Sometimes you feel like a nut
HOW NUTS CAN MAKE YOU BECOME A REAL BRAINIAC
The 2004 movie “Brainiac” is about the discovery of the ultimate feel-good drug, dubbed “Nirvana.” Unfortunately, it ends up turning those who take it into braindevouring monsters. Talk about changing brainwaves.
A new study shows that going (for) nuts also changes your brainwaves, but for the better. Seems nuts and peanuts (really a legume) strengthen brainwave frequencies that are associated with cognition, empathy, healing, learning, memory, recall and other important brain functions.
The study published in the FASEB Journal found that pistachios got the biggest response from your brain’s gamma waves — and that builds cognitive processing, information retention, learning, perception and rapid eye movement during sleep. Peanuts triggered the greatest delta-wave response; it’s associated with healthy immunity, healing and deep sleep. Plus, all nuts are packed with flavonoids, potent polyphenols that are antiinflammatory and help fight off cancers and heart disease. And, say the researchers, nuts’ flavonoids support growth of new neurons and improve blood flow in the brain. Walnuts deliver the most.
In another new study, researchers followed more than 200,000 people for an average of 32 years and found that eating more nuts was tied to a lower risk of stroke, heart attack and heart disease. Walnuts came out on top again: Eating them two to three times a week was associated with a 19 per cent lower risk of heart problems.
HELPING OBESE TEENS LOSE WEIGHT
What came first — the chicken or the egg? That’s been buggin’ folks for millennia. In fact, Aristotle, in the 4th century BC, wrote, “There could not have been a first egg to give a beginning to birds, or there would have been a first bird which gave a beginning to eggs.” Only with evolution did we learn that the chicken came from some not-quitea-chicken predecessor, all the way back to the first living cell.
Seems there’s a faulty appetite regulator in the brains of obese teens. The question is: Did the broken regulator cause the excess weight, or is it a result of it? As with the chicken and the egg, which came first? Well, we don’t know, but realizing there’s a broken food regulator provides a new understanding of the challenges obese teens face in achieving a healthy weight.
A study presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America makes it clear that the 20.5 per cent of 12- to 19-year-olds in the U.S. who are obese have measurable changes in the appetite-, impulse- and rewardregulating centres of their brain. (Obesity affects the brain’s amygdala, hippocampus, thalamus, bilateral hypothalamus and more!) Helping teens attain a healthy weight means dealing with all of that.
How to do it: It takes a team to help them reset their brains: an exercise physiologist/coach; a nutritionist; a yoga or meditation instructor, plus cognitive behavioural therapy. That can provide the tools needed to establish impulse control.
DOUBLE TROUBLE: THE UNEXPECTED RESULT OF SLEEVE GASTRECTOMY
College Times says that the top three movies to watch when you’re tipsy are “Superbad,” “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” and “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” We say, if you find yourself binge-watching them (they are, after all, aggressively incoherent, even if amusing), well, then, there’s a pretty good chance you’re already one drink over the line.
But that doesn’t mean you’ve lowered your standards or lost the remote. It might be that after a sleeve gastrectomy for weight loss, your tolerance of alcohol plummeted.
A new study reveals that after sleeve gastrectomy, women can become legally intoxicated if they consume half the number of drinks it takes for women who haven’t had the surgery to register as drunk. Two drinks have the effect of four or five! And this comes along with research showing similar results for women who’ve had Roux-en-Y gastric bypass. (This reduced alcohol tolerance probably holds for men, too, because the body’s enzymes that process alcohol would be greatly reduced in anyone who’s had these operations.)