Silvie+Maryl | Upgrading Minds, Transforming Lives

Music: No need for drugs – get your “feel good” dopamine from music. Scientists have found that the pleasurable experience of listening to music releases this neurotransmitter in the brain, a chemical important for more tangible pleasures associated with “rewards” such as food, drugs and sex. The study revealed that even the anticipation of pleasurable music induces dopamine release. The research was published in the journal Nature Neuroscience. Read More…

Green: Want to help the planet? Waste less food. Scientists have identified a way that the United States could immediately save the energy equivalent of about 350 million barrels of oil a year – without spending a penny or putting a ding in the quality of life: just stop wasting food. The study, reported in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, found that it takes the equivalent of about 1.4 billion barrels of oil to produce package, prepare, preserve and distribute a year’s worth of food in the United States, while consumers waste about 27% it in general. The top most wasted food items were fats, oils, dairy, grains, eggs, sugar and other sweeteners. The waste represents a largely unrecognized opportunity to conserve energy and help control global warming, so do your part. Read More…

Brain: No more excuses – seems our brains can be taught to control cravings. According to researchers at Yale University, standard therapeutic techniques decrease cravings of cigarette smokers by regulating activity in two separate areas of the brain. In the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, smokers who are taught cognitive strategies, such as thinking about the long-term consequences of smoking, show increased activity in the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain associated with cognitive control and rational thought. They also show decreased activity in areas of the striatum, a region associated with drug craving and reward-seeking behavior. “This shows that smokers can indeed control their cravings, they just need to be told how to do it,” said Hedy Kober, assistant professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine and lead author of the study. More research is being conducted to see if the same goes for other types of drugs and cravings. Read More…

Nutrition: In a new study, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health found that eating five or more servings of white rice per week was associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes. In contrast, eating two or more servings of brown rice per week was associated with a lower risk of the disease. The researchers estimate that replacing 50 grams of white rice (just one third of a typical daily serving) with the same amount of brown rice would lover risk of type 2 diabetes by 16%. The same replacement with other whole grains, such as whole wheat and barley, was associated with a 36% reduced risk. The researchers also found that consuming white rice was associated to ethnicity and diabetes risk, while eating brown rice was not associated with ethnicity but with a more health-conscious diet and lifestyle instead. The study is the first to examine the difference between white and brown rice. It was published in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine. Read More…

Media: Don’t be fooled by that sexy commercial – making food choices based on television advertising results in a very imbalanced diet according to a new study comparing the nutritional content of food choices influenced by television to nutritional guidelines published in the June issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association. Investigators found that a 2,000-calorie diet consisting entirely of advertised foods would contain 25 times the recommended servings of sugars and 20 times the recommended servings of fat, but less than half of the recommended servings of vegetables and fruits. In fact, the excess of servings in sugars and fat is so large that, on average, eating just one of the observed food items would provide more than three times the recommended daily servings for sugars and two and a half times for fat – for the entire day. “The foods advertised on television tend to oversupply nutrients associated with chronic illness, (for example, saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium) and undersupply nutrients that help protect against illness (fiber, vitamins A, E and D, and calcium and potassium),” said Michael Mink, PhD, lead investigator in the study. Luckily, we know that’s not how YOU make your food choices. Read More…

Nutrition: For centuries, ginger root has been used as a folk remedy for things like colds and upset tummies. Now, researchers at the University of Georgia have found that daily ginger consumption also reduces muscle pain caused by exercise (sports or recreation). Ginger had been showed to exert anti-inflammatory effects in rodents before, and this study has concluded that the root can reduce muscle pain in humans by as much as 25%; it is also believed that heating ginger, as it happens when it is cooked in a soup or sauté, might increase its pain-relieving benefits. The study will be published in the September issue of the Journal of Pain. Read More…