Using Resveratrol For Chronic Colitis

Chronic colitis is a difficult and painful bowel disease.

Recent studies looked at the benefits of resveratrol’s anti-inflammatory effects.

In a study with mice with severe colitis, the ones given the equivalent of 30 mg of resveratrol experienced reduction of inflammation and even reduced mortality by 40% when compared with a control group that had colitis and did not receive resveratrol.

Resveratrol has also been shown to have an anti-aging benefits.

So…if you have colitis, you might want to consider taking resveratrol for a couple of months. As they say, it can’t hurt.

Using Music To Help You Exercise Harder

A recent study in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports found that music can get you to exercise harder.

What the researchers did was have 12 college students ride a stationary bike while listening to music that had been pre-selected for them. During one session, the songs ran at their normal tempo. During other sessions, the tempo was slowed by 10% or increased by 10%.

When the tempo was slowed, the students’ pedaling slowed, their heart rates fell and their mileage dropped. When the tempo was increased, they produced more power with each pedal stroke, increased their pedaling rate and their heart rates rose.

So…get some high-energy music and exercise faster and better.

To read other research on music, go to http://www.musicianbrain.com/#index 

This is research reported at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess.

Working At A Computer Causing You Eye Strain?

With all the time we are spending at computers, iPads, iPhones, Androids and e-readers, more of us are getting eye fatigue and eye strain.

While there may not be any long-term damage from long hours looking at screens, it can hurt and be bothersome to have eye fatigue and headaches.

Gamers seem to have found an answer. It’s wearing yellow-tinted glasses which cut down on glare and general fatigue. So…yellow eye glasses here I come.

Federal Government To Purchase Environmentally Friendly Products

By an Executive Order, the government is now required to purchase environmentally friendly products.

According to the order, 95% of new government contracts must contain recycled content and sustainable materials.

By fiscal year 2015, the goal is to increase the quantity of sustainable products from 41,000 to 250,000. Hurray for the environment!

That’s quite a commitment. This Executive Order should have a major impact on the development of new sustainable products.

Speaking of commitments to the environment, there is a website that rates companies by their commitment to fighting global warming. There are 22 criteria that the organization uses.

The top six companies in the household products area are L‘Oreal, Proctor & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, Kimberly-Clark, Clorox and Avon.

Congrats to those companies. To read about the scores in many industries, go to http://www.climatecounts.org/scorecard_overview.php.

Acupuncture In The West

Many people, including myself, remember that when James Reston was in China in 1971 and he had to have emergency surgery, acupuncture was used as the anesthetic.

He wrote about it in The New York Times and we became aware of acupuncture as something newly-found in our western world.

Well, it turns out that the first practitioner in this country was a Philadelphia physician, Franklin Bache, and this was back in 1825! Bache published a study in a prestigious medical journal about treating a dozen prisoners suffering from chronic pain, neuralgia, rheumatism and other disorders.

The first report in Europe was even earlier. In 1683, Dr. Willem Ten Rhijne, who worked for the Dutch East India Company wrote a 20-page essay titled “De Acupunctura.”

So…start thinking about how long we’ve actually known about the value and importance of acupuncture instead of considering it as something newly rediscovered.

Think About Summer Sun…Now, Think Of No Damage From The Sun

Two things about this sentence stand out. One, it’s March and it’s still cold, and two, too much such can cause damage to the skin. Well, it being March is true, but sun damage may become a thing of the past.

It turns out humans lack a key enzyme found in many animals and plants that reverses severe sun damage. Research published in Nature reported that scientists were able to observe the enzyme photolyase inject a single electron and proton into an injured strand of DNA.

These subatomic particles healed the damage in a fraction of a second. After the repair is done the electron and the proton are automatically ejected out of the DNA and back into the photolyase enzyme so it’s ready to use again.

For readers who are old enough to remember it, the statement comes to mind of…”who was that masked man” or in this case…”what was that enzyme.”

We’re Not The Only Ones With Social Networks -Think Plants

Botanists have tried to figure out why some trees don’t grow well near members of their own species while others do.

It turns out that newly sprouted seeds respond to soil-dwelling microbes near the tree’s roots. These microbes can harm a tree’s seedlings so the seeds need to get away from the mother tree.

This has caused trees to evolve methods of dispersal of their seeds by using fruits that get eaten and seeds that get blown on the wind.

There are also plants that fare better when they are surrounded by their own kind. Sagebrush, for example, sends out airborne chemical cues from its foliage and branches that play a vital role in protecting the plants against insect attack.

One study showed that two genetically identical sagebrush plants grown next to each other were more effective fending off caterpillars and grasshoppers than two unrelated plants.

So…the notion of “friending” started a long time ago.

The Power Of A Pencil To Reduce Test Anxiety?

You might be saying, “Uh,
how can a pencil reduce test anxiety?”

Well, a study reported in the journal Science found that students who spend 10 minutes before an exam writing about their thoughts and feelings can free up brainpower by focusing on their worries and fears.

The researchers found that students who were prone to test anxiety improved their test grades by nearly one grade point simply by writing about their feelings before the exam. So…anyone still own a pencil sharpener?

Feedback From Readers on The Teplitz Report

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Somehow one of my monthly Teplitz Report readers received an erroneously sent email message from us confirming that he had asked to be deleted from the list. It was fun and gratifying for me to read his response. He wrote “I never sent a message asking to be deleted. I LOVE YOUR E-ZINE.  It is one of just a few I read absolutely every month! You are one of my deepest inspirations…I would be greatly upset to be removed from your wonderful publication.”

Thanks, BJ, Dorothea and Bart. It’s feedback like yours that inspires me to continue doing these monthly reports!

The Least Productive Time Of The Day

It’s official – the lease productive time of the day for workers is the 4 to 6 pm time period (big surprise, huh?). 

In a survey of 1,000 managers by Accountemps, they found that 37% of the managers said the 4 to 6 time was the least productive followed by 28% saying it was the 2 to 4 time slot.

The most productive time period is 10 to noon. So what do most people do in the afternoon…they go get a cup of coffee or a caffeinated soda.

Let me suggest a couple of alternative options. The first is to take a five to ten minute meditation break. Since you quickly go to a deeper state than the deepest state of sleep, it’s a great way to re-energize yourself.

The second is to change the office lighting to full spectrum fluorescent tubes. The research that we’ve done shows that late afternoon fatigue disappears and late afternoon productivity soars.

To learn how to meditate, you can purchase my new book, Managing Your Stress In Difficult Times: Succeeding In Times of Change on Amazon.

For lighting information - bulbs, tubes and Videos about Energy Lighting - you can go to www.jtv-energy-lights.com  for videos and details.

Sending Thoughts Can Affect The Growth Of Lettuce Seeds

If you've been at one of my seminars, you may have seen me demonstrate how the sending of thoughts can impact another person.

An experiment was done by Lynne McTaggart at a seminar she was conducting for 100 people that gives further validation to the sending of thoughts. In her experiment McTaggart, who was conducting the seminar in New York State, had the attendees focus on seeds which were in England with the following intention in mind: "My intention is for all seeds in our target group to sprout at least three inches by the fourth day of growing."

The researcher found that the focused intention caused significantly larger seed growth overall in both the intention seeds and even in the control seeds as compared to earlier experiments where the intention was not as specific.

To me, this means it's important that you are clear about what you are focusing on. The old adage applies - be careful what you pray for, you might just get it.

Women Are More At Risk For Concussions Than Men

While pro football players having concussions has been in the news recently, women may be more at risk than men. It turns out that women have smaller frames and neck muscles than men, which may make them more prone to concussions.

In addition, once a woman is injured, the effects can be much more severe. A 2010 study found that women took longer than men to recover from concussions. This was especially true for women of child-bearing age. Women also performed worse than men with comparable injuries on neurological tests.

Part of the problem is that women may ignore their concussion’s symptoms thinking things will get better. Here are the symptoms of a concussion:

Headaches
Dizziness
Trouble concentrating
Feeling over-stimulated by lights and noises
Memory loss, especially of the accident itself

So if you’re a woman and have had an accident, if you have one of these symptoms, then get yourself to a doctor.

(Reported Prevention January 2011)

The Fountain Of Youth May Be In Your Nose

A study published by the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation discovered that beauty and the perception of being younger may not be in the eyes of the beholder but in the nose of the beholder.

The researchers found that women wearing a grapefruity fragrance were perceived by as being an average of 6 years younger!

Two fragrances that have this grapefruity scent are Eau de Parfum Light Citrus Floral by Aubrey Organics or Trillium fragrances.

Or you can just go out and buy a grapefruit (probably pink), cut and squeeze!

Coronary Disease And L-arginine

Since I’m writing about the heart, let’s explore another way to heal it. A study published in the Journal of Cardiovascular Pharmacology found that the long-term use of L-arginine supplements reduced the risk to patients with multiple cardiovascular risk factors.

L-arginine is an amino acid that is the precursor to nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is a gas released by the body to help promote healthy blood vessel flexibility and dilation. The improvement noted in the study was associated with a decrease in systolic blood pressure, peripheral vascular resistance as well as a decrease in aldosterone levels.

The only time not to use L-arginine is if you are experiencing an active herpes infection.

So… you now have two ways to protect your heart in one post!

Fighting Coronary Artery Disease With Cocoa

A study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that cocoa flavonols could improve poor blood vessel function in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD). Poor blood vessel function is recognized as an early stage in the development of CAD.

The researchers found that daily cocoa flavonal consumption more than doubled the number of specialized cells that repair blood vessels and maintain the vessels, which keeps the vessels healthy.

Increasing these cells decreases the risk of death from CAD with no side effects! So… dark chocolate cocoa, anyone?

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