NIH National Institutes of Health
Here’s the problem:
Iodine is tough to come by naturally in our food supply. The two good sources of iodine – seafood and sea vegetables (such as seaweed) have been adulterated by mercury poisoning and industrial wastes poured into the sea. Plus, with the advent of Fukushima, we now have to contend with radioactive iodine flowing into the ocean’s waters and atmosphere as well.
Food grown on large commercial farms suffers from chemical over-fertilization. Gone are the times when farmers would use fish as fertilizer – restoring the trace amounts of iodine back to the soil. Also, the soils are not allowed to recoup their natural vigor by laying fallow for several seasons, but are rather “fortified” year after year by man-made fertilizers.
Yes, the plants grow – but the fertilizers used have only a limited amount of nutrients, and iodine is usually not among them. This nutritional shortfall is passed on to the crops, and ultimately us when we consume them.
Next come three other culprits in this iodine connection – fluorine, chlorine and bromine.
The first line of defense in treating hypothyroidism should then be the least invasive – namely supplementing with iodine. Just by increasing iodine levels, primary hypothyroidism can be alleviated and normal thyroid function restored in almost half of all cases. But please be advised most iodine supplements and multi-vitamins have far too little iodine in them to be effective. In fact, the standard 400 IU in most preparations is 80 – 100 TIMES LESS than what is truly needed. How do we supplement iodine for patients with hypothyroidism is Part III tomorrow. Hope you come back!
Older adults are more likely to have either no signs or symptoms or subtle ones, such as an increased heart rate, heat intolerance and a tendency to become tired during ordinary activities.
MAYO CLINIC
Hypothyroidism can be a tricky condition to manage, and what you eat can interfere with your treatment. Some nutrients heavily influence the function of the thyroid gland, and certain foods can inhibit your body’s ability to absorb the replacement hormones you may take as part of your thyroid treatment. There’s no such thing as a “hypothyroidism diet” that will make you well, but eating smart can help you feel better despite the condition.
Thyroid hormone is required for the normal functioning of numerous tissues in the body. In health, the thyroid gland predominantly secretes thyroxine (T4), which is converted into triiodothyronine (T3) in other organs by the selenium-dependent enzyme iodothyronine deiodinase. Triiodothyronine binds to the thyroid hormone receptor in the nulceus of cells, where it stimulates the turning on of particular genes and the production of specific proteins. Additionally, the hormone binds to integrin αvβ3 on the cell membrane, thereby stimulating the sodium–hydrogen antiporter and processes such as formation of blood vessels and cell growth. In blood, almost all thyroid hormone (99.97%) is bound to plasma proteins such as thyroxine-binding globulin; only the free unbound thyroid hormone is biologically active.
The thyroid gland is the only source of thyroid hormone in the body; the process requires iodine and the amino acid tyrosine. Iodine in the bloodstream is taken up by the gland and incorporated into thyroglobulin molecules. The process is controlled by the thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH, thyrotropin), which is secreted by the pituitary. Not enough iodine, or not enough TSH, can result in decreased production of thyroid hormones
Goitrogenic foods are foods that interfere with iodine absorption, leading to an enlargement of the thyroid gland, otherwise known as the formation of a “goiter”. A steady stream of iodine is necessary to keep your thyroid running optimally.
If you are having problems with low thyroid function, you can help your thyroid work better by making some adjustments to your diet, Some foods support your thyroid, while others could be hindering its function if you eat them frquently. So a few changes in your diet could make a big difference. This applies especially to those vegetarians who substitute large quantities of soy products for meat.
Here are three major contributors to the emergence of Iodine deficiency in the developed world.
1) Reduced use of table salt If you have high blood pressure then you probably cut down on your salt. However, even when you think you’re doing the right thing for your health, there are sometimes unintended consequences! If you eat too little salt then your thyroid is not getting the raw materials that it needs to synthesize thyroid hormones.
2) Processed food Processed food generally has a very high salt content, however this salt is not iodized. As more and more people live on packaged and processed food, they are actually eating more salt but less Iodine. This is a major contributor to thyroid problems.
3) Sea salt Almost any recipe book you find will tell you that sea salt tastes better than the iodized table salt that you buy in the supermarket. However if you eat only sea salt, you’re probably not getting the Iodine that you need. Although sea salt seems like a healthier choice, it is normally not iodized, so iodized table salt contains a lot more Iodine. You can use sea salt occasionally when you cook, but make sure that its not the only salt that you use.
Today our nutrition is many times abysmal. Fast foods, junk food, foods grown in nutrient depleted soils – these just can’t give the human body what it needs to thrive. Now add three “modern day improvements” – fluoride, chlorine and bromine – and our thyroid is taxed to the max.
According to the WHO (World Health Organization) at least 72% 0f the world’s population is currently iodine deficient. Many holistic physicians feel even this figure is far too conservative.
The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES – completed 1971-1974) shows iodine levels have dropped 50% in the U.S.A. alone. The problem has only worsened over time.
About the only populations on earth that get enough iodine in their diet are the Japanese and Eskimos. (They both eat plenty of fish and/or seaweed.)
The Japanese diet typically consumes a 100-fold amount of iodine than that of Westerners – and Japan has no significant amount of thyroid disease. But as mentioned above, with the advent of Fukushima this can well change as the seaweed and fish being consumed is now becoming radioactive.
At first, you may barely notice the symptoms of hypothyroidism, such as fatigue and weight gain, or you may simply attribute them to getting older. But as your metabolism continues to slow, you may develop more obvious signs and symptoms. Hypothyroidism signs and symptom may include:
When hypothyroidism isn’t treated, signs and symptoms can gradually become more severe. Constant stimulation of your thyroid gland to release more hormones may lead to an enlarged thyroid (goiter). In addition, you may become more forgetful, your thought processes may slow, or you may feel depressed.
Come back tomorrow for more information on hypothyroidism.
If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know the man, don’t bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, or seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you’ll get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he’s a good man…All I claim to know is that laughter is the most reliable gauge of human nature.
Feodor Dostoyevsky(11 November 1821 – 9 February 1881,[was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist and philosopher. )
Laughing heartily and uncontrollably provides a physical release. Several muscles are stretched and exercised including throughout our face and body, the diaphragm, the abdomen muscles and the shoulders; our pulse and blood pressure go up, and we breathe faster, sending more oxygen to our tissues. Blood circulation is increased for all major body organs including the brain. Laughter even provides some exercise for the heart. Increased blood circulation stimulates facial muscles so you might even look better!
Some researchers report that laughter can reduce pain. Increasingly, medical experts use laughter therapy in cancer care and with other chronic illnesses.
When we laugh, stress hormone levels are reduced and levels of healthy hormones are increased. The body’s immune system improves with the release of endorphins, those natural ‘feel-good’ chemicals.
These physical effects account for the cleansed feeling that happens after a good laugh
It’s hard to feel anxious or sad when you are having a good laugh. Laughter distracts. It takes your mind away from daily problems and worries. When the endorphins reach your brain, stress levels are automatically reduced. You relax and as you relax you recharge. You start to feel good and your mind clears.
Laughter can also provides a new perspective. Very often I need my husband’s light-hearted view of the world to help me see situations differently. His easy laughter re-frames problems which helps me to see new possibilities — and sometimes, to find novel solutions.
Experts consider the social benefits of laughter as the most powerful way that laughter influences health. This winter I have played bridge with a wonderful group of women. The bridge games often involve eating a meal together, sharing stories and lots of good laughs as we play. My bridge game is getting better. More importantly, new bonds of friendship are forming as we laugh at our mistakes and learn together.
Laughter creates and strengthens relationships. It is contagious. When you laugh, others laugh too — thus the quality of social interaction improves.
You can learn to laugh at any stage of life. Even if you are going through a difficult phase of life, laughter will contribute to your overall outlook and keep you young and healthy.
People who believe in the benefits of laughter say it can be like a mild workout — and may offer some of the same advantages as a workout.
“The effects of laughter and exercise are very similar,” says Steve Wilson, MA, CSP, a psychologist and laugh therapist. He states “Combining laughter and movement, like waving your arms, is a great way to boost your heart rate.”
One pioneer in laughter research, William Fry, claimed it took ten minutes on a rowing machine for his heart rate to reach the level it would after just one minute of hearty laughter.
And laughter appears to burn calories, too. Maciej Buchowski, a researcher from Vanderbilt University, conducted a small study in which he measured the amount of calories expended in laughing. It turned out that 10-15 minutes of laughter burned 50 calories.
While the results are intriguing, don’t be too hasty in ditching that treadmill. One piece of chocolate has about 50 calories; at the rate of 50 calories per hour, losing one pound would require about 12 hours of concentrated laughter!
Laughter is a positive effect on our health!
Memory lapses can occur at any age, but we tend to get more upset by them as we get older because we fear they’re a sign of dementia, or loss of intellectual function. The fact is, significant memory loss in older people isn’t a normal part of aging—but is due to organic disorders, brain injury, or neurological illness, with Alzheimer’s being among the most feared.
Harvard Medical School
“No matter what your brain status or age, there is much we can do to significantly improve brain functions and slow brain aging.”
Dr. Larry McCleary (Former Acting Chief, Pediatric Neurosurgery, Denver Children’s Hospital Author of The Brain Trust Program)
First let us look at the functions the brain has in its operations:
– Memory
Memory is probably the easiest of the cognitive domains to understand. Memory is the process through which new information about our world is encoded, stored and later retrieved by our brain cells. The ability to remember new facts and new ways of doing things is not only key to our ability to maintain independent lives, our memories are what individualizes each and everyone of us. Our personal memories of past experiences and of family and friends are valuable treasures. Sadly, these treasures are often lost or become tarnished as we age and in tragic cases, with the onset of dementia. For this reason alone, it is necessary that we continue to exercise and activate the neural networks that form our memories. It is also important that we continue to find new strategies and tools to help us form new memories.
– Focus
We live in a world of instant communication and sometimes the demands of work and family can become unbearable and seemingly never-ending. When we become mentally fatigued or over burdened we can lose our ability to prioritize, our ability to identify important information and our ability to stay on task. At home, at the office and at school, we are constantly pulled in multiple directions at the same time and losing focus and concentration can result in us failing to meet our obligations. In addition to providing our brains with the rest and relaxation it needs to operate at its best, it is also important that we engage in brain exercises that can improve our ‘mental endurance’, focus and concentration.
It is also important that we exercise this cognitive domain to find new strategies to overcome specific challenges such as ADD/ADHD. You need to provide your brain with the best and newest brain fitness tools that will improve your concentration and strengthen your mental endurance. Which can be done through games and exercises that will engage your brain and sharpen your focus and teach you new ways to stop wasting time. With stronger concentration skills, improved attention to detail, and sharper focus you can expect to live life with less confusion, less stress and a greater feeling of mental clarity. Strengthening your focus is a surefire way to improve your performance at work or at school.
– Word Skills
Language is the highly evolved human skill that enables us to effectively communicate our thoughts and emotions with the rest of the world. Language is what allows us to grow as people, to share ideas with others and to form the social bonds that bring true value and meaning to our lives. And the fabulous fact about our word skills and capacity for language is that we can continue to improve these skills over the course of our lives.
Unfortunately, on the other side of the coin is fact that our spoken and written word skills can degrade over time with out practice. I’m sure we can all remember a time during conversation when we found ourselves dumbfounded and embarrassed as we struggled to find a word stuck on the tip of our tongue. Or maybe we can remember a time when we mis-used or mis-spelled a fancy word in an important email. As we grow, it is important that we continue to expand our vocabulary, improve our language comprehension skills and find new ways to make our words mean more to the people in our lives.
You can do this through fun and effective brain fitness games and tools to help them continue to grow their capacity for language. Improving word-skills with brain fitness games and exercises is a sure fire way to increase your verbal communication confidence and reduce social anxiety.
– Coordination
From the moment we wake up in the morning until we fall asleep at night, we humans are constantly on the move! And for most of us, our ability to make purposeful, timely and accurate movements is often taken for granted as we go about our day. But the truth is that our ability to perform the seemingly infinite number of goal directed movements we make is the result of our brain precisely detecting sensory information from the world around us and integrating it with our internal motivations to accurately execute the appropriate motor commands that tell our muscles how to move.
Unfortunately, as we age, this process becomes more difficult and moving about the world can become more challenging than it once was before. For most of us, our senses tend to dull, our reaction times become a bit slower and seemingly simple motor tasks such as writing, driving our car and moving about to enjoy the things we love to do can become more difficult. For this reason, it is important that we not only exercise our muscles to maintain strength and flexibility to stay mobile, but that we also exercise the areas of our brain that are involved in coordinating our movements.
You need to provide yourself with fun and challenging brain fitness tools that will help improve your sensory perception, manual dexterity, spatial awareness and precision of movement. By doing you can continue to make the most of your independent lifestyle.
– Critical Thinking
Critical thought can also be referred to as our brain’s ‘executive function’. And as such, we can think of our critical thinking skills, as the analysis tools used by the CEO of our brain.
Critical thinking skills are the tools we use to objectively analyze information, recognize patterns, follow logical rules, strategize, and solve problems. It is also the brain function that provides us with the ability to form the complex chronological and spatial plans we use to navigate our lives. Everyday we use our critical thinking skills to objectively analyze the world we live and thrive as individuals.
Along with Language, higher order critical thinking skills are what separate us humans from the rest of the Animal Kingdom. And anatomically speaking, the parts of our brain that allows us to think critically reside in the most highly evolved parts of our brain, the frontal and temporal lobes of the cortex. Sadly, it is most often our critical thinking skills that decline with age-related dementia. Our critical thinking skills also need to be fostered at an early age and throughout our lives in order for our brains to operate at their best.
Fortunately, research investigating the phenomenon of neuroplasticity has taught us that we can actually change the way our brains are wired. By engaging in intellectually stimulating activities and by taking on cognitive challenges we actually have the ability to strengthen our critical thinking skills and improve our executive function. But if we want to enhance our critical thinking skills globally, it is important that we exercise our executive functions individually and as a whole. For example, it is important to engage in a variety of different brain exercise designed to improve deductive reasoning, logical reasoning, pattern recognition skill, strategic decision-making skill and the efficiency of our brain’s ability to process information.
By taking a ‘whole- body approach’ and incorporating brain fitness into your daily routines you will be making the lifestyle changes needed to sharpen your minds and reduce your risk of dementia.
Since the human brain peaks in size at about age 20 and then starts to shrink, you might think that by age 70 or 80, you’d be lucky to remember your name. The good news is that memory loss is not inevitable. “There are examples of people who have lived to 123 years of age who died with completely intact memories and no evidence of neuropathology,” said Sam Gandy, MD, PhD, director of the Center for Cognitive Health at The Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City.
A history of infectious mononucleosis due to infection by Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) may increase risk of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma but the precise contribution of Epstein–Barr virus remains largely unknown. Hodgkin lymphoma is characterized by the orderly spread of disease from one lymph node group to another and by the development of systemic symptoms with advanced disease. When Hodgkins cells are examined microscopically, multinucleated Reed–Sternberg cells (RS cells) are the characteristic histopathologic finding.
Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital