Melatonin Has Benefits Beyond Just Helping Your Sleep 

While Melatonin is known for helping people sleep deeper, it also has a number of other benefits which include reducing inflammation and boosting our immune system. Recent research suggests that it protects against breast and prostate cancers. In addition, melatonin improves bone density and may prevent osteoporosis. Finally, it may reduce tinnitus problems. So…that’s a good list of benefits for taking a 1 to 3 mg supplement half an hour before bedtime.
(Reported Health & Wellness, Vol 25, No. 8) 

Protecting Your Eyes With Foods

  There are a number of foods that can protect your eyes and improve your eyesight. Black currants or black current oil is one of the leading substances that can help our eyes. It has some of the highest levels of the antioxidant anthocyanins that are found in nature. It is also rich in essential fatty acids. The substances in black currants can protect your eyes from age-related macular degeneration by stopping free radical damage.   

The Importance Of Staying Hydrated

A study published in Physiology & Behavior looked at drivers who limited drinking liquids to avoid bathroom breaks. They found that drivers who were even mildly dehydrated made twice as many errors as drivers who were adequately hydrated. These errors included lane drifting, breaking late and crossing the rumble strip. If this was happening to drivers who were only mildly dehydrated, what about the rest of us with the things we do in addition to driving? And what about kids performing in school? So…a simple solution is to drink plenty of water.

 
The Stuff In Our Guts

Our gastrointestinal tract, commonly called our gut, is now considered to be one of the most complex microbial systems on the planet. There are nearly 110 trillion (that’s trillion) bacteria, fungi, viruses and other microorganisms in our body. It turns out that the viruses actually out number the bacteria by 10 to 1. So, surprise, surprise, viruses may be helpful for our functioning.

Some of the most recent research shows that these bacteria:

1. Counteract inflammation and control the growth of disease-causing bacteria

2. Produce vitamins, absorb minerals and eliminate toxins

3. Control asthma and reduce the risk of allergies

4. Benefit your mood and mental health, and even

5. Normalize your weight

Let’s get back to the viruses in your gut. We look at viruses as bad for our health, yet in the gut, they seem to play an integral role in the maintenance of our heart and in disease prevention. These viruses are called bacteriophages and they infect and destroy bacterial cells that have the ability to transfer genetic material from one bacterium to another. So…a whole new world is opening up that’s been inside us all the time.
(Reported Mercola.com, May 15, 2014)

 Progress Being Made On Saving the Fish In The Oceans

   
Over fishing has been devastating our oceans. An environmental group called EDF has come up with an answer that seems to be working. They’ve developed a catch share program where local fishermen have the rights to fish in a designated area.  In exchange, the fishermen help monitor illegal fishing, which has been a huge problem. In the country of Belize, EDF and the government ran a pilot project on this program in 2011. They found that fish populations in their waters are rebounding and illegal fishing has reportedly dropped 60%. Today, nearly two-thirds of the fish caught in US waters are under catch share and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently announced that over fishing is at an all-time low while revenues for fishermen are up and dozens of species are on the path to recovery.
(Reported Solutions/edf.org/Summer 2015)

Family Stories May Bring A Patient Out Of A Coma 

When someone is in a coma, the thought you may have is that there’s no reason to talk to that person because he or she can’t consciously hear or understand what is being said. It turns out this is not true as confirmed in a recent double blind placebo controlled study. The study included 15 coma patients. Eight of the patients heard family stories while the other patients experienced silence.

Family members worked with therapists to construct 5 minute stories about happy, sad and neutral events that the patient and the family members experienced together. As an example, the stories were developed so that the patient would experience such feelings as the cold wind while skiing. The stories were recorded and played to the patient during the day.

Using an MRI machine, the researchers found that when the patient heard the voice of a family member calling out their name or telling their story, the parts of the brain associated with understanding language and retrieving long-term memories showed increased neural activity. The researchers found that these recordings helped awaken the patients significantly faster and improved their level of recovery.
(Reported Northwestern, Fall 2015)

 Food Doesn't Taste As Good As It Used To

According to food journalist Mark Schatzker, foods today don’t taste as good as they used to. Schatzker explained the reasons that these reductions in taste have been happening using an example of chickens.

1. Chickens are fed inexpensive bland food, primarily seeds.
2. They are butchered very young which makes them less flavorful
3. They are bread to be plump and not tasty

The result is bland food. The same methods apply to pigs, beef cows and even egg laying hens. 

A study in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition found that 43 fruit and vegetable corps have lost their nutritional punch. As compared to the 1950s, today’s food crops had 20% less Vitamin A and 15% less Vitamin C. So…to get optimum taste and nutritional value, I’d suggest switching to organic wherever you can.
(Reported Mark Schatzker, Bottom Line Personal, August 1, 2015)

Living Longer By Reducing Inflammation

 While chronic inflammation in the body plays a key role in many diseases, does reducing this inflammation help you live longer? According to a study published in EBioMedicine, the answer is a counter intuitive yes. The researchers found that low levels of inflammation related to longevity by reducing disease rates for a longer period of time in this population. This means these people won’t have the diseases and illnesses of other people their age.

The researchers analyzed data from 1,500 adults between the ages of 50 to 115. They also looked at the children of these elderly people. They found that the elderly who had the lowest levels of inflammation were able to maintain good cognition and independence for the longest period of time. They also experienced the greatest longevity.

Inflammation was also found to be a stronger predictor of cognitive capacity in those who lived to be 105 than either a person’s gender or biological age. These benefits stemming from low inflammation rates were also passed onto the children of these elderly people.

So…to keep inflammation down to low levels, there are a number of things you can do including eating whole foods (and I’d suggest organic), exercising, getting enough sleep and maintaining a positive attitude.
(Reported Carolyn Gregoire, The Huffington Post, 8/6/15)

THANKS, THAT'S IT FOR THIS MONTH!