Botox and your emotional connection to the world

Whether you've had Botox or not, you've probably seen the sitcoms on TV making fun of it.  The mom trying to get mad at her teenager but the anger just not coming through because she can't make the accompanying angry face.

There's a new study out that suggests that not only will that mom not be able to express her anger, she might not be able to feel it as intensly either.  Now...before the curfew breaking teenagers rejoice too much, it's not just anger that would be dulled.  The research was looking at the question, do emotions create expression or expression create emotion?

Apparently, it works in both directions -- you smile because you experience something positive but you experience something positive when you smile.  And if you can't smile or frown?  You will experience less depth of either of those emotions.

Wondering if your suppeiments are effective? How about "Are they safe?"

Supplements are a booming business -- and they are not regulated by the FDA (because they are neither food nor drugs).  There is lots of talk about the effectiveness of any given supplement but what about their safety?  Are they doing you more harm than good?

"Of the more than 54,000 dietary supplement products in the Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database, only about a third have some level of safety and effectiveness that is supported by scientific evidence," says Consumer Reports.

And yet, reports from Nutrition Business Journal say the US spent $26.7 billion in 2009.

The key?  Do your homework.  Where are your supplements being manufactured?  In the US?  China?  Mexico?  Have there been rigorous scientific studies done?

And perhaps, lastly, if you are eating a varied and nutritionally dense, whole food based diet, do you really need supplementation???

For more information on real-food eating, check out the book In Defense of Food.

Too much caffeine

The Canadian government is taking a look at the amount of caffeine in energy drinks and how to keep them out of the hands of children.  The are investigating dozens of caffeine related deaths and 15 that were cardiac events linked to caffeine.

For example:

a 250-ml bottle of Coca-Cola contains 26 milligrams of caffeine
a 75-ml bottle of Rockstar “energy shot” contains 200 mg of caffeine
a 355-ml can of Red Bull contains 113.6 mg of caffeine.

Health Canada says children between 10 and 12 should not consume more than 85 mg of caffeine a day and
healthy adults shouldn’t consume more than 400 mg a day.

A couple energy drinks really add up in a day.  Yikes!

Click here to visit the source article

And here for a link to what the Mayo Clinic has to say about caffeine.

Prayer can heal hearing and vision issues?

A new study out says just that and goes on to say that those in physical proximity during the prayer experience greater effects.  Why?  Is it placebo?  Is it the healing hand of God?  Does it really matter if the results are measureable and statistically relevant?

Growing your own replacement parts?

Replacement rabbit bones

You just can't swing a dead cat without hitting someone who has had knee, hip or shoulder replacement surgery!

 478,000 knee replacements along are done annually with the total expected to grow to 3.4 million by 2030.  One of the down sides of current replacements is they wear out, necessitating another replacement in 10-15 years.  In a person undergoing replacement at age 50 or 55, 10-15 years means several procedures on that joint in their lifetime.

Scientists have been successfully experimenting (in animals) with implanting a biodegradable bioscaffold that was 3D designed to match the original joint.  As the body breaks down the bioscaffold, it replaces the man made substance with bone.  Cool, huh??? 

Looks like there are better options on the horizon!  For more information, click here to get the NIH report.

The world is getting more addictive?

Paul Graham wrote an interesting essay on the Acceleration of Addictiveness.  It wasn't my intention to use the same links on this blog as the ones on the Eating Coach blog -- however, I found this idea interesting.

Here are a few of his thoughts:

What hard liquor, cigarettes, heroin, and crack have in common is that they're all more concentrated forms of less addictive predecessors....

...If some new technique makes solar cells x% more efficient, that seems strictly better. When progress concentrates something we don't want to want—when it transforms opium into heroin—it seems bad. But it's the same process at work....

...The world is more addictive than it was 40 years ago. And unless the forms of technological progress that produced these things are subject to different laws than technological progress in general, the world will get more addictive in the next 40 years than it did in the last 40....


Some interesting things to think about since we are careening through time and space with much less time to plan or set our course.

He continues his thoughts with a discussion of normal -- as in normal-what everyone does and normal-what are the ideal operating conditions for us.  It bears consideration to our health to see if our "normal" is just unhealthy habits we share with our friends, family, and community.  Or if our habits are allowing us to live optimally.

Social Network and Longevity

Alright, we know that studies have shown people with a larger social network tend to life longer.  Recently, researcher from Brigham Young University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill reviewed data from 148 studies on health outcomes and social relationships.  These studies included better than 300,000 people -- so this is not a small group study.

Researcher found that those with fewer social connections had a 50% increased risk of dying in study's follow-up period (averaging 7.5 years) than those with a larger social network.

Cool, huh?  Yeah, I thought so but here's the really interesting part:

That is the same life expectancy difference (poor social connections vs. more robust social ties) as the life expectancy between smokers and non-smokers!  And it is a greater difference than known health risk factors such as obesity or lack of exercise.

Wow!  Looks like we should be paying attention to our friends if we want them (and ourselves) to live a longer life!

For more information, click here.