The 11 Health Benefits of Whisky

The 11 Health Benefits of Whisky Whisky is one of the most popular alcoholic beverages in the world, thanks to its distinct flavors and the fact that it’s the least likely to give you a hangover. Add to that the fact that whisky also holds several medicinal property, and you got yourself an obvious success story. Please remember that whisky is alcoholic, so drink it responsibly and as always - in moderation.

A Brief History The first confirmed accounts of whisky distillation are from the early 15th century, when the Irish and Scottish distilled it, calling it “Aqua Vitae” (Water of Life / Lively Water), for medicinal properties.  During the American Revolution, it was used as currency and George Washington even owned a distillery in Mount Vernon. In the Prohibition era (1920-1933), whisky was the only alcohol permitted for consumption with a doctor’s prescription.

The Health Benefits of Whiskey: 1. Memory Boost: Whisky contains antioxidants that help improve the health of the brain, additionally, alcohol boosts blood circulation, both of which contribute to your memory. In addition, the Ethanol in whisky helps your neurons function properly, which also aids with memory. 2. Stress Relief: In moderation, whisky can reduce stress and calm the nerves. The combination of slowing down  brain activity and increased circulation, which helps provide the body with oxygenated blood, are essential for achieving calmness. 3. Fight Weight Gain: Compared to its counterparts, whisky is a low-calorie alcohol, free of fat and cholesterol. If you’re on a diet but still want a drink – it’s your best choice. 4. Reduce the Risk of a Stroke: Whisky prevents cholesterol from accumulating in the cardiovascular system and can help remove excess cholesterol from the body. It also relaxes the walls of the arteries, reducing the risk of obstruction. All of these factors help reduce the risk of stroke considerably. 5. Reduce the Risk of Cancer: Whisky contains an antioxidant called ‘ellagic acid’, an acid that stops DNA from coming in contact with cancer-causing compounds, such as nitrosamines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.. It is also said to help protect the body from damage during chemotherapy. 6. Helps with Digestion: For centuries, whisky was considered a digestive aid, drunk after a heavy meal. Whisky's composition and high alcohol percentage also makes it an effective appetite suppressant. 7. Live Longer: The antioxidants in whisky help fight free radicals – the number one cause of aging, as well as prevent various diseases. This double-whammy helps your body live a longer, healthier life. 8. Diabetic-Friendly: Containing zero carbs, it won’t affect blood sugar levels, making it the number one choice for diabetics. 9. Improve Your Heart's Health: Drinking whisky actually helps your heart stay healthy, similarly to red wine. It reduces the risk of blood clots, thus it can prevent strokes and heart attacks. The antioxidants in the whisky also inhibits the oxidation of low density lipoprotein - a main factor in heart disease. 10. Improve the Health of Your Brain: A 2003 study found that, thanks to the antioxidant qualities of the ellagic acid, moderate consumption of whisky reduces the risk of Alzheimer’s and dementia, as well as improve cognitive functions. Basically, one drink a day will keep the doctor away. 11. Prevent & Treat Cold and Flu: Whisky is known for its positive effects towards allergies and colds. It’s an effective cough syrup for people suffering from an itchy throat, and the alcohol helps kill bacteria in the throat. The best results are achieved by adding a little bit of whisky to a cup of hot water and lemon.

Neuroscientists reverse memories’ emotional associations

Neuroscientists reverse memories’ emotional associations

Thu, 08/28/2014 - 8:27am

Anne Trafton, MIT News Office

This image depicts the injection sites and the expression of the viral constructs in the two areas of the brain studied: the Dentate Gyrus of the hippocampus (middle) and the Basolateral Amygdala (bottom corners). Image courtesy of the researchers

Most memories have some kind of emotion associated with them.

A new study from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) neuroscientists reveals the brain circuit that controls how memories become linked with positive or negative emotions. Furthermore, the researchers found that they could reverse the emotional association of specific memories by manipulating brain cells with optogenetics—a technique that uses light to control neuron activity.

The findings, described in Nature, demonstrated that a neuronal circuit connecting the hippocampus and the amygdala plays a critical role in associating emotion with memory. This circuit could offer a target for new drugs to help treat conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, the researchers say.

“In the future, one may be able to develop methods that help people to remember positive memories more strongly than negative ones,” says Susumu Tonegawa, the Picower Professor of Biology and Neuroscience, director of the RIKEN-MIT Center for Neural Circuit Genetics at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, and senior author of the paper. 

The paper’s lead authors are Roger Redondo, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute postdoctoral researcher at MIT, and Joshua Kim, a graduate student in MIT’s Dept. of Biology.

Shifting memories

Memories are made of many elements, which are stored in different parts of the brain. A memory’s context, including information about the location where the event took place, is stored in cells of the hippocampus, while emotions linked to that memory are found in the amygdala.

Previous research has shown that many aspects of memory, including emotional associations, are malleable. Psychotherapists have taken advantage of this to help patients suffering from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, but the neural circuitry underlying such malleability is not known.

In this study, the researchers set out to explore that malleability with an experimental technique they recently devised that allows them to tag neurons that encode a specific memory, or engram. To achieve this, they label hippocampal cells that are turned on during memory formation with a light-sensitive protein called channelrhodopsin. From that point on, any time those cells are activated with light, the mice recall the memory encoded by that group of cells.

Last year, Tonegawa’s laboratory used this technique to implant, or “incept,” false memories in mice by reactivating engrams while the mice were undergoing a different experience. In the new study, the researchers wanted to investigate how the context of a memory becomes linked to a particular emotion. First, they used their engram-labeling protocol to tag neurons associated with either a rewarding experience (for male mice, socializing with a female mouse) or an unpleasant experience (a mild electrical shock). In this first set of experiments, the researchers labeled memory cells in a part of the hippocampus called the dentate gyrus.

Two days later, the mice were placed into a large rectangular arena. For three minutes, the researchers recorded which half of the arena the mice naturally preferred. Then, for mice that had received the fear conditioning, the researchers stimulated the labeled cells in the dentate gyrus with light whenever the mice went into the preferred side. The mice soon began avoiding that area, showing that the reactivation of the fear memory had been successful.

The reward memory could also be reactivated: For mice that were reward-conditioned, the researchers stimulated them with light whenever they went into the less-preferred side, and they soon began to spend more time there, recalling the pleasant memory.

A couple of days later, the researchers tried to reverse the mice’s emotional responses.

For male mice that had originally received the fear conditioning, they activated the memory cells involved in the fear memory with light for 12 mis while the mice spent time with female mice. For mice that had initially received the reward conditioning, memory cells were activated while they received mild electric shocks.

Next, the researchers again put the mice in the large two-zone arena. This time, the mice that had originally been conditioned with fear and had avoided the side of the chamber where their hippocampal cells were activated by the laser now began to spend more time in that side when their hippocampal cells were activated, showing that a pleasant association had replaced the fearful one. This reversal also took place in mice that went from reward to fear conditioning.

Altered connections

The researchers then performed the same set of experiments but labeled memory cells in the basolateral amygdala, a region involved in processing emotions. This time, they could not induce a switch by reactivating those cells—the mice continued to behave as they had been conditioned when the memory cells were first labeled.

This suggests that emotional associations, also called valences, are encoded somewhere in the neural circuitry that connects the dentate gyrus to the amygdala, the researchers say. A fearful experience strengthens the connections between the hippocampal engram and fear-encoding cells in the amygdala, but that connection can be weakened later on as new connections are formed between the hippocampus and amygdala cells that encode positive associations.

“That plasticity of the connection between the hippocampus and the amygdala plays a crucial role in the switching of the valence of the memory,” Tonegawa says.

These results indicate that while dentate gyrus cells are neutral with respect to emotion, individual amygdala cells are precommitted to encode fear or reward memory. The researchers are now trying to discover molecular signatures of these two types of amygdala cells. They are also investigating whether reactivating pleasant memories has any effect on depression, in hopes of identifying new targets for drugs to treat depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

How many neurons make a human brain

How many neurons make a human brain? 

Billions fewer than we thought

A technique that involves turning the brain into 'soup' and counting the nuclei of nerve cells reveals that we're 14bn short

Even the lower estimate of brain neuron numbers puts us head and shoulders above other primates. 

Photograph: Sprint/Corbis

How many neurons are there in the human brain? It was a question that scientists thought they had nailed – and the answer was 100bn (give or take). If you went looking you would find that figure repeated widely in the neuroscience literature and beyond.

But when a researcher in Brazil called Dr Suzana Herculano-Houzel started digging, she discovered that no one in the field could actually remember where the 100bn figure had come from – let alone how it had been arrived at. So she set about discovering the true figure (HT to the excellent Nature neuroscience podcast NeuroPod).

This involved a remarkable – and to some I suspect unsettling – piece of research. Her team took the brains of four adult men, aged 50, 51, 54 and 71, and turned them into what she describes as "brain soup". All of the men had died of non-neurological diseases and had donated their brains for research.

"It took me a couple of months to make peace with this idea that I was going to take somebody's brain or an animal's brain and turn it into soup," she told Nature. "But the thing is we have been learning so much by this method we've been getting numbers that people had not been able to get … It's really just one more method that's not any worse than just chopping your brain into little pieces."

She told me that so far, she has only looked at four brains, all of them from men.

The method involves dissolving the cell membranes of cells within the brain and creating a homogeneous mixture of the whole lot. You then take a sample of the soup, count the number of cell nuclei belonging to neurons (as opposed to other cells in the brain such as glia) and then scale up to get the overall number. The great advantage of this method is that unlike counting the number of neurons in one part of the brain and then extrapolating from that, it gets over the problem that different brain regions may have more or less densely packed neurons.

So what is the number?

"We found that on average the human brain has 86bn neurons. And not one [of the brains] that we looked at so far has the 100bn. Even though it may sound like a small difference the 14bn neurons amount to pretty much the number of neurons that a baboon brain has or almost half the number of neurons in the gorilla brain. So that's a pretty large difference actually."

This leads to the bigger question of what makes human brains special.

Herculano-Houzel says our brains are rather standard primate models, except for the fact that we have a massive number of brain cells compared to other species. That is energetically very expensive to maintain. She estimates that 20% to 25% of our total energy budget goes on running our brains, a figure which she describes as "extraordinary". How do we manage it?

"We can afford such a huge number of neurons. That difference might actually be related to a shift to a cooked food diet and that allows us to have far more calories per day. And with that we can afford a much larger number of neurons that other animals probably could not."

That is a reference to Prof Richard Wrangham's ideas about how the invention of cooking had a crucial impact on human evolution.

There is a beautiful, if slightly grisly, elegance to Herculano-Houzel's method and her work embodies the constantly questioning attitude that is what makes science so powerful. But what I find interesting is how this 100bn neuron myth became lodged in the collective scientific consciousness in the first place, and why it continued to propagate.

Does anyone have any insight into where it came from?

Top 10 Most Damaging Brain Habits

Top 10 Most Damaging Brain Habits

1. Lack of Stimulating Thoughts

Lack of brain stimulation may cause brain shrinkage. Thinking is the best way to train your brain, so think more, write more, explore more, all this will help you to keep your brain fresh.

2. Skipping Breakfast or No Breakfast at all

People who do not eat breakfast have lower blood sugar levels, which leads to an insufficient supply of nutrients to the brain causing brain degeneration.

3. Over Eating

Often we find tasty food and start eating more than what our body requires, which can cause hardening of the brain arteries, leading to a decrease in mental power.

4. Smoking

Smoking not only harms the lungs, but the brain as well, the nicotine in cigarettes contains substances that can cause multiple brain cell shrinkage, leading to Alzheimer’s disease.

5. High sugar consumption

Too much sugar will interrupt the absorption of proteins and nutrients causing malnutrition and may interfere with brain development.

6. Sleep Deprivation

Long term deprivation from sleep will accelerate the death of brain cells. More cells dead equals more memory loss.

7. Head covered while sleeping

Sleeping with the head covered increases the concentration of carbon dioxide and decreases concentration of oxygen that may lead to brain damaging effects, it would result in a 92.8% chance of suffering from either an early stage, middle stage, or late stage of dementia, by the age of 70.

8. Talking Rarely

Intellectual conversations will promote the efficiency of the brain.

9. Working your brain during illness

Take a rest, working hard or studying with sickness may lead to a decrease in effectiveness of the brain as well as damaging the brain.

10. Air pollution

You probably know that your brain is the largest oxygen consumer in your body, so its the organ that consumes the largest amount of pollution from the air. Inhaling polluted air decreases the supply of oxygen to the brain, bringing about a decrease in brain efficiency.

Unfettered by regulation, India pulls ahead on stem cell treatments

Mridu Khullar October 9, 2009 15:35Updated May 30, 2010 13:10

Unfettered by regulation, India pulls ahead on stem cell treatments

A controversial New Delhi clinic deploys advanced therapies that are unavailable in the U.S. to cure Americans suffering from MS, diabetes, paralysis, Alzheimer's, Lyme disease and cerebral palsy.

In a city better known for traffic and stray bulls, Geeta Shroff is pioneering stem cell treatments unavailable anywhere else. Some doctors hail the revolution. Others decry wanton risk-taking. 

NEW DELHI, India — In December 2007, Californian Amy Scher got on a plane to India, wheeled herself into the Nu Tech Mediworld hospital in New Delhi, and started the first phase of an experimental embryonic stem-cell treatment.

Her American doctor had warned her against this untested procedure. But 27-year-old Scher was making no progress with conventional medicine, and she was fed up with the constant visits to hospital emergency rooms.

Scher suffered from chronic Lyme disease, which had gone undiagnosed initially, causing serious damage her nervous system. After researching her options for months, talking to several people who had benefitted from these treatments in India, and reading up about therapies available stateside, Scher decided the American medical system couldn't help her. She chose to travel to India.

For eight weeks, she was injected with stem cells and underwent extensive physical therapy. The treatments cost an average of $20,000 to $30,000 for a first round of injections. They were not covered by insurance.

Today, Scher's U.S. physician, Dr. Steven Harris considers her "asymptomatic." He is uncertain whether the disease has been eradicated, or if it’s just dormant, but he says the treatments appear to have helped.

From India, Scher brought back a SPECT scan, which measures blood flow in the brain. Before India, Harris says, the blood flow in her brain was impaired. "At the end of her stay, a repeat scan showed normalization of her blood flow — in effect, an improvement in brain function." Scher no longer takes nerve stabilizers or cardiac medication. The chronic pain, a constant companion since 2001, is gone.

Unknown risks 

But some scientists and stem cell researchers in the West believe that patients like Scher are putting themselves at a huge risk by coming to India to get these experimental treatments. The problem, they say, is the lack of legislation governing the use of stem cells in the developing world.

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) allows the use of embryonic stem cells if the condition or disorder is considered incurable. But Dr. Satish Totey, Chief Scientific Officer at Stempeutics, a private stem cell company, and the Secretary of the Stem Cell Research Forum of India (SCRFI) believes there needs to be tighter regulation.

"There is nothing in those ICMR guidelines that can actually be called a guideline," he says.

Unlike in the West, there has never been a controversy about the manipulation or destruction of human embryos in India, giving the country’s doctors a head start in the field.

The growth of private hospitals providing stem cell therapies, however, is breeding a rift of a different kind. Given that most of these treatments have not been proven safe or effective, medical professionals dispute whether these clinics should be allowed to exist at all.

A controversial doc

At the heart of the controversy is Dr. Geeta Shroff, the doctor who treated Scher.

Being both fiercely independent and intelligent has earned Dr. Shroff the criticism and scorn of many. A pioneer in many ways, she developed a technology through which, by the use of a single donated embryo, she has been able to treat 600 patients for conditions such as Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis, renal failure, cerebral palsy, and diabetes. What's also unique about Dr. Shroff's technique is that's she's been able to grow embryonic stem cells without the use of any animal products.

Dr. Shroff converts the stem cells into a clear substance that can be injected into her patients. The treatments include four to eight weeks of injections with intense physical therapy. In a progressive disorder, such as multiple sclerosis, the aim is to first stabilize the patient, in order to stop further deterioration, and then eventually, to start rebuilding through the use of stem cells.

The greater the damage to the body, the longer it takes for the stem cells to start regeneration. In a static injury, such as a stroke or a spinal cord injury, the stem cells have to bypass the thick scar tissue and form connections around it. Patients who come seeking a "miracle cure," are often disappointed, she says. The stem cells need time to regenerate the body, and often take months or years depending on the injury.

Dr. Shroff started out as an infertility specialist. That, and her practice as a gynecologist, helped fund her early work, which was carried out in her garage. It also gave her insight into embryonic stem cells.

In the nine years that she's been treating patients using this technology, she says that not one has reported any side effects. For GlobalPost Passport, several of her patients were happy to lay out their medical reports, wiggle their toes where they once had no feeling, and share details of their stay in the hospital — including complaints about the food. The scientific community, however, remains unconvinced.

In what is probably her most controversial move, instead of publishing her findings, Dr. Shroff decided to patent her technology. (Her patent application is available online.)

Totey says Shroff is taking advantage of her patients’ desperation. "Under the pretext of patents, she says that nothing can be shown," he says. "Why does she not publish a paper?" He believes that by not doing so, she is putting her patients at a risk of getting a teratoma — a type of tumor “that may contain several different types of tissue and sometimes mature elements such as hair, muscle, and bone,” as defined by medterms.net. (Teratomas are a common challenge for embryonic stem cell researchers.)

Initially, Dr. Shroff explains that she did think about publishing her results. "You do try and get out there and at the end of the day, I am a doctor," she says. She tried to present at some conferences, but was rejected and told that there were already too many people presenting on embryonic stem cells. That's when she decided to patent her work instead. "With the patent, I could protect the technology. I could make sure that somebody who doesn't understand the business can't stop it." Once the patent is granted, Dr. Shroff will be able to move forward with the next step.

The dream, she says, is to make stem cell injections available in pharmacies across the world, so that the process of stabilization and treatment can be started right at the onset of disease. She likens it to the discovery of penicillin. "That was the beginning of the antibiotic era, and it changed the entire face of infection around the world. This is similar to that."

Favorable outcomes

Of her 600 patients, 30 percent are either doctors or have physicians in the family, she says. Despite her critics' claims, Dr. Shroff says she has always put the well being of her patients first. An ethics committee at her hospital evaluates every case that comes in. The first two years, she says, were spent exclusively in the lab, testing repeatedly to make sure the treatments were safe.

In time, she's sure the controversy will die out, as laws will come into effect. "It's important to have certain guidelines or laws, but they shouldn't curb research," she says. "The law has to be such that the work does not stop."

But Dr. Totey rejects proceeding with treatments before the science has been published and vetted. He points out that no one knows what she is putting into those injections. "If it is intravenous, I can use river water and inject that," he says. Until she shows the scientific community what she is putting in there, he says he'll remain unconvinced.

Some doctors argue that the U.S. puts up too many barriers, and that India's regulations are appropriate in allowing stem cell treatments for incurable and terminally ill patients. One such physician is Dr. Laurance Johnston, who in 2007 was the first American scientist to visit the Nu Tech Mediworld clinic.

Dr. Johnston’s credentials make him well-placed to judge: he is the director of the Spinal Cord Research and Education Foundations, Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA); and he was formerly director at the Division of Scientific Review at the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He told GlobalPost Passport that he's convinced she's sincere and conscientious in her endeavors.

"As you probably expect, there are a lot of politics, agendas, and economic interests when it comes to various emerging stem-cell programs," he says. "In general scientists think they are being good scientists if they point out what is wrong with a program rather than its potential."

Dr. Harris, Scher's physician, is also impressed. After advising his patient not to go, and being pleasantly surprised on her return, he decided to travel to India himself to see Dr. Shroff's work. "She has been able to accomplished two feats quite advanced in the field of stem cells," he says. "The ability to freeze and thaw her cells to allow storage and transport and the creation of an immortal cell line without animal feeder cells." Harris was most impressed with Shroff’s success treating patients with spinal cord injuries, and children with cerebral palsy.

According to a report by the SCRFI, India’s stem cell industry — including mainly research, but also stem cell therapies deployed by Shroff, and other stem cell therapies — is expected to grow at a rate of 15 percent, to $540 million by 2010.

"I think India is at the forefront of emerging stem-cell treatments in many ways," says Dr. Johnston. "Convinced of their superiority, American scientists hate the notion that the hottest breakthroughs may be happening in other parts of the world and vociferously denigrate them."

Dr. Totey agrees that it would be a mistake to base India's stem cell guidelines on those of the U.S. "The way we work is different," he says. "We should look at our own system and make our own guidelines. There is no point in looking at the U.S. and thinking that they're the best."

Scher, who spent years going in and out of U.S. hospitals, shares this sentiment. "I had really tried," she says. "I had tried all the traditional things, but I had also tried alternative therapies. And then, when you don't have any of that left, you have to be open-minded. It's ignorance to not look anywhere else. You can't think that the U.S. has the only good treatments in the world.
 

Editor's note: this article was originally published on GlobalPost's premium content section, Passport. For more articles like this, please join Passport. 

Passport helps GlobalPost support its worldwide news operation. By joining, you'll get exclusive in-depth reporting, access to conference calls with our foreign correspondents, and a voice in the topics Passport covers. Support GlobalPost by becoming a member of out inner circle. Learn more about Passport's innovative community.
  

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/091009/unfettered-regulation-india-pulls-ahead-stem-cell-treatments

Brain and Eye Test

"You can't determine the length of your life but you can determine its depth."

Good example of a Brain Study: If you can read this OUT LOUD you have a strong mind. And... better than that: Alzheimer's is a long, long, way down the road before it'll ever get anywhere near you.

If you can read the following paragraph in RED and BLACK below, forward it on to your friends, and to the person that sent it to you, with 'yes' in the subject line.

Only very good minds can read this. This is weird, but interesting!

7H15 M3554G3 

53RV35 7O PR0V3 

H0W 0UR M1ND5 C4N 

D0 4M4Z1NG 7H1NG5! 

1MPR3551V3 7H1NG5! 

1N 7H3 B3G1NN1NG 

17 WA5 H4RD BU7 

N0W, 0N 7H15 LIN3 

Y0UR M1ND 1S 

R34D1NG 17 

4U70M471C4LLY 

W17H 0U7 3V3N 

7H1NK1NG 4B0U7 17, 

B3 PROUD! 0NLY 

C3R741N P30PL3 C4N 

R3AD 7H15. 

PL3453 F0RW4RD 1F 

U C4N R34D 7H15.

Now that you have read the above, see if you can read this - if so, you have a very strange mind, also. Only 55 people out of 100 can.

I cdnuolt blveiee that I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd what I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in what oerdr the ltteres in a word are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is that the frsit and last ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can still raed it whotuit a pboerlm. This is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the word as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! If you can raed this forwrad it 

FORWARD ONLY IF YOU CAN READ IT 

Forward it, and put 'YES' in the Subject Line 

Even if you are not old, you will find this interesting ...

This is a TEST ---------------- Good Luck!!! 

I don't know about the wishes but we can all use some brain exercise!!

How old are your eyes? 

The Eye Test

Can you find the B's 

(there are 2 B's) DON'T skip, or your wish won't come True...

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

RRRRRRRRRRRBRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

RRRRRRRRRRBRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Once you've found the B's 

Find the 1

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII 

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII 

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII 

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII 

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII 

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII 

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII 

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII 

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII1III 

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII 

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Once you found the 1................ 

Find the 6

9999999999999999999999999999999999 

9999999999999999999999999999999999 

9999999999999999999999999999999999 

9999999999999999999999999999999999 

9999999999999999999999999999999999 

9999999999999999999999999999999999 

9999699999999999999999999999999999 

9999999999999999999999999999999999 

9999999999999999999999999999999999 

9999999999999999999999999999999999 

9999999999999999999999999999999999 

9999999999999999999999999999999999

Once you've found the 6... 

Find the N (it's hard!!)

MMMMMMMMMMMMM 

MMMMMMMMMMMMM 

MMMMMMMMMMMMM 

MMMMMMMNMMMMM 

MMMMMMMMMMMMM 

MMMMMMMMMMMMM 

MMMMMMMMMMMMM 

MMMMMMMMMMMMM 

MMMMMMMMMMMMM 

MMMMMMMMMMMMM

Once you've found the N...

Find the Q..

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO 

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO 

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO 

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO 

OOOOOOOOOOQOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO 

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO 

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO 

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO 

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO 

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Make 2 wishes!

> 

>> 

>>> 

>>>> 

>>>>> 

>>>>>> 

>>>>>>> 

>>>>>>>> 

>>>>>>>>> 

>>>>>>>>>> 

>>>>>>>>>>> 

>>>>>>>>>> > > 

>>>>>>>>>>>>> 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 

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>>>>>>>>>>>>> 

>>>>>>>>>>>> 

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>> 

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NATURAL THERAPY FOR HEAD ACHES

NATURAL THERAPY FOR HEAD ACHES

In about 5 minutes, 

Your Headache will go

The nose has a left and a right side. 

We use both to inhale and exhale. 

Actually they are different. 

You'll be able to feel the difference. 

The right side represents the sun. 

The left side represents the moon. 

During a headache, try to close your right nostril 

and use your left nostril to breathe. 

In about 5 minutes, your headache will go. 

If you feel tired, just reverse, close your left nostril 

and breathe through your right nostril. 

After a while, you will feel your mind is refreshed. 

Right side belongs to 'hot', so it gets heated up easily. 

Left side belongs to 'cold'. 

Most females breathe with their left nostrils, 

so they get "cooled off" faster. 

Most of the guys breathe with their right nostrils,

they get worked up.

Do you notice, the moment you awake, which side breathes better? 

Left or right ? 

If left is better, you will feel tired. 

So, close your left nostril and use your right nostril for breathing.. 

You will feel refreshed quickly. 

Do you suffer from continual headaches? 

Try out this breathing therapy. 

Close your right nostril and breathe through your left nostril. 

Your headaches will be gone. 

Continue the exercise for one month. 

Give it a try.....It can't do any harm 

A natural therapy without medication. 

US man Michael Boatwright found in Palm Springs motel awakens with amnesia, speaking only Swedish

US man Michael Boatwright found in Palm Springs motel awakens with amnesia, speaking only Swedish

Date July 17, 2013 - 8:13AM

Michael Boatwright, woke up with amnesia, calling himself Johan Ek Photo: AP

Palm Springs, California: Doctors are looking into the mystery of a US man who awoke speaking only Swedish, with no memory of his past, after he was found unconscious four months ago at a Southern California motel.

Michael Boatwright, 61, woke up with amnesia, calling himself Johan Ek, The Desert Sun reported.

Sometimes it just makes me furious... I don't know anybody, I don't recognise anybody. 

Mr Boatwright was found unconscious in a motel room in Palm Springs in February.

Now calling himself Johan Ek, he was found carrying a veterans' medical card, inset, identifying him as Michael Thomas Boatwright, but has no memory of his son and two ex-wives. Photo: USA Today screengrab

After police arrived, he was transported to the Desert Regional Medical Centre where he woke up.

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Hospital officials said Boatwright may have been in town for a tennis tournament in the Coachella Valley.

He was found with a duffel bag of exercise clothes, a backpack and tennis racquets.

He also carried four forms of identification - a passport, a California identification card, a veteran's medical card and a Social Security card - all of which identified him as Michael Thomas Boatwright.

Palm Springs police have documented his information in case anyone lists Boatwright as missing or wanted, authorities said.

In March, doctors diagnosed Boatwright with Transient Global Amnesia, a condition triggered by physical or emotional trauma that can last for several months.

The rare mental disorder is characterised by memory loss, "sudden and unplanned travel," and possible adoption of a new identity, according to the Sun.

After an extensive search, medical personnel and social workers have been unable to locate Mr Boatwright's next of kin.

Authorities are still unsure of his birthplace, listed on his identification as Florida.

Photos show him in Sweden at a young age.

Swedish public records show Mr Boatwright lived in the Nordic country on and off between 1981 and 2003.

Several Swedes on Tuesday said they knew of him as an American with a big interest in medieval history and jousting.

Swede Olof Sahlin said he met Boatwright around 1985 through their joint interest in medieval history.

He said he saw the American at jousting events regularly in the 1980s and sporadically in the early 1990s.

"He was nice, sympathetic and talented at fighting in plate armour," Mr Sahlin told The Associated Press.

"A little bit reserved maybe."

Mr Sahlin said he never knew how Mr Boatwright made a living during his time in Sweden but has now heard from other friends that he briefly worked as a personal assistant and in the construction sector.

Mr Sahlin said their last contact was in 1999 and he doesn't know what happened to him after that.

Mr Boatwright doesn't recall how to exchange money, take public transportation or seek temporary housing like homeless shelters or hotels, the social worker assigned to his case, Lisa Hunt-Vasquez, told the Sun.

He doesn't remember his son and two ex-wives, either.

He has no income or insurance, further complicating his treatment at Desert Regional.

And he has little money he can access - only $US180.

He also has a few Chinese bank accounts but can only access one account, which holds $US7, according to the newspaper.

Doctors don't know how much longer he will be able to stay at the centre.

Aside from his amnesia, Mr Boatwright is in good health.

The hospital is currently looking for alternatives that would keep him off the streets.

For now, Mr Boatwright is unsure of both his past and his future.

"Sometimes it makes me really sad and sometimes it just makes me furious about the whole situation and the fact that I don't know anybody, I don't recognise anybody," Mr Boatwright told the newspaper.

AP

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/us-man-michael-boatwright-found-in-palm-springs-motel-awakens-with-amnesia-speaking-only-swedish-20130717-2q2v5.html#ixzz2ZGC8fBj3

Jill Bolte Taylor's stroke of insight

Jill Bolte Taylor's stroke of insight

Split brain with one half atheist and one half theist

Split brain with one half atheist and one half theist

A Wiring Diagram of the Brain - Spectrum

A Wiring Diagram of the Brain

Advances in medical imaging allow the Human Connectome Project to map neural connections

By Eliza Strickland

Posted 22 Apr 2013 | 20:12 GMT

Image: David Van Essen for the WU-Minn HCP Consortium

LIGHTBULB MOMENT: This color-coded map, created by researchers at the Human Connectome Project, illustrates relative levels of functional connectivity between points in the brain’s cerebral cortex.

In early March, an unusual 2 terabytes of data hit the Web: the first batch of images from a massively ambitious brain-mapping effort called the Human Connectome Project. Thousands of images showed the brains of 68 healthy volunteers, with different regions glowing in bright jewel tones. These data, freely available for download via the project’s website, give neuroscientists unprecedented insights into which parts of the brain act in concert to do something as seemingly simple as recognizing a face. 

The project leaders say their work is enabled by very recent advances in both brain-scanning hardware and image-processing software. “It simply wouldn’t have been feasible five or six years ago to provide this amount and quality of data, and the ability to work with the data,” says David Van Essen, one of the project’s principal investigators and head of the anatomy and neurobiology department at the Washington University School of Medicine, in St. Louis. 

Based on a growing understanding that the mechanisms of perception and cognition involve networks of neurons that sprawl across multiple regions of the brain, researchers have begun mapping those neural circuits. While the Human Connectome Project looks at connections between brain regions, a US $100 million project, announced in April and called the BRAIN Initiative, will attempt to zoom in on the connectivity of small clusters of neurons. 

But it’s the five-year Human Connectome Project that’s delivering the data now. The $40 million project funds two consortia; the larger, international group led by Van Essen and Kamil Ugurbil of the University of Minnesota will eventually scan the brains of 1200 adults, a group of twins and their siblings. The goal, says Van Essen, is “not just to infer what typical brain connectivity is like but also how it varies across participants, and how that relates to their different intellectual, cognitive, and emotional capabilities and attributes.” 

To provide multiple perspectives on each brain, the researchers employ a number of cutting-edge imaging methods. They start with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to provide basic structural images of the brain, using both a 3-tesla machine and a next-generation 7-T scanner. Both provide extremely high-resolution images of the convoluted folds of the cerebral cortex. 

Next, a series of functional MRI (fMRI) scans, which detect blood flow throughout the brain, show brain activity for subjects both at rest and engaged in seven different tasks (including language, working memory, and gambling exercises). The fMRI is souped-up as well: Ugurbil pioneered a technique called multiband imaging that takes snapshots of eight slices of the brain at a time instead of just one. 

To complement the data on basic structure and blood flow within the brain, each participant is also scanned using a technique called diffusion MRI, which tracks the movement of water molecules within brain fibers. Because water diffuses more rapidly along the length of the fibers that connect neurons than across them, this technique allows researchers to directly trace connections between sections of the brain. The Connectome team had Siemens customize its top-of-the-line MRI machine to let them alter its magnetic field strength more rapidly and dramatically, which produces clearer images. 

Each imaging modality has its limitations, so combining them gives neuroscientists their best view yet of what goes on inside a human brain. First, however, all that neuroimaging data needs to be purged of noise and artifacts, and it needs to be organized into a useful data base. Dan Marcus, director of the Neuroinformatics Research Group at the Washington University School of Medicine, developed the image-processing software that automatically cleans up the images and precisely aligns the scans so that a single “brainordinate” refers to the same point on a diffusion MRI and fMRI scan. That processing is computationally intensive, says Marcus: “For each subject, that code takes about 24 hours to run on our supercomputer.”

Finally, the team adapted open-source image analysis tools to allow researchers to query the database in sophisticated ways. For example, a user can examine a brain simply through its diffusion images or overlay that data on a set of fMRI results.

Some neuroscientists think that all this data will be of limited use. Karl Friston, scientific director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, at University College London, applauds the project’s ambition, but he criticizes it for providing a resource “without asking what questions these data and models speak to.” He’d prefer to see money spent on hypothesis-directed brain scans, which can investigate “how a particular connection changes with experimental intervention or disease.”

But the Connectome team thinks the open-ended nature of the data set is an asset, not a weakness. They’re hoping to provoke research questions they never anticipated, and in fields that they know nothing about. “You don’t have to be a neuroscientist to access the data,” says Marcus. “If you’re an engineer or a physicist and want to get into this, you can.”

Learn More Human Connectome Project MRI connectome diffusion MRI fMRI image processing neuroscience

When Lapses Are Not Just Signs of Aging

When Lapses Are Not Just Signs of Aging

By JANE E. BRODY

Who has not struggled occasionally to come up with a desired word or the name of someone near and dear? I was still in my 40s when one day the first name of my stepmother of 30-odd years suddenly escaped me. I had to introduce her to a friend as s. Brody

But for millions of Americans with a neurological condition called mild cognitive impairment, lapses in word-finding and name recall are often common, along with other challenges like remembering appointments, difficulty paying bills or losing one train of thought in the middle of a conversation.

Though not as severe as full-blown AlzheimerⳊ disease or other forms of dementia, mild cognitive impairment is often a portent of these mind-robbing disorders. Dr. Barry Reisberg, professor of psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine, who in 1982 described the seven stages of Alzheimer disease, calls the milder disorder Stage 3, a condition of subtle deficits in cognitive function that nonetheless allow most people to live independently and participate in normal activities.

One of Dr. Reisberg's patients is a typical example. In the two and a half years since her diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment at age 78, the woman learned to use the subway, piloted an airplane for the first time (with an instructor) and continued to enjoy vacations and family visits. But she also paid some of the same bills twice and spends hours shuffling papers.

Dr. Ronald C. Petersen, a neurologist at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minn., described mild cognitive impairment as  intermediate state of cognitive function, somewhere between the changes seen normally as people age and the severe deficits associated with dementia.

While most people experience a gradual cognitive decline as they get older (only about one in 100 lives long without cognitive loss), others experience more extreme changes in cognitive function, the neurologist wrote in The New England Journal of Medicine in June. In population-based studies, mild cognitive impairment has been found in 10 percent to 20 percent of people older than 65, he noted.

Dr. Petersen described two types of the condition, amnestic and nonamnestic, that have different trajectories. The more common amnestic type is associated with significant memory problems, and within 5 to 10 years usually 砢ut not always progresses to full-blown Alzheimer's disease, he said in an interview.

Subtle forgetfulness, such as misplacing ob-jects and having difficulty recalling words, can plague persons as they age and probably represents normal aging, he wrote. The memory loss that occurs in persons with amnestic mild cognitive impairment is more prominent. Typically, they start to forget important information that they previously would have remembered easily, such as appointments, telephone conversations or recent events that would normally interest them, like the outcome of a ballgame would a sports fan.

The forgetfulness is often obvious to those who are affected and to people close to them, but not to casual observers.

The less common nonamnestic type, which is associated with difficulty making decisions, finding the right words, multitasking, visual-spatial tasks and navigating, can be a forerunner of other kinds of dementia, Dr. Petersen said.

In general, Dr. Reisberg said, 㭩ld cognitive impairment lasts about seven years before it begins to interfere with the activities of daily life.

The Correct Diagnosis

Distinguishing mild cognitive impairment from the effects of normal aging can be challenging. Typically, new patients take a short test of mental status, provide a thorough medical history and are checked for conditions that may be reversible causes of impaired cognition. Problems like depression, medication side effects, vitamin B12 deficiency or an underactive thyroid can mimic the symptoms of mild cognitive impairment.

Other tests, like an M.R.I. or CT scan of the brain, can look for evidence of a stroke, brain tumor or leaky blood vessel that may be impairing brain function.

It is natural, Dr. Petersen said, for patients and their families to want to know whether and how quickly the disorder might progress. While patients decline by about 10 percent each year, on average, certain factors are associated with more rapid progression. Among these are the presence of a gene called APOE e4, more common among patients with AlzheimerⳠdisease; a reduced hippocampus, a region of the brain important to memory; and a low metabolic rate in the temporal and parietal regions of the brain.

Amyloid plaques in the brain, while a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease and a predictor of progression, have also been found at autopsy in people with perfectly normal cognitive function.

Preserving Cognitive Function

Despite a number of clinical trials that tested various medications, no drug to treat mild cognitive impairment has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. But experts like Dr. Reisberg and Dr. Petersen suggest several approaches that may slow the decline in cognitive function.

Although studies did not show that medications like donepezil (brand name Aricept) and memantine (Namenda), both used to treat AlzheimerⳠdisease, change the ultimate course of mild cognitive impairment, Dr. Reisberg said they can be useful temporary treatments that may stabilize patients for a few years.

Although the drugs are not approved for this condition, licensed physicians can prescribe approved medications of label. Clinicians have to work with what we have,Dr. Reisberg said.

There are people who think they are having memory problems, but tests do not show anything definitive. Some may be in Stage 1 of Alzheimer's disease, Dr. Reisberg said, and perhaps could benefit from early treatment with the drugs.

It is also important to reduce cardiovascular risk factors like smoking, elevated cholesterol and high blood pressure; keep blood sugar at normal levels; minimize stress (which in animal studies can cause the hippocampus to shrink); and avoid anticholinergic drugs that can interfere with brain chemicals important to memory. These include Demerol to treat pain, Detrol to treat a leaky bladder, tricyclic antidepressants, Valium, and over-the-counter medications with Benadryl (diphenhydramine), like Tylenol PM, Dr. Petersen said.

Some cognitive rehabilitation exercises, like computer games that enhance focus, may be helpful, Dr. Petersen said, but there have been few good studies to demonstrate a benefit. Compensatory techniques, like taking notes, creating mnemonics and making structured schedules, can be useful aids, he added.

But most promising is regular physical exercise, which in animal studies was found to reduce the accumulation of amyloid in the brain. An Australian study in patients with memory problems showed that brisk walking for 150 minutes a week improved cognitive function.

Allen Institute a part of Obama brain-research initiative

Originally published April 2, 2013 at 8:57 PM | Page modified April 3, 2013 at 11:08 AM

Allen Institute a part of Obama brain-research initiative

The leaders of Paul Allen’s Seattle brain-science center helped craft President Obama’s BRAIN Initiative and will collaborate — not compete — with federal scientists to better understand the most complex organ.

By Sandi Doughton

Seattle Times science reporter

Paul Allen’s brain institute is participating.

Allan Jones caught a red-eye from Seattle to be at the White House on Tuesday when President Obama announced plans for a major initiative to unravel the complexities of the human brain.

“It was fantastic,” said Jones, who as CEO of the Allen Institute for Brain Science has been tackling those very mysteries for more than a decade. He also helped craft the new initiative, and, along with his staff, will be working to bring it to fruition.

“The brain is so complicated, and there is so much to learn,” Jones said, shortly before catching a return flight to Seattle. “You need the best and the brightest and you need them all rowing in the same direction.”

Obama asked Congress to appropriate about $110 million next year to kick off what he envisions as a multiyear effort to better understand the most complex organ of all. Potential payoffs include treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, autism, stroke and the types of brain injuries suffered by troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama said.

“As humans, we can identify galaxies light-years away,” he said. “We can study particles smaller than an atom, but we still haven’t unlocked the mystery of the three pounds of matter that sits between our ears.”

Struck by the same paradox, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen created the Allen Institute in 2003. The $500 million Allen has committed to the institute is his biggest single charitable gift and an amount that even Obama might envy.

Allen praised Obama in a tweet Tuesday, adding: “Large-scale collaboration is key.”

Nino Ramirez, who directs the Center for Integrative Brain Research at Seattle Children’s Research Institute, echoed the delight of neuroscientists across the country.

“This sets a priority,” he said. “And it sets in motion a new kind of research, on a grand scale.”

Jones and the Allen Institute joined with the Kavli and Gatsby foundations to convene a meeting in 2011 that laid the groundwork for what the Obama administration is calling BRAIN: Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies. The meeting brought together scientists who study the brain with scientists who work on nanotechnology — the engineering of tools and materials on a minute scale.

New tools that can record the activity of single neurons or zero in on tiny brain regions are vital to advances in brain science, Jones said. The atmosphere at the meeting was electric as the neuroscientists realized the power of nanotechnology. “People got really excited about the possibility that we could ultimately map all of the activity in the brain in real time,” Jones said.

The result was a flurry of white papers and follow-up meetings where the approach was refined.

But many details remain to be worked out. Obama designated Rockefeller University’s Cornelia Bargmann and William Newsome of Stanford to lead a working group that will define goals and develop a long-term plan and budget. Allen Institute scientists will be part of the conversation, Jones said.

BRAIN’s initial focus would be development of new techniques to probe the brain in greater detail than now possible, he explained. Currently, scientists rely on MRI scans to look inside the human brain. The instruments can single out activity in areas as small as a millimeter across, but that’s not good enough.

“In a millimeter of brain tissue, you’ve got millions of cells and each cell is connected to 10,000 other cells,” Jones said.

The entire human brain contains about 86 billion neurons, wired in circuits made up of 100 trillion connections.

Researchers have developed techniques using lasers and fluorescent tags to mark single brain circuits and switch them on and off in living animals. Those methods can’t be used in people, but they reflect the advances made in recent years, Jones said.

“It’s really a unique time in brain science, where the technology is improving very, very quickly, but we still know so little about how the brain works.”

There has been little progress in the past two to three decades when it comes to being able to cure or even treat brain disorders such as childhood epilepsy and aggressive tumors, Ramirez said.

If Congress goes along, the federal money will be awarded to laboratories in the form of competitive grants. Some of that money could come to researchers in Seattle, Ramirez pointed out. Even the Allen Institute could apply for funding.

Obama compared the brain initiative to sequencing the first human genome, an ambitious project that took more than 12 years and cost more than $1 billion. Today, modern instruments can zip through an entire genome in a matter of weeks.

Jones hopes to match the enthusiasm engendered by the Human Genome Project — and sidestep the rivalries between labs racing to be the first to the prize. That’s why he made another exhausting plane trip to Brussels two months ago, to show his support when the European Union launched its own, $1.3 billion brain initiative.

“I don't want anybody to start pitching this as Europe versus the U.S. or private versus public,” he said. “There’s so much to do it would be really foolish for us to do anything other than work together.”

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Sandi Doughton at: 206-464-2491 or sdoughton@seattletimes.com

The #1 WORST Food that HARMS Your Brain (avoid!)

The #1 WORST Food that HARMS Your Brain (avoid!)

Some foods you might be eating daily can actually DAMAGE your brain over time. In this article, we'll explore foods that HARM your brain vs foods that PROTECT your brain.

by Mike Geary - Certified Nutrition Specialist
Co-Author of the best seller: The Top 101 Foods that FIGHT Aging
 

First, the BAD NEWS...

Certain foods you eat can indeed harm your brain, both in impaired learning ability as well as impaired memory.  Even worse, the wrong food and drink choices throughout your life can even lead to the terrible and deadly disease of Alzheimers. 

A friend of mine just told me that her dad died of Alzheimers recently and it was just a terrible disease where he didn't even know who she was anymore towards the end.  It's time our society starts taking degenerative diseases like Alzheimers, cancer, and heart disease more seriously throughout our lives, and not just once it's too late. Even in our 30's, 40's, and 50's, the choices we make with our daily food can PREVENT these terrible diseases.

So let's dig in with the topic today of foods that harm your brain, and what you can do about it...
 

Food #1 that HARMS your brain:  Fructose

In a 2012 UCLA study published in the Journal of Physiology, researchers found that a diet high in fructose over time can damage your memory and learning ability. 

Beyond the harm to your brain, it's well known in the research world that a high fructose diet can also cause insulin resistance in your body over time, and possibly lead to type-2 diabetes and extra body fat.  If that's not enough, a high fructose diet also detrimentally affects your triglyceride levels in your blood as well as small dense LDL particles that cause plaque in your arteries.

So what we have here is high-fructose intake = impaired memory and learning in your brain, increased risk of diabetes, and increased risk of heart disease. Oh, and we forgot to mention extra belly fat too...  Yum - who wants another can of soda pop or a large bowl of corn syrup sweetened ice cream!

The average person eating a modern western diet of processed food consumes a LARGE quantity of fructose without even thinking about it from all of the soft drinks (high fructose corn syrup typically), sweetened juice drinks, orange juice, processed junk foods such as cakes and candies, as well as the HFCS that's added to store-bought salad dressings, breads and cereals, and even condiments like ketchup.

Note that many sports drinks, even though marketed as "healthy", can have large amounts of corn syrup or even crystalline fructose as their main sweetener.  These sports drinks can be equally as bad as a soda for your body and your brain.  Don't be fooled by the clever marketing showing pictures of pro athletes guzzling this stuff.

Also note that agave syrup (aka, agave nectar) which is marketed as a "healthy" sweetener as well, is one of the most concentrated forms of processed fructose in sweeteners as well.  I personally stay away from agave sweeteners as much as possible unless the amounts are very small.

All of these fructose-laden foods and drinks are easy to avoid though if you choose to eat consciously... for example, make homemade salad dressings from your favorite olive oil and vinegar with added spices, or choose to drink unsweetened iced tea with lemon instead of sweetened drinks or juices.  If you use a lot of ketchup, try to reduce the quantity by mixing with mustard or hot sauce, which typically don't contain HFCS sweetener in any significant quantities.

Last thing to note about fructose... Yes, natural whole fruits do contain fructose, but generally contain MUCH smaller quantities of fructose than you would consume in a sweetened juice drink, soft drink or sweetened junk foods.  Also, the phytonutrients, antioxidants, and fiber that's contained in most whole fruits counteracts any negative effects of fructose.  I personally try to keep fruit intake to no more than 1-2 pieces a day due to the sugar and fructose content of larger amounts of fruit.

Here's a trick:  Did you know that limes and lemons contain virtually zero fructose, and only 3-4 grams of total carbs in a whole lemon or lime, whereas a typical orange contains 6 grams of fructose and 25 grams of total sugar per fruit.  I squeeze lemons and limes daily into either water or teas for a healthy flavorful drink. Fresh lemon juice has even been shown to control blood sugar response from a meal...another bonus!
 

Other Foods that HARM Your Brain:

You probably already know some of the harmful health effects of these foods, but long term effects on your brain are yet another...

Trans fats -- strongly inflammatory in your entire body including damage to cell membranes throughout your body.  Avoid hydrogenated oils in processed foods and deep fried foods.

Mercury -- studies show that mercury from pollution (coal burning plants are the biggest source of mercury pollution to air and water) and from fish that are high on the food chain such as tuna, shark, swordfish, tilefish, etc can possibly cause long term negative effects on your brain.  Limit these types of fish to a couple times a month and focus more on fish such as salmon, trout, and many other types of smaller fish to reduce your mercury load.

Wheat-based foods -- In the groundbreaking book, Wheat Belly, Dr William Davis makes a very convincing argument that wheat has addictive properties in the brain.  Wheat contains compounds termed "exorphins" that have an effect in your brain similar to opiate drugs.  This explains why people have such a hard time giving up their beloved breads, cereals, pasta, and muffins because these foods are mildly addictive. 

I know personally from past experience that if I have have a pasta dinner, I'll go back for seconds and thirds as I just can't seem to stop eating the stuff.  And then hours after dinner, I'll get cravings for more carb-based foods or sweets.  But if I pass on the pasta and just have meat, veggies, and salad, I find myself totally satisfied after dinner with no cravings later at night.
 

The good news is...

There are plenty of superfoods, herbs, and spices that can protect your brain and your other organs too!

In fact, did you know that turmeric is one of the highest antioxidant spices that also exhibits brain-protecting effects? In India, where curry containing turmeric and other spices is eaten daily, rates of Alzheimers disease is among the lowest in the world, proving some of the brain-protecting effects of turmeric.

In addition, the powerful DHA and EPA omega-3 fats in fish oil has been proven in countless studies to protect your brain from damage over the years.

Want more...

I'll show you how to find dozens of delicious foods, spices, herbs, and unique nutrients that PROTECT your brain, joints, organs, and skin from aging on the next page!

These unique nutrients and superfoods can be found at most stores and can help PROTECT your brain from aging, HEAL your joints, reverse or prevent type 2 diabetes, normalize your blood pressure, SLOW aging of your skin, FIGHT against developing cancer, FIX years of digestion problems, and even help to BOOST your metabolism...

You'll discover these powerful superfoods and nutrients on the next page: