Now, do you know that television is the only mid-life recreation positively linked to developing Alzheimer’s disease? Alzheimer’s affects one in 20 aged over 65 and nearly a quarter of those over 85, causing bouts of dementia, loss of memory, wrenching personality changes and, eventually, death. The study found that the disease was linked to those less involved in recreation between the ages of 20 and 60 than healthy people of similar background.

In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Robert Friedland reports with colleagues at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and the University Hospitals of Cleveland: It is possible for television to be intellectually stimulating but probably that is not what is happening most of the time, especially in America, where people watch an average of four hours a day. I think it is bad for the brain to watch four hours of television a day. When you watch TV you can be in a semi-conscious state where you really are not doing any learning.” The results suggest that recreational inactivity in mid-life may be either a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease, a consequence of early, undetected symptoms of the disease, or both.

April issue of the Journal of School Health says children who reported watching TV or playing video games 2 or more hours a day were 73 per cent more likely to be at risk of type 2 diabetes. Furthermore, watching a lot of television and other sedentary behaviors increase women’s risk of both obesity and type 2 diabetes, according to data analyzed in April 2003 from the Nurses’ Health Study. Diabetics have a significantly greater risk of dementia, both Alzheimer’s disease — the most common form of dementia — and other dementia, reveals important new data from an ongoing study of twins. The risk of dementia is especially strong if the onset of diabetes occurs in middle age, according to the study.

The adverse affects of television could occur decades prior to a person developing Alzheimer’s symptoms. Doctors confirm that by keeping Alzheimer sufferers brains active, progression of this disease is slowed down, decreases depression related to the disease and enables sufferers to live for much longer periods of time at home. Doctors have now found links between people who spend hours in front of television screens and people who are obese and get very little physical exercise. These risk factors all increase the likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

So basically excessive TV watching is a very important contributor to obesity and diabetes, and diabetes is a very important risk factor for developing Alzheimer’s. It is no wonder that scientists have found a link between excessive TV watching and Alzheimer’s.

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We use it to overcome self-consciousness, give us ‘Dutch courage’ and help us loosen up in social gatherings. Sometimes we use it to ‘drown our sorrows’. In moderation, alcohol can, temporarily, make us feel better about ourselves but it is actually a depressant drug.

More than three or four units of alcohol can begin to adversely affect our mood and can make us feel worse. Then our brain tells us to have another one to buck us up again. The trouble is, even after just a couple of drinks, alcohol affects our judgement.

When we are feeling down, perhaps after a bereavement, relationship breakdown, disappointment, or if we are in physical pain, we might turn to alcohol for comfort. Most of us have done it but we soon find there’s no solution in the bottom of an empty glass.

There is a genetic factor to alcoholism. Autopsies on male alcoholics’ brains show the presence of a chemical not found in non-alcoholic males. Most of the time, sons of alcoholics become alcoholics and daughters of alcoholics marry alcoholics. If alcohol and water offered to a group of animals approximately, half of the group will drink water and other half of the group will drink alcohol.

It is proved that whether we like or do not like alcohol depends on our genetics. Children of alcoholics who are adopted by healthy parents more likely become alcoholics than their own children. Scientists wanted to know how animals that drink alcohol are different from animals that drink water. In one group of experiments alcohol was injected to both types of animals.

After injection of alcohol animals are falling asleep. Animals that like to drink alcohol sleep much less than animals that do not like to drink. It means that metabolism of alcohol is much faster in animals that like to drink than in animal that don’t. It was shown that animals that like to drink alcohol and have short sleep after injection of alcohol have more active enzymes than animals that do not like to drink alcohol and sleep long time after alcohol injection.

Since activity of enzymes is higher in those animals, their level of endogenous alcohol or alcohol that is produced inside their body is lower than level of endogenous alcohol in animals that do not like to drink. If animals have lover than “normal” level of alcohol they drink it to restore alcohol to normal level in the same way as we eat fruits when our sugar level is low. For animals that drinking behavior is normal and rats do not become alcoholics. For human being there is a catch. When human being raises his/her blood alcohol to “normal” level, he/she does not stop drinking because alcohol activates brain rewarding system.

A person, who has low enzyme activity while drinking alcohol very soon starts to feel bad because his enzymes will not oxidize alcohol and acet-aldehid fast enough.

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Copper acts as a catalyst in  the formation of hemoglobin, which is the oxygen carrying component of our body. Therefore lack of it will result to insufficient oxygen and nutrient supply to our brain, since oxygen is also needed in the synthesis of essential nutrients. The health benefits of copper include proper growth, utilization of iron, enzymatic reactions, connective tissues, hair, eyes, ageing and energy production. Apart from these, heart rhythm, thyroid glands, arthritis, wound healing, red blood cell formation and increasing beneficial cholesterol are other health benefits of copper.

The health benefits of copper are crucial for our healthy existence, as this mineral enables normal metabolic process in association with amino acids and vitamins. Copper cannot be produced within our body and hence we needs it to source our from external food origins. It is the third most prevalent mineral in the body and it is mostly carried by our blood plasma protein, ceruloplasmin. In order to enjoy health benefits of copper, we must  include it in our diet. Do you know that copper is widely known as a brain stimulant? It is also otherwise called “Brain food”. However, copper content in the diet has to be in right proportions. Too much of copper is also not healthy for the brain. The presence of copper in our body plays in the proper functioning of our brain, hence the need for balance.

If you are pregnant and nursing an infant through breast feeding, your body increases the the need for copper. We may not know it, but copper is essential for the fetus inside the womb as well as infants for normal growth and development. Nature did not forget that because it has devised a way for the fetus to get copper from the mother via the placenta and for infants, via breast milk.

Since the best source of copper and other essential micronutrients during the first year of life is human milk, our newborn baby can get the much needed copper from fortified baby formula. However, cow’s milk contains very low amounts of bioavailable copper and should be supplemented with copper during the first year of life.

As adults, we can obtain copper from various food sources such as liver, meat, seafood, beans, whole grains soy flour, wheat bran, almonds, avocados, barley, garlic, nuts, oats, blackstrap molasses ,beets and lentils. It can also reaches our body by drinking water from copper pipes and by using copper ware when cooking. One of the richest source of copper is the oyster. But when food materials are stored in tin cans, copper content of foods gets lost because of the high acid content of tin cans.

It is very rare to discover both a deficiency and an excess of copper. Deficiency in copper is not severe enough to cause detectable diseases or injury but may impair good health in subtle ways. The World Health Organization is more concerned with this. Lowered resistance to infection, reproductive problems, general fatigue or weakness, and most especially, impaired brain function are all related to copper deficiency.

It is good to take note of all the healthy benefits of copper to our body and brain. And it all starts in a healthy diet during pregnancy. As infants are born, we are getting used to the idea of using baby formula as replacement for breast milk. With this preference, we are denying the optimum normal growth and development of our children. The optimum growth of the brain can only be achieved if we use all opportunities for our children to get what they need from what Mother Nature has naturally provided.

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In an experimental eye research, MSG showed no significant effects to the laboratory animals. But after three to six months of continued usage, there was observable damage. Therefore, we can think that if we consistently include MSG in our line of flavor enhancers, there is the possibility of us experiencing the above mentioned adverse reactions and face the future with the likely incidence of having any of the degenerative disorders of the  brain, such as Alzheimer’s. Difficulty in learning, obesity and other endocrine problems appear with continued use. Very young children easily gets affected because their blood brain barrier is not fully developed. While in the elderly, the blood brain barriers are less functional to keep excessive amounts of MSG from getting to the brain.

It was in 1980 that MSG was proved to cause brain lesions in laboratory specimens. These brain lesions further develop into stroke, epilepsy, degenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s. We really cannot easily avoid this flavor enhancer, since it is present in almost everything found in the grocery store. A restaurant may claim not to use MSG on food but the choice of raw materials for cooking plays a role.  How?

Similar to the processed food we purchase, these restaurants also utilize processed foods. Where? The broth cubes or bouillon cubes we use. The salad we enjoyed which we thought was a healthy one as well as the barbecue sauce has MSG in it. Canned, dried or frozen food, flavored potato and tortilla chips, all of these are MSG-laden. We are not aware but MSG is hidden in product labels, especially those that are processed. We cannot help but be concerned.

Most number of people who experienced bodily reactions to MSG manifest migraine. A throbbing headache that we usually experience after enjoying a tasteful meal. This was also termed Chinese Restaurant Syndrome (CRS) which includes nausea with that migraine you complained. It was associated with Chinese Restaurants since most of the tasteful and flavor-rich foods are cooked in Chinese Restaurants. If you have felt this, it is attributed to consuming large amounts of MSG.

Though most testing for MSG effects was conducted on animals, we should not make ourselves behave like guinea pigs not to believe the harmful effects it can do to our brain and go on consuming such foods. If research efforts produced conclusive evidence the harmful effects it does to animal subjects, it is almost always sure that it will have the same harmful effects to humans. All testings even for developments on medications, exhaust all possible effects to the animal subject before launching it to public consumption.

“Large doses of MSG fed to animals damaged nerve cells in the part of the brain that controls appetite, body temperature and other key functions. The additive was also found to damage reproductive organs. It has caused female animals to conceive less frequently and to give birth to smaller litters. Some evidence also links MSG with learning disabilities in laboratory animals,” said Dr. Susan Baker of the Boston Children’s Hospital, the world’s largest pediatric research center.

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But in societies such as in America, where plentifulness abounds for some of us, at least, the endless rounds of pursuing interests, hobbies, passions, addictions, goals, plans, diversions, distractions and a whole lot of TV couch-potatoing often leads to periods of boredom and angst, an uncomfortableness that just won’t let go. Somedays, nothing is satisfying or enriching – the drive for diversions is just not there and one is stuck with oneself, and that is suffering. Big time. You just can’t get it up for anything, and it all seems so empty.

So the popular conception of boredom: that it is about a lack of something, such as fulfillment, peace, satisfaction, etc) is misguided – it is more about the fullness of something and that is the fullness of the experience of the pains of one’s own mind forms, and the inability to distract oneself from them.

There is a fidgety, unsettled feeling that often characterizes boredom, a sense of wanting to bolt, to be anywhere but where one is exactly standing in the moment. So really, nothing is actually lacking; simply stated, one is full of the torture of one’s own karmic patterns, in the form of mental anguish, and uncomfortable and unsettled bodily feelings, to one degree of another. Of course, wanting to bolt out of one’s life situation is not a monopoly of boredom.

Many years ago, a friend’s brother did a retreat with a Buddhist group. He was instructed to meditate in a small booth/cabin that had nothing in it, save a meditation pillow. And he had to spend a long, long period of time in this structure. The instructor told him, “You’re about to face what is driving you crazy”.

It can be said that the entire thrust of people’s lives is precisely the avoidance of being faced with their own karmic patterns, the endless rounds of distractions brought on by a commercialized and entertainment oriented society that keeps people’s attention on all sorts of pleasurable objects, be they movie stars, sports heroes, the latest high tech gadget, etc. And whether a person is an active participant in hobbies, interests, passions and diversions, or a passive TV watching observer, the underlying strategy of avoidance of one’s own painful karmic burden is exactly the same.

We are all burdened not only by their physical weight, but subtle weights of all kinds that often seem excruciatingly heavier than our physical burden. Simply stated, boredom is just another face of suffering, limited to a certain portion of the human population in industrialized countries for the most part . Animals seemed to be spared of boredom simply by the nature of being an animal. Boredom is a reminder of the prison of self-contracted, karmic existence, and we do not want to touch that at all, the third rail of high society. And as long as there is a core belief inherent that there is a substantial self in which to be bored, boredom will surely occur, among other things!

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Mindfulness also has its benefits for men, Brotto notes, but might be especially pertinent for the distractibility women experience. Women relearn to appreciate their body and its capacity for sensual pleasure.

In the Journal of Sexual Medicine, Brotto reported that 150 women experienced higher levels of sexual after being trainer in her 4-step program of mindfulness specifically geared to enhancing sexual pleasure. Tested in the lab while watching erotic videos, the women reported feeling more lubricated, even though there was no measurable increase in lubrication from watching such videos before training. The results suggest the women had become aware of their genital lubrication.

It turns out the the surest approach to problems of desire in women is something no pill can do. It’s bringing the mind in synchrony with the body. And that has benefits for women that go way beyond the bedroom.

Lori Brotto has devised and tested a program to increase sexual responsiveness in women with sexual complaints, including low desire. A major component draws in Buddhist principles of mindfulness to reconnect the mind with the body’s sensations.

Women first learn the basics of mindfulness in a nonsexual context. The goal is to guide the mind back to the present whenever distracting thoughts arise. Using an object like a penny or a raisin, slowly explore the way it feels, looks, smells, tastes. When your mind starts to wander, gently guide it back to focus on the object. Practice this exercise 10 minutes a day while engaged in some activity, like walking, eating a meal, or washing the dishes. You can also practice a more traditional meditation: Close your eyes, remain silent and focus simply on your breath.

Next, women learn to examine their bodies in a nonsexual way without generating distress. The aim is to lessen distractions by judgment of physical appearance during sex. Look at your body while showering, bathing or drying yourself. Notice when judgments arise and guide your mind back to just looking at your body. Repeat the exercise next using a hand-held mirror to look at your body and genitals. Then touch your body and genitals in a nonsexual manner while being aware of judgments and guiding attention back to what you are doing.

Women repeat the body-focused exercise, but this time, with a shift in sexual attitude. The goal is to help women change the way they look at their body and enjoy sensations in a sexual way. Tell yourself that “my body is sexual,” “I am a sexual person,” “I enjoy my sexuality,” repeat the mindfulness exercise from the previous one.

Last, women learn to connect bodily arousal and emotional pleasure. Use a vibrator, look at erotica or fantasize about sex to deliberately arouse your body. Stop about after five minutes. Then perform a mindfulness exercise to fully tune into the sensations.

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Not everyone agrees things are quite so straighforward. Marta Meana at the University of Nevada Las Vegas contends it’s possible to overemphasize the importance of relationships to desire in women. In fact, she finds, relationships can have a dampening effect on desire and sex for both genders – and as relationships progress, desire declines.

“It could that relationships are very arousing to women at first, but there are not a lot of data showing that it lasts for long. The longer you are in relationships, the more fantasies steer away from touchy-feely concepts. I think relationships are important to sexuality. I think women probably care more about relationships than about having sex, but that doesn’t mean relationships are what turn women on,” Meana says. “If safety, comfort, love and respect were as facilitative to femal sexual desire as some of the relationally focused literature claims, then we should not see as many married women in happy relationships complaining of low desire,” she notes.

Much of the research is biased, she explains, because it surveys college students – people not yet likely to be in long-term relationships. Sure, their fantasies may have more romantic content than do the fantasies of men, but they are not representative of what happens in marriage.

“In the early stages of relationships, the infatuation stage, people can’t get enough sex,” says University of Texas sexologist Cindy Meston. “They can’t stop thinking about that person.” Meston, who coauthored with David Buss Why Women Have Sex, points to research showing that people in the early stages of falling in love have brain serotonin levels as low as those seen in people with obssessive-compulsive disorder. “That’s why you cannot stop thinking about that person and want to be close to them at all the time. Of course, having sex all day or staring at each other all days isn’t conducive to everyday living,” all those levels settle down.

Overtime, people settle into a normal pattern of sex – which means they simply aren’t having as much sex as they were. Neverthless, this is what couples sometimes complain about when they complain abot low female desire. But which is normal – the level of desire a person experiences early in a relationship or what transpires later?

While the drop in desire that Meston describes affects both men and women, it often causes more problems in a relationship when it occurs in a woman, whose level of desire is generally lower to start with. Decades of data show that on average, men think more about sex, fantasize more about it, work harder to get it, place more importance on it, what to have it more, initiate it more and masturbate more. Data also show that what ignites women’s desire, regardless of any generalized decline in desire, is a new partner.

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But what about anger? Is it healthy to suppress it or let it flow? If you suppress it, will it manifest in other unguarded situations? If you let it flow, will it be effective enough not to hurt yourself or hurt anyone or worst, lose your job?

What happens to our body when we get angry? An investigation lead by scientists from the University of Valencia analyzed changes in the brain’s cardiovascular, hormonal and asymmetric activation response when we get angry. The study revealed that when we get angry, the heart rate, arterial tension and testosterone production increases, cortisol, the stress hormone decreases, and the left hemisphere of the brain becomes more stimulated.  The results, published in the journal Hormones and Behavior, reveal that anger provokes profound changes in the state of mind of the subjects “they felt angered and had a more negative state of mind” and in different psychobiological parameters. There is an increase in heart rate, arterial tension and testosterone, but the cortisol level decreases.

On the contrary, psychologists from Boston College, Maya Tamir and Christopher and James Gross of Stanford University tested whether people prefer to experience emotions that are potentially useful, even when they are unpleasant to experience, such as anger. Some participants preferred activities that were likely to make them angry like listening to anger-inducing music, recalling past events in which they were angry, when they expected to perform confrontational tasks, like defending a project or engaging in a debate. On the other hand, some participants preferred more pleasant activities when they expected to perform a non-confrontational task. The researchers found that angry participants performed better than others in the confrontational game by successfully killing more enemies while  angry participants did not perform better than others in the non-confrontational game, which involved serving customers. “Such findings,demonstrate that what people prefer to feel at any given moment may depend, in part, on what they might get out of it.”

If you notice, the physiologic changes brought about by anger are also bodily changes brought about by excitement with the exception of the cortisol hormone. Suppression of anger on the other hand will also generate the same effects and it may double itself since it is a form of stress that is not released or processed and so remains in the body. When such stress accumulates, like a volcano, it explodes and molten lava flows and it would be difficult to retract hurtful words uttered or apologize for an unprofessional display of emotions.

It is healthy to release anger in other forms. You can break a glass, break a pencil, take a walk in the park, punch a punching bag, anything to release that pent-up anger. Anger that accumulates mean tension that increases. And any tension produces stress that will later on manifest through illness.

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Though no one is exactly sure what work the brain does when you’re asleep, some scientists think that the brain sorts through and stores information, replaces chemicals, and solves problems while you snooze.Both in children and adults, when the body doesn’t have enough hours to rest, they may feel tired or cranky, or they may be unable to think clearly. Notice how you had a hard time following directions or having that argument with a friend over something to realize later that it was really stupid?

A growing child needs an average 8 hours sleep – this is because he is developing. Inversely, elder persons and adults get little sleep – an average of 4-5 hours only. No scientific explanation seems to support this notion – most probably, adults have reached their maximum physical growth and sleep functions only as the brain’s preparation for learning new information.

Observe yourself when you did not get a fair amount of sleep. Do you notice being disorganized and feeling like being in the clouds? Your brain is muddled because of lack of sleep. If you continue to get no sleep for three consecutive days, buzzing in the ear will start and on the fourth day, hallucinations will start. Your lack of sleep may be triggered by anxiety and this is the usual reason for mental illness. It seems that all mental illness that are pathologic in nature starts their symptoms in lack of sleep.

When you try to force yourself to work and function without sleep, you end up with a lot of mistakes. And when you don’t do any work and can’t seem to sleep, you tend to stare into space. Quite weird if you ask me. This is the reason that doctors recommend that you time your coffee and other food and drinks that you take that act as stimulants. When you take coffee late in the afternoon, predictably, you will have a hard time catching sleep later.

Some people who skips their routine physical work outs in the afternoon have a hard time sleeping at night. This is because the body’s biorythm is disrupted. When it is disrupted, it will take some time before it goes back to normal. Notice how sleepy you still feel even if you catch a nap in the afternoon in compensation for the sleep you did not get at night? Because the body is attuned and the brain is timed to rest at night, it will expect to be rested at night. Such is the common problems of people who travel around the world because of the time difference.

Sleep is a vital need of the brain and the body that when a person who made his appointment with a psychologist will normally be prescribed with medications that will induce sleep and rest most of the time. This is to rest the overactive brain to avoid those hallucinations from getting severe aside from the anti-psychotic medications.

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Nicotine can either act as a stimulant or a sedative, depending on the amount taken. The smoker’s body finds an acceptable level of nicotine in order to experience the pleasurable sensations associated with smoking. This chemical from cigarettes increases the activity of dopamine in your brain. This is the chemical substance that elicits pleasurable sensations. Usually, first cigarette of the day is particularly effective at stimulating the dopamine-sensitive neurons in your brain, which is why you often find the first cigarette of the day the most satisfying. During the rest of the day, your nerve cells become accustomed to the effects of nicotine, which is an example of the long-term smoker’s tendency to develop a tolerance to nicotine. It requires an increasingly higher levels of nicotine to be used over time to achieve the same benefits.

As you continually smoke, even more nicotine is required to maintain the level of satisfaction you need. The body, and the nervous system in particular, copes to constantly receiving this expected level of nicotine and will typically exhibit symptoms of withdrawal without it. In general, the severity of the withdrawal symptoms that you will experience once you quit, will all depend on how heavy you smoke. Heavy smokers are more likely to experience pronounced withdrawal symptoms than light smokers. The more nicotine you have learned to tolerate in your blood, then the more likely you are to miss it when you stop. This is why a smoker can still experience a mild form of nicotine withdrawal if they cut down on the amount of cigarettes they smoke rather than quitting completely because the body is responding to the reduced amount of nicotine it is receiving.

Our genetic coding can also affect how the brain responds to certain stimuli. Nicotine stimulates neurological receptors throughout the brain, including the pleasure centers of the brain where we experience gratification through pleasurable experiences like sex or eating our favorite food. The nicotine in cigarettes produces pleasurable feelings while at the same time acting as a depressant by interfering with the flow of information between the nerve cells.

Funded by the National Institute of Health, the Scripps Research Institute, of La Jolle, California,  conducted a study on the effects of nicotine on the brain. This study discovered that the brains of laboratory rats exhibited less sensitivity to pleasurable experiences once their nicotine intake was stopped. For several days after they ceased to receive nicotine, the rats experienced anxiety, irritability and depression equivalent to a human going through the same withdrawal. This decreased sensitivity in the pleasure circuits of the brain is a characteristic common to any attempt to stop using an addictive substance.

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