TECH NOTES

Few people truly take the time to watch over their health. Most spend more time analyzing baseball stats and the problems with their cars than their own health issues. The result is that many people then rely on their doctors for that aspect of their lives and in a rational, more functional planet than that of Earth, this is the way it should be. Unfortunately, for us who dwell here on this “rock”, the sad story is that much of medicine, especially in the United States, has been converted into a revenue producing business which promotes the “bottom line” to the top priority in such an environment and far above that of an individual health.

The result is that many Americans, and many more should, have already taken the pro-active stance of doing their own research and turning to what we like to call “Alternative Treatment”; those that rely on natural supplements and herbal remedies instead of traditional prescription drugs.

Years ago Americans could rely on the FDA to do a somewhat reliable job of regulating the pharmaceutical industry in order to keep harmful drugs out of the public domain. However, this is no longer true since the ideology of free-markets has consumed the attention of politicians since the Reagan years. Unfortunately, such an ideology, which is quite good for the private sector, as long as companies are kept to much smaller sizes than they have been allowed to grow to, it has done very little to promote rational government which has an overriding concern for the public interest.

In fact, you will find no evidence to date that can dispute the statements just made as the corroborative documentation is now overwhelming. The same trend is also occurring in the United Kingdom and has been ongoing for years. It is now making its face shown in France. However, its lifespan is somewhat questionable as the French are impassioned about their society as it has been and as they should be. France, for instance, has one of the finest educational systems in Continental Europe. Why should it change simply for the rational of free-enterprise. It’s not as if it is going to get better than “the best”…

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Tough Choices: How Making Decisions Tires Your Brain

The brain is like a muscle: when it gets depleted, it becomes less effective.

By On Amir

July 22, 2008

The human mind is a remarkable device. Nevertheless, it is not without limits. Recently, a growing body of research has focused on a particular mental limitation, which has to do with our ability to use a mental trait known as executive function. When you focus on a specific task for an extended period of time or choose to eat a salad instead of a piece of cake, you are flexing your executive function muscles. Both thought processes require conscious effort-you have to resist the temptation to let your mind wander or to indulge in the sweet dessert. It turns out, however, that use of executive function—a talent we all rely on throughout the day—draws upon a single resource of limited capacity in the brain. When this resource is exhausted by one activity, our mental capacity may be severely hindered in another, seemingly unrelated activity. (See here and here.)

Imagine, for a moment, that you are facing a very difficult decision about which of two job offers to accept. One position offers good pay and job security, but is pretty mundane, whereas the other job is really interesting and offers reasonable pay, but has questionable job security. Clearly you can go about resolving this dilemma in many ways. Few people, however, would say that your decision should be affected or influenced by whether or not you resisted the urge to eat cookies prior to contemplating the job offers. A decade of psychology research suggests otherwise. Unrelated activities that tax the executive function have important lingering effects, and may disrupt your ability to make such an important decision. In other words, you might choose the wrong job because you didn’t eat a cookie.

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Vitamin D something of a panacea
Click title for source at TheGlobeAndMail.com…

SHERYL UBELACKER
Canadian Press
September 10, 2007

TORONTO — People who take vitamin D supplements appear to have a lower risk of death from any cause, an analysis of numerous studies has found, adding to the weight of evidence suggesting that the “sunshine nutrient” confers widespread health benefits.

In an analysis of data pooled from 18 randomized controlled trials, researchers at the International Agency for Research on Cancer and the European Institute of Oncology found that subjects who took at least 500 international units of vitamin D daily had a 7 per cent lower risk of death, on average, compared with control groups given a dummy pill.

The 18 clinical trials involved a total of more than 57,000 subjects, who were followed for almost six years. Most of the studies, with participants mainly over age 65, were investigating the role of vitamin D in keeping bones strong and preventing fractures.

In the nine trials that collected blood samples, participants who took supplements had an average 1.4- to 5.2-fold higher blood level of vitamin D than those who did not, the analysis shows.
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Study shows vitamin C’s cancer-fighting properties
Click title for source at Reuters.com…

Will Dunham
September 11, 2007

Vitamin C can impede the growth of some types of tumors although not in the way some scientists had suspected, researchers reported on Monday.

The new research, published in the journal Cancer Cell, supported the general notion that vitamin C and other so-called antioxidants can slow tumor growth, but pointed to a mechanism different from the one many experts had suspected.

The researchers generated encouraging results when giving vitamin C to mice that had been implanted with human cancer cells — either the blood cancer lymphoma or prostate cancer. Another antioxidant, N-acetylcysteine, also limited tumor growth in the mice, the researchers said.

Antioxidants are nutrients that prevent some of the damage from unstable molecules known as free radicals, created when the body turns food into energy. Vitamin C, vitamin E and beta-carotene are among well-known antioxidants.
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