ecomZera Blog

Downing as little as one glass of toned milk daily could keep the heart healthy by protecting it against a range of serious conditions, including stroke and heart disease, a new study has claimed.

A team of international researchers has found that adults who drink at least one serving of low-fat milk or milk products have 37 per cent lower odds of poor kidney function linked to heart disease than those who don't drink regularly.

According to the researchers, the study suggests that milk protein, vitamin D, magnesium and calcium may contribute to milk's potential heart health benefits.

In fact, they came to the conclusion after measuring the kidney function of more than 5,000 people, all adults aged between 45 and 84, the latest issue of the 'American Journal of Clinical Nutrition' reported.

The researchers tracked eating patterns and tested albumin-to-creatinine ratio -- a measure that when too low, can indicate poor kidney function and an extremely high risk for cardiovascular disease -- of the participants.

They found that people who reported consuming more low-fat milk and milk products had lower ACR, or healthier kidney function. In fact, low-fat milk and milk products was the only food group evaluated that on its own was linked to a significantly reduced risk for kidney dysfunction.

An overall healthy diet, including low-fat milk and milk products, whole grains, fruits and vegetables was also associated with a benefit -- 20 per cent lower ACR or even healthier kidney function, the study revealed.

So, drink milk to a healthy heart!

Source: The Hindu

Have you ever felt exasperated when you bumped into someone at the store but absolutely couldn't remember their name? Sure, it happens to all of us.

Despite being the strongest computer on the planet, our brains do lapse. It's hard to blame them really. As humans, we spend much of or existence stuffing our brains with stuff. Some stuff is worthless, some of it's meaningful, some of it, well, it's just stuff and there is an endless amount of it.

No matter how powerful our brains are, they need recuperation time, to be kept in shape, and even an occasional charge. Think of it as a tune up for your brain. Skipping brain maintenance is as silly as the person wandering the parking garage because they forgot where they parked. Is that you? Are you that person? Sure. We all are at some point. No worries, there is hope.

Now I am not a brain surgeon and I am not going to suggest you do anything surgical or dangerous. I am however an astute student of human behavior, so I always look for simple ways to super charge my brain.

Here are some things you can begin doing as soon as today to begin the great brain tune up.

1. Eat Almonds
   Almond is believed to improve memory. If a combination of almond oil and milk is taken together before going to bed or after getting up at morning, it strengthens our memory power. Almond milk is prepared by crushing the almonds without the outer cover and adding water and sugar to it.
   


2. Drink Apple Juice
   Research from the University of Massachusetts Lowell (UML) indicates that apple juice increases the production of the essential neurotransmitter acetylcholine in the brain, resulting in an increased memory power.
   


3. Sleep well
   Research indicates that the long-term memory is consolidated during sleep by replaying the images of the experiences of the day. These repeated playbacks program the subconscious mind to store these images and other related information.
   


4. Enjoy simple Pleasures
   Stress drains our brainpower. A stress-ridden mind consumes much of our memory resources to leave us with a feeble mind. Make a habit to engage yourself in few simple pleasures everyday to dissolve stress from your mind. Some of these simple pleasures are good for your mind, body and soul.
   
   
   • Enjoy music you love
     
   • Play with your children
     
   • Hug a stranger
     
   • Appreciate others
     
   • Run few miles a day, bike or swim
     
   • Start a blog
     
   • Take a yoga class or Total Wellness routine
     
   
   
5. Fast for a day
   Fasting cleans and detoxifies our body. It is known fact that heavy food not only causes stress on our digestive system but also drains our brainpower. Fasting relieves toxic emotions such as anger, grief, worry, and fears - before they accumulate and cause disease. By cleansing toxic emotions, fasting strengthens metal clarity with increases memory, concentration, creativity and insight.


6. Exercise your mind
   Just as physical exercise is essential for a strong body, mental exercise is equally essential for a sharp and agile mind. Have you noticed that children have far superior brainpower than an adult does? Children have playful minds. A playful mind exhibits superior memory power. Engage in some of the activities that require your mind to remain active and playful.
   
   
   • Play scrabble or crossword puzzle
     
   • Volunteer
     
   • Interact with others
     
   • Start a new hobby such as blogging, reading, painting, bird watching
     
   • Learn new skill or a language
     


7. Practice Yoga or Meditation
   Yoga or Meditation relives stress. Stress is a known memory buster. With less stress, lower blood pressure, slower respiration, slower metabolism, and released muscle tension follows. All of these factors contribute significantly towards increases in our brainpower.


8. Reduce Sugar intake
   Sugar is a non-food. It's a form of carbohydrate that offers illusionary energy, only to cause a downhill slump once the initial burst has been worn off. Excess intake of sugar results in neurotic symptoms. Excess sugar is known to cause claustrophobia, memory loss and other neurotic disorders. Eat food without adding sugar. Stay away from sweet drinks or excess consumption of caffeine with sugar.


9. Eat whole wheat
   The whole wheat germs contain lecithin. Lecithin helps ease the problem of the hardening of the arteries, which often impairs brain functioning.
   


10. Eat a light meal in the night
    A heavy meal at night causes tossing and turning and a prolonged emotional stress while at sleep. It's wise to eat heavy meal during the day when our body is in motion to consume the heavy in-take. Eating a light meal with some fruits allows us to sleep well. A good night sleep strengthens our brainpower.


11. Develop imagination
    Greeks mastered the principle of imagination and association to memorize everything. This technique requires one to develop a vivid and colorful imagination that can be linked to a known object. If you involve all your senses - touching, feeling, smelling, hearing and seeing in the imagination process, you can remember greater details of the event.


12. Sex
    Our sexual imagination often empowers our ability to daydream, which strengthens our brainpower with greater imagination, visualization and association.
    


13. Control your temper
    Bleached food, excess of starch or excess of white bread can lead to nerve grating effect. This results in a violent and some time depressive behavior. Eat fresh vegetables. Drink lots of water and meditate or practice yoga to relieve these toxic emotions of temper and violent mood swings.


14. Take Vitamin B-complex
    Vitamin B-complex strengthens memory power. Eat food and vegetables high in Vitamin B-complex. Stay away from the starch food or white bread, which depletes the Vitamin B-complex necessary for a healthy mind.

Source: Dumb Little Man

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Green in the City , trackback

Over at The Coffee House they’ve been trying to put together a list of ways in which ordinary people can reduce their impact on the planet. They’re all good ideas, though I’d change them to emphasise Reducing, rather than reuse or recycling, and to include some points which are not for consumers, but for citizens. At the moment, their list is:

1. Walk, cycle, use public transport & lastly, carpool
2. Reduce, reuse, recycle
3. Reduce useage of lights, heating & gadgets
4. Buy Fairtrade & Organic
5. Buy energy efficient products
6. Protect woodlands & green spaces
7. Reduce useage of fossil fuels
8. Conserve water
9. Use more renewables
10. Buy local, reducing product miles

Read more...

There are 18,000 free books in the Project Gutenberg Online Book Catalog. You can get them here.

Ever felt you were slightly lacking in the life skills department? Let's face it, there's so much to master - and so little time in which to do it. But worry no more. Expert help is at hand. From building a fire to asking for a rise, this guide means you'll never be at a loss again. Read More

Sanjay, a rich guy, loved fast cars and he did have a few in his possession. He loved to speed and could not be bothered about breaking speed limits.
Many a times he was caught by the cops and speed radars, fined, but still he never bothered until. One day as he was driving at a very high speed as usual,
he saw a cop following him. The cop overtook him finally and asked him to stop and checked his license. He then took out his pad and started writing,
and then handed over the sheet of paper to Sanjay. How much was this one going to cost?!!! Wait a minute. What was this???? Some kind of joke?
Certainly not a ticket. Sanjay began to read: "Dear Sanjay, Once upon a time I had a lovely daughter. She was six when killed by a car.
You guessed it - a speeding driver's car. A fine and three months in jail, and the man was free. Free to hug his three daughters.
I only had one, and I'm going to have to wait until Heaven, before I can ever hug her again. A thousand times I've tried to forgive that man.
A thousand times I thought I had. Maybe I did, but I need to do it again. Even now. Pray for me.. And be careful, Sanjay, my son is all I have left."
Sanjay turned around in time to see the cop's car pull away and head down the road. He watched until it disappeared.
A full 15 minutes later, he too, pulled away and drove slowly home, praying for forgiveness and hugging a surprised wife and kids when he arrived.
Life is precious. Handle it with care.

According to a new study by Researchers at Michigan University consuming too much beer may increase the risk of pancreatic cancer. The next time you get a hold on that chilled beer, have a second thought. Mostly Pancreatic cancers are detected when it reaches the later stages as early detection is often difficult.

From the Pancreatic Cancer Collaborative Registry 453 patients were evaluated by Prof Michelle A. Anderson, lead researcher along with here fellow researchers. The patients drinking and smoking habits if any were noted down. The type of liquor and the quantity consumed were also taken in consideration.

It was found that heavy drinkers were more likely of developing pancreatic cancer 10 years earlier than non-drinkers. Moreover consuming beer accelerated the risk as compared to other liquor. While people who smoked more were likely to develop cancer 7 years before when compared those who did not smoke.

According to Anderson, “Heavy alcohol intake may induce chronic inflammatory changes that are also linked with cancer”. The researches also found that when two habits combined for example drinking and smoking had a less effect on pancreatic risk.

Source: littleabout

Isaiah and Abdoulaye are at it again in this small collection of short outtakes. It is so hard to film Isaiah when he is really playing good. Anytime he was filmed when drumming, he could not play as good as before the camera was on. Still, he is just amazing. Watch this cool video.

The coffee you drink as a pick-me-up in the morning could also make you more open to persuasion, researchers say. Evidence from a new study suggests that this happens because caffeine revs up the brain, not because it generally boosts mood.

Previous studies have show that consuming caffeine can improve one’s attention and enhance cognitive performance, with 200 milligrams (equivalent to two cups of coffee) being the optimal dose.

Moderate doses of caffeine can also make you more easily convinced by arguments that go against your beliefs, say Pearl Martin of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and her colleagues.

In 2005, her team published a paper suggesting that the compound primes people to agree with statements that go against their typical views because it improves their ability to understand the reasoning behind the statements.

Cooperative mood

But what if people were more likely to agree with others’ views simply because drinking coffee put them in a better mood?

To answer this question the team embarked on a new experiment involving nearly 150 volunteers. Subjects were asked about their attitude to controversial medical practices, such as voluntary euthanasia.

The participants were then given an orange-flavoured drink that either contained roughly 200 milligrams of caffeine or lacked the compound completely. Forty minutes later, when caffeine levels typically peak after consumption, subjects read arguments selected to contradict the particular opinion they held.

In order to determine whether caffeine made people more open to persuasion because it was promoting better mental function, or because it was improving mood, Martin’s team also threw distracting tasks into the mix. In one part of the experiment, researchers asked volunteers to cross out the letter ‘o’ whenever it appeared in the text. In another part, they asked volunteers to wear headphones and discriminate between high and low-pitched notes by pressing a button as they read the arguments that contradicted their opinions.

Poor concentration

Volunteers who had consumed the caffeine drink were more likely to change their point of view than those who hadn’t. However, the more distracted subjects were, the less likely they were to have their views altered.

This, say the authors of the study, supports the idea that better mental function – rather than better mood – is the reason that coffee could make a person more easily persuaded, because the volunteers were only more open to persuasion when they could concentrate on and assimilate the persuasive argument.

In light of these findings, people who gulp down lattes at business meetings may want to reconsider how the drink is affecting them, the authors suggest.

Journal reference: European Journal of Social Psychology OI: 10.1002/ejsp.347)

hi guys,

Probably you all have noticed how bloated yahoo messenger has got with its new version 8.0. (It takes upto 30 mb on my system (P4 256 mb ram)). It has these new plugins which suck up the system everytime you use YM 8.0

So i've switched over to Trillian, which has got all the commonly used features and takes a lot less out of the system. I think its a must use for all those using a lower-end system.

Get trillian!

In addition to chat you can send files, have a voice chat and log in with mul;tiple ids if you wish.

by Steven Gillman

Some have said Einstein's riddle is the worlds hardest riddle. It isn't. The story is that Albert Einstein created it as a young man, and claimed that 98% of the world population couldn't solve it. Though I'm not certain of the true origin, it is a tough one, and it is a good way to exercise your brainpower. Here it is.

In my experience, what most people consider to be their “best” people are often the root of most problems. It’s the difference between troubleshooters and troublepreventors.

Let me explain…

Bill is a troubleshooter (only). Many consider Bill to be the best employee in the company because he solves almost any problem that comes into the door.....

By simply eating three servings of fruits and vegetables everyday, and drinking green or black tea, smokers can be able to substantially reduce their risk of developing lung cancer.

A study has found that tobacco smokers who ingest high levels of natural chemicals, called flavonoids, in their diet have a lower risk of developing lung cancer the main cause of which is puffing, the 'Cancer' journal reported.

Flavonoids block the formation of blood vessels that tumours develop so they can grow and spread, and stop cancer cells from growing, allowing for naturally programmed cell death, or apoptosis, to occur, according to researchers at University of California.

"What we found was extremely interesting, that several types of flavonoids are associated with a reduced risk of lung cancer among smokers. The findings were especially interesting as tobacco smoking is the major risk factor for lung cancer," lead researcher Zuo-Feng Zhang said.

The researchers reached the conclusion after looking at 558 people with lung cancer and 837 people who did not have lung cancer and analysing their dietary history. They found that those who ate foods containing certain flavonoids seemed to be protected from developing lung cancer.

Source: Business Standard

Nasal congestion, stuffed nose, running nose – these are common problems experienced by everyone, usually many times a year. We generally disregard it, if it’s on moderate levels but can get very annoyed when they are strong and require our attentions.

Here is what you can do about it.

An interesting video that talks about how Google search works is Google Factory Tour (the video is very long: 5 hr 39 min 41 sec).