As the age grows, we tend to forget things. Sometimes, forgetting small things doesn't matter a lot.

But, if you notice you’re forgetting important details, and daily activities there might be something else going on. Do you constantly forget where you’ve kept things?

Has it felt like you’re forgetting important dates you had no problem remembering before?

Do you forget directions to familiar places? If you’re having trouble with things mentioned before, you should see a psychiatrist in Patna, Dr. Vivek Pratap Singh. 

Dementia psychology

Dementia is a broad category characterized by mental decline as one ages. It’s a cluster of syndrome affecting thinking and memory abilities.

Dementia is more prominent as one ages. But, secondary dementia can manifest whenever depending on the cause.

As one ages, the risk of dementia grows. That leads to many asking questions like can i prevent it? Are there steps to curb its growth and symptoms? 

How to prevent dementia and memory loss?

Dementia’s major risk factor is growing age. Old age can’t be prevented. So, rather adopting other ways can help just as much. 

Regular physical activity puts one’s general health in good condition. It’s one of the best ways to improve blood circulation in your heart, and all the other organs. Being physically fit has shown a positive impact on mental well-being of a person. For someone, who doesn’t take care of their fitness, it can be hard for them to perform activities that enhance physical well-being. This is the reason one should find activities that are accommodating and comfortable for them so that they don’t have a reason to break the streak. 

Eating a healthy diet is immensely vital for the brain to get adequate nutrients and vitamins. Try eating a varied range of different foods for the best results. For example, foods like wholemeal bread, and rice have a good amount of required nutrients. Almonds are a great source of a vital brain nutrient called L-carnitine that increases brain activity and prevents neurological decline. 

Fishes like salmon, and mackerel are rich in iodine and other minerals, and omega-3 needed for optimal brain function and reduces risk of stroke and various other heart diseases. Walnuts contain minerals, melatonin, and omega-6 that slows cognitive decline and reduces brain inflammation.

Don’t drink too much alcohol. It slows down cognitive abilities and neuronal function. Drinking alcohol in heavy amounts can cause alterations in neuronal size and shape. 

How to avoid dementia and Alzheimer's?

Dementia and Alzheimer's are associated with growing age. Dementia is a symptom of Alzheimer's disease where the individual’s memory and important mental functions go through a gradual decline. These symptoms start manifesting in older age. Hence, if one has a family history, or knows they are at risk of this condition, they should follow ways that can prevent the early-onset. Following are the ways to prevent alzheimer’s:

Blood pressure control during midlife crisis can save not only from cognitive decline, but even reduces risk of stroke. Try to aim for systolic pressure to be below 130 mm/hg. 

As global warming affects the world, there has been a link associated with air pollution and dementia. Avoid harmful gases and inhalants, and try not to go out where there's a high risk of toxic inhalants such as company and industrial sites. 

Smoking has always been a culprit in one’s health. Tobacco is the most harmful substance one can introduce to their body. Even if it’s too late, stopping smoking can never be. Smoking cessation helps reduce the risk. 

Traumatic brain injuries are major secondary causes for dementia. Avoiding accidents to your head, by wearing protective gear while playing or driving can help a great deal in preventing injuries to the head. If one has sustained any kind of injury to the head, make sure to visit the GP to rule out concussions or delayed hemorrhages. This type of dementia manifests immediately without any warning.

How to prevent dementia in old age? 

Dementia is associated with memory loss that most often is noticed by someone else. Gradually, the individual has to depend on someone else for daily chores and this can lead to people getting anxious and upset. A lot of people get more and more depressed with old age, adding dementia on top of that is a recipe for disaster. Preventing it can somehow control a bit of damage. The various ways to prevent dementia are 

First and foremost, limit alcohol and smoking to a bare minimum. Researchers have found these substances damage the brain and its neurons. Smoking harms the blood vessels in the brain causing a negative impact and memory decline. 

Mental and social activities help the brain relieve stress and cope with aging mood changes. Try doing activities that stimulate brain cells developing thinking and memory skills. This way the brain is challenged and it remains active reducing the risk of dementia. 

Treatment: 

Treating already progressed dementia can be done through medications. A lot of people ask questions, can you slow down dementia with medication? The answer is yes. There are some medications that can slow down dementia like cholinesterase inhibitors such as donepezil, and rivastigmine; these medications reduce the breakdown of a chemical in the brain that is responsible for memory functions. 

Antidepressants (SSRIs) are given to improve mood symptoms such as depression and anxiety brought on by dementia. 

The supplement to prevent dementia is memantine, a brain chemical that is for memory and learning. Dementia targets these chemicals so the physician might prescribe it to improve the symptoms. 

Dementia is a grave disease that can push a person to the brim of depression and in severe cases, suicide too.

So, if you or your loved one is suffering from dementia please contact the best psychiatrist in Kankarbagh, Patna, Dr. Vivek Pratap Singh. He can counsel you about the condition to the best of his abilities. 

5 Health Benefits of Apples

Apples are pleasant, satisfyingly crisp, and sweet or sour and there is many Benefits of Apple. They can also aid in preventing serious illnesses like heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and other ones when they are a part of a diet rich in nutrients.

"An apple a day keeps the doctor away," as the proverb goes. It turns out that is more accurate than you may imagine. Studies have shown that apples have significant health advantages, especially in the fight against chronic diseases, which claim the lives of millions of people every year. Researchers are looking for ways to incorporate apples in healthcare products for the prevention and treatment of diseases brought on by inflammation because the components found in apples are so potent, according to a 2022 study in the journal Antioxidants. Here are a few benefits of eating more apples for health, as well as some delicious ways to include them in your meals.

Apple Nutrition

The nutritional differences between the various apple varieties are minimal. According to the USDA, this is the nutritional breakdown of 1 medium apple.

95 calories

0 g protein

0 g fat

25 g carbohydrates

4 g fiber

8 mg vitamin C

98 IU vitamin A

195 mg potassium

The two elements you need to feel full are high water content (apples are about 85% water) and fiber (a medium apple has 4 grams, or about 16% of your daily value). Apples also take time to eat, which contributes to a feeling of fullness. Quick-digesting foods often leave you hungry, causing you to consume more.

Apples also have a low glycemic index, so eating them won't cause a surge in blood sugar levels. So even though a red Delicious or a golden Honeycrisp might taste incredibly sweet, your body can handle the sugar.

Additionally, eating an apple as a snack can be a sensible method to satisfy cravings because apples are delicious and filling. Just make sure to consume the entire fruit, including the peel, as it also has fiber and nutrients. In fact, a 2022 study in Foods found that the phenolic content and 41% of the total flavonoid content of Fuji apples, respectively, are both contributed by the peel of the fruit.

5 Health Benefits of Apples

1. Protects Your Heart

Pictured Recipe: Apple-Cinnamon Quinoa Bowl

Apples are healthy for your ticker in many ways, according to numerous research. A comprehensive evaluation of 16 studies that examined the relationship between apple consumption and the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) was published in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition in 2020. They discovered that eating whole apples was linked to a lower chance of passing away from any cause, including CVD, ischemic heart disease, stroke, and severe abdominal aortic calcification.

These researchers discovered that eating whole apples decreased plasma inflammatory cytokines, systolic blood pressure, LDL cholesterol (the "bad" cholesterol), total cholesterol, and pulse pressure. In turn, eating apples can raise HDL cholesterol, a good type of cholesterol. These findings, according to the researchers, are based on a daily apple consumption of 100–150 grams, or around two medium-sized apples.

2. Boosts Brain Health

A 2018 study by Swedish researchers that followed 2,000 participants for six years and was published in Nutrients revealed that those who adhered to the Nordic Prudent Dietary Pattern (NPDP) had superior cognitive performance than those who consumed more fatty, processed foods. The NPDP recommends eating a variety of fruits and vegetables, including apples, pears, peaches, and other non-root vegetables.

According to a 2022 study published in the journal Alzheimer's Research and Therapy, older persons who followed the MIND diet, which combines the DASH and Mediterranean diets and emphasizes eating fresh fruits and vegetables, had a decreased incidence of dementia. Although additional research is required, the findings are encouraging, according to experts.

2020 research published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that individuals who consumed fewer foods high in antioxidant-like components had higher rates of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. This research focused more specifically on components found in foods like apples, tea, and berries (ADRD). In particular, a low intake of substances known as flavonoid polymers, which are present in apples, pears, and tea, was linked to a twofold increased risk of developing ADRD. With reference to AD, similar findings were made.

3. May Help You Lose Weight

Pictured Recipe:Apple-Crisp-Stuffed Baked Apples

It is not surprising that apples can aid in weight loss given that one medium apple has under 100 calories and can help you feel full. A 2018 review published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition reveals numerous connections between eating apples and losing weight.

Additionally, apple chemicals support the growth of good gut flora, which may reduce the risk of several obesity-related issues. Apple prebiotics have been demonstrated to nourish healthy gut microbes. For instance, a lab study from 2021 that was published in the journal Agriculture examined whether substances found in apple peels (as well as banana and mango peels) could function as prebiotics. According to the findings, these peels all enhanced specific strains of good gut bacteria by feeding them.

4. Lowers Risk of Type 2 Diabetes

A 2019 meta-analysis that included 339,383 people across many studies and was published in Current Developments in Nutrition reveals that eating apples, pears, or a mix of the two on a daily basis may reduce your chance of getting type 2 diabetes.

An intriguing 2022 study published in Foods reveals that those with reduced glucose tolerance may benefit from consuming an apple before a meal to reduce postprandial blood glucose levels (pre-diabetes). Additionally, a 2017 review published in Food & Function hypothesizes that consuming apples and pears may cut the risk of type 2 diabetes by 18%. A weekly serving of one apple or pear was enough to cut the risk by 3%.

According to a 2021 systematic review published in the journal BMJ Nutrition Prevention & Health, eating a lot of apples and other fruit (such as pears, blueberries, grapefruit, and grapes) is associated with a 7% lower risk of type 2 diabetes.

5. Fights Cancer

Pictured Recipe:Turkey-Apple-Brie Sandwiches

Apple consumption has been related to a reduced risk of various malignancies. For instance, an analysis of papers published in Nutrients in 2021 revealed that eating apples may lower your chance of developing cancers of the bladder, breast, pancreas, pharynx, esophagus, ovarian, kidney, and prostate. That one berry contains a lot of protection!

Apple phytochemicals, according to studies, can help delay the spread of cancer in addition to preventing it. Just be careful to consume the entire fruit and avoid throwing away the skin, which contains a lot of the antioxidants that fight cancer.

Apples are not a miracle cure for every health issue, just like any other food. However, consuming them frequently in your diet in addition to other fruits and vegetables may enable you to take advantage of many of the health advantages highlighted here. In addition, we enjoy using apples in our recipes, such as Roasted Squash & Apples with Dried Cherries & Pepitas, Curried Chicken Apple Wraps, and Sausage-Stuffed Apples. Or just chop them up and add them to your salads.

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5 Good Reasons To Drink Soy Milk and How You Can Make It At Home

You’ve probably got that one person in your circle who loves soy milk. This milk drink is packed with proteins, fiber, and essential fatty acids. And because it can be made at home through premium products like the Joyoung Soy Milk Machine (?????), you have the liberty to adjust it to suit your taste. If you need more reasons to try homemade soy milk (?????), this read is for you. Here are five great things about this drink — plus a quick guide on how to make it at home. It’s a nutritious alternative to your dairy milk. Soy milk is plant-based and non-dairy. It’s traditionally made by soaking, grinding, and boiling soybeans with water. It’s one of the most nutritious dairy milk alternatives as it contains fiber, protein, essential fatty acids, vitamins, and minerals. It promotes weight loss. Soy milk has a lower sugar and calorie content than other milk. One cup has only 80 calories and 7 grams of sugar. It’s a guilt-free way to enjoy milk. Plus, the fatty acid it contains can prevent fat absorption in your intestines, promoting weight loss. It helps strengthen your bones. Our bones weaken over time. With the phytoestrogen in soy milk, you can help promote calcium absorption. You can prevent developing bone diseases like osteoporosis. It’s good for your heart. If you have a soy milk maker like Joyoung Soy Milk Machine at home, did you know that you’ve got something that you can use to keep your heart healthy? According to a study, consuming 25 grams of soy protein daily for just six weeks can already reduce your LDL cholesterol levels by up to 4%. Many researchers also agree that soy’s plant compounds have heart-protective capabilities. It reduces your risk of developing dementia. Soy milk is not only good for the heart, but it’s also helpful in promoting brain health. With its omega-3 fatty acids, you can improve memory and other brain functions. This helps you reduce your risk of developing dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. How To Make It At Home Making homemade soy milk has several benefits. You can prepare it to suit your palate and avoid drinking products that contain preservatives and chemical sweeteners. It’s also cheaper and easy to prepare if you have a reliable maker like Joyoung Soy Milk Machine. Here’s how to make it: Soak soybeans (preferably overnight) Put the beans in your soy milk maker and add water according to instructions Hit the push button and wait for the machine to signal that the soy milk is ready Strain it through a fine mesh to make your soy milk smoother Joyoung is a leading brand that manufactures soy milk makers. Their 1.3L Household Soymilk Maker (?????) is multi-functional as you can also use it to make rice paste, nut butter, and fruit and vegetable juice. Their 1L Smart Non-residue Soya Milk/Coffee Maker is ideal for both soy milk and coffee lovers. Their durable, versatile products feature a sleek design that makes them a great kitchen must-have. For more details, visit their website: https://joyoung.com.au.

MIND Diet For Brain Health And Memory

The MIND diet is a hybrid of Mediterranean and DASH diets with its goal to reduce dementia and the decline in brain health that usually occurs as we go on to age.

Only a few epidemiological studies have been published on the MIND diet, with their main findings showing that adherence to the MIND diet is associated with a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

The Basics of the MIND Diet

For many years, the researchers have examined the relationship between foods we eat and their effects on our health.

In 2015, the researchers began to specifically examine the relationship between certain foods and their effect on brain health with intention of slowing the decline of brain health as we age and also reducing the risk of the development of Alzheimer’s disease. Thus, the “MIND” diet was created.

The MIND diet stands for the Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for the Neurodegenerative Delay. This diet also combines principles from two other well-known diets: the Mediterranean diet and the DASH diet.

The Mediterranean diet is inspired by the traditional eating habits of those in the Mediterranean countries. The DASH diet was developed as a result of the clinical trials funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI).

This diet reduces dementia and also declines in brain health that usually occurs as we age. Specifically, MIND diet differs from the Mediterranean and the DASH diets in a few ways like:

It emphasizes the berries, due to their antioxidant properties, over other fruits and also recommends eating fish at least once per week.

also highlights the difference between the green, leafy vegetables, which are rich in many nutrients and thought to reduce the risk of CVD and also cognitive decline

The MIND diet argues that both the green leafy vegetables and other vegetables are essential.

MIND Diet and Health

Both the Mediterranean and the DASH diets have been researched thoroughly and are also associated with lower blood pressure, a decreased risk of cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes.

In contrast, there are only a handful of epidemiological studies examining the MIND diet’s effect on brain health and cognitive function. So far, the results have shown the MIND diet to be associated with the slowing cognitive decline and a reduced risk for Alzheimer’s disease.

Additionally, because the MIND diet is a combination of the both Mediterranean diet and the DASH diet, it’s thought to have a similar effect on improving heart health and reducing the risk of CVD and diabetes, both of which are risk factors for the Alzheimer’s disease.

Although  MIND diet – in conjunction with other good health habits like the regular exercise, not smoking and getting adequate sleep may have an effect on the cognition, many other factors impact the development of Alzheimer’s disease (source)

Research on the MIND Diet and Brain Health

The first official paper on this diet was published in 2015. So it’s no surprise that there’s not much research investigating its effects. However, the two observational studies on the MIND diet have shown very promising results also.

In one more study of 923 older adults, the people who followed the MIND diet has the closest to 53% lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease than the people who followed it the least

Interestingly, the people who followed the MIND diet only moderately still had seemed to benefit from it, and cut their risk of Alzheimer’s disease by 35%, on average.

The second study also found that people who followed the MIND diet has the closest experience of a slower decline in brain function compared to the people who followed the diet the least

According to MIND diet pioneers, an ischemic stroke causes the brain to age 3.6 years for every hour that the stroke symptoms go untreated. This likely explains why the stroke survivors have a double rate of dementia than the general public, and almost 20 percent of the stroke survivors develop dementia.

However, note that both these studies were purely observational, meaning they can’t prove the cause and effect. They can only detect the associations.

A study done by healthy Chicago-area residents found that those who had tended to follow the MIND diet functioned as if they were 7.5 years younger than those subjects who were the least adherent to the diet.

A study comparing the Mediterranean, the DASH and MIND diets in octogenarians who had suffered from the stroke was presented at the International Stroke Conference. This study has found a 20-year difference in the cognitive functioning between those who were most and least adherent to the MIND diet.

How the MIND diet is unique

All three diets encourage eating lean meats, fish, whole grains, fresh produce, and olive oil and discourage the salt. But they have important differences.

The MIND diet deviates from Mediterranean and DASH diets in that it restricts the type and amount of fruits and vegetables to be consumed. The MIND diet also specifies eating the berries, but not other fruits, as the other diets do. Nor does for eating dairy products, the potatoes or more than one meal of fish a week.

The MIND diet suggests that by consuming green, leafy vegetables plus one other vegetable every day, while the Mediterranean and the DASH diets encourage loading up on fruits and vegetables of all kinds.

When coming to dairy, the MIND diet discusses limiting only the cheese and butter. The Mediterranean diet encourages consuming dairy products in moderation and allows the eggs.

The MIND diet specifies the elimination of foods with an unhealthy effect on the brain. These include red meat, and processed meats, fried fast foods, sweets and pastries, butter, stick margarine, etc.

Foods to be included and avoided in the MIND diet

Green leafy vegetables

The MIND diet recommends the frequent servings of green leafy vegetables like kale, spinach, broccoli, collards and other greens as they are packed with vitamins A and C and other nutrients.

At least about two servings a week can help, and the researchers found six or more servings a week to provide the greatest brain benefits. The Mediterranean and the DASH diets do not specifically recommend these types of vegetables, but the MIND diet study found that including the greens in addition to other veggies made a difference in reducing the risk of Alzheimer’s.

The MIND diet emphasizes the importance of vegetables for brain health. The researchers recommend the eating of a salad and at least one other vegetable every day to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s.

Nuts

Nuts are a good snacks for brain health, according to MIND diet study. Nuts contain good amounts of healthy fats, fiber, and antioxidants, and other studies have also found they can help lower bad cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart disease. The MIND diet recommends eating nuts at least five times a week.

Berries

Berries are only fruit that specifically recommended in the MIND diet. Blueberries are one food that are having more potent foods in terms of protecting the brain

Strawberries have also shown the benefits in past studies looking at the effect of food on the cognitive function. The MIND diet recommends eating a good amount of berries at least twice a week.

Beans

If beans aren’t the regular part of your diet, they should be. High in fiber and proteins, and low in calories and fat, they also help to keep your mind sharp as part of the MIND diet. The researchers also recommend eating beans at least three times a week to help reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s.

Whole grains

Whole grains are a key component of the MIND diet. It recommends at least about three servings a day.

Fish

MIND diet study found that eating fish at least once a week helps in protecting brain function. However, there’s no need to go overboard; unlike the Mediterranean diet, which recommends eating the fish almost every day, the MIND diet says about once a week is enough.

Poultry

Poultry is another part of a good brain-healthy eating plan, according to the MIND diet. It recommends two or more servings a week at least.

Olive oil

Olive oil beat out other forms of the cooking oil and fats in the MIND diet. The researchers found that the people who used olive oil as their primary oil at home saw greater protection against cognitive decline as years gone.

Wine

Raise a toast to MIND diet: it recommends a glass of wine every day. Just one! Wine rounds out of the list of brain-healthy food groups that help to protect against Alzheimer’s: like green leafy vegetables, other vegetables, etc Now here are five food groups it says you should avoid reducing your risk of developing dementia…

Red meat

Red meat isn’t banned in the MIND diet, but researchers say that you should limit the consumption to no more than four servings a week to help the protection of brain health. That’s more generous than the Mediterranean diet, which restricts the red meat to just one serving a week.

Butter and stick margarine

Butter and the stick margarine should be limited to less than a single tablespoon per day on the MIND diet. Brain-healthy olive oil can often be used instead of it.

Cheese

Cheese may be so delicious but it doesn’t do your brain any good favors, according to MIND diet study. Eating cheese no more than once a week if you want to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s.

Pastries and sweets

You already know that they’re not so good for your waistline, and it turns out that the pastries and other sweets could have a negative effect on brain health as well. The MIND diet recommends limiting yourself to about no more than five of these treats per week.

Fried foods and fast food

Fried foods and the fast-food round out MIND diet’s list of unhealthy food groups. Limit your indulgence in the fried food to no more than once a week for optimal brain health. But even if you slip up on the diet from time to time, the researchers say that it can still have benefits. Even the modest adherence to  MIND diet measurably reduced a person’s chances of developing the Alzheimer’s disease, and longer you stick with it, the greater the benefits would be(source)

A Sample Meal Plan

Breakfast: Greek yogurt with raspberries, with topped with sliced almonds. Lunch: The Mediterranean salad with olive-oil-based dressing, the grilled chicken, whole-wheat pita. Dinner: The Burrito bowl with brown rice, black beans, a good amount of fajita vegetables, the grilled chicken, salsa and guacamole.

Breakfast: A Wheat toast with almond butter, and scrambled eggs. Lunch: A Grilled chicken sandwich, blackberries, carrots. Dinner: A Grilled salmon, along with side salad with olive-oil-based dressing, brown rice.

Breakfast: A Steel-cut oatmeal with strawberries, hard-boiled eggs. Lunch: The Mexican-style salad with some mixed greens, black beans, red onion, boiled corn, grilled chicken and olive-oil-based dressing. Dinner: Chicken with vegetable stir-fry, brown rice.

Breakfast: The Greek yogurt with peanut butter and banana. Lunch: The Baked trout, collard greens, black-eyed peas. Dinner: Whole-wheat spaghetti with some turkey meatballs and marinara sauce, with a side salad

Indian sample MIND diet

Breakfast- Start your day with a big bowl of oats with some berries or yogurt topped with the berries and some nuts Mid-meal snack- Unsalted nuts, about 1/3 cup Lunch- A 1-2 medium-sized multi-grain or the whole-wheat flatbread (roti) + 1 portion of green leafy vegetables such as the spinach, fenugreek, kale, mustard greens and broccoli + 1 portion of chicken (2 pieces, non-fried) or 1 portion of beans or whole pulses The entire meal should always be cooked in olive oil, herbs, and spices such as turmeric, cinnamon, and pepper should be used. The use of salt should be limited strictly. Mid-meal snack- A fruit Dinner- 1 portion of quinoa or wheat cracks with stir-fry vegetables such as the tomato, carrot, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli.

Dry Fruits Adult Should Eat

IF A MIRACLE anti-growing old pill does exist, probabilities are that it is available in a shell. Nuts – and it doesn’t count number in case you’re munching on almonds, walnuts, Brazil nuts, pistachios or peanuts (which can be technically legumes) – are proven time and time once more to save you the improvement of chronic sicknesses, promote durability and, in keeping with a new have a look at published within the American journal of medical nutrients, take on inflammation, the single best marker of getting old. “Nuts are wealthy in monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids, fiber, nutrients and minerals which have a synergistic impact to reduce infection and its results on the frame,” says observe co-creator Ying Bao, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard clinical school. Her preceding research, posted inside the New England journal of medication, found that folks who ate nuts seven or more times per week had 20 percentage decrease danger of death on any given day.

Also Check : Saffron Benefits & Buying Guide

Here are six ways nuts permit you to age gracefully and stay the longest, healthiest lifestyles possible: 1. Have a more healthy coronary heart “primarily based on our research, the largest benefit of nut intake is in the discount of heart sickness,” Bao says. In truth, whilst she and co-workers tracked information on 119,000 ladies and men covering 30 years, individuals who ate a serving of nuts approximately every day had been 29 percent much less probable to die from heart disease. “this is mainly critical for older adults, as coronary heart ailment kills greater people than every other disease and getting older is a first-rate threat element for coronary heart disease,” Bao says. In keeping with the arena coronary heart Federation, the probability of struggling a stroke doubles each decade after age 55. Other than their health-wholesome fatty acids, nuts are rich in plant sterols, fiber and copper, all of that have been linked to reduced ldl cholesterol and blood strain stages, notes Jim White, a registered dietitian and spokesman for the Academy of vitamins and Dietetics. The yank coronary heart association recommends eating four servings of unsalted nuts in step with week for cardiovascular health. One serving is 1.Five oz, or a handful. [See: The 12 Best Diets for Your Heart.] 2. Hold Your mind Sharp You know the inflammation that nuts are so top at fighting? Properly, that is essential to preventing cognitive decline and dementia into old age. For example, research out of Huntington medical studies Institutes indicates that during patients with Alzheimer’s disease, ranges of infection are higher, in part due to decrease ranges of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, explains Alfred Fonteh, neuroscience research scientist at HMRI. Nuts, but, are rich in omega-3s, and walnuts specially are ripe with docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA, a form of omega-three that is a primary structural compound in the human brain. “DHA is the source of molecules that protect neurons, molecules that clear up infection and molecules that help restore loose radical harm of tissues,” Fonteh says. “what’s more, monounsaturated fatty acids wealthy in nuts additionally manipulate how poisonous proteins are eliminated from the brain.” “consequently, a dietary source of omega-three fatty acids and monounsaturated fatty acids from nuts may top off what is misplaced in the brain and decorate the capacity of the brain to dispose of poisonous peptides that could in any other case kill neurons,” he says. Living proof: In a 2015 JAMA inner remedy have a look at of older adults, those who followed a Mediterranean weight-reduction plan supplemented with nuts over the route of six years loved better cognitive feature than folks that ate a Mediterranean food regimen sans nuts. [See: 5 Ways to Cope With Mild Cognitive Impairment.] Three. Prevent Age-associated Weight benefit Nuts are rich in each fat and energy. But studies display they nonetheless assist human beings lose, no longer gain, weight over the years. For example, in one Harvard faculty of Public health observe, middle-elderly women who noshed on nuts as a minimum two times per week were 27 percent less likely to grow to be obese over the path of the eight-yr study length. Once more, nuts’ ability to combat inflammation may play a function in preventing age-related weight advantage. And while they’re wealthy in energy, White notes that nuts’ aggregate of fats, fiber and protein resource in satiety to make weight-control less difficult. Plus, interestingly enough, your body might not truly absorb all the calories indexed in your almonds’ nutrients label. It really is because nuts have a totally big thermic effect – which means that your frame burns many energy chewing and digesting them, he says. 4. Prevent and manipulate kind 2 Diabetes Similarly to curbing age-associated weight advantage, nuts lower ranges of blood glucose and insulin, to help both save you and manipulate kind 2 diabetes. At the same time as studies posted in Diabetes Care suggests that regularly eating pistachios improves metabolic health in human beings with prediabetes, Bao’s studies shows that individuals who consistently devour any form of tree nut can be up to 20 percentage much less in all likelihood to die from diabetes. To prevent blood sugar and insulin spikes which might be related both with the development of type 2 diabetes in addition to bad diabetes management, nuts are in particular helpful while integrated into high-carb food. Their combination of fiber, fat and protein slows digestion to show excessive-GI (glycemic index, a degree of submit-meal blood sugar response) meals into low-GI ones. 5. Ease Aching Joints Nuts are a critical part of a joint-healthful diet, in line with the Arthritis basis, and are mainly beneficial for people managing osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis. Nuts’ blessings to your joints might also come down to 2 mechanisms: weight loss and irritation reduction. “Musculoskeletal diseases, along with osteoarthritis, are strongly correlated with weight problems,” says Reema Kanda, a medical dietitian at Hoag Orthopedic Institute in California. In reality, in those who are overweight, even modest weight loss can ease pressure on joints to help relieve signs. “what’s extra, stopping immoderate in inflammation can prevent degeneration of joints and help restore,” Fonteh says. He notes that in humans with joint disease and arthritis, levels of inflammatory enzymes are markedly higher. In the end, the most apparent sign of irritation is swelling, and arthritis sufferers are used to seeing – and feeling – joint irritation. 6. Avert most cancers Age is the primary risk element within the improvement of most cancers, in accordance to investigate published in present day Biology. And whilst nuts can’t preserve the years from passing, they may be able to lessen biological markers of ageing and decrease the hazard of growing most cancers. At the same time as little studies exists on the topic of nut consumption and cancer prevention, a promising examine in most cancers Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention determined t

Best Dry Fruits For Elders

IF A MIRACLE anti-growing old pill does exist, probabilities are that it is available in a shell. Nuts – and it doesn't count number in case you're munching on almonds, walnuts, Brazil nuts, pistachios or peanuts (which can be technically legumes) – are proven time and time once more to save you the improvement of chronic sicknesses, promote durability and, in keeping with a new have a look at published within the American journal of medical nutrients, take on inflammation, the single best marker of getting old. "Nuts are wealthy in monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids, fiber, nutrients and minerals which have a synergistic impact to reduce infection and its results on the frame," says observe co-creator Ying Bao, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard clinical school. Her preceding research, posted inside the New England journal of medication, found that folks who ate nuts seven or more times per week had 20 percentage decrease danger of death on any given day.

You Can Also Check this Article by Taste of Afghan

Here are six ways nuts permit you to age gracefully and stay the longest, healthiest lifestyles possible: 1. Have a more healthy coronary heart "primarily based on our research, the largest benefit of nut intake is in the discount of heart sickness," Bao says. In truth, whilst she and co-workers tracked information on 119,000 ladies and men covering 30 years, individuals who ate a serving of nuts approximately every day had been 29 percent much less probable to die from heart disease. "this is mainly critical for older adults, as coronary heart ailment kills greater people than every other disease and getting older is a first-rate threat element for coronary heart disease," Bao says. In keeping with the arena coronary heart Federation, the probability of struggling a stroke doubles each decade after age 55. Other than their health-wholesome fatty acids, nuts are rich in plant sterols, fiber and copper, all of that have been linked to reduced ldl cholesterol and blood strain stages, notes Jim White, a registered dietitian and spokesman for the Academy of vitamins and Dietetics. The yank coronary heart association recommends eating four servings of unsalted nuts in step with week for cardiovascular health. One serving is 1.Five oz, or a handful. [See: The 12 Best Diets for Your Heart.] 2. Hold Your mind Sharp You know the inflammation that nuts are so top at fighting? Properly, that is essential to preventing cognitive decline and dementia into old age. For example, research out of Huntington medical studies Institutes indicates that during patients with Alzheimer's disease, ranges of infection are higher, in part due to decrease ranges of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, explains Alfred Fonteh, neuroscience research scientist at HMRI. Nuts, but, are rich in omega-3s, and walnuts specially are ripe with docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA, a form of omega-three that is a primary structural compound in the human brain. "DHA is the source of molecules that protect neurons, molecules that clear up infection and molecules that help restore loose radical harm of tissues," Fonteh says. "what's more, monounsaturated fatty acids wealthy in nuts additionally manipulate how poisonous proteins are eliminated from the brain." "consequently, a dietary source of omega-three fatty acids and monounsaturated fatty acids from nuts may top off what is misplaced in the brain and decorate the capacity of the brain to dispose of poisonous peptides that could in any other case kill neurons," he says. Living proof: In a 2015 JAMA inner remedy have a look at of older adults, those who followed a Mediterranean weight-reduction plan supplemented with nuts over the route of six years loved better cognitive feature than folks that ate a Mediterranean food regimen sans nuts. [See: 5 Ways to Cope With Mild Cognitive Impairment.] Three. Prevent Age-associated Weight benefit Nuts are rich in each fat and energy. But studies display they nonetheless assist human beings lose, no longer gain, weight over the years. For example, in one Harvard faculty of Public health observe, middle-elderly women who noshed on nuts as a minimum two times per week were 27 percent less likely to grow to be obese over the path of the eight-yr study length. Once more, nuts' ability to combat inflammation may play a function in preventing age-related weight advantage. And while they're wealthy in energy, White notes that nuts' aggregate of fats, fiber and protein resource in satiety to make weight-control less difficult. Plus, interestingly enough, your body might not truly absorb all the calories indexed in your almonds' nutrients label. It really is because nuts have a totally big thermic effect – which means that your frame burns many energy chewing and digesting them, he says. 4. Prevent and manipulate kind 2 Diabetes Similarly to curbing age-associated weight advantage, nuts lower ranges of blood glucose and insulin, to help both save you and manipulate kind 2 diabetes. At the same time as studies posted in Diabetes Care suggests that regularly eating pistachios improves metabolic health in human beings with prediabetes, Bao's studies shows that individuals who consistently devour any form of tree nut can be up to 20 percentage much less in all likelihood to die from diabetes. To prevent blood sugar and insulin spikes which might be related both with the development of type 2 diabetes in addition to bad diabetes management, nuts are in particular helpful while integrated into high-carb food. Their combination of fiber, fat and protein slows digestion to show excessive-GI (glycemic index, a degree of submit-meal blood sugar response) meals into low-GI ones. 5. Ease Aching Joints Nuts are a critical part of a joint-healthful diet, in line with the Arthritis basis, and are mainly beneficial for people managing osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis. Nuts' blessings to your joints might also come down to 2 mechanisms: weight loss and irritation reduction. "Musculoskeletal diseases, along with osteoarthritis, are strongly correlated with weight problems," says Reema Kanda, a medical dietitian at Hoag Orthopedic Institute in California. In reality, in those who are overweight, even modest weight loss can ease pressure on joints to help relieve signs. "what's extra, stopping immoderate in inflammation can prevent degeneration of joints and help restore," Fonteh says. He notes that in humans with joint disease and arthritis, levels of inflammatory enzymes are markedly higher. In the end, the most apparent sign of irritation is swelling, and arthritis sufferers are used to seeing – and feeling – joint irritation. 6. Avert most cancers Age is the primary risk element within the improvement of most cancers, in accordance to investigate published in present day Biology. And whilst nuts can't preserve the years from passing, they may be able to lessen biological markers of ageing and decrease the hazard of growing most cancers. At the same time as little studies exists on the topic of nut consumption and cancer prevention, a promising examine in most cancers Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention determined t

Why You Need to Move Every Day to Get the Benefits of Exercise

Did I just describe you? If so, I applaud you for making time on your days off for physical activity. Unfortunately, such sporadic bursts aren’t enough to counteract the harmful effects prolonged sitting has on the mind and body. To get the benefits of exercise, you need to move much more often—every single day—by sitting much less. In other words, you have to swap your sedentary lifestyle for an active one.

Don’t panic: That doesn’t mean you have to find an extra hour in your busy day to get to the gym or a fitness class. By doing simple things like taking standing and walking breaks during work, plus occasionally engaging in brief but higher-intensity exercise, you’ll be moving like our active hunter–gatherer ancestors did and be well on your way to enjoying better health.

Think about your typical work day. Do you sit at a desk for eight hours, commute home in a car, and sit in front of the TV until bed? If so, you’re not getting the full benefits of exercise—even if your weekends are full of workouts. Find out why. #healthylifestyle #chriskresser

Six Reasons Why Sitting Is So Bad for Your Health

A sedentary lifestyle, comprising prolonged sitting and minimal physical activity, has a negative effect on nearly every aspect of human health. As a result, it increases your risk of developing serious chronic diseases and even early death. Although we’re not 100 percent sure why sitting raises these risks, thanks to the emergent field of sedentary physiology, we have some pretty good ideas. (1) For example, we know that sitting is associated with decreased calorie expenditure and poorer metabolic functioning, including reduced insulin sensitivity. (2) As I’ve discussed before, sitting too much can lead to weight gain over time—even if you’re exercising when you step away from your desk.

Avoiding the additional pounds isn’t the only reason to start moving. Here are six more evidence-backed reasons why you need to stop spending so much of your day sitting.

Reason #1: It’s Hazardous to Your Heart

Studies have linked being sedentary with cardiovascular disease (CVD), including coronary heart disease, stroke, heart attack, and CVD-related death. (3, 4) It appears that sitting decreases activity of the enzyme lipoprotein lipase (LPL), which leads to higher levels of triglycerides (a type of fat that moves through your bloodstream and is sometimes an indicator for CVD) and lower levels of HDL (“good” cholesterol). (5) Sitting too much has also been found to increase blood pressure and decrease the diameter of arteries, making heart disease more likely.

Reason #2: It Impairs Insulin Sensitivity, Putting You in the Diabetes Danger Zone

Sitting has been linked to insulin resistance, a risk factor for diabetes. In one investigation, on the day participants sat for five consecutive hours after consuming a high-calorie drink, their plasma insulin and glucose levels were more than 20 percent higher than on days when they interrupted sitting with short breaks. Other research suggests that sitting for just two hours after a meal could increase your blood sugar levels. Over time, that sets the stage for insulin resistance and diabetes. (6, 7)

Reason #3: You Set the Stage for Osteoporosis in Your Lifetime

Researchers now associate sitting with lower bone mineral density and osteoporosis in both men and women. (8, 9) The lower your bone mineral density—think calcium and phosphorus—the weaker your bones. Some of the latest studies have looked at adolescents and the amount of time they spend at a computer, watching television, or playing video games, finding a negative association between sitting and bone mineral content and density, particularly in teenage boys. (10, 11, 12)

Reason #4: You Boost Your Chance of Cancer ...

… by up to 66 percent, according to one study. (13) Researchers found sedentary behavior to be associated with a:

24 percent higher risk of developing colon cancer

32 percent greater chance of endometrial cancer

21 percent increased risk of lung cancer

Watching TV, in particular, was associated with a 54 percent higher likelihood of colon cancer and 66 percent greater chance of endometrial cancer. These links remained strong even in people who worked out regularly. A large study also linked sitting to a higher risk of breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and multiple myeloma. (14)

Reason #5: You Lose Your Mind—Literally

One recent study from UCLA reported that participants who sat for long stretches of time had thinning in regions of the brain involved in memory formation. This decreased thickness can serve as a precursor to cognitive decline and dementia. (15)

Reason #6: Ultimately, It Can Kill You

Multiple studies from around the globe have found an association between increased sedentary time and the risk of early death. In the summer of 2018, results of a survey of more than 125,000 adults were released that found that those who sat for six or more hours a day were 19 percent more likely to die over the next two decades than those who spent less time sitting once their workday was over. And the higher risk of death remained even in people who exercised. (16)

Think Exercise Is the Only Answer? Think Again

Notice something about many of the studies shared above? Several found the same negative health outcomes in people who were completely sedentary and “weekend warriors,” those who worked out but still spent the majority of each day seated. And there are many other studies that confirm those conclusions.

It’s clear: Exercise alone—including bursts of moderate to vigorous activity—can’t undo the damage caused by sitting.

Some research even suggests that people who exercise intensely, like marathon runners, are more likely to be sedentary when they’re not exercising, falsely assuming their training offers them the full benefits of exercise and protects them from the harmful effects of sitting. (17) What’s more, in some cases marathons, triathlons, and long-distance bicycle rides can result in overtraining, and studies have linked these activities with heart, muscle, and joint damage. (18, 19)

In industrialized societies, this “active couch potato” phenomenon has unfortunately become the norm rather than the exception. If you work in an office, commute by car, and watch a few hours of TV each night, it’s not hard to see how you could spend the vast majority of your waking life (up to 15 hours a day) sitting on your butt. This is far outside of the evolutionary norm for humans, and it has serious consequences for our health.

How to Get the Benefits of Exercise: Stop Being Sedentary and Move Like Your Ancestors

What is the evolutionary norm? Our hunter–gatherer ancestors didn’t work out; they just lived. They naturally spent a lot of time outdoors in the sun—walking, hunting, and gathering. They had to exert themselves, and often quite strenuously, to survive. Our ancestors sprinted, jogged, climbed, carried, and jumped intermittently throughout the day, on top of walking and running. They also alternated strenuous and demanding days with days of rest, an instinctual response that protected them from injury and fatigue.

You can mimic their approach today by becoming what I call an “organic mover,” a person who engages in lots of low-intensity physical activity along with distinct periods of higher-intensity exercise. SWAP your way to ancestral health: stand, walk, and push.

Stand

One of the easiest ways to undo the harmful effects of sitting is simply to stand up! Standing engages muscles that boost LPL activity and boosts your metabolism. (20) In general, I recommend standing or walking for at least 50 percent of your day.

Try this:

Use a standing desk. There are several types of standing desks on the market, ranging from stationary to adjustable models, or you can make one yourself. (A few low-tech ideas: Try putting your laptop on a sturdy box or crate, an old speaker stand, or even some stacked books.) Many employers permit them and even provide them for their employees.

Take standing breaks. If you’re unable to work at a standing desk, be sure to stand up for at least two minutes every 30 to 45 minutes, and either stretch or take a quick walk (do this when you’re sitting at home, too). Even short breaks like this can make a huge difference. Set a timer on your phone or look for an app that will remind you to move on a regular basis. Also try standing for part or all of your meetings.

Walk

Again, let’s keep it simple: Walk more and sit less. (Other light exercise such as gardening and household cleaning is also beneficial.) Research has shown that even low to moderate physical activity like walking lowers post-meal blood sugar, insulin, and triglyceride levels. (21)

Try this:

Walk while you work with a treadmill desk. I use a treadmill desk myself and average between 15,000 and 18,000 steps a day. As with standing desks, there are several options for configuration. You can buy a treadmill for an existing standing desk or buy a desk that fits above your existing treadmill.

Hold walking meetings. Who says meetings have to sit around a boardroom table?

Walk or bicycle to work. If you live too far away to walk or ride exclusively, consider driving part of the way and commuting on foot or bike for the remainder.

Use the stairs whenever possible, and rack up steps.

Find a hobby that moves you. Ballroom dancing, bowling, gardening, and cooking are fun choices that get you walking around. Pick something that’s fun and that fits your lifestyle—that’s the key to sticking with it.

Push

In addition to standing and walking more, you need to occasionally push yourself as our ancestors did with bouts of more intense exercise; just don’t overdo it. I recommend following the guidelines established by my friend and colleague Dan Pardi.

Try this:

Aim for 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week (jogging, yoga, or dancing), which requires 50 to 70 percent of your maximum effort to perform; OR

Get 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity a week (running, Zumba, or sports), which takes 70 to 90 percent of your maximum effort; OR

Complete 30 sets (roughly 30 minutes) of highest-intensity exercise per week (sprinting, jumping rope, or resistance training), which needs greater than 90 percent of your maximum effort; OR

Do some combination of the above.

A note about your maximum effort: I use percentages here because your “maximum effort” will differ from someone else’s based on a number of factors. Someone who’s living a sedentary lifestyle, for example, might consider a light jog to be a vigorous-intensity workout, while a runner might call it moderate. The key is to pay attention to your body and push yourself.

The third bullet refers to a type of exercise often called high-intensity interval training (HIIT), which involves performing movements at very high intensity for very short periods of time, usually between 30 seconds and two minutes. If you’ve been taught that “chronic cardio” (as Mark Sisson calls it) is the way to go, this approach may seem too good to be true, yet studies have found HIIT superior on nearly every level. It’s a great option to help you move like your ancestors.

I hope you now see that truly active living is key to optimal well-being, and that as long as you sit for the bulk of your day, you run the health risks of a sedentary life. If you want to get the full benefits of exercise, it’s time to SWAP things up.

Now, I’d like to hear from you. What’s your exercise routine? How long do you sit in a typical day? Let me know below in the comments!

The post Why You Need to Move Every Day to Get the Benefits of Exercise appeared first on Chris Kresser.

Source: http://chriskresser.com November 17, 2018 at 06:01PM

Sleeping Benefits For Health

In this article, you will learn about sleeping benefits for the health of your brain, heart, skin, hair, eyes and how sleeping affects weight loss.

Sleeping Benefits – Table of Contents

How sleeping is important?

Sleeping benefits for brain

Sleeping benefits for heart

Sleeping benefits for skin

Sleeping benefits for eyes

Sleeping benefits for weight loss

Sleeping benefits during pregnancy

Sleeping and depression

Napping benefits

Sleeping tips

FAQs about sleeping

How Sleeping is Important?

Sleep is a huge factor in health. Besides being necessary for our physical and mental well-being, sleep also helps to regulate many daily functions such as blood pressure, stress levels, and appetite.

Sleep deprivation can lead to serious health consequences such as cognitive impairment. Additionally the quality of your sleep greatly determines how effective you are during the waking hours.

It is recommended that adults get between 7-9 hours of sleep a night.

It is important to get enough sleep because the study shows that sleep deprivation is linked to increased anxiety, drowsiness, depression, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and heart disease.

Sleeping is critical to a healthy lifestyle. When you sleep, your body rebuilds itself for the next day. You wake up feeling refreshed, revitalized and less tired!

Sleeping Benefits for Brain

The word ‘sleep’ is pretty much always associated with the term ‘power nap,’ which is a necessary part of the daily routine for many people. Naps are a quick way to boost mental alertness and reduce tiredness, but what about the benefits that sleep has on your brain’s health?

Sleeping for one hour is the equivalent of exercising for 90 minutes! When you sleep well, your brain releases chemicals that keep you calm during the night and:

Boosts your mood and improves cognitive function

Reduces stress and increases productivity

Lowers your risk of Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease

Sleeping and Dementia

People who sleep less than 7 hours per day have a 40% higher risk of developing dementia. Sleep is important for brain function and healthy aging so I try to get as much sleep as possible.

Sleeping and Alzheimer’s

A study from the University of Pennsylvania has linked a lack of sleep with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. In the study, subjects with sleep disorders were x3 times more likely to develop Alzheimer’s compared to those without sleep disorders.

Sleeping and Memory

Sleeping benefits your memory in a number of different ways. First of all, the frontal lobe of your brain is a major hub for memory formation. When you sleep, this area is at its most active state so that it can create new memories (neural pathways) to protect and retain the ones you already have. Secondly, when you sleep, your brain eliminates waste products such as cellular components and hormones from your body.

Sleeping Benefits for Heart

Most doctors agree that sleeping 9 hours helps to lower the risk of heart disease. A study at Harvard University found that people who slept for less than six hours were twice as likely to have a heart attack or stroke, compared to those who sleep for eight hours.

Sleeping longer than six hours can boost heart and cardiovascular health. Sleeping benefits for heart are numerous, recent studies have found that cardiovascular health such as blood pressure, heart rate, and cholesterol levels are better when someone is sleeping than when they’re awake.

Continue learning about Sleeping Benefits For Health..

Podcast 43: 15 ways to Improve Your Sleep

​Sleep Better Even having Insomnia because of Anxiety

Podcast (Audio Only)​

Joanne Williams discusses How lack of sleep can affect your health and 15 ways to Improve your sleep and 3 ways to help you sleep better, even with anxiety interferes with you good sleep.

Sleep is a necessity and yet we seem to treat it like not getting enough sleep will come without consequences. The research will challenge you on this, sleep is necessary for good health.We will share15 ways to make sleep better, and how do deal with ruminating thoughts that go around and around in your head at night, that interfere with good sleep.Sleep deprivation is when you don’t get the sleep your body and mind needs, and it is It’s estimated to affect around 1/3 of American adults, have a problem that has only worsened in recent years.Lack of sleep directly affects how we think and feel. While the short-term impacts are more noticeable, chronic sleep deprivation can heighten long-term risks of physical and mental health problems.

10 reasons why you want to figure out how to get better sleep-

- Sleepiness Causes Accidents. ... - Sleep Loss Dumbs You Down. ... - Sleep Deprivation Can Lead to Serious Health Problems. ... - Lack of Sleep Kills Sex Drive. ... - Sleepiness can be one symptom of Depression. ... - Lack of Sleep Ages Your Skin. ... - Sleepiness Makes You Forgetful. ... - Losing Sleep Can Make You Gain Weight. - Cardiovascular disease: Sleep deficiency and cardiovascular problems including high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, heart attack, and stroke. - Diabetes: Insufficient sleep appears to affect the body’s ability to regulate blood sugar. - Obesity: Research has found that people tend to consume more calories and carbohydrates when they don’t get enough sleep. - Immunodeficiency: Sleep deficiency has been shown to lead to worsened immune function, including a poorer response to vaccines. - Hormonal abnormalities: Sleep helps the body properly produce and regulate levels of various hormones. - Pain: Sleep-deprived people are feeling that their pain is getting worse. Pain may cause further sleep interruptions, creating a negative cycle of worsening pain and sleep. - Mental health disorders: Sleep and mental health are closely intertwined, and poor sleep has strong associations with conditions like depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder.Given these diverse and important impacts of sleep deprivation, studies have found insufficient sleep to be tied with a greater overall risk of deathas well as a lower quality of life.On a society-wide level, the impacts of sleep deprivation are enormous. sleep deprivation has been calculated to incur hundreds of billions in added healthcare costs as well as over $400B in productivity losses per year in the United States alone.Here are 15 Ways to sleep better BY MICHAEL MARTIN SEPTEMBER 3, 2020  You Think Sleep Issues Are Part of Normal AgingAt age 40 or 60, you need the same amount of sleep as you did in college.

1.You're Getting Less Than Seven Hours

According to Gallup, the average American sleeps 6.8 hours nightly, and 40 percent of us sleep less than six hours a night. Adults, need seven to nine hours.2. Shut Down Screens An Hour Before Bed"Wind down by reading a (paper) book, writing in a journal, or chatting with your partner."

3. Don’t Drink Late-Night Cocktails

Researchers have found that alcohol shortens deep (REM) sleep, which makes sleep less restorative. Stick to one to two drinks nightly, and don't use booze as a sleep aid.

5. If You're Snoring

It can be the sign of a serious health problem: Namely, obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). During OSA, breathing can stop for as long a minute, before your brain wakes you up to resume breathing. It's also exhausting. talk to your doctor.

6. If You're Using Sleeping Pills- think again.

You shouldn't need to rely on meds to get to sleep, even over-the-counter drugs. Some studies have linked the use of hypnotic (sleep-inducing) drugs to an increased risk of cancer and death.  Instead figure out a new way to relax and slow your mind.I did a survey of my clients and the #2 Challenge with having anxiety was getting good sleep because of difficulty of shutting off your brain.

3 Ways to Shut off your Anxious mind:

Learn ways to Let Go of the worry thoughts that are not processed in the day, that are affecting your sleep if you are a chronic worrier.For instance, If you're still hashing over a conflict or a meeting at work that you didn't say what you felt you should have said.Learning letting go skills of the What if’s, what if I would have said this or that or the ruminations of the thoughts that are going around and around. Instead refocusing these thoughts on peaceful calming thoughts to instill that feeling in your body to relax. Learn progressive tense and release of different muscle groups starting at your toes to your head that has been shown to not only reduce your physical muscle tension and stress, but it also refocuses your thoughts on your body.Add a breathing technique of counting your breathes in through your nose as you count to 4 and exhale to the count of 8 and patterns of a set of 4. This is a profound relaxer because it stimulates the Vagus nerve to excrete a relaxing chemical acetylcholine.Create a nightly practice of a meditation. You could put on a headset, listen to some musicThis building new habits of releasing the worry that you can actually build ways you can use to shift these rumination to a more peaceful place.

7. Make your Afternoon Nap earlier or not at all

Just don't doze too long — anything over 25 minutes or so will put you into a deeper sleep and make it harder to wake up. Snooze too late in the day — say, anytime after 5 pm — and it may be harder for you to hit the hay later. Or try not to nap during the day at all.

8. Don’t  Sleep On A Full Stomach

Eating a full meal too close to bedtime increases your risk of acid reflex and indigestion, which can lead to snoring or insomnia. Eat dinner at least three hours before bed. If you need a late-night snack, stick to something light.

9. Change Your Pillow

Your pillow should be washed every six months and replaced every year or two. The reason to wash: Dust mites. These microscopic critters (and their waste) can worsen allergies and asthma, impairing breathing and therefore your sleep.

10. Wash Your Sheets More Often

Experts recommend washing your sheets at least every two weeks, weekly if you suffer from allergies, asthma or eczema. To prevent dust mites from inhabiting your mattress, use a protective cover. Wash it every two months.

11. No Sleeping With A Pet

Man's Best Friend is causing your worst nightmares. 53 percent of people who sleep with their pets have disturbed rest and abnormal sleep patterns, because of their four-legged friend's restless behavior (or the real estate they take up).12. Get Enough ExerciseGetting as little as 10 minutes of exercise a day has been shown to lead to better shut-eye, warding off sleep-inhibiting conditions like sleep apnea and restless leg syndrome

13. If You Toss And Turn

Experts recommend that if you're having trouble getting to sleep, get out of bed after 20 minutes.  Do a calm activity, like reading a (paper) book or listening to music until you feel sleepy. Avoid screens.

14. Don’t Sleep On Your Stomach

Many stomach sleepers experience pain because that position twists the body out of alignment. You have to sleep with your head turned to the side, which makes it hard to breathe and puts strain on your back and spine, raising your risk for neck problems or a herniated disk.

15. You're Sleeping Too Much

Sleep is vital for health as we age, but there can be too much of a good thing. Oversleeping has been correlated with an increased risk of dementia. Stick to nine hours, max, and wake up at the same time every day.I hope this helps to relax to sleep better and will your health and lower your anxiety.This is by no means a replacement for therapy of any medical attention if you need it.  Always reach out and take care of yourself or if you are feeling like you want to hurt yourself, there is always someone standing by at 1800-273-8255 or call 911. Remember to Share the Love.Or check out more atAnxietySimplified.netOr go tohttps://esapros.comfor an emotional support animal or a Psychiatric Service Dog to go with you everywhere to give you the support to lower your anxiety.Join us for Our next podcast: What Happens in Vagus, stays in Vagus, when you learn how to use the Vagus nerve to calm you.See other podcasts atAnxietySimplified.net   Load More Read the full article

10 Whisky Health Benefits

You might be surprised to know that whisky is more than an enjoyable drink you share with your friends after work or at a special event. It actually carries some meaningful health benefits. When you do enjoy a glass of dram, not only does it taste good, but it is good for you. These are 10 amazing health benefits of whisky.   1. Lowers Risk of Heart Disease According to multiple studies, a glass of whisky a day can help reduce your risk of heart disease and heart failure. According to a study by Harvard, a moderate amount of alcohol raises the amount of “good cholesterol” in your blood. This is a natural protection against heart disease. 2. Can Help Fight Cancer Although it should not be used as the only treatment, research shows whisky can help fight cancer. Whisky contains ellagic acid, which helps absorb rogue cells in your body. This acid is also found in fruit and wine; however, it is found in higher levels in whisky. 3. Promotes Weight Loss Not only is whisky delicious in flavour, but it contains very little sodium and no fat. Plus, the sugar in the drink is simple sugar, which is quickly processed by the body. This can help promote weight loss. Moderate beer drinkers tend to lose muscle tone and increase their “beer gut.” By switching to whisky you can keep the pounds off while still having a good time. 4. Reduce Stress Between work, family, and everyday stresses, you deserve a break. If you are feeling stressed, a glass of whisky can take off the edge. Alcohol is known for calming the nerves. This is extremely beneficial for people with high stress or anxiety. However, alcohol should not be used as the only way to de-stress. Relying on alcohol as a way to calm your nerves can lead to further anxiety if abused. 5. Control of Diabetes Risk If you are at risk for diabetes, whisky is good for you. The sweet drink has been shown to reduce the chances of diabetes by up to 40%. According to a study, a moderate amount of whisky can improve your body’s ability to regulate insulin and glucose levels. This is because of all the simple sugars in the drink, which are easy to process. If you can control your body’s blood sugar levels, then you lower your risk for developing diabetes. 6. Lower Risk of Dementia Dementia is one of the most prominent diseases facing the elder population. While scientists are working hard, there is not yet a cure. Therefore, if you want to protect yourself from dementia, you need to take preventative steps to avoid the disease.   A 2003 study states that adults who consumed one to six glasses of whisky a week were half as likely to suffer dementia as non-drinkers and heavy drinkers. Once again, it is always important to practice moderation. While a couple of glasses a week will lower your risk of dementia, drinking multiple glasses a day will raise your risk exponentially. 7. Fight Your Cold Hottie toddies are common at the bar, but when you feel that cold coming on you should try to grab one right away. The mix of whisky, hot water, lemon and honey warms you up inside and helps fight that cold.  While the infamous drink doesn’t fight the flu directly, it does dilate blood vessels to make it easier for mucus membranes to fight the infection. So, drink up! 8. Digestive Aid After a large meal, it’s common to feel a rumble in your stomach. If you are feeling nauseous, a post-meal whisky may help ease your stomach. Since whisky is a high-proof, it stimulates your stomach enzymes. This gets your digestive system moving fast. Not only will your stomach work hard to break down the whisky, but it will also break down that large meal in the process. It’s nature's own digestif. 9. Reduces Blood Clotting When you have an internal injury, your blood naturally clots to try and stop the bleed. However, if that clot spreads into another part of your blood system - like your heart, lung, or brain - there can be disastrous results.  Thankfully, whisky significantly reduces blood clotting. Whisky is a natural blood-thinner. Therefore, enjoying some whisky once in a while can reduce your risk of developing blood clots. Furthermore, blood clots often cause issues when they get stuck in bad cholesterol. As noted previously, whisky promotes good cholesterol, which fights the bad stuff. Therefore, if you do have a blood clot, it is less likely to cause damage, such as stroke. 10. Boost Your Immune System Not only does whisky help you fight common colds, but it can also help prevent it. Whisky contains ellagic acid, which alone with vitamins can help your immune system fight off illnesses.  Although whisky can be good for you, you will not receive any of these health benefits if you overindulge. Like all alcohol, whisky is meant to be enjoyed in moderation.

You might assume that standard medical advice was supported by mounds of scientific research. But researchers recently discovered that nearly 400 routine practices were flatly contradicted by studies published in leading journals.

Of more than 3,000 studies published from 2003 through 2017 in JAMA and the Lancet, and from 2011 through 2017 in the New England Journal of Medicine, more than one of 10 amounted to a “medical reversal”: a conclusion opposite of what had been conventional wisdom among doctors.

“You come away with a sense of humility,” said Dr. Vinay Prasad of Oregon Health and Science University, who conceived of the study. “Very smart and well-intentioned people came to practice these things for many, many years. But they were wrong.”

Some of those ideas have been firmly dislodged, but not all. Now Dr. Prasad and his colleagues are trying to learn how widespread are discredited practices and ideas.

Here are 10 findings that contradict what were once widely held theories.

Peanut allergies occur whether or not a child is exposed to peanuts before age 3.

Pediatricians have counseled parents to keep babies away from peanuts for the first three years of life. As it turns out, children exposed to peanuts before they were even 1 year old have no greater risk of peanut allergies.

Fish oil does not reduce the risk of heart disease.

At one point, the notion that fish fats prevented heart trouble did seem logical. People whose diets contain a lot of fatty fish seem to have a lower incidence of heart disease. Fatty fish contains omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3 supplements lower levels of triglycerides, and high levels of triglycerides are linked to an increased risk of heart disease. Not to mention that omega-3 fatty acids seem to reduce inflammation, a key feature of heart attacks.

But in a trial involving 12,500 people at risk for heart trouble, daily omega-3 supplements did not protect against heart disease.

A lifelike doll carried around by teenage girls will not deter pregnancies.

These dolls wail and need to be “changed” and “cuddled.” The idea was that girls would learn how much work was involved in caring for an infant. But a randomized study found that girls who were told to carry around “infant simulators” actually were slightly more likely to become pregnant than girls who did not get the dolls.

Ginkgo biloba does not protect against memory loss and dementia.

The supplement, made from the leaves of ginkgo trees, was widely used in ancient Chinese medicine and still is promoted as a way to preserve memory. A large federal study, published in 2008, definitively showed the supplement is useless for this purpose. Yet ginkgo still pulls in $249 million in sales. Did people just not get the message?

To treat emergency room patients in acute pain, a single dose of oral opioids is no better than drugs like aspirin and ibuprofen.

Yes, opioids are powerful drugs. But a clinical trial showed that much safer alternatives relieve pain just as well among emergency room patients.

Testosterone treatment does not help older men retain their memory.

Some men have low levels of testosterone and memory problems, and early studies had hinted that middle-aged men with higher testosterone levels seemed to have better preserved tissue in some parts of their brains. Older men with higher testosterone levels also seemed to do better on tests of mental functioning.

But a rigorous clinical trial showed that testosterone was no better than a sugar pill in helping older men avoid memory loss.

To protect against asthma attacks, it won’t help to keep your house free of dust mites, mice and cockroaches.

The advice from leading medical groups has been to rid your home of these pests if you or your child has asthma. The theory was that allergic reactions to them can trigger asthma attacks. But intensive pest management in homes with children sensitized to mouse allergens did nothing to reduce the frequency of their asthma attacks, researchers reported in 2017.

Step counters and calorie trackers do not help you lose weight.

In fact, dieters may be better off without digital assistance. Among 470 dieters followed for two years, those who wore devices tracking the steps they took and calories they burned actually lost less weight than those who just followed standard advice.

Torn knee meniscus? Try physical therapy first, surgery later.

An estimated 460,000 patients in the United States get surgery each year to fix knee cartilage that tears, often because of osteoarthritis. The tear is painful, and many patients fear that if it is not surgically treated, the pain will linger.

But when patients with a torn meniscus and moderate arthritis were randomized to six months of physical therapy or surgery, both groups improved, and to the same extent.

If a pregnant woman’s water breaks prematurely, the baby does not have to be delivered immediately.

Sometimes, a few weeks before a woman’s due date, the membrane surrounding her fetus ruptures and amniotic fluid spills out. Obstetricians worried that bacteria could invade what had been a sterile environment around the fetus, causing infection. Better to deliver the baby immediately, doctors thought.

But a clinical trial found that if obstetricians carefully monitor the fetus while waiting for labor to begin naturally, the fetus is at no greater risk for infection. And newborns left to gestate were healthier, with less respiratory distress and a lower risk of death, than those who were delivered immediately after a break.

Correction: July 1, 2019

An earlier version of this article misstated the annual sales of ginkgo. It is $249 million, not billion.

323: How to Have a Genius Life Using Four Key Pillars of Health With Max Lugavere

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323: How to Have a Genius Life Using Four Key Pillars of Health With Max Lugavere

Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.

This podcast is sponsored by The Ready State. If you’re at all like me, you might have perpetual stiffness and pain in your neck and shoulders from years of working, carrying kids and all of the demands of parenting. Or sore hips from too much sitting or multiple pregnancies. I found a great way to relieve my aches and pains and improve my fitness and flexibility. It’s from someone I highly respect… Dr. Kelly Starrett at The Ready State. If you don’t know Kelly, he’s a Mobility and movement coach for Olympic gold medalists, world champions, and pro athletes. He’s the Author of two New York Times bestselling books, including “Becoming a Supple Leopard”, which has sold over half a million copies. He has over 150,000 hours of hands-on experience training athletes at the highest levels. A Doctor of Physical Therapy who helps top companies, military organizations, and universities improve the wellness and resilience of their team members. He created a program called Virtual Mobility Coach. This program is easy to do from home each day, making it ideal for me, and for most moms. And I can do with my kids. Every day, Virtual Mobility Coach gives you fresh, guided video exercises. They show you proven techniques to take care of your body, relieve pain, and improve flexibility. And you can customize your videos in three ways. If you’re in pain, you can pull up a picture of the human body and click on what hurts. And from there, Virtual Mobility Coach will give you a customized pain prescription to help you find relief. Second, you can find a library of soothing recovery routines in the daily maintenance section. They’re a great way to wind-down and practice self-care from the comfort of your home. And third, for athletes, Virtual Mobility Coach also has an entire section of pre- and post-exercise routines for more than four dozen sports and activities. They help you warm-up before your workout so you can perform your best with a lower risk of injury. Right now, you can try Virtual Mobility Coach totally risk-free for two weeks without paying a penny. And after that, you can get 50% off your first three months. Just go to thereadystate.com/wellnessmama and use code WELLNESSMAMA50 at checkout. That’s half-off your first three months when you sign up for a monthly plan. And you’ll get personalized techniques to relieve nagging pain and improve your fitness and flexibility.

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Katie: Hello, and welcome to “The Wellness Mama Podcast.” I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com, and today’s guest is Max Lugavere, who you’ve probably heard of. He is a filmmaker, a health and science journalist with a background in journalism, like mine, and the author of The New York Times bestselling book, “Genius Foods: Become Smarter, Happier, and More Productive While Protecting Your Brain for Life.” He’s also the author of a new book, just coming out, called “The Genius Life: Heal Your Mind, Strengthen Your Body, and Become Extraordinary.” His book has been published in eight languages. He’s the host of the iTunes podcast, “The Genius Life,” and he’s appeared on everything from “Dr. Oz” to “Rachael Ray”, “The Doctors,” and many more.

And in this episode, we talk about his story of losing his mom and what he learned from the research around that, as well as the very simple, actionable, research-backed, practical tips in four key areas that can improve your life. So, like me, he’s focused on finding the most effective and efficient changes that you can make that have a big payoff, and we go into the weeds on a lot of these today. The resulting conversation is an extremely practical and actionable one. Make sure to check out the show notes at wellnessmama.fm for all the links to the things that we talk about. I know that you will enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed recording it.

Max, welcome. Thanks for being here.

Max: Thanks so much for having me. What an honor it is to be joining you on your show.

Katie: I am so excited to have you here. I’m a big fan of your work and especially your new book, which I just got to read. I know we’re gonna have so much to chat about today. But to start, I would be really grateful if you could kind of introduce yourself to the audience by telling a little bit about your story and how you came into this world to begin with.

Max: Yeah, absolutely. So, my background is as a journalist. I started college on a pre-medical track, but I ended up halfway through realizing a love of storytelling and creativity. And so that kind of derailed my plans to go through medical school. And thankfully, my parents were okay with that. But I actually ended up getting a job as a journalist, which allowed me to be a storyteller while also covering stories that were of relevance to younger people. And, you know, the stories that I got to cover as a journalist ranged from the more, you know, topical to some pretty serious topics ranging from geopolitics to the environment to health. And I did that for six years out of college. And for those, you know, who might remember the network that I worked for, it was called “Current TV.” And it was actually co-founded by Al Gore. So I worked for him, but it was not his political platform. In fact, I, you know, only saw him at the company parties. And it was really…I had free reign to cover topics that I was passionate about. And I did that for six years, sort of, you know, getting to hone my skills, cut my teeth with some of the best of the best in the field.

And when I left that job to try to figure out where I was gonna go with my career, it was at that point in my personal life, I started spending more and more time in New York City, which is where I’m from, around my mother. And it was then around the year 2010, 2011, that me and my brothers, we started to notice the earliest symptoms of what would ultimately be diagnosed as a form of dementia in my mom. Just to paint the picture for you, my mom was not old. She was 58. You know, she was in the prime of her life. She had all the pigment in her hair. She was a vibrant, spirited New Yorker. And suddenly, it had seemed as though her brain, she had had a brain transplant with somebody 30 years her senior. And it was confusing, to say the least, for me and my brothers to witness. And in tandem with the changes to her cognition, she also had an alteration in her gait, which is how she walked. So, there were symptoms that were indicative of a neurocognitive disorder, but then also a movement disorder, like a more Parkinsonian sort of complex. And I didn’t have this vernacular back then. Back then, I was just a son who was concerned for his mother.

So, what I ended up doing was accompanying her to doctor’s appointments. And because, you know, as I mentioned, we were in New York, we started at NYU, then we ended up at Columbia. But ultimately, when we couldn’t find a diagnosis for her because her symptoms were so strange, they didn’t fit neatly into the Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis, they didn’t fit neatly into the Parkinson’s disease diagnosis, it was really hard to figure out what she actually had. And so we ended up going to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. And then ultimately, it was at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio where she was diagnosed for the first time with a neurodegenerative disease. And that was the first time in my life that I’d ever had a panic attack. I was so scared and I felt so desperate and hopeless. Because what I experienced in those doctor’s offices with my mom, I’ve come to actually call diagnose and adios.

And that’s because usually what a doctor will do is he’ll run a battery of esoteric tests. You really don’t know what they’re doing most of the time. They don’t take the time to explain. They never once bring up environmental factors that might have led to the condition. They never talk about diet. They never talk about lifestyle. And that’s not to say that these doctors weren’t great in their fields, but I was left, to put it lightly, disenchanted by the whole process. And what I did was I ended up looking on my own into what’s called the primary literature, which is our peer-reviewed, most respected medical journals where, you know, trials and, you know, observational evidence, and all kinds of, you know, studies, the research that we all draw on when we talk about health and nutrition and write books about it, this is accessible to anybody. And back then, I was just looking for help from my mom.

So what I did was I used those skills that I had honed as an investigative journalist to try to figure out why this was happening to my mom, what could be done to help her, and what I could potentially do to prevent it from ever happening to myself. And there was this huge gap in between what I was reading about in the research and what I had experienced in those doctors’ offices. So I basically thought to myself, “This isn’t right.” I mean, people need to know that we don’t need to sit idly on our hands as we await whatever is in our genetic hand of cards. I mean, we can take steps today that are going to boost our cognitive health and minimize our risk for conditions like Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, which one of the most shocking findings I uncovered is that oftentimes, these conditions begin in the brain decades before the first symptom.

So from that point on, it was a…you know, there’s this term that they use in astrophysics, singularity. It was like a singularity in my life where, you know, from one day to the next, I couldn’t think about anything else other than researching this topic and reaching out to researchers around the globe who could provide further insight. And that really began my journey and that, you know, continues obviously to this day, you know, nine years later. And my new book, “The Genius Life,” is really a reflection of all of the latest insights that I’ve been able to glean from the literature and from my interviews with experts and my personal experience going through this with my mother that people can really use to make the small changes in their day-to-day life that are gonna have big wins both in terms of their health and how they feel day-to-day.

Katie: Wow, that’s awesome. And like you, I got into it for my own health with Hashimoto’s. And my background is ironically also in journalism, that’s what I went to school for. And when I couldn’t find answers in the conventional medical system, I started researching for my own answers as well and was amazed at just how much there was that is not talked about in the mainstream. And I think something really important that you said, I wanna expound on a little bit before we move on, is the idea of not being controlled just by our genes, that our genes not being our destiny. I think that’s something that a lot of people maybe don’t fully understand is that just because we may have a genetic predisposition to something, that doesn’t at all mean that we’re going to necessarily have to have that condition or whatever it is expressed in our lives. So let’s talk a little bit more about what you’ve learned in your research, specifically related to that and how we have probably a much more control than many of us realize over our genetic expression in what happens.

Max: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, what I like to say is that genes are not your destiny, but they do help determine what the standard American diet and lifestyle will do to you. You know, for some people, eating the standard American obesogenic diet, they’ll develop obesity. Some might develop type 2 diabetes, some might develop certain forms of cancer, which, you know, research suggests certain cancers are sensitive to diet. And our risk for cancer, in general, increases the more overweight we are. Alzheimer’s disease is related to being a type 2 diabetic. So everything is interrelated in very intricate ways. And I don’t pretend to have all the answers but, you know. And of course, there are genes…there are certain conditions where, you know, genes are destiny. So, I don’t like to make blanket statements.

But when it comes to dementia, which today if you make it to the age of 85, you have a 50% chance of being diagnosed with dementia so that is a coin toss. The vast majority of Alzheimer’s cases, which is the most common form of dementia, are not genetic. They’re influenced by our genes. We have risk genes, but they’re not due to deterministic genes, except for a small percentage of cases, which we call early-onset or familial Alzheimer’s disease. But sporadic Alzheimer’s disease, which again, is the most common form of dementia, but it’s not the only form of dementia, make up 95% of Alzheimer’s cases. And we do have some control when it comes to our brain health. Now, again, you could do everything “right” and still, you know, and I use air quotes when I say right because this is a constantly evolving science and 90% of what we know about the condition has been discovered only in the past 15 years.

But we know that the health of the body influences the health of the brain. And today, unfortunately, we live in a time where our bodies are unwell. If you look, statistically, two-thirds of adults are either overweight or obese. And we live in a nation where, by the year 2030, one in two adults are actually gonna be obese. So this is a startling statistic. Fifty percent of adults are either type 2 diabetic or prediabetic and the vast majority of people with prediabetes, which means that their blood sugar is starting to inch up to a point where it becomes chronically elevated, most people with prediabetes don’t even actually know that they have prediabetes. And by being a type 2 diabetic, your risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease increases anywhere between two and fourfold.

And we know, by and large, that type 2 diabetes is a lifestyle condition. It’s driven by primarily an overly sedentary lifestyle, chronic stress, and eating foods that are associated with the standard American diet. So, ultra-processed foods that are just loaded with refined flours and fats. So, essentially, what I try to offer people is a way of improving their metabolic health, which we know influences the metabolic health…the metabolic health of the body influences the metabolic health of the brain. And the guiding sort of thesis that I advance in my books is that Alzheimer’s disease really stems from a kind of metabolic dysfunction in the brain. And what that essentially means in English is that the brain in Alzheimer’s disease, one of the earliest measurable features that we can see in the brains of people at risk for Alzheimer’s disease is an inability to properly generate energy. So that’s essentially metabolic dysfunction.

And this is, as I mentioned, an evolving science but there’s even evidence that suggests that transient hyperglycemia actually blocks the ability of glucose to enter the brain, which is the brain’s primary energy source, sugar. So, I mean, it’s kind of ironic that high blood sugar, you know, we would think, “Wouldn’t high blood sugar be good because it’s more sugar for the brain to use?” Having chronically high blood sugar…having transiently high blood sugar might actually affect sugar’s ability to cross into the brain. So imagine what happens if you have chronically high blood sugar. So now, researchers have started to actually refer to Alzheimer’s disease as a form of diabetes of the brain. Type 3 diabetes is what they have started to refer to it.

And this is a hypothesis that’s gaining a lot of traction, especially in light of the fact that the prevailing hypothesis as to why Alzheimer’s disease develops over the past few decades, the so-called amyloid hypothesis really has been met with abject failure in the way of interventional studies that try to use pharmacological interventions to reduce amyloid in the brain. So it’s led researchers to sort of question, what is the earliest feature that we might be able to intervene and change in patients at risk for Alzheimer’s disease that might improve their risk, or lower their risk and improve their chances against developing the condition? And it seems that this sort of impaired ability for the brain to generate energy is one of the earliest features that we might be able to have agency and, you know, change our course.

So these are all the sorts of things that I explore in the book and make it really actionable and achievable for people to tend to. And, you know, we live in a time, as I mentioned, where people are just, unwell. We don’t feel great. Most people are walking around, you know, and they’ve just sort of accepted their reality as par for the course. You know, feeling tired and bloated and mentally fatigued with brain fog. And I think that that has a lot to do with the fact that only 12% of adults today have what researchers would call good metabolic health.

Yeah, so in the book, I go into all these different facets. And the four tent poles of the recommendations, they fall under four different categories. One is nutrition. One is exercise, which can be subdivided into two categories. So we have thermal exercise and we have physical exercise. And we can go into those two arenas. But then we have light, the body’s relationship with light and how important getting good quality light is in the earlier half of the day, and then how important it is also to have a break from light in the latter half of the day. And then our exposure to environmental toxicity. You know, we live in a world where on a constant basis, we’re exposed to industrial chemicals that if it were one or two here and there, it might not be such a big deal, but the overall burden of toxicity is just overwhelming our defense forces. And so, I go into the more common of these chemicals that people should watch out for that could be affecting their health in invisible ways.

Katie: I love it. And so much we can delve into from there. I actually wanna start with light. I know that’s not the first pillar you mentioned, but I think it’s one that is not as well understood and one that can be almost universally beneficial. And something I’ve realized in the last couple of years, especially, is that so much of health and wellness is very much personalized. And at the end of the day, each of us is responsible for figuring out the things that are gonna work the best for us. But there are some universally applicable principles. And I think that the idea of circadian biology in light and how it influences the body is not as well understood as perhaps some of the others. So I’d love to start there. And I know that you have written about this extensively and talked it before, but for people who aren’t familiar with this concept, we know that food affects our body. We know that exercise affects our body. I am a big believer that light might actually be more important, but let’s start with this one. Explain how light affects the body.

Max: Yeah. So, our bodies are rhythmically influenced and the chief clock that our brains use to know what time of day it is and then to accordingly adjust how our hormones work and how our neurotransmitters work to cater to the activities that are associated with that, with whatever time of day it is, is light. So light being the primary time center that the brain uses to gauge what time of day it is, obviously, enters through our eyes. And it basically acts like a switch to either flip on or to not flip on proteins in the eyes called melanopsin proteins. And these proteins are actually not involved in sight and they’re not super sensitive. They’re only sensitive to about 1,000 lux of light. So lux is a measure of light intensity. And people can actually download an app on their phones called Lux, which can give them a sense of the relative light intensity in their surroundings.

And what happens when our eyes perceive a brightness of about 1,000 lux, it then flips a switch in a small region of the brain, it’s about half the size of a chocolate chip, called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. And you don’t really need to remember these terms. But when melanopsin interfaces with the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which is housed in another region of the brain called the hypothalamus, that basically tells your brain that it’s daytime. Like, you know, up and at ’em, let’s orient hormones and neurotransmitters in a way that is gonna give you the most focus, the most energy, the most coordination, the greatest sort of metabolic machinery that you can have over the course of the day that’s gonna support your ability to forage, and to find new hunting opportunities, and to find new ground to settle on if you were, say, a hunter-gatherer or to find a potential mate.

So you’re gonna be most energetic and most active, obviously, during the day. Now, the hypothalamus, which is where this structure, the suprachiasmatic nucleus is housed, is one of those primordial regions of the brain. It controls very basic survival-oriented functions like metabolic rate, our drives for food, our drives to procreate. So needless to say, this is crucially important to our survival. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be in that part of the brain. It would be maybe in a higher, you know, order area involved with, you know, human consciousness or something like that, you know. But it’s really in the reptile part of the brain that is just so crucial to our being as organisms. And when that occurs, when we experience light at that intensity, it sets off this 24-hour timer that influences, as I mentioned, daylight-associated activity as well as when we begin to get tired in the evening.

So people who expose their eyes to bright light in the morning have an earlier expression of a hormone called melatonin, which is involved in winding us down and getting us ready for bed in the latter half of the day. So, getting that bright light for about half an hour every morning is crucially important. And to be clear, I mean, the light that you’ll get from an overcast day is sufficient. It doesn’t have to be direct sunlight, necessarily, but just being outside, or being near an open window, or even commuting to work for half an hour without sunglasses on would be sufficient to essentially anchor your body’s circadian rhythm. So that’s where light, really, I think plays a role in helping us feel good. It boosts levels of serotonin in the brain. It can help reduce levels of cortisol.

And this is something that’s super important. You’ll see a lot of people today not getting adequate light exposure in the morning. And this is partially owed to the fact that we spend 93% of our time indoors, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. So, very important stuff and, you know, this circadian clock, it influences antioxidant status. It influences, as I mentioned, metabolism in the body. It influences levels of inflammation. And so light really kind of interfaces with all of these different systems in the body. You know, it’s not just a visual phenomenon. It really influences our biology in a profound way. And at the later end of the day, experiencing a reprieve from bright light is equally as important.

Today, we live in a time where we’re exposed to ever-growing, you know, TV screens that emit powerful light into our eyes. We’re faced with unprecedented artificial light in our homes from our devices. And unfortunately, the light intensity that some of these devices give off, and even overhead lighting in our homes and other establishments that we may visit in the latter end of the day, can easily reach that light intensity of 1,000 lux. So if you were to walk into a supermarket or a drug store at 8 p.m., which is when your brain is supposed to be winding down and getting you ready for sleep and catering to all of those restorative and rejuvenating processes that we associate with, you know, getting good sleep, you’re actually shutting off those processes if you walk into, say, a drug store and the overhead light reaches 1,000 lux. So, making sure that we’re honoring our bodies’ circadian inclinations in the latter half of the day has become one of the central challenges of modern life. And so that’s where I think being mindful of the light intensity that you allow to enter your eyes is crucially important.

Now melatonin, which I mentioned earlier, it’s a sleep hormone. It’s not just involved in sleep, it’s an antioxidant. It is involved in DNA repair. It is a gatekeeper to a process called autophagy, which I like to refer to autophagy as the KonMari method for biology. So, people who might be familiar with Marie Kondo and her love of tidying up, that’s essentially what biology does. And the term for that is autophagy. It’s when cells clean house. They break apart worn-out proteins and organelles that maybe have become old and dysfunctional. And melatonin is a sort of gatekeeper on that process.

Now, when we experience bright light in the latter half of the day, you’re basically suppressing the release of melatonin to a profound degree. And so that’s not only gonna affect your sleep, but it’s gonna affect your body’s ability to repair DNA damage. And DNA damage is at the root cause of cancer and even aging itself. So, in the sense that light can actually affect the way that your body repairs DNA that has become damaged, light at the latter end of the day can actually serve as a potential carcinogen, which is a very powerful concept and one that needs further testing. But it’s perhaps no surprise when you look at all of the data coming from animal labs, you know, and you see the observation that people who work night shifts are at increased risk for certain types of cancer. So, it’s definitely something I think that is worthy of having our attention, being really cautious of the level of light intensity that we allow to enter our eyes in the latter half of the day. And then also, of course, getting good quality light in the first half of the day.

Katie: Got it. Yeah. I love that. And I’m also a big believer in that 30 minutes of light early in the morning, I’ll often sit on the front porch with my husband and sip a cup of tea or coffee, and just be outside, and that’s such an underestimated, easy thing we can do. It’s free and it’s amazing. I’ve seen results in my labs. I’ve seen results in my energy level, all the things that you’ve mentioned. And I think really, like, light seems to be a key because, as you mentioned, we’re seeing a rise in obesity and all of these diseases at a rate that mathematically and statistically does not make sense. We haven’t seen this ever before in history at this rate. And I think if you look at the data, like, what you’ve done, light is the one really logical potential answer because that has changed so much over the last 50 to 70 years.

And so, looking at that in the same way that you would diet or exercise, I think is really important going forward because this is obviously not a problem that’s going away. We’re not moving away from technology and artificial light. So it’s important to learn, based on all these tips that you’ve talked about, how to navigate that and to use it to our advantage versus our disadvantage. And I think based on your pillars, the other one that people…my listeners are probably above the curve on, but a lot of people don’t fully understand is the environmental toxin component here as well. And this is another area that’s changed so drastically over just the course of one generation and that can have really dramatic results in our life. But I feel like people often find it easier to ignore because it’s not as immediately noticeable as nutrition or exercise. So let’s go deep on the environmental side now and what you found when you started looking into the research on this.

Max: Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, as I mentioned, the overall burden of toxicity today that your average human is exposed to is unprecedented. And many of the kinds of harmful chemicals that I think we need to be concerned with, we’ve been exposed to for the entirety of our lives. There was a study that found that, you know, in utero, fetuses are exposed to about 287 industrial chemicals. And I’m not, like, trying to be chemophobic. I’m certainly not trying to fearmonger. But, you know, we live in a world that has just, you know, become mutated in so many ways. And many of these chemicals we’re exposed to on a daily basis and are foisted into the marketplace so that humans are exposed to them prior to really, I would say, you know, the kinds of robust research, that we really need to feel safe about these chemicals has been done. Oftentimes, certain compounds are just assumed to be safe because we don’t eat them the way we do food. We don’t take them the way we do supplements and medicines. And so, they’re not subject to the same regulatory scrutiny.

But in the book, I go into two different kinds of pollution, I guess you could categorize it. So first is, you know, the external environment, the environment outside of your house and pollution like, air pollution, which, you know, a growing body of research is now suggesting is very harmful to the health of our brains and even just our overall cognitive function. There is a type of air pollution that many people are exposed to in the United States called fine particulate matter. And fine particulate matter is basically, airborne particles measuring 2.5 micrometers or smaller. And, you know, 166 million people in the U.S., 52% of all Americans are exposed to unhealthy levels of outdoor air pollution. I grew up in New York City, I live in Los Angeles now, you know, there’s certainly things to be gleaned by living in the world’s great cities, but air pollution is definitely a growing concern.

And what we see is that people that are exposed to high levels of air pollution seem to have dramatically increased risk for cognitive decline. There’s a study that occurred across 48 states and found that high exposure to air pollutants increases the risk of cognitive decline in women by 81% and Alzheimer’s disease by 92%. Now, there are probably confounding variables in this, people who are exposed to higher levels of air pollution are probably in more industrial areas. Maybe it’s harder to find healthy food in those areas. We don’t yet know. But what we do know is that fine particulate matter is after we inhale air that has these particles in it like magnetite, which is made of iron, it’s actually able to enter our circulation and pierce the blood-brain barrier and accumulate in the brain where it creates pathologies that look a lot like what you’ll see in a brain with Alzheimer’s disease way earlier than Alzheimer’s disease would typically present its ugly head.

So, what you’ll see, and a lot of these studies have been done in very polluted parts of the world, like Mexico City or in China, they’ll find that once these particles accumulate in the brains of people, even younger people, they will start to show increased levels of amyloid-beta, which is the protein that serves as the backbone of the plaques that we associate with Alzheimer’s disease. And people who are at risk genetically for Alzheimer’s disease, carriers of the ApoE4 allele, might actually have a higher vulnerability to outside air pollution. In fact, one-fifth of Alzheimer’s cases might be owed to air pollution alone.

So you definitely wanna be cognizant of the air that you’re breathing in on a regular basis. And if you do happen to live in a polluted part of the world, there are things that you can do. So overall nutritional status is gonna go a long way towards helping protect you. So making sure that you’re eating a diet that is rich in antioxidants, fruits, and vegetables, and also properly raised meat products, which most people don’t think about grass-fed beef when it comes to detoxing. But animal proteins provide sulfur-containing amino acids, which are really important in the synthesis of glutathione, which is your body’s master antioxidant or detoxifier. So making sure that you’re eating a diet that is providing you ample nutrition, that’s super important.

Taking a fish oil supplement can be useful. They found in both humans and animal trials that fish oil, which we know can be anti-inflammatory, especially for people who are not regular consumers of fish, can actually reduce the harm that comes from being exposed chronically to air pollution. A B vitamin, a B complex can help support your body’s detox pathways as well. And just, generally speaking, knowing your ApoE4 status. So knowing your genetic risk for conditions like Alzheimer’s disease, you know, might actually affect how frequently or how regularly you allow yourself to spend in time in, you know, areas of higher pollution.

The other type of pollution that I talk about in the book “The Genius Life” is indoor air pollution. It’s a major problem and it’s not just in the indoor air environment. It’s compounds that we’re exposed to in our food, the BPA, which is able to leach out of the plastics we use to store our food or phthalates, which are plasticizing chemicals as well. We’re inundated with compounds that serve as endocrine disruptors. They disrupt the way our delicate and finely tuned system of hormones functions. And this can be associated with certain cancers. It can be associated with alterations in the way that our bodies handle glucose. It can be associated with weight gain.

And there’s really no limit to the negative effects that we can experience when regularly exposed to endocrine disruptors. I’ve become kind of friendly with an organization that I think people should support or at least know about, called the Endocrine Disruption Exchange, which is dedicated to raising awareness for and tracking ultimately about 1,400 potential endocrine disruptors that people are potentially exposed to every single day. And so while it’s impossible to talk about all of them, you know, the most common of them would be these plastic-related compounds. Most people are unaware of the fact that, you know, compounds that are used to make plastic can easily leach into food and beverages when stored in them.

So if you take a plastic water bottle, for example, and you pick that water bottle up from, you know, say, the airport, which, you know, I’m not perfect. If I’m thirsty and I’m traveling, I’ll buy a water bottle. I’ll try to buy my water in glass, but I’m not always so lucky. You have no idea where that water bottle was stored before being in the store. You know, it could have sat in the hot cargo bed of a truck for days, weeks, months, and heat catalyzes the leaching of compounds like BPA or phthalates into the liquid. It’s one of the reasons why in my home, I’ve gotten rid of all of the plastic Tupperware containers and I will generally only store, you know, foods and beverages in glass.

A lot of people will keep water bottles, plastic water bottles in their cars, you know, which can be a very warm environment, especially in the summer. That’s a big no, no. You definitely wanna get rid of any of these plastic water bottles, you don’t wanna reuse them. And even when we’re avoiding compounds like BPA, unfortunately, manufacturers have now started to replace BPA with BPS. And there’s no reason to suspect that any of these alternative plasticizing compounds are any safer than BPA. In fact, they could be even more treacherous because there’s just less research on them. And it’s been known for almost a century, at this point, that BPA has profound estrogenic properties in the body. Meaning it can act like a hormone estrogen once we consume it.

Other sources of BPA, most people are unaware, store receipts. So if you are touching a store receipt that happens to be printed on thermal paper and you can always tell that these receipts are coated with BPA because you’re able to sort of write on them with your fingernails, that provides a powerful source of exposure for BPA. Oftentimes, we’ll touch these receipts and then we’ll hold the hands of our little ones and hormonal disruption earlier in life when we’re children can have potentially lifelong implications. So we really wanna be cautious of our exposure to these compounds. And one shocking thing that I discovered the other day that I wasn’t even privy to, you know, I had known about BPA on these receipts, when we use hand sanitizer on our hands before touching these receipts, it dramatically increases the absorption into our bodies of these chemicals. So, you know, that’s kind of counterintuitive. Most people might touch a store receipt and then use a hand sanitizer or use a hand sanitizer before touching the store receipt. Certainly, you see this all the time with people who work at the registers, you know, which is unfortunate. You definitely don’t wanna use a hand sanitizer prior to touching these receipts.

And another surprising source of these compounds, not BPA or phthalates, but actually compounds more similar to Teflon, which we know, you know, can serve as a potent endocrine disruptor is glide dental tape. So, I’m a big advocate for oral health, dental health, and flossing is certainly very important. But if you’re using one of these dental tapes, like the kinds that are marketed for being able to slide more easily between teeth, those tapes are actually made with Teflon. And what we see is that people who use those kinds of tapes have higher levels of these endocrine-disrupting compounds in their bodies. So you wanna use dental floss but you wanna make sure that it’s more of like a string as opposed to this dental tape. Usually, they’re called glide. You wanna make sure that you’re avoiding those.

So there’s a lot of different potential tips that people can use to better detox. As I mentioned, the three Ps, pee, poop, and perspire. You wanna make sure that you’re going to the bathroom regularly. You wanna make sure that you’re drinking ample fluids throughout the day, making sure that your urine is either clear or light yellow because, of course, a solution to pollution is dilution. So making sure that you’re staying hydrated. And then also perspiring on a regular basis. Now, exercise is one great way of making sure that you’re sweating on a regular basis but, you know, some people just don’t sweat that much when they work out. I’m one of those people. I don’t, you know, sweat all that profusely when I’m working out. But that has made me become a huge fan of saunas and doing things that are gonna increase, you know, how much I sweat.

So sometimes I’ll work it out and I’ll work out with, like, a sweater on or, like, a hoodie just to make sure that my body temperature is increasing and I’m able to purge some of these compounds. But I’m a big fan of sitting in a sauna and really sweating it out. People who more regularly engage in sauna bathing, we’re seeing out of the University of Eastern Finland, have reduced risk for early mortality, which is essentially dying early. We see that they have reduced risk for Alzheimer’s disease, cardiovascular disease, and stroke. So saunas really are a powerful healing modality. I’m a huge fan of saunas. And, you know, just one of the many mechanisms by which the saunas boost our health is that they help us excrete certain of these environmental toxins.

Katie: I love it. I’m also a huge fan of saunas. We actually have a couple of different types at our house. And based on what I’ve seen in the research, it seems to be the gold standard of getting four to seven sauna sessions per week. And most data is at least 20 minutes. I usually am for 30 to 45 minutes. And temperature ranges vary, but I try to aim for about 170 degrees. And you’re right, the statistics are really incredible for reduction of all-cause mortality and cardiovascular events and all kinds of things. I think that’s an easy one. It can be difficult to sit there if you don’t enjoy the heat, but so many benefits. And I love everything you said about endocrine disruptors as well. This was actually the impetus for our new company called Wellnesse, which is personal care products, but most people don’t realize even your personal care products and beauty products can have plastic chemicals actually added to them and in them because it improves the texture or the performance, but then you’re absorbing those things into your body.

And like you said, babies are now born with hundreds of those already in their body because we’re just so bombarded from so many angles. And I agree with you. I don’t wanna be alarmist, but I think when we have this many negative inputs, we do just at least have to be aware and a little bit proactive about avoiding what we can and doing things to give our body a fighting chance in other areas. I wanna make sure we get to all the pillars. So let’s talk about nutrition a little bit. Like, again, I feel like there is a definite personalized aspect when it comes to nutrition, but there’s also some universal things that are beneficial to all of us. So what did you find in your research when it came to nutrition?

Max: Yeah. So, you know, when I first began my journey into health, you know, I encountered a lot of people who feel very dogmatically about certain macronutrients. So you’ll see a lot of people who are anti-carbs. You’ll find a lot of people who are, you know, anti-fat. I feel like the anti-fat sentiment that still remains comes predominantly from the plant-based community. But then you’ll see a lot of people that are zealots on both sides. You’ll see, you know, low-carb people. Ultimately, what I tried to do in the book is to…I tried to look at what the research really says and to paint a picture for people and to make it really actionable and achievable so that people can reach their best health with food and nutrition in a way that is not dogmatic, but it’s gonna give them the most bang for their buck.

And so the two big takeaways that I offer in “The Genius Life” really, number one, is to avoid ultra-processed foods. I mean, we could argue about the benefits of low-carb versus low-fat, you know, until the cows come home. And, you know, what you see online is that argument is something that is, ever-occurring. But ultimately, if you do, you know, just one thing in your life, it’s to avoid these packaged, processed convenience foods. I mean, for one, oftentimes these foods are loaded with these endocrine-disrupting chemicals that we were talking about earlier. So actually parabens, which sometimes you’ll find in your cosmetics, are actually also used in packaged processed foods because what they do is they serve as an antimicrobial, so they prevent the growth of microorganisms that might make you sick. So I mean, it’s one of the reasons why food today is so safe. You’ll see a lot less foodborne illnesses than, you know, we’ve seen in prior centuries.

But these foods, you know, they’re loaded with industrial chemicals that, again, it’s not any one to be concerned with, the dose makes the poison oftentimes. But that’s just one aspect of it. People who consume processed foods, they have higher amounts of these, you know, compounds in their bodies, phthalates, parabens, and things like that. But the real reason why I think these foods are worth avoiding is that they drive their own overconsumption. And this was actually shown very eloquently in a study that was funded by the National Institutes of Health over the past year that found that people who consume predominantly ultra-processed foods, when eating to satiety, consume a caloric surplus of about 500 calories. Now, if you’re basing the entirety of your diets around these ultra-processed foods and you’re eating 500 additional calories every single day, that’s a pound of fat stored every single week.

The other problem with these ultra-processed foods is that they’re basically pre-digestible. And when I say ultra-processed foods, I think it’s good to offer a quick definition. These are foods that, you know, they’re convenience foods. They’ve got long ingredients lists. They range from, you know, the chips and commercial breads and rolls to pizzas, and burritos, and ice creams, and granola bars, and things like that. These are the foods that you’ll generally find in the aisles of your supermarkets, not on the perimeter. They’re shelf-stable. And the thing about these foods is that they are 100% digestible and so you’re getting 100% of the calories that you consume when you eat ultra-processed foods.

This is actually in contrast to when we eat whole foods where a small but significant portion of the calories that you eat in the form of whole foods might not actually be fully digested. And so you get a bit of a caloric free ride with whole foods that you don’t get with ultra-processed foods. And this was actually shown in this study funded by the USDA, which came out just a few weeks ago actually, that found that when people ate whole nuts, they actually passed about 30% of the calories that they had consumed through their stool that they didn’t even fully absorb. And that actually warranted a reassessment of the amount of calories that we assume to be in whole nuts. Now, this wasn’t true for nut butters, which are processed, right? One hundred percent of the calories that we consume in the form of nut butters, in the form of wheat snacks, in the form of potato chips, in the form of ice creams, we mainline, essentially.

So, this is one of the contributing factors to the fact that, you know, the modern health milieu is defined in part by energy toxicity. We’re just consuming too many calories, and ultra-processed foods are at the sort of helm of driving that overconsumption. There is also a sort of metabolic advantage to consuming primarily whole foods. We actually burn about twice the calories just in the digestion of whole foods alone that we don’t burn when we’re consuming ultra-processed foods. It’s a far smaller thermic effect that we experience when we consume processed foods.

And so, that’s really one of the primary recommendations that I make is, you know, whether it’s carbs or fat, if you can, you know, maybe live by the 80/20 rule and 80% of the time eat primarily whole foods, the foods that you’re gonna find around the perimeter of your supermarket, dark, leafy greens, cruciferous vegetables, grass-fed beef, eggs, fish, meat, you know, poultry, you’re gonna get the most bang for your buck. And then, you know, maybe, you know, if it’s gonna help your adherence to those foods to have on a weekly basis the planned indulgence of, you know, the processed food of your choice just to make it a little bit easier for you, then that’s great. Then essentially, I mean, you’re winning if that’s your strategy. And when it comes to when to have a planned indulgence, I always recommend the post-workout setting because your body’s just primed to partition energy in a way that’s very efficient in the post-workout setting.

The other point that I make in “The Genius Life” is really to prioritize protein. So, this isn’t about demonizing any one macronutrient, but to prioritize the macronutrient, which is protein, that is gonna be the most satiating macronutrient available to us. I mean, I think in the fitness community, this has been known for some time, the value of protein. But I think for most people, the benefits of eating higher protein diets, it’s just gonna lead to much greater satiety, much greater bang for your buck in terms of the maintenance and promotion of the growth of the lean mass, which becomes increasingly important as we age. And people who eat less protein tend to eat more carbs and fat.

Carbs and fat tend to be energy, whereas protein is the substrate that we use to promote muscle protein synthesis, which is the growth and maintenance of lean mass in the body. So, prioritize protein at every meal. It can help reduce what I call snacksidents. If you’re feeling, you know, a hunger pang, reach for higher protein food. Again, it’s very satiating. You’ll rarely see people that overeat high protein foods like chicken or fish. You know, like, if you think about when the last time was that you binged on chicken or grass-fed beef, you know, it’s probably gonna be hard to think of the last time that occurred. But if you had to think of the last time you overindulged on foods that were composed primarily of carbs and fat, I mean, this occurs on a regular basis for most people.

So prioritizing protein to really satiate your hunger, that’s something that I think is a powerful tool that is underappreciated. And, you know, I go into the nuances of protein and, you know, why protein is so important and why some of the fears surrounding high-protein diets really have not been born out in the literature and why they’re unwarranted for most people. But those are the two nutritional sort of, you know, keystones that I offer in the book that I think are gonna give people the highest bang for their buck in terms of helping them easily shed weight without having to count calories, gain muscle, which I think is crucially important no matter what your age or gender is, and ultimately, achieve better metabolic health.

Katie: I agree. And I’m a big fan of using the 80/20 principle in a lot of aspects of life. And I think that this is an area where it definitely can simplify things. There’s so much dietary information out there that it can get overwhelming. And I think, like you do, sticking to a few simple rules that have a big payoff is an easy way for a lot of people to really see the benefits over time.

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And I love that you use the term “planned indulgences” versus “cheating”. I’ve never liked thinking of food in terms of cheating because, to me, there is room for that within a nutritious overall lifestyle plan. I’d love that you reframe that for people as well. And I saved exercise for last because this is actually where I’m most personally interested right now. I feel like all the other areas I have very much dialed in and I’ve been experimenting more and more with exercise these last six months in different types of weight lifting and high-intensity training, and looking at the research, and then also trying it on my own. And I know that this is something you also systematize and make easy in the book. But walk us through what you learned when it came to exercise.

Max: Yeah. So I break it down into thermal exercise, which is exposing your body to variation in ambient temperature, which I think is really important for metabolic health, body composition, mental acuity, and even mood. And I think that’s a really important part of the equation. So just making sure to regularly step out of your comfort zone where it comes to, you know, climate control. A lot of us live, you know, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, in a state of chronic climate control. And, you know, this is certainly comfortable and I wouldn’t give up my air conditioning living in Southern California during the summer months. But I think, you know, whether it’s sauna, which we talked about, or even exposing yourself to mildly cooler temperatures, which research shows can actually boost metabolic health and improve insulin sensitivity, I think that’s a crucial part of the equation.

And I give very actionable and specific, you know, tips in the book, but physical exercise is something that I also talk about. I mean, there’s just no getting around the fact that physical exercise is a form of medicine for the brain. And I break it down into different categories in the book. So, we have resistance training, which I think is crucially important to anybody’s exercise regimen. You gotta be lifting weights or at least doing some form of resistance training, even if it’s bodyweight exercises. You know, growing stronger muscles, you know, having greater strength and larger muscles is just important. It’s directly related to better metabolic health, lower levels of inflammation.

And, you know, for people who are listening, like, you know, I see this a lot with women. You know, people will say like, “I don’t wanna get too big or too bulky.” I’ve been lifting weights for 20 years and, you know, like, it’s very hard to get jacked. You know, there’s so many pieces at play, you know, hormones and things like that, that you really shouldn’t worry about getting too big from lifting weights. I mean, you’re gonna get as big as your biology allows, but it’s not, like, you know, somebody goes to the gym and then overnight wakes up looking like, you know, G.I. Jane. Like, you know, when Demi Moore famously transformed her body to get ready for that role. I think a lot of women sort of began to fear weightlifting for that reason. But it’s super, super, super important and there’s been this bias in the literature, I think, towards aerobic exercise, but there is a bounty of evidence now coming out showing us that having stronger legs, a stronger upper body directly related to better brain health.

So I talk about resistance training and how important that is. I also talk about high-intensity interval training and how for people who don’t like steady-state cardio, and I would put myself in that category, I’ve never been a fan of long bouts of cardio, high-intensity interval training can be a much more efficient way of boosting what’s called cardio-respiratory fitness. And I give tips on that in the book and how to really maximize that. Essentially, what it comes down to is doing something at the peak of your ability, for 10 to 20 to 30 seconds and then recuperating, and then doing it again. So really pushing yourself so that your cells really have no choice but to keep up. And in so doing, they learn to adapt and become more efficient. So this is really crucial for overall metabolic health, for brain health as well.

And then I talk about aerobic exercise, which aerobic exercise is super important. What we see is that people who, you know, do aerobic exercise, they have greater endurance, which is important. It’s a way to boost endurance. You can also boost levels of BDNF in the brain with aerobic exercise. Although the research is now validating other forms of exercise and means of doing the same thing. But BDNF has been referred to as the brains miracle grow protein and it’s been shown for some time now that a regular aerobic exercise can lead to not only an increased expression of BDNF but actually growth in the brains of vulnerable memory center, which is important to note because the size of the hippocampus actually will typically decline with age.

And then there’s another form of physical activity that I talk about in the book called non-exercise physical activity. And this can be anything from dancing to walking the dog, to folding laundry, to carrying groceries. So this is not deliberate exercise, but it’s, you know, any form of movement other than just sitting on a couch and watching reruns of your favorite show. So just moving more throughout the day. You know, yard work, for example, cleaning or maintaining your house can expend 10 to 50 times more energy than sitting in front of your television. So just by doing these simple movements, you’re burning a tremendous amount of calories.

And one thing that I really kind of drive home in the book is that a lot of people will do long bouts of cardio, you know, for weight maintenance or even weight loss because, you know, we get on a treadmill and we look at the calorie counter. But actually, non-exercise physical activity can account for anywhere between 300 and 1,000 calories daily. It’s an attribute called non-exercise activity thermogenesis, which is a way larger calorie burn than, you know, anything that you can expect, any number of calories that you can expect to burn on a treadmill.

And there was actually a study that found…it was performed at the Mayo Clinic, where they found that they wanted to see whether or not NEAT, non-exercise activity thermogenesis, alone could prevent a person from becoming overweight. And what they found was that after giving normal weight subjects an additional 1,000 calories worth of food every day, the equivalent of a triple Whopper sandwich, they found that people with higher levels of NEAT were able to preserve their leanness and prevent weight gain to a remarkable degree. In fact, the increase in activity was able to explain a tenfold variation in fat gain between the subjects.

So, just staying active, anything that you can do to not be sitting on your butt throughout the day is crucially important. And for people who are desk jockeys that are stuck at, you know, working desk jobs throughout the day, you know, anything that you can do, whether it’s getting one of these desks that’s able to transform into standing desks and going from a seated to a standing position and just kind of stretching in place as you work or every 30 minutes, you know, doing a lap around the office, taking the stairs whenever you can, parking, you know, at a further parking spot than where you normally try to park, you know, when you’re getting your groceries. Just trying to build more of these simple, spontaneous movements into your day are really gonna go a long way towards boosting your metabolic health, lowering things like triglycerides, blood sugar, and also boosting blood to the brain.

So these simple, spontaneous, daily movements, you know, actually create micro-alterations in your blood pressure that pushes fresh blood and nutrients up to the brain, which is crucially important when you consider the fact that being sedentary for an extended period of time actually drains blood from your brain. So, anything that we can do to just be more active. You know, this does not have to be something that you need to buy a gym membership for. Just, you know, spending more time walking or, I don’t know, doing chores around the house, or trips that are gonna just get you off of your butt. I can’t underscore enough how important just staying active is and not being sedentary for an extended period of time.

Katie: Wow. I love it. That was so much clear and precise and actionable information in such a short amount of time. I’ve been making tons of notes that I’ll make sure they get into the show notes at wellnessmama.fm. And of course, I will also link to your book so people can find them, but they’re also anywhere books are sold I know available as well. You’ve mentioned so many great resources. For those of you who are listening, while hopefully getting some of that non-exercise activity thermogenesis by walking or cleaning or whatever it may be, check out the show notes at wellnessmama.fm to find all of those links. Another question I love to ask toward the end of the episode is, other than your own, is there a book or a number of books that have had a really dramatic impact on your life? And if so, what, what book and why?

Max: Yeah, absolutely. So two books actually. One is, “We Are Our Brains” by a neuroscientist named D. F. Swaab. I just love the way that he talks about neuroplasticity and the hope and optimism that’s coming out of neuroscience these days, which was a stark contrast when I read it to what I was experiencing in the clinicians’ offices with my mother. So it was just very enlivening to me to be able to read something like that written by a neuroscientist. And then another book in a similar vein, “The Brain that Changes Itself” by a neuroscientist, Norman Doidge. both of those books were very inspiring to me and really kind of got me to investigate the topic further and to really learn as much as I possibly could about how to encourage brain health. You know, our brains really are who we are, as is the title of that book, “We Are Our Brains.”

And, you know, the brain is the only…you know, we have so much agency when it comes to bolstering its health. And yet when we look in a mirror, you can’t really see your brain. It’s not something that you can flex like your biceps, you know. But by strengthening our brains, it’s gonna improve our quality of life. It’s gonna improve our health and our lifespan. And it’s gonna avert these kinds of diseases like Alzheimer’s disease, for which there really is no meaningful treatment available to sufferers of the condition. And I truly wish that there was. But taking the steps, you know, do whatever it is that you can today to bolster your brain health and to just make, you know, whether it’s incremental changes or, you know, sort of a one-and-done approach, they’re really gonna pay off in a big way.

And it’s not just our long-term brain health that’s on the table here. It’s our mental health. I mean, one of the most shocking findings, and really the revelation that caused me to write my book, is that the same steps that you can take to sort of buy stock in a better, healthier future, are actually they pay dividends in the here and now. They bolster your mental health in a time where so many people are struggling with things, anxiety, fatigue, depression. This is just something that I think is crucially important, you know, at least to try before reaching for medications, which, you know, so many people are on. And I place no stigma on medicine.

If I had a blockbuster drug available to me when my mom was sick and I could give it to her, I would in a heartbeat, you know, run to the local pharmacy to get that prescription filled. But unfortunately, there were no, you know, viable medical interventions for my mom. And, you know, lo and behold, when you look at statistics, 99.6% of Alzheimer’s drug trials fail. And it’s really not looking good for the future of suffers, you know, with the condition. Although, you know, I continue to support measures for research and to promote awareness. But I think, you know, you owe it to yourself to do what you can, starting today.

To quote John F. Kennedy, “The time to fix the roof is when the sun is shining.” And how that applies to your health is, you know, if you’re younger, if you’re healthy, that’s when the sun is shining. And that’s really when you wanna work on that roof. And even for people who are in older age and, you know, might be suffering from brain fog, it’s not too late either. I mean, you know, I cite research in the book that shows that even when you’re in advanced age and with at least one risk factor for developing dementia, people can have a marked effect on the way that their brains work, on their cognitive function, on their performance, on their processing speed, on their executive function. So, yeah, you’re never too young or too old. And those two books, you know, definitely ignited my journey. And it’s a path that I’ll be on for the rest of my life.

You know, over the course of writing “The Genius Life,” I lost my mother and obviously that was incredibly traumatic and, you know, she was the person who I loved most in the world. And so, understanding why she, you know, just had such bad fortune from the standpoint of health is a question that I’ll be asking for the rest of my life. And so, I hope my work resonates with people. And yeah, again, just, you know, spread the message, spread the word, and take care of yourself and your loved ones.

Katie: Well, I’m really sorry for your loss, but I think that your work is helping so many people and I think that’s a perfect place of encouragement to end. I know that you are incredibly busy and doing amazing work. I’m so grateful that you took the time to be here today. Thank you for sharing with us. And again, you guys check him out. His books are linked in the show notes. I highly recommend them. Thank you so much, Max.

Max: Thank you so much. It’s been a real pleasure and I can’t wait to welcome you on my podcast sometime soon.

Katie: I look forward to it. And thanks, as always, to all of you for listening and sharing one of your most valuable assets, your time, with both of us today. We’re so grateful that you did and I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of “The Wellness Mama Podcast.”

If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.

Source: https://wellnessmama.com/podcast/max-lugavere/

What is Ginseng, how is it used? What are the benefits of tea and oil?

Ginseng is a medicinal herb that has been used for treatment in eastern medicine for centuries and has recently become popular in western medicine. It has a wide range of uses, from cancer to Alzheimer's disease, relief of stress and fatigue to impotence treatment. Ginseng root can be consumed dried or powdered. Tablets obtained by pulverizing the tea, oil and powder obtained from the dried pieces of the root are sold in pharmacies and herbalists. Since it is used as a spice, it has very few side effects, and it is recommended to consume it carefully and under the control of a physician with conditions such as blood pressure and heart due to its effect on blood values.

What is ginseng?

Ginseng, which has been used in Chinese medicine for hundreds of years, has different varieties grown in American, Asia and Siberia. However, the most commonly used types are American and Asian Ginseng. The active ingredients in these two types can be consumed for different purposes depending on their intensity and effects on the body. Since the dried roots are similar to the human body, it is also called man root. Features of ginseng This short plant with fleshy roots is classified as fresh, white or red ginseng depending on how much it grows. Harvest times are different. Its freshness is harvested before 4 years, white ginseng between 4-6 years, and red in 6 years. Ginseng contains two important compounds: ginsenosides and gintonin. A lot of research has been done on the medicinal benefits of these compounds. Different amounts of ginsenosides are found in Asian and American ginsengs. Also, its effects on the body are different. Asian ginseng has a more invigorating effect while American ginseng relaxes the body.

Ginseng root

What does Ginseng do?

Increases the body's energy, improves cognitive ability, helps treat impotence in men, reduces stress , helps eliminate the toxic effects of alcohol on the body, inflammation Prevents , menstruation and helps to eliminate problems related to menopause , enhances sexual performance, strengthens the immune system .

The benefits of ginseng

It is a powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory In recent studies, it has been observed that Korean red ginseng reduces inflammation, increases capacity in cells antioxidant and helps skin regeneration in eczema patients. . Ginseng, which is also protective against oxidative stress, can reduce nerve inflammation and speed up motor function recovery in spinal cord injuries. Can strengthen cognitive functions Although the research is not yet sufficient, antioxidants in ginseng are thought to prevent the accumulation of plaque and free radicals in the brain. Thus can prevent dementia , Alzheimer and other cognitive impairments.

Good for impotence The herb may be a useful alternative in the treatment of erectile dysfunction (impotence) in men . Compounds in red ginseng prevent oxidative stress in the blood vessels and tissues in the penis and can help restore normal function. It can also promote nitric oxide production, improving muscle relaxation and blood circulation in the penis. Strengthens immunity in cancer patients Some studies in cancer patients receiving surgery or chemotherapy have shown that ginseng significantly improves immune function and reduces symptoms. In addition, the extract of the plant increases the protection of vaccines against diseases such as influenza. However, there are not enough scientific studies yet showing the effect of healthy people on the immune system. Can protect against cancer Ginsenosides in the plant reduce inflammation and provide antioxidant protection. According to some studies, people who take ginseng, especially lip, oral cancer , esophagus, stomach cancer , colon cancer The risks of , liver and lung cancer are reduced. However, more research is needed on the subject. Prevents fatigue and increases energy Thanks to its polysaccharides and oligopeptides, it reduces oxidative damage and increases energy production in cells. Thus, it helps to reduce fatigue. May lower blood sugar Thanks to its ginsenosides, it helps control blood sugar. In particular, its fermented red form improves pancreatic cell function, and also increases the production of insulin and blood sugar intake in tissues.

The benefits of ginseng tea

Provides physical fitness and reduces stress. Vitamins and minarels in the body help remove toxins and edema that accumulate in the body. Contains antioxidants that strengthen the immune system. It is effective in regulating blood pressure and blood sugar. Improves brain functions, increases concentration, strengthens memory. With this feature, it is recommended to be used in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. It increases sexual performance, is used in the treatment of impotence problem in men, it has also been observed to increase the number of sperm. There are studies showing that it reduces pain in menstrual period and helps to eliminate the problems experienced during menopause How to prepare ginseng tea? Ginseng tea is obtained from the dried roots of the plant. When the water boils, turn off the diaper and wait 2 minutes, then throw the ginseng tea into the water and infuse it for 5 minutes after straining. If it is taken as a root, the roots are grated or cut into small pieces and boiled over and cooled water is poured for 5 minutes. In this way, it is infused for 6-7 minutes.

The benefits of ginseng oil

Stimulating feature increases body and mind functions. It has anti-aging feature by renewing cells. It prevents wrinkles on the skin, revitalizes the skin and renews the skin texture. Therefore, it is used in many skin care products. It increases sexual power, increases sperm count and quality. It resolves sexual performance and erection problems. There are studies showing that it has a special effect on lung, kidney and spleen. It is used as restorative care to restore functions in these areas of the body. Drops the fire Balances blood sugar and pressure

How to use ginseng oil? A tea glass can be drunk by adding 2-3 drops of oil to the water, or a glass of sugar can be added to the same amount and swallowed. Creams and lotions with ginseng oil in the separator can be used for skin care.

Ginseng varieties

Panax Ginseng (Asian and Korean ginseng): This species has been widely used for more than 4000 years. The type that is harvested in four to six years and peeled and dried in sunlight is called white. Red ginseng is harvested after six years and dried. It is one of the most popular ginseng species today. Asian ginseng can be used to lower blood pressure, improve mental performance, treat impotence and increase body energy. Wild Ginseng (American ginseng): This species, harvested between the ages of three and five, has been used for hundreds of years in respiratory infections, diabetes treatment and to strengthen the immune system. Ginseng products It can be found in pharmacies, markets, transfers in ready-made packages, and can also be ordered online. Apart from this, it can be obtained as a root or in powder form.

How to use ginseng?

Ginseng is mostly consumed as tea. It can also be found in capsules in powder form. In some cultures, it is also used as a spice in meals, but it is better to consume it as a tea in order to get the beneficial nutrients fully. A standard Ginseng product contains 2-3% ginsenoside in total. It should be consumed before meals to get the full benefit. How much can Ginseng be used? Ginseng root can be consumed raw, between 1 and 2 grams daily. If consumed in powder form, 200-400 milligrams of Korean Ginseng can be taken per day. It is best to start with fewer doses and increase the dose over time. There is evidence that prolonged use of ginseng reduces its effect on the body. Therefore, using Ginseng for 2-3 weeks and taking a 1-2 week break will make it more effective.

Harms and side effects of ginseng

Sleep problems, insomnia Digestive system problems Tension, discomfort Headache Changes in blood pressure and blood sugar Allergic reactions on the skin Impact reduction when used for a long time Irregularity during menstrual periods in continuous use It is also not recommended to use ginseng in combination with caffeine. Apart from this, it has interactions with many drugs, some drugs have been observed to increase the side effects. If you have a regular medication, consult your doctor before consuming ginseng. Who shouldn't use ginseng? Those who are allergic to any substance in ginseng, Those who have bleeding or clotting problems or will have surgery Pregnant women or those who plan to become pregnant Breastfeeding mothers Patients with diabetes, imsomnia (insomnia), cancer or schizophrenia should not consume ginseng. Herbal and nutritional supplements like ginseng should always be used with caution and under the supervision of a doctor. Sources: 1- Health Benefits of Ginseng, 2- Side effects of ginseng, 3- Ginseng Read the full article

A Comprehensive Overview On Nootropics Supplements Phosphatidylserine

What is Phosphatidylserine?

Phosphatidylserine may sound like a complicated word, but in the real sense, it is one of the commonest compounds that offer nootropic benefits in the body. Having been discovered in the early 1940s by Howard A. Schneider and Jordi Folch, Phosphatidylserine powder (51446-62-9) has become more popular and is one of the world’s most sought after nootropic today.

You will be suprised to learn that Phosphatidylserine is an amino acid derivative and aminophospholipid that our bodies produce naturally. It is a phospholipid that makes up a massive part of the brain. So why would you need to supplement it? Most of the foods we take today may not offer sufficient Phosphatidylserine to the body.

Also, studies have shown that the Phosphatidylserine levels decrease as you age; hence, you have to keep yourself armed with the Phosphatidylserine best source. There are various reasons why you should be taking Phosphatidylserine, including for the proper functioning of the nerve cells in the brain. It also assists in the transmission of messages between them.

Phosphatidylserine as well works as a signaling agent for apoptosis. That is the process of cell death which contributes to an organism’s growth and development.

In the past Phosphatidylserine, was manufactured from cow brains until a health concern arose on its risk in causing infections like mad cow disease. Today, it is mostly made from cabbage or soy.

How does phosphatidylserine work?

So far, Phosphatidylserine has undergone extensive research indicating that it works through the nerve cell membranes. It assists in the optimization of the functions of the cell, including homeostatic, maintenance, and specialized processes that are unique to the nerve cell.

Phosphatidylserine and other phospholipids help in holding the cell membranes together. They are packed side to side, forming a two-layer structure that holds proteins and other membrane constituents in place. Studies done on rodents showed that Phosphatidylserine works by;

Rejuvenating adaptive behaviors, including learning.

It improves glucose utilization and synaptic efficiency in the body.

Reversal of the EEG patterns.

Works by reversing the nerve network decline.

It boosts the nerve transmitters, i.e., acetyl-choline, tyrosine hydroxylase activity, dopamine release, and catecholamine turnover.

It resets lagging circadian and estrus rhythms.

Phosphatidylserine is usually present in every cell type, and although it has proven to work best in the nerve cells, it also helps in improving one’s immunity. That is by facilitating the recycling of old cells. Usually, red blood cells become less rigid, and this makes them incapable of passing through the narrow capillaries, making them need replacement.

Consequently, membrane enzymes transfer Phosphatidylserine from its normal position, which is the inner half of the membrane to the outer half. That acts as a signal to the circulating immune cells to get rid of the aged red blood cells from circulation.

Phosphatidylserine has also been linked with membrane phenomena which are involved in the bone matrix formation, signal transduction in the heart, testicular function and secretion by the adrenal glands.

Does phosphatidylserine help you sleep?

Yes, phosphatidylserine help sleep. Sleep is one of the most valued gifts that you can give to your body. Wondering why? Good sleep leads to greater wellbeing, more happiness, lower disease rate, sharper mental capabilities, and less fatigue.

Although most of us yearn to have a sound sleep, not all of us can achieve that naturally. Today, almost six out of ten people are suffering from sleeplessness and insomnia for at least a few days a week globally.

The bad news is that abnormal sleep patterns could lead to a higher risk of suffering from cardiovascular disease and multiple types of cancer. It could also lead to lower testosterone output and a higher risk of type 2 diabetes.

Well, in a bid to get a cool and a longer nap many people are going for natural ways to improve their sleep quality including maintaining regular sleep times, making their rooms darker and sleeping in cooler rooms. The tricky part is that this may only work for a day and leave you glaring at the roof for the rest of the week. So what do you do?

The Phosphatidylserine sleep benefits are so substantial that you might forget you ever struggled to have a good nap. It does this through the Phosphatidylserine cortisol effect. Cortisol is a chemical produced by the adrenal glands in a circadian rhythm. That means that its production peaks in the morning and that’s what makes you wake up. In the evening, it gradually decreases, giving you some sound sleep.

However, due to the ups and downs in the world we live in today, cortisol levels could stay high for many people. Subsequently, there is desensitization in two parts of the brain; the hypothalamus and the hippocampus which act as cortisol’s shut off valves.

Once the desensitization takes place, the cortisol levels go high up. Phosphatidylserine has proven to re-sensitize the hypothalamus and the hippocampus, which in turn lower the cortisol levels back in line with the circadian rhythm.

What makes it a great option as a sleep supplement is that it is natural (it is not synthesized from human-made chemicals found in the lab). It also works through a natural mechanism which is the lowering of the cortisol levels. All this sets it apart from other human-made sleep medications that may only end up giving you severe side effects and also make you suffer from addiction.

Next time you feel like your sleep is playing games on you; you could try Phosphatidylserine for deep and refreshing sleep.

Is phosphatidylserine the same as phosphatidylcholine?

Both the Phosphatidylserine and Phosphatidylcholine are phospholipids that assist in the formation of the cell membrane.  That allows for the transfer of fat and water-soluble molecules hence keeping the membrane flexible, healthy, and fluid. In other words, these phospholipids help in keeping the cells healthy, which translates to healthy overall wellbeing.

Both of them share a function which is to aid in neurotransmitter production, which helps with memory and concentration. This role is very vital, especially as we age as it slows down the decline in the cognitive ability and the risk of dementia.

Although they sound similar, the Phosphatidylserine structure is different from that of Phosphatidylcholine. Phosphatidylcholine adds a positively-charged group that is choline to the phosphate head group of phosphatidic acid whereas phosphatidylserine is made of the phosphatidic acid and a negatively charged phosphate group attached to the serine at the hydroxyl end.

Phosphatidylserine only comprises about 10% of the total cell membrane phospholipids and is mostly situated in the inner monolayer. On the other hand, Phosphatidylcholine is one of the largest phospholipids found in the cellular membranes and could make up to 50% of the total membrane phospholipid composition. It is mostly found in the outer part of the membranes.

What foods are high in phosphatidylserine?

It is good to note that Phosphatidylserine is mostly found in the food that we eat. Some of the common Phosphatidylserine sources include; chicken heart, Atlantic mackerel, soy lecithin, cabbage, egg yolk, bovine brain, and Atlantic herring. If you are not a food enthusiast, then you could save yourself the hustle by buying Phosphatidylserine supplement.

Phosphatidylserine health benefits

Reverse the age-related mental decline

Aging is inevitable, but there is always something you can do to age gracefully. As age piles on us, our mental capability decreases. It is for such reasons that you have seen older adults struggle to live a healthy life. Luckily, you do not have to feel like you are powerless and can do nothing concerning aging.

With the help of Phosphatidylserine, you can improve your language skills, attention, and memory which may have reduced due to aging.

Improve athletic performance

If you are into cycling, jogging, training, or running for long distances, then you can admit that any product that promises to boost your performance could help you achieve your goals fast. In this case, Phosphatidylserine powder (51446-62-9) helps in reducing muscle soreness even after strenuous training. It does this by providing relief to the sore muscles and also reducing inflammation of the joints.

Additionally, Phosphatidylserine offers protection against the increase in the cortisol levels, which frequently occurs due to overtraining. Consequently, you are likely to enjoy more significant physical achievements without feeling all the pain and fatigue.

Helps with depression

Depression is one of the severe illnesses that many people around the globe suffer from. Sometimes it may be characterized by intense sadness and anxiety that seem to take away one’s purpose in living. Although there are many depression treatments, medication is not recommended and only comes as a last resort. What else could you use to reduce the symptoms and treat depression?

Phosphatidylserine is one of the natural supplements that you could use to fight depression. It is said to play a role in the regulation of one’s mood. In a study done on people over the age of sixty-five and who suffered from major depression, those that took Phosphatidylserine in combination with omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA three times daily for three weeks, observed improvement on the symptoms.

Aids in memory loss

One of the most devastating things one would undergo as you age is memory loss. It gets heartbreaking when you notice that you now forget even the obvious stuff like your name, what day of the week it is etc. What could you do to stave off memory loss?

Phosphatidylserine has been used in the past to slow age-related memory loss. In 2010, a study was conducted on seventy-eight older adults who had mild cognitive impairment. They were administered with Phosphatidylserine for six months. It was observed that those who had low memory scores experienced considerable improvement in their memory.

Helps in the management of ADHD

ADHD is a disorder that has an impact on the brain and one’s behavior. So far, there is no known cure, but there are several options that could help counter the hyperactive behavior. The Phosphatidylserine ADHD effect has helped in the management of its symptoms effectively.

When taken in combination with omega-3 fatty acids, Phosphatidylserine has proven to aid in the treatment of ADHD, especially in children. A study was done on two hundred children with ADHD, and they were assigned on a fifteen weeks treatment with Phosphatidylserine and omega-3 fatty acids. The results showed that they experienced a significantly higher reduction in impulsive behavior.

Improving thinking ability

Our thinking ability may sometimes become slow due to reasons like age, anxiety, and stress. That does not, however, mean that you sit there and watch your thinking skills and the efficiency of your brain go down the drain; there are ways you could deal with it.

One of the Phosphatidylserine benefits is that it enhances your thinking ability by improving your cognitive brain functioning and by sharpening your thinking skills too.

So if you are looking for a product that will help you with faster learning, sharper thinking, good memory and out of the box problem-solving, then you can trust in the Phosphatidylserine nootropic. It will make you feel like a genius in no time.

Aid in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive condition which leads to the degeneration and ultimate death of the brain cells. This disorder is known to cause dementia; a condition that leads to the decline in one’s thinking ability, behavioral and social skills that could result in the disruption in a person’s ability to function self-reliably.

While some of the symptoms include severe memory impairment and the inability to carry out everyday tasks, as usual, the Phosphatidylserine Alzheimer’s effect comes as a new dawn to patients suffering from it. The essential brain nutrient helps in improving some of the Alzheimer’s disease symptoms within six to twelve weeks of treatment.

It has, however, been observed that Phosphatidylserine works best in people with less severe symptoms. After the first sixteen weeks of treatment, this nootropic may not offer any more benefit on the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.

How should I take phosphatidylserine?

What is the appropriate Phosphatidylserine dosage? Is there any risk of taking too much? These are some of the critical questions that many people ask. Since we have already dealt on the Phosphatidylserine benefits, let us learn a little more on how much of this supplement you should be taking every day.

The recommended Phosphatidylserine dosage is 100mg taken three times a day. However, you could play around with the dosage to know what works for you best. The 100mg should be your starting point as you gradually increase the dosage. That will help you understand your reaction towards it before testing the depth of the water with both feet.

Never take more than 500mg in a day as it may increase the chance of suffering from Phosphatidylserine side effects as rare and minor as they may seem.

Phosphatidylserine stack

You may decide to stack Phosphatidylserine with other nootropics to achieve better results. The most popular choices that people prefer to use are pramiracetam and Noopept. That is because they offer different effects from those that Phosphatidylserine give; hence, their combination could give very nice synergistic effects. You could, however, choose any other nootropic that suits you since Phosphatidylserine is safe and well-tolerated in the body.

If you stack Phosphatidylserine, then you may want to use less than 100mg especially if it synergizes well with the other nootropics.

Although some people stack Phosphatidylserine, it doesn’t mean that it is not potent on its own. You could use it purely on its own and still reap the fruits. To get the best out of it, do not take it only when you want to hack your brain, instead, use it with a long term goal of achieving the overall health of both the mind and the body.

What are the side effects of phosphatidylserine?

Phosphatidylserine is considered to be a safe nootropic as many people rarely react to soy-derived supplements. The Phosphatidylserine side effects are, therefore, less likely to occur. They may include;

Trouble while sleeping

Stomach upset

Gas

To prevent yourself from suffering from this, always take the right dosage and avoid drugs that interact with it, e.g., blood thinners, anti-inflammatory medicines, and performance-enhancing drugs or supplements.

Buy phosphatidylserine online

Getting the right Phosphatidylserine supplier can be a hustle, especially if quality is your thing. The fact that 85% of the supplements on the market contain additives makes it even harder to settle for any Phosphatidylserine manufacturer.

There is some little hope left, though. The legit Phosphatidylserine manufacturers that offer nothing else other than excellent quality. It is no wonder all the Phosphatidylserine reviews from our clients have been positive.

Additionally, buy phosphatidylserine supplements online comes with a bunch of benefits. Other than the convenience it will offer you; you can choose the quantity you want in a short period. Why walk around physical stores when your favorite supplement is a click away?

Conclusion

As seen in the article, Phosphatidylserine is no ordinary supplement. It is what every person should be taking for a longer and quality life. With all the benefits it brings on the table, it comes as a surprise that it does not offer all this at the expense of your body’s wellbeing. That means that with the correct dosage, you will never suffer from any adverse effect.

Furthermore, it has undergone a large number of studies; hence, you already know what to expect. Why not try it today and unleash the great potential in your overall health?

References

Kannan, Muthukumar; Riekhof, Voelker, Dennis R. (2015). “Transport of Phosphatidylserine from  Endoplasmic Reticulum to  Site of Phosphatidylserine Decarboxylase2 in Yeast”.  16 (2): 123–134.

Solomon TM, Leech J, DeBros G, Budson A,. A randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled, , efficacy study of alpha BRAIN® administered orally. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition. 2015;12(S1):P54.

EFSA Panel on Dietetic Products, Nutrition and Allergies . “Scientific Opinion on health claims related to phosphatidyl serine, pursuant to Article 13(1) of Regulation (EC) “. EFSA Journal. 8 (10): 1749.

Jäger R, Purpura M, et al. The effects of phosphatidylserine on the golf performance. Journal of the International Society of Sport Nutrition. 2007;4(1):23

10 Super Foods for Baby Boomers Over 50

Eating healthy is important at any age but becomes especially crucial for baby boomers over 50. Why? Okay, the bad news first. As we get older, our bodies go through some major changes, as nutritional expert Tara Collingwood M.S., RDN points out in an interview for Newsmax. "Men and women alike are susceptible to bone loss, muscle loss, hormonal changes, and the dreaded middle age spread," the dietitian explains. "We see and feel these changes in our achy joints, vision impairment, heart complications, weight gain, decreased memory retention, and lack of energy - all of which are tied directly to nutrition." The good news? Eating the right foods can help prevent diseases, maintain a healthy metabolism, and help you look and feel good. Win-win! With that in mind, here are #10 super foods that boast a high nutrient-to-calorie ratio to keep your body performing optimally. You'll notice that some of these age-defying and disease-fighting super foods are items that you may already love and are sitting inside your refrigerator or pantry. #1 Wild Salmon The American Heart Association recommends eating fish two times a week, particularly fatty fish like salmon. Salmon is packed with vitamin D, potassium, B vitamins, and other important minerals, but that's not all. Fatty fish are high in omega-#3 fatty acids, which helps fight inflammation, removes triglycerides from the blood, benefits arthritis, and may even help with memory loss and dementia. (By the way, omega-3 can also be found in other fatty, cold-water fish like herring, sardines, rainbow trout, cod, tuna, and mackerel.) In addition, salmon is a complete protein, meaning it contains all of the essential amino acids. This is important since protein is what our bodies use for maintenance and repair. No wonder experts often put salmon at the top of their list of healthy foods that promote good health! #2 Chia Seeds Chia seeds are nutritional, energy-boosting dynamos and the richest source of plant-based omega-3 fatty acids available. The seeds are full of antioxidants, protein, minerals, plus soluble and insoluble fiber to help digestion. The tiny seeds are also a "complete protein" containing all nine essential amino acids, rare for a plant-based source of protein. Another benefit? These little seeds have an unusual quality - when combined with liquid they swell and absorb more than 10 times their weight. That means adding a spoonful or two to meals will help you feel fuller while adding some crunch and texture. If you're trying to lose a few pounds, this can be helpful! So here are a few fun facts about this super food. Although chia seeds have only become a popular health food recently, they've been around a long time as a staple of Mayan and Aztec diets. In fact, "chia" means "strength" in the Mayan language. Aztec warriors were known to use the seeds to give them high energy and endurance, especially during battles. And in case you're wondering, these seeds are the same ones used for the iconic Ch-Ch-Ch-Chia Pets that allow you to "grow" garden animals and characters. However, the seeds in these kits aren't approved for consumption, so head to a grocery or drugstore to enjoy the health benefits. These nutritious seeds are virtually tasteless, so you can add them to just about anything including oatmeal, yogurt, smoothies, sauces, breakfast cereals, soups, and salads. Another popular way to eat the seeds is by making "chia pudding." Just mix some seeds with one cup of liquid like almond milk. After 15 minutes or so, the seeds "swell" and the "pudding" is ready to eat. Add some fruit, nuts, or other toppings for extra flavor. Just be careful about eating spoonfuls of the seeds by themselves which could pose a choking hazard. 3 Avocados This unique and nutritious fruit has 20 different vitamins and minerals along with antioxidants including carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin which are valuable for eye health. Surprisingly, avocados have more potassium than bananas - an essential mineral that most older adults don't get enough of that helps reduce blood pressure. Other bonuses: Avocados contain monounsaturated fatty acids, which numerous studies have shown can help lower levels of 'bad' LDL cholesterol while boosting 'good' HDL cholesterol. These fruits are also high in omega-3 fatty acids which, as previously mentioned, help remove triglycerides from the blood and lower inflammation. #4 Blueberries/Blackberries These small berries are full of nutrients including vitamins, potassium, minerals and antioxidants. Blueberries and blackberries contain high levels of soluble fiber which is beneficial for maintaining a healthy weight, lowering cholesterol, maintaining healthy blood sugar levels, and lowering blood pressure. The berries rank the highest of any fruit for antioxidants including concentrated levels of flavonoids, a natural brain booster that helps reduce age-related declines in motor skills and cognitive ability. When selecting berries, note that the darker they are, the more antioxidants they have. These fruits are also anti-inflammatory. The good news is that frozen are just as good as fresh and easy to toss on your morning cereal or salad. #5 Almonds. Nuts in general are good for our bodies, but almonds are the most nutrient-dense nut, ranking highest in protein, calcium, vitamin E (which helps #skin stay supple), magnesium, and folate. Almonds are also high in manganese and copper which are necessary to form collagen and can help #aging bodies look and feel younger. An added bonus: Dieters who ate almonds daily shed 62 percent more weight and 56 percent more fat than those who didn't, a study from Loma Linda University in California found. "The fiber in nuts may prevent your body from absorbing some fat, speeding weight loss," says lead author Michelle Wien, R.D. Almond eaters also lowered their blood pressure, the study noted. #6 Ginger Ginger may be best known for its ability to soothe stomach aches and ease nausea. But it has so much more to offer. This anti-aging herb is a good source of many nutrients, including potassium, magnesium, copper, manganese, and vitamin B6; however, the majority of its benefits for anti-aging nutrition come from its special phytonutrients called gingerols. As WebMD points out: "When you eat or drink phytonutrients, they may help prevent disease and keep your body working properly." Healthline adds: "Gingerol is the main bioactive compound in ginger, responsible for much of its medicinal properties. It has powerful anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects." By the way, other herbs such as garlic and turmeric also contain anti-inflammatory properties that help relieve achy joints and stiff muscles. #7 Matcha Green Tea Matcha comes from the same plant as green tea, but since it's made from the entire leaf, it packs in a more concentrated amount of antioxidants and beneficial plant compounds. The good news is that these powerful properties can help us baby boomers as we age.What makes matcha such a super food? Its key component is EGCG, a catechin linked to lowering risks to cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and liver disease. Loaded with antioxidants, matcha is known for its immunity-boosting and disease-fighting properties. According to Healthline.com, "Including matcha in your diet could increase your antioxidant intake, which may help prevent cell damage and even lower your risk of several chronic diseases." EGCG is also linked to potential weight loss benefits. Matcha can crank up your metabolism, helping you burn more calories every day and process food more effectively. In fact, researchers conducted a series of studies on dieters and found that those who drank green tea lost more weight than those who didn't drink it. The amino acid L-theanine in matcha, which stimulates the production of dopamine and serotonin helps improve concentration and memory. According to a study published in the journal Phytomedicine, regular consumption of green tea may even offer protection against Alzheimer's disease and other types of dementia. An added benefit: Unlike coffee, the amino acids in Matcha help your body absorb the caffeine gradually which releases energy slowly and sustainably. Matcha promises a four to six hour energy boost that's just enough to perk you up. Janie Zeitlin, a registered dietitian in White Plains, NY and New York City, says matcha is a "nutritional powerhouse," and "a valuable addition to any diet," but adds that moderation is best because of the potency. Most experts recommend drinking a cup or two a day. #8 Beans Experts recommend adults consume three cups of beans per week to promote health and reduce the risk of chronic diseases. With good reason. This often overlooked super food is considered "heart healthy" since beans contain an abundance of soluble fiber, which can lower cholesterol and triglyceride levels. Beans also deliver a powerful combination of vitamins and minerals, including blood-pressure-regulating magnesium, energizing iron, bone-strengthening calcium, potassium, and folate as well as antioxidants. Keep in mind, the darker the bean, the higher its antioxidant levels. As a bonus, beans help raise levels of the hormone leptin which curbs appetite and thus can help you maintain a healthy weight. Beans are also metabolized more slowly than other complex carbs, helping you feel fuller longer while delivering a great source of energy throughout the day. A comparatively inexpensive source of protein, beans can be purchased canned, frozen, or dried. To increase your intake, incorporate beans into main dishes like chile or soup, use as a filling side-dish instead of bread or potatoes, toss into a salad, or eat snacks like roasted chick peas or hummus. Have a variety of beans including kidney beans, pinto beans, black beans, lima beans, black-eyed peas, garbanzo beans (chickpeas), split peas, fava beans, and lentils in your pantry and get creative! #9 Quinoa The South American grain quinoa is well-known to vegans and vegetarians because it's a complete protein and filled with antioxidants, vitamins and minerals, such as B2, magnesium, copper, iron, and phosphorus. Quinoa is easy to use in place of other grains, pastas, or white rice. An excellent source of protein with sufficient amounts of all the essential amino acids, it packs more nutrition than most grains. In addition, quinoa contains large amounts of flavonoids, including quercetin and kaempferol. These are potent antioxidants with several health benefits. 10 Dark Chocolate Okay, I saved the best for last. Who doesn't love chocolate? Just so happens that quality dark chocolate is rich in fiber, iron, magnesium, copper, manganese and a few other minerals. Dark chocolate also contains organic compounds that function as antioxidants, including polyphenols, flavanols, and catechins. Some studies indicate that consuming small amounts of dark chocolate on a regular basis can lower blood pressure and decrease the rate of stroke in women by 20 percent. The darker the chocolate, the lower the fat and sugar content. However, don't go too crazy. Unfortunately, there are 170 calories in one piece (one ounce) of dark chocolate and the treat does contain sugar along with all those nutrients, so should be eaten in moderation. Still, I love that dark chocolate can be counted as a health food, don't you? https://www.skin-beauty.com Read the full article

How to Keep Your Brain Happy and Healthy

We track our heart rate, exercise our muscles, and protect our skin with sunscreen as best we can. Yet despite all the thinking our brain does for us, we rarely stop and think about it. Our small but mighty command center can simultaneously rehearse a PowerPoint, manage digestion, dive to catch a teetering coffee mug, and contemplate whether perfect love is actually attainable. Just ponder that for a minute.

But exactly how the brain gets all that done is a mystery. However, our understanding of this three-pound wonder has exploded in the past two decades. Once upon a time, we thought we were born with all our brain cells, or neurons. Now, research is showing us evidence that we continue to make more as we age. We can also build new connections between existing neurons, a phenomenon called neuroplasticity that helps our brain hum along at high efficiency.

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Experts are learning more about how our daily choices can benefit the brain, too. "Changes that lead to Alzheimer's start decades before the first symptoms of forgetfulness," says Marwan Sabbagh, MD, director of the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas, Nevada. "You can take steps in early and middle adulthood to protect your brain, for right now and down the road."

While your mother always said eating right and exercising would do nothing but benefit our health, those aren't the only ways to keep our brains in tip-top shape. Read on for more ways you can help yours be its very best.

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Connect with Friends

Whether it happens at book club or weeding in the community garden, what can seem like small talk does a world of good. "Social engagement is one of the most important things you can do for brain health," says Jessica Langbaum, PhD, associate director of the Alzheimer's Prevention Initiative at the Banner Alzheimer's Institute, in Phoenix, Arizona. And it doesn't just give you a long-term advantage. Social ties also buffer us from the effects of the stress hormone cortisol. That's good news, since a 2018 study in Neurology found that middle-aged adults—women in particular—with high levels of it scored lower on memory and attention tests than subjects with moderate levels.

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Avoid Multitasking

"Multitasking is as bad for your brain as smoking is for your lungs," says Sandra Bond Chapman, PhD, author of Make Your Brain Smarter, professer and founder of University of Texas at Dallas's Center for BrainHealth. A surefire by-product is an elevated cortisol level can dim your recall and focus powers. When you multitask—texting during a meeting, say—you ask your brain to do two competing things. "It overloads the brain and makes you less efficient," Bond Chapman says. "It's like having your feet on the gas and the brake simultaneously." Instead, try focusing on just one thing in its turn, and step away from what you're doing for three to five minutes a few times a day.

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Feed Your Mind

Researchers at Chicago's Rush University Medical Center and Harvard University developed a way to eat that keeps the brain stoked with what it needs now and staves off future cognitive decline. Meet the MIND diet, a combo of the Mediterranean and DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) regimens. "Nutrients in the MIND (or Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay) diet have been shown to reduce inflammation, prevent neuron death, and reduce oxidative stress, which can harm neurons," says Martha Clare Morris, ScD, a Rush University Medical Center researcher and nutritional epidemiologist.

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Keep It Balanced

The key players are omega-3 fatty acids, from at least one three-ounce serving of fish a week; polyphenols, from berries (two half-cup servings or more a week—wild blueberries are especially potent); and plenty of olive oil's healthy fat. The diet also calls for a daily minimum of a cup of raw or a half-cup of cooked leafy greens (spinach is particularly rich in protective vitamin E) and five weekly one-ounce servings of nuts, which are chock-full of the B vitamins neurons love. "Eating this way gives your brain all the macro-and micronutrients it needs for peak performance, period," says Maggie Moon, a registered dietitian and author of The MIND Diet.

RELATED: This Diet Could Cut Your Risk of Dementia, Heart Disease, and Cancer—and Help You Lose Weight, Too

Find Your Exercise Regimen

All the busy experts in this story make fitness a top priority. "I started running after I noticed the top brain researchers do it—and I hate running," says Sabbagh. But in truth, any exercise helps manage blood pressure and lower stroke risk. It also increases blood flow to the brain, ups its oxygen supply, and reduces inflammation. In addition, "a chemical called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, increases," Sabbagh says. "It regenerates neurons and helps them work better."

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Take Small (Slow) Steps

In a 2018 review in Neurology Clinical Practice, people in their 70s who logged at least 52 hours total (about three times a week) over six months improved most in vital areas like problem-solving and mental speed. "It didn't have to be high- or moderate-intensity, either. Tai chi and yoga count," says lead researcher Joyce Gomes-Osman, PhD, a clinical neuroscientist and assistant professor at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

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Learn New Things

"The brain craves novelty," says Tracey Shors, PhD, a distinguished professor of psychology and neuroscience at Rutgers University, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. And it doesn't get it from a sudoku or brain-training app, which recruits the same skills repeatedly. "It's like exercising one muscle—that one gets stronger, but your overall fitness doesn't change," says Langbaum. She and Shors agree it's best to pick up interests that command your full attention and keep developing your skills, like playing a new instrument or learning a foreign language.

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Prioritize Deep Sleep

When we nod off, the brain's nighttime janitors come out and mop up the day's mess. "Cognitive activities require energy and create waste that builds up in the brain," explains Jessica Payne, PhD, a sleep researcher at the University of Notre Dame. Among the refuse is beta-amyloid, a protein that forms plaques and tangles in the brains of people with Alzheimer's. "During deep, slow-wave sleep [which gets logged mostly in the first few hours], this gunk gets flushed out," Payne says. That said, indiviudals who suffer from chronic sleep problems are often as higher risk of developing dementia.

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Create a Bedtime Routine

To get more of that good rest, establish a wind-down routine: Stretch, read, or take a sip some soothing tea a half hour before bed. And if you have symptoms like daytime fatigue or freight-train snoring, get checked for sleep apnea, which affects an estimated 22 million Americans. "Long-term sufferers have been shown to have less white matter, the fibers that help send signals between brain cells," says Sabbagh. "Patients come in complaining of memory impairment. Treatment improves it in days. They often say they feel clearer." In other words, their brains light right back up.

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This article originally appeared on MarthaStewart.com

source https://www.health.com/syndication/healthy-habits-brain