How to Take Good Sleep

Don’t go to bed as advised by Mark Twain, insomniac and humorist, because so many people die there. But the truth is that if you did not you would soon find yourself yearning for cool sheets and a soft pillow. As you know, that sleep is essential to all living things, which have their own cycles of waking and sleeping, activity and rest stop and go.

It is the balance between them that generates energy and interest. During sleep, the body gathers its resources, regenerates its energies rebalances its metabolism and orders its psyche. Just how much it refreshes the brain and the body becomes apparent as soon as you are deprived of it. Lack of sleep quickly diminishes the quality of life when awake.

Fortunately this does not happen very often. Sleep is so natural and vital that the body tends to take just as much, or as little, as it needs 14 hours or more as a baby, 6 hours or less as an octogenarian. But it is not just age that determines your sleep requirements. The amount of sleep needed varies considerably from person to person and with the state of the mind and emotions. The eight hours rule stands corrected experiments in sleep laboratories have consistently shown that some people need as few as five hours sleep before walking refreshed and alert while others may need as many as 11. Body and brain seem to restore themselves at different rates in different individuals.

If you are worried and stressed out that you’re not getting enough sleep considers first that you may in fact be getting all the sleep that you need and that you are only suffering from unreal expectations. Use your diary to record how much sleep you got, over a two week period and how you felt the following day. If you are habitually wake up feeling un-refreshed and carry on feeling excessively tired throughout the day. Then you may not be getting your full quota.

You should bear in mind that if you are going through a particularly demanding phase in your life and are getting very little sleep, you do not have to make it all up. Studies on students kept up for three nights in a row at the University of Florida, USA showed that they only needed three to four hours extra sleep to make up for the 24 they actually lost.

Keep in mind that sleep cannot be forced. It is easy and effortless and seeks you out. It does not come with trying still less with anxiety. As worrying about not getting off to sleep is almost certain to keep you awake, relax using and of the methods detailed on the previous pages and let sleep surprise you. It almost certainly will. Even so, there will be times in most people live when sleep is elusive. You may take hours to go off to sleep and then find that your time asleep is disturbed by periods of wakefulness or you may wake up at dawn, overcome with tiredness and yet find it impossible to drop off again.

You may get up in the morning and somehow struggle irritably through the day, only to go to bed at night to find that exactly the same thing occurs. Sleeplessness has become a pattern. While it is a pattern that usually resolves itself spontaneously, prolonged periods of insomnia can lead to considerable strain and should be discussed with a doctor in order to rule out any medical cause.

Moreover, if you are suffering from sleeplessness, then do not automatically reach out for the sleeping tablets. These should be a last not a first, resort and should be prescribed only for a short period of time in order to help you ride through a particularly difficult period. Despite their evident drawbacks, however sleeping pills are still widely prescribed. In fact it has been estimated that every tenth night’s sleep in the UK is hypnotically induced. While the newer generation of sleeping tablets may be safer than the previous ones the barbiturates and the highly addictive mandrax, they still work in large general areas of the brain, often depressing the central nervous system in amounts above that simply required to produce sleep. They may linger in the system long enough to give feelings or handover on awakening together with impaired concentration and alertness the following day. In addition, these sleeping tablets which are almost identical in chemical composition to tranquillizers, can lead to dependency. With long term use, it becomes increasingly difficult to get to sleep without them so treat them with respect.

Tips for Sound Sleep

1.       Go to sleep when you are tired, not when it is time for bed. If you feel wide awake, stay up. Capitalize on having a little extra time. The best idea is to read a book or take short walk. Fresh air and gentle exercise are two of the best sleep inducers, particularly if taken an hour or so before going to bed.

2.       The most effective ways of counter acting difficulties in getting off to sleep at night is to get up an hour early morning. It takes a certain amount of discipline, but persevere and you will soon find that you start feeling sleepy at bedtime if not before.

3.       Another tip is to avoid over loading the stomach just before going to bed. Meals are best eaten early in the evening and proteins, despite their unearned reputation for causing bad dreams make much better bedtime foods than carbohydrates. Cheese milk and yogurt are ala good, late night foods. Milk is especially suitable because it contains high levels of an amino acid that seems to play a significant part in mobilizing the sleep inducing chemicals in the brain.

4.       Make sure that your system is not running on overdrive by the time you go to the bed, our intake of all stimulants including alcohol, sugar, salt, coffee, tea and cola drinks. The caffeine present in the last three speeds up the metabolism and its buzz may last for up to seven hours. If you go to bed at mid night, coffee or tea drunk at six o’clock in the evening could well be keeping you awake. While caffeine tends to interfere with sleep in the early part of the night, large amounts of alcohol, though sleep inducing will cause you to wake early. Because the alcohol is still in the process of being metabolized, it can react upon the digestive and nervous system, causing restlessness and gastritis not to mention handover.

5.       Take a warm bath before going to bed, use an aromatic essence to soothe and relax you. Some of the pure, essential oils, such as chamomile, Melissa and orange blossom, are deliciously relaxing. As you soak, try going through a simplified progressive relaxation procedure, r simply lie there and enjoy it. Letting your mind drift, do not drift off altogether though.

6.       Make yourself a sleep pillow, to place a pot pourri of herbs dried hops, lime blossom, rosemary, lavender, jasmine and chamomile in a flat linen envelope and tuck it inside your ordinary pillow. Hops and lime blossom, in particular have very strong sleep inducing properties.

7.       Check that is you comfortable in bed. This may sound obvious, but it is crucial. There are no hard and fast rules about what meals one bed and bedroom preferable to another it is your own comfort that counts. If you find you tend to sleep better in other beds, your mattress may be too soft or too hard, or your bedroom too cold or too hot.

8.       Is your sleep disturbed by background noise, some people find sound, whether the indistinct rumble of traffic or the louder ticking of an alarm clock, conducive to sleep. Others find it infuriating. In addition there is the possibility that your sleep is being disturbed by noises of which you are unaware. If you do find it difficult to get off to sleep, keep waking up during the night or feel excessively tired the following day, embark on an anti sound strategy. Move to another bed room away from street noise, have double glazing fitted to bedroom windows or buy a pair of earplugs.

If sleep still eludes you try building up the amount of carbon dioxide in your body. It is easy to fall asleep in a crowded room when the windows are tightly shut, because the amount of oxygen available is gradually being displaced by carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide acts as a natural tranquillizer in excess as a poison too, of course, numbs the brain, slows the body responses and produces a range of symptoms identical to stage one sleep. This breathing technique will temporarily raise your carob dioxide levels, without dangerously depriving you of oxygen. Take three deep breaths and at the end of third, hold on to the outward breath for a count of six, so that the lungs are completely emptied of air. Repeat this twice, and then do it once again but this having exhaled as deeply as possible breathe minimally not gulping for air but breathing from the top of your chest in short, shallow breaths. This will increase the amount of carbon dioxide in your system and can be repeated every ten minutes or so if you are still awake.

 

Nature’s Medicine Chest

There animals and plants both on land and in the seas that are a rich source of remedies, painkillers and health supplements. Killer venoms can ease pain and save life, snakes scorpions, frogs, jellyfish and ants, which are the stingers prisoners and paralyses of the animal world, produce a range of venoms and secretions powerful enough to kill or immobilize their prey. Many of these poisons, scientist have now discovered, that contains chemical compounds that can be used in medical treatments.

 

Pit viper venom is used in a number of drugs. The venom of Brazilian pit viper, which induces the constriction of blood vessels and increases blood pressure, has been used to develop a drug for treating people with high blood pressure.  Russell’s viper of India and Southeast Asia has venom used for a drug that controls bleeding in hemophiliacs, and vital ingredient of a drug for treating thrombosis comes from Malayan pit vipers. And from the venom of African’s which include the deadly 14 feet long black mamba, scientists have isolated proteins that can help in the treatment of brain diseases.

Natural substances that effectively block pain have been found in the skin secretions of frogs. The skin toxins from some of the brightly colored arrow poison frogs of Central America have been made into a painkiller to be more effective than morphine. Scientists have also investigating the toxins used by certain spiders to immobilize their prey for up to three weeks without impairing the victim’s vital function. These secretions may be useful for the production f new drugs that could sedate patients for long periods without ill effect, perhaps during lengthy operation.

If you look in history, you will find that in 1870’s Joseph and Thomas Bancroft of Brisbane Australia a father and son team of Doctors, heard of a narcotic brew made by Aborigines They decided to investigate the medicinal potential of  this brew, made from water stored in the bark of a small tree of the eastern Australian rain forest. Experiments with extracts from the tree, a Duboisia known locally as a corkwood, resulted in the production of a highly effective dilator for use in eye surgery. Other doctors used the brew to treat inflammations and fevers. Before long rate forest it was being exported to Europe.

But with the move towards synthetic medicines at the beginning of the 20^th century Duboisia and many other local remedies fell out of favors. The 2^nd world war when synthetic drugs were in exceedingly short supply, did Australian researchers begin to look once more to the rain forest as a source of natural medicines. Testing different plants at random, the researchers discovered almost 500 alkaloids potent poisons made by certain plants to protect themselves against animals that strip them of their leaves.

They found too, that there are more poisonous plants growing in tropical rain forests than in temperate forests. This is because tropical forests have a far greater number of animals competing for food so tropical plants need much better defenses against animals. Duboisia leaves were found to contain several alkaloids one of which hyoscine, is a highly effective treatment for motion sickness, shell shock and stomach disorders, as well as the side effects resulting from cancer therapy. This led to the cultivation of Duboisia once again becoming a commercial proposition. Now the hyoscine rich leaves of a hybrid of two Duboisia species are exported in powdered form to pharmaceutical companies in many parts of the world.

The Senses

All our knowledge has its origins in or perceptions, to the ancient Greeks sensitivity constituted the essential difference between plants and animals, and between animals and humans. It was not that anyone specific sense was better developed in human’s just one glance at the animal kingdom will give examples of more acute vision (birds of prey), hearing (dogs and bats) or smell (insects). Rather it was that between them they provided a range of information that the intelligent brain could sift through and use for the purposes of communicating, socializing, improvising and inventing.

Every moment of our waking lives, millions of sense signals from the eyes, nose, mouth, ears and skins are sent to the brain most of which are never perceived on a conscious level. All these signals are constantly being adjusted analyzed edited eliminated, even completed by the brain. It is for example hard to find the blind spot in the eye not because it is not there but because the brain fills in the missing part of the visual jigsaw. The world of perception is very different from and much more selective than the world of sensation.

Moreover, in adulthood, the senses have a strict hierarchy, ruled first by the eyes and then by the ears the distance senses of sight and hearing and only later by the skin, the mouth and the nose the proximity senses of touch, taste and small. You can see how this sensual hierarchy organizes itself simply by closing your eyes. What happens? Your subjective inner world becomes filled with sound you can pick up the rhythm of your own breathing and back ground noise, which you may not have been aware of before, seems amplified. You do not need absolute quiet to before, seems amplified. You do not need absolute quite to hear a pin drop when your eyes are shut. If you carry this experiment one stage further and place your hands over your ears, you will now find that sensation arrives predominantly from your sense of touch.

You will suddenly become aware of the comparative softness or hardness of the chair on which you are sitting, of the texture of the clothes you are wearing and of sensations arriving from different parts of your body, your neck, your back, and your shoulders even your scalp. These are not new sensations they are continually being communicated to the brain via the skin. The difference is that you have only just begun to perceive them.

Further, we are all much more receptive to the messages arriving from our senses than we, perhaps, realize although most of the time we make use of just a fraction of their full potential. Think of the virtuosity displayed by the piano tuner, who carries all the notes of the scale I his head and can detect and adjust the slightest variation in the pitch, or the discernment of the master of wine, who has educated his senses of smell and taste to such a point of refinement that he can identify not only the vintage of a certain wine, but the locality and even the vineyard that produced it.

Migraine or Headache Symptoms

Migraines are very common these days. The migraine is common; suffer a headache at some time in their lives which may be classified as migraines. Classically the condition starts with disturbances of vision caused by a constriction of blood vessels supplying oxygen to the eye.  These may include seeing bright lights zig-zag lines, auras or haloes around bright objects or vision may be burred or even double. Less commonly, tingling or sensations of numbness may be experienced in the hands and feet. This stage usually lasts for about 20 minutes. A migraine usually lasts from four to 72 hours if untreated. The frequency with which headaches occur varies from person to person.

The headache, unbearably oppressive in nature, often starts on one side of the head and in up to 90 percent of the cases, is also accompanied by feelings of nausea, if not by actually vomiting. Migraine seems to run in families about 50% of sufferers can trace and hereditary factor usually arrives before the age of 40 and afflicts three times as many as men. While the cause is not yet established the most likely theory is that it is caused by a blood disorder causing the vessels to spasm and dilate attacks have been fairly convulsively linked to a number of factors. Migraines may progress through four stages: prodrome, aura, headache and post-drome, though you may not experience all stages.

Principal among these are stress anxiety and tension are common precursors of migraine attacks menstruation and foods containing nitrite, glutamate and other yet unidentified chemicals. Recent studies suggest that migraine sufferers maybe unable to metabolize proteins present in certain foods. Higher levels of these proteins still circulating in the bloodstream are then thought to act as stimulus of trigger for the attack. In one study on 500 migraine sufferers the following foods were most consistently implicated.

1.        Chocolate

2.        Cheese and dairy products

3.        Citrus Fruits

4.        Alcoholic Drinks

5.        Fatty fried foods and vegetables

6.        Tea or Coffee

7.        Meat, Especially pork

8.        Seafood

Moreover, other contributing factors may include a change in routine, physical or mental fatigue too little or too much sleep travel, a change in climate or temperature, high winds, bright glaring sunlight, noise, sleeping tablets, oral contraceptives, hunger, head injury, high blood pressure, toothache and other pains in the head or neck. Because migraine is triggered by so many different things and because each sufferer will have particular sensitivities to some, but not all of these trigger factors the best preventative course lies in working out which one you are sensitive to and talking steps to avoid them. An estimates show that 6 to 18 percent of the adult population suffers from recurring migraines (about 6 percent of men and up to 18 percent of women.

Keep a diary or note in your mobile for a period of at least three months and record your attacks of migraine together with any associated factors. Hence as the stage of the menstrual cycle, foods eaten meals missed and particular stresses. You can also help yourself by recognizing the warning signals that precede an attack and taking appropriate action. Along with or in place of visual disturbances you may experience dizziness, numbness, nausea, increased sensitivity to noise or light, unusual energy or hungery, yawning, trembling, changes in mood and outlook, unusual parlor or an increase in frequency of passing water. When these occur, do not solider on. Use any of the relaxation methods i.e. lie down in a darkened room and try to sleep.

If you feel very sick, anti-emetic drugs, which your doctor can prescribe for you can help. Take soluble aspiring or paracetamol for the pain and if attacks are severe, consult your doctor. Stronger analgesics may then be given or occasionally, drugs to reduce the dilation of the blood vessels and thus to prevent or at least minimize, the headache. But some of these such as ergotamine do have slid effects over frequent doses leading to incessant headaches for example and are therefore rarely prescribed. Moreover, medicines may also support in to alleviate their severity once they have started as well as supplements, coloured lenses in glasses or contact lenses and alternative therapies.

How to Cope with Stress?

Stress can come from anywhere – anger or frustration an illness, the mere thoughts, deadlines at work, a new home, the birth of a child, shopping, and the headlines in your newspaper. The stress of handling it all can make you anxious, cranky and tired. Stress is exhausting, can make you sick. The less serious conditions that are stress-related are fatigue, headache, heartburn, indigestion, insomnia, and even hair loss.

But stress also undermines the immune system and can increase susceptibility to infection, heart disease, and cancer. Stress affects everything you do. Some behaviors that appear to be caused by low self worth overeating, not exercising, neglecting our own needs are really caused by having too little time and too much stress. In and of itself, stress is neither negative nor positive. It is our reaction to stress that affects our physical and emotional health. Although everyone experience stress, not everyone handles it constructively. For instance in addition to zapping your energy, stress depletes your time. You are less likely to make yourself a salad for dinner and more likely to rip open a bag of corn chips while you sit on the cough and watch the evening news. You may think this is relaxing and that yu are dealing with the stress of crazy day, but you are not. Actually you’re adding your stress by not eating well. The healthier you are the better you can handle stress. You need to have your body working at maximum capacity to deal with stress.

The bottom line in dealing with stress is to cope, to handle the stress in such a way that it doesn’t harm you. Life is one stressful situation after another, and there’s no way to remove stress from your life. And you shouldn’t want to. It’s stress that challenges you and makes you grow. Stress is what keeps us all going. What should you do about stress? There are several types of techniques for battling the negative effects of stress everything from exercise and meditation to taking 15 minute mini vacation from stress several times a day. The right diet can also help. 

Good diet will give you the strength you need and keep your immune system and nervous system in great shape. Thus, to understand why good nutritional habits are essential during periods of stress, it is very important to recognize how the body responds to stress. When faced with a huge dose of stress the body relies on the digestive system. Epinephrine “adrenaline” the stress hormone, is released from the adrenal glands. This hormone travels through the body to increase blood pressure heart rate, and breathing. Digestion shuts down fats and sugars are release from stores in the body, and cholesterol levels rise. The result of these hormonal changes is an aroused and tense state that prepares a person to meet danger. This is known as the fight or flight response. This response was needed back when cavemen had to react to physical danger. When the danger was no longer threatening the body would return to normal.

The reacts to stress in the same way, but instead of running or fighting you just get the stressed out state. And you can stay in a state of tension unless you find ways to release it. Food can affect stress in many ways. What you eat either can promote or relieve stress. It can also either help or hinder how the body handles the physical stress response. To build up your resistance to stress try these eating tips.

1.        Don’t Skip Meals: Stress depletes you of energy. Many people really don’t eat enough, either because they don\t have time or because they are trying to lose weight. Since food is essential of energy, these practices actually increase stress. When you skip meals, you don’t tolerate stress as well because you lack energy.

2.        Eat for energy: The first rule is to be consistent. Eat at regular times each day even if you are not hungry. That way you will head off hunger pangs that are bound to surface later, and spacing meals four to six hours apart and filling in with snacks when required.

3.        Eat Enough: If you know you have to expend an enormous amount of energy in the morning, you have to take a good breakfast. If you are mood swings and fatigue in the early afternoon. Make your breakfast low in fat focusing on complex carbohydrates. Some good suggestions are whole grain cereal with low fat milk or toast with yogurt or cheese for added protein. A breakfast full of sugar, may give you a temporary boost but will leave you drained an hour later just about the time you are ready to being your presentation.

4.        Do Break for Lunch: Eating lunch at your desk may sound like a good way to squeeze in some extra work, but it’s better for your stress level to get away for a while. Eat separate from where you spend the rest of your stress filled day. Let coworkers know you don’t want to talk about work or other stressful situation while you eat. A powerful lunch is okay once in a while, however don’t make it habit. It only adds to  your stress level and interferes with your digestive process.

5.        Don’t Overeat: When people are under a great deal of stress, they often tend to do things in excess, whether its eating, drinking or spending. Giving in to the anxiety from stress makes you feel calm and in control but this euphoria is only temporary. A few days later there’s guilt for the indulgent behavior and that compounds the original stress. Thus, overeating and compulsive eating typically affect those who haven’t learned to handle stress or how to express anxiety and tension orally. Stock up fresh fruits yogurt rice cakes and herbal tea.

6.        Don’t give in to Sugar Carvings. There is not person alive who hasn’t at some point reached for a chocolate bar in the middle of a stress packed afternoon. Some people triggered by an onslaught of continual stress, go on sugar binges. They devour large quantities of sweets a bag of cookies a quart of ice cream at a time. When you’re stressed you are perhaps drawn to junk foods. Chocolate and cookies won’t make stress go away. Eating sweets may give you an initial boost of energy, but within an hour you would be feel even more sluggish tense, and irritable.

7.        Drink lots of Fluids: Dehydration causes fatigue and clouds your thinking. Try to have 2 quarts of fluid each day, either plain water or non-caffeinated beverages such as juice or herbal tea. If you work in an office all day, you should try to drink even more fluids. Dry, overheated or highly air conditioned buildings increase the rate at which the body loses water.

8.        Don’t Rely on Coffee: Some people turn to coffee tea or caffeinated soda for a quick pick me up. You feel more energetic at first, however after the effects wear off, you may feel even more tired and crave another energy boost. Too much caffeine also can make you edgy. Caffeine acts in the body like a shot of epinephrine, increasing the heart rate and blood pressure. Caffeine is a diuretic; it causes dehydration which is fatiguing. To counter it, drink a glass of water for every cup of coffee tea or soda you have.

9.        Don’t use Alcohol to Relieve Stress: Many people drink when they are tense and uncomfortable. They reach for a glass of wine or some beer to unwind after a stressful day. Alcohol does give an immediate sense of stress relief, but once the buzz is gone, so is the good mood. Alcohol also causes disrupted sleep, which makes stress even more likely to return. Alcohol deprives the body of nutrients from other foods. Alcohol is metabolized by the liver, it uses up niacin and thiamin, which means these B vitamins are not available for other purposes. Alcohol also depletes your energy by dehydrating the body. Since alcohol is a diuretic, which increases the output of urine, it causes the loss of such water soluble minerals as magnesium, potassium and zinc.

So, eat regularly and eat enough, so pay careful attention to eating a good well balanced diet when you are under lot of stress. Stress also leads to Anxiety and depression, which are very difficult situation. So try to relax and calm, don’t take too much tension. Every work takes their own time so taking more stress will not change the situation.

Scientists Edge Closer To A Blood Test To Detect Eight Common Cancers

In a major development, scientists have devised a blood test that can detect eight of the most common types of cancer. Hence, a team of scientists at John Hopkins University, who published the study in journal Science, said the test could be available to patients in the next couple of years. The test called CancerSEEK looks for the presence of eight different types of cancer, including breast, lung and colorectal cancers, ovarian, liver, stomach, pancreatic and esophageal which are commonly diagnosed when it is too late to battle them and are together accountable for more than 60 percent of cancer deaths in the United States. There have been numerous attempts more than two decades to develop blood tests to screen for cancers. Some look for proteins in the blood that appear with cancer. Others more recently have focused on DNA from tumors. But these methods alone don't give reliable results.

So, for the first time we are seeing a possible for a blood test that can screen for many types of nasty cancers that until now we have had to wait until symptoms are diagnosed quite late. CancerSeek looks for traces of mutated DNA and proteins released by tumors in the bloodstream explicitly mutations in 16 genes and eight proteins. However, working with blood samples of 1,005 people with one of the eight different cancer types, researchers used CancerSEEK to dependably recognize the tumors in 70 percent cases. ," said Professor Peter Gibbs from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, who was one of the researchers involved in the study.

Moreover, the success rates ranged from an inspiring 98 percent in case of ovarian tumors to only 33 percent in people with breast tumors. This field of early detection is very critical, and the results are very exciting," Dr Cristian Tomasetti from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine told the BBC. I think this can have a huge impact on cancer mortality, thus apart from the ease of a blood test; another factor going for CancerSeek is the cost of the testing. As for the cost of the test, the research team has tried hard to make it affordable. The projected price tag of $500 for the test is less than for those of other screening methods. Professor Gibbs said with the progress of the technology and with more people partaking of the test, they expected the cost to come down over time. So expectantly, sooner or later this will be a few hundred dollars, which puts it in the ballpark of numerous other tests that we routinely do.

Joshua Cohen, the lead author of the study, said, our eventual vision is that a person goes to their primary caution provider for a routine checkup and at the same time as testing their cholesterol, they have a screening to test for different types of cancer. Though, the researchers stressed the need for a larger-scale trial before making CancerSEEK available commercially. Therefore, with this in mind, they are get on on a new study featuring 10,000 healthy individuals, eager it will allow them to further ascertain if the test can accurately predict who ultimately develops cancer. The potential study will answer the question, can this test detect cancer earlier than conventional methods, and at the same time as this, we will be working on improving and refining CancerSEEK," said Cohen. 

The Plants You Need in Your Bedroom to Beat Tight Chests, Insomnia and Colds

NASA scientists say, that you need to keep plants in your bedroom to beat different diseases, i.e. colds, tight chests, insomnia. Although plants look very beautiful in gardens but scientists maintain that we can reap plenty of health benefits of plants by bringing them in indoors. The researchers have long preached the benefits of house plants, that popping some greenery on your bedside table can boost your sleep and health. The plants may decrease your anxiety, depression, stress and helps with the removal of airborne pollutants. Elle Decor and The Joy of Plants delved into research from NASA and the American College to determine which houseplants are best suited to your bedroom - and the benefits they provide. Indoor plants can also elicit a number of physical health benefits, including the removal of airborne pollutants, both particulate and gaseous, which lead to better indoor air quality and associated improvements in physical health.

A review of the scientific evidence suggests that workers are more productive when their office is filled with greenery - and hospital patients are even thought to tolerate pain better if there is a plant on the ward. Perhaps most importantly, plants also trap and filter pollutants that are linked to thousands of deaths a year. The experts from the Royal Horticultural Society say that ‘bringing the outdoors inside’ can recreate some of the natural benefits lost in the process. Plants reduce stress levels, improve mood and filter polluted air, they say.  

Here’re top 10 lists of plants which helps to improve your health.

1. Areca Palm: Madagascan areca palm leads the way in efficiency at “mopping up” pollutants. Researchers say that the palm is excellent for anyone prone to colds and sinus problems because it releases moisture into the air. This, in turn, makes it much easier to breathe so will support you nod off quicker.

 2. Aloe Vera: This plant is very easy to keep and aesthetically pleasing in any home, the aloe vera plant has been named as one of the best plants for air purification by NASA. It releases oxygen incessantly throughout the night, making it an ideal bedroom addition. It also fights benzene which is found in detergents and plastics and formaldehyde (in varnishes and floor finishes) so helps keep the air super pure.

3. English Ivy: It is commonly grows up your house is actually perfect for your bedroom. Certainly, researchers at the American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology found that English ivy in particular removes 78 per cent of airborne mould in just 12 hours.

4. Dwarf date palm: This plant is hardy, drought-tolerant and long-lived and it's excellent at removing indoor air pollutants - particularly xylene.  

5. Boston Fern: This nice-looking plant has graced indoor landscapes since Victorian times - and for good reason. However, this plant ranks 9th in NASA’s list of 50 air-purifying plants, being particularly adept at removing formaldehyde.

6. Chinese evergreen: This has been dubbed the easiest houseplant because it grows well in low light and areas of the home where other plants won't grow like a dark bedroom. The best part about it is that it removes more toxins as time and exposure continues.

7. Peace lily: This beautiful plant can cleanse air and improve it by 60%. It also absorbs mould spores through its leaves and circulates them its roots to use as food.

8. Spider plant: This houseplant grows super quickly and can remove up to 90 per cent of the toxins from the air in your bedroom in just two days. It's especially great for people with dust allergies.

9. Lady palm: This houseplant is one of the most effective plants at cleansing the air of formaldehyde, ammonia, xylene and toluene.

10. Weeping fig: This houseplant is the best at beating pollutants that are emitted from carpeting and furniture such as formaldehyde, benzene and trichloroethylene.

Magic Mushrooms Can Reset Brains of Depressed Patients

Depression is most common disease these days, everybody facing difficult situation in their life. Someone handles it brilliantly, however someone went in depression.  This is the situation where active ingredients in magic mushrooms psilocybin may have restore the effect on the brain that helps patients overcome depression. The participant who took part in this study voluntarily expresses a sense of their brains rebooting after just two psilocybin experience. Therefore, psychoactive substance in the first instance disintegrates the “default mode network” which is a highly-connected set of brain regions that are mostly active during introspection and when we are under stress. The researchers of Imperial college of London do the psilocybin experiences, and found those areas of brain reintegrated. The patients became more stable and felt immediate and continued relief from their depression. Thus, Imperial College London's head of psychedelic research, Dr Robin Carhart-Harris, and his team recruited 20 participants whose depression had been unresponsive to traditional antidepressants to try the substance that makes mushrooms magic. All but one subject did the psilocybin treatment twice.

Moreover, the participants experienced the come down from their “trips” they were interviewed by the scientists. Without being prompted or asked, several of them described the feeling of having their brains “rebooted”. One person compared their brain to a hard drive and it was like a defragmentation process. Things seemed to be working more proficiently afterwards. The Dr Carhart-Harris says that psilocybin’s effect on the default network to be like taking a system and provisionally scrambling it, then allowing it to reform. However, the brain scans taken during and after the psilocybin experience, the default mode networks of the patients became steadier. The after-effects of the psilocybin seemed to reach their maximum level five weeks later, but they saw continued improvement in the patients for as much as six months. What’s more, the benefits of the treatment started instantly, unlike conventional antidepressants that characteristically have to be in the system for weeks before patients notice improvements.

He said, to give people such a window of relief from their depression, after, in this case, just two experiences, really bodes well for the future. The patients did not seem to enter a hyper state after their psilocybin experiences. Hence, they don’t talk about or show loose, impractical thinking. They’re quire balanced, tranquil and normalized. The depressed persons are often quite fixed. They become quite rigidly pessimistic. You can’t just tell someone who’s depressed to cheer up it’s not under their control, almost like an addiction. They’ve really reinforced this way of thinking. Moreover, research has also shown that psilocybin and other psychedelics may have potential uses for treating alcoholism and addictions, but psychedelics are still illegal in most countries, and far from being approved for clinical use. If you really want to convince people, then to be able to show how it works is really important. This isn’t magic or some kind of wishful thinking on part of the researchers; sure we will see its effects. He cautions that this doesn’t mean that the experience of a psilocybin trip is ‘a walk in the park,’ or that running out and buying magic mushrooms will cure depression. The study was set up as a composite treatment, combining the drug with psychotherapy.

The drug works to open a window of chance, and if in that window provided to a relaxed setting and empathetic with them to guide them through the experience, it can help them to get better. I sometimes worry that people are going to hear about this and think oh I’m going to go off and find magic mushrooms and this will be the treatment of depression, and then they go out to the pub. That wouldn’t be good. Though, even in a supportive context, that about half of the participants had challenging or unfriendly experiences during their trips, but felt ‘relief’ afterwards. Dr Carhart-Harris compares using psilocybin with psychotherapy to physical exercise. If you want to get really fit, you might have to go for a bit of pain in order to get really fit. Maybe the same thing is true for mental health.

Would You Choose to Live Forever?

Scientists have made a discovery that could lead to a revolutionary drug that actually reverses ageing. Age-reversing pill that Nasa wants to give to astronauts on Mars will begin human trials within six months. The drug could assist damaged DNA to miraculously repair and even by protecting astronauts from solar radiation. A scientist’s team developed the drug after discovering a key signaling process in DNA repair and cell ageing. Therefore, during trials on mice, the researcher team found that the drug directly repaired DNA damage caused by radiation exposure or old age. However, the cells of the old mice were indistinguishable from the young mice after just one week of treatment,' said lead author Professor David Sinclair and his colleague Dr Lindsay Wu were winners in NASA's iTech competition in December 2016.

Hence, it is expected that human trials of the pill will begin within six months. This is the closest we’re to a safe and effective anti-ageing drug that's possibly only 3 to 5 years away from being on the market if the trials gets successful,' said Professor Sinclair. Moreover, the work has drawn the attention of Nasa, which is bearing in mind the big challenge of keeping its astronauts healthy during a four-year mission to Mars. Even thus on short missions, astronauts experience faster ageing from cosmic radiation, suffering from muscle softness, memory loss and other symptoms when they return. Although on a massive challenge of Mars trip, the situation would be far worse: 5% of the astronauts' cells would die and their chances of cancer would approach 100 per cent.

The Anti-Ageing Drug Trials

A team of researchers of University of New South Wales, experiments in mice, recommended a treatment is possible for DNA damage from ageing and radiation. So, it is so hopeful it has attracted the attention of Nasa scientists in their mission to reach Mars. Whereas our cells can naturally repair DNA damage, such as damage caused by the sun and their ability deteriorations with age. Moreover, the experts recognized that the call signaling molecule NAD+, which is naturally present in every cell in the body, has a crucial role in protein interactions that control DNA repair. Hence, treating mice with an NAD+ 'booster' called NMN improved their cells' ability to repair DNA damage caused by radiation exposure or old age. So, it is expected that human trials of NMN therapy will start within 6 months.

Furthermore, Dr Wu Said, we came in with a solution for a biological problem and it won the competition out of 300 entries. Cosmic radiation is not only an issue for astronauts, and all exposed to it aboard aircraft, with a London-Singapore-Melbourne flight roughly equivalent in radiation to a chest x-ray. Nevertheless in theory, the anti-ageing pill could mitigate any effects of DNA damage for recurrent flyers. Further, the other group that could benefit from this work is survivors of childhood cancers. Because 96% of childhood cancer survivors suffer a chronic illness by age 45, including cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, and cancers unrelated to the original cancer.  So, keeping in mind all of this adds up to the fact they have accelerated ageing, which is devastating, Dr Wu, said. So, it’d be great indeed to do something about that, and we have faith in we can with this molecule.  Source: Charismatic Planet

 

Major Asthma Breakthrough as Scientists Discovers Root Cause of the Condition and says a New Treatment is less than Five Years Away

Well, good news for Asthma patients, because scientists have claimed to found the root cause of asthma, a breakthrough which could pave the way for a new treatment within 5 years. As you know, millions of asthma sufferers are able to regulate their symptoms with inhalers, but a minority about 5% of patients does not respond to any treatment. At the moment scientists have found a protein within the airways which they have faith in triggers all asthma attacks. Unusually, a drug already exists which they think could deactivate the protein, raising hopefulness for a treatment which may be effective for any asthma patient. 

The team, which is led by Cardiff University, has already revealed that the drug works in mice and in human tissue samples in the laboratory. They’ve now designed the first clinical trials, which could start in coming two years. Professor Daniela Riccardi said (Lead Investigator): “Our findings are extremely electrifying.” Though, the discovery came quite by chance when Professor Riccardi, “formerly a bones specialist”, switched from the study of osteoporosis to the study of the lungs 5 years ago. She realized that a protein that triggers the progress of calcium within bones also plays a role in the airways. Moreover, tests revealed that asthmatics had far higher levels of the protein and it is called calcium sensing receptor or CaSR than healthy people. Therefore, when an asthmatic breathes in triggers due to dust, smoke, or pollen, the CaSR molecules cause the speedy increase of calcium within the cells of the lung tissue. 

The additional calcium makes the cells contract, making the airways spasm, triggering an asthma attack. Thus, for the first time we’ve found a link between airways inflammation, which can be caused by environmental triggers - such as allergens, cigarette smoke and car fumes – and airways twitchiness in allergic asthma. It makes the cells much more sensitive to the asthma triggers and which then make an attack much more likely. Because, the drug already exists that can disable the CaSR protein, meaning it could be obtainable to patients as soon as clinical trials are complete. The medication called a “calcilytic” was developed some where fifteen years ago to knock out the same protein in osteoporosis.

Though the drug was believed to be safe, and it was not effective for osteoporosis patients. However, initials tests in mice and human tissue showed encouraging results as an asthma treatment. Nevertheless, the team, which included scientists from King’s College London and the Mayo Clinic in the United States, believe to use the drug in a nebuliser, in which it is turned into a mist and breathed straight into the lungs.  A few courses of treatment would be adequate to stop asthma attacks from recurring, they believed. The doubtful it might also have a role in tackling chronic obstructive pulmonary disease “COPD” and chronic bronchitis, for which there is presently no effective treatment. 

Furthermore, Prof Riccardi said: ‘If we can prove that “calcilytics” are safe when administered directly to the lung in people, then in 5 years we could be in a very good position to treat patients and potentially stop asthma from happening in the first place. Dr Samantha Walker, director of research at Asthma United Kingdom, who supported in fund the research, added: This is without an enormously exciting discovery, which will enables us, for the first time, to tackle the underlying causes of asthma symptoms. Only 5% people with asthma don’t respond to existing treatments so research breakthroughs could be life changing for hundreds of thousands of people. 

Moreover, if this research proves effective we may be just a few years away from a new treatment for asthma, and we instantly need further investment to take it further through clinical trials. Asthma research is chronically underfunded; there’ve only been a handful of new treatments progressed in the last 50 years so the significance of investment in research like this is absolutely indispensable.’ Source: Dailymail