Most recent international health newscast in addition to examination from our health explore band.

We need fibre to keep our bowels healthy and prevent constipation but fibre is also vital for our fertility.

The fibre contained in whole grains, fruit and vegetables reduces excess oestrogen levels, clearing out old hormone residues. It does this by preventing oestrogens that have been excreted in the bile from being reabsorbed back into the blood.

Studies have shown that women who eat a vegetarian diet excrete three times more ‘old’, detoxified oestrogens than women who also eat meat. The meat-eaters also reabsorb more oestrogen. So, for both men and women aiming to keep their reproductive systems in optimum balance, it makes sense to ensure that you are getting enough fibre in your diet.

Contrary to popular belief, the best way to do this is not to add bran to your food. Whatever you may have read or heard about its benefits, bran can actually block the absorption of vital nutrients such as iron, zinc, calcium and magnesium. It is much better to eat it in its natural form (as whole grains) instead.

To increase your fibre intake, you need to eat plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables (cooked and raw), whole grains (brown rice, whole meal bread, oats, wholegrain crackers and whole meal pasta), beans, nuts and seeds.

You should also avoid refined carbohydrates (such as cakes, white bread and biscuits, and anything containing white flour and sugar). Don’t be tempted to eat bran on its own or when added or made into breakfast cereal.

It is important for your bowels to work efficiently so that ‘old’ hormones can be quickly excreted and also so that food does not end up putrefying (which it may do if it stays in your bowel too long). Proper bowel function also helps you get rid of chemicals, pesticides, heavy toxic metals and other toxins that can affect your fertility.

I have found that even patients diagnosed with high lead levels, caused by daily commuting to work through London, soon start to get rid of the excess lead once they are on a healthy, high-fibre diet.

Help for constipation

What can you use instead of bran? First try increasing your intake of fresh fruit and vegetables. If you need extra help then either sprinkle 1 tablespoon of linseeds onto your breakfast cereal in the mornings or soak 1 tablespoon of linseeds in a small amount of “water and swallow. Vitamin Ñ can also be used to help soften stools. Try taking l,000 mg per day, and increase by 500mg at a time until your stools are manageable, soft and comfortable.

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Comments (0) Apr 23 2009

A Shock to the System

Electrical shocks aren’t the most common form of home accident, says Taylor. But they can be among the most harmful. “Even mild electrical shocks can result in serious internal injuries,” adds Dr. Alton Thygerson of Brigham Young University and the National Safety Council’s First-Aid Institute. “Even standard household current of 110 volts can be deadly.”

The most basic way to avoid getting an unwanted shock to your system is to make it a cardinal rule not to mess with the wiring in your house unless you’re a trained professional, Taylor says. “Be especially careful when you’re drilling,” he adds. “You don’t want to be drilling around places where there could be electrical wires present, like outlets. When in doubt, always call an electrician. Your life is more important than the ego boost of doing it yourself.”

If you do receive a shock, seek medical attention immediately, Dr. Thygerson says. “The burns on the skin that result from an electrical shock often are small and don’t look like much, but electricity travels along your nerves and blood vessels before exiting your body. And even relatively minor shocks can cause internal damage.”

Yardwork Woes

Your home doesn’t end when you walk out the door. If you’re like most homeowners, you likely have a patch of green-or more often stubbornly brown-that you call home for cookouts and lazy Sunday lounges. If you thought the inside of your house was an accident zone, check out what awaits in the backyard. The following are common yard-improvement tools, along with the number of handymen they send to the emergency room each year.

Nails, screws, and tacks or bolts:         191,037

Ladders:         151,327

Fences and fence posts:         114,055

Pruners, trimmers, and edgers:          36,204

Chain saws:          35,132

Gasoline and other fuels:          18,924

Pliers, wire cutters, and wrenches:          14,543

Just like accidents that happen inside the house, accidents that happen in the yard are often the result of cutting corners or being overly confident,” Taylor says. The following tips can help.

Cover up. “We tell people that if they’re going to be working around the old house, take their cue from Bob Vila or Norm Abram,” says Taylor. “They always wear gloves and safety goggles and take the little precautions that can keep you out of big trouble.” It’s especially important to take these safety precautions when handling power equipment, like mowers and pruners.

Take your time. Whatever you do, don’t rush yourself on a domestic-repair or improvement job. Haste can waste you. “The worst thing you can do,” Taylor says, “is not allow yourself enough time to do the job properly. Many accidents occur when you try to do too much in too little time.” If you really don’t have time to do the job right, get somebody else to do it-like a professional-or don’t do it at all.

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Comments (0) Apr 23 2009

The brain

The brain acts as the central processing unit for all these various forces and influences. Different parts of the brain control responses to different stimuli.

Perhaps of greatest interest in a discussion of eating is the hypothalamus. This cluster of nerves, located near the front of the brain and surrounded by the hemispheres of “gray matter,” is astonishingly powerful given its tiny size. The hypothalamus, serving as a kind of gatekeeper between the brain and the rest of the body, coordinates many activities, including the central nervous system, the endocrine system, and the autonomic nervous system that governs, among other things, breathing and digestion.

The hypothalamus receives signals from the body about the state of energy supplies, decides what has to be done, and issues orders accordingly. For example, “hunger” signals sent from one part of the brain to other areas propel us toward the refrigerator. During the meal, various feedback loops change the concentration of certain brain chemicals. The hypothalamus records all of these changes and signals other parts of the brain to stop the eating. You put your fork down and push yourself away from the table. This is a “satiety” response. Without it we would continue eating to the point of physical pain.

Although small, the hypothalamus is divided into several discrete areas. Since the 1940s, we have known that damage to one area can disturb metabolism, resulting in overeating and obesity. Such results led to the early conclusion that the hypothalamus housed the central mechanisms in charge of hunger and satiety. We have since learned, however, that the eating process is much more complex than this simplistic explanation would allow. Hunger signals are now thought of as “decentralized,” traveling not just from the brain to the body, but from the body to the brain as well.

Research has also revealed that the hypothalamus, like the rest of the brain, is awash in a biochemical bath. The different areas of the hypothalamus are studded with specific receptors geared to respond only to certain neurotransmitters.

Other organs

The brain is just one of the links in the chain of the eating process. Other links include the nose, mouth, esophagus, the digestive tract, the bowels, and the kidneys.

Until recently, people tended to look on the stomach as just a passive bag that received food, broke it down, and passed it on. New discoveries indicate that the gastrointestinal system plays an active role in regulating the intake of food.

Food landing in the stomach sets in motion a series of events. The stomach and small intestine react to the size of the meal and the type of nutrients contained in the foods-fats, carbohydrates, and so on-by releasing the right mix of acids and other compounds necessary for digestion. Various gastrointestinal peptides are released in response to feeding, which in turn signal the hypothalamus to “terminate eating.” (A peptide is a compound of two or more amino acids; proteins are long sequences of amino acids linked together.)

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Comments (0) Apr 22 2009

Murray Hann admits that he wasn’t the kind of person that you’d expect to find on a tennis court. At 315 pounds, he looked more like a spectator than a player. “But I played a decent game, even as a fat guy,” he says.

His love of the sport helped him launch a regular fitness program—and helped him lose almost half of his body weight.

Murray, a 38-year-old mechanical engineer from Palm Bay, Florida, had a weight problem throughout his entire life. “I grew up with a wonderful, Aunt Bea type of mom who regularly baked cookies for my brother and me,” he recalls. “I ate more than I should have, and it showed.”

At age 30, Murray started feeling self-conscious about his size. “I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life alone, and I believed that that’s what would happen if I didn’t slim down,” he says. “There was no woman on Earth who was tolerant enough to see through all that fat.” ; ^

As much as he wanted to shed the extra pounds, Murray refused to go on a diet. “Diets provide only temporary results,” he ex- j <j§ plains. “I wanted to lose the weight permanently. I knew that that would mean making lifestyle changes.”

Murray thought about how much he enjoyed tennis, along with a number of other sports. He figured that he could stick with a regular exercise program, which in turn would help him lose weight.

“I made up my mind to work out every day, no matter what,” he says. “Sometimes, I felt selfish because I put exercise so high on my priority list. It became almost as important to me as food, water, and sleep.”

His brother gave him a rowing machine, which Murray used every night. “I wouldn’t fix dinner until I completed 40 minutes,” he says. He continued to play an occasional game of tennis. As his fitness improved, he graduated to racquetball, then mountain biking, then walking, then jogging, then running.

To support his new exercise habit, Murray began paying more attention to his food choices. He cut back on fat while making sure to get an adequate amount of protein.

With regular workouts and a better diet, Murray was able to take off 150 pounds in about a year. He has maintained his weight at 165 pounds since 1992.

Exercise had another, unexpected benefit that made Murray even happier than his trim physique. He met his wife, Susan, on the racquetball courts at a local recreation center. “We played against each other, and she kicked my butt,” he recalls.

S These days, Murray and Susan often work out together as part of their active lifestyle. In addition, during his lunch hour, Murray usually runs with a group of coworkers. “I enjoy the sunshine, fresh air, and camaraderie more than food,” he says.

WINNING ACTION

Do what you love; love what you do. There’s no rule saying that you have to walk or run or pedal a bike to lose weight. Anything that gets your body moving burns calories. So find an activity that you love. Murray is a great role model: He loves tennis, and he used it as a springboard to establishing a regular exercise program. The point is that if you enjoy what you’re doing, you’re more likely to do it.

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Comments (0) Apr 22 2009

Stress seekers must learn to slow down and calm down, to put things into perspective. Here are some guidelines:

1. Slow down the pace of your life; even a little bit will help. Learn to walk more leisurely, talk a bit slower, chew your food longer, and drive in the slow lane.

2. Set aside time every day for relaxation, meditation and exercise. The little time you invest in this way will pay you handsome dividends in years to come.

3. Don’t try to do more than one thing at a time. Nothing is that important.

4. Don’t plan to do more in a day than you can comfortably accomplish. If you finish early, go home and relax. Don’t take on new responsibilities that will overload your schedule.

5. On your way to work, to the market, or anywhere, take some time to appreciate the beauty of the scenery: the sky, the people, the architecture.

6. Spend time with your loved ones and friends. Holidays, birthdays, anniversaries and graduations are great opportunities for fun.

7. Leave ten minutes early, no matter where you’re going. Now you won’t have to drive with an eye on the clock, fretting about being late.

8. If you find yourself too busy to do something, you’re trying to do too much. Get someone else to do it or leave it undone until tomorrow, or the next day.

9. Don’t always volunteer to take on more work, go to more classes or supervise more people. If you have the time and energy, fine. If not, skip it.

10. If your work environment is constantly pressuring you, it may be time for you to look for a new job.

11. If you can’t seem to finish everything you want to, learn to live with it. Remember, the only thing that is completely finished is a corpse.

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Comments (0) Apr 20 2009

With continued exercise, the tiny blood vessels that carry fresh blood throughout your body begin to relax: resistance to the blood flow decreases, and blood pressure is lowered. This effect can last for many hours, during and after exercise. That’s why it’s especially important for the person with high blood pressure to exercise.

NOTE: If you have high blood pressure or any other medical problems, see your doctor before beginning an exercise program.

Exercise For Air

During exercise, your lungs work harder to make sure that enough oxygen gets into the blood. But it’s the muscles between the ribs (intercostal muscles) and the diaphragm that actually tighten, then relax, to expand and contract your lungs. Like any other muscles, the intercostals and the diaphragm get stronger with use. In the long run, sustained exercise increases your ability to take oxygen into your lungs. I’ve found that pulmonary (lung) functions improve in almost all patients after just four to six weeks of regular exercise.

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Comments (0) Apr 20 2009

Nuts:

Almonds
Hazelnuts
Pecans
Cashews
Lychees
Peanuts
Chestnuts
Macadamias
Walnuts
Filberts

Seeds:

Anise
Dill
Sesame
Caraway
Flax
Sunflower
Chia
Poppy
Pumpkin
Celery

• Nuts and seeds are high in fat, deriving about 70 percent to 87 percent of their calories from fat (depending on the nut). Use them sparingly. Macadamias contain the highest percentage of calories from fat. Chestnuts, which are very low in fat, are an exception, and roasted chestnuts taste great.

• If you use nuts and seeds, use them sparingly as a condiment, to give your food extra taste and crunch.

Anise Basil

Bay Leaves Cardomom Cayenne Pepper Celery Seeds Cinnamon Cloves Coriander Cumin (ground) Curry Powder

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Comments (0) Apr 20 2009

There’s more to stress than being yelled at by your boss or being stuck in traffic. Stress results any time your body is called upon to adapt to different circumstances, and there are “good” and “bad” stresses. Anger, negative thoughts and depression are stressors that harm your “doctor within.” I’ll talk more about stress later, but for now let me say that stress is a major health problem.

Stress contributes to disease. And disease, in turn, is a very stressful event. You must protect your “doctor within” by learning how to avoid the dangerous stress-disease, more-stress-more disease cycle.

Mr. Grossbaum was an angry 60-year-old man. “That lousy partner of mine!” he used to say, shaking his fist. Mr. Grossbaum and his partner had founded a successful chain of dry cleaning stores on the West Coast. Two excitable men, they never got along well. Every time they fought, which was often, Mr. Grossbaum wound up with headaches and stomach pain. Finally, after 25 years of stress, he sold his share of the business to his partner.

He came to see me soon after, complaining of abdominal pain, headaches, high blood pressure, insomnia, nightmares and irritability. “My wife insisted I come,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with me that going back and telling off that lousy ex-partner of mine won’t cure.”

Instead of learning to avoid stress, as I suggested, he called up his old partner to tell him exactly what he thought of him. They yelled at each other on the phone for ten minutes before Mr. Grossbaum ended the conversation by ripping the cord out of the wall and hurling the phone across the room. With his blood pressure sky high, his heart pounding and his hands shaking, he sat down to rest. Five minutes later he had a massive heart attack and died.

Mr. Grossbaum didn’t know it, but fighting with his partner— or even thinking about fighting—caused his sympathetic nervous system to spew out high-voltage chemicals that eventually triggered the heart attack.

So there’s no way to get around it: we’ve been wired in such a way that our thoughts are felt throughout our bodies. Good thoughts improve our health. Bad, distressful thoughts induce poor health.

We tend to think of our body and mind as distinct entities. That isn’t true. Our mind and body are actually one and the same. It’s convenient to separate them for discussion’s sake, but they are really both aspects of a singular entity: you. What happens in your mind is reflected throughout your body; changing the chemical composition of your cells and body fluids, even affecting your ability to fight off disease. I’ll talk more about this in Chapter Five, and show you how to keep your mind filled with the happy, positive thoughts that encourage good health.

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Comments (0) Apr 20 2009

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, doctors tried to explain why they saw certain patterns of diseases. Epidemics broke out in the crowded urban slums created by the Industrial Revolution, due to a lack of sanitation and clean water supplies. Knowing nothing of bacteria and viruses, doctors constructed the theory of ‘miasmas’ to explain them.

Miasmas were elusive, unidentified atmospheric conditions that could somehow cause disease. To explain the great variety of diseases that appeared in the same crowded areas, the miasmas were assumed to be non-specific -they might cause cholera in some people, yellow fever in others, and so on. As an extension of this idea, other factors in the environment were assumed to cause disease. Cold was an obvious one, and it too was seen as being nonspecific – different people suffered different symptoms when they lived in cold houses or breathed cold air.

In the 1860s and 1870s, a revolution occurred in medical thinking. Dr Robert Koch in Germany and Louis Pasteur in France discovered that microorganisms caused a great many diseases. More importantly, they found that specific bacteria caused specific illnesses. This is a fact that we now take for granted, but in its time it was a remarkable and novel idea. The germ theory, as it was known, quickly replaced the old way of thinking, where a miasma or other environmental factor could cause a great variety of different ills.

The change in medical thinking brought about by the germ theory was a radical one. In a reaction to the vagueness of the old ways of thought, a dogmatic insistence on cause-and-effect thinking took over. From then on, each disease had to have a specific set of symptoms and a specific cause. This way of thinking, with its obvious scientific merits, has dominated medical education for the past century.

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Comments (0) Apr 20 2009

Interestingly, more primitive people living near industrialised communities are not affected by many of their neighbours’ diseases, even though the causative agents could attack them just as well. I am referring especially to multiple sclerosis, although here is as yet no conclusive evidence that it is caused by micro-organisms. But similar diseases cannot gain a foothold among such people either, simply because they live more naturally and therefore have sufficient resistance to germs and other causes of disease.

Nothing but wholefood offers real sustenance and protection and this is shown by the example we have in whole rice. Everything offered by nature consists of an integral whole and if only a fraction of it is removed, whatever it maybe, we are deprived of something that would otherwise provide us with complete nutrition. The Creator meant cereal to be a complete formula and to benefit fully from it we should prepare our food from the whole grain.

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Comments (0) Apr 08 2009