Hangover cures

No matter what your good intentions, it can happen that you might have raised a glass too and are faced with the effects of a hangover. If you have then there are some natural remedies that can help, but first let me just suggest that however you feel, before you go to bed do drink a large glass of water, preferably with some vitamin C to counteract the dehydration alcohol can bring. Then in the morning, try these:

** Honey and Lemon may be something you associate with a cold, but it is a wonderful way to get plenty of liquid and the sugars that are also lost when you overindulge. Couldn’t be simpler, just squeeze a lemon into a mug, add honey and hot water then stir and sip. Please don’t substitute sugar for honey, as you need the fructose honey contains as it prevents the rapid change in alcohol levels that results in headaches. Plain sugar contains sucrose, which isn’t absorbed as quickly, so get out the honey jar and make several cups a day to help you recover.

** Rice, Soup, or Toast is what you need to give you some energy, and although you may not feel like eating you do have to give your body some fuel to start the rebuilding process. You don’t want a heavy meal, but some easy to digest foods are just what your body wants so either use an organic vegetable stock cube and make a cup of soup for yourself or if you can manage it have some plain toast, very lightly buttered and with no topping, or some plain boiled rice with just a little miso or soy sauce to flavour it.

** Slippery elm bark was traditionally used by Native Americans as a poultice for boils, ulcers and for wounds in general. If you were caught up in the obligatory hugging and kissing at the stroke of midnight, (on New Years eve for example), then you might have a few bruises if the hugging got too enthusiastic, but generally it’s recommended for that irritated stomach that often follows over indulgence. It has been used to treat IBS because of it’s soothing effect on tissue and will certainly help calm down an upset stomach. It can be obtained in powder or capsule form, and personally I would get the capsules as the texture of the powder when mixed with water is quite gelatinous in nature and some find it difficult to swallow.

Acupuncture with no needles

I am a great fan of acupuncture for pain relief and boosting the immune system, but I appreciate there are people who don’t like needles. Well, good news for you because scientists at Linkoping University in Sweden have shown that it works just as well without using needles.

They were studying 200 cancer patients and using acupuncture to help relieve nausea during radiotherapy, Half received standard acupuncture and half were given pressure on the same acupuncture points with a blunt placebo needle that just touched the skin, but didn’t go in.

An impressive 95 percent of the patients in both groups felt that the treatment had helped relieve their nausea, and 67 percent had experienced other positive effects such as improved sleep, brighter mood, and less pain.

Oh Really?

This is an area where common sense, your mother’s advice and science have finally met. Having a good cry to relieve your frustration, tension or unhappiness is what we naturally tend to do, usually accompanied – if we are lucky – by someone holding our hand and telling us to ‘let it all out’.

Scientists love to explain the everyday things we have all taken for granted, and reported by the Association for Psychological Science is a joint study by the University of South Florida and Tilburg University in the Netherlands that explores the benefits of crying. Not surprisingly they found that most people in their study reported improvements in their mood following a bout of crying, but that around a third found no difference and a tenth felt worse.

The blessing of a senior memory

If you tend to see the past as having hotter summers, more fun and fewer problems then that’s a benefit of ageing. At least it is according to Neuroscientists from Duke University Medical Center in the USA as they have reported in the online issue of ‘Psychological Science’. They have discovered activity in the brain that causes us to remember fewer of life’s negative events than younger people – presumably because they are nearer in time to the bad events.

It seems that as our brains get older then they allow negative memories to fade away. It’s because older people use their brains differently than younger people when it comes to storing memories, particularly those associated with negative emotions. The study focused on two groups; over 70′s and under 25′s who were shown a series of 30 photographs while their brains were imaged in a functional MRI (fMRI) machine. The pictures varied from neutral to having very strong negative images such as attacking snakes, mutilated bodies and acts of violence. While in the fMRI machine, the subjects looked at the photos and ranked them on a pleasantness scale.

Later, they were then asked to recall the pictures while being scanned again and the results found that the older adults had less connectivity between areas of the brain that generate emotions and those of memory and learning, but had stronger connections with the frontal cortex, the higher thinking area of the brain that controls these lower-order parts of the brain.

In contrast, the young adults used more of the brain regions typically involved in emotion and recalling memories. This meant that they were able to recall more of the negative photos and that because the older adults were using more thinking than feeling, that they didn’t recall the more emotive, negative, pictures nearly so well.

The conclusion was that although the emotional centres of the older people were just as active as those of younger subjects, their brain connections were different. For older subjects the benefit is that they had over their lifetime learned to be less affected by negative information in order to maintain their well being and emotional state. So the summers may not have been hotter, but how nice to remember them that way and shut out all those days spent huddling under an umbrella on the sands.

Dieting? Train your tongue for maximum success

Diets come and go, and are more or less successful, but according to neuroscientists we may be overlooking a vital factor. We tend to focus on calories and exercise and food generally – which are all good things – but a report in Science Daily has added another element. Research has shown that if you are overweight over a long period it gradually numbs the taste sensation to sweet foods. Now that may sound like a good thing, but it means in reality that you eat more sweeter foods to compensate. The scientists have shown that there is a critical link between taste and body weight so knowing that will help if you have a sweet tooth. There are two factors at work: obesity is often accompanied by a failure of the ‘satiety signal’, in other words knowing when you are full and also not recognising that your taste buds have been deadened so you don’t realise how much you are increasing your intake of sweet foods.

Solution? Start with portion control, and use a smaller plate, and monitor your sweet food intake so you can start reducing it.

Get moving in the morning – In 60 seconds

We read a lot about ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder), but mostly in relation to children. However, children grow up and they don’t necessarily grow out of the disorder but they usually learn to manage it. One of the challenges can be the task of getting out of bed in the mornings and getting on with the day.

If this is you, then here’s a simple 60 second plan to overcome this – and it works whether you have ADD or just difficulty getting out of bed! All you have to do is open your eyes, sit up in bed and breathe gently and slowly while giving yourself a gentle face massage just like this:

1 Breathe in and as you slowly breathe out stroke the sides of your nose from your eyebrows downwards, using the knuckle of your thumbs.

2 Next out breath, move your thumbs up to the middle of your forehead and stroke outwards over your brow. Repeat 5 times and on the last time let your knuckles move down to end in that hollow on either side of your temple.

3 Again using your thumb knuckles, take a deep breath and as you breathe out apply some light pressure and massage with a circular motion until you have no breath left. with a bit of pressure, massage that area of your temple, right in the dip. Continue the massage until you’re out of air from that breath.

4 Next breathe in, move your thumbs down to that small hollow just in front of where your ear lies and massage that as you did before.

5 Moving down your face, stop at the next small hollow where the bottom of your ear lies, and near the top of your jawbone. Massage again until you are out of breath. Take another slow even deep breath, and find the last dip just inside the spot the bottom of your ear attaches to your face. This one’s right near the top of the jaw bone at your temple, right in the dip. Massage that dip until you’re out of breath.

6 Final breath in, and now move round to massage the curve of your ears as you breathe out. Repeat once more.

Now you should be ready to face the day.

Food to change your mood

Food is so closely associated with our emotions that we scarcely give it a thought. We overeat when unhappy or depressed, chomp chocolate to soothe a broken heart and celebrate with special foods to make an occasion memorable. However, it might help you to know that you can manipulate your moods to some extent by paying attention to your diet.

There are some foods in particular which trigger chemicals in the brain and these can have an effect for up to 3 hours on our emotions. I know this first hand because I wrote a book with a naturopath many years ago and she said she always knew when I had been eating chocolate – which I was doing a lot of at the time – because my mood was different and my responses not as fast or open. Knowing which foods can help, or hinder, your mood might be a useful tool to get you through any challenging situations that can arise. There are three neurotransmitters (chemicals) in our brain that affect our emotions: dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin. Our brain produces them in different quantities depending on certain elements in our food so the more, or less, of these we eat then the more we will feel their influence.

Feeling Good:

We are fairly familiar with the effects of serotonin as it makes us feel calm and positive and modern anti depressants are based on enabling greater serotonin intake. Serotonin is manufactured in the body from the amino acid tryptophan, which is present in most protein-based foods. If you want a natural mood boost then add in some of its best sources: cheese, meat, soya beans, sesame seeds, oats, bananas, dried dates, milk and salmon. Plus of course my perennial favourite – chocolate.

However, given the fashion for high protein diets, please don’t ignore the important role of carbohydrates. If you have a very low, or no, carbodydrate diet then your serotonin production can just cease as the brain needs them to produce serotonin. You may be thinner, but your mood could plummet. In fact you may be doing yourself a disservice by cutting down on carbs as serotonin helps control the appetite by giving us the feeling we are full and stopping us from having that extra helping. If you need to calm down, then reach for a slice of bread, some whole grain cereal or pasta and that will increase your serotonin levels and balance your mood.

Women particularly need to pay attention to their serotonin levels as we have less than men do and therefore are more affected by a low-carb diet. In fact it can lead to symptoms similar to those of PMS, so if you feel any of those you might try just upping your carbs and seeing what difference that makes.

Feeling Alert:

If you are starting to slow down, or even want to have forty winks, and need a quick boost then the neurotransmitters dopamine and norepinephrine are the ones that can help increase your focus and alertness. That mid morning slump is often treated with coffee or a biscuit, but in fact for a temporary lift you would do better to head for protein. Having a steak in your coffee break isn’t always appropriate, so snack on something like tuna or eggs. Go to work on an egg was an old slogan, but keep a hard boiled egg handy and you will be as alert at 11am as you were at 9am.

Feeling lethargic:

Our energy levels do fluctuate during the day, but if yours are extreme then one remedy might be to switch to foods with a low Glycaemic Index (GI). These are digested more slowly and release their energy in a more measured fashion and so have much less impact on your blood sugar levels. Look for unprocessed foods, grains, and particular fruits and vegetables. The high GI foods are usually those that are more processed and include baked goods, sugar and that breakfast favourite – cornflakes. If you eat more low GI foods you should be able to contain those energy swings, and for a full view on how to do that there are plenty of excellent books on the subject on Amazon like: The Low GI Diet Cookbook: 100 Delicious Low GI Recipes to Help You Lose Weight and Keep It Off or GI High Energy Cookbook: Low-GI Recipes for Weight Loss, Health and Vitality

Astrological health profiles – Capricorn

Capricorn 22 December – 20 January

The first profile of the year goes to Capricorns who happily tend to live to a ripe old age. This could in part be due to the fact they are tenacious, determined, cautious and disciplined, but like all the signs they have their own areas of weakness. This is what they need to watch out for:

* The skeletal structure is a vulnerable area, especially the knees * Later in life, rheumatism and arthritis can be a problem * Osteoporosis and deposits of calcium on the bones, especially around the joints * Stress and tension may show up in the skin as boils, acne and nervous rashes

Sounds like the ‘goat’ may be overstraining the joints with all that leaping from rock to crag, so try Tai Chi for keeping the joints and knees supple and include plenty of omega 3 and 6 oils in the diet, plus a good bone supplement.

Paperless prescriptions on the way?

Where the US leads, we often follow – however reluctantly sometimes. Now the latest buzz in the states is the move towards online prescriptions and the end of that familiar pad. But just what is a paperless prescription? It’s when your doctor inputs your prescription into his email and it gets emailed straight to your chosen pharmacy. It could benefit us as patients as you would not run any risk of losing the piece of paper and theoretically should as it could be there waiting for you when you leave the surgery. The other great advantage is that electronic prescribing systems can flash an alert if the dose seems wrong or patient records show use of another drug that can dangerously interact.

Up to now there has been a lot of resistance by US doctors to online prescribing – only 10% are currently signed up for it – that may be about to change. Medicare will give doctors who go over to online prescribing bonus payments from January but are warning that they will only do so up to 2012. After that any doctors who insist on sticking with their prescription pads will find their Medicare payments cut. It’s a move that has the backing of President-elect Barack Obama as his health-reform plans are based on saving millions of dollars a year by moving to computerized records for everything, including medical charts and not just prescriptions.

The Medicare incentive has encouraged a lot more doctors to sign up, and it will be interesting to see if we follow their lead. The US experience seems to indicate that electronic prescribing can also save money by doctors using more generic, and therefore cheaper, drugs but this system has two major drawbacks: up to last year in the US there were still 27% of independent pharmacies who did not have internet or email access and doctors also must use software recognized by the network. This has led to doctors printing out their online prescriptions and then faxing them to pharmacies who don’t have the right access or equipment. That doesn’t sound like a system that is saving time or money, but it could be the shape of things to come.

Oh Really?

Sorry, couldn’t resist this one – and although this piece of research confirms what we already know, it’s valuable to remember it at this stressful time of year. We know that stress is a powerful trigger for heart attacks and strokes, but apparently it is not the stress in and of itself that is the problem it is the unhealthy coping mechanisms that we often turn to that have been investigated by University College in London. When I talk about stress in my book ‘How To Cope Successfully With Stress’ I point out that stress is not always a bad thing; it is how you cope with it that is important. If you turn to healthy methods of dealing with it like meditation, exercise and changes in diet then you can handle it without adverse health effects.

However stress makes us reach for those comfort props whether that is food, alcohol, or smoking and those are the factors that impact on your health and can lead to heart disease or strokes. When we are stressed our good health resolutions often go by the board and we stop exercising and eating healthily and generally take less good care of ourselves. If you get stressed, try to maintain at least some healthy habits and make your ‘comfort’ blanket a little more active – swop it for a down filled coat and go for a walk.

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