A study recently published in the Journal of Physical Activity and Health found that a 20-minute session of yoga improved participants’ speed and accuracy on two measures of brain function associated with the ability to focus and take in, retain, and use new information. The study had 30 participants, and researchers said they performed significantly better immediately after the yoga practice than after moderate to vigorous aerobic exercise for the same amount of time.
Medical Research Sheds Light On Hunger and Risk… Never Make Decisions Hungry!
6 AprHave you heard of the term, hangry? Even if you haven’t, I can almost guarantee you’ve experienced it. According to the Urban Dictionary, the definition of
hangry is: “When you are so hungry your lack of food causes you to become angry.”
Here is hangry used in a sentence: The service in this place stinks! I ordered my food over an hour ago. I’m starving and starting to get really hangry!
Come on. You can admit it…
You’ve Been Hangry!
We all have, and hangry is not a good place to be. Well, now research is showing how being hungry affects our decision making.
According to an article published by the Max Planck Society, hunger affects not only decision making, but also the perception of risk.
According to the article, “Hungry people are often difficult to deal with. A good meal can affect more than our mood, it can also influence our willingness to take risks. This phenomenon is also apparent across a very diverse range of species in the animal kingdom. Experiments conducted on the fruit fly, Drosophila, by scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried have shown that hunger not only modifies behavior, but also changes pathways in the brain.”
Studies show that animals are willing to take much more risk depending on how hungry they are. For example, an animal will only hunt dangerous prey
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when hungry. If they are not hungry, they will try their luck getting a meal in a less hazardous way.
That seems pretty obvious, but here’s something that is NOT obvious… and even a little surprising. One study found that hungry humans took significantly more financial risk than their well-fed colleagues.
One obvious lesson here is…
Never Make Financial Decisions When You’re Hungry!
Of course, make sure your financial advisor and stock brokers are also well fed. Maybe call them and make sure they have a good breakfast before they start their work day! ☺
On a more serious note, it is obvious that blood chemistry is seriously affected by what and when you eat. Your blood chemistry is extremely important when it comes to both your physical and mental health.
Hangry may seem funny, but when you are hungry, your body is not functioning optimally.
Your muscles and brain are not getting the nutrients they need. Bad decisions and risk taking are just the tip of the iceberg. Not giving your body the nutrients it needs when it needs them can affect every organ and cell in your body.
Understand this: If you want to GAIN WEIGHT, being “hangry” is one of the best ways to do it.
Why? Because weight loss is best accomplished when you keep your blood sugar levels stabilized. This can be accomplished by eating small portions of the correct foods multiple times throughout the day. Often times, eating five or more small meals is ideal.
If you have reached the point when you feel hunger, then you are falling behind. Hunger means your blood sugar levels have already dropped. (Becoming “hangry” is a whole different level!)
But this does not mean you should eat as much as you want whenever you want.
The answer is to eat the right foods, at the right times, in the right portions.
Portion size is a BIG problem for most people. But, believe it or not, you can be “tricked” into eating or drinking more (or less) than you think you are.
Here is how: You’ve heard the statement, “Everything is relative.” Well, relative is a HUGE factor when it comes to how much you decide to eat.
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There is something called the Delboef illusion. This illusion occurs when people misjudge the size of identical circles when they are surrounded by larger circles of different sizes.
For example, people will think a circle is smaller if the circle surrounding it is huge and vice versa.
Researchers found that the same illusion applies to plates we eat our food on.
When the same portion of food is served on a very large plate, it seems like less food than when it is served on a small plate.
According to an article published by the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab, “For example, in a study conducted at a health and fitness camp, campers who were given larger bowls served and consumed 16% more cereal than those given smaller bowls. Despite the fact that those campers were eating more, their estimates of their cereal consumption were 7% lower than the estimates of the group eating from the smaller bowls. This suggests that not only could large dinnerware cause us to serve and eat more, it can do so without us noticing and trick us into believing we have eaten less.”
The Cornell article also revealed how we can use this optical illusion to our favor. Here is how: Serve the vegetables and healthy foods many people do not like on large plates. The large plate will make the portion look small and easier to eat. On the contrary, serve bad foods, like desserts, on small plates to make the serving size look bigger.
The Secret To Living A Happy, Healthy and Longer Life.
5 AprDo you like secrets? Most people do. I’m not talking about that dvd/book, The Secret. No… not even close to that.
But first, let’s define what a secret is. Basically, a secret is something someone else doesn’t know. So, secrets can be good, bad, or neither. They can be information that changes someone’s life or just worthless trivia.
In this case, this secret is something that has the potential to change your life.
So, what is this big secret?
Let’s start with a quote from the late, great, Jim Rohn:
“You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.”
That, in a nutshell, is the secret to living a happy, healthy, and long life.
There is no doubt that taking 100% personal responsibility for EVERYTHING in your life is the most positive and life altering thing you can ever do. It is also the most difficult.
We live in an era of almost ZERO personal responsibility.
People sue because the coffee is too hot. They blame the credit card company for what they bought. They blame the junk food maker because what they stuffed in their mouth made them overweight and sick.
The minute you take total responsibility for everything in your life, your life will change.
The minute you take total responsibility for your health, you will become healthier. Because health comes from the small decisions you make every day, the small actions you take every day, the right foods you eat every day, and the exercise you do every day.
Jim Rohn also said, “Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don’t fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.”
You become what you repeat every day. If your life is not what you want it to be, then stop repeating what you are doing.
Do start repeating something that makes you happy, healthy, and live longer.
The Surprising Secret Ingredient In Pepper That Fights Parkinson’s Disease.
4 AprIf you are in pain, you are probably looking for a treatment for your pain. If you have a disease, you are probably looking for a treatment for that disease. Most people look for a miracle scientific breakthrough like a brand new surgical procedure or a new drug. Stem cell therapy has many people (and doctors) dreaming of potential cures, but many times, mother nature had the answer all along.
For example, new research just published in the Annals of Neurology tested the effects that eating plants in the Solanacae family had on Parkinson’s disease. Solanacae is a plant family includes plants with edible nicotine. Plants in this family include tobacco, peppers, tomatoes, and potatoes. This study examined whether Parkinson’s disease was associated with self-reported typical frequency of consumption of peppers, tomatoes, tomato juice, and potatoes during adulthood, while adjusting for consumption of other vegetables, age, sex, race/ethnicity, tobacco use, and caffeine.
Results: Parkinson’s disease (PD) was inversely associated with consumption of all edible Soloanacae. The more concentrated the nicotine in the food, the greater the impact. The inverse association was greatest for peppers. According to the study, “Dietary nicotine or other constituents of tobacco and peppers may reduce PD risk. However, confirmation and extension of these findings are needed to strengthen causal inferences that could suggest possible dietary or pharmaceutical interventions for PD prevention.”
Peppers may not be the “cure” for Parkinson’s disease, but once again, it points out the importance of the basics: eating right, exercise, and stress reduction.
Surprising Top Source Of Hidden Salt.
3 AprHere’s a surprising discovery made by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention… The number one salt culprit in the United States is bread, including rolls and sweet rolls. Americans get twice as much salt from bread products as they do from salty snacks, which only stand at number 10 in the CDC’s list of the saltiest foods. Breads and rolls aren’t saltier than many other foods, but people eat a lot more of them, according to the CDC.
Breads and rolls account for about 7 percent of the salt we consume. About 40 percent of the salt we eat is hidden. After bread, the next nine are: cold cuts and cured meats, such as deli turkey or ham; pizza; fresh and processed poultry; soups; sandwiches on bread or buns (including cheeseburgers); cheese; pasta dishes; meat- mixed dishes, such as meat loaf with tomato sauce; and snacks, such as chips, pretzels and popcorn. These 10 foods are responsible for 44 percent of all sodium consumed.
Nine out of ten Americans over age two consume too much sodium. On average, they eat 3,300 mg a day. Experts say everyone over age 51, individuals of African descent, and anyone with high blood pressure, diabetes, or chronic kidney disease should limit sodium to 1,500 mg a day. For everyone else, less than 2,300 mg is recommended. Consuming too much salt has been linked to heart disease and stroke.
She Is A Freshman, Fourth In Her Class, and The Best Pole Vaulter In School History. Why She Has Her “Sight” Set On Inspiring Other People…
2 AprIf you watched her at a track meet, you would see three things: power, grace, and beauty. While only a Freshman, Charlotte Brown is an academic star, and she has cleared heights in the pole vault that no female at Rains High School in Emory, Texas ever has.
“I’d definitely consider myself very competitive. And I think a lot of that comes from my older brothers. They are never giving me a break.” Competitive she is. When talking about her first track coach, Charlotte said, “Our coach was pretty harsh. He was like…there’s no excuses…you are going to run and you are going to be good at it… and you are gonna like it, and if you don’t, you can leave.”
What Charlotte said next summed up the real secret to her success: “It’s easier to run hard than to have to think about an excuse.”
What’s incredible is that Charlotte would not have to think very hard to come up with an excuse because she is legally blind.
When describing her sight, she said, “When I look out right now, I see a pin dot of white, which I guess is the grass. And it’s blurry… kinda like looking through a coffee stirrer.”
Running is not the only thing Charlotte never makes excuses about. She doesn’t make excuses about carrying extra large text books, or that she has to use a talking calculator, or use a magnifier to make the pages of her books and any paper work huge so she can barely read it.
Her mental toughness comes from her parents who say it’s her job to recognize and overcome problems. The phrase “no excuses” has been the family motto right from the beginning.
Charlotte’s mother said, “One of the first conversations we ever had with Charlotte [was] when she was about three. We told her at that time, everyone struggles with something in their life. Everyone has something in their life that they have to overcome in this world, and her vision was going to be her something, and she might as well figure it out and move on. And… she did.”
Charlotte was born with natural vision, but quickly developed infant cataracts. Her sight went back and forth between good and bad until sixth grade when she lost most of her sight. It is now 20/-400.
So, how does Charlotte pole vault? First, she gets a little help from Ulala. Ulala is a tennis ball with a smiley face and wig attached to a spike Charlotte puts in the ground to help match her path. Ulala sits exactly at her 14th step away from the bar. She starts with her foot touching Ulala and plants the pole on her 14th step, not seeing where she is going.
When she trains, she runs on the inside lane where she can barely make out the contrast between the grass and track. Her cross country teammates wear bells on their shoes so she can follow. She even plays on the basketball team. She counts her steps and listens to the ball. Watching her play, you’d have no idea she cannot see.
Her parents never told her she could not do something. Instead, they always asked her, “HOW ARE YOU GOING TO DO IT?” …and she always came up with the answers.
Here are some more wise words from Charlotte, “I don’t think disability should be in the dictionary. That’s a dumb word. A disability is something that limits you or stops you from being able to do the things you want to do. And I don’t think anything, even if it’s vision impairment, should stop you.”
The last teeny, tiny bit of sight that Charlotte has could be gone at any moment. So, what is holding you back? What are you worried about today? Charlotte’s story sure helps put life in perspective.
Pain Relief Chiropractic 