Saturday 31 January 2009

7 minutes execise p week helps diabetics

This confirms the exercise program (Pace) of Dr Al Sears and the research of Dr Tabata (see postings on this blog)

Rigorous workouts lasting as little as three minutes may help prevent diabetes by helping control blood sugar, British researchers said on Wednesday.

The findings published in the journal BioMed Central Endocrine Disorders suggest that people unable to meet government guidelines calling for moderate to vigorous exercise several hours per week can still benefit from exercise.

'This is such a brief amount of exercise you can do it without breaking a sweat,' said James Timmons, an exercise biologist at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, who led the study.

'You can make just as big as an effect doing this as you can by doing hours and hours of endurance training each week.'

Type 2 diabetes, which affects an estimated 246 million adults worldwide and accounts for 6 percent of all global deaths, is a condition in which the body gradually loses the ability to use insulin properly to convert food to energy.

Very strict diet and vigorous, regular and sustained exercise can reverse type 2 diabetes, but this can be difficult for many people. The condition is closely linked to inactivity.

Timmons and his team showed that just seven minutes of exercise each week helped a group of 16 men in their early twenties control their insulin.

The volunteers, who were relatively out of shape but otherwise healthy, rode an exercise bike four times daily in 30 second spurts two days a week.

After two weeks, the young men had a 23 percent improvement in how effectively their body used insulin to clear glucose, or blood sugar, from the blood stream, Timmons said.

The effect appears to last up to 10 days after the last round of exercise, he added in a telephone interview.

'The simple idea is if you are doing tense muscle contractions during sprints or exercise on a bike you really enhance insulin's ability to clear glucose out of the bloodstream,' Timmons said.

The findings highlight a way for people who do not have time to work out a few hours each week as recommended to improve their health, he added.

His team did not look for other important benefits to health that come from exercise, such as lowered blood pressure or weight control, but said another study had shown similar benefits to heart function.

But Timmons said getting people to exercise even a little could translate into big savings for health systems that spend hundreds of million of dollars treating diabetes.

Wednesday 28 January 2009

insane

It has been said that one sign of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different outcome.

aren't we all guilty of this tho?

Tuesday 27 January 2009

Paul McCartney And Eddie Vedder To Play Benefit Concert

Sir Paul McCartney and Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder are among a host of names set to perform at special concert in New York on April 4th.

Sheryl Crow, Donovan, Paul Horn and Moby are also set to appear at the benefit event for the David Lynch Foundation.

The concert aims to raise more awareness to the foundation's target of teaching children the technique of Transcendental Meditation.


David Lynch said in a statement: "In today's world of fear and uncertainty, every child should have one class period a day to dive within himself and experience the field of silence - bliss - the enormous reservoir of energy and intelligence that is deep within all of us.

"This is the way to save the coming generation."

Ticket information for the concert, which will take place at the Radio City Music Hall, will be announced shortly.

Tuesday 20 January 2009

fat causes dementia?

a recent study published in the March edition of Neurology, involving over 6,500 participants monitored for an average of 36 years found that people with normal body weight, but with extra fat stored around the abdominal area were 89% more likely to have dementia compared to people with normal body weight and low abdominal fat. The risk increased among overweight and obese people with high abdominal fat measurements.

Yet again, it is made clear that early action is the key to long-term good health. Prevention is indeed better than cure and undoubtedly, the best time to start taking action to protect health for the long term is now!

Sources:
www.medicalnewstoday.com
Neurology March 26 2008
www.alzheimer’s.org.uk

Thursday 15 January 2009

no comment

"He has Van Gogh's ear for music." – Billy Wilder

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn't it." – Groucho Marx

sugar - is it good for you?

Some interesting points from Dr Mark Hyman about sugar:

"Historically we ate the equivalent of only 20 teaspoons of sugar a year as a hunter/gatherer species, now we eat 150lbs per year per person, or about 1/2 pound each day. The average schoolboy has 34 teaspoons of sugar a day.

We evolved in a world without super grocery stores, convenience stores, and fast food restaurants. We had to work for our food and had limited access to refined foods or excess calories. In fact, our genes are pre-agricultural. We only started farming 10,000 years ago and only started refining flour about 200 years ago with the advent of the steam engine-powered flourmill.

With the advent of 15,000 low-fat foods (a/k/a high-sugar, high-calorie foods) on the market over the last 15-20 years, we have created an epidemic of increasing obesity, diabetes and heart disease. The scientific foundation for the low-fat movement was shaky from the start. Madison Avenue got ahead of medical science to the detriment of us all.

Our bodies normally produce insulin in response to food in our stomach, particularly sugar.

We once thought that insulin’s only role was to help the sugar enter the cells to be metabolized, transforming the stored energy of the sun (in plant foods) with the oxygen we breathe into the energy we use every day to run our bodies.

Here is what too much insulin really does to your body and health:

* Now we recognize insulin as a major switching station, or control hormone, for many processes. It is a major storage hormone – fat storage that is.
* Try as you may, as long as your insulin levels are high you will fight a losing battle for weight loss. It acts on your brain to increase appetite and specifically an appetite for sugar.
* It increases LDL cholesterol, lowers HDL cholesterol, raises triglycerides and increases your blood pressure. Insulin resistance causes 50% of all reported cases of high blood pressure.
* It makes your blood sticky and more likely to clot, leading to heart attacks and strokes.
* It stimulates the growth of cancer cells.
* It increases inflammation and oxidative stress and ages your brain.
* It even increases homocysteine because sugar consumption decreases B6 and folate.
* It also causes sex hormone problems and can lead to infertility, hair growth where you don’t want it, hair loss where you don’t want to lose it, acne, and low testosterone in men and more. It also leads to mood disturbances.

Balancing blood sugar and correcting insulin resistance is well within our reach.

Scientific advances of the last few decades point the way to managing this.

While there are some new medications that can help such as Glucophage, Avandia and Actos, they have side effects and are only a band-aid unless used with a comprehensive nutritional, exercise and stress management plan I describe in a moment.

My goal is to make your metabolism more efficient, to make your cells more intelligent and cooperative, not resistant. In other words, you will need much less insulin to accomplish the task of balancing your blood sugar.

While I want to tell you how to balance your stress hormones, thyroid function and all your sex hormones, and all your brain and mood chemicals that will take a few more lessons!

For now I want to show you how you can reset your metabolism of sugar and insulin by stopping the things that knock you off balance, and providing the things that put you balance in balance allowing you to thrive.

Here is what to do:

* Stop eating flour and sugar products, especially high fructose corn syrup.
* Don’t have liquid calories – your body doesn’t feel full from them so you eat more all day!
* Stop all processed, junk or packaged foods. If it doesn’t look like the food your great-great-great grandmother ate, then stay away.
* Stop eating trans or hydrogenated fats.
* Slow the rate of sugar uptake from the gut through balancing your meals (low glycemic load) with healthy protein (nuts, seeds, beans, small wild fish, organic chicken), healthy carbs (vegetables, fruit, beans, whole grains) and healthy fats (olive oil, nuts and seeds, avocadoes, fish oil)
* Rough it up: eat plenty of soluble fiber (30-50 grams a day)
* Eat smaller more frequent meals
* Get an oil change: Make your cells smarter by giving them an oil change with omega-3 fats – fixing the cell membranes so that they can more readily receive the messages from insulin.
* Move your body: exercise improves your cells ability to work better, respond to insulin better and burn sugar faster.
* Relax! Stress reduction also helps improved blood sugar control!
* Make your cells smarter through increasing specific nutrients such as chromium, vanadium, magnesium, vitamin E, biotin, the B vitamins, zinc, bioflavinoids and some newer compounds including alpha lipoic acid, arginine, and carnitine.
* Herbs may also be of benefit including Panax ginseng, ginkgo biloba, green tea, fenugreek and gymnena sylvestre, bitter melon and garlic.

Just balancing this one hormone – insulin – can have wide-ranging effects on all your other hormones and brain chemicals – so just start there".

Saturday 10 January 2009

chiropractic and addictions

Reward Deficiency Syndrome and Addictions

It is estimated that at least 20% of the American population suffers from some form of addiction or compulsive disorder, including attention deficit /with or without hyperactivity disorders (ADD, ADHD).

The five primary addictions are work, food, sex, gambling and chemical addictions.

Chemical addictions include, but are not limited to: alcohol, nicotine, marijuana, cocaine, heroin, opiates, amphetamines, barbiturates, methadone, prescription drugs, sedatives, hypnotics, Ecstasy, antidepressants and even caffeine.

The total cost of addictive behaviors in terms of family disintegration, loss of labor productivity, illness, injury and death is staggering. Over 80% of all crimes are related to addictions or substance abuse. There is now evidence that addictions account for 69% of all drownings, 68% of manslaughters, 52% of rapes, 50% of spousal abuse, 50% of traffic fatalities, 38% of child abuse and 20-35% of all suicides.

The disease of addiction is multifactorial, having genetic, psychological, physical and spiritual components. Recent research has shown a genetic component in the form of a defective gene for the Dopamine D2 receptor. When functioning optimally, the human organism is capable of producing a cascade of neurotransmitters within the Central Nervous System which results in a sense and feeling of well-being. This is called the Brain Reward Cascade.

People suffering from the defective gene are unable to produce a reward cascade. We then say that they suffer from Reward Deficiency Syndrome (RDS). Those individuals are unable to produce a feeling of well-being and, consequently, turn to addictive substances or compulsives behaviors that momentarily make them feel better.

RDS can be manifested in mild forms such as chain smoking or in more severe forms such as in chemical addictions.

Alcohol addictions, obesity (as a result of carbohydrates bingeing), nicotine addiction, attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder, cocaine addiction, Tourette’s Syndrome and post-traumatic stress disorders are centrally mediated Reward Deficiency Syndromes.

Chiropractic, Subluxation and Addictions

Many things can interfere with the normal function of the Brain Reward Cascade, including, but not limited to: genetic factors; loss of normal neurological function (vertebral subluxations) due to physical, emotional and chemical traumas; illness, nutritional deficiencies; and drug and medication interactions.

In vertebrates, the vertebral motor units are intimately related with the Brain Reward Cascade by virtue of the nocioceptive reflex from vertebral joints to the limbic system (where the cascade takes place). Research has shown that the limbic system is not just in the brain, but also extend to the spinal cord (especially the dorsal roots and dorsal horn).

In light of this research, a subluxation-free spine is a requisite for the Brain Reward Cascade to express itself fully and allow the individual to experience optimal well-being.

The beneficial effects of subluxation-based chiropractic care in enhancing the well-being of individuals suffering from addictions has been demonstrated in a landmark randomized, placebo control, single blind study published in the very prestigious scientific journal Molecular Psychiatry.

The study – designed by Robert Duncan, PhD at the University of Miami School of Medicine, and Dr. Jay Holder, chiropractor and medical director of Exodus Treatement Center – has demonstrated that chiropractic adjustment of the spine of addicts enhanced their ability to complete a 30-day treatment protocol at a remarkable 100% retention (compared to 56% in the group not receiving chiropractic). The chiropractic group also had significantly lower anxiety levels and did not require as many visits to the nurse station.


Discovery Health Channel airs documentary segment on chiropractic and addictions

chiropractic can reduce high blood pressure

Thursday 8 January 2009

'one man's meat is another man's poison'

While researching ideas for a natural health book I'm writing I came across'metabolic typing'.
the idea is that the same diet won't be good for everyone : some people get on better with eating a lot of protein and others have a different genetic make-up and feel healthy eating more carbohydrates, and there are mixed types.

some of my friends have gained great results within a few days from following their body type diet - lost weight, bloatedness, less fuzzy headed, etc.

you can take the test here for free:

www.naturalhealthyellowpages.com/metabolic/self_test.html