Nuts for health

If you are looking for a fast food that is full of health benefits then make sure you add nuts to your daily diet. I know nuts have a bad reputation in terms of putting on weight, but if you choose sensibly you get all the benefits without the drawbacks – basically eat your nuts untreated and unsalted.

Spanish researchers who were looking at the benefits of a Mediterranean type of diet found that by adding nuts into the mix cut certain heart risks substantially. Adding the nuts helped the subjects reduce fat on their stomachs and improved blood pressure and cholesterol levels. If you want to follow their example, greatest health improvements in the study were shown by those who ate 3 walnuts, 8 hazelnuts and eight almonds but remember they must be untreated so no roasted, salted, or flavoured versions – just the whole nut as nature intended.

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.

Selenium has role in preventing high risk bladder cancer

Selenium is an essential trace element that we need for health, and now it seems it could play an important role in preventing high risk-bladder cancer for certain groups of people. Researchers from Dartmouth Medical School this month reported in a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research that although not true for everyone some groups who had been newly diagnosed with bladder cancer showed significant reductions in their cancer when they were found to have higher rates of selenium than average in their bodies. The groups affected were women, moderate smokers and those with p53 positive cancer. While other studies have shown a similar association between selenium and bladder cancer among women, this study is one of the first to show an association between selenium and p53 positive bladder cancer. Selenium is a trace element found widely in the environment and good food sources include Brazil nuts, bread, fish, meat and eggs Christmas excess – be prepared!.

Help for hormone headaches

If you have ever suffered from hormone headaches triggered by periods then you know how badly they can affect you – and those around you. Resorting to painkillers is not always the best answer and if you are looking for a more natural treatment then there is one that has been clinically proven to effectively deal with the pain for 96% of hormone headache sufferers.

It may be put down to your ‘moods’ but in reality it’s those fluctuating hormones that can cause the problem and they can occur at any point in a woman’s life from puberty to menopause. Hormone headaches generally affect only one side of the head, and the pain is often described as throbbing and can be accompanied by nausea and vomiting and may be made worse by bright light and loud noise.

A small study of 50 women aged 18 to 45 who reported regularly having hormone headaches were asked to test 4head, a natural plant-based, licensed medicine, to see if it helped reduce their headaches. On average, the volunteers had regularly suffered from hormonal headaches for more than 12 years, with a minimum of one year and a maximum of 30 years. An amazing 96% of the women in the study reported that the treatment relieved the pain, and in most cases the headache began to ease within 15 minutes. A previous clinical trial found it could begin working in just two minutes, and this was backed by this latest study.

Another point in 4head’s favour is the fact that up to a third of women don’t like taking tablets for headaches, and this product is applied directly to the forehead either as a stick or a patch. The active ingredient is pure levomenthol, which gives it a minty aroma when applied to the skin and the cooling/tingling effect effectively diverts the body’s attention away from the less bearable painful stimulus of the headache and blocks the pain signals. At the same time, the levomenthol helps to relax tense muscles in the head that are associated with tension type headaches.

Given the symptoms of hormone headaches, it ought to prove helpful for migraines as well. Available at pharmacies and many supermarkets.

Breast cancer treatment optimism

News from Greece has confirmed that the new chemotherapy agents are cutting advanced breast cancer mortality in half. This reassuring news comes from a review of published studies, by John P. A. Ioannidis, M.D., of the University of Ioannina, and reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. They looked at 122 clinical trials involving 26,031 patients and 22 different types of therapy.

Their conclusion was that the advent of the new anthracycline drugs led to a 22% reduction in mortality risk compared with older nonanthracycline drugs, and that the introduction of taxanes resulted in a 33% risk reduction compared with older single-agent therapy. Taken together this means that the newer taxane-based combination treatments such as those involving capecitabine (Xeloda), or gemcitabine (Gemzar), have reduced mortality by 51% compared to the single-agent treatment in use 35 years ago.

Now I know chemotherapy is not the favoured option for many people and they choose to go on any of the alternative routes from Chinese Medicine to Spiritual healing, however, if you are undergoing chemotherapy there is an excellent homoeopathic remedy that can help alleviate some of the side effects. Many homoeopathic chemists have their own variation so ask locally or I can recommend an excellent chemist in Dorset who make their own tablets and are happy to speak with you on the phone about your requirements. They are the Galen pharmacy and their telephone number is 01305 263996 or if you would like to read more about natural treatments for cancer a book I recommend is Say No to Cancer by Patrick Holford and an interesting website to check out is www.cancertruth.net which is American but will give you some food for thought.

PS – if you or someone you know has been affected by cancer, then here’s a chance to walk, jog, run and have fun at 5k events across the UK, to help raise as much money as possible to beat cancer. Women only can run, but men are very welcome as supporters, coaches and fundraisers at Cancer Research UK’s Race for Life events taking place in 2009. If you are interested, they are open for entries on 19 January and for more information visit www.raceforlife.org or call 0871 641 2282

Kids health and new media dangers

We have touched on this before but with the average child now spending 7 hours a day on various forms of media it bears looking at again. Most Christmas lists will have at least one or two electronic ‘toys’ on them, plus the ones already in the home. New research from the National Institutes of Health, Yale University and California Pacific Medical Center in the USA has yet again emphasised the problems between high media consumption and children’s health problems.

This is not the usual concerns about too much violence, though they have their place, this is specifically focused on the effects on childrens health and the ‘new media’ area has not so far been put under the spotlight. Just what is ‘new media’? Well it encompasses everything from the internet to mobile phones, texting, video games, and social networking sites like YouTube and Twitter. Many youngsters organise their whole social lives on YouTube and one local family near me had their home trashed when their teenage daughter posted her birthday invitations on the site and got 100 gatecrashers instead.

The researchers found that the greater the exposure to the internet, TV, movies, music and technology a child has then they have correspondingly higher health risks. So what are they risking? Primarily obesity but they also are more likely to smoke, drink and use drugs – three other key health risks. There is of course a follow on effect and they are also likely to be poor performers at school as well. What’s the cure? Well, back to the family – limit the amount of time spent on this media at home. You can have little impact outside it so it’s important to have home boundaries and don’t add to the electronic stockpile this Christmas – don’t buy them an Xbox, think outside it.

Meditation is best for depression – Say Om, not Ah

If the Christmas season does not fill you with cheer and you find yourself getting low then, rather than head to the doctor, do heed a new piece of research. Published this week in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology it has found that meditation beats antidepressants both short and long-term. Professor Willem Kuyken, from the Mood Disorders Centre at the University of Exeter, found that Buddhist meditation techniques (which are similar to mindfulness-based cognitive therapy) can be just as effective at not only combating depression but enabling participants to have lower rates of relapse than those on medication.

The aim of all such meditation is to keep your focus in the present, not dwelling on the past or future. The trial lasted 8 weeks, and fifteen months afterwards they found that 47%pc of people with long-term depression (who had done the meditation) had relapsed, compared to 60% of those taking anti-depressant drugs. What those people gained from just 8 weeks of meditation was life skills that powerfully supported them to stay well.

For details of a group in your area, contact the network of buddhist organisations in the UK who may be able to help. Their website is www.nbo.org.uk and if you don’t have access locally, or prefer to meditate at home, you might find my mediation CD useful. It’s in the marketplace section of my website at www.catalystonline.co.uk/potential.htm and contains a simple everyday meditation (Blue Sky) to help you stay focused in the present and let go of any worries and anxieties you may have.

Fruit drinks and chemicals

Well it’s nice to be a world leader, but not when it comes to being up there because we have some of the highest levels of pesticides in fruit-based soft drinks. Spanish researchers checked drinks in many European countries and the USA and we came joint first with Spain, and the USA – usually home of the additives – came out well, as did Russia.

The study was reported in the December 15 issue of the journal Analytical Chemistry, and has revealed a basic flaw in the regulatory system for pesticides. Although levels of pesticides are strictly regulated in fresh fruit, vegetables, and drinking water there has been no follow through on fruit-based soft drinks.

The scientists measured the levels of a wide range of common pesticides in more than 100 fruit-based soft drink samples from 15 different countries. Pesticides they tested were those that are applied to crops after harvest and are known to still be able to be present during any processing methods. These included carbendazim, thiabendazole, imazalil, and malathion, and were found in fairly large concentrations in most of the samples analyzed.

The main concern is for children as their systems are more vulnerable to these chemicals, and they tend to have more fruit-based soft drinks than adults do. Until there is legislation in place it would be sensible to limit such drinks or make sure they come only from organic sources – make your own by buying organic apple juice concentrate and diluting it with water.

Help a stranger to live – Give blood

We are very focused on presents for friends and families, but there is one way you can give the most incredible gift of life to someone you will never meet, or even know their name. Please think about becoming a blood donor this month, as there is a projected critical 50% drop in donations over Christmas and New Year.

We know how vital blood is in hospitals for operations, and emergency treatment and the Christmas period usually means a greater number of road accidents. In critical cases a transfusion may not be able to save a life, but it can keep someone alive long enough for their family to reach them in hospital.

It’s also not well known that terminal patients in the last stages of their lives can also benefit from a blood transfusion. It can help to improve their quality of life during their final months, weeks or even days. These transfusion are often given in the patient’s own home and can give them the energy and ability to enjoy this precious, final time with their families. If you would like to donate please contact the national blood transfusion service and enrol at the website or ask at your doctor’s surgery as they usually have the dates when the next event is in your area.

Visit www.blood.co.uk and type in your postcode.

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