Papolos, co-author of the Bipolar Child studied 300 bipolar kids ages 4 to 18 and was able to establish a characteristic pattern. Our kids in the morning are really difficult to rouse in the morning. But once, they have risen up, most of them can fend for themselves. They usually brush their teeth alone and occassionally needs assistance with dressing up and taking a bath. With bipolar children, they are difficult to rouse from sleep. They resist getting up, getting dressed and even heading to school. They are either irritable with a tendency to snap and gripe, or sullen and withdrawn.

By midday, the darkness lifts and the child becomes wild, wired, euphoric in a giddy and strained way. They laugh too loudly when they find something funny and go on long after the joke is over. Their type of play has an aggressive quality to it. It is quite normal for children to pretend they are superheroes but to insist that they have superhuman abilities is entirely a different thing. They resist all efforts to pacify them when they throw tantrums whenever their wants are denied. Such wildness often continues deep into the night, which explains their difficulty of waking up in the morning. Quite difficult to believe but these children’s manifestations are like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

The next question a concerned parent may have will be, how did my child/son/ daughter developed it? Most scientists says it is genetically connected but there are other factos that sets of the bipolar fuse.  One of the biggest contributing factor is drugs. Drugs connected with this disorder are amphetamines, coccaines and stimulants. Let us not discount the ever present Stress. Many of the psychiatric conditions are precipitated by life’s conditions such as divorce, death or even a happy rite of passage such as entering college.

Though some of us may not be genetically predisposed to this disorder, there are certain things we do t as parents, that we could be likely contributors to our child development of this disorder. Did you ever impose something to your child and yet you yourself broke it? One of the classic example is having your child sleep in the afternoon. But as a parent, you’re too concerned that he might develop diaper rash and go on change his diaper thereby disrupting his sleep. Families that do a lot of travel should take time to consider the implications of time zone differences to their children. This disrupts sleeping pattern which is the usual cause of sleep deprivation.

Clearly, there is something in the environment that contributes to a child as well as a growing teenager’s possibility of developing bipolar disorder, not just genes. Raise a child in a steady and stable home and reduce the odds that illness will gain a toehold. Another strategy is to avoid too much negatively expressed emotion. “Tough love is a good idea in principle but it sometimes do more than good especially if it make kids feel worse about themselves,” says Psychology Professor David Miklowitz of the University of Colorado. When family arguments cannot be avoided, they need to be conducted in a controlled way. Most importantly, we must be the eyes and ears of our children. A teenager in depression cannot see the hope beyond the gloom. A child can’t see the quiet reality behind the giddiness. We must be sensitive enough to our kids’ unspoken needs. Our children can be taught how to seek our help, much like Oddyseus in Homer’s Oddyssey. When blown off course, he sought the help of his crew. As parents, our compasses are much more reliable and we must be ready to show our children the way.

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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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Your eating habits determine your well-being. Facilitation of excretion of your body wastes does not only help you feel good but also can help you to reduce weight. But how about tea? Can tea help you in cleansing your colon? Various types of teas are available in the market and equally capable of cleaning your whole body system. It is also known to be a good source of antioxidant. Being an anti-oxidant, it does not necessarily mean it treats you of your digestive tract disease. It just helps and promote excretion thereby promoting and increasing your risk against benign polyps that form in your colon which later on leads to colon cancer.

Have you ever wondered where does tea comes from, how it came to the grocery store for you to enjoy in your precious chinaware? Tea came from the leaves of camellia sinensis. The leaves are green when they are harvested. Processing tea is a step by step process. The quality of the tea you will get is determined from how it was picked to the length of time it was given for proper oxidation as well as panning it. It goes through a complicated process which makes it more reasonable to enjoy each cup.

How does tea help your digestive system? Your body constantly produces oxidants which has bad molecules that when they lost an electron during a biochemical process are highly unstable and chemically reactive. To  revive cell stability, oxidants steal electrons from other molecules in the cell. In doing so, it damages cell proteins and genetic material. To protect yourself, the body makes and uses antioxidants which fights oxidants by engulfing them. This process is similar to someone who stole something from you, and you go call the police to apprehend the perpetrator. But if unsuccessful like when it was your mobile phone that was snatched from you and there was no other means to call, you feel that you cannot do anything except report it. Similarly, when this happens to your body, it is in a state of imbalance wherein, cells may mutate and contribute to disease processes, including cancer.

This is why, intake of tea is encouraged. Tea contains polyphenols and tannins. These are chemicals innate in tea leaves and when biochemically breakdown by your body, is excreted in your urine.  Evidence of the benefits of these chemicals were published in the Elsevier journal Research in Microbiology. Extracts from Chinese tea were introduce to cell culture that has different bacterial strains like e. coli, salmonella, listeria, bacteroides and clostridium. These pathogens are responsible for the many ailments that assault the digestive tract including colon cancer. The phenolic compounds exhibited  general inhibitory effects on the intestinal bacteria.

Tea also contains tannins. Tannins are defensive compounds that antagonize bacteria and fungi by interfering with their surface proteins. How would you know that tea has tannins? It is that sensation of dry, puckery, constriction after sipping your tea or when you bite into less than ripe fruit. This is caused by the interaction of the compounds in the fruit or tea and the proteins in the saliva and mucous membranes of your mouth. Tannins are also responsible in large part for the tea’s color.

There are various types of tea, but they are generally classified into four: black, white, green and oolong tea. Each have different levels of polyphenols thus different degree of effects on the colon in terms of cleansing benefits. It is important that you find time to find out the difference to maximize on their cleansing effects depending on your need.

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ONE – Meditation

Skin conditions, of all things, along with depression, diabetes, insomnia, asthma, high blood pressure, pain, anxiety disorders, and immune system weakness can all be ameliorated by meditation. Just exactly what is meditation? It can best be described as turning your mind into itself for deep contemplation and deep relaxation.

Researchers have discovered some surprising matters regarding the brains of meditators by hooking them up to brain-imaging machines. They saw that, during meditation, the subjects’ brain cells all fire at the same time, while in non-meditators the brain cells fired in a random and unsynchronized manner. Generally, when talking with meditators and non-meditators, the researchers found that meditators spoke of themselves as being at ease and creative more often than the non-meditators.

Meditators also show a commotion of brain activity in the left prefrontal cortex. That area of the brain has been associated with positive emotions. Folks who have the most activity in that brain area also had high levels of immune system efficacy.

Some other surprising physical differences were discovered, too. Meditators had thicker cerebral cortexes in brain areas associated with sensation and attention span. And it wasn’t because of more brain cell growth, but rather that the brain cells had more connections with each other, that there were a larger number of support cells, and that the blood vessels were larger. Because of the increased attention abilities and focus acuity, meditators were adept at cognitive tasks. They required less mental exertion with these cognitive tasks as well.

TWO – Music

Did you know that playing classical and soothing music can increase the milk yield of dairy cows? Among humans it can help with a number of afflictions: Anxiety. Insomnia. High blood pressure. It also can soothe patients suffering with dementia and help premature babies gain weight so they can leave the hospital sooner.

Music has many components: Volume. Pitch. Timbre. Melody. Rhythm. The auditory cortex analyzes these musical components. However, there’s more to music’s interaction with the brain than just the raw sound. Music can also activate your brain’s reward centers and depress activity in the amygdala, that area of the brain associated with fear or a number of other negative reactions or emotions.

Certain areas of the brain are bolstered by by musical training. The motor cortex, cerebellum and corpus callosum (it connects the brain’s two sides) are all bigger in musicians than in non-musicians. In string players, the sensory areas of the brain that help us feel vibrations through our fingers are larger than those who don’t play that type of instrument. It’s arguable that musical training makes one smarter, but children that receive that sort of training do have better spatial reasoning. And music lessons during childhood increase the sensitivity of the brain stem to the sounds of human speech. Even for kids who don’t have a “musical talent”, such training aids the fine-tuning of this part of the brain used to detect the subtleties of sound.

THREE – Video Games

Mental dexterity, along with superior hand-eye coordination, depth perception and pattern recognition, are traits enjoyed by most gamers. Gamers also have superior attention spans and information processing abilities. In one study, non-gamers agreed to spend a week playing video games and their visual-perception skills improved markedly. In another study, a researcher found that white-collar professionals who played video games are more confident and more social, giving lie to the perception that gamers are greasy, antisocial loners.

Some negatives must be mentioned. Gamers’ brains are less responsive to images of graphic violence, suggesting that these gamers have become somewhat desensitized to those images. And other research revealed that gamers had patterns of brain activity consistent with aggression while playing.

Video games activate the brain’s reward circuits, recent research has found. But this was true more so in men than in women. Hooked to MRI machines, men and women played a video game. Both women and men performed well, but the men showed more activity in the brain area that is associated with

reward processing. What is more, the men showed greater connectivity between the structures that make up the reward circuit, and the better this connection was in a particular player, the better that player performed. No real connections of this nature occurred in women. Of course, men are more apt to confess to being addicted to video games than are women.

Meditation, music, and video games may seem an unlikely group that boosts brain power and brain sustainability; they are all beneficial. Of course, we don’t want to give too much credibility to gamers, so we’ll tell them that moderation is good in all things. In other words, “Get off that game and get busy with your homework!” And, we all know that music soothes the savage beast. Meditate on that.

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One of the best ways to freshen up the odor of paint is to mask its odor with a more powerful scent. There are few chemicals that can completely mask the odor of fresh paint:

1.      Vanilla extract.Vanilla is a very pleasant odor, and does not discolor most paint types. A few drops of vanilla extract can go a long way. Make sure you don’t pour the whole bottle in, because vanilla extract is rather expensive.

2.      Peppermint oilis a cheaper essential oil that you can use in place of vanilla extract. Peppermint oil has a very pleasant minty odor; because the oil is clear, it will not add a dull shade to a painted surface.

3.      Charcoal is a tried-and-true odor removal technique that can be used to deodorize any powerful chemical odor. It’s an excellent room deodorizer because of its large surface area, and its odor-adsorbent qualities. You can use activated carbon, but ordinary cooking charcoal is usually enough to remove the solvent odors from a freshly-painted room. Here’s how you can use charcoal to remove the paint smell from a room

a)      Lightly crush whole pieces of wood charcoal into small pieces. It’s OK to pulverize the charcoal into fine powder, but the particles may float around and stick to the wet paint.

b)      Place the charcoal pieces inside a bucket together with some pieces of wet paper towels or rags.

c)      Place the bucket in the middle of the room and leave it there overnight. The charcoal will then absorb the odors and fumes from the solvent, leaving you with a fresh-smelling room the next day.

4.      One time-tested way to get rid of solvent fumes from a freshly-painted room is to light a candle or a match to burn out the fumes. A trick used by many veteran house painters is to light a candle in the middle of the room and let it stay there for about three hours. The open flame will burn out the flammable substances in the solvent, like benzene and other hydrocarbons. Candles and matches still pose a potential fire hazard, especially if you’ve just painted an enclosed space. To minimize the risk of fire, place the candle on top of a bowl or a saucer of water to catch the hot wax, and prevent fire from spreading. It may also help to make a small dome out of wire netting to catch candle soot, especially if you’ve painted your ceiling.

5.      If you don’t want to risk a fire hazard by lighting a candle to burn off the fumes, you can simply place a few buckets of water in the middle and around the room to absorb the solvent vapors. While not as effective as a candle, it is a safer option especially if you’re painting a room finished or made with wood. The odors will be removed overnight, although you’ll still have a faint smell of solvent that will linger and will go away in time.

6.      If you’re using traditional latex paints, you may want to tone down on the amount of paint thinner you use. Three-quarters of a small bottle of paint thinner for every three gallons of paint is usually enough to act as a solvent for the paint. The more paint thinner you use, you’ll end up with runny paint with a very strong odor. Go easy on the paint thinner; don’t add more paint thinner than you actually need. Like any ingredient added to a mixture, it’s easier to add more paint thinner than to remove the excess. A nifty trick you can use is to add thinner a splash at a time, and then mix the paint to check its consistency. The paint should be thin enough to spread evenly on the surface, but should be thick enough not for the paint to run.

7.      The many hydrocarbons found in paint and paint thinner can cause diseases and illnesses when inhaled. Prolonged exposure to paint vapors can lead to lung disease, weakened tissues in the lungs and windpipe, and breathing problems. The vapors can also cause you to faint or be hospitalized if you’re particularly sensitive to them. Always wear a breathing mask, or wear a handkerchief or scarf to cover your nose and mouth, to prevent yourself from inhaling paint vapors. A freshly-painted fence or wall may look good, but the smell of paint is hardly appealing. With these hints and tricks to remove paint odors, do-it-yourself house painting does not have to be a toxic and noxious affair. If you liked reading this article, you might as well read how to get rid of paint scratches and how to remove paint from carpet.

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Music has a sublime power over human emotions and is a great benefit to our mental and physical selves. Music seems to be as important to human life, culture, and communication as is language and gesture. Some studies have shown that the motor regions of the brain, responsible for physical coordination and “fight or flight” action, become highly active in response to music. Hence, through the brain, we have the rhythm and the swaying of the body that leads to dance.

“Self-medication” may not be a term you would associate with music, but nearly every one of us has used music to enhance or alter our mood at various times. Children seem to be born with the ability to interpret music. Parents use this innate characteristic to soothe their children with lullabies or nursery rhymes. Medical professionals have known for some time that music can be a powerful tool to relax patients about to undergo procedures such as surgery or childbirth. The analgesic effects (like aspirin or other pain relievers) of music has been seen to continue for sometime after the procedure has ended and the music has stopped, thus lessening soreness. Music has been used to soften or control the behavior of folks with varying degrees of dementia.

Witnessing the actions of those exercising, or on the dance floor, or feeling the effects of worship services, certainly shows us that music can pump us up. Music is very often used to enhance or give reason to any number of social activities, so it is very likely that it brings us together and enhances our feelings of community and cooperation; which is probably very important to our survival, maybe even our superiority, as a species. Perhaps singing “Happy Birthday” is a lot more than just good wishes for the celebrated person. Elevator or shopping mall music does have a profound affect, admit it or not, on our behavioral reactions regarding institutional or commercial venues.

While we must recognize that there are sources of music outside of the human experience, the production and use of music as a tool is uniquely human. Indeed, the hum of insects on a sunny afternoon, bird songs, maybe even the bangings of monkeys on tree-stumps, could arguably be called music, but there is a form of communication, beyond the threshold of the animal accidents of communication, that humans have taken to be their own special art form of rhythm and tone.

The machinations of the human brain are so important to a human’s actual and sensual health. The brain is capable of many things, it is the control center of these machines, our bodies, that carry it around. Meditation, psychosomatic techniques, acupuncture and other therapies depend on the persuasion of the brain to feel good and healthy – music is one of its more powerful tools.

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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 1993, researchers from the University of Minnesota, analyzing the data of more than 35,000 women from the Iowa Womens Health Study, found that vitamin D and calcium in the diet significantly reduced the risk of colon cancer. Women with the lowest vitamin D intake were twice as likely to develop colon cancer. Do not forget, diet supplies only 10 per cent of vitamin D as most people get almost all their vitamin D from sun exposure.

In 1997, researchers in Finland confirmed the Garland brothers’ original findings on vitamin D blood levels and colon cancer. Again, they found that the risk of colorectal cancer was highest in those with the lowest blood levels. Perhaps more ominous for the people of Finland (which is very far north and gets little sunlight) was the very low blood levels of vitamin D they were found to have. The average person in Finland had blood levels of only 13 nanogram per ml, a level now known to be associated with numerous serious illnesses, not just cancer.

Colorectal cancer is the second most common form of cancer in the western world. About 150,000 Americans will be told they have colon cancer this year and 50,000 will die. Your chance of developing colon cancer, sometime in your life, is about 1 in 15. Blacks are particularly affected by colorectal cancer, as well as other cancers, with both a higher incidence and mortality from colon cancer than non-blacks. We believe this is due to a widespread vitamin D deficiency within the black community.

Many factors contribute to causing colon cancer (it is multifactorial) but diet is probably the most important factor. Certain diets promote colon cancer, such as diets high in fat and red meat. Other diets help prevent colon cancer, especially diets high in fiber, calcium, fruits, and vegetables.

If you have colon cancer, please remember that vitamin D is not a cure-all and should never be used as a main treatment for cancer. Your oncologist will prescribe treatment that has proven efficacy and you should carefully follow their advice as the mainstay of treatment. At the same time, you should know that evidence suggests that the proper amount of vitamin D will help you in your fight against colon cancer.

Vitamin D is found in fortified milk, salmon, cod liver oil, sardines, and mackerel. Spending time in the sun also helps the body produce vitamin D.

However, too much vitamin D can cause nausea, constipation, weakness, and other problems, so Lieberman cautioned against overdoing it.

According to the National Institutes of Health, people aged 19-50 need 200 International Units daily whether in either their diet or in supplements for adequate nutrition, while people between 51 and 69 year old should get 400 International Units each day. People 70 and older need 600 International Units of vitamin D each day. The recommended dose of vitamin D for most children and adults is no more than 1,000 International Units for babies under 12 months according from the Institute of Medicine’s Food and Nutrition Board.

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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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