10 Great Easy to Keep NY Resolutions

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

We all make good NY resolutions each year, but how many of them do we actually keep? This list is easier and simpler and will still make your year healthier:

1. HAVE FUN! Yes this is one of the easiest of all, take the time to have some fun. Laughter really is the best medicine and can help relieve stress, exercise your heart and joy is one of the reasons we are all here.
2. Drink a little wine. There’s nothing wrong with a little wine particularly red wine full of antioxidants, but please stop at one.
3. Challenge yourself mentally. Doing puzzles and learning something new every day keeps your brain sharp and your neurons firing this will help keep you younger all over.
4. MOVE ON A DAILY BASIS. Yes make sure that you move your body every day, and by move I mean walk with free swinging arms, dance, get on your vibration platform, do yoga, or some form of exercise every day. More than anything else this will keep you feeling young and delay most if not all the signs of aging.
5. Check your bed and your office chair are ergonomically sound to prevent wear and tear on your tendons, muscles and joints.
6. Brush your teeth. Medical scientists have found that oral hygiene is linked to overall health.
7. Get 15 minutes of sunshine every day. We are all lacking in vitamin D because we are working indoors and avoiding the sun too much now, so get out in the sun before 10am or after 3pm and allow your skin to get at least 15 minutes of direct sunshine a day.
8. Eat more vegetables. Yes I know this is an old one, but a goodie and we all know why. Diabetes and metabolic syndromes are a world wide epidemic and eating more vegetables is one way to avoid this decline.
9. Sleep well. Sleeping well actually helps us lose weight, energises our body and brain and keeps us younger.
10. BREATHE. you would think that this comes naturally, yet many of us do not breathe properly, so learn to breathe well. Breathing needs to be from your diaphram – take note of your breathing by lying down and breathing naturally and look to see which part of your body is moving as you do. If you chest is moving up and down – you’re not breathing correctly at all. Your upper tummy and lower chest is the part that ought to be moving, so practice breathing until you can breathe diaphramatically for better health and slower stress levels.

Live a balanced life…

Fluoride Danger In Qld As Of Today

Yes, after years of being protected against added fluoride in our water supply, as of December 1st we are now being poisoned in our drinking water. Do you really believe the TV ads and other propaganda that is telling you how safe and healthy it is for you?

Here are a few statistics to try on for size:

• 1 teaspoonful can kill 70kg adult
• DiSodium HexaFluofosilicate has been linked to – Brain Damage – DIminishes IQ in Children – Cancer

For more information watch this video:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2702431699206958386&hl=en

• Chronic administration of aluminium-fluoride or sodium-fluoride to rats in drinking water: alterations to neuronal and cerebrovascular integrity: Julie A. Verner, Karl F. Jensen, William Horvath, Robert L. Isaacson, Brain Research, Vol. 784:1998, Elsevier Science.

• The National Cancer Institute study found that as exposure to Fluorosilic Acid increases, so does the incidence of oral cancer; sometimes as much as a 50% increase in oral cancer rates occur in those  areas – this translates to 8,000 new cases of oral and pharyngeal cancer per year, needless pain and suffering and a financial windfall to the medical and pharmaceutical factions that concern themselves with treatment.
  1988  Researchers  at the  Argonne  National  Laboratory discover  that  NaHFSA promotes and  enhances  the  carcinogenicity  of  other  cancer-causing   chemicals  in  the   food  and environment.  Interestingly, this  work  confirmed  studies  sponsored  by the  United States  National  Cancer Institute conducted  back in 1963 by  Herskowitz  and  Norton at  Saint  Louis University.

  More  than  30  years  ago, these  scientists  showed  that  low  levels  of  NaHFSA  Sodium Fluorosilic Acid increased the incidence of melanotic tumors in living organisms from 12 to 100% – often these tumors  were  induced by  NaHFSA  over  a  period  of  days.  These  studies  were   further  amplified  by  work  done  by  the  Taylor’s  at  the University of Texas  which  found  that 1 ppm NaHFSA Sodium Fluorosilic Acid in drinking water increased tumor growth rate in mice by 25%.

  1987 Research is conducted at Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) in England which indicates that  NaHFSA – Fluorosilic Acid – cause genetic damage in human blood cells..

• Professor Mark Diesendorf New Evidence on Fluoridation.pdf

• According  to  eleven  thousand   scientists   including  world  renowned  Professor  Paul  Connett  and   Dr   Hardy  Limeback,  adviser  to   the  Canadian   Government, the  constituents  of S7 Poison Industrial Fertiliser Toxic Waste Sodium Fluoride contains a cocktail of nasties, which are deadly toxic to Infants, Children, Kidney or Thyroid  sufferers to name a few, it also contains, arsenic, cadmium, barium and lead, We   have   discovered   that  the  Sodium  Fluoride  intended  for  the  Queenslands  Water is actually  a Waste  Product   from  a  Phosphate  Fertiliser  Works  possibly  coming   from Belgium and or Japan,   countries  that   have  banned  all  Fluoridation  bases  on  the available International Research. It is interesting to note that almost every country in Europe has also banned  S7 Poison Industrial Fertiliser Toxic Waste Sodium Fluoride and products containing it. Watch this video fore more info: http://goldcoastwaterwatch.webs.com/apps/videos/

Where do they get this stuff they are putting in our water??

Fluoridation, laundry sours, opalescent glass, metallurgy (aluminium and beryllium), vitreous enamel frits, insecticides and rodenticides, chemical intermediate, glue, leather and wood preservative, moth repellent, manufacture of pure silicon.

DANGER! Never add water to this substance.
This product has a UN classification of 2674 and a Dangerous Goods Class 6.1 (Toxic) according to The Australian Code for the Transport of Dangerous Goods By Road and Rail.

Swallowed
Toxic if swallowed! Severe exposure from ingestion may result in muscular weakness, tremors, convulsions, collapse, dyspnea, cardiac failure and death.

Thank you to the Gold Coast Water Watch for this information on Flouride

NEED MORE EVIDENCE?

FROM: “National Fluoridation News” XXII (Jan-March 1976) p. 2:

Child poisoned by fluoride

My husband and I have agreed on writing this letter in the hope that it may prevent someone going through the experience we suffered in May 1973.

In July 1970 we were told by our doctor that we were going to have a baby. In my first visit to the Hospital for a check-up in October, I was told by the Matron to start taking fluoride tablets for the benefit of the baby. I did so until the 20th of February 1971 when our first child, Jason, was born.

When he was one year oild the welfare clinic told me to start giving him 1/2 of a fluoride tablet per day. I did so for 15 months. When he was 27 months old he got hold of the fluoride tablets, and at the time I didn´t know how many he had eaten, but I knew it wasn´t many.

I took him to the doctor straight away and he gave our son a stomach pump treatment. The doctor told me he could only find four tablets in his stomach. I was told to take him home and he would sleep for a while, but he would be okay when he woke up. This was at 2:00 P.M.

At 5:30 P.M. I realized that something was wrong, as I couldn´t wake him. I rang the doctor and was advised to take him back to the surgery. The doctor saw him staright away and told me to take him to the maternity hospital. As we arrived he was still unconscious and he stopped breathing. The doctor put him in a respirator immediately.

The doctor and the nurses didn´t believe that he could be so ill from taking fluoride tablets until they did some test on him. They told us it would take 200 to 500 tablets to make him so sick. There were less than 100 tablets in the bottle before he touched it.

On May 15th, five days after admission, Jason passed away. The doctor verified that his brain, due to fluoride poisoning, was completely dead.

We have now two children. They have never or will never receive fluoride tablets from us.

We are completely against fluoridation of drinking water and we hope that this letter will help stop such a thing from happening.

Mr. and Mrs. A. Burton

Kirkdale, Brisbane

Queensland, Australia

Fluoride (SEDA-3, 399)
At least three fatalities have occurred due to the fact that the toxicity of fluoride is often underestimated. One case report may be cited.
A boy aged 27 months swallowed an unknown quantity of fluoride tablets containing 0.5 mg each. As the bottle contained less than 100 tablets, the unconscious child was sent home after a gastric lavage yielding 4 (!) tablets only, with the assurance to the parents that no risk existed. Three and a half hours later respiratory failure began to develop and the child was hospitalized; he died five days later. Even at the hospital the parents were told that 200 to 500 tablets would be required to endanger the child.
5 – 10 g of fluoride are commonly considered to comprise the acute lethal dose; the child in question had received less than 50 mg, which suggests an enormous difference between the supposed and actual lethal dose, even allowing for the age of the victim. It is true that the mother had received fluoride during pregnancy and that the child had received 0.5 mg daily for 15 months before the incident occurred but one must wonder whether the chronic load could have been sufficient to lower the acute lethal dose so drastically. This overdosage risk must be added to known risks attributable to fluoride in normal doses (i. e. gastrointestinal bleeding and atopic dermatitis) (33 c)

STATE OF QUEENSLAND

“The Registration of Births, deaths and Marriages Acts, 1962 to 1967″

(Section 31)

POST-MORTEM EXAMINATION

(Medical Certificate of the Cause of Death)

To the Registrar for the District of BRISBANE

I HEREBY CERTIFY that on 16th May, 1973, by order of W. R. PULLAR Esq., Coroner, I made a Post Mortem Examination of the body of a male aged 2 years, named JASON BURTON who is stated to have died at Mater Childrens Hospital and, in my opinion, the date of death was 15th May, 1973, and the cause of death was

Disease or condition directly leading to death :… Fluoride poisoning

Dated… 16.5. 1973 ………………………………………..N. G. Johnston (Government Medical Officer)

MATER MISERICORDIAE PUBLIC HOSPITALS — SOUTH BRISBANE

DISCHARGE SUMMARY

21st June 1973

NAME……..BURTON…….Jason..Paul…………………………..AGE…..2……..

ADDRESS………16 Hardwick S t.,……………………………………………………

………………………Wynnum West……………………………………………………….

ADMITTED……10.5.73…………………………………….Died…15.5.73……….

REFERRING DOCTOR………..Hansen…………………………………………….

FINAL DIAGNOSIS…………….Flouride Ingestion……………………………..

—————————————————————————

SUMMARY OF HISTORY, CLINICAL FINDINGS, INVESTIGATIONS, TREATMENT AND PROGRESS

This child was admitted to hospital via casualty in a moribund condition.

The child was said to have swallowed an unknown quantity of flouride tablets (2 mg). but more than likely he would not have swallowed more than 50 tablets. This was said to have happened approximately 6 hours prior to admission. The child did have access to several other drugs. These drugs included Polarmine, Elexamine, Robinul and Dormel. However, it was unlikely that he may have swallowed any of these other tablets.

On EXAMINATION: Blood pressure 50 systolic and there was only fair peripheral perfusion. The pupils were dilated, unequal and irregular.There was generalized muscular hypotonia. There were no focal neurological signs. The pulse was 100 per minute, regular R.T.A.and there was normal sinus rythym on E.C.G. Immediate treatment was instuited with the administration of I.V. SPPS. This bought his blood pressure back to 100/systolic. As the child had had an respiratory arrest five minutes after arrival in the casualty dept, he was taken to theatre and a naso-tracheal tube was inserted. The patient was then placed on the Bird´s respirator with intermittent positive pressure respiration. Very intensive observations were instuited. Because his presentation was consistent to a flouride intoxication he was treated accordingly. He was given doses of 10% calcium gluconate I.V. Blood was taken for analysis of the most common poisons, and a sample of blood was also sent to a state government analysist for estimation of serum flouride.Over the next few days this patient made no improvement whatsoever. E.E.G. was performed on 14.5.73. The trace was completely flat. It was thought the prognosis was absolutely hopeless. The respirator was turned off 15.5.73 and life was pronounced extinct.

The level of serum flouride, although it was elevated was not regarded as being in the toxic range. However, the sample of blood had been taken approximately 10 hours after ingestion.

S. Fluoride level <100 µg/100 ml (Toxicity levels 200-300 µg)

Think about what they are putting in your water and then ask yourself, is this all? What other decisions about our health are they going to make without consulting us?

Live a balanced life…

Th

Gardasil Dangers Do Not Vaccinate Until You See This

Gardasil, the cervical cancer vaccine recommended for girls as young as 12 years old, is causing side effects ranging from seizures and numbness to dizzy spells, fainting and paralysis. More than 17 girls a week in Australia have experienced such reactions after receiving the vaccination, but the country’s Department of Health and Aging refuses to release their details. Further, as of November 30, 2007, 496 adverse reaction reports were filed with Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Association (TGA). Of them, 468 had the cervical cancer vaccine as the sole suspected cause. In the United States, up to 1,700 women have reported adverse reactions from Gardasil, including at least seven deaths. To date, more than 10 million doses of Gardasil have been distributed worldwide.

Not only is as prominent researcher calling for Gardasil to be recalled until more research has been done:

“Independent health researcher Grace Filby, who won a Churchill Fellowship for her research into phage therapy, is calling on the government for more research into the possible side-effects of the HPV vaccine that is currently being given to teenage girls.

Filby believes that not enough is known about the effects of the vaccine on children with pre-existing medical conditions and weakened immune systems. She says, “We simply do not know whether the vaccine interacts with other medication or medical conditions, and the manufacturers have not studied it yet. This could be a very valid reason why some families and schools might hesitate or opt out.”

She has this week written to UK education ministers and health officials calling for urgent small-scale independent studies that would highlight any health problems stemming from vaccinations already carried out.”

But this MUST WATCH video will tell you one story of the possible cost of vaccinating your daughters:

live a balanced life…

Move and Sleep To Reduce Your Risk of Cancer

Image via Wikipedia

According to some of the latest research it’s easy to avoid cancer, ust get enough sleep and enough exercise.

“Exercise is good for more than just your waistline. A recent study presented at the American Association for Cancer Research’s Seventh Annual International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research suggests that regular physical activity can lower a woman’s overall risk of cancer but only if she gets a good night’s sleep. Otherwise, lack of sleep can undermine exercise’s cancer prevention benefits.”

“A new US study of nearly 6,000 women found that while regular exercise appeared to reduced their risk of cancer, this benefit was likely to be lost if they did not get enough sleep.

“Greater participation in physical activity has consistently been associated with reduced risk of cancer incidence at several sites, including breast and colon cancers.”

“Short duration sleep appears to have opposing effects of physical activity on several key hormonal and metabolic parameters, which is why we looked at how it affected the exercise/cancer risk relationship,” he added.

Scientists don’t know exactly how exercise reduces cancer risk, but they suspect it is something to do with hormone levels and the immune system, and also because it affects body weight. In this study McClain and colleagues looked at the link between exercise and cancer, with particular attention to how not getting enough sleep might affect it.”

Come on ladies get out and exercise, do it in the outdoors – go for a walk, walk the dog, play with the kids and then go home and get your nanna nap 🙂

live a balanced life…

Even Governments are Taking the Diabetes Epidemic Seriously

With one headline in Medical News Today spelling it out in no uncertain terms

“Health of up to 84% of Children with Diabetes at Risk in England”

it is time to take the epidemic proportions of ours and our childrens health seriously. We are eating ourselves to death, and more important we are allowing our children to eat themselves into a shortened, unhealthy lifespan.

Even the British Prime Minister is getting involved in the talk as this is a crisis for any country that it prime resource – people are under attack from their own bad choices.

“Prime Minister Talks About Schoolchildren with Diabetes”

“Diabetes UK Response to Change4Life Announcement”

Even in America they have realised that they (the government and its agencies) are going to have to do something about it:

“American Dietetic Association Releases Nutrition Trends Survey”

If governments including our own are worried this much about our kids, isn’t it time we were?

“Escalating diabetes figures present worrying trends”

“Department of Health and Aging Diabetes Trends”

Come on, get your kids out of the house, into the sunshine, breathing fresh air, feed them salads, vegetables, good quality protein sources, fresh fruit, and whole grains in that order. Do you want to satisfy their taste buds now and maybe give them 2 or 3 insulin shots a day for the rest of their lives? Or run the risk of them becoming chronically tired, or developing heart disease, cancer, or other illnesses that come as a result of Metabolic Syndrome.

Or show them how to live – healthy, strong and long?

live a balanced life…

Are Your Kids Eating Well?

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

A study to come out of Australia from the CSIRO has shown that only a proportion of our kids are eating and exercising well enough to be healthy now and in the future. Are yours?

Our children are our future and many of them are setting themselves up for terminal ill health before they have even started. The article goes on to say:

“UniSA Professor Tim Olds says about one quarter of the children surveyed were overweight or obese.

‘This number hasn’t increased over the last decade or so, and that’s encouraging but it’s still far too high,’ Professor Olds says. ‘Australian children spend very large amounts of time (3-4 hours a day on average) in front of a screen of some sort – TV, computer or videogame console. Swapping sedentary behaviours like TV watching for activities that get kids moving is a great step towards getting that number down.’

Project coordinator, Dr Jane Bowen of CSIRO’s Preventative Health National Research Flagship, says since the previous surveys there have been some big changes in the Australian way of life.

‘Many children are not eating enough nutritious food, which means they don’t get the vitamins and minerals needed during their growth years,’ she says. ‘Unfortunately fruit, vegetables and dairy foods are being replaced by foods high in kilojoules, salt and saturated fat – the very dietary patterns linked to the development of type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease in adults.’

The head of the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics at Flinders University Professor Lynne Cobiac, says the results for teenage girls are particularly worrying.

‘As a group, teenage girls appeared to be getting insufficient amounts of calcium from foods. Eighty percent of 14 to 16 year old girls did not consume the recommended amounts of calcium. Girls this age also reported doing the least amount of physical activity. These two factors combined put them at risk of developing weak bones as they grow older.’

Dr Bowen says the survey involved more than 4,400 interviews with children aged 2 to 16 years and their parents.” (Science Centric News)

live a balances life

Meditation On Compassion Improves Health and Stress Levels

Image via Wikipedia

Many years ago I studied under a man who had spent a lot of time studying the oldest beliefs and practices around the world. To do this he spent time, often years, in monasteries, living with tribal peoples and learning all he could about how they maintained their connection to spirit.

One of my favourites, out of the things he taught me was a Tibetan meditation called Tonglen, which is where you sit in meditation and purposefully take in the sorrows of the world and transmute it into love and send it back out again. Now this may seem like it would hurt you, however if you have prepared your heart before hand and made sure to set the boundaries (80% to go back out into the world and 20% for me) well it can be one of the most enlightening things you can do.

My teacher always said that enlightenment was all about ‘lightening up’, and in that he meant pulling back the veils of illusion we have over our eyes seeing life for what it was, ‘all small stuff’ and letting it go. Either through laughter or through love.

Tonglen was all about letting it go through love for your fellow man, yourself and spirit.

Now a study on meditation and health has proved his point, that not only will you feel better emotionally your physical body will not react to stress in the same way either. Compassion was a way to heal within yourself and outside of yourself:

“This study focused on the effect of compassion meditation on inflammatory, neuroendocrine and behavioural responses to psychosocial stress, and evaluated the degree to which engagement in meditation practice influenced stress reactivity.

‘Our findings suggest that meditation practices designed to foster compassion may impact physiological pathways that are modulated by stress and are relevant to disease,’ explains Charles L. Raison, MD, clinical director of the Mind-Body Program, Emory University’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences, Emory School of Medicine, and a lead author on the study.

Sixty-one healthy college students between the ages of 17 and 19 participated in the study. Half the participants were randomised to receive six weeks of compassion meditation training and half were randomised to a health discussion control group.

Although secular in presentation, the compassion meditation program was based on a thousand-year-old Tibetan Buddhist mind-training practice called ‘lojong’ in Tibetan. Lojong practices utilise a cognitive, analytic approach to challenge an individual’s unexamined thoughts and emotions toward other people, with the long-term goal of developing altruistic emotions and behaviour towards all people. Each meditation class session combined teaching, discussion and meditation practice.

The control group attended classes designed by study investigators on topics relevant to the mental and physical health of college students such as stress management, drug abuse and eating disorders. In addition, a variety of student participation activities were employed such as mock debates and role-playing.

Both groups were required to participate in 12 hours of classes across the study period. Meditators were provided with a meditation compact disc for practice at home. Homework for the control group was a weekly self-improvement paper.

After the study interventions were finished, the students participated in a laboratory stress test designed to investigate how the body’s inflammatory and neuroendocrine systems respond to psychosocial stress.

No differences were seen between students randomised to compassion meditation and the control group, but within the meditation group there was a strong relationship between the time spent practising meditation and reductions in inflammation and emotional distress in response to the stressor.

Consistent with this, when the meditation group was divided into high and low practice groups, participants in the high practice group showed reductions in inflammation and distress in response to the stressor when compared to the low practice group and the control group.” Science Centric News

**Tonglen is also known as Lojong

So what are you waiting for? If you are stressed I can tell you that this kind of meditation can change the way you see your world, it can create a feeling of calm mindfulness throughout your whole day, where you are in a state of mind that sees all things as a part of your learning process – and no more. Nothing to get upset about, I just need to learn this lesson and move on. Such a feeling of peace and I can also tell you  that when I do this, my whole physiology changes, I rarely get tired on days I use this meditation and I rarely feel any aches and pains at the end of the day.

Isn’t it nice that science it proving it isn’t all in my mind? or perhaps it is the exact opposite – if I see life differently so will my whole self and nothing will perturb me mind, body or soul.

live a balanced life…

Laugh, Laugh ‘Til The Tears Run Down Your Face

Image via Wikipedia

Laugh every day for health and fitness. Yes, you heard right daily laughter helps to create a healthier, fitter you!

Ask yourself this… When was the last time you enjoyed a real belly laugh? Not just a snigger, a giggle or a titter, but a reall deep genuine belly laugh.

Laughter has so many benefits:

• helps to reduce stress and release ‘happy hormones and chemicals through the brain and nervous system
• lowers blood pressure
• elevates the mood (those happy hormones and chemicals)
• boosts the immune system
• improves brain function
• protects the heart
• helps to connect you to others (connection is a deep survival need)
• gives instant relaxation
• is a great core workout as it activates the diaphragm and massages the internal organs

What if you don’t feel like laughing?

I’ll let you into a little secret your mood is what is called a state, and you can change state just by choice. Yes that’s right no-one can actually make you feel anything, you have to choose it (I have brought my kids up with this knowledge and it has created the most well adjusted kids). So the trick is to choose a different mood and happiness accomanied by laughter is very healing as well.

So try watching a comedy or cartoon, tell jokes with your friends (even if there not funny it is laughable), seek out humour in your daily life and respond to it by laughing, and last but by no means least – fake it until you make it, laugh for no reason at all. You will reap the results and it works better than any anti-depressant.

Best Preventative Medicine is… Happiness! Get Happy

We all know that when we’re happy we seem to stay well, and for years I have believed strongly in the power of being (not just saying positive things) happy. I know for sure due to my own history that consciously and intentionally staying positive, happy can not only prevent illness and chronic disease but can also heal even the most “incurable” (don’t believe in that term at all) health challenge. Now scientists are finding out, I and manyo of my peers have been on the right track all along.

New research shows being happy can add several years to life.

“Happiness does not heal, but happiness protects against falling ill,” says Ruut Veenhoven of Rotterdam’s Erasmus University in a study to be published next month.

After reviewing 30 studies carried out worldwide over periods ranging from one to 60 years, the Dutch professor said the effects of happiness on longevity were “comparable to that of smoking or not”.

That special flair for feeling good, he said, could lengthen life by between 7.5 and 10 years.

The finding brings a vital new piece to a puzzle currently being assembled by researchers worldwide on just what makes us happy — and on the related question of why people blessed with material wealth in developed nations no longer seem satisfied with their lives.

Once the province of poets or philosophers, the notions of happiness and satisfaction have been taken on and dissected, quantified and analysed in the last few years by a growing number of highly serious and respected economists — some of whom dub the new field “hedonics”, or the study of what makes life pleasant, or otherwise.

“The idea that there is a state called happiness, and that we can dependably figure out what it feels like and how to measure it, is extremely subversive,” says Bill McKibben in his 2007 book “Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future”.

“It allows economists to start thinking about life in richer terms, to stop asking ‘What did you buy?’ and to start asking ‘Is your life good?’.”

Growth in material wealth adds little to happiness once buying power hits 10,000 dollars a year per head, according to such research.

But happiness can be bolstered by friendship and human community, as well as larger social factors such as freedom, democracy, effective government institutions and rule of law.

In Veenhoven’s findings, published in the Journal of Happiness Studies, a scientific publication founded in 2000, the strongest effect on longevity was found among a group of US nuns followed through their adult life — perhaps reflecting the feel-good factor from belonging to a close-knit stress-free community with a sense of purpose. ” Physorg.com

Come on get happy, you better chase all your blues away,

the sun is shining, Come on get happy…

Live a balanced life… 

Spice Up Your Life and Live Well!

Cinnamon can be used to regulate blood sugar

I don’t know about you but i love a few well chosen herbs and spices in my food. Some of my favourites are sweet chilli, nutmeg, black pepper, garlic, tumeric, sea or rock salt and my all time favourite; cinnamon.

A new study has proposed what many of us have known for a while, herbs and spices are good for you and may even protect you against many modern diseases more efficiently than many average foods.

A University of Georgia study has suggested that they are potent inhibitors of inflammation and tissue damage (one of the leading causes of cancer, heart disease and arthritis caused by high blood sugar and let’s face it this is a really common problem in today’s world).

Researchers, whose results appear in the current issue of the Journal of Medicinal Food, tested extracts from 24 common herbs and spices. In addition to finding high levels of antioxidant-rich compounds known as phenols, they revealed a direct correlation between phenol content and the ability of the extracts to block the formation of compounds that contribute to damage caused by diabetes and aging.

“Because herbs and spices have a very low calorie content and are relatively inexpensive, they’re a great way to get a lot of antioxidant and anti-inflammatory power into your diet,” said study co-author James Hargrove, associate professor of foods and nutrition in the UGA College of Family and Consumer Sciences.

Hargrove explained that when blood sugar levels are high, a process known as protein glycation occurs in which the sugar bonds with proteins to eventually form what are known as advanced glycation end products, also known as AGE compounds. The acronym is fitting because these compounds activate the immune system, resulting in the inflammation and tissue damage associated with aging and diabetes.

The researchers found a strong and direct correlation between the phenol content of common herbs and spices and their ability to inhibit the formation of AGE compounds. Spices such as cloves and cinnamon had phenol levels that were 30 percent and 18 percent of dry weight, respectively, while herbs such as oregano and sage were eight and six percent phenol by dry weight, respectively. For comparison, blueberries – which are widely touted for their antioxidant capabilities – contain roughly five percent phenol by dry weight.

Study co-author Diane Hartle, associate professor in the UGA College of Pharmacy, said various phenols are absorbed differently by the body and have different mechanisms of action, so it’s likely that a variety of spices will provide maximum benefit.

She added that controlling blood sugar and the formation of AGE compounds can also decrease the risk of cardiovascular damage associated with diabetes and aging. She explained that high blood sugar accelerates heart disease partly because AGE compounds form in the blood and in the walls of blood vessels. The AGE compounds aggravate atherosclerosis, which produces cholesterol plaques.

The UGA researchers tested for the ability to block AGE compounds in a test tube, but animal studies conducted on the health benefits of spices lend support to their argument. Cinnamon and cinnamon extracts, for example, have been shown to lower blood sugar in mice. Interestingly, cinnamon lowers blood sugar by acting on several different levels, Hargrove said. It slows the emptying of the stomach to reduce sharp rises in blood sugar following meals and improves the effectiveness, or sensitivity, of insulin. It also enhances antioxidant defenses.” Physorg

live a balanced life…