Protein From Plants May Improve Your Quality Of Sleep. Researchers in Ireland and the United…
The Middle-Age Brain.
For many years, it was believed that our brains peaked in our mid-20s, with a downhill side from then on.
But data from scanners, which allow us to see what’s happening inside the brain, and long-term cognitive ability studies have upended everything we thought about how the brain aged.
In four out of six important cognitive areas, including spatial and inductive reasoning (i.e, solving visual problems and making educated guesses), we peak between 40 and 65.
We might think we’re getting more stupid, but we don’t appreciate what our brains can do almost on autopilot, such as driving and using computers.
We might feel stressed by work and family worries, but we forget that we’re meeting those challenges pretty well.
When we can’t remember the name of someone, we’re terrified we’re getting dementia.
In fact, there’s a natural shrinkage in short-term memory (for proper nouns in particular) from our mid-20s onwards, so a momentary blank is completely normal.
Mistletoe May Combat Cancer.
According to folklore, mistletoe ‘magic’ may seal romance, bestow fertility and bring peace to warring spouses.
The plant has also been credited with the power of healing – an attribute currently being harnessed by a new outpatient unit at the independent Raphael Medical Centre in Kent, which offers integrated cancer care.
The centre uses mistletoe (known by its Latin plant name, Viscum Album) to combat undesirable effects of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, such as fatigue, nausea, weight loss, low mood and infections.
Advocates believe the herb boosts the immune system and may even help kill tumour cells – particularly breast, gynaecological, colo-rectal, pancreatic and lung cancer, along with lymphomas and leukaemia.
Results have been so promising that Professor Gene Feder, a GP and Professor of Primary Care at Bristol University, is initiating the UK’s first pilot study.
The World’s Massive Cancer Industry.
The world’s massive cancer industry – largely comprised of extremely rich drug companies and extremely rich charities – continues to waste money, time and effort on a search for magic cures when we already know what causes 80% of all cancers.
Despite all the money wasted on alleged cures, death rates from cancer continue to rise.
Alternative therapies which might work are banned if they appear to threaten the profits of the big drug companies.
Donation From Ricky Tomlinson.
Ricky Tomlinson gave £1million of his own money to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital to build a wing where parents could stay overnight to be near their sick children.
On one side is a Government Cabinet containing 17 multi-millionaires slashing hospital budgets in order to give a tax-cut to their supporters.
On the other is a jobbing actor handing most of his wealth to one of those hospitals to plug the gap they leave.
Good Quality Chocolate Is Good For You.
Chocolate starts life as a fruit.
It’s made from cocoa beans – the seeds of cacao tree fruit – which are fermented, dried, roasted and ground into liquid chocolate.
Real chocolate is just cocoa beans, cocoa butter (a natural fat extracted from the beans) and sugar.
EU rules specify a minimum cocoa content of 35% for dark chocolate and 25% for milk, but some well-known bars contain as little as 8% (which makes it ‘confectionery’ rather than chocolate) and some are just fat and sugar, and contain no cocoa at all.
Some doctors recommend chocolate for depression, but it has to be high on cocoa to prompt the release of serotonin in the brain, which calms the mind and reduces anxiety.
Good-quality chocolate can also contain health-giving antioxidants (which protect against cancer, heart disease and stroke) and is a natural source of magnesium, which helps regulate heart rhythm and blood sugar levels.
But it might keep you awake at night.
Cocoa contains theobromine – a naturally occurring caffeine-like stimulant.
Lupus.
More than 50,000 people in the UK have the autoimmune disease Lupus.
It’s a type of self-allergy in which a person’s immune system, instead of protecting the body, begins to attack its own collagen, the scaffolding for every organ.
This causes very severe inflammation and a range of symptoms including extreme fatigue, joint pain, skin rashes and in the most serious cases, damage to the vital organs.
Women with Lupus can also experience recurrent miscarriages.
We don’t know exactly what causes Lupus, but women are nine times more likely to suffer than men and it tends to be first diagnosed during late teens and early 20s.
It also seems to run in families so it’s likely to have a genetic element, although this hasn’t yet been identified.
There is currently no cure.
Those with Lupus can help themselves by avoiding direct sunlight, getting rest, having a healthy diet and lifestyle and taking regular exercise.
A low-dose aspirin helps some to ease joint and muscle pain and reduce inflammation.
Immunosuppressant drugs can dampen overactive immune response, as can steroids.
Osteoporosis.
Osteoporosis affects half of women over the age of 50 in the UK.
It is not merely a matter of brittle bones – this condition kills more women than ovarian, cervical and uterine cancers combined.
Up to 20% of women who suffer hip fractures die within six months of sustaining the fracture.
Complications can arise from surgery, pain can be chronic and severe.
Understanding of this illness remains woefully limited and a third of all women who suffer from an osteoporotic fracture never fully recover.
Sometimes the first sign is a fracture following a relatively minor bump or accident.
It has even been thought that, in many cases, it is the bone that breaks first and so causes the fall, rather than the other way around.
As a disease that frequently remains undetected, it is also often devoid of any obvious symptoms, with bone loss happening at a very gradual rate over a prolonged period of time.
Consequently, osteoporosis is set to become a serious illness over the coming years.
The biggest concern remains for the next generation of girls, many of whom will not even reach their peak bone density by the age of 25, owing to lifestyle factors such as smoking, lack of exercise, poor diet and dieting due to peer pressure.
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