Tag: Nutrients

Ways to Better Your Brain, Cognitively and Physiologically

When you start forgetting things, you blame your brain. When you don’t feel so good since you stayed up late and drank till 3am, you won’t be working in the office like a sharp instrument. When you don’t even notice what doesn’t work among the solutions you come up with and argue for during meetings, you have to do something about this. When you can relate to all these, you need to better your brain, both in sharpening your perceptions, in improving how you approach problems, in analyzing information, and in adjusting your health, sleeping, eating, and work out regimen.

Your brain is not only like a muscle. It’s also like a 10 year old. It could have started out curious and as you nourish that curiosity and savor the habit of learning more, of seeing relationships among things, of solving problems, you tend to improve the cognitive aspect of your brain.

Problem solving is a good way to keep your brain sharp. Once you get familiar with how your biases clog and impede your way of seeing things, and get some training on problem solving techniques, not only will your stress level go down, you will start to feel empowered. Most people try to avoid problems, but if you’re curious on how to generate solutions to things and to try them out, then problems become opportunities to make things better. The more empowered and capable you feel about your problem solving skills, the better you feel about yourself, the more you become capable of dealing with stress. Consequently, the more capable your observational and analytic skills become, the healthier your brain gets.

So it’s recommended to start researching on problem solving techniques, and see how the many strategies may apply to your various domestic, academic, and work scenarios.

On the other hand, your brain is like a muscle. It atrophies or welts when you don’t use it. Like a plant, It doesn’t grow well when it doesn’t receive the right nutrients. Like a dog underfed and eating trash, it limps and gets sick easily.

There is also a social and self-affirming positive outlook about trying to better your brain. It involves spending time enjoying the company of your friends and family, when you can be yourself, and just let it all hang. There’s something spiritually relieving about being yourself, and around the people you’re comfortable with, and whose company you enjoy. This kind of rest is good for your brain, too.

Get some sleep, a lot of sleep. The brain works better when your synapses are healthily firing and your subconscious has had time to sort itself out. This means rest physically and mentally. The more time away from a problem you get the more your mind has time to work on it, subconsciously. It’s always better to approach work problems after a long night’s sleep.

Work out, too, on a regular basis. The more your heart gets pumped and often the more blood circulates throughout your body, and to your brain, bringing fresh supplies of oxygen and nutrients to it. Also, working out brings about increased levels of release of endorphins that make you feel good. It’s no wonder some people become addicted to exercise. Your brain will like it, too. These are just some of the ways to better your brain.

Tips to Better Your Brain Performance

It may be true that as you get older, your memory also deteriorates. But this does not mean that if you are younger, your brain is not capable of memory deterioration. Aging is just one cause of memory loss, but there are other factors. Thus, if you want to prevent this, you may want to read these tips to a better your brain performance.

1) More Relaxation Period, Better Thinking

If you want to protect your recent memories, you should stay away from stress. Stress can trigger the release of cortisol, a neuro drug which can interfere with the brains performance, especially with handling recent memories. Furthermore, with chronic stress, the part of the brain which handles recent memories may even shrink. If you want to prevent this from happening, you should learn to relax a little and release the tension from your body. You should never let stress overwhelm you.

2) Refrain From Cigarette Smoking

Cigarettes affect the flow of blood in your veins. Because of this, there may be a chance of reduced blood flow to your brain; and reduced blood flow means reduced oxygen. With lesser oxygen to consume, the brain may not function well as expected, hence the memory may be prejudiced.

3) Stay Away from Brain Toxins

As you may know, illegal drugs may cause harm to your brains functioning. However, you should also know that prescription drugs, if misused, may also have the same toxic effect to your brain. Thus, you should always follow the prescription given to you be your doctor, and never self-medicate. This may affect your brains normal performance. Prolonged use of drugs may cause memory loss.

4) Eat Healthy

Your brain functions according to the nutrients that it receives from the food that you eat. Thus, if you are deprived of certain nutrients, then it may have an adverse effect on the functioning of your brain. You most certainly would not want this to happen. Thus, as prevention, you should eat a healthy and balanced diet so that you will absorb all the vitamins and nutrients that your body needs. Also, you should stay away from junk foods.

5) Exercise Your Brain

Find ways to use and improve your thinking skills. Some mentalists propose techniques which are designed to improve mental skills. We all have the potential to possess a good functioning memory, thus it should be something that we can all improve. All we have to do is to find ways and try techniques that can effectively help us develop our potentials.

Most people believe that by engaging themselves into educational activities, they are improving their mental faculties. This is true, and you can try this even at home. Simple activities like crossword puzzles can exercise your brain. This may help your brain functioning to get better, if not, to prevent it from deteriorating easily.

6) Shield Your Brain

There is no point of improving the brain if you cannot protect it physically. You should always protect your head from injuries because trauma may affect the functioning of your brain. Even simple injuries should be avoided, because repeated minor injuries, if accumulated, may cause damage to your brain. Thus, you should try simple prevention, like putting helmets when bicycling, in order for you to avoid situations that may damage your brain functioning.

If you want to be able to think better, your brains health is the key. Thus, you should keep it as healthy as possible and avoid all those factors which may expose you to mental deterioration.

A Family Approach To Celiac Disease

For protein lovers, Celiac disease is one thing they wouldnt want to inherit from the family genes. Fortunately, its treatment can also be ensured within the family and in the home.

Celiac disease is a digestive order that can run from one generation to another. The disease causes severe damage to the small intestines as a reaction to gliadin or a gluten protein, and results to inflammation and flattening of the lining of the small intestines.

The person with Celiac disease is unable to absorb gluten, which is a group of protein common in wheat, rye, oats and barley. Hence, the disease imposes a gluten-free diet for those who are affected. This proves to be a difficult task since gluten is the second most consumed ingredient next to sugar, and hence difficult to avoid. Also, it is difficult to monitor since some may not experience any symptoms. But already knowing that the person and his or her family are prone to the disease can provide a head start on how to mitigate the damages.

Indeed, the home is the best place to start addressing Celiac disease. A family approach to knowing the disease and understanding how it affects everyday life will provide the battle gears for coping. This is especially helpful for the children, who would need all the support and guidance they could get.

A family that eats together heals together. This can be a reasonable motto for families afflicted with the history of Celiac disease. Several measures can already be taken if these families consider carefully their eating habits. One step is taking into heart what food to buy, grow, store, prepare or eat at any time of the day. By this, it is not just about ensuring that food is gluten-free but also ensuring that the needed nutrients are sourced from other food groups.

The family can also seek help from dieticians for the information on gluten-free foods. This includes help on how to read labels that may not specify gluten but contains it nonetheless. An example is the hydrolyzed vegetable protein that may be sourced from wheat. Familiarization with these gluten-free foods may be hard at first, but with the aid of a food diary and the collective memory of the family members, it will soon be easy.

Remember also that it is not just about knowing what to avoid, but rather knowing what to eat. For example, fruits are very much encouraged since these reduce other stressors to the digestive system, such as constipation. Further, in planning what meals to prepare and what other food to stock in the kitchen, the family can treat this as an opportunity to monitor and ensure balanced nutrition and sufficient calorie intake.

But what happens when family members, especially the children, need to eat outside of the home?

Again, it is important for the family to plan ahead. Children and teens should be part of the whole process of learning about gluten-free food. To engage their interest and to ensure that they like what they eat, children and teens may be entrusted with the responsibility of choosing what gluten-free meals to prepare. In this way, they would be able to prepare for food they can either eat at home or have as packed lunch or snacks. But in cases when they have to buy food outside the home, their knowledge about gluten-free food would enable them to discriminate which meals to buy. For young children with Celiac disease, their parents can also talk to teachers about the food requirements of their children. Or talk to the parents of their childrens friends, in case they visit or sleep over at houses of their friends.

In the end, a realistic talk among family members is the best approach. Each member, especially the children and teens, needs to know the consequences of eating meals with gluten.

A Celiac Disease Urban Legend

Now urban legends are urban folklore that were created by stories weaved together and circulated around until most people have accepted them as truths. There are different kinds of urban myths and covers a wide range of subject matter. Its not impossible to find that even diseases have their own folklore. A celiac disease urban legend revolves around tea bags containing gluten which can trigger the disease.

For those who do not know, celiac disease is a condition where the small intestines get inflamed due to the consumption of food containing gluten. Gluten is a protein commonly found in food made from wheat, barley, and rye. So such foods like bread, pizza, and pasta can contain gluten. The condition can be really bad in the long run. The inflammation that the disease causes in the intestines prevents the body to absorb the nutrients that it needs. So the end results would be malnutrition. Malnutrition itself can then cause more ailments.

I dont actually know where and when it started, but stories have already circulated that some makers of tea uses tea bags made from gluten. This is obviously bad for tea drinkers that have contracted the celiac disease. Word gone out and people with the disease now started to avoid tea just because of the stories or are selective of the tea brands that they buy.

Reinforcing the stories is the fact that tea manufacturers began labeling their products as using only gluten free tea bags. This of course is a reaction from the stories which probably resulted to tea sales going down. Thats the problem with urban myths, despite how absurd they might sound, people will tend to be wary since they would treat stories coming from credible sources as truth. The effects can sometimes be quite devastating.

Now, there has not been a solid shred of proof that manufacturers indeed used gluten as an ingredient for making their tea bags. Some say that making tea bags with gluten does not make sense at all since gluten can be dissolved with water. Although, there are research which indicates that gluten has poor water solubility properties. But still stories circulated.

Tea in itself does not contain gluten. It contains caffeine and other antioxidants but definitely not gluten. However, the tea brands that are available in the market today are often a blend of other ingredients. The reason for blending different kinds of tea and other stuff is to develop a unique taste. There are times that barley is added to tea blends to enhance taste and to offer something different. But barley contains gluten. Maybe, a tea brand that contains barley was consumed by someone with celiac disease. The symptoms recurred and that person might have generalized that the tea was the cause not analyzing it more closely.

That can be the start of the urban myth of the tea bag. I am not aware of any tea blends, today or in the past, which uses barley or even wheat as part of the ingredients. In the same way, I havent read any conclusive study which defunct this urban legend once and for all.

Personally, I would believe the fact that protein based or gluten based tea bags is not a commercial viability. I would choose to believe that this is indeed a celiac disease urban legend. However, for you who chose to be cautious, there are numerous tea brands today that claims to be gluten free. With regards to choices, you wont be restricted. You can continue enjoying your tea.