The Amazing Human Brain..

The human brain has amazed and baffled people throughout the ages. Some scientists and researchers have devoted their entire lives to learning how the brain works. Here are some facts about your brain.

Physical Attributes

• The weight of your brain is about 3 pounds.


• Your skin weighs twice as much as your brain.


• Your brain is made up of about 75 percent water.Your brain consists of about 100 billion neurons.


• There are anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 synapses for each neuron.


• There are no pain receptors in your brain, so your brain can feel no pain.


• There are 100,000 miles of blood vessels in your brain.


• Your brain is the fattest organ in your body and may consists of at least 60 percent fat.

The Developing Brain

• At birth, your brain was almost the same size as an adult brain and contained most of the brain cells for your whole life.


• A newborn baby’s brain grows about three times its size in the first year.


• Humans continue to make new neurons throughout life in response to mental activity.


• The first sense to develop while in utero is the sense of touch.


• The lips and cheeks can experience touch at about 8 weeks and the rest of the body around 12 weeks.

Brain Function

• Your brain uses 20 percent of the total oxygen in your body.


• If your brain loses blood for 8 to 10 seconds, you will lose consciousness.


• While awake, your brain generates between 10 and 23 watts of power -- or enough energy to power a light bulb.


• The old adage of humans only using 10% of their brain is not true. Every part of the brain has a known function.


• The brain can live for 4 to 6 minutes without oxygen, and then it begins to die. No oxygen for 5 to 10 minutes will result in permanent brain damage.


• A study of 1 million students in New York showed that students who ate lunches that did not include artificial flavors, preservatives, and dyes did 14 percent better on IQ tests than students who ate lunches with these additives.

Psychology of Your Brain

• You can’t tickle yourself because your brain distinguishes between unexpected external touch and your own touch.


• There is a class of people known as supertasters who not only have more taste buds on their tongue, but whose brain is more sensitive to the tastes of foods and drinks. In fact, they can detect some flavors that others cannot.


• The connection between body and mind is a strong one. One estimate is that between 50-70 percent of visits to the doctor for physical ailments are attributed to psychological factors.

Memory

• Every time you recall a memory or have a new thought, you are creating a new connection in your brain.


• Memories triggered by scent have a stronger emotional connection, and therefore appear more intense than other memory triggers.


• While you sleep at night may be the best time for your brain to consolidate all your memories from the day. Lack of sleep may actually hurt your ability to create new memories.

Dreams and Sleep

• Most people dream about 1-2 hours a night and have an average of 4-7 dreams each night.


• Studies show that brain waves are more active while dreaming than when you are awake.


• Some people (about 12 percent) dream only in black and white while others dream in color.While you sleep, your body produces a hormone that may prevent you from acting out your dreams, leaving you virtually paralyzed.

How to Keep Your Brain Healthy: Nine Essential TipsA healthy lifestyle can help protect, nourish, and revitalize your brain. This includes:

1. Taking omega-3 fats. The omega -3 fatty acids eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) keep the dopamine levels in your brain high, increase neuronal growth in the frontal cortex of your brain, and increase cerebral circulation. Krill oil is an excellent source of omega-3, and may even be superior to fish oil.

2. Exercising. Exercise may encourage your brain to work at optimum capacity by causing nerve cells to multiply, strengthening their interconnections and protecting them from damage.

3. Sleeping well. It’s during sleep that your mental energy is restored, and a lack of sleep may cause your brain to stop producing new cells.

4. Eating healthy. Like the rest of your body, your brain depends on healthy foods to function. While protein is the main source of fuel for your brain, vitamins and minerals from fresh veggies are also important, as is limiting sugar.

5. Getting out into the sun. This will help you maintain optimal vitamin D levels. Scientists are now beginning to realize vitamin D is involved in maintaining the health of your brain, as they’ve recently discovered vitamin D receptors in the brain, spinal cord, and central nervous system. There’s even evidence indicating vitamin D improves your brain’s detoxification process. For children and pregnant women, getting enough vitamin D is especially crucial, as it may play a major role in protecting infants' brains from autism.

6. Turning off the TV. Allowing children under the age of 3 to watch television can impair their linguistic and social development, and it can affect your brain chemistry as well.

7. Protecting your brain from cell phones. Recent studies have found that cell phone users are 240 percent more prone to brain tumors, and a study back in 2004 found that your risk of acoustic neuroma (a tumor on your auditory nerve) was nearly four times greater on the side of your head where your phone was most frequently held.

8. Challenging your brain. Mind-training exercises can keep your brain fit as you age. This can be something as simple as searching for famous people whose first names begin with the letter A, doing crossword puzzles or playing board games that get you thinking.

9. Avoiding foods that contain artificial sweeteners and additives. Substances such as aspartame (Nutrasweet) and MSG, which are common in processed foods, can damage your brain. For instance, consuming a lot of aspartame may inhibit the ability of enzymes in your brain to function normally, and high doses of the sweetener may lead to neurodegeneration. You may notice that all of these things will help not only your brain but also your entire body. So being good to your brain means enjoying better health from head to toe!

source: www.mercola.com

Diabetes-Don't Forget Vitamin D!

Studies has shown that-majority of people with diabetes lack a very crucial vitamin, apart from all the nutrients mentioned in previous posting.And you can get it F.O.C-from the sunlight!

Vitamin D deficiency happened because, people have migrated to colder, sun-deprived climates, work indoors in offices or factories, travel by car, exercise in gyms rather than outdoors, and wear clothes that cover all but 5% of body surface area.

Vitamin D has been shown to increase insulin sensitivity, assists insulin production in the pancreas, prevent development of type 2 diabetes (by simple exposure 2-3 times per week) and prevent development of type 1 diabetes in infants. It also has cardioprotective (heart) properties ie reducing rate of heart attack. (heart disease is very much related to diabetes)

::Vitamin D Facts::

• Vitamin D is produced by your skin in response to exposure to ultraviolet radiation from natural sunlight.


• The healing rays of natural sunlight (that generate vitamin D in your skin) cannot penetrate glass. So you don't generate vitamin D when sitting in your car or home.


• It is nearly impossible to get adequate amounts of vitamin D from your diet. Sunlight exposure is the only reliable way to generate vitamin D in your own body.


• A person would have to drink ten tall glasses of vitamin D fortified milk each day just to get minimum levels of vitamin D into their diet.


• The further you live from the equator, the longer exposure you need to the sun in order to generate vitamin D. Canada, the UK and most U.S. states are far from the equator.


• People with dark skin pigmentation may need 20 - 30 times as much exposure to sunlight as fair-skinned people to generate the same amount of vitamin D. That's why prostate cancer is epidemic among black men -- it's a simple, but widespread, sunlight deficiency.


• Sufficient levels of vitamin D are crucial for calcium absorption in your intestines. Without sufficient vitamin D, your body cannot absorb calcium, rendering calcium supplements useless.


• Chronic vitamin D deficiency cannot be reversed overnight: it takes months of vitamin D supplementation and sunlight exposure to rebuild the body's bones and nervous system.
  Even weak sunscreens (SPF=8) block your body's ability to generate vitamin D by 95%. This is how sunscreen products actually cause disease -- by creating a critical vitamin deficiency in the body.


• It is impossible to generate too much vitamin D in your body from sunlight exposure: your body will self-regulate and only generate what it needs.


• If it hurts to press firmly on your sternum, you may be suffering from chronic vitamin D deficiency right now.


• Vitamin D is "activated" in your body by your kidneys and liver before it can be used. Having kidney disease or liver damage can greatly impair your body's ability to activate circulating vitamin D.


• The sunscreen industry doesn't want you to know that your body actually needs sunlight exposure because that realization would mean lower sales of sunscreen products.


• Even though vitamin D is one of the most powerful healing chemicals in your body, your body makes it absolutely free. No prescription required.

How Much? How Long to expose to Sunlight?

It has been suggested, that approximately 5-30 minutes of sun exposure between 10 AM and 3 PM at least twice a week to the face, arms, legs, or back without sunscreen usually lead to sufficient vitamin D synthesis.

Alternatively, you can take Vitamin D in the form of food supplement.Dose varied from 1000 IU to 5000 IU, depend on your blood level. Discuss with physician who has experience in natural medicine

Reference:

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Vitamin D and Heart Protection

A growing body of research indicates that vitamin D deficiency contributes to a broad spectrum of conditions such as high blood pressure, poor insulin sensitivity, inflammation, and other fundamental processes that underlie heart disease.

Alarmingly, vitamin D deficiency is extremely common throughout the population—affecting more than half of adults and the majority of the elderly

Sunlight, Vitamin D, and Heart Attack

The farther north you live, the more likely you will suffer a heart attack. That curious observation led to the suspicion that vitamin D may somehow be related to the development of heart disease. It suggests that sunlight exposure may somehow provide a protective effect, perhaps through vitamin D. The notable exception to this pattern is the Eskimos, who eat large quantities of oily fish, a rich source of vitamin D and omega-3 fatty acids

Health-Promoting Effects of Vitamin D

• Normalizing blood pressure. People deficient in vitamin D are much more likely to have high blood pressure. Treatment with vitamin D and calcium significantly lowers systolic blood pressure. Vitamin D likely exerts this effect by suppressing the expression of the blood pressure hormone renin
• Anti-inflammatory effects. Vitamin D appears to have a potent effect on reducing inflammation, as measured by C-reactive protein (CRP). Dramatic reductions in CRP have been documented. In contrast, statin medications may only produce modest decreases in CRP levels
• Anti-diabetic effects. Diabetes is more prevalent in individuals with low serum vitamin D levels. Vitamin D administration reduces blood sugar and increases sensitivity to insulin. Improvement in insulin sensitivity is associated with a cascade of benefits, including a decreased risk of developing full-blown diabetes

Optimizing Vitamin D Levels

The best way to know your vitamin D status is to have your doctor measure the blood level of 25-hydroxyvitamin D (not to be confused with 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D).Dr. Michael Holick of the University of Boston proposes that serum level of 25-hydroxyvitamin D is in the range of 30-50 ng/mL (75-125 nmol/L).

Ten minutes of sun exposure in midday, wearing shorts and t-shirt to expose skin surface area, will provide most Caucasians plentiful vitamin D during the summer. This limited time minimizes the risk of skin cancer. (If you are especially fair-skinned, you might do fine with somewhat less.) If you are in the sun any longer than this, you should apply a sunscreen (which blocks both sunlight as well as vitamin D activation in the skin).

However, if sun exposure is sporadic, supplementation is crucial to obtain the full benefit of vitamin D’s panel of biologic effects.

-Adapted from article by Dr William Davis, a cardiologist practicing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

LE Magazine Sept 2007. for full article, read here

vitamin d

heart

Sunlight-friend or foe?

All the while we were told to avoid sunlight and use sunblock whenever you're exposed to it.hmmm..let's sit back..relax.. and review new data on the importance of you're actually get enough sun exposure!

VITAMIN D BASICS

Technically, vitamin D is not a true vitamin. Since sun exposure can stimulate its synthesis in the body, it is not necessarily required in the diet, except in certain circumstances. Furthermore, its structure and mechanism of action more closely resemble those of a hormone than those of a vitamin.Vitamin D occurs in nature in two main forms: vitamin D2, or ergocalciferol, and vitamin D3, or cholecalciferol. While vitamin D2 is obtained from plant sources, vitamin D3 can either be obtained through animal sources or synthesized in the skin when its precursor molecule absorbs light energy from ultraviolet B rays. Vitamin D can refer to either D2 or D3. In the liver, both are converted into 25-hydroxyvitamin D, the primary circulating form of vitamin D. Conversion into its active form, 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D, occurs in the kidney

Vitamin D’s most crucial role is regulating calcium and phosphorus concentrations in the serum. Vitamin D assists with absorption of these two minerals in the small intestine. When dietary intake of calcium is below optimal levels, vitamin D3 along with parathyroid hormone will move calcium from storage in the bone into the serum, where the body as a whole can use it

VITAMIN D PREVENT MOST OTHER CANCERS

While sunscreen may help protect against the deadliest skin cancer—melanoma—its effect of limiting vitamin D production could lead to a greater incidence of other cancers. That does not mean that sunscreens should not be used, as they can significantly protect against premature skin aging (and skin cancers). What this does tell us, however, is that in one way or another, it is critical that we obtain optimal levels of vitamin D.

HOW MUCH WE NEED?

For those living in climates with greatly reduced angles of sunlight (the northern and southern parts of the globe) or where sunlight itself is rare, the need for supplementation is unchallenged.(Vitamin D supplement available in oral form). The human body is designed to obtain vitamin D from exposure to sunlight, with only brief exposure providing roughly 80-90% of the body’s vitamin D stores.Exposure of the entire body to sunlight may produce approximately 10,000 IU of vitamin D a day.Vitamin D supplement (oral form) is typically well tolerated in adults at doses up to 2000 IU daily, with some research indicating that even higher levels up to 10,000 IU daily may be used safely without adverse effects

STUDIES DONE ON THE BENEFIT OF VITAMIN D:

1-Combating Colorectal Cancer-Vitamin D intake > 1000 IU lower the risk by 50%

2-Protecting the Prostate-reduce risk of contracting prostate cancer and inhibit proliferation and spread of prostate cancer

3-Benefits for Breast Health-reduce the incidence of breast cancer

4-Improving Lung Cancer Survival

5-Preventing Multiple Sclerosis

6-Effects on Type I Diabetes-prevent the occurance

7-Lowering Gingivitis Risk

8-Promoting Bone Health

9-Alleviating Musculoskeletal Pain

10-Preventing Falls in the Elderly

further reading and reference here