Can you go for more than a day without eating sugar in any form? Do you drink soft drinks or milkshakes, eat Danish pastry, fruit yogurt (a 6 oz. cartoon has 7 teaspoons of sugar or honey), donuts, bagels, cakes, cookies, most bran muffins or many other sugary items. Can you go without any other foods that contain words ending in “ose” such as sucrose, fructose, etc., or contain corn syrup, corn sweetener, honey, barley malt, maple syrup, sugar cane solids, or rice syrup? Do you pig out on a carton of ice cream or a bag of cookies? If you find that sugar is part of your diet every day, you may have a problem.

The problem with sugar
The average person eats 153 pounds of sugar a year. That is equivalent to over 1/2 cup of sugar a day. The teenage boy eats twice that much. So you say, “Who cares?” What is wrong with sugar?
There is much scientific evidence written in many medical journals showing that sugar can ruin your health. Do you have any of the following symptoms? Do you fall asleep after meals, have allergies, gas, bloating, extended stomach after meals, joint pains, headaches, chronic fatigue, constipation, diarrhea, over weight, skin problems, high blood pressure or other symptoms? These all can be signs of a sugar problem.

Here’s the problem: The human body was simply not designed to handle refined sugars.Refined sugar is new to the human diet. Metabolizing refined sugar is quite a challenge, but if forced to, the body will struggle to cope with it. This struggle causes serious disturbances, and after time, disease is the guaranteed result.
We have evolved from early man having digestive mechanisms to digest foods. We do not have the digestive mechanisms to digest the glut of sugar that we are eating on a daily basis!

Sugar in your body
Recently, information has emerged as to what happens to the minerals in the body when sugar and other abusive foods are eaten.
Sugar throws body chemistry into biochemical chaos lasting for six to eight hours after consumption. During this period, hormone, fat, carbohydrate, and protein metabolism are greatly disrupted.

After consumption, refined sugar is rapidly absorbed by the body, which dangerously increases the sugar content of the blood. Excess sugar causes production of excess insulin, which signals cells to take up sugar. Cells then absorb sugar, to get it out of the bloodstream. This solves one problem but creates another: Now the body’s cells have too much sugar. To correct this imbalance, cells turn the sugar into saturated fats and cholesterol.

Increased insulin levels not only tell the body to store fat, but they also tell it not to release fat. This makes people get fat and stay fat. It causes fat to be deposited in our cells and organs, resulting in atherosclerosis, fatty liver and kidneys, and obesity.

These fats cause blood cells to become sticky thereby increasing the chances of blood clots, strokes and heart attacks. Sugar increases “bad” LDL cholesterol, decreases “good” HDL cholesterol, and increases triglyceride levels in the blood. If antioxidant vitamins and minerals are deficient, these triglycerides can be oxidized causing serious health problems. In addition, red blood cells are choked by the saturated fats and this reduces their ability to carry oxygen to our tissues.

Hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) is another problem caused by sugar consumption. When insulin is secreted into the blood, it makes blood sugar levels fall rapidly. Insulin levels remain high however, so the body continues to take up sugar beyond the point where it needs to. The result is hypoglycemia. Symptoms include weakness, dizziness, crying spells, insomnia, aggression, and depression.

Sugar in breakfasts or lunches can cause children to do poorly in school. They become hypoglycemic about 60 minutes after eating sugar and this affects brain function. Many teachers claim that their students are “brain dead” after lunch, and this is why.

Sugar-induced hormone imbalances tax and weaken the immune system to the point where it can no longer defend the body. When insulin causes blood sugar to fall excessively low, the adrenal glands secret hormones that pump blood sugar back up. Daily consumption of sugar causes an overworked biochemical balancing act resulting in adrenal exhaustion, which in turn decreases the body’s ability to respond to future stress. Adrenal exhaustion is now a common problem in the chronically ill.

Sugar quadruples adrenaline levels, while increasing both cholesterol and cortisone. Cortisone is known to depress immune function. Studies show that the ability of white cells to destroy harmful bacteria is reduced as sugar consumption rises. This is why children, who eat lots of sugar, are more susceptible to colds, flu, and other infections.

Another point is Fiber Deficiency : Humans were designed to derive energy from complex carbohydrates, which are naturally high in fiber. By contrast, a high sugar diet provides calories without the fiber that is essential to human health. Insufficient fiber causes materials to move too slowly through the digestive tract. This can cause constipation, which is a big problem in our society. It also causes waste to remain too long in the colon where it can serve as food for harmful bacteria, thereby producing gas and toxins, and promoting intestinal inflammation and bloating.

Conclusion
The bottom line is that sugar upsets the body chemistry and suppresses the immune system. Once the immune system becomes suppressed, the door is opened to infectious and degenerative diseases. The stronger the immune system the easier it is for the body to fight infectious and degenerative diseases.
Sugar is implicated in the following diseases and many more: allergies, arthritis, diabetes, hypoglycemia, osteoporosis, gallstones, kidney stones, headaches, yeast infections, and cataracts.

So if you have any of the symptoms or diseases mentioned, remove all forms of sugar from your diet for two weeks, I think that you will be pleasantly surprised. Not only will some of those symptoms disappear but you will be strengthening your immune system, allowing it to do the job it was meant to, defend you against foreign invaders.

Some of the other effects of sugar on the body are:
* Increases overgrowth of candida yeast organism
* Increases chronic fatigue
* Can trigger binge eating in those with bulima
* Increases PMS symptoms
* Increases hyperactivity in about 50% of children
* Increases tooth decay
* Increases anxiety and irritability
* Can increase or intensify symptoms of anxiety and panic in susceptible women
* Can make it difficult to lose weight because of constantly high insulin levels, which causes the body to store excess carbs as fat.

Meditation can help you become smarter. So just breathe..relax and read this article

About meditation
Everyone knows that meditation reduces stress. But with the aid of advanced brain scanning technology, researchers are beginning to show that meditation directly affects the function and structure of the brain, changing it in ways that appear to increase attention span, sharpen focus and improve memory.

One recent study found evidence that the daily practice of meditation thickened the parts of the brain’s cerebral cortex responsible for decision making, attention and memory. Sara Lazar, a research scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital, presented preliminary results last November that showed that the gray matter of 20 men and women who meditated for just 40 minutes a day was thicker than that of people who did not. Unlike in previous studies focusing on Buddhist monks, the subjects were Boston-area workers practicing a Western-style of meditation called mindfulness or insight meditation. “We showed for the first time that you don’t have to do it all day for similar results,” says Lazar. What’s more, her research suggests that meditation may slow the natural thinning of that section of the cortex that occurs with age.
The forms of meditation Lazar and other scientists are studying involve focusing on an image or sound or on one’s breathing. Though deceptively simple, the practice seems to exercise the parts of the brain that help us pay attention. “Attention is the key to learning, and meditation helps you voluntarily regulate it,” says Richard Davidson, director of the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin. Since 1992, he has collaborated with the Dalai Lama to study the brains of Tibetan monks, whom he calls “the Olympic athletes of meditation.” Using caps with electrical sensors placed on the monks’ heads, Davidson has picked up unusually powerful gamma waves that are better synchronized in the Tibetans than they are in novice meditators. Studies have linked this gamma-wave synchrony to increased awareness.

A quick nap or meditation?
Many people who meditate claim the practice restores their energy, allowing them to perform better at tasks that require attention and concentration. If so, wouldn’t a midday nap work just as well? No, says Bruce O’Hara, associate professor of biology at the University of Kentucky. In a study to be published this year, he had college students either meditate, sleep or watch TV. Then he tested them for what psychologists call psychomotor vigilance, asking them to hit a button when a light flashed on a screen. Those who had been taught to meditate performed 10% better—”a huge jump, statistically speaking,” says O’Hara. Those who snoozed did significantly worse. “What it means,” O’Hara theorizes, “is that meditation may restore synapses, much like sleep but without the initial grogginess.”

Firms jumping on the opportunity
Not surprisingly, given those results, a growing number of corporations—including Deutsche Bank, Google and Hughes Aircraft—offer meditation classes to their workers. Jeffrey Abramson, CEO of Tower Co., a Washington-based development firm, says 75% of his staff attend free classes in transcendental meditation. Making employees sharper is only one benefit; studies say meditation also improves productivity, in large part by preventing stress-related illness and reducing absenteeism.
Another benefit for employers: meditation seems to help regulate emotions, which in turn helps people get along. “One of the most important domains meditation acts upon is emotional intelligence—a set of skills far more consequential for life success than cognitive intelligence,” says Davidson. So, for a New Year’s resolution that can pay big dividends at home and at the office, try this: just breathe.

I have found this study from 2004. I find it worth reading to understand how stress affects our immune system.

We have known for some time that stress affects our immune systems. Many studies have shown that stress can suppress the immune system, but other studies have shown boosts in the immune system under stress. A July 2004 meta-analysis of 293 studies conducted over the past 30 years puts the pieces of the puzzle together.

Psychologists Suzanne Segerstrom, Ph.D., and Gregory Miller, Ph.D. found the following:
-  Stress does indeed affect the immune system in powerful ways.
-  Short-term stressors boost the immune system. It seems that the “fight or flight” response prompts the immune system to ready itself for infections resulting from bites, punctures, scrapes or other challenges to the integrity of the body.
- Chronic, long-term stress suppresses the immune system. The longer the stress, the more the immune system shifted from they adaptive changes seen in the “fight or flight” response to more negative changes, first at the cellular level and later in broader immune function. The most chronic stressors – stress that seems beyond a person’s control or seems endless – resulted in the most global suppression of immunity. Almost all measures of immune system function dropped across the board.
- The immune systems of the elderly or those already sick are more subject to stress-related changes.

In reaching these conclusions the authors looked at the effects of the various stressors on different immune responses, such as “natural” and “specific” immunity. They summarized the results of the studies that looked at each of these types of stress:
- Natural immunity produces quick-acting, all-purpose cells that can attack many pathogens; they bring fever and inflammation.
- The body takes a few days to mount a more specific attack on particular invaders with specific immunity. This response includes lymphocytes (T-cells and B cells). Specific immunity has both cellular responses, which fight pathogens that get inside cells (such as viruses), and humoral responses, which fight pathogens that stay outside cells, such as bacteria and parasites. Segerstrom and Miller were able to assess how different types of immune response correlated with different types of stress because researchers have identified the blood markers of these different immune responses.

They divided stressors into different types:
- Acute time-limited stressors: lab challenges such as public speaking or mental math.
- Brief naturalistic stressors: real-world challenges such as academic tests.
- Stressful event sequences: a focal event such as loss of a spouse or major natural disaster gives rise to a series of related challenges that people know at some point will end.
- Chronic stressors: pervasive demands that force people to restructure their identity or social roles, without any clear end point – such as injury resulting in permanent disability, caring for a spouse with severe dementia, or being a refugee forced from one’s native country by war.
- Distant stressors: traumatic experiences that occurred in the distant past yet can continue modifying the immune system because of their long-lasting emotional and cognitive consequences, such as child abuse, combat trauma or having been a prisoner of war. Much of their analysis goes on to review the similarities and differences among the 293 studies that they examined. These studies included a total of 18,941 subjects. “Stressful event sequences” appeared to be weakly associated with different immune consequences, depending on the type of event. There appeared to be different patterns for grief than for trauma, for example, but the associations weren’t strong enough for the authors to make new claims. They recommended further study.

The authors did find that the most chronic stressors – those which change people’s identities or social roles, are more beyond their control and seem endless – were associated with the most global suppression of immunity. In such situations almost all measures of immune function dropped across the board. The longer the stress, the more the immune system shifted from potentially adaptive changes (such as those in the acute “fight or flight” response) to potentially detrimental changes, at first in cellular immunity and then in broader immune function. This analysis suggests that stressors that turn a person’s world upside down and appear to offer no hope for the future probably have the greatest psychological and physiological impact.

The authors also found that age and disease status affected a person’s vulnerability to stress-related decreases in immune function. It seems that illness and age make it harder for the body to regulate itself.

This is a ground-breaking meta-analysis that helps us understand the complex relationship between stress and the immune system. It should lead to new treatments and to better stress management programs, especially for patients with HIV or other disorders that compromise immunity.

I was very impressed with the news today that a person with rectal cancer in the UK had his tumour destroyed using Ultrasound.
In fact so impressed that i searched some past news and found this article from 2004.
You’ll be impressed. That piece of news was published in 16th Feb 2004 !

The treatment
An invisible knife that uses high-intensity sound waves to penetrate the body and destroy tumours is set to revolutionise cancer treatment, it is claimed.
In five to 10 years ultrasound could replace conventional surgery and radiotherapy for patients with many different types of cancer, scientists said.

About the technique
The technique is undergoing early trials for liver and kidney cancer in the UK while a French team using a different system has already achieved disease-free results treating men with prostate cancer.
In China, where the technology has been pioneered, anecdotal evidence from studies of thousands of patients is said to be “astounding”.
Ultrasound surgery focuses bursts of high energy sound waves on the tumour, heating it to a temperature of 60 degrees Celsius. The tumour cells are destroyed while surrounding tissue is left unharmed.
Professor Gail ter Haar, who is leading trials of an experimental system at the Royal Marsden Hospital in Sutton, Surrey, England, said the technique could treat tumours up to the size of a small orange.

Testing ultrasounds
At this stage the trials are confined to testing the safety of the technique, but Prof ter Haar said they had already yielded “really exciting results”.
She told the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting in Seattle yesterday: “I think there will be cancers for which it will revolutionise treatment, but we’re a long way from knowing which they will be, and exactly how it should be employed”.

What is treatment?
Patients with liver and kidney cancer are taking part in the Royal Marsden studies.
Treatment consists of two-second long bursts of ultrasound delivered to the surface of the body by a machine mounted on a gantry.
A number of bursts are needed to clear an organ of cancer.

Testing accross the world
At a different centre in Oxford, England, Prof ter Haar has been using a commercial device developed in China to treat a similar group of patients.
She has worked with Chinese physicians who have already treated about 3,000 cancer patients with ultrasound.
Although the Chinese trials were not as scientifically rigorous as those in the UK, the anecdotal evidence was impressive.
“The results in China are really quite astounding,” said Prof ter Haar.
“There are patients who are disease free with tumours for which there are no other treatments, particularly in the pancreas.”
She said that theoretically, ultrasound should be suitable for a wide range of solid tumours.
“If you can image a tumour with diagnostic ultrasound you should be able to treat it,” she told the meeting.

Not all cancers can be targeted with ultrasound
However, since the sound beam could not travel through bone or air, certain cancers would be difficult to treat.
Brain tumours and lung cancers deep behind the rib cage fell into this category.

Thinking about the tough cancer areas
Scientists in the UK and United States were working on the problem of getting ultrasound into the brain.
“Its very appealing for the brain because it’s a trackless form of damage,” said Prof ter Haar.
“You only get damage at the focus so you don’t damage the rest of the brain through which you’ve got to travel. If we could solve that problem it would be very exciting.”

Different applications and challenges of ultrasound
Dr Jean-Yves Chapelon from the French research institute Inserm in Lyon described a different ultrasound system now at an advanced stage of development which he had used to treat 242 men with prostate cancer.
The results were due to be published in the next few months.
Dr Chapelon said the treatment was as effective as conventional surgery or radiotherapy, and safer.
In this case the ultrasound beam was delivered through the rectum. After five years of followup, 80 per cent of low-risk patients were found to be disease-free and effectively cured.
For medium-risk patients the success rate was 60 per cent and for patients with high-risk aggressive cancers, 50 per cent. The men had an average age of 71.
Traditional treatments for older men with prostate cancer carry a high risk of impotence and urinary incontinence, but 40 per cent of the patients recovered their potency and only eight per cent were unable to control their urine flow.

Impressive results
Not one patient had died of cancer although the first was treated as long as 11 years ago.
“We believe that this therapy challenges other therapies,” said Dr Chapelon.
However, he said that at present it was still difficult to convince specialists that ultrasound therapy could be as good as conventional treatment.
Prof ter Haar said there was still much work to do before ultrasound became universally available as a cancer treatment.
She expected the process of patient trials, publication of data, and introduction into hospitals to take between five and 10 years.

Other applications for ultrasound
Another possible application of ultrasound might be on the battlefield, according to Dr Shahram Vaezy, from the University of Washington in Seattle.
His team was working on miniaturising ultrasound equipment that could be used to treat wounded soldiers, or accident victims.
A big advantage of ultrasound was that it had the ability to stop bleeding by sealing broken blood vessels, he said.
Dr Vaezy told the meeting: “The application we are pursuing is treating internal bleeding, to develop a non-invasive method of treating patients at the scene of an accident, for example”.