Omega-3 in Inflammation and Autoimmune Diseases

Among the fatty acids, it is the omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) which possess the most potent immunomodulatory activities.

And among the omega-3 PUFA, those from fish oil-eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA)--are more biologically potent than alpha-linolenic acid (ALA).

Some of the effects of omega-3 PUFA are brought about by modulation of the amount and types of eicosanoids made, and other effects are elicited by eicosanoid-independent mechanisms, including actions upon intracellular signaling pathways, transcription factor activity and gene expression.

Animal experiments and clinical intervention studies indicate that omega-3 fatty acids have anti-inflammatory properties and, therefore, might be useful in the management of inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.

Coronary heart disease, major depression, aging and cancer are characterized by an increased level of interleukin 1 (IL-1), a proinflammatory cytokine.

Similarly, arthritis, Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis and lupus erythematosis are autoimmune diseases characterized by a high level of IL-1 and the proinflammatory leukotriene LTB(4) produced by omega-6 fatty acids.

There have been a number of clinical trials assessing the benefits of dietary supplementation with fish oils in several inflammatory and autoimmune diseases in humans, including rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, psoriasis, lupus erythematosus, multiple sclerosis and migraine headaches.

Many of the placebo-controlled trials of fish oil in chronic inflammatory diseases reveal significant benefit, including decreased disease activity and a lowered use of anti-inflammatory drugs.

Journal Reference

Simopoulos AP. Omega-3 fatty acids in inflammation and autoimmune diseases. Journal of the American College of Nutrition. 2002 Dec;21(6):495-505.

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Is Your Sex Life Killing You?

Sex feels good, and the proper amount of sex can help maintain physical and emotional health. But balance is the key - Dr. Mark Wiley

Both having too little or too much sex can lead to unhealthy conditions. Let us look at the effects of too much sex, too little sex, and what the proper amounts should be based on your age and condition.

How Much Sex Is Too Much?
The theories of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) warn that a man who engages in too much sex can become what is known as “kidney jing deficient.” Jing is a term that refers to the body’s essential fluids, distilled by the kidneys from what we eat and drink. The kidneys are thought of as the body’s “batteries” and the place where jing is stored. Chinese health theory suggests we are actually equipped with enough jing (life essence) to live 120 years. The problem is we exhaust this essence through poor diet, lack of rest, lack of exercise, the effects of stress, disease and… an unhealthy amount of sex.

Signs and symptoms of kidney jing deficiency include a weakening of the bones, hair loss, a graying of facial color, loosening or loss of teeth, soreness in the lower back, weakness of the legs (particularly behind the knees), poor memory, loss of libido, impotence and a general lack of sexual desire. If you are suffering from any of these signs and symptoms, perhaps you should consider if too much sex is killing you… or at least weakening you.

With too frequent ejaculation, jing (semen, the essence of pure fluids and life energy) is depleted from the body. Moreover, as a man passes middle age, the excessive loss of jing can cause the disastrous effects described above. Like contact sports, sex is a young man’s game. Middle aged and older men need to retain their jing (semen essence) and ejaculate less frequently. (There is an entire art in Yogic and Taoist traditions of men learning to come to orgasm while not releasing a single drop of semen. (More on this in another article)

Two-thousand years ago Su Nu Jing, the classic text on TCM, was published. It advised how much sex/ejaculations are safe for a man to have. For example, a healthy 20-year-old can ejaculate twice per day with no adverse effects. Also, to maintain proper health, the 20-year-old should have a minimum of one ejaculation every four days.

The following chart suggests the sex guidelines from that classic text:

Age	Minimum	Average Health	Good Health
20+	Every 4 days	1X Day	2x Day
30+	Every 8 days	Every other day	1x Day
40+	Every 16 days	Every 4 days	Every 3 days
50+	Every 21 days	Every 10 days	Every 5 days
60+	Every 30 days	Every 20 days	Every 10 days

Of course, these are rough guidelines set forth within the theories of TCM. This gives you an idea of the frequency a man should have sex in order to maintain good health and balanced emotions.

The average 20-year-old male who is engaging in masturbation three times a day is probably overdoing it. This could possibly affect his grades (poor memory) or affect his tennis match (with weak knees and sore low back).

If you are a 40-year-old executive thinking of having that affair with the 24-year old-intern, you might want to consider if you are in good enough health to survive an extramarital affair. You could wind up suffering from hair loss, aging of the face, low back soreness, weak legs, poor memory, loss of libido, impotence and lack of sexual desire that could cost you your career and your health. not to mention your marriage (if applicable).

How Much Sex Is Too Little?
Keep in mind that no sex at all is unhealthy. Psychologically, it can cause resentment, depression and anxiety. Sex is important for relationships, not just emotionally, but for the organ systems as well. Ladies, when men tell you they feel like they are dying from lack of sex, it's partially true. In reality, the choked up emotions and lack of connection can cause him to suffer what is known in TCM as liver qi stagnation.

According to TCM theory, the liver functions to move the qi (life energy) freely in the body. So, liver qi stagnation is a pathogenic flow of qi manifesting in some of the following signs and symptoms: feeling of distension in the chest and hypochondrium, sighing, hiccup, melancholy, depression, moodiness, unhappiness and feeling of a lump in the throat. Often the etiology of this syndrome includes emotional problems, a state of anger, frustration and/or resentment.

If this condition persists it can grow into what is called liver fire. The signs and symptoms associated with liver fire include irritability, anger, shouting, ringing in the ears, temporal headache, bitter taste in the mouth, dream disturbed sleep, a red face and red eyes. This is the result of long-standing emotional states of anger, resentment or frustration. This can cause problems like high blood pressure, tinnitus, insomnia, migraine headache and the like.

Good sexual relations are a part of good health. Overdoing it can be detrimental to health, and so can too little of it.

My advice: Be happy and be wise in the ways of lovemaking.

Dr. Mark Wiley is an internationally renowned mind-body health practitioner, author, motivational speaker and teacher. He holds doctorates in both Oriental and alternative medicine, has done research in eight countries and has developed a model of health and wellness grounded in a self-directed, self-cure approach.

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ZESTZ

Inflammatory Responses To Social-Stress

Inflammation is a key part of the body's immune system's natural response to potentially harmful situations.

A mosquito bite, a splinter, a virus infection, a bruise, or a broken bone will trigger an inflammatory response and dispatch cells and chemicals to the site to repair the damage.

Social stress can also induce inflammatory activity.

Stress-induced increases in inflammation have been implicated in several major disorders, including cardiovascular disease and depression but the neurocognitive pathways that underlie inflammatory responses to stress remain largely unknown.

George Slavich et al recruited 124 healthy young adult participants to complete a laboratory-based social stressor while markers of inflammatory activity were obtained from oral fluids.

As predicted, the laboratory-based social stressor tests showed that individuals who exhibit greater neural sensitivity to social rejection exhibit significant increases in two markers of inflammatory activity, namely a soluble receptor for tumor necrosis factor-α (sTNFαRII) and interleukin-6 (IL-6).

A subset of 31 participants later completed an MRI brain scan session in which their neural responses to social rejection were assessed.

Greater inflammatory activity was recorded in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula. These are the brain regions that have previously been associated with processing rejection-related distress and negative affect.

These data elucidate a neurocognitive pathway that may be involved in potentiated inflammatory responses to acute social stress.

As such, they have implications for understanding how social stressors may promote susceptibility to diseases with an inflammatory component; these includes asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, cardiovascular disease, and depression.

Journal Reference

Slavich GM, Way BM, Eisenberger NI, Taylor SE.Neural sensitivity to social rejection is associated with inflammatory responses to social stress. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published ahead of print August 2, 2010

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Zestz : Celebrating the PRESENT

A Meaningful Life: The Impossible Request

Several years ago I attended a ceremony at the San Francisco Zen Center in which a new abbot, or spiritual leader, was being installed. I was one of six people chosen to ask the incoming abbot a question that he was to answer in public as part of the ceremony. The purpose of this exchange was to challenge and test the new abbot’s wisdom and understanding and simultaneously to support and encourage him. The question that came to me was, “What is the impossible request your life makes of you?” The new abbot answered that his life was asking him “to keep my heart open, to the pains and sorrows, to the joy and well-being of everyone in my life, to not turn away from what was difficult but to turn toward it.” I think that question and answer can be applied to our own lives and jobs.

What is the impossible request that your life makes of you? Stop for a moment and ask yourself that question, very slowly. Now slower. “What is the impossible request that my life makes of me?” Have you ever asked yourself this question? Don’t have a clue what this means? That’s okay. The question is more important than the answer. Just trust the question.

Your work and your life are impossible, imperfect, messy, unanswerable. Your work and your life are precious, amazing, challenging, and incomprehensible. Is there any difference between these two, what is messy and what is precious? What if you accepted and appreciated your work and your life, just as they are, right now, without judgments and labels? Your work, and your life, if you are paying attention, present themselves as impossible requests, asking impossible things from you that are impossible to respond to.

Trust the questions. Trust what is difficult, unpredictable, and does not quite fit anywhere. There is no other place than right here, no other time than right now. There is no other question than this one “What is the impossible request that my life makes of me?”

In Zen there is a classic conversation, a koan, a dialogue between Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen and Emperor Wu, the political head of China in the sixth century. Emperor Wu asks Bodhidharma, “What is the highest meaning of the holy truths?” Bodhidharma replies, “Empty, without holiness.” (Perhaps this is a way of saying that everything is holy.) The Emperor asks, “Who is facing me?” Bodhidharma responds, “I don’t know.”

Without holiness, our work lives are empty. We write, we talk, we meet with people, we take out the trash. Work is one moment after another. But our work lives are precious and amazing. When asked who we are at work or how we came to be doing the work we do, the real answer, for most of us is, “I don’t know.” Our lives and our work are much like a koan, an impossible question whose purpose is to penetrate and deepen our understanding of our truth and the mysterious and mundane nature of our days.

Most of us have no idea how we came to do the work we are doing. Some people clearly choose their work. Others seem to be chosen by their work, and for many, work appears to be a result of a series of accidents. All three of these statements seem to describe how I came to be the founder of a greeting card publishing company. I can trace a series of choices that led me to this place. From another perspective it does feel as though there were a series of choices made, and that I just happened to be at the right place at the right time, on the receiving end of a constellation of decisions. Clearly my being in this role is the result of an amazing series of accidents and unexplainable events. My question continues, again and again “What is the impossible request that my life makes of me?”

Adapted from Z.B.A. Zen Of Business Administration

Marc Lesser is CEO of ZBA Associates LLC, a company providing executive coaching, leadership development consulting, and keynote speaking services to businesses and non-profits. He is a developer and instructor of Google’s Search Inside Yourself program. Marc was the founder and former CEO of Brush Dance publishing. Marc is a Zen teacher with an MBA degree; a former resident of the San Francisco Zen Center for 10 years, and graduate of NYU’s Stern School of Business. He is the author of Less: Accomplishing More By Doing Less and Z.B.A. Zen of Business Administration.

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Stress, Inflammation and Cardiovascular Disease.

Various psychosocial factors have been implicated in the etiology and pathogenesis of certain cardiovascular diseases such as atherosclerosis, now considered to be the result of a chronic inflammatory process.

Atherosclerosis is a condition in which fatty material collects along the walls of arteries. This fatty material thickens, hardens (forms calcium deposits), and may eventually block the arteries.

In an article of the same title published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research, Paul H. Black and Lisa D. Garbutt reviewed the evidence that repeated episodes of acute psychological stress, or chronic psychologic stress, may induce a chronic inflammatory process culminating in atherosclerosis.

The researchers from the Boston University School of Medicine found that inflammatory events, caused by stress, may account for the approximately 40% of atherosclerotic patients with no other known risk factors.

The inflammatory response is contained within the stress.

Stress

• by activating the sympathetic nervous system, the hypothalamic-pituitary axis, and the renin-angiotensin system,
  
• causes the release of various stress hormones such as catecholamines, corticosteroids, glucagon, growth hormone, and renin, and elevated levels of homocysteine,
  
• which induce a heightened state of cardiovascular activity, injured endothelium, and induction of adhesion molecules on endothelial cells to which recruited inflammatory cells adhere and translocate to the arterial wall.

An acute phase response (APR), similar to that associated with inflammation, is also engendered.

The acute phase response is characterized by macrophage activation, the production of cytokines, other inflammatory mediators, acute phase proteins (APPs), and mast cell activation, all of which promote the inflammatory process.

Stress also induces an atherosclerotic lipid profile with oxidation of lipids and, if chronic, a hypercoagulable state that may result in arterial thromboses.

Shedding of adhesion molecules and the appearance of cytokines, and APPs in the blood are early indicators of a stress-induced APR, may appear in the blood of asymptomatic people, and be predictors of future cardiovascular disease.

The inflammatory response, which evolved later and is adaptive in that an animal may be better able to react to an organism introduced during combat.

Humans reacting to stressors, which are not life-threatening but are "perceived" as such, mount similar stress/inflammatory responses in the arteries, and which, if repetitive or chronic, can create significant damage to the cardiovascular system by

• increasing the risk of coronary artery disease,
• elevating blood pressure
• increasing atherosclerosis
• increasing risk of myocardial infarction
• increasing the risk of diabetes, and
• increasing the likelihood of obesity

Journal Reference

Black PH, Garbutt LD. Stress, inflammation and cardiovascular disease. Journal of Psychosomatic Research. 2002 Jan;52(1):1-23.

Stress has also been linked to:

• cancer
• diabetes
• breakdown in the immune system
• alcohol and substance abuse,and
• cardiovascular disease

The Take Home Message - Learn to Manage Stress

It’s is all about taking charge:

• Take charge of your thoughts
• Take charge of your emotions
• Take charge of your schedule
• Take charge of your environment,and
• Take charge of your the way you deal with problems

The ultimate goal is a balanced life, with time for work, relationships, relaxation, and fun – plus the resilience to hold up under pressure and meet challenges head on.

Make lifestyle change, such as

• Loose Weight
• Exercise Regularly
• Control Diabetes
• Stop Smoking,
• Control High blood Pressure, and
• Reduce Alcohol Intake

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Tiada risiko kalsium yang perlu dikhawatirkan: CHC

Kekhuatiran atas kajian yang menghubungkan suplemen kalsium dengan peningkatan risiko penyakit jantung tidak perlu dirisaukan, mengikut Complementary Healthcare Council (CHC) [Australia].

Penyelidikan yang diterbitkan dalam British Medical Journal menemui bahawa suplemen kalsium yang diambil tanpa vitamin D, meningkatkan risiko infarksi miokardium sekitar 30 peratus.

Para penyelidik menyatakan bahawa risiko yang berkaitan dengan pengambilan suplemen kalsium tanpa vitamin D, melebihi manfaatnya.

"Kesan sampingan yang mungkin terjadi dari suplemen kalsium terhadap kardiovaskular, dan juga kesan buruk yang mungkin dalam kejadian patah tulang pinggul dan keberkesanan mengurangkan keretakan [sekitar 10 peratus] menunjukkan bahawa penilaian semula tentang peranan suplemen kalsium dalam pencegahan dan rawatan osteoporosis adalah dibenarkan, "kata kajian tersebut.

Namun CHC berkata keputusan meta-analisis dari 11 kajian yang melibatkan hampir 12,000 pesakit adalah lemah.

"Kajian tersebut tidak menjelaskan dengan pasti sama ada 36 pesakit yang mengalami serangan jantung berbanding 22 plasebo mempunyai tahap atherosclerosis atau faktor risiko penyakit jantung yang sama sebelum mengambil suplemen."

"Selain itu, ketika menilai keputusan tersebut adalah penting untuk mempertimbangkan bahawa pengambilan jumlah kalsium keseluruhan peserta dalam ujikaji tersebut mencapai 2400 mg sehari (diet kalsium ditambah suplemen)."

"Jumlah ini jauh lebih tinggi daripada pengambilan yang disarankan oleh penduduk Australia ketika ini iaitu 1000mg hingga 1300 mg kalsium sehari untuk orang dewasa dan orang tua," kata CHC.

"Bukti yang ada sampai saat ini tidak menunjukkan peningkatan risiko serangan jantung atau strok disebabkan peningkatan pengambilan kalsium dari diet atau suplemen."

Australian Self-Medication Industry (Asmi) juga mengkritik kajian tersebut, dengan mengatakan hubungan antara suplemen kalsium dan penyakit jantung adalah sesuatu yang "kontroversi".

Seorang jurucakap untuk Asmi mengatakan kajian sebelumnya telah menolak hubungan antara suplemen kalsium dan peningkatan risiko kardiovaskular.

oleh Nick O'Donoghue sebagaimana dilaporkan dalam Pharmacy Enews, Rabu 4 Ogos 2010
Gambar

Zestz for LAUGHS? - Getting a Second Opinion

The Surgical Intervention

A man was having terrible headaches.

He couldn't sleep, eat, think, or do much of anything because of the pain. Several doctors examined him and couldn't determine the cause of his problem.

He finally went to one of the top neurological specialists in the country who examined him and said, "I've found the cause of the pain. Your testicles are pushing up into your spine. The constant pressure on the spine causes the headaches. The only thing I can do is perform surgery and remove your testicles."

The man was shocked to hear this but the decision was not difficult as he knew he could not stand the pain of the headaches.

He had the surgery and immediately felt like a new man. The pain was completely gone and he felt like he has a new life. He was so happy he decided to buy himself a new suit. He went to a small men's shop and told the old tailor that he wanted to buy a suit.

"Sure," said the tailor. "You're a 42 long, right?"

"Wow, how did you know?" says the man.

"Hey, I've been in this business a long time. You learn a few things" said the tailor."

The tailor brought the man a suit that was a perfect fit. It looked so good that the man decided to buy a new shirt to go with it.

"16, 34, right?" said the tailor.

"Right again!" said the man. "You're amazing."

"Hey, I've been in this business a long time. You learn a few things".

The tailor brought a shirt and tie and they looked great. The man said, "Hey, let's go for broke. Give me a pair of the silk boxers too."

The tailor said, "36 right?"

"I'm disappointed," said the man. "But 2 out of 3 is still good. I wear size 34 boxers."

The tailor said, "Hey, I've been in this business for a long time and I think you need 36."

The man replied, "It's obvious you know your business but I've worn size 34 for as long as I can remember. I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one".

"Hey look," said the tailor, "I'll sell you whatever you want. But I've been in this business a long time. If you wear a size 34 it's gonna push your nuts up into your spine and give you terrible headaches."

A Headache is defined as a pain in the head or upper neck. It is one of the most common locations of pain in the body and has many causes. You can find out more about headaches HERE.

CLICK HERE Should you need a second opinion.

Public information from the American College of Surgeons

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