Healthy Aging: Body, Mind & Spirit

Wine and chocolate are good for your brain!

Dark chocolate and red wine contain epicatechin, a flavonol which may protect nerve cells from damage.   So stock up for Valentine’s Day!

To learn more about this type of brain research, go here!

Is laughter the best medicine?

Go learn more about all the great ways laughter can improve your health!

Love does conquer all when it comes to health and healing

New research shows that lots of love and social support during healing does improve your chances of survival.   And that makes perfect sense when you realize all of the great reasons you have to get better!   I know when I had my bike accident with a brain injury, fractured ribs, and abrasions, my husband’s love and attentiveness made all the difference!

Love and support lowers your stress levels so your body can focus all of it s energy on ramping up its immune response which leads to healing.

Watch this ABC News report to learn more.   Don’t miss my new book:  How to Believe in LOVE again. View a cute video about it here! Or view a news interview with me here.

Learn how to regain your faith in love so you can start over and really find love this time!   I did and it feels wonderful!

Take it easy on those NSAID painkillers!

According to a new study which just came out in the British Medical Journal, NSAID (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) can increase the risk of death from stroke or heart attack by between two and four times, compared with a placebo.   Peter Juni, professor of clinical epidemiology at the University of Bern, Switzerland, told the BBC:  “For elderly (people) with musculoskeletal pain there must be extreme care when prescribing or taking these drugs.”

But he stressed that the findings did not relate to people taking anti-inflammatories now and again for symptoms such as period pain or sports injuries.

New electronic products effective in treating severe depression, anxiety, SAD and insomnia

Physicians have known for 2,000 years that electricity could help troubled minds, and today there’s a growing consensus among neuroscientists that many psychiatric illnesses stem from problems in the brain’s electrical circuits.   “In psychiatry, we have gone from ‘It’s all about your mother’ a la Freud to the concept of chemical imbalances in the brain to the current focus on dysfunctional brain circuits and genetics,” says Emory University neurologist Helen Mayberg, a pioneer in brain imaging and depression.

Take for example electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), the decades-old practice of using electric current to trigger a brief brain seizure.   “The reason we still have ECT is that we need it.  It’s the most rapidly acting and effective approved treatment we have for major depression,” says Duke University Medical Center psychiatry chairwoman Sarah Lisanby, one of many who fear that suicides might rise if ECT were unavailable.    Once known for blunting personalities and breaking bones, ECT has become much safer in recent years.   Patients now undergo general anesthesia, the current is far more controlled and it is often applied only on one side to minimize memory loss.  More than 100,000 ECT procedures are conducted annually in the U.S.

Meanwhile, another older technology is getting new attention.  Cranial Electrotherapy Stimulation (CES), which sends very weak micro-currents into the brain, was widely used in Russia in the 1940s as a sleep aid.   Several battery-powered CES devices won FDA clearance to treat depression, anxiety and insomnia in the 1980s and 1990s, largely because they were similar to other grandfathered devices, and some have been quietly selling to home users ever since.

Last fall, a newcomer in the field, Fisher Wallace Laboratories, launched a YouTube campaign lampooning the side effects of anti-depressants and promoting its cranial stimulator as a practical alternative.   Powered by two AA batteries, the device sends 1 milliampere of alternating current—1/1,000th the voltage used in ECT—through a patient’s head via small, wet pads placed at the temples.   The company recommends using the device 20 minutes once or twice a day for 30 to 45 days, and several times a week afterward.

The company, founded by electronics entrepreneur Charles Avery Fisher and Martin Wallace in 2007, says the device works by boosting endorphins, serotonin and dopamine and reducing cortisol

Does it work?   Columbia University psychiatrist Richard P. Brown says he has used the device with 400 severely depressed patients and that more than 70% found relief—about twice the rate of anti-depressants.   “I’m seeing some patients smile for the first time in 20 years,” says Dr. Brown, who, like other doctors interviewed for this column, have no financial ties to the company.

Much of the clinical data supporting CES devices is outdated; a few small placebo-controlled trials of the Fisher Wallace device are planned at Harvard, Columbia and the University of Toledo.

“I think a lot of people who use it will tell you it can be very helpful, but I am looking forward to the double-blind placebo-controlled trials,” says Andres San Martin, a Columbia psycho-pharmacologist who says about 50 of his patients use the device, along with antidepressants.   Some use it just half the year for Seasonal Affective Disorder, while others have found it helpful in quitting smoking or for insomnia caused by menopause.

This post was created with excerpts from this Wall Street Journal article dated January 11, 2011.

News about H1N1 and flu immunity

New findings show, those who recover from swine flu may be left with an extraordinary natural ability to fight off other flu viruses.

Learn more here!

Success at last!

As luck would have it, the publication of my new book:  How To Believe in Love Again fell on the anniversary of me finally finding love myself.

Six years ago, at the beginning of 2005, kismet played an interesting trick on me.   At age 49, when I felt that love was not in my future, and certainly not in my immediate future, I bumped into my soul mate.   We’ve been enjoying that amazing twist of fate ever since!

Trying to make sense of the craziness of life is silly.   It is best to just enjoy the ride when things turn out surprisingly good for a change.

I have learned that a powerful love like ours can provide powerful inspiration.   Mike inspires me to be a better person, to encourage others who feel caught up in their own version of a midlife crisis, and to help others believe in love again!

Most of us start out believing that love can transform our lonely existence into something better. When that doesn’t work out as hoped for or planned, do we dare dream again?

I say YES!   That is exactly what my new book is about.

View a short video montage about this book!

Go buy your own copy over at Amazon!

Stress: Portrait of a Killer

Just watched this AMAZING documentary from National Geographic (2008) on what we have learned in the past 20 years about stress and its impact on our lives.

What I learned:

Stress hormones evolved to help us survive by reacting quickly to life-threatening situations:  “When you’re running for your life, basics are all that matter.”   The problem today is that we human beings cannot seem to find our off switch and so our brains are constantly marinating in these stress hormones.   By never turning off these hormones, eventually the stress response is more damaging to our brains and bodies than the stressor itself.

The lower you are in the hierarchy of any group or organization, the higher your stress levels and the more likely you are to suffer stress related illnesses.   This was studied for years in the British Civil Service (called the “Whitehall Study”) where all members have equal access to health services, stable jobs and no industrial exposures to toxic substances.  Your position in the hierarchy also influences how much weight you put on and how it is distributed on your body.   Lower level employees tend to put more weight on around the middle, a kind of fat which produces different hormones which are more detrimental to your health.

The more subordinate you are, the fewer dopamine receptors you have in your brain to produce a feeling of well-being and pleasure.   In rats it was proven that the higher the stress levels in your life, the more plaque build-up in your arteries.

High stress levels can shut down your natural immune response.   Chronic stress kills brain cells, especially in the hypocampus, the center of learning and memory formation in the brain.

Mothers who were under extreme stress with a baby in vitro produce children who exhibit physical and emotional vulnerabilities decades later like depression and other psychological problems.   This was learned by interviewing people in their 60s who were in vitro during the Dutch Hunger Winter of 1944.

New research on telomeres shows that living under chronic stress conditions does shorten your life, but stress management techniques like connecting with caring, compassionate others can reduce stress and help you live longer.

The problem with our society is that we tend to look up to those who can do five things at once, rather than admiring those who have learned how to live a more balanced and serene life.

The Social Cure for Alzheimer’s

“Scientists and health professionals now believe that the more socially active people are, the less likely they will experience signs of dementia, including the devastating cognitive impairments associated with Alzheimer’s pathology.   In fact, maintaining a large social fabric may even act as a neuro-protective.”

Learn more here.

The Brain and Language Learning

“If a more complicated entity than the human brain exists on Earth, it has succeeded in maintaining its confidential nature. Not only is the brain the most multifaceted organ in the human body, and composed of the greatest number of diverse cell types in a single organ, it is also the most adaptable and complex single object in the known universe.

Prior to the 1990s, most information gathered about the human brain came largely by way of misfortune—brain-injured patients or disease. The balance of our knowledge was speculative or intelligent deductive conclusions. Brain injuries and postoperative behavior changes gave us a peek into the nature of processes such as movement, memory and language.”

Here’s a fascinating new article on how we learn language.