Health & WellnessS


Magic Wand

10 Healing Herbs

Nancy Kalish
Prevention.com
Mon, 14 May 2007 16:00 UTC
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© ionicspa.com
New science shows these herbal power-healers can ease pain, prevent Alzheimer's, and ward off cancer and heart disease. Try 3 natural wonders you haven't heard of yet.

Your arsenal of home remedies is about to get a lot spicier. Though herbs have been used for hundreds of years to heal, scientists are finally starting to substantiate these plants' abilities to alleviate arthritis pain, reduce high blood sugar and cholesterol, and help with many other conditions. They're even discovering amazing new powers in some herbs, such as the ability to kill cancer cells and help problem drinkers curb their alcohol intake.

"Herbs and other natural remedies can be as effective as traditional treatments, often without the same negative side effects," says Roberta Lee, MD, medical director of the Continuum Center for Health and Healing at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. So here are 10 superhealers you'll want to add to the all-natural section of your medicine cabinet - and even to your favorite recipes! Folding one or two of them into your cooking every day can yield big benefits.
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Attention

How Harsh Parenting Affects Child's Brain


UPI.com
Wed, 22 Sep 2010 15:25 UTC
Montreal - Studies show coercive parenting - spanking, yelling, grabbing - are linked to anxiety in children but Canadian researchers are testing how the brain reacts.

Lead investigator Francoise Maheu, a professor at the Universite de Montreal, and her team are determining how the anatomy or physiology of the brain is affected by coercive parenting. They are recruiting 120 teens ages 12-17 split into four groups based on two variables - current anxiety symptoms and their parents' current harsh parenting practices.
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Attention

How to Raise Boys Who Read

Thomas Spence
The Wall Street Journal
Fri, 24 Sep 2010 14:34 UTC
Hint: Not with gross-out books and video-game bribes.

When I was a young boy, America's elite schools and universities were almost entirely reserved for males. That seems incredible now, in an era when headlines suggest that boys are largely unfit for the classroom. In particular, they can't read.

According to a recent report from the Center on Education Policy, for example, substantially more boys than girls score below the proficiency level on the annual National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test. This disparity goes back to 1992, and in some states the percentage of boys proficient in reading is now more than ten points below that of girls. The male-female reading gap is found in every socio-economic and ethnic category, including the children of white, college-educated parents.

The good news is that influential people have noticed this problem. The bad news is that many of them have perfectly awful ideas for solving it.
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Attention

U.S. Pushing Drugged, Vaccinated, Chlorinated Chickens on the World

Rady Ananda
Global Research
Sat, 04 Sep 2010 17:43 UTC
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© upc-online.org
On August 31, thirty US Senators sent a letter to Russia's ambassador asking for a full lift of the ban, but failed to mention the chlorine issue. Instead, profits were stressed. [9]

Until 2008, the European Union also banned chlorinated poultry. Greenpeace condemned the procedural maneuver that removed public debate on the issue. [10]

But the global market for US poultry more than made up for Russia's hesitancy. June was a phenomenal month for US exports - marking a 20-month high. In its latest export report, the US Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) wrote: [11]

"Increases in shipments to Mexico (26%), the Baltic States (60%), Newly Independent States (including Belarus, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) (155%), Philippines (310%), Korea and Hong Kong (174%), and Japan (181%) all rose beyond last June's shipment volumes.

In a single month, the Ukraine increased imports from one million pounds of poultry to almost 30 million.
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Phoenix

Vagus Nerve Controls Intestinal Inflammation

Dr. Art Ayers
coolinginflammation.blogspot.com
Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:11 UTC
Vagus Nerve
© Adam
Macrophages release inflammatory signals (TNF, IL-1, IL-6, IL-18) that result in tissue inflammation. Nicotine is anti-inflammatory by acting on the acetylcholine receptors normally responsive to acetylcholine released by the vagus nerve. Acupuncture is anti-inflammatory by stimulating the vagus nerve-mediated effects on macrophages.

The relationship between the nervous and immune systems has been accepted as a reality, but has been elusive. Numerous examples in alternative medicine appear to show that a variety of treatments have immunological impacts, but explanations based on cellular biology have been slow to materialize. Here I will discuss some of the recent experiments that reveal obvious connections between nerves and macrophages that may explain in medical terms at least part of the efficacy of acupuncture.
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Phoenix

Vagus nerve's role in regulating inflammation


news-medical.net
Wed, 24 Oct 2007 13:03 UTC
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© UnknownVagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS) successfully treats a wide variety of ailments, which is why people are having implants placed inside their body to artificially stimulate this important nerve. There is a far more cost-effective (and safe!) way to achieve even better results... pipe-breathing! Check out EEbreathe.com to find out more about this revolutionary technique for retaking control of your health.
It used to be dogma that the brain was shut away from the actions of the immune system, shielded from the outside forces of nature.

But that's not how it is at all. In fact, thanks to the scientific detective work of Kevin Tracey, MD, it turns out that the brain talks directly to the immune system, sending commands that control the body's inflammatory response to infection and autoimmune diseases.

Understanding the intimate relationship is leading to a novel way to treat diseases triggered by a dangerous inflammatory response.
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Sun

Vitamin C Rapidly Improves Emotional State of Acutely Hospitalized Patients, Study Suggests


ScienceDaily
Thu, 23 Sep 2010 10:41 UTC
Treatment with vitamin C rapidly improves the emotional state of acutely hospitalized patients, according to a study carried out by researchers at Montreal's Jewish General Hospital (JGH) and the affiliated Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research (LDI).

In a double-blind clinical trial, patients admitted to the JGH were randomly assigned to receive either vitamin C or vitamin D supplements for seven to ten days. Patients administered vitamin C had a rapid and statistically and clinically significant improvement in mood state, but no significant change in mood occurred with vitamin D, the researchers discovered. Their results were published recently in the journal Nutrition.

"Earlier studies, both in our hospital and in other centres, demonstrated that the majority of acutely hospitalized patients have subnormal levels of vitamins C and D in their blood," said Dr. L. John Hoffer, MD, PhD, an investigator at the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research.
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Health

The World's Oldest Man Shares His Advice and His Memories

Robert Quigley
GeekoSystem
Thu, 23 Sep 2010 13:08 UTC

This video interview with Walter Breuning, the world's oldest man, is nothing short of remarkable. Breuning, who celebrated his 114th birthday on Tuesday, has lived in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, and his mind is still sharp. He can remember the early days of the automobile, when you had to change your tires every five miles; he remembers the stock market crash of 1929; he remembers the inventions of radio and television as some of the most significant, although he also notes the importance of the computer - as it appeared in the 1960s, when it changed the face of business.
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Magnify

Psychologist Shows Why We "Choke" Under Pressure - and How to Avoid It

William Harms
University of Chicago
Tue, 21 Sep 2010 00:00 UTC
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© University of Chicago NewsUsing brain scans and other research, University of Chicago psychologist Sian Beilock studies reasons why especially talented people fail at critical moments, or "choke."
A star golfer misses a critical putt; a brilliant student fails to ace a test; a savvy salesperson blows a key presentation. Each of these people has suffered the same bump in mental processing: They have just choked under pressure.

It's tempting to dismiss such failures as "just nerves." But to University of Chicago psychologist Sian Beilock, they are preventable results of information logjams in the brain. By studying how the brain works when we are doing our best - and when we choke - Beilock has formulated practical ideas about how to overcome performance lapses at critical moments.

Beilock's research is the basis of her new book, Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting it Right When You Have To, published Sept. 21 by Simon and Schuster, Free Press.

"Choking is suboptimal performance, not just poor performance. It's a performance that is inferior to what you can do and have done in the past and occurs when you feel pressure to get everything right," said Beilock, an associate professor in psychology.

Comment: To learn more about how meditation can help relieve the stress of everyday life and to help prevent "choking," visit the Eiriu Eolas - Stress Control, Healing and Rejuvenation Program website here.

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Target

Genes Related to Body Mass Discovered


ScienceDaily
Thu, 16 Sep 2010 00:00 UTC
Johns Hopkins scientists who specialize in unconventional hunts for genetic information outside nuclear DNA sequences have bagged a weighty quarry -- 13 genes linked to human body mass. The experiments screened the so-called epigenome for key information that cells remember other than the DNA code itself and may have serious implications for preventing and treating obesity, the investigators say.

"Some of the genes we found are in regions of the genome previously suspected but not confirmed for a link to body mass index and obesity," says co-lead investigator Andrew Feinberg, M.D., M.P.H., King Fahd Professor of Molecular Medicine and director of the Center for Epigenetics at Johns Hopkins' Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences. "Meanwhile, others were a surprise, such as one known to be associated with foraging behavior in hungry worms."

Starting with DNA samples extracted from Icelanders' white blood cells banked in 1991 and 2002 by scientists there as part of the AGES-Reykjavik study of individuals in the general population, the Hopkins team used a customized, genome-wide profiling method dubbed CHARM (comprehensive high-throughput arrays for relative methylation) to look for regions that were the most variable, all chemically marked by DNA methylation.
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