Is your thyroid bringing you down?

With the fast pace of modern living there are many conditions that go incorrectly diagnosed and treated by the medical community. One of these major conditions that warrant attention is that of thyroid dysfunction.

The thyroid gland which is based in the neck behind the thyroid cartilage and is responsible for your body’s metabolism and can affect every cell within the body. The rate at which you metabolise carbohydrates, fats and proteins is regulated by the thyroid and here are just a few symptoms of a underactive or hypothyroid.

* decreased body temperature
* weight gain
* decreased blood pressure+ dizziness when standing
* weak flabby skeletal muscles
* sluggishness and fatigue
* dry rough skin
* emotional disturbances and even psychosis

And the list goes on! The problem is that there are so many people particularly in fast paced westernised culture who are suffering from hypothyroid and for that matter hyperthyroid or an over active thyroid also.

An underactive thyroid has clear implications for the development of atherosclerosis through raised blood cholesterol levels. There have been studies that showed that when the thyroid glands were removed from rabbits blood cholesterol levels shot through the roof. In fact high cholesterol levels were used as the marker for thyroid function, along with metabolic rate, and core temperature.

Cholesterol levels have now been hijacked these days for the purpose of telling us that there is too much fat in our diet but dietary fat has very little implication on circulating cholesterol levels!

Once someone has been determined to have an underactive thyroid the influence of the medical companies has shifted the paradigm of natural thyroid prescription to thyroxine which by all accounts does not work as well its natural counterpart. This is primarily because pharmaceutical companies couldn’t patent the natural version and a heap of research designed to convince the medical practitioners that thyroxine, the synthetically manufactured product was a better choice.

Secondary hypothyroidism is often bought on by a failure in another system and particularly, when the adrenal glands become fatigued thyroid dysfunction ensues.

The fact is that most of us are in some stage of adrenal fatigue, high levels of cortisol, which whilst having anti-inflammatory properties, inhibits the production of DHEA which is a repair and growth hormone which helps us to heal at nighttime during sleep. Here are a few symptoms of adrenal fatigue:

* exhausted easily
* crave salty foods
* dizzy when standing up
* wounds heal slowly, bruises stay for a long time
* body becomes sensitive to touch and change in temperature
* blue or black circles under eyes

There are more. I have had quite a few clients who have been fobbed off with statements such as, ‘its all in your head’ or ‘you’re just imagining it.’ The sad thing is this is all very real

There are many things that you can do to help prevent or rehabilitate yourself from thyroid dysfunction or adrenal fatigue. Working on foundational principles of health can go along way to getting you back to optimal and wellbeing.

The next time you feel any of the above symptoms ask what your quality of life is like? Do you follow these principles?

* Thinking right
* Breathing correctly
* Drinking good quality water
* Eating for your genetic needs
* doing the right type of exercise
* good sleep wake cycles

These changes can be easily implemented with a little time and effort and can help to prevent any unwanted conditions such as thyroid dysfunction or adrenal fatigue!

Isolation and Analysis of Lipid Rafts in Cell–Cell Interactions

Chapter 20

Isolation and Analysis of Lipid Rafts in Cell–Cell Interactions

Aimee Landry and Ramnik Xavier

© 2006 Humana Press Inc. 999 Riverview Drive, Suite 208 Totowa, New Jersey 07512

Summary

Lipid rafts are dynamic structures made up of proteins and lipids that float freely within the liquid-disordered bilayer of cellular membranes and have the ability to cluster to form larger, more-ordered platforms. These clustered structures have been identified in all cell types and have been shown to play critical roles in signal transduction, cellular transport, and cell–cell communication. Lipid rafts also have been implicated in facilitating bacterial/viral entry into host cells and in human disease, highlighting the significance of understanding the role lipid rafts play in physiological and pathological signaling outcomes. In this chapter, we provide protocols to isolate lipid rafts from polarized and nonpolarized cells and outline novel technologies to analyze signal transduction cascades in vivo.

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Exercise 1 Hour a Week & Lower Your Cholesterol

Previous studies have found that exercise can improve good (HDL) cholesterol levels.  This is one of the first studies to find a link between exercise and significant lowering of bad (LDL) cholesterol in women.  This study did not find a benefit in men and this needs to be evaluated further.  Almost 9,000 sedentary middle-aged adults were followed in this 9 year study which was published in The Journal of Lipid Research (August 2009).  

 Women who did as little as one hour a week of moderate physical activity (like taking a brisk walk) or 30 minutes of vigorous activity a week had a decrease in their bad (LDL) cholesterol levels.

White women had a 4 mg/dl decrease in LDL cholesterol

African American women had a 10 mg/dl decrease in their LDL cholesterol

 Postmenopausal women had an even greater benefit.

Postmenopausal white women had a 5.9 mg/dl decrease in LDL cholesterol

Postmenopausal African American women had a 14.7 mg/dl decrease in LDL cholesterol

 Now we can all fit 1 hour a week of exercise into our busy schedule.  Your Heart with Thank You!!

“Take Charge: A Woman’s Guide to a Healthier Heart” discusses how women can help control their cholesterol and other risk factors to prevent a heart attack, stroke and diabetes.  “Take Charge: A Man’s Roadmap to a Healthier Heart” is due to be released Fall 2009.  For more info visit www.heart-strong.com

Reduce your cholesterol, is this possible?

Cholesterol scared. Everyone watches his cholesterol as if it was his sworn enemy. One has the impression that there are two categories of French: those of cholesterol and those who do not!

However, cholesterol is not only your opponent. It is rather your ally in that it is necessary for the proper functioning of your body.
What is needed above all to know about cholesterol is that there are good and bad cholesterol. And both are vital: they are blood components necessary for building and good health of your cells.
High levels of good cholesterol is essential. And only a high level of bad cholesterol can be harmful. You must watch them closely to avoid problems.

To locate a high cholesterol in your blood, a number of signals is easily identifiable. These include, for example: hypertension, blurred vision, ringing in the ears, tingling in the legs, feet or around the lips, overweight. Stress can also be an important factor in increasing your cholesterol.

If you feel this kind of inconvenience, please feel free to control your cholesterol with your doctor. A simple blood test is enough. It is a small thing but you need to be reassured and calmed.
Indeed, a high cholesterol can have serious consequences. Grease accumulate on the walls of your arteries that will eventually become clogged and cause cardio-vascular or cerebro-vascular diseases.
To avoid this end, it is essential that you monitor your cholesterol levels, especially as you avoid seeing your rates rise. In cases where prevention is not enough, there are ways to reduce your rates.

If your cholesterol is especially high, your doctor will prescribe a medical treatment that will decrease.
A healthy lifestyle can also help. The latter is widely advocated prevention.
Tons of tips are distributed regularly to fight against cholesterol.

Here are some tips that may help you have no cholesterol or lower your rate.

As might well say about La Palisse, your cholesterol will be high if your diet is rich in fat. It’s the perfect equation. Therefore, to reduce your cholesterol, you need to adopt a diet low in fat. This is the essential point. Other foods are also recommended: those rich in fiber tend to lower cholesterol in the blood.
Vegetables perfectly combine these two advantages: green beans, peas, carrots, artichokes, onions, garlic, broccoli, etc.. are preferred.
An important input fiber can be made by the bread, pasta and brown rice, oat bran that you can sprinkle on your food.

The fruits are also essential, especially apples (one or two a day, or even 1 kg if you are able). Add to that type of fatty fish mackerel, tuna, salmon, sardines, herring, rich in fatty acids and increase good cholesterol. Olive oil, canola will have the same effect. Also drink green tea and wine (drink in moderation), whose tannins will lower your cholesterol. Other recommended foods: pickles, cucumbers, peppers, grapes.

Avoid meat, sunflower oil or corn (because fats oxidize easily), fried foods, whole milk, butter, eggs (not more than two per week), alcohol (even if some studies show a glass of beer or wine a day can increase good cholesterol. But caution: this is not a reason to drink without moderation!).
If you are able, adopt a vegetarian diet that combines all the advantages.

Other precautions. If your stress is the source of your cholesterol, try to minimize. To be more relaxed, do yoga, relaxation, turn to Amma sitting meditation.
Other natural therapies are sometimes suggested to help lower your cholesterol: reflexology (ask a very good practitioner stimulate points that correspond to your thyroid and your liver), the display would have an interesting effect.
Move more and also your good cholesterol will increase. You do not have to exercise to excess, walking half an hour per day sessions of qi-gong or soft gym may suffice. Some researchers also advise to stop smoking.

Now you have all the keys in hand to prevent or reduce a high cholesterol. Talk to your doctor first! Take you hands. Adopt a healthy lifestyle. Thus, the cholesterol will do you fear most.

Open Mic Goodness

Like OMG kid! As promised here is my recollection of the open mic from last night. I keep my promises even when I’m extremely hungover, which I am not.

On the myspace for Doyle’s Corner it listed the open mic as “Thursday at 9pm”. If you’ve ever been to an open mic you’re probably familiar with the signup sheet that comes out about 30 minutes before the actual open mic. Being the punctual musicians that we are we showed up at 8:30pm with the expectation that there would be a signup sheet out or at least some other performers. We walked in on three or four beer guzzlers and the bartender. We looked around for a second to see if perhaps there were some open mic gnomes hidden amongst the pool table and videogames. Nothing. I approached the bartender with a simple “Hi, do you know if the open mic is going on tonight?” or something even more eloquent. “Yeah. The guy usually shows up around 9:30 or 10.” I said the obligatory “Thanks!” and as we were leaving he said, “So you guys will be by later?” and then I was all like “Yup.” and he was all like and then she was all like “Wha’?!”

We were as out of place as this dead horseshoe crab in Boston Common.

We walked around the area for a while killing time. We stopped in the nearby Starbucks to see if anyone I knew was working. They weren’t. Then we killed some time in a sad looking video store that still sold some good old VHS. They didn’t have any of the four movies that I’m looking for on VHS so we just did some knitting in the adult section. Not really…yet. We looked in Doyle’s again since we were expecting some friends to come out and play. Nothing. Then we got really adventurous and sat in the car just talking about our feelings and what not. There were a lot of revelations. Around 9:30pm we went in after I got a text from a friend who was inside and sat around chatting like some real Chatty Cathys. Besides our friend we were the only other people with instruments among the growing number of frat boys. Finally around 10pm an older gentlemen(not to be confused with old guy) came in and started setting up the PA. He then began what wound up being about a 30 minute set of originals and maybe a cover thrown in there. It was hard to distinguish the acoustic blues originals from the acoustic blues covers. My ear isn’t that good. After this he announced, “If anyone wants to sit in just let me know.” Now where I’m from, the Maldives, to “sit it” means to “jam” or play with other people that you have probably never played with before. Our friend spoke up first and the acoustic blues older gentlemen left the stage(there was no stage). He played some sweet tunes and my bandmate/friend talked to ABOG briefly about our obnoxious setup.

Another professional shot. Here's the host melting our faces and hearts.

A big part of the reason we were going play to this open mic was to test run some stuff that we’re preparing for a show later this month. We’re both in another group, which is our “main band” or “mand” and this new band/side project is quite a departure from our usual hard rawkin’ technical muzak. What makes it even more convoluted is that the only difference in terms of members is that the new project has the same two out of three members except instead of a drummer the new project has a computer. Did that make any sense? Eh.

Like I was saying, we went up to play and setting up the computer and all the technical stuff took a couple of minutes so I won over the crowd by repeatedly saying “Computer.” and breathing heavily into the microphone. Once we got going everything went fairly smoothly except for the host turning our backing track volume way down during the middle of a song only for some other guy turn it right back up. Weird. They asked us to play another song after our two hit singles. We were prepared to drop another music bomb on everyone sans computer and did in fact drop that bomb, which brought about the end of the open mic. Afterwards, we did all the handshaking stuff and were invited to come back and have our own show there. The prospect of being able to have a show there was a nice bonus and we connected with a local promoter who wants to “work with us” or whatevers. We walked out feeling a lot more confident about our upcoming first show with the new project.

I’m sure we’ll be spending some more time there. It wasn’t the most ideal place to play music but there was a built in audience and not a lot of competition considering only three acts played. It’s definitely worth checking out especially if you like your open mics like I like my mail couriers: loose and cheap. I’ll shut up now.

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UK researchers uncovered the Alzheimer Gene's Linked

Alzheimer Disease

Alzheimer’s disease is a brain disorder named for German physician Alois Alzheimer, who first described it in 1906.

Alzheimer is a progressive and fatal brain disease. People with Alzhemier has been growth rapidly in the world . Since Since Dr. Alzheimer first drew attention to it, Scientistes have learned a great deal about Alzheimer disease .

One of their project is studying the human genes deal with this brain disease . Two potentially key genes linked to the development of Alzheimer’s disease have been uncovered by UK researchers.

It is the first gene clue to the condition in 16 years and has prompted scientists to rethink their theories on how the disease develops. …  Read Full Story

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