Nutrients essential for fat loss

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Your level of energy every day is determined by how much ATP our mitochondria create so that the proper enzymes can be activated to make our bodies move and function properly.


This can effect your healthy weight loss since you may not have the energy to commit 100% to your exercise for calorie burning workouts.


The amount of ATP your mitochondria create is determined by genetics, exercise level, your nutritional status and thyroid activity.


Of course you can’t change your genetics, but as we always talk about you can dictate and control your exercise and nutritional status.

I bet you didn’t know that as you age the number of mitochondria in your cells decreases in efficiency by about 5-8 percent every ten years. This is one of the main reasons why you have less energy the older you get.

One easy way to reverse this is by exercising. Those who exercise have more mitochondria, which means more potential for energy and the ability to burn more calories for healthy weight loss.


Your thyroid also plays a role in mitochondria activity and for those that have been diagnosed with hypothyroidism knows what I am talking about. Those with hypothyroidism can suffer a 60 percent reduction in ATP production and suffer from low energy and fatigue.


Iodine deficiency has a correlation with low thyroid function and some believe up to 50 percent of the population is iodine deficient. The reason for this is because changes in our food intake, eating patterns, and food production methods. Iodine levels have been decreasing since the 1970’s.


Since iodine is required to produce thyroid hormones and we are consuming less iodine in our food the result is hypothyroidism or low thyroid activity. This doesn’t bode well for healthy weight loss. In fact weight loss may stop all together and weight gain starts to occur.


So take a good whole food multivitamin that contains iodine preferably from sea vegetables such as kelp to make sure you are not causing low thyroid activity because of your nutritional habits.


Another factor that contributes to low ATP production is oxidative damage to the mitochondria. A deficiency of antioxidants increases this rate of oxidative damage to the mitochondria.


Several antioxidant nutrients can be used to protect the mitochondria from oxidative damage. Some common powerful antioxidants are green tea and coffeeberry forte.


I already talked about how our food intake, eating patterns and food production methods are influencing our thyroid production and deficiency in iodine. Well other deficiencies that are common include niacin, biotin, pyridoxine (B6), riboflavin (B2), manganese and zinc.


These are commonly deficient due to our poor diets and nutrient depleted foods. Even more reason why a quality whole food based multivitamin is essential for your mitochondria to function properly and produce plenty of ATP for energy.


One last nutrient I want to touch on that isn’t required for essential health, but has been proven effective in promoting healthy mitochondrial function is Alpha lipoic acid. Alpha lipoic acid is a cofactor in the Krebs cycle, which is part of your body’s ATP system.


This nutrient also stimulates the production of glutathione, which is a mitochondrial antioxidant. Research has shown that supplementation of alpha lipoic acid in humans may increase mitochondrial function and reduce mitochondrial damage.

As you can see many factors play a role for you to succeed in healthy weight loss. It is also hard to consistently know that you are eating enough nutrient rich foods to consume all these nutrients each and every day.


That is why a whole food based multivitamin that contains many of these nutrients is essential for your healthy weight loss.


A quality whole based multivitamin isn’t going to directly burn more calories for you like a weight loss supplement may do, but what it does is allow your body to function optimally so that you can exercise harder, create more ATP and burn more calories, which then can lead to healthy weight loss.


Make a resolution right now to make sure you are providing the best opportunity for your body to produce ATP and optimize your body to assist with healthy weight loss.


Jayson Hunter, Registered Dietitian


R&D Director, Prograde Nutrition
 
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Chocoholics and drug addicts and obesity - a link

reuniting.info
Article: Kristin Leutwyler Ozelli at Scientific American

Neuroimaging reveals a shared basis for chocoholia and drug addiction

This article explains clearly how "natural reinforcers" like food (and sex) can become addictive.


Mounting evidence shows that compulsive eating and drug abuse engage some of the same brain circuits in similar ways, offering a new angle for understanding and treating obesity. In an interview with Scientific American, Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and a pioneer in the study of addiction, explains.


How do foods and drugs affect the brain in the same way?


The system in the brain that both drugs and food activate is basically the circuitry that evolved to reward behaviors that are essential for our survival. One of the reasons why humans are attracted to food is because of its rewarding, pleasurable properties. When we experience pleasure, our brains learn to associate the pleasurable experience with the cues and conditions that predict it. In other words, the brain remembers not just what the food tasted like but also the sensation of pleasure itself, and the cues or behaviors that preceded it. That memory becomes stronger and stronger as the cycle of predicting, seeking and obtaining pleasure becomes more reliable. When you remember that food, you also automatically expect the pleasure that comes from it. So when you like something very much, the mere fact of being re-exposed to it, even if it is out of reach, will trigger the desire to get it. In scientific terms, we call this process conditioning.


Conditioned cues or memories are very powerful and can profoundly affect our behavior. And when conditioning occurs to a positive stimulus, such as food, you are much more likely to repeat a particular action to obtain it. Drugs are particularly effective as conditioning stimuli, primarily by virtue of their chemical properties. They can directly stimulate areas of the brain involved with pleasure in a way that is more efficient than natural reinforcers, such as food or sex. You get an exaggerated response (supraphysiological) partly because the drug can get to the brain very fast, in a matter of seconds. With natural reinforcers the process of activating the reward pathway is more prolonged. Importantly, the conditioning that takes place links the behavior not just to the stimulus itself but to the environment and other cues that might have been only peripherally associated with it.


That’s exactly what nature intended: if the behavior necessary to seek a pleasurable experience was triggered exclusively by the object, the conditioned response would be very ineffective indeed; think about the need to find food to survive, for example: say we are primitive creatures in the jungle and you by pure chance taste a banana. The banana tastes good, but if you were just conditioned to remember that it tasted good—and not to the smell, the shape, the color, or the location of the banana—your ability to find it again would be impaired. Once you create this conditioned memory, though, it’s just like Pavlov’s dogs; the response becomes a reflex. This conditioned response underlies both the drive in drug addiction and the drive in compulsive eating.
What’s going on in the brain during cravings?


Had Pavlov been able to see inside the dog’s brain, he would have very likely seen that there is an increase in dopamine in the brains of those dogs when they get exposed to the sound previously paired with the meat. Dopamine tells us what's important—the unexpected bits of new information we need to pay attention to in order to survive, like alerts about sex, food and pleasure, as well as danger and pain. Indeed we’ve tested these in humans using brain imaging technologies. The human brain is highly sensitive to food stimuli. We’ve documented that when you show people favorite foods, to which they’ve been conditioned, there is an increase in dopamine in the striatum which is a brain region involved with reward and behavioral motivation. Mind you, this increase is just from smelling and looking at the food, because we tell study participants that they will not be able to eat it. And this is the very same neurochemical response that happens when addicts see a video of other people taking drugs, or anything to do with their drug of choice, like where they normally take it or with whom they take it.


Also in the brains of both drug addicts and obese people we typically find a reduced number of D2 dopamine receptors in the striatum, compared to non-abusers and non-obese controls, respectively. Perhaps these findings reveal that the brain is somehow trying to compensate for the repeated surges inn dopamine stimulation from continuous stimulation with drugs or food. Another possibility is that these individuals had lower numbers of receptors to begin with, a biological feature that may put them at increased risk for diseases of addiction, in general. Low numbers of D2 receptors are well documented in people addicted to cocaine, alcohol, opiates and other drugs. Interestingly, a study by Dr. Gene Jack Wang and colleagues found the same type of relationship between the availability of D2 receptors and Body Mass Index (BMI) in obese individuals. In other words, the more obese a person is, the fewer receptors they have. By contrast, in normal weight subjects, the levels of D2 receptors are not associated with their BMI.


Now the chronic use of drugs—by repeatedly stimulating the dopamine and other systems--eventually leads to a disruption of function in frontal cortical areas involved with inhibiting behaviours and emotions. It is also possible that this circuit is weaker in people who are addicted to drugs from the start, but we don’t know that yet. In obesity, however, we do not have evidence, to my knowledge, that the frontal cortex is similarly disrupted. What has been documented instead is that the drive for food is so powerful that it overrides any ability to exert inhibitory control.


Are particular foods more reinforcing than others? Why?


Yes, absolutely. High calorie foods—particularly foods that are high in fat or sugar—are more likely to trigger compulsive eating. Again, that makes sense from nature’s perspective. As hunters, we didn’t always succeed at finding something to eat and so high-calorie foods, which pack a lot of energy, offered a survival advantage. In that environment, it was in our best interest to consume as much of this type of food as we could find. So they are very reinforcing. But today when we open up our refrigerators, we have a 100 percent chance of succeeding at finding food.


Our genes have changed little, but in our environment, we are now surrounded by high-fat, high-sugar foods. And this abundance is undoubtedly a major factor contributing to the rise in obesity Conditioning responses are incredibly powerful with food: when I go past a vending machine and I see chocolates I like very much, I desire the chocolate even though I’m not hungry. But if those chocolates weren’t there, it would be the last thing on my mind.


Are certain people at greater risk for drug or food addictions?


We know from twin studies that approximately 50 percent of the risk for both addiction and obesity is genetic. But the genes involved come into play on many different levels—from differences in the efficiency with which we metabolize drugs (or food) to differences in our likelihood of engaging in risk-taking or exploratory behaviors to more specific risks, such as the underlying sensitivity of the reward system.


In obesity, some people may be at a greater risk for compulsive eating because they may be overly sensitive to the rewarding properties of food. One study showed that some obese people have increased brain activity in response to mouth, lip and tongue sensations. For them, eating may be much more pleasurable than other natural reinforcers. Likewise, some people are not very efficient at registering or responding to internal signals of satiety, so they are possibly going to be more vulnerable to cravings triggered by food cues in their environment.


For example, in a recent study we looked at obese people who had an Implantable Gastric Stimulator (IGS), which electrically activates the vagus nerve and causes the stomach to expand and feel full. And even with this implant, these people still only manage to lose about five percent of their body weight. On a higher level, they have powerful conditioned responses that can apparently override other regulating signals


Does the overlap between addiction and obesity reveal any new targets for treatment?


There are pharmacological interventions to explore, such as medications that increase the dopamine response in the brain. Rimonabant, which boosts dopamine levels by dampening the endocannabinoid system, has shown promise in helping people who are obese and those who are smokers.


Another exciting development is the recent synthesis and preliminary testing of an orally administered drug that blocks orexin, a peptide that reinforces the “high” associated with drinking alcohol and is thought to regulate feeding. This drug could be extremely helpful in the treatment of specific brain disorders that involve aberrant food and drug taking behaviors. Also, because of the stigma associated with both of these conditions, obesity and drug addiction can lead to a deep sense of isolation, which is very stressful. This is an area where group therapy could help.


Yet another exciting area NIDA is researching is the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (or fMRI) in biofeedback to train people to exercise specific parts of their brains, just like muscles. Sean Mackey of Stanford University, neuroscientist Christopher De Charms of Omneuron [in SanFrancisco] and their colleagues have similarly trained healthy subjects and chronic-pain sufferers to control their brain activity to actually modulate their experience of pain. So NIDA is exploring the possibility that you might use this kind of biofeedback to train people to control a region of the brain called the insula, which has been implicated in food and drug cravings. Smokers who have a lesion in the insula after a stroke, for instance, seem to lose the desire to smoke.


But one of the major and distinct obstacles for a person trying to recover from compulsive eating is the obvious fact that you have to eat in order to survive whereas, if you are addicted to an illegal substance, you are in a way protected by the fact that that drug is not going to be environmentally available everywhere. One of the therapeutic interventions for drug addicts is to teach them to avoid places associated with their habit. But how do you do that with food? It’s impossible.




And these people suffer. In rats, it has been shown that, if you give them very high-sugar diets and then make them give them an opioid antagonist (naloxone), you can trigger a withdrawal that is similar to that you observe when you give naloxone to an animal that has received repeated injections of morphinel. This indicated that chronic exposure to high sugar diets generated physical dependence. If similar processes happen in humans then interventions to mitigate the appearance of withdrawal symptoms during dieting may benefit the discomfort to the subject and improve outcomes.


Addiction is not a choice. It is a reflexive response. Do you think that Pavlov’s dogs had a choice of salivating when they heard the sound that had been conditioned to the meat? They did not and had you seen inside their brains you would probably have observed that the sound would trigger dopamine increases in their striatum that would be signalling to expect the reward of the meat. The message that you get when dopamine is liberated in striatum—in this case, the dorsal striatum—is that you need to get into action to achieve a certain goal. It is a powerful motivator. It is extremely hard to overcome these impulses with sheer willpower.

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3 sneaky ways "healthy" juice is fattening us up...

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This is a great article by Rob Poulos of fatburningfurnace.com 

100 percent fruit juice seems like it should be healthy, right?

It's a 'no brainer'... or is it?


I mean, it's from real fruit...full of antioxidants and other great stuff from mother nature herself.


Even that old salty fitness trainer who pulls tugboats with his choppers has been telling us to 'juice it' for years.

But there's another side to fruit juice that's VERY UNHEALTHY, and can actually sabotage your ability to get or stay lean.

And, no, I'm not talking about KoolAid and other junk like that with 5% juice...this is the 100% juice we're talking about here.

(By the end of this newsletter, I'll also explain how to best use fruit juice in your phat loss or lean body eating


plan.)

So what is the problem with juice?
Well, there are 3:

1. Juice is EXTREMELY calorie dense. A typical orange, for example, has about 40 calories. A typical glass of orange juice has around 120 calories... that's 3 times the calories!

2. Juice has almost NO FIBER and will spike your blood sugar like crazy, causing FAT STORAGE.
Back to our orange... it has about 3 grams of fiber which helps slow blood sugar response form the 9 grams or so of sugar in it. That glass of O.J. has almost NO FIBER (stripped out in the juicing process) to combat the over 23 grams of sugar.


3. Juice's blood sugar spikes will make you hungrier...you'll end up eating more and more. While the differences between juice may seem small on a 1 to 1 comparison, keep drinking juice and you'll have a hard time losing phat and keeping it off.

Now, as I said, this doesn't mean you must cut out juice entirely...


One of the best ways I've found to enjoy the antioxidants and great taste of real juice is to simply add a SPLASH of your favorite juice to some ice cold water.

If you're a juice drinker, try it for a few days and you'll find your over-sensitive taste buds will adjust faster than you may expect.

I do this almost every day and it's become like a special tasty treat for Kalen and I.

If you're trying to cut out soda (that's a whole different newsletter!), take the splash of juice and add it to
carbonated ice water.

Don't forget you can also make your own fruit/vegetable smoothies as this won't strip out the fiber...just add some frozen produce to a good protein source and you're good to go!

Alright, so now that you know the TRUTH ABOUT JUICE, you've just knocked down another MISTRUTH on how to get and stay lean and healthy.


Now get out there and eat some real whole organic fruits and vegetables...just as nature intended!


Here's to getting lean, strong and healthy for life,


Rob Poulos


Zero to Hero Fitness




P.S. If you've got kids, they need to hear this too...and so do the schools... they've been cramming fruit juice down my daughter's throat for years. And while there are worse things in school lunches, I believe it is another reason the obesity rates in kids is still on the rise...


http://www.fatburningfurnace.com/

Microwave cooking

Microwave cooking and nutrition

Almost every American home has one. The convenience offered by owning a microwave oven is almost undeniable. But there remains a level of skepticism for many—a lingering feeling that using a microwave to cook food may somehow make food less healthy. Does cooking with a microwave take nutrients out of food?


Understanding how microwaves work can help clarify the answer to this common question. Microwave ovens cook food with waves of oscillating electromagnetic energy that are similar to radio waves but move back and forth at a much faster rate. These quicker waves are remarkably selective, primarily affecting molecules that are electrically asymmetrical — one end positively charged and the other negatively so. Chemists refer to that as a polarity. Water is a polar molecule, so when a microwave oven cooks or heats up food, it does so mainly by energizing — which is to say, heating up — water molecules, and the water energizes its molecular neighbors.


In addition to being more selective, microwave-oven energy is also more penetrating than heat that emanates from an oven or stovetop. It immediately reaches molecules about an inch or so below the surface. In contrast, regular cooking heat goes through food rather slowly, moving inward from the outside by process of conduction.


Some nutrients do break down when they’re exposed to heat, whether it is from a microwave or a regular oven. Vitamin C is perhaps the clearest example. So, as a general proposition, cooking with a microwave probably does a better job of preserving the nutrient content of foods because the cooking times are shorter.


As far as vegetables go, it’s cooking them in water that robs them of some of their nutritional value because the nutrients leach out into the cooking water. For example, boiled broccoli loses glucosinolate, the sulfur-containing compound that may give the vegetable its cancer-fighting properties as well as the taste that many find distinctive and some, disgusting. The nutrient-rich water from boiled vegetables can be salvaged and incorporated into sauces or soups.


Is steaming vegetables better? In some respects, yes. For example, steamed broccoli holds on to more glucosinolate than boiled or fried broccoli.


But this is nutrition, and nothing in nutrition is simple. Italian researchers published results in 2008 of an experiment comparing three cooking methods — boiling, steaming, and frying — and the effect they had on the nutritional content of broccoli, carrots, and zucchini. Boiling carrots actually increased their carotenoid content, while steaming and frying reduced it. Carotenoids are compounds like lutein, which may be good for the eyes, and beta carotene. One possible explanation is that it takes longer for vegetables to get tender when they’re steamed, so the extra cooking time results in more degradation of some nutrients and longer exposure to oxygen and light.


But let’s not get too lost in the details. Vegetables, pretty much any way you prepare them, are good for you, and most of us don’t eat enough of them. And the microwave oven? A marvel of engineering, a miracle of convenience — and sometimes nutritionally advantageous to boot.


ibaL recommends: Concentrated fruits & vegetables

The immune system (in a nutshell)

The immune system protects organisms from infection with layered defenses of increasing specificity. Most simply, physical barriers prevent pathogens such as bacteria and viruses from entering the organism. If a pathogen breaches these barriers, the innate immune system provides an immediate, but non-specific response. Innate immune systems are found in all plants and animals. If pathogens successfully evade the innate response, vertebrates possess a third layer of protection, the adaptive immune system, which is activated by the innate response. Here the immune system adapts its response during an infection to improve its recognition of the pathogen. This improved response is then retained after the pathogen has been eliminated, in the form of an immunological memory, and allows the adaptive immune system to mount faster and stronger attacks each time this pathogen is encountered.




In short, the innate immune system responds the same way to each new attack and wakes the adaptive immune system to action. The adaptive immune system changes in response to new threats and remembers how to respond to old threats. This process of adaptation is in fact what brings that component of the immune system to its knees eventually. But there are different and less well understood mechanisms at work that undermine the innate immune system:


Courtesy of http://www.fightaging.org/


ibaL recommends:

Nutrilite Double X

Milk cancels benefits of tea

ibaL
A study at the Charité Hospital of the Berlin Universities showed that adding milk to tea will block the normal, healthful effects that tea has in protecting against cardiovascular disease. This occurs because casein from the milk binds to the molecules in tea that cause the arteries to relax, especially EGCG. Milk may also block tea's effect on other things, such as cancer. Other studies have found little to no effect from milk on the observed increase in total plasma antioxidant activity. Teas with high EGCG content, such as green tea, are not typically consumed with milk. Previous studies have observed a beneficial effect from black tea which was not attributable to the catechin content. Plant-based "milks", such as soy milk, do not contain casein and are not known to have similar effects on tea.



Milk binds catechins, most notably EGCG. Milk also binds tannin, rendering it harmless, which helps to exemplify the effect on tea's constituent parts (i.e. EGCG binding)


Catechins are a kind of polyphenol, a group of chemicals long thought to underlie the beneficial effects of a plant based diet. EGCG is the primary antioxidant in green tea.


Dr. Robert Vogel, a professor of medicine at the University of Maryland Medical School who agrees that tea is one of the greatest sources of antioxidants. In countries where they drink a lot of tea, heart disease is decreased, except for the British Isles, where it is typical to add milk to the tea. His advice is to add lemon to tea, but not milk or cream.

When body meets H1N1 flu

Courtesy: Tina Hesman Saey & Science News

When body meets H1N1 flu

Two studies map interactions between virus and human cells; one study reveals natural flu fighters

Pandemic H1N1 influenza may seem daunting, but two new studies reveal that you’ve got it in you to fight the flu.






Two separate research teams have cataloged interactions between the H1N1 influenza virus and human cells, with one group reporting that human cells already contain powerful antiflu agents that also help defend against other viral infections, including West Nile virus and dengue.


Published online December 17 in Cell, both studies may help scientists build better flu-fighting therapies in the future.


One of the studies concentrated on learning how the body responds to the flu, says Stephen Elledge, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston. Elledge and Abraham Brass led the study, which identified more than 120 human genes required by the H1N1 virus to infect a cell. For most of the genes, their removal stopped or slowed virus growth. But for three of the genes, removal actually helped the virus grow better, indicating that those genes are normally involved in fighting the virus.


These three genes encode proteins in a family called the interferon-inducible transmembrane family, or IFITM proteins. The proteins IFITM1, IFITM2 and IFITM3 are normally made at low levels in cells. Scientists knew that an immune-stimulating protein called interferon causes IFITM levels to rise, but haven’t known what increased levels of those proteins does for the cell.


Now, Brass, Elledge and their colleagues show that IFITM proteins help kill flu viruses, and that IFITM3 may be particularly important. That protein may help block flu viruses from entering host cells, though the team has not pinpointed the mechanism. IFITM3 also thwarts viruses such as dengue, West Nile and yellow fever, the team found.

“This [protein] blocks them all,” Elledge says. Increasing levels of IFITM3 might boost the body’s ability to combat the flu. And the team shows that blocking the protein in chicken and dog cells used to grow vaccine strains could make the virus grow better, possibly speeding vaccine development, he says.


If people have varying levels of IFITM3 in their cells, people with low levels may be more susceptible to flu, speculates Andrew Mehle, a virologist at the University of California, Berkeley. He also wonders whether a species’ versions of the IFITM proteins may determine which viruses can infect that species.


The other Cell paper documents the hundreds of interactions between the H1N1 virus and host proteins that take place during an infection. Previously scientists have studied how individual virus proteins interact with human cells. The new, large-scale screen reveals that the H1N1 flu virus’ 10 proteins connect to 1,754 human proteins in some way, report researchers led by Aviv Regev and Nir Hacohen of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Mass. Of those relationships, 87 are direct between flu and human proteins. Indirect connections make up the remainder and include some interactions that affect levels of human proteins in a cell.


On average, one influenza protein interacts with about twice as many human proteins as does one typical human protein with other human proteins, says Regev. The flu virus “really is sending many tentacles into the cell,” giving the virus a big impact on a host cell’s behavior, she says.


Both studies raise intriguing questions, Mehle says. “They both seem to lay the foundation for several careers right now,” he says. “It will be pretty exciting for the field to chase down these leads over the next two or three years.”

ibaL view: It will be interesting to discover Vitamin D's role in this.
 
 
The Brain

The human brain is the most complex and least understood part of the human anatomy. There may be a lot we don’t know, but here are a few interesting facts that we’ve got covered.

1. Nerve impulses to and from the brain travel as fast as over 200 miles per hour. Ever wonder how you can react so fast to things around you or why that stubbed toe hurts right away? It’s due to the super-speedy movement of nerve impulses from your brain to the rest of your body and vice versa, bringing reactions at the speed of a high powered luxury sports car.

2. The brain operates on the same amount of power as 10-watt light bulb. The cartoon image of a light bulb over your head when a great thought occurs isn’t too far off the mark. Your brain generates as much energy as a small light bulb even when you’re sleeping.

3. The human brain cell can hold 5 times as much information as the Encyclopedia Britannica. Or any other encyclopedia for that matter. Scientists have yet to settle on a definitive amount, but the storage capacity of the brain in electronic terms is thought to be between 3 or even 1,000 terabytes. The National Archives of Britain, containing over 900 years of history, only takes up 70 terabytes, making your brain’s memory power pretty darn impressive.

4. Your brain uses 20% of the oxygen that enters your bloodstream. The brain only makes up about 2% of our body mass, yet consumes more oxygen than any other organ in the body, making it extremely susceptible to damage related to oxygen deprivation. So breathe deep to keep your brain happy and swimming in oxygenated cells.

5. The brain is much more active at night than during the day. Logically, you would think that all the moving around, complicated calculations and tasks and general interaction we do on a daily basis during our working hours would take a lot more brain power than, say, lying in bed. Turns out, the opposite is true. When you turn off your brain turns on. Scientists don’t yet know why this is but you can thank the hard work of your brain while you sleep for all those pleasant dreams.

6. Scientists say the higher your I.Q. the more you dream. While this may be true, don’t take it as a sign you’re mentally lacking if you can’t recall your dreams. Most of us don’t remember many of our dreams and the average length of most dreams is only 2-3 seconds–barely long enough to register.

7. Neurons continue to grow throughout human life. For years scientists and doctors thought that brain and neural tissue couldn’t grow or regenerate. While it doesn’t act in the same manner as tissues in many other parts of the body, neurons can and do grow throughout your life, adding a whole new dimension to the study of the brain and the illnesses that affect it.

8. Information travels at different speeds within different types of neurons. Not all neurons are the same. There are a few different types within the body and transmission along these different kinds can be as slow as 0.5 meters/sec or as fast as 120 meters/sec.

9. The brain itself cannot feel pain. While the brain might be the pain center when you cut your finger or burn yourself, the brain itself does not have pain receptors and cannot feel pain. That doesn’t mean your head can’t hurt. The brain is surrounded by loads of tissues, nerves and blood vessels that are plenty receptive to pain and can give you a pounding headache.

10. 80% of the brain is water. Your brain isn’t the firm, gray mass you’ve seen on TV. Living brain tissue is a squishy, pink and jelly-like organ thanks to the loads of blood and high water content of the tissue. So the next time you’re feeling dehydrated get a drink to keep your brain hydrated.

Cutting Salt as Good as Quitting Smoking

By Daniel J. DeNoon



WebMD Health NewsReviewed by Louise Chang, MD

 Cutting U.S. salt intake by just half a teaspoon a day would prevent up to 92,000 deaths, 99,000 heart attacks, and 66,000 strokes -- a benefit as big as smoking cessation.


That's the prediction from computer models that used real clinical data to predict the effects of small reductions in salt intake.


"The [ heart] benefits of reduced salt intake are on par with the benefits of population-wide reductions in tobacco use, obesity, and cholesterol levels," says Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, PhD.


Cutting daily salt intake by a half teaspoon -- about 3 grams -- would not be enough to bring most Americans down to the goal of 3.7 grams a day recommended for about 70% of adults. It wouldn't even get us down to the 5.8 grams a day recommended for lowest-risk adults.


That's because the average U.S. man gets about 10.4 grams a day and the average U.S. woman gets about 7.3 grams a day.


But cutting back by 3 grams, or even just 1 gram, would have huge effects across the population, Bibbins-Domingo and colleagues find.


And here's the best part: To get the benefit, you don't have to do anything. Of course, there is a catch.
Food manufacturers would have to stop putting so much salt into processed foods.


The U.S. Department of Agriculture says that 77% of the salt in the American diet comes from processed food. Only 6% is shaken out at the table, and only 5% is sprinkled during cooking.


Would we miss that salt in processed foods? Not if we're like the British.


"In the United Kingdom, a population-wide reduction in dietary salt of 10% was achieved in four years without a reduction in sales of the food products included in the initial effort and without consumer complaints about taste," Bibbins-Domingo and colleagues report.


There's more good news. Once people cut back on salt -- whether or not they know they are doing it -- they begin to prefer less salt in their food. This happens in a matter of weeks.


The bad news is that food makers probably won't do it on their own. Although some manufacturers already are putting less salt in their prepared foods, others are adding even more.


In an editorial accompanying the Bibbins-Domingo study, Johns Hopkins researchers Lawrence J. Appel, MD, MPH, and Cheryl A.M. Anderson, PhD, MPH, call for federal regulations.


"As we deliberate health-care reform, let us not neglect this inexpensive, yet highly effective public health intervention for the prevention of disease," they say.


Regulations likely would be opposed by industry. New York City already is trying to regulate salt in prepared foods; the effort is opposed by the Salt Institute, a trade association representing the salt industry.


"Salt reduction doesn't provide any positive health benefits and may diminish benefits when it relates to diet," said Morton Satin, the Salt Institute director of technical and regulatory affairs, in a news release.


The editorial and the Bibbins-Domingo study were published in the Jan. 20 online issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.


ibaL view: A good rule of thumb is to realise that adding any amount of salt to your food will exceed your daily requirements. Salt is very similar to sugar in that the more you consume, the more you will want it. So work on breaking the cycle.


Also recognise processed foods over whole do indeed contain large amounts of sodium, even when the labels claim low sodium! Look for no added salt.


There are exceptions when our sodium levels need boosting such as when excercising or when in a hot climate.


The following is courtesy of Medicinenet.com
Sodium: A Good Thing...in Moderation
We may malign the salt shaker, but sodium plays an important role in maintaining the body's fluid balance. It’s essential for muscles and nerves to function properly. But most of us consume too much of it. FDA guidelines call for less than 2,400 mg of sodium per day -- about 1 teaspoon of table salt. Surprisingly, most of our salt intake doesn’t come from the salt shaker; it’s hidden in many of the foods we buy at the grocery store.
Learn more: salt shockers



Quote:
"Since 1976, I have known how people can lose weight without ever being hungry; cure most cases of arthritis, diabetes, and hypertension; and reverse serious heart disease. Furthermore for almost three decades it has been no mystery to me how one can prevent cancer, osteoporosis, heart attacks, and strokes. The common denominator is the modern Western diet - rife with foods so rich in high-calorie refined ingredients that before industrial times they were consumed only by kings and queens. This diet must be replaced with one consisting of whole, natural plant foods. Add to this seemingly simple step a little daily exercise, and you now have a medical tool more powerful than bypass surgery and drugs." 
John McDougall, M.D.

Darker liquor, never sicker!

A new study may help drinkers pick their poison. In a head-to-head comparison, bourbon gave drinkers a more severe hangover than vodka, report Damaris Rohsenow of Brown University and colleagues in an upcoming issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

But vodka drinkers aren't off the hook: Drinkers’ sleep suffered equally with both drinks, as did their performance on tasks requiring attention and quick responses. Understanding the lingering effects of alcohol after a night of heavy drinking is important for people who engage in safety-sensitive tasks, such as driving, while hung over Rohsenow says.

Overall, bourbon drinkers reported feeling worse than vodka drinkers, rating higher on scales that measure the severity of hangover malaise, including headache, nausea, loss of appetite and thirst.

One reason for the different effects of vodka and bourbon, Rohsenow says, could be that bourbon contains 37 times more toxic compounds than vodka does, including nasty organic molecules such as acetone, acetaldehyde, tannins and furfural. A good rule of thumb for liquors, she says, is that the clearer they are, the less of these substances they contain.
- courtesy of Laura Sanders, Science news

- Vodka it is then!

1. Tea off in the morning

Hot tea can slash your risk of kidney cancer by 15 percent, according to a review in the International Journal of Cancer. Try pu-erh tea, which is better than green or black tea at preventing DNA damage.
2. Sleep smarter
Too much sleep, or not enough of it, can kill you. A British study found that getting more than 9 hours of sack time a night, or less than 6, doubles your risk of an early death from any cause. Aim for 7 to 8 hours a night.
3. Drink wine, stay lean
As well as resveratrol, the compounds found in red wine include Polyphenols, which help your body block fat absorption, an Israeli study found. Red-wine marinades work, too.

4. Check your neck
An American Journal of Medicine study found that a mildly underactive thyroid can boost your heart-disease risk by 65 percent. A quick blood test can assess your level of thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH).

5. Lean back
Parking your torso at a 90-degree angle strains your spine, say Scottish and Canadian researchers. Instead, give your chair the La-Z-Boy treatment and recline the seat back slightly. The ideal angle is 45 degrees off vertical.

6. Scent your air safely
Some air fresheners contain phthalates, compounds that may disrupt hormone processes, Natural Resources Defense Council testing reveals. Stick with Febreze Air Effects and Renuzit Subtle Effects.

7. Boost your defenses
2000 IU of vitamin D a day drastically reduces your risk of early death and disease.

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8. Skip the spray
Using household spray cleaners just once a week increases your risk of an asthma attack by 76 percent, say Spanish researchers.

Note: Does not apply to all 'homecare' Legacy of Clean products found at www.ibalonline.com which are made from only natural ingredients and are chemical free!


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9. Steam your broccoli
Italian researchers recently discovered that steaming broccoli increases its concentration of glucosinolates (compounds found to fight cancer) by 30 percent. Boiling actually lowers the levels.

10. Stretch it out Genes in your body linked to heart disease, diabetes, and obesity can be "turned on" if you sit for hours on end, reports a study in Diabetes. Hit the "off" button by taking hourly laps during TV, book, and Web sessions.

Fat does not make you fat

Guest Post - Dee Merritt

This week's guest posting comes from Dee Merritt of http://www.nutritionalmerritt.com/


We had the pleasure of meeting and hearing Dee's talk on nutrition at Northborough/Southborough Rotary club's Biggest Loser/Fitness Winner competition - of which ibaL is a proud sponsor.
The following article is taken from Dee's blog http://foodforthought-dee.blogspot.com/ which is packed full of great advice, tips and recipes.

Fat does not make you fat

Contrary to popular belief, it's not fat that makes us fat, it's actually sugar. We have been bombarded by fat free products for years - fat free ice cream, fat free cookies and more, making us all think it was okay to eat these foods because they didn't contain any fat, which we all thought was the culprit in our ever expanding waistlines. According to bestselling author, Jorge Cruise, as he writes in his new book, "The Belly Fat Cure", he has discovered, after more than 10 years of research that, "there is only one critical key to getting rid of fat forever, and that is to lower insulin, the scientifically proven hormone that pushes fat into cells. You can't get fat or stay overweight without insulin. This is a biological fact that was proven in multiple research studies over the past 60 years that have appeared in such respected publications as The British Journal of Nutrition and The Journal of the American Medical Association. Unfortunately, this critical idea that insulin is essential for storing fat - and lowering your insulin is essential for releasing fat - has been buried under the conventional medical community's message that it's all about calories in, calories out; that all you have to do is exercise more and eat less to lose weight. It's a broken theory". So, according to Cruise, in order to lose weight, it is essential to lower our consumption of sugar and processed carbohydrates (white flour products) to insure that our blood sugar levels remain balanced and insulin levels stay in check.
Cruise's discovery has been backed by some very well known and respected top docs - namely Andrew Weil and David Katz, both at the head of the list in the Integrative Medicine field. Katz, who wrote the foreward of Jorge's book, states that, "excess sugar in our diets is among the most important factors conspiring against our waistlines and our health. Too much sugar means increased risk of weight gain, obesity, hormonal imbalance, diabetes, heart disease and even cancer".
So, does this give us license to eat all fats with abandon and gorge on artifically sweetened foods and drinks? No, we need to be smart about what we are putting in our mouths. The best fats to consume are heart healthy omega 3 fats such as avocados, almonds, walnuts, olive oil and salmon to keep us satiated, help recapture radiance and aid us in keeping blood sugar at balanced levels, so that insulin stays in check. That means sticking with quality proteins such as eggs, lean meats and fish, unprocessed carbohydrates which include plenty of fruits and vegetables and avoiding artificially sweetened foods that could cause cancer and tumors and actually increase sugar craving and hinder weight loss.
This low sugar/low processed carbohydrate plan is one of the best, most delicious, very satisfying and healthful ways to eat to avoid disease and naturally manage your weight. You will soon discover that after adopting this lifestyle that sugar cravings will disappear, energy will soar, hormone fluctuations will cease, mood will be lifted and you will be living your best, most dynamic life imaginable. It has certainly worked for me - for the past 25 years of my life and I highly recommend it to you - you won't be disappointed!

Dee Merritt is a Certified Nutrition and Wellness Consultant and owner of Nutritional Merritt, a nutrition consultancy. She is also the host of "Dee-Lish Nutrish" Cooking Show that airs on local cable television. Dee's passion is to inspire, empower and motivate mothers and others in their own kitchens so that they may learn to make meaningful meals for themselves and their families. Dee may be reached through her website, http://www.nutritionalmerritt.com/

Senses:


The primary means by which we interact with the world around us is through our senses. Here are some interesting facts about these five sensory abilities.


After eating too much, your hearing is less sharp. If you’re heading to a concert or a musical after a big meal you may be doing yourself a disservice. Try eating a smaller meal if you need to keep your hearing pitch perfect.

About one third of the human race has 20-20 vision. Glasses and contact wearers are hardly alone in a world where two thirds of the population have less than perfect vision. The amount of people with perfect vision decreases further as they age.

If saliva cannot dissolve something, you cannot taste it. In order for foods, or anything else, to have a taste, chemicals from the substance must be dissolved by saliva. If you don’t believe it, try drying off your tongue before tasting something.

Women are born better smellers than men and remain better smellers over life. Studies have shown that women are more able to correctly pinpoint just what a smell is. Women were better able to identify citrus, vanilla, cinnamon and coffee smells. While women are overall better smellers, there is an unfortunate 2% of the population with no sense of smell at all.

Your nose can remember 50,000 different scents. While a bloodhound’s nose may be a million times more sensitive than a human’s, that doesn’t mean that the human sense of smell is useless. Humans can identify a wide variety of scents and many are strongly tied to memories.

Even small noises cause the pupils of the eyes to dilate. It is believed that this is why surgeons, watchmakers and others who perform delicate manual operations are so bothered by uninvited noise. The sound causes their pupils to change focus and blur their vision, making it harder to do their job well.

Everyone has a unique smell, except for identical twins. Newborns are able to recognize the smell of their mothers and many of us can pinpoint the smell of our significant others and those we are close to. Part of that smell is determined by genetics, but it’s also largely due to environment, diet and personal hygiene products that create a unique chemistry for each person.

Water.........ah!

You probably already know that it’s important to drink enough water. A minimum of eight glasses of water a day is recommended. You should aim for more if it is really hot, or you are working out and sweating a lot.

According to WEB MD the early signs of dehydration are increased thirst, dry mouth, sticky saliva and reduced urine output with dark yellow urine. You may also experience a lack of energy and a headache. None of these sound fun. It maybe hard sometimes to drink that much water; especially when sodas and coffee are tempting. However, to stay healthy and feel great, we should strive to drink those eight glasses of water a day. Here are a few tips to help you remember to drink the water, and to make it a little more pleasant or interesting.

1. Add Some Lemon Juice
Tend to get bored with drinking just water after a few days? Change things up and add a little flavor by adding a teaspoon or less of lemon to your water. You can also try some other fruit juices. Just make sure you are still drinking mainly water. Just a splash of juice should be enough to make things interesting and give the water some flavor without adding a lot of sugar and calories.

2. Try Some Club Soda
If you are craving the fizz of a soda, try some Club Soda. Alternatively, you can also add a splash of fruit juice to your watered down club soda.

3. Drink Some Water When You Feel Hungry
Unfortunately many of us have gotten so out of tune with our bodies that we feel hungry when we are actually thirsty. If you feel hungry, try drinking a glass of water first. You may just be thirsty.

4. Carry A Water Bottle
It’s much easier to drink water when you have it readily available. Carry a bottle of water around with you in the car, at work, while running errands, in the yard, and even while you are working around the house. You’ll be sipping away the water without even noticing it.

5. Drink More If You Are Working Out
We already touched on this, but it bears repeating. Make sure you drink more glasses of water before, during and after working out, or if you spend some time outside while it’s hot. Your body uses and needs more water when it sweats a lot.

Just pay attention to how much you drink and implement some of these ideas if you don’t get the recommended eight glasses of water a day. Your body will thank you for it in the long run.

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Did you know....

It takes your food seven seconds to get from your mouth to your stomach.

One human hair can support 3 kg (6.6 lb).

The average man's penis is two times the length of his thumb.

Human thighbones are stronger than concrete.

A woman's heart beats faster than a man's.

There are about one trillion bacteria on each of your feet.

Women blink twice as often as men.

The average person's skin weighs twice as much as the brain.

Your body uses 300 muscles to balance itself when you are standing still.

If saliva cannot dissolve something, you cannot taste it.

Women reading this will be finished now.

Men are still busy checking their thumbs.

Antioxidants and cancer

Courtesy of http://www.canceractive.com/ Britain´s Number 1 site for cancer information on Holistic cancer treatment:

Three large studies show antioxidants cut cancer rates and death from cancer.
Scientists in France have recently finished a major 7-year study involving 13,000 men and women aged 35-60. Called the Su Vi Max study, half received a supplement, whilst half a placebo. The supplement in question was a mixture of beta-carotene, vitamins C and E, selenium and zinc.
For both groups cancer deaths fell by 37%
The risk of men getting cancer fell by 31% (there was little difference for the female sample and scientists concluded this was because women in France were felt to have much healthier diets).
However, for both groups cancer deaths fell by 37%.

It is not just the size of the protection afforded that is interesting but the speed at which they work. Icon has continually stated the view that at the moment people are diagnosed with cancer, the great majority are both nutritionally deficient, and nutritionally toxic (from too much sodium (salt), for example).
The French figures represent the truth for a modern Western culture.
A previous large scale study, the American ´China Study´ taking 38,000 Chinese across the five years to 1993, produced "only" 13% less cancers in a group controlled research trial with people on selenium, beta-carotene and vitamin E supplementation.
A third study of people taking at least 4 multivitamin and mineral supplements per week during the 1970´s and 80´s saw a fall in colon cancer by 40 per cent over the following 30 years. The research involved over 170,000 people.

Synthetic vs Natural
We repeatedly warn readers that the High Street antioxidants are not in the same form or concentration as those of 20 years ago. Nor are they as good as the real thing. A study covered in icon´s Cancer Watch comparing orange juice to the High Street synthetic vitamin C showed the orange juice providing antioxidant benefits for almost 36 hours whilst the synthetic vitamun C provided no benefit at any period of measurementt!
The reason given was that High Street vitamin C is almost always synthetic AND contains no supporting bioflavenoids, co-vitamins that can support its action. But then High Street Vitamin E is most usually synthetic and contains only one of the eight variants naturally found in foods(alpha - tocopherol). Beta-carotene is equally likely to be synthetic and sold in just one of the two naturally occuring forms(cis- or trans-).

Not surprisingly, eminent Professors have been in the media urging caution on the overuse of these High Street supplements. We regard these High Street ´supplements´ as little more than inferior copies of the real thing - rather like fake Gucci Handbags bought from Thailand. Do you really expect them to be as good as the real thing?

It should be noted that the study of antioxidants is still in its infancy. In the USA, for example, there is excitement over the benefits of Curcumin (turmeric) as a cancer-fighting antioxidant, and many natural herbs are now being shown to have significant anti-cancer properties.

ibaL view: It is deceiving when synthetic products with no health benefits are passed off as nutritional supplements, as it fools the consumer into believing they are taking care of their health. We are proud to admit that all vitamins & supplements available from www.ibalonline.com are produced and manufactured by the only global vitamin and mineral brand to grow, harvest, and process plants on their own certified organic farms.

Random:
Here are a few things you might not have known about all different parts of your anatomy.

1. The colder the room you sleep in, the better the chances are that you’ll have a bad dream. It isn’t entirely clear to scientists why this is the case, but if you are opposed to having nightmares you might want to keep yourself a little toastier at night.


2. Tears and mucus contain an enzyme (lysozyme) that breaks down the cell wall of many bacteria. This is to your advantage, as the mucus that lines your nose and throat, as well as the tears that wet your eyes are helping to prevent bacteria from infecting those areas and making you sick.


3. Your body gives off enough heat in 30 minutes to bring half a gallon of water to a boil. If you’ve seen the Matrix you are aware of the energy potentially generated by the human body. Our bodies expend a large amount of calories keeping us at a steady 98.6 degrees, enough to boil water or even cook pasta.


4. Your ears secrete more earwax when you are afraid than when you aren’t. The chemicals and hormones released when you are afraid could be having unseen effects on your body in the form of earwax. Studies have suggested that fear causes the ears to produce more of the sticky substance, though the reasons are not yet clear.


5. It is not possible to tickle yourself. Even the most ticklish among us do not have the ability to tickle ourselves. The reason behind this is that your brain predicts the tickle from information it already has, like how your fingers are moving. Because it knows and can feel where the tickle is coming from, your brain doesn’t respond in the same way as it would if someone else was doing the tickling.


6. The width of your armspan stretched out is the length of your whole body. While not exact down to the last millimeter, your armspan is a pretty good estimator of your height.


7. Humans are the only animals to produce emotional tears. In the animal world, humans are the biggest crybabies, being the only animals who cry because they’ve had a bad day, lost a loved one, or just don’t feel good.


8. Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people do. This doesn’t have a genetic basis, but is largely due to the fact that a majority of the machines and tools we use on a daily basis are designed for those who are right handed, making them somewhat dangerous for lefties to use and resulting in thousands of accidents and deaths each year.

9. Women burn fat more slowly than men, by a rate of about 50 calories a day. Most men have a much easier time burning fat than women. Women, because of their reproductive role, generally require a higher basic body fat proportion than men, and as a result their bodies don’t get rid of excess fat at the same rate as men.


10. Koalas and primates are the only animals with unique fingerprints. Humans, apes and koalas are unique in the animal kingdom due to the tiny prints on the fingers of their hands. Studies on primates have suggested that even cloned individuals have unique fingerprints.


11. The indentation in the middle of the area between the nose and the upper lip has a name. It is called the philtrum. Scientists have yet to figure out what purpose this indentation serves, though the ancient Greeks thought it to be one of the most erogenous places on the body.




ibaL view: who is still trying number 5?