Optimal Functioning - positive psychology & physical health

Environment Cartoon

Helge Bjorland — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 13:20:30 +0000

Type 1 Diabetes, Genetics, Environment, and Diet

Fish Oil Linked to Colon Cancer Risk

Helge Bjorland — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 06:00:59 +0000

Fish oil — long encouraged by doctors as a supplement to support heart and joint health, among other benefits — induced severe colitis and colon cancer in mice in research led by Michigan State University and published October 2010 in the journal Cancer Research.

Don’t take this the wrong way though, this study seems to serve more as a reminder too much of anything can be bad for you. It’s also nice to contrast the information we hear, which is usually positive related to fish oil — omega-3 fatty acids. The fact of the matter is that the amount of omega-3 fatty acids we need for optimal functioning is still not known, so don’t go crazy with the supplements.

Fenton cautions people may not need to avoid fish oil; what the research shows is needed are guidelines on dosing. With any nutrient, there is a “bell curve” effect. On the left of the curve are those deficient in a nutrient; on the right are those in excess.

She said people already receiving enough omega-3 fatty acids through their normal diet and foods have no need for added supplementation.

[ScienceDaily]

Following Lifestyle Tips Could Save You From Bowel Cancer

Helge Bjorland — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 20:14:29 +0000

A study published on the British Medical Journal website suggest that following public health recommendation could reduce risk of bowel cancer by up to 23%. The study is not very specific as to causality, but at least supports the effectiveness of the public health goals.

The researchers created a healthy lifestyle index using internationally accepted public health recommendations from the World Health Organization, World Cancer Research Fund and the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations.

These included being physically active for at least 30 minutes a day, having no more than seven drinks a week for women and 14 drinks a week for men, being non-smoker, having a waist circumference below 88 cm for women and 102 cm for men and consuming a healthy diet

If all participants had followed all five recommendations, then 23% of the bowel cancer cases could have been avoided.

The researchers conclude: “Our study reveals the useful public health message that even modest differences in lifestyle might have a substantial impact on colorectal cancer risk and emphasises the importance of continuing vigorous efforts to convince people to follow the lifestyle recommendations.”

[BMJ]

Latest in Clinical Nutrition (2007) by Michael Greger

Hans Rippel — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 07:00:54 +0000

In information packed and research backed dose of fun interesting …A quick, easy, and especially interesting way.

Weeding through thousands of researches published in the last year and selecting out the most interesting, practical, and groundbreaking findings from what the latest nutritional science has to offer.

httpvp://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=D97C091AA2069C7A

http://www.drgreger.org/DVDs/#2007

Contents (playlist)

01. Introduction [00:00]
02. Preventing Cancer: Which Foods to Avoid [01:51]
03. Slowing the Growth of Breast Cancer [05:21]
04. Preventing Cancer: Which Foods to Eat [11:09]
05. Just the Flax, Ma’am [15:35]
06. How to Eliminate Constipation [20:43]
07. The Healthiest Vegetables [21:55]
08. The Dangers of Blue-Green Algae and Spirulina [24:18]
09. Never Eat Raw Alfalfa Sprouts [26:10]
10. Fecal Bacteria in Sushi [28:24]
11. How Much Pesticide Can Be Washed Off? [31:03]
12. Which Fruits and Vegetables Don’t Count? [35:27]
13. How Much Doctors Know About Nutrition [39:52]
14. Raw Food Diet Myths [42:33]
15. The Food That Can Drop Your Cholesterol 20 Points [45:44]
16. The Healthiest Fruits [47:27]
17. Noni Juice: Helpful, Harmless, or Harmful? [48:48]
18. HerbaLife Supplements: Helpful, Harmless, or Harmful? [49:20]
19. The Healthiest Beverage [49:47]
20. The Food That Cuts Your Fatal Heart Attack Risk in Half [50:16]
21. Foods for Weight Loss [54:48]
22. The Great Grain Robbery [57:12]
23. Good Fats, Bad Fats, Great Fats, and Killer Fats [59:29]
24. What About Olive Oil? [61:43]
25. The Healthy Type of Chocolate [65:05]
26. Recipe of the Year [68:02]
27. Nutritional Deficiencies: Vegans vs. Meateaters [69:26]
28. Avoiding Iodine Deficiency [70:49]
29. The One Supplement Everyone Eating a Healthy Diet Needs [74:33]
30. New Studies on Vegans and Vegetarians [76:14]
31. Effects of Meat Hormones on Fertility [79:46]
32. IQ and Vegetarian Children [82:14]
33. Diet and Body Odor [84:06]
34. Conclusion [87:08]

Latest in Clinical Nutrition (2010) by Michael Greger

Helge Bjorland — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 07:00:35 +0000

In information packed and research backed dose of fun interesting …A quick, easy, and especially interesting way

weeding through thousands of researches published in the last year and selecting out the most interesting, practical, and groundbreaking findings from what the latest nutritional science has to offer.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYLRKa9p0Rs

Latest in Clinical Nutrition (2009) by Michael Greger

Hans Rippel — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 07:00:29 +0000

In information packed and research backed dose of fun interesting …A quick, easy, and especially interesting way

httpvp://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=DBA02DD311F1D505

Contents (playlist)

1. Introduction [00:00]
2. Nutrition Quizshow [00:00]
3. Nutrasweet: Harmful? [00:00]
4. MSG: Harmless? [00:00]
5. Black Pepper: Helpful? [00:00]
6. Vitamin E Supplements [00:00]
7. Vitamin A Supplements [00:00]
8. Beta Carotene Supplements [00:00]
9. Vitamin D Supplements [00:00]
10. Vitamin Supplements Worth Taking [00:00]
11. Broccoli Sprouts [00:00]
12. One Egg a Day: Harmful? [00:00]
13. Two Cups of Coffee a day? [00:00]
14. Black Coffee vs. Black Tea [00:00]
15. Black Tea vs. Green Tea [00:00]
16. Yerba Maté [00:00]
17. Red Tea [00:00]
18. Honeybush Tea [00:00]
19. Soy Foods [00:00]
20. Soy for Women with Breast Cancer? [00:00]
21. Meat [00:00]
22. Dairy Products [00:00]
23. Flame Retardants in U.S. Food [00:00]
24. Farmed Fish vs. Wild-Caught Fish [00:00]
25. Fish: Omega 3s and Mercury [00:00]
26. Should Everyone Take Algae DHA? [00:00]
27. Meat and Arthritis [00:00]
28. Acrylamide in French Fries [00:00]
29. New Antioxidant Superstars [00:00]
30. Superfood Bargains [00:00]
31. Recipe of the Year [00:00]
32. Oranges vs. Orange Juice [00:00]
33. Apples vs. Apple Sauce [00:00]
34. Sun-dried vs. Golden Raisins [00:00]
35. Raisins vs. Currents [00:00]
36. Carrots vs. Baby Carrots [00:00]
37. Green Lettuce vs. Red Lettuce [00:00]
38. Red Onions vs. Yellow Onions [00:00]
39. Pinto Beans vs. Black Beans [00:00]
40. The Best Bean [00:00]
41. The Best Mushroom [00:00]
42. The Best Beverage [00:00]
43. Bottled Water vs. Tap Water [00:00]
44. The Best Apple Variety [00:00]
45. The Best Nut [00:00]
46. Raw vs. Cooked Vegetables [00:00]
47. Steaming vs. Microwaving [00:00]
48. Roasted Nuts vs. Raw Nuts [00:00]
49. Best Cancer-Fighting Berry [00:00]
50. Flawed Study Interpretation [00:00]
51. Golden Carrot Study of the Year [00:00]
52. Conclusion [00:00]

Latest in Clinical Nutrition (2008) by Michael Greger

Hans Rippel — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 07:00:03 +0000

In information packed and research backed dose of fun interesting …A quick, easy, and especially interesting way.

Weeding through thousands of researches published in the last year and selecting out the most interesting, practical, and groundbreaking findings from what the latest nutritional science has to offer.

httpvp://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=FD84B14C63A2AA88

http://www.drgreger.org/DVDs/#2008

Contents (playlist)

Game teach people healthy diet choices

Helge Bjorland — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 07:00:15 +0000

A Georgia Tech College of Computing Ph.D. candidate, Andrea Grimes Parker, has shown that playing health-related video games on a mobile device can help adults learn to live more healthfully by making smart diet choices.

OrderUP! seeks to educate players about how to make healthy eating choices in situations nearly everyone encounters regularly in their lives. By casting players as virtual restaurant servers, Order UP! forces players to make healthy — and fast — menu decisions for a group of demanding, impatient customers.

“We found that, after playing OrderUP! for just three weeks, we saw people engage in behaviors and thinking consistent with the processes of change identified by the TTM,” Parker said. “In particular, we found that people learned how to make healthier choices when eating out, reassessed the healthiness of their current eating habits, began having productive conversations about healthy eating with people in their social network and, finally, actually started introducing healthier foods into their diet.”

“The most important finding from the OrderUP! project was how the game was integrated into conversations players had with other players and non-players about things that they had learned, particularly things that confronted their assumptions about healthy choices.”

The game works like this: One at a time, 10 virtual “customers” approach the counter with three possible food choices; for example, the choices could be a fried chicken thigh, a jerk chicken breast or gumbo. They’re then asked to make the healthiest choice, with only a few moments to pick before the customer gets impatient and leaves. Players start with 1,000 health points, and as they make unhealthy choices for their customers (or as the customers get tired of waiting and leave) their health points drop. The object of the game is to continue serving food as long as possible.

OrderUP! fits into a larger research profile within the College of Computing of trying to determine how the ubiquity of mobile devices can be leveraged to improve users’ health.

Future development of OrderUP! will include a longer study to measure player behavior change over an extended period of time, as well as an expanded game with more levels, more food choices and more nutritional information available to the player.

[Sciencedaily]

Five amazing lifehacks

Helge Bjorland — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 07:00:15 +0000

There are some tricks, or “lifehacks”, which you appreciate more than others and start incorporating into your daily life. This could be something like; if you learned that tucking your t-shirt into your underwear would relieve you of shirts becoming untucked. Wouldn’t those Monday afternoons be a little bit brighter if you still had your shirt tucked in?

In this post I have gathered five of the lifehacks I find the most useful and which I have come to use every day. I hope they will be useful to you as well.

If you have any lifehacks you are using on a regular basis, leave a comment below and share it!

Let’s get started on the list:

1. Tie your shoes with a knot that holds all day

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc4H6goKFB0

2. Sharpen your razor blade and use it forever

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ADaRIqy0Dc

3. Peel a banana like a monkey

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBJV56WUDng

4. Create some easy to remember & strong passwords

– (where you can’t use LastPass that is)

5. Let your kid make a mess in the dishwasher

Set a bowl on top of the open dishwasher door which should be just the right height for your toddler. Let her help cooking by adding ingredients and stir, and the pile of flour and sugar that usually ends up on the counter will end up on the dishwasher instead, making clean up as easy as closing the door 8-) When you clean of the counter, make sure to sweep the dirt into down of the counter and into the dishwasher, it’s easier.

No related posts.

Ted Prize winner 2011: JR

Helge Bjorland — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 07:00:58 +0000

Congratulation to the guerrilla photographer JR who is the winner of the TED Prize award 2011. This award grants him $100,000 and a wish to change the world with the support of the TED community. While a seemingly unconventional recipient, his work matches the creativity and innovative spirit of TED’s community, and his art inspires people to view the world differently –- and want to change it for the better. His latest exhibition called “Women Are Heroes,” is a project underlining the dignity of women who are the target of conflict.

TRAILER ” WOMEN ARE HEROES” from SOCIAL ANIMALS on Vimeo.

JR creates “pervasive art” where he mounts enormous black-and-white photos on buildings in areas such as the urban slums of Paris, the Middle East, Africa, and the favelas of Brazil. These images become part of the local landscape and capture people’s attention and imagination around the world.

People in the exhibit communities, those who often live with the bare minimum, discover something absolutely unnecessary but utterly wonderful. And they don’t just see it, they make it. Elderly women become models for a day; kids turn into artists for a week. In this art scene, there is no stage to separate the actors from the spectators.

As he is anonymous and doesn’t explain his huge full-frame portraits of people making faces, JR leaves the space empty for an encounter between the subject/protagonist and the passer-by/ interpreter.

This is what JR is working on. Raising questions…

An interview with JR can be found at the TED site.

[TED]