation All submitted photographs should be clearly labelled with a caption, your name, address and title of your article. Write these details on an adhesive label and attached it to the back of the picture. Never write directly onto the print. If you are wary about sending original photographs with your article query, enclose scanned copies in the first instance. If you are contributing readers' letters or fillers it is probably better to provide the original print. Editors may not feel motivated to correspond with you for this type of submission but they usually do send your pictures back. Louise Dop is a successful freelance writer and technical author. Her ebook, The Writer's Secret Weapon, brings together a collection of the best free online resources for writers and gives an insight into the writing life. With over 50 direct links to resources, this straightforward guide will show you the real-life tips and tricks that - armed with an Internet connection and basic computer literacy - you can try for yourself right away. http://www.clearlywrite.co.uk Article Source:http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Louise_Dop

Family Tree - Why You Should Avoid Free Website and Hosting Deals

Do a search for free websites or free hosting on Google and you'll get 191,000,000 or more links to websites that offer this so called deal. If you are planning to setup a family site, with the latest news, photos of the kids etc, or you're a genealogist and would like to post your family tree and information for other genealogists, and all the traffic you want or need is your family, friends and whatever strangers you happen to meet and would like to send to your URL, then by all means take advantage of their offer. Because that is probably all the traffic you are going to get to visit your site. However if you are seriously considering becoming an internet entrepreneur, find yourself a reputable web design company and an affordable hosting plan. Too expensive? Not at all. Actually, the start up costs for an internet business is usually less than a hundred dollars (this figure is based on the average cost of a domain, a professionally designed website and set up fees). Naturally custom built websites would be substantially more expensive but, unless you require the addition of unique features in order to manage your business, your most cost effective choice would be a professionally designed website. There are three factors which I encourage my clients to keep in mind when selecting a website for their online business venture. The deciding factors when selecting your web design should be the ease of navigation and the suitability of the page layout to your content. Customers come to your site searching for a product, service, or information. If your site does not provide easy access to the content they want, they not going to hang around just to admire the design elements of your website. By selecting a layout suitable for the content you intend to place on your web pages, whether its product images and descriptions or informational content, like this article for example, you can save a lot of time and--if you intend to have your support staff setup your content-- money as well. The third factor is the basic web design. While many experts, and myself as well, believe customers are sub-consciously motivated by colors, (red encourages them to take action, blue promotes a sense of trust, yellow and orange, a sense of well being or contentment, etc), the basic design elements of your website such as the background colors, images, bullets, flash etc, are really a matter of personal preference. Your free provider offers templates you may use to create your website. However, before you go to the trouble, read the fine print. Those templates are the property of the free provider. You may only use them as long as you use the free provider's services. If you decide to move your site to another hosting provider in future, that lovely site you worked so hard to design isn't going anywhere bucko. On the other hand, once you purchase a professionally designed website, it's yours. You can move it to Timbuktu if you're so inclined. A good support staff is an extremely valuable if not totally indispensable resource for a new website owner. Unfortunately it is also a resource that very few free website providers offer. Would you like to know how to determine whether a web design company has a good support staff before you purchase your website? Simply email the seller these two simple questions. 1. How do I setup links on my site? 2. What software will I need to manage my site? If you don't get a response to your questions within 24 to 48 hours, look elsewhere for your website. If the only answers you receive are an offer to setup the links for you for a small fee and a list of expensive software products, look elsewhere for your website. A good support staff will respond to your request within 24 to 48 hours. A good support staff will offer to setup links on your site for you for a small fee--and provide you with a list of links to free software you can use to manage your site. The list will probably include some optional software products you may find useful for the management of your site. The key words here are free and optional. An excellent support staff will tell you up front whether a product is optional or not. The two software products you absolutely must have to manage your website are a good text editor and FTP program. Any support staff worth their salt will tell you that there are several free text editors with WISIWIG (what you see is what you get) capabilities available on the internet. These editors are an excellent choice for those of you who don't know HTML. The staff will also tell you that there you can get free FTP programs as well. An excellent support staff will offer advice similar to the advice given in the following paragraph. With a good WISIWIG text editor, you can easily set up your links even if you don't know HTML. Refer to the help section for "hyperlinks" in your WISIWIG text editor to learn how to use this feature on your editor. By the way, if you don't know HTML, it's actually an extremely easy language to learn. There are free HTML tutorials available on the internet. You can learn more about it here (www.tizag.com/htmlT/). A domain is an extremely valuable asset; you should most definitely have one of your very own. Without a domain of your own, you may as well save yourself the time and trouble of trying to start an online business at all. The average cost of a .com domain is approx $8.95 per year. You'll find that some web design companies will include your domain with your professionally designed website at no extra charge. If you are planning to use a free provider, then don't bother purchasing a domain for your new site unless you intend to shell out the provider's membership fee. Most free providers provide you with two membership options'free or paid. If you choose the free membership option, the provider will set up your URL for you website like this: FREE PROVIDER DOMAIN/YOUR USER ID, or even worse, like this: FREE PROVIDER DOMAIN/DIR/YOUR USER ID. Settle for either one these URLs, and you'll be lucky to even get your site indexed by the search engines and directories at all. You see, many search engines and directories will not accept your website submissions if your URL contains a forward slash. Some major search engines and directories categorically refuse to accept submissions for websites hosted with free providers at all. Google rarely indexes sites hosted by free providers, and even more rarely gives the site a ranking greater than 0/10. Even if you are lucky enough to land yourself a few customers for your site, the inclusion of a free provider's domain in your URL can also have an adverse affect on your ability to get repeat customers for your site. Yourdomain.com is fairly easy for your customer to recall. Your provider domain.com/your user id would be extremely difficult for them to remember since they have probably never done business with your provider. . Look at it this way. Your URL is the name and address of your online company. If you were operating a brick and mortar business which name and address would you want to print on your business cards, forms and advertisements? Your Free Provider's Company Name/ Your User ID, we're located inside Free Provider Company's premises. Or Your Company Name, we're located at 123 Main Street. Of course your free provider will be more than happy to setup your website under your own domain'provided you pay their membership fee and purchase the domain yourself to boot. Sort of defeats your purpose of saving a few bucks, doesn't it? Now let's take a look at the pros and cons of your hosting plan. They are not providing free hosting out of the goodness of their hearts, my friend. Read that fine print again. The majority of free providers offer limited amounts of web space, bandwidth and features. Better check the number of web pages you're allowed to setup under your free account while you're at it, because some providers set a ridiculously low limit. If you exceed whatever limits your free provider allows, you'll have to pay their membership fee and/or purchase one of their hosting plans. Paid hosting providers offer you a choice of plans tailored to fit your needs. If your needs change, you simply upgrade to the next plan. Although prices vary, hosting plans range from 8.95 to 14.95 per month, based on the amount of space, bandwidth and features you want. I've found some free providers who offer small quantities of additional memory for as much as 5 bucks each. Choose that option and you may find yourself paying twice as much for hosting as a paid provider charges for the best hosting plan they offer. Again, you need to make sure your hosting provider offers a good support staff. So before purchasing a hosting plan, email them a couple of simple questions, such as; how do I set my DNS (Domain Name Servers) and will you set up my site for me? A good hosting company offers 24/7 support. Their support staff will respond within 24 hours and give you two options to both questions. A good support staff offer to set up your DNS at no charge and setup your site for a small fee An excellent support staff will also give you simple instructions on how to do these tasks yourself. Even if you have no intentions of doing these tasks yourself, you may want to learn how to do some tasks yourself in the future. You should make sure that if and when you do, your support staff will be willing to provide you with the information you need should you require it. If you are determined to succeed in the online marketplace, you'll save yourself a lot of time and trouble if you start out right. Before you leap on that free website, free hosting offer, do your research. Read the fine print and see if the deal they are offering will meet your needs now and calculate the cost that you could incur if you have to exceed the allotment of services they provide for free in the future. If you want your own domain, then add the cost of the provider's membership too. Talley the costs of "free provider's services", then set it aside and shop around a bit. Visit a web design company offering professionally designed websites for less than a hundred dollars and see what they have to offer. Take a look at the hosting plans available with all the features you need. Now, compare the costs of both options. Keep in mind that, as with any business, you will eventually have to invest a little money if you truly want to succeed. While we're on the subject of money, please be very, very careful when it comes to investing your hard earned dollars. Sadly, many of the businesses deals you'll find offering your own website and free hosting are at best affiliate sites or multi-level marketing schemes. Most major search engines and directories will not index these sites. If their sales pitch includes claims that you can make hundreds or even thousands of dollars within a very short time with no effort you've found yourself a full fledged scam. You can make money on the internet, but just as with any business venture, you are going to have to invest some time and money in order to achieve your goals. The secret to being a successful entrepreneur is investing your time and money wisely. Loretta Wright is the CEO of http://www.topcat-web-design.com and also serves as the Vice President of Sales and Marketing for http://www.Topcat-Hosting.com She also oversees the operations for seven other websites she currently owns. Article Source:http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Loretta_Wright

Family Tree - Starting Your Family History

If you have ever sat and wondered about your family and where you come from your not alone, you can have an emotional roller coaster ride of an adventure seeking your kindred dead as many do. Doing your Family History is something that comes to each of us at sometime in our life, it appears as a deep-seated desire to know more about our ancestors, what they were like, and where you come from. Many remember the made for TV minnie series called "Roots" written by Alex Halley, which seemed to start a nation wide interest in something people have been doing for centuries... Genealogy, or also know today simply as Family History. I'm here to tell you some things that can be useful to you as you think about getting started doing your own personal Family History research. First start with yourself... after choosing one of the many Family History or Genealogy software's on the market today open it up and put in your personal information. Mainly you're full name, birth date, where you were born, and whatever else is asked for in the software. Then do your mediate family, wife or husband, children, or if your not married start with your parents and siblings. If you use the Pedigree Chart you can see how this looks like a tree and the farther you go back the more branches you have. That's why people often ask "who's in your family tree"? After that keep putting in your parents and their siblings, their parents and their siblings, for as far back as you know or can remember. Then when you look at it, you start to see how very quickly your ancestors add up. Don't let the shear magnitude of the numbers discourage you from continuing. You see in the digital age we live, the second most researched topic on the Internet is Genealogy, so even though you don't know all the people from your past chances are someone has done some work that you can find by doing some simple research on the world wide web. Second, remember all the stories you have heard about your parents and grand parents, write them down as best you can. They take a recording device and interview your parents or grand parents, or anyone that may have information about your family. Keep these recording and use them as reference material. Most of all the software out there will allow you to input these stories as a part of your record, and pictures. Last of all; set aside a regular time to work on this weekly, monthly, or whatever works best for you. The key here is to find time to spend doing this work on a regular basis. I can promise you that if you do this you will find yourself excited, and it wont be work at all, you'll look forward more and more to the time you spend with your kindred dead. They will become alive for you as you come to know who they are; this leads to a better understanding of yourself too. Remember this last tip, share your findings with others, and they will share with you. We are all connected at some point if you go back far enough. So just remember most likely others are doing research on your family line somewhere in the world. They will share as you share with them. Because of the times we live in today this work is linking the family of man on a worldwide bases, mainly because of the information super highway, and the advance in technology over the past 15 years. Embrace your Family History with passion, which for many used to be just a hobby, but now has become an addiction. Copyright 2005 Jessica Deets has been researching the internet for over 4 years and finds valuable information to help people. The website at http://www.genealogyworkbook.com has information, news and a current blog regarding genealogy and family history. Article Source:http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jessica_Deets