January 2014

Hello, and welcome to this edition edition of my Natural Alternatives Newsletter!

I hope you will enjoy reading this issue.

If you like this e-zine, please do a friend and me a favor and pay it forward!

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“The natural healing force within each one of us is the greatest force in getting well.” ~Hippocrates

I am wishing you and your family a happy and healthy 2014!

IN THIS ISSUE:

1) HOW EXERCISE MAKES YOUR BRAIN GROW

2) HEALTHY RAW SNACKS AND TREATS

3) WOMAN GETS RID OF ASTHMA AND ALLERGIES WITH RAW FOOD DIET

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1) HOW EXERCISE MAKES YOUR BRAIN GROW
by Dr. Mercola

Can exercise help boost your cognitive faculties? Researchers increasingly say the answer is a resounding yes. Recent research reveals that exercise promotes a process now known as neurogenesis, i.e. your brain’s ability to adapt and grow new brain cells, regardless of your age.

As reported by Forbes Magazine:

“Not only has research discovered that we can foster new brain cell growth through exercise, but it may eventually be possible to ‘bottle’ that benefit in prescription medication.

The hippocampus, a brain area closely linked to learning and memory, is especially receptive to new neuron growth in response to endurance exercise. Exactly how and why this happens wasn’t well understood until recently. Research has discovered that exercise stimulates the production of a protein called FNDC5... Over time, FNDC5 stimulates the production of another protein in the brain called Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF), which in turns stimulates the growth of new nerves and synapses... and also preserves the survival of existing brain cells.”

In essence, physical activity produces biochemical changes that strengthen and renew not only your body but also your brain—particularly areas associated with memory and learning.

Researchers Aim to Bottle Exercise Benefits...

Researchers at Harvard Medical School now believe they may be able to recreate the benefits of exercise by putting this protein, FNDC5, into a pill. Bruce Spiegelman, PhD, told Forbes:

 “What is exciting is that a natural substance can be given in the bloodstream that can mimic some of the effects of endurance exercise on the brain.”

They believe such a drug might be useful for those experiencing cognitive decline, including those with early-stage Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. So far, the hypothesis has only been tested on animals however.

In a recent study published in the journal Cell, the researchers successfully increased BDNF in the brains of mice by piggybacking FNDC5 molecules on a virus. According to the authors:

“Perhaps the most exciting result overall is that peripheral delivery of FNDC5 with adenoviral vectors (i.e. a virus) is sufficient to induce central expression of BDNF and other genes with potential neuroprotective functions or those involved in learning and memory.”

Personally, I don’t believe you can fool your body in the long term. It’s important to realize that while a pill may be able to mimic a specific biological effect that exercise produces, such as increasing production of a specific protein or chemical, it will never provide you with ALL the health effects exercise provides, which go far beyond any one specific effect.

Exercise has countless effects on your body -- not only on your muscle fibers and brain, but also on your immune system, your ability to fight cancer and much more. To “mimic” all of these benefits, you would literally need handfuls of different pills -- and even then they could never reproduce the synergistic benefits that exercise has on your body and mind.

For example, besides boosting memory and learning, regular exercise is also one of the “secret weapons” to overcoming depression. It does this quite effectively by normalizing insulin resistance and boosting natural “feel good” hormones and neurotransmitters associated with mood control in your brain.
Earlier this summer, Princeton University researchers reported that physical exercise also helps you combat anxiety by making your brain more resilient during times of stress. 

You Cannot Fool Your Body in the Long Run

While actual physical activity can offer you dozens of health benefits, a pill might only be able to recreate one at a time. Besides losing out on the synergistic benefits, taking a pill versus engaging in physical activity will also cost you financially and physically, as there might be unforeseen adverse side effects of the drug to contend with.

All in all, you’re FAR better off just getting physically active. To get the most out of your workouts, I recommend a comprehensive program that includes Peak Fitness high-intensity exercise, strength training, stretching, and core work.

Non-exercise activity and movement is also critical for optimal health, as explained by Dr. Joan Vernikos. Sitting for extended periods of time is actually an independent risk factor for poor health and premature death. Even if you exercise regularly and are fit, uninterruptedly sitting for a great percentage of the time increases your risk of dying prematurely.

Simply standing up, a minimum of 30 times a day, is a powerful antidote to long periods of sitting and is, surprisingly enough, more effective than walking. The good news is that there are virtually unlimited opportunities for movement throughout the day, from doing housework or gardening, to cooking and even just standing up every 10 minutes.

Your Brain Health Is Directly Related to Exercise

That said, let’s look at some of the beneficial effects exercise can have on your brain. According to John J. Ratey, a psychiatrist who wrote the book Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, there’s overwhelming evidence that exercise produces large cognitive gains and helps fight dementia. Besides triggering the release of BDNF, exercise also protects your brain by:

Increasing production of nerve-protecting compounds, Improving and increasing blood flow to your brain, Improving development and survival of neurons. Altering the way damaging proteins reside inside your brain, which appears to slow the development of Alzheimer's disease. In animal studies, significantly fewer damaging plaques and fewer bits of beta-amyloid peptides, associated with Alzheimer's, were found in mice that exercised.
Ideally, you’d want to make exercise a regular part of your life from as early on as possible. But it’s never too late to start. Even seniors who take up a fitness regimen can improve their cognitive function.
For example, a team at the University of Edinburgh followed more than 600 people, starting at age 70, who kept detailed logs of their daily physical, mental and social habits. Three years later, their brains were imaged for age-related changes, such as brain shrinkage and damage to the white matter, which is considered the "wiring" of your brain's communication system. Not surprisingly, seniors who engaged in the most physical exercise showed the least amount of brain shrinkage.

Similarly, Kirk Erickson, PhD of the University of Pittsburgh, found that adults aged 60 to 80 walking moderately (just 30 to 45 minutes, three days per week for one year) increased the volume of their hippocampus by two percent. The hippocampus is a region of your brain important for memory. Erickson told WebMD:

"Generally in this age range, people are losing one to three percent per year of hippocampal volume. The changes in the size of the hippocampus were correlated with changes in the blood levels of the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)."

Erickson also found higher fitness levels associated with a larger prefrontal cortex. He called exercise "one of the most promising nonpharmaceutical treatments to improve brain health." The most important message from studies like these is that mental decline is NOT inevitable! And exercise is as good for your brain as it is for the rest of your body.

Fasting Can Also Trigger Brain Rejuvenation

Growing evidence indicates that fasting and exercise trigger similar genes and growth factors that recycle and rejuvenate both your brain and muscle tissues. These growth factors include BDNF, as previously mentioned, as well as muscle regulatory factors, or MRFs. These growth factors signal brain stem cells and muscle satellite cells to convert into new neurons and new muscle cells respectively.

Interestingly enough, BDNF also expresses itself in the neuro-muscular system where it protects neuro-motors from degradation. (The neuromotor is the most critical element in your muscle. Without the neuromotor, your muscle is like an engine without ignition. Neuro-motor degradation is part of the process that explains age-related muscle atrophy.)

So BDNF is actively involved in both your muscles and your brain, and this cross-connection, if you will, appears to be a major part of the explanation for why a physical workout can have such a beneficial impact on your brain tissue. It, quite literally, helps prevent, and even reverse, brain decay as much as it prevents and reverses age-related muscle decay.

This also helps explain why exercise while fasting can help keep your brain, neuro-motors, and muscle fibers biologically young. For more information on how to incorporate intermittent fasting into your exercise routine for maximum benefits, please see this previous article. Sugar suppresses BDNF, which also helps explain why a low-sugar diet in combination with regular exercise is so effective for protecting memory and staving off depression.

For Total Body-Mind Health, Adopt a Well-Rounded Fitness Program

Ideally, you’ll want to strive for a varied and well-rounded fitness program that incorporates a wide variety of exercises. As a general rule, as soon as an exercise becomes easy to complete, you need to increase the intensity and/or try another exercise to keep challenging your body.

Additionally, as I mentioned earlier, more recent research has really turned the spotlight on the importance of non-exercise movement. Truly, the key to health is to remain as active as you can, all day long, but that doesn’t mean you train like an athlete for hours a day. It simply means, whenever you have a chance to move and stretch your body in the course of going about your day—do it!

And the more frequently, the better. Everything from standing up, to reaching for an item on a tall shelf, to weeding in your garden and walking from one room to another, and even doing dishes count. In short, it’s physical movement, period, that promotes health benefits by the interaction your body gets with gravity. To learn more about this important aspect of health, please see this previous article. That said, I recommend incorporating the following types of exercise into your program:

1. Interval (Anaerobic) Training: This is when you alternate short bursts of high-intensity exercise with gentle recovery periods.
2. Strength Training: Rounding out your exercise program with a 1-set strength training routine will ensure that you're really optimizing the possible health benefits of a regular exercise program. You can also "up" the intensity by slowing it down. For more information about using super slow weight training as a form of high intensity interval exercise, please see my interview with Dr. Doug McGuff.
3. Stand Up Every 10 Minutes. This is not intuitively obvious but emerging evidence clearly shows that even highly fit people who exceed the expert exercise recommendations are headed for premature death if they sit for long periods of time. My interview with NASA scientist Dr. Joan Vernikos goes into great detail why this is so, and what you can do about it. Personally, I usually set my timer for 10 minutes while sitting, and then stand up and do one legged squats, jump squats or lunges when the timer goes off. The key is that you need to be moving all day long, even in non-exercise activities.
4. Core Exercises: Your body has 29 core muscles located mostly in your back, abdomen and pelvis. This group of muscles provides the foundation for movement throughout your entire body, and strengthening them can help protect and support your back, make your spine and body less prone to injury and help you gain greater balance and stability.

Foundation Training, created by Dr. Eric Goodman, is an integral first step of a larger program he calls “Modern Moveology,” which consists of a catalog of exercises. Postural exercises such as those taught in Foundation Training are critical not just for properly supporting your frame during daily activities, they also retrain your body so you can safely perform high-intensity exercises without risking injury.

Exercise programs like Pilates and yoga are also great for strengthening your core muscles, as are specific exercises you can learn from a personal trainer.

5. Stretching: My favorite type of stretching is active isolated stretches developed by Aaron Mattes. With Active Isolated Stretching, you hold each stretch for only two seconds, which works with your body's natural physiological makeup to improve circulation and increase the elasticity of muscle joints. This technique also allows your body to repair itself and prepare for daily activity. You can also use devices like the Power Plate to help you stretch.
Source:mercola.com

2) HEALTHY RAW SNACKS AND TREATS

I just finished checking out a book of so called healthy snack recipes. The author, Carolyn Hansen, says that her little book 100 Healthy Raw Snacks And Treats contains only recipes that are prepared with "raw and living" ingredients. Well, that certainly seems to be true. None of the recipes requires any cooking as part of the recipe preparation and the ingredients are almost 100 percent derived from fruits, nuts, honey, and similar food stuffs that she cleverly substitutes for the ingredients she has banned from her kitchen, like sugar, flour, eggs and butter. She calls her book: 100 Healthy Raw Snacks And Treats

Naturally I was suspicious of her claims that the ingredients she uses would produce snacks that are not only healthy for you, but also taste great too. But I was wrong. The other good piece of news is that these recipes are also very simple in design. Mostly they require that you gather a few ingredients together and toss them into the blender. Even I can do that.

I guess if I had stopped and thought about it for a minute or two I would not have been surprised to find that these recipes really do produce snacks that get your mouth watering. After all, if you are going to be combining ingredients like dates, agave oil, nuts, carob and coconut flesh you ought not be too shocked that the final assembled snack might actually taste quite good.

Well, there are literally dozens of different healthy ingredient's that Carolyn uses in imaginative ways to come up with her surprising recipes. If you are a snack lover like I am, I recommend you take a moment to check out her web page for her book.

100 Healthy Raw Snacks And Treats has more than enough recipes in it (like Cherry Choco Cookie, Chocolate Gogi Lemon Bar, and Coconut Fudge Bars) to keep yourself and your family snacking for some time to come, and you won't have to feel the least bit guilty for doing so. These recipes really are good for you - and low carb too!

3) WOMAN GETS RID OF ASTHMA AND ALLERGIES WITH RAW FOOD DIET
by Antonia

When Jenni, who worked in a factory in her late teens, was convinced that she was having a heart attack, doctors informed her that she had developed asthma. Fortunately, her heart was not in trouble, but her ability to breathe easy was. Turns out, the dusty conditions and poor air quality at her workplace contributed to her diagnosis.

Determined to embark on a healthier lifestyle, she quit her job and started running for exercise. However, her asthma symptoms not only persisted but worsened. When doctors performed a bevy of tests on her, they said she had exercise-induced asthma.

Raw Foods, Gluten and Dairy-free Diet Turned Life Around

Frustrated with the tests, hospitals, inhalers and constant chest tightness, Jenni sought the advice of a chiropractor who focused on healing through proper nutrition. He advised her to go raw and also to adhere to a gluten and dairy-free lifestyle.

According to Jenni, who is also known as Raw Jenni on her YouTube channel and Facebook page, she followed his advice and the results were "breath returning, instead of breath-taking." She says that in a very short time after starting the healthier diet which consisted of raw foods, her asthma and allergy symptoms were gone.

Ever since, Jenni stayed on track with this lifestyle. Now approaching age 40, she says, "I rarely get a cold. . . I don't have tight chest issues, I don't have difficulty breathing." In 2012, she even adopted the 80-10-10 diet (80% carbs, 10% protein, 10% fat daily) and the 30 Bananas a Day diet and continues to feel great.

Additional Health Benefits of Going Raw

In addition to getting rid of her asthma and allergies, Jenni also says her raw food lifestyle has helped eliminate other health problems in her life, including arthritis and constipation (she used to be constipated up to four days after eating meat, but she says this no longer happens).

According to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (AAAI), about one in 12 people, or 25 million people in the U.S., have asthma, costing an average of $3,300 annually in hospital visits, missed school/work days and early deaths.
Source: http://www.naturalnews.com/043024_raw_food_diet_asthma_allergies.html

PREVENTION IS BETTER THAN CURE!

Thank you for reading.

Livia
https://www.natural-health-and-healing.com
Brampton, Ontario, Canada

P.S. If you have a comment or suggestion, just reply to this e-mail. Your feedback is important to me.

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This newsletter is for educational purposes only. It is your right to educate yourself in health and medical knowledge, to seek helpful information and make use of it for your own benefit, and for that of your family. You are the one responsible for your health. You must educate yourself in order to make decisions in all health matters. My views and advices are not intended to be a substitute for conventional medicine, but simply a help you to make educated changes in order to help your body heal itself. If you have a medical condition or concern you should consult your physician.