Taking an Afternoon Nap Makes You Smarter
February 22, 2010
All Headline News
By David Goodhue
A new study from University of California, Berkley researchers touts the mental benefits of taking a midday nap.
The researchers said in a statement that afternoon naps not only refresh the brain, but can also make a person better able to learn new information.
The researchers divided 39 healthy young adults into two groups – one that took a 90-minute nap at 2 p.m. and one that did not. Each group was given a series of tasks designed to work the brain’s hippocampus, the region that helps store fact-based memories.
The participants were given another round of tasks at 6 p.m. The researchers said that the no-nap group became worse at learning as the day progressed. The nap takers, however, actually improved their learning capacity, the researchers said.
The researchers said that they will next investigate whether the reduction in sleep experienced by people as they age impacts their ability to learn. The research, they said, could help scientists better understand neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s disease.
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Heal Yourself in 15 Days (part 8)
February 12, 2010
Natural News
By Mike Adams
It also seems too simple: In order to achieve lasting health, simply stop making disease. But the concept is foreign to most people: Making disease? Why would I be making disease?
Mainstream consumers, you see, have been trained by the medical industry to believe that disease strikes spontaneously, without any real cause. One day you have nothing wrong with you, and then suddenly the next day you’re diagnosed with a breast cancer tumor. Shazam! It happens just like being struck by lightning… (and it’s not your fault, you’re told — there’s nothing you could have done about it…)
That’s what they want you to believe, anyway. But the truth is very different: All the most common degenerative diseases — cancer, diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, etc. — take many years to grow and expand. A cancer tumor can take 10 years (or even more) before it grows to the size that will show up on a mammogram. That means the tumor has been “under construction” for a decade!
During that time, the patient has been “making cancer” on a daily basis.
By the way, I’ve borrowed this concept from Dr. Thomas Lodi, a brilliant cancer doctor who has a presentation called “Stop Making Cancer.” You can check out his clinic in Arizona at http://www.anoasisofhealing.com or watch his speech for yourself on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKH_…
Dr. Lodi’s concept of “stop making cancer” is so powerful and simple that I borrowed it for this article (with credit, of course) and expanded it to all degenerative diseases. If you want to be healthy, stop making disease!
How disease is manufactured
In reading this, the first question you might ask is, “How do I stop making disease?”
To answer that question, though, you need to understand how disease is created in the first place. All disease begins with an imbalance in the mind or the body (it can originate in either place and then spread to the other).
Disease can be set off by a nutritional deficiency (not enough vitamin D, for example), or a dietary excess (too much homogenized milk). It can be caused by an emotional state such as anger or stress that then spreads to the tissues and begins to create dis-ease in the physical body.
Most disease that’s being “manufactured” in the bodies of people today is created through controllable factors: What people eat, what chemicals they expose themselves too, how much exercise they get (or not), their state of mind, what supplements they take (or don’t) and so on.
There’s a recipe for creating each disease. If you want to manufacture type-2 diabetes, for example, the recipe is very simple:
How to manufacture diabetes:
• Drink lots of liquid sugars and high-fructose corn syrup.
• Consume a huge number of empty calories (junk food).
• Avoid all exercise. Live a sedentary lifestyle.
• Live indoors. Avoid sunshine and the natural world.
• Maintain nutritional deficiencies in vitamin D, selenium, zinc and plant-based nutrients.
If you do this for long enough, you will begin manufacturing diabetes. And before long, you’ll be officially diagnosed with it by a doctor who will say something like, “You’re diabetic.” (Which isn’t really true. You are not defined by a disease. You’re just expressing a certain physiology that’s been named a disease.)
If you want to make cancer, there’s a different recipe:
How to make cancer:
• Expose yourself to radiation (mammograms, CT scans, X-rays, etc.).
• Eat cancer-causing foods like bacon, processed meats and foods with chemical preservatives.
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Mammograms Being Pushed on Elderly Women With Alzheimer’s
February 5, 2010
Natural News
By Sherry Baker
Here’s a story about the mammography industry that sounds almost too crazy — and too greedy — to be true. But the facts are documented in a new study by University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) researchers. It turns out that unneeded, expensive mammograms are being pushed on elderly women who are incapacitated from Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia, especially if the women have savings or assets of $100,000 or more.
The study, which was just published in the January edition of American Journal of Public Health, used 2002 data from the Health and Retirement Study, an ongoing national prospective study sponsored by the National Institute on Aging that is investigating the relationship between health, income, and wealth over time. The researchers were able to document screening mammography rates by compiling information from Medicare claims.
When they looked closely at the mammogram history of 2,131 elderly women with severe cognitive impairment, the research team found nearly 20 percent received mammograms (compared to 45 percent of women with normal mental status) — even though these women were unlikely to live three more years and mammograms are not indicated for women with a life expectancy of five years or less. However, the rate of mammograms ordered for elderly women with severe dementia went up dramatically if they were married and the couple still had tens of thousands of dollars in assets. In fact, the rate of unnecessary screening mammography for seriously cognitively impaired women soared to nearly 50 percent if they were still married and the couple’s net worth was $100,000 or more.
It’s important to note that the women who were studied were given mammograms not because a suspicious lump had been detected during a physical exam. Instead, these dementia patients were subjected to screening mammography to see if any hidden masses could be spotted that were not causing any symptoms but could possibly cause problems in the future.
Geriatrics researcher and lead author Dr. Kala Mehta pointed out in a statement to the press that “a woman must have a life expectancy of at least four to five years,” for a mammogram to possibly do any good; whereas, the severely cognitively impaired women in this study had a life expectancy of only 3.3 years on average. “Otherwise,” she stated, “the potential harms are likely to outweigh the benefits.”
What are those harms, specifically? Dr. Mehta lists them as invasive follow-up tests such as biopsies in women who don’t have the mental capacity to know what is going on and surgery for asymptomatic lumps that would almost certainly never cause any problems for these women in their lifetimes. What’s more, all this unneeded and expensive medical intervention diverts time and money away from the daily needs of women with profound dementia. Bottom line: unnecessary mammograms can cruelly rob these women of whatever quality of life they have left.
The study authors concluded that screening mammography guidelines should be enforced that explicitly recommend against screening severely cognitively impaired older women. “I don’t think most people would say that putting a very demented older woman through screening mammography is a good thing,” stated principal investigator Louise C. Walter, MD, an associate professor of medicine at UCSF, in the press statement.
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Swine Flu Deaths Occurred Even After Vaccination
January 18, 2010
Natural News
By Mike Adams
The CDC is engaged in a very clever, statistically devious spin campaign, and nearly every journalist in the mainstream media has fallen for its ploy. No one has yet reported what I’m about to reveal here.
It all started with the CDC’s recent release of new statistics about swine flu fatalities, infection rates and vaccination rates. According to the CDC:
• 61 million Americans were vaccinated against swine flu (about 20% of the U.S. population). The CDC calls this a “success” even though it means 4 out of 5 people rejected the vaccines.
• 55 million people “became ill” from swine flu infections.
• 246,000 Americans were hospitalized due to swine flu infections.
• 11,160 Americans died from the swine flu.
Base on these statistics, the CDC is now desperately urging people to get vaccinated because they claim the pandemic might come back and vaccines are the best defense.
But here’s the part you’re NOT being told.
The CDC statistics lie by omission. They do not reveal the single most important piece of information about H1N1 vaccines: How many of the people who died from the swine flu had already been vaccinated?
Many who died had already been vaccinated
The CDC is intentionally not tracking how many of the dead were previously vaccinated. They want you (and mainstream media journalists) to mistakenly believe that ZERO deaths occurred in those who were vaccinated. But this is blatantly false. Being vaccinated against H1N1 swine flu offers absolutely no reduction in mortality from swine flu infections.
And that means roughly 20% of the 11,160 Americans who died from the swine flu were probably already vaccinated against swine flu. That comes to around 2,200 deaths in people who were vaccinated!
How do I know that swine flu vaccines don’t reduce infection mortality? Because I’ve looked through all the randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials that have ever been conducted on H1N1 vaccines. It didn’t take me very long, because the number of such clinical trials is ZERO.
That’s right: There is not a single shred of evidence in existence today that scientifically supports the myth that H1N1 vaccines reduce mortality from H1N1 infections. The best evidence I can find on vaccines that target seasonal flu indicates a maximum mortality reduction effect of somewhere around 1% of those who are vaccinated. The other 99% have the same mortality rate as people who were not vaccinated.
So let’s give the recent H1N1 vaccines the benefit of the doubt and let’s imagine that they work just as well as other flu vaccines. That means they would reduce the mortality rate by 1%. So out of the 2,200 deaths that took place in 2009 in people who were already vaccinated, the vaccine potentially may have saved 22 people.
61 million injections add up to bad public health policy
So let’s see: 61 million people are injected with a potentially dangerous vaccine, and the actual number “saved” from the pandemic is conceivably just 22. Meanwhile, the number of people harmed by the vaccine is almost certainly much, much higher than 22. These vaccines contain nervous system disruptors and inflammatory chemicals that can cause serious health problems. Some of those problems won’t be evident for years to come… future Alzheimer’s victims, for example, will almost certainly those who received regular vaccines, I predict.
Injecting 61 million people with a chemical that threatens the nervous system in order to avoid 22 deaths — and that’s the best case! — is an idiotic public health stance. America would have been better off doing nothing rather than hyping up a pandemic in order to sell more vaccines to people who don’t need them.
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Eye Test To Spot Alzheimer’s 20 Years Before Symptoms
January 15, 2010
Mail Online
By Fiona Macrae
A test that can detect Alzheimer’s up to 20 years before any symptoms show is being developed by British scientists.
The simple and inexpensive eye test could be part of routine examinations by high street opticians in as little as three years, allowing those in middle age to be screened.
Dementia experts said it had the power to revolutionise the treatment of Alzheimer’s by making it possible for drugs to be given in the earliest stages.
The technique, being pioneered at University College London, could also speed up the development of medication capable of stopping the disease in its tracks, preventing people from ever showing symptoms.
Rebecca Wood, of the Alzheimer’s Trust, said: ‘These findings have the potential to transform the way we diagnose Alzheimer’s, greatly enhancing efforts to develop new treatments.’
Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia blight the lives of 700,000 Britons and their families, and the number of cases is expected to double within a generation.
There is no cure and existing drugs do not work for everyone.
Current diagnosis is based on memory tests, and expensive brain scans are also sometimes used.
However decisive proof of the disease usually comes from examination of the patient’s brain after death.
The eye test would provide a quick, easy, cheap and highly-accurate diagnosis.
It exploits the fact that the light-sensitive cells in the retina at the back of the eye are a direct extension of the brain.
Using eye drops which highlight diseased cells, the UCL researchers showed for the first time in a living eye that the amount of damage to cells in the retina directly corresponds with brain cell death.
They have also pinpointed the pattern of retinal cell death characteristic of Alzheimer’s. So far their diagnosis has been right every time.
With research showing that cells start to die ten to 20 years before the symptoms of Alzheimer’s become evident, it could allow people to be screened in middle age for signs of the disease.
However, some may not want to know their fate so far in advance. There is also the fear that insurance companies could increase premiums for those who test positive while still young.
The experiments, reported in the journal Cell Death & Disease, have been on animals but the team are poised to start the first human trials.
Researcher Professor Francesca Cordeiro said: ‘The equipment used for this research is essentially the same as is used in clinics and hospitals worldwide.
‘It is also inexpensive and non-invasive, which makes us fairly confident that we can progress quickly to its use in patients.
‘It is entirely possible that in the future a visit to a high street optician to check on your eyesight will also be a check on the state of your brain.’
The technique could also improve the diagnosis of other conditions, including glaucoma and Parkinson’s disease.
In the short term, an early diagnosis would give patients and their families much more time to prepare for the future.
In the longer term, it would allow new drugs that stop the disease in their tracks to reach their full potential.
Professor Cordeiro said: ‘If you give the treatment early enough, you can stop the disease progressing, full stop.’
Dr Susanne Sorensen, of the Alzheimer’s Society, cautioned that the test was still experimental but added: ‘This research is very exciting. If we can delay the onset of dementia by five years, we can halve the number of people who will die from the disease.’
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Start Today to Prevent Alzheimers Later
January 13, 2010
Natural News
By Mike Adams
Researchers from the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences have come to the conclusion that studying the way people age rather than the diseases they develop is the key to preventing disease. Particularly with Alzheimer’s Disease, the group believes that the toxic clumps of beta amyloid plagues that build up in the brain are slow to develop and can be prevented through anti-aging therapies.
Dr. Ehud Cohen, author of the study, explained that the IGF-1 growth hormone that is present in all people can be slowed down to prevent aging and the onset of Alzheimer’s. Utilizing this approach, Cohen and his team claim that life can be extended by 35 percent or more when IGF-1 signaling is properly limited.
Beta amyloid plaques are said to be present in everyone’s brain, however healthy cells are able to control them and regulate their growth when a person is young. It is when a person becomes old that the plaques take over and lead to severe neurological disorders like Alzheimer’s.
What was found as a result of the study was that mice whose IGF-1 hormones were reduced remained biologically young even in their old age. The mice who aged normally didn’t get Alzheimer’s until late in their lives but, unlike the treated group, their brains slowly became overridden with plaques.
Researchers consider the findings breakthrough as they give further understanding to the aging process and how the growth of amyloid plaques is able to take place. Prevention of the normal degenerative results of aging was found to be both possible and effective for preventing Alzheimer’s.
Comments by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
I’m always fascinated by western medicine’s fixation on “amyloid plaques” to explain Alzheimer’s disease. The preoccupation of western medicine with physical explanations of disease seems childish and ignorant. The real truth about Alzheimer’s disease is that amyloid plaques are just the side effect of the underlying cause which is inflammation of the brain.
This inflammation, in turn, is caused primarily by the consumption of a highly inflammatory diet of processed foods, processed dairy products, cooked foods and junk foods. If you do this over a lifetime, you’ll experience all sorts of inflammatory diseases including Alzheimer’s.
Remember this: Before the age of processed foods (from the 1950’s on), Alzheimer’s was an extremely rare condition. It was so rare that doctors traveled long distances just to study the brains of people who died with the condition. A century ago, Alzheimer’s disease was an oddity; today it’s the norm. And our processed food diets are largely to blame.
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Pomegranate Reduces Risks of Breast Cancer
January 8, 2010
Reuters
By Xavier Briand
An acid found in pomegranates appears to block aromatase, an enzyme that converts androgen to estrogen, a hormone that plays a role in the development of breast cancer, the researchers wrote in the journal Cancer Prevention Research.
“We identified some of these chemicals in pomegranates that actually have properties that can suppress aromatase,” researcher Shiuan Chen, of the City of Hope cancer research and treatment center in Duarte, California, said in a telephone interview.
Many women who have had breast cancer take medicines called aromatase inhibitors — such as Pfizer’s Aromasin, Novartis’ Femara and AstraZeneca Plc’s Arimidex — to keep estrogen from feeding tumors.
Chen and colleagues studied whether compounds, or phytochemicals, in pomegranates can suppress aromatase and ultimately block cancer growth. They found that 10 natural compounds in the fruit may potentially prevent estrogen-related breast cancer.
Chen said the compounds would not be a replacement for aromatase inhibitors.
“We do not recommend people start taking this as a replacement for the AI’s,” Chen said. “They (pomegranate compounds) are not as potent as the real drugs so we think that the interest probably is more on the prevention end rather than in a therapeutic purpose.”
Other researchers not associated with the study told the journal that the results are promising, and suggested more studies involving animals and humans were needed to confirm the findings.
“It’s not clear that these levels could be achieved in animals or in humans because the (compounds) are not well absorbed into blood when provided in the diet,” said Gary Stoner of Ohio State University.
Dr. Powel Brown, an oncologist at the University of Texas, said in a statement that future studies should focus on testing pomegranate juice for its effect on estrogen levels, menopausal symptoms, breast density or even as a cancer preventive agent.
More than 400,000 women die from breast cancer globally every year. About 75 percent of breast cancers are estrogen-receptor positive, meaning they are fed by estrogen.
Previous research has shown that pomegranate juice is rich in antioxidants — vitamins and other substances — that may help prevent diseases such as cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
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Green Tea Prevents and Reverses Brain Disorders
December 17, 2009
Natural News
By Mike Adams
The December issue of Nature Chemical Biology contains a study that reveals the powerful effect of the green tea component EGCG in preventing and treating serious brain disorders like Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, and Parkinson’s diseases. When combined with another isolated component, the elements therapeutically eliminate the protein amyloids which are thought to cause these brain diseases.
Amyloid plaques are tightly-bound protein sheets that make their way into the brain and occupy nerve cells. Sometimes they literally bind themselves around the brain tissue. Consequently, brain cells lose their oxygen source and begin to die, leading to memory and speech loss, diminished motor skills, and eventually death.
Researchers from Boston Biomedical Research Institute (BBRI) and the University of Pennsylvania discovered that two chemical components, one found in green tea, were able to break up the amyloid plaques and restore normal cell function in samples similar to what would be found in patients with brain disorders. The combination was found to be effective at eradicating all kinds of amyloids.
Representing the first time a specific set of chemical extracts has successfully destroyed protein amyloids, the research is breakthrough. Because amyloids are highly stable and incredibly complex, there have been no workable solutions to stopping their deadly impact on the central nervous system up until now.
Scientists are encouraged by the fact that such components have proven to be a viable treatment for serious degenerative brain disorders. They anticipate further research that will help to explain the mechanism behind the components that causes them to be so effective.
Dementia from Traffic Fumes
November 23, 2009
Natural News
By E. Huff
A recent German study published in the journal Environmental Research revealed a definitive link between prolonged inhalation of automobile fumes and inflammation of the brain. An analysis of a group of women found that those who lived closest to busy roads were the most likely to develop memory problems and mild cognitive impairment, indicating the potential onset of fume-induced dementia.
The group from Heinrich-Heine University in Dusseldorf constructed models that measured air pollution and the location of the womens’ homes in proximity to roads that were travelled by more than 10,000 cars in a day. Findings revealed that, among women under age 74, those that lived the closest to the busy roads performed the worst on cognition tests.
Since mild cognitive decline can indicate either a transition between normal aging and dementia, further research and follow-up with the women was emphasized. Alzheimer’s disease is one of the most widely recognized forms of dementia and researchers continue to investigate its causes.
It is widely accepted that air pollution particles are so small that they are able to pass through the lungs and make their way into the brain. As a result, the brain tissue becomes inflamed and cognitive decline begins to occur. By crossing the blood-brain barrier and lodging themselves in the brain, these particulates are the primary suspect in causing cognitive dysfunction.
Toxic heavy metals such as aluminum and mercury act similarly in that they build up in the body, particularly in the brain, and cause serious problems. Antiperspirant deodorants, baking sodas, food additives, and vaccines commonly contain aluminum derivatives that many claim are the perpetrators in causing brain disorders like Alzheimer’s disease. Vaccines are also often loaded with mercury.
Industry must also strive to develop cleaner forms of energy that cause less of a negative impact upon people. Particularly with automobiles, clean fuel technologies are of critical importance since vehicle exhaust is known also to induce asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes.
One would do best to live as far away from busy roads and polluted areas as possible and to integrate an ongoing detoxification regime into his or her lifestyle. By continually ridding the body of lodged toxins with supplements such as chlorella, spirulina, and garlic, the potential for excessive toxin buildup is virtually impossible. By perpetually cleansing the body, it will be better able to fend off harmful disease despite inevitable exposure to various toxins.
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Green Tea Reduces Stress
November 23, 2009
Natural News
By Paul Louis
Green tea has an impressive of list of health benefits. Studies have reported that green tea can help prevent Alzheimer’s, certain cancers, and improve cardiovascular health. Some health experts have asserted that green tea can help alleviate stress as well.
But until recently there has not been a large scale study on stress reduction with green tea. A large scale study in Japan linking green tea with stress reduction was recently published online in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
The research team from the Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine was led by Atsushi Hosawa. The study included 42,093 Japanese individuals. Just under seven percent of the study population, 2,774, suffered from psychological stress. The research team determined that consuming sufficient quantities of green tea improved their psychological well-being.
Those who drank five cups of green tea per day showed considerably less psychological distress than those who drank less than a cup a day. These results were calculated after making adjustments for variables such as age, diet, cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, and disease histories.
The benefits of polyphenols
Because this was strictly an epidemiological study, no effort was made to determine the bioactive components that achieved the observed results. Green tea leaves contain polyphenols. Polyphenols are a type of antioxidant that combats the oxidative stress associated with neurodegenerative and cardiovascular diseases.
The four primary polyphenols found in fresh green tea leaves are: epigallocatechin (EGC), epicatechin gallate (ECG), epicatechin (EC), and epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG).
An earlier Japanese animal model study uncovered a link between EGCG and recovery from stress-induced fatigue. The researchers subjected rats to physical stress trials. They administered EGCG orally to the rats and discovered a significant reduction of liver oxidative damage, which stress and fatigue create. The research results were published in the journal Nutrition.
Stress and workaholic fatigue have been increasing worldwide. Consuming more green tea daily may offer a low-cost solution for stress management.
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