Punya Anak Bikin Wanita Tak Gampang Pikun

http://health.detik.com/read/2012/08/05/095655/1983424/764/punya-anak-bikin-wanita-tak-gampang-pikun
Minggu, 05/08/2012 09:56 WIB
Rahma Lillahi Sativa - detikHealth





Jakarta, Bagi pasangan menikah, memiliki anak adalah anugerah terbesar sehingga akan selalu diharapkan kehadirannya. Selain membuat hubungan pasangan semakin harmonis, ternyata memiliki anak juga bisa meningkatkan daya ingat para ibu.

Hal ini diungkap sebuah studi baru yang menyatakan bahwa wanita yang baru melahirkan memperoleh nilai tes memori visuospasial yang lebih tinggi dibandingkan wanita yang tidak memiliki anak. Memori visuospasial sendiri merupakan kemampuan untuk mengetahui dan mengingat informasi tentang lingkungan di sekitarnya.

"Temuan ini membantah kepercayaan lama yang menyatakan bahwa wanita akan cenderung memiliki 'otak bayi' atau penurunan daya ingat dan fungsi kognitif setelah memiliki anak. Anda tak perlu berpikir seperti itu karena ketika Anda punya anak, memori Anda takkan sama lagi," kata peneliti Melissa Santiago, seorang mahasiswa program doktoral di Carlos Albizu University di Miami.

Santiago mendapatkan kesimpulan ini setelah membandingkan 35 wanita yang baru melahirkan anak pertamanya dengan usia bayi berkisar antara 10-24 bulan dengan 35 wanita yang belum pernah hamil. Sebagian besar partisipan adalah orang Hispanik dan kedua kelompok memperoleh skor tes intelijensia yang sama. Usia rata-rata partisipan ibu muda adalah 29 dan usia rata-rata wanita yang belum pernah hamil adalah 27.

Saat menjalani tes memori visuospasial, kedua kelompok diperlihatkan sebuah kertas berisi 6 simbol selama 10 detik lalu diminta untuk menggambarkan apa yang mereka ingat di kertas lain. Tes ini diulang hingga beberapa kali.

Ketika pertama kali diperlihatkan kertasnya, kedua kelompok sama-sama bisa mengingat isinya. Namun ketika diulang untuk kedua dan ketiga kali, para ibu muda melakukan performa lebih bagus daripada wanita yang belum pernah hamil. Hal ini mengindikasikan bahwa para ibu muda mengumpulkan lebih banyak informasi setiap waktunya dibandingkan dengan kelompok pembandingnya.

Dalam tes kedua, para wanita diperlihatkan beberapa simbol yang berbeda dan diminta untuk mengingat simbol apa yang muncul pada tes sebelumnya. Sudah bisa diduga, para ibu muda tak melakukan kesalahan sedikit pun dalam tes ini dan mereka bisa mengingat setiap simbol dengan benar. Sebaliknya, wanita yang tak punya anak seringkali membuat satu-dua kesalahan, terang Santiago.

Menurut Santiago, sebenarnya banyak perubahan fisiologis yang terjadi pada tubuh wanita saat hamil, bahkan otaknya bisa menyusut hingga 4-6 persen. Namun otak ini akan kembali ke bentuk semula 6 bulan setelah melahirkan dan selama masa ini, bisa jadi otak mengalami pemetaan ulang sehingga terjadi perubahan daya ingat seperti yang terlihat dalam studi ini.

"Kondisi ini tentu bermanfaat bagi para ibu karena dengan peningkatan memori visuospasial maka mereka bisa melakukan scanning terhadap lingkungan dengan cepat agar anaknya terlindungi dari hal-hal berbahaya yang ada di lingkungan itu," pungkas Santiago seperti dilansir dari myhealthnewsdaily, Sabtu (4/8/2012)

The Fastest Way To Lose 10 Pounds, Keep It Off, & Fit Into A New Pair Of Jeans

http://abstrengthguide.com/Lose-10-Pounds.php

Cut sugar, rehydrate and do high-intensity exercise anytime you make a mistake; plus, find time for 5 minutes of exercise 3x per day.

The rules are simple, and you can be there before you know it. Eliminate sugar from your diet, entirely, and cut out the possibility of putting on fat; you're addressing the hormonal imbalances your body has brought on since you developed insulin sensitivity, and you're re-stabilizing your body without all of the inflammation that processed sugars create in our bodies.

Eliminating sugar, while rehydrating, stimulates an increase in cellular metabolism while simultaneously eliminating energy crashes, excess-sugar fat deposits that happen when you consume more sugar than your body can process, and abnormalities in blood pressure and heart rate response that take place with dehydration. In turn, your body realizes its ready for change, and it responds.

There is a lot of controversy about whether or not you should do cardio, interval training, build muscle before you lose fat, or do high repetition-based exercise. The fact of the matter is that all approaches help people with weight loss, but let's compare and contrast these four methods for a greater understanding and increased likelihood of success:

	Cardio For Weight Loss	High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)	Building Muscle For Weight Loss	High Repetition/ Intensity-Based Exercise For Weight Loss
Burns Calories During Workout	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Burns Calories After Workout Is Over	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Helps Body Burn More Calories Over Time	No	Yes, with plateau effect	Yes, no plateau	Yes, with effect plateau effect
Uses "Carb-Based Calories" To Burn Fat	Yes, tons.	Yes, tons.	Barely	Yes, tons.
Uses "Protein-Based Calories" To Burn Fat	No, barely.	No, barely.	Yes, tons.	Some
Uses "Fat-Based Calories" To Burn Fat	Yes, if greater than 40 minutes.	Yes, but only in afterburn effect.	Yes	Yes, but not quite as much as muscle building
Leads To Higher Exercise Tolerance For Increased Workout Capability Over Time	Slowly	Rapidly	Moderately	Quickly
Functional Carryover To Weight Loss Through ADL's	None	Depends on whether or not this is done outside or on a machine	Often, but not always.	Often, but not always.
Increases Risk of Injury With Workout	Yes, but usually not during cardio.	Yes, when over VO2 max or 20 minutes.	Yes, especially without a spotter	Low, but possible

Now that we've listed out the various benefits of each form of weight loss exercise, let's discuss the importance of each row above in your weight loss efforts:

Weight Loss Factor:	Importance For Weight Loss:
Burns Calories During Workout	Calories In vs Calories Out still determines your overall ability to lose weight, but this doesn't take into account the necessity to discuss 'nutrient density' in your caloric intake.*
Burns Calories After A Workout	This is the result of an 'afterburn effect' (EPOC) that takes place when your body craves oxygen after a workout, and it forces repair of injured muscle tissue used to train. Muscle naturally gets injured in a small way when you do high intensity exercise or you lift weights; repairing this muscle, and ridding it of lactic acid, is what leads to burning calories for days after a workout.
Helps Body Burn More Calories Over Time	Building muscle leads to an increased metabolism by increasing your muscle:fat ratio. Your muscle:fat ratio ultimately determines your metabolism, as increasing muscle mass forces your body to work harder to feed itself, ultimately burning more calories throughout each day.
Uses "Carb-Based Calories" To Burn Fat	Generally speaking, people overeat carbs, so it's great to have a solution that burns through your sugars and carbs when you need to. However, the better advice would be to do the minimum amount of exercise needed to burn excess carbs, and then work on utilizing your other macronutrient categories for caloric burn and weight loss.
Uses "Protein-Based Calories" To Burn Fat	Biasing protein-based calories for weight loss means that you are building muscle, which ultimately affects your muscle:fat (muscle to fat) ratio.
Uses "Fat-Based Calories" To Burn Fat	Oddly enough, these aren't the most important calories to burn during a workout, as this will often mean that you are losing the main benefit of your workout. Fat-burning calories get affected with low-load, high-duration exercise, or after a workout that involves the 'afterburn effect;' this is when your body is continuing to burn calories, but at a lower heart rate and with less work.
Leads To Increased Exercise Tolerance For Increased Workout Capability Over Time	Increasing exercise tolerance, or VO2 max, is one of the most important factors for someone who is just starting out or who hasn't reached his/her fitness potential. If your body has the ability to tolerate more work (i.e. more reps, more weight, longer workouts, etc.), your body has the ability to get more results from every workout.
Functional Carryover To Weight Loss Through Activities of Daily Living (ADL's)	When you choose exercises that "remind" your body of your workout during your day, your body naturally engages your muscles a bit more, remembers postural setting, and believes it needs to grow to survive. From a practical example, when we were hunters and gatherers, running more meant that we needed to be able to run further to find food; similarly, lifting heavy rocks meant that we needed to build a home, so we needed more strength. Our bodies are smart, so they respond.
Increases Risk Of Injury With Workout	Avoiding injury is paramount in your exercise success. Not only is injury avoidance important for faster results, but it's also important to help with your motivation levels. Finally, an injured muscle/joint remembers the injury for longer than the expected time period, and it causes muscle imbalances to take place. Without specifically reversing these muscle imbalances, your results will naturally plateau over time, or even reverse in some situations.

*NOTE on 'Nutrient Density': All calories were not created equally. At the end of the day, calories in vs calories out will let you know if you are in a caloric deficit, which leads to weight loss. However, protein-based calories are known to consume 20% of themselves, so these calories don't count for as much. Also, all excess calories derived from any macronutrient group that go unused ultimately turn to sugar and get deposited as fat. Therefore, if you ate 2000 calories of only carbs, your body would store much more fat than if you ate a blend of carbs, proteins, and fats.

Awesome! So now you know that cardio can be an effective way to burn calories in the moment, and it helps you get rid of carbs, but it might not be the best way to burn calories long-term. Also, it is not the most efficient way to lose weight, although it does work.

Next, you understand that interval-training is an effective way to burn calories both now, and after you go to the gym; but alone, it will lead to plateau. The reason for this is because your body needs to build muscle to sustain an increased metabolism. There are two ways to increase your metabolism:

1. Lower your bodyfat
2. Increase your muscle mass

Interval training does a great job of lowering bodyfat, as you rid your body of all of its excess sugars, bias protein and fat-burning for days to come, and increase your exercise tolerance. However, it will not lead to increasing your muscle mass, whatsoever. So, interval-training, alone, is not the answer.

Building muscle is great for #2, above, but often times these workouts force you to increase your caloric intake in order to grow the muscle. Also, long rest breaks are important for muscle building, so you need to factor in the decrease heart rate response to exercise that would take place in interval training.

To come full circle, let's discuss high repetition/intensity-based exercise as a plan to lose 10 pounds as fast as possible. In this case, we'll eventually plateau if we don't build muscle, but we will accomplish both #1 and #2, albeit more of #1 than #2. Your body will have the same response as interval training, in terms of bodyfat response, because you can actually train with intervals while lifting lighter weights. Naturally, since you are lifting weight, you will build a bit of muscle as well.

When it comes to losing 10 pounds as fast as possible and sustaining those results, high intensity-based exercise is the way to go. Your body needs to crave an increased exercise tolerance, consume its own carbs on a daily basis, and bias protein-breakdown for increasing your muscle mass over time. Ultimately, you should periodize this type of program to alternate with muscle building every 4-6 weeks for best effect, but this is the fastest path to weight loss.

This Food Has 180 Times the Fluoride of Drinking Water

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/this-food-has-180-times-the-fluoride-of-drinking-water.html

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• Jeff Green has been an activist in the movement to eliminate toxic fluoride from your water supply for the past 15 years.

With more than 60 percent of U.S. water supplies currently fluoridated, chances are you’re one of the 170 million Americans who drink fluoride on a daily basis.

In a previous interview, Green delved into the sordid history that made water fluoridation a reality in the first place.

If you missed it, I highly recommend taking the time to watch it now.

But fluoridated water is not the sole source of harmful fluoride. Here, the discussion focuses on some of the lesser-known sources of fluoride exposure.

A Primary Source of Fluoride: Your Food!

While toothpaste and drinking water would appear to be the leading sources of fluoride exposure, probably the most common source of exposure is actually non-organic foods! The reason for this is because of the widespread use of fluoride-based pesticides.

According to Green, non-organic food could account for as much as one-third of the average person’s fluoride exposure!

This is important, as many people are under the mistaken assumption that by avoiding fluoridated water, they’ve eliminated the primary source of fluoride. But if you’re still eating conventionally-farmed foods, your fluoride exposure is still likely very high. Green explains:

“Cryolite is actually sodium aluminum fluoride… This sodium aluminum fluoride is especially effective at killing bugs. It’s also very sticky, so when they spray it, it’s more likely to stick on your produce, unless you’re… really working at trying to get it off of it. As time has gone on, and… everybody said fluoridation must be really great, they ramped up the amount of residue [allowed on food] from these fluoride-based pesticides. They have petitioned the EPA to be able to allow it, and they come out with larger and larger [allowable] amounts.”

Amazingly, based on the assumed safety of such fluoride-based pesticides, iceberg lettuce can now contain a whopping 180 parts per million (ppm) of fluoride—that’s 180 times higher than what’s recommended in drinking water!

“The assumption is that on a head of lettuce, you’re going to peel off those outer layers and you’re not going to eat much of that. Whether you do or not; that’s up to you… Romaine lettuce and what we call leaf lettuce are allowed to have 40 ppm, with the assumption that it’s down inside there and you’re going to have to do more cleaning. But because it’s so sticky, it’s almost impossible [to wash off] unless you go back to the old ideas of the Fuller brush… produce brushes that you… scrape this stuff off with. The majority of people don’t make that extra effort to be able to take it off.”

Citrus fruits are allowed to be contaminated with 95 ppm of sodium aluminum fluoride. Potatoes may have 22 ppm on the outside and up to 2 ppm on the inside. Raisins can have up to 55 ppm. But of all the foods, grapes are perhaps one of the foremost sources of fluoride exposure.

Bet you would not have guessed that!

Grapes are a major source of fluoride because, first of all, they’re heavily sprayed with cryolite, and second, white grape juice is typically used as the base, or filler juice, in all sorts of juice drinks. So if you drink any kind of juice on a regular basis, you’re probably getting hefty doses of cryolite, i.e. fluoride-based pesticide… Cereals, mechanically deboned meats, and black or green tea are a few other sources that may surprise you.

“Wheaties for example was measured at 10 parts per million,” Green says. “Shredded Wheat: 9.4 parts per million. Why is it so high? One, they use pesticides on the grains. Two, they use [fluoridated] water… So you actually have higher concentrations than you ever found in the water where it was being made.

As for mechanically deboned meats, the source of the fluoride is the animal itself, which is exposed in the same manner as humans—through feed and water—which then comes out during the manufacturing process. Black and green teas are naturally high in fluoride, even if organically-grown without pesticides. This is because the plant readily absorbs fluoride thorough its root system, including naturally-occurring fluoride in the soil. According to Green, there are reports of people who have developed crippling skeletal fluorosis from drinking high amounts of iced tea alone.

Is Bottled Water More Pure than Tap Water?

Besides food, though, drinking water is certainly a primary source of fluoride exposure. Many mistakenly believe that bottled water is the answer, but this is a serious misconception.

As a general rule, I don’t recommend or encourage using bottled water on a regular basis—for a number of reasons. Not only does it contribute to profound amounts of environmental pollution, but a variety of toxins can leach from the plastic, contaminating your water. Not to mention the fact that you’re not guaranteed a more pure product to begin with. An estimated 40 percent of all bottled water is just bottled tap water that may or may not have received additional water treatment. No, buying bottled water certainly is not a guarantee of getting either pure or fluoride-free water!

For pure drinking water, your best bet, from a practical perspective, is to filter the water coming into your own home. Unfortunately, fluoride can be quite difficult to remove from the water once added in. Reverse osmosis systems have typically been recommended to remove fluoride, but according to Green, many home systems may not be very efficient at this task. Commercial systems are typically much better, as they have redundancy features not found in smaller-scale residential models.

“[Y]ou’ve got to remember that the free fluoride ion, which is the part that we are concerned with… is smaller than the water molecule. You can’t… “filter” it out. You can’t screen it out because of the size, obviously… If you look at what the literature tells you, when you’re looking at reverse osmosis, they almost always say that if you had eight parts per million of fluoride [which is eight times higher than recommended]… they could bring it down to 0.9. So you get a 90 percent reduction.

But nobody says take your 0.9 and take it down to 0.1. Because what it’s basically doing is it’s taking out the fluoride compounds, which is still a good thing in some ways, especially if you had eight parts per million in it… but you’re still not getting out that free fluoride ion.”

To Distill or Not to Distill… That is the Question…

Distillation is another alternative. However, while distilled water is very clean, it also lacks structure and minerals, which is inadvisable for long-term daily use as it can deplete your body of essential trace minerals. Distilled water can be quite useful for short-term detoxification though.

Despite these drawbacks, Green prefers the distilled water over reverse osmosis, primarily because the amount of water that is wasted with the reverse osmosis (R/O) filtration systems. A reverse osmosis system can use anywhere between three to eight gallons of water to create one gallon of drinkable water.

I disagree with Green’s recommendation, as the example he gave is quite skewed. The typical level of fluoride in most fluoridated municipal water supplies is about one part per million, not eight, like the example he gave. So if you reduce that by 90 percent with an R/O system you are in relatively safe range of 0.1 parts per million. You can use distilled water to remove nearly all of it, but the distillation process is a form of more severe processing than R/O and it is more difficult to restore the water minerals and structure.

Add Fluoride, and Other Chemicals Become More Dangerous…

Interestingly, not to mention importantly, fluoride has the ability to affect other toxins and heavy metals, in some cases making them even more harmful than they would be on their own. For example, when you combine chloramines with the hydrofluorosilicic acid added to the water supply, they become very effective at extracting lead from old plumbing systems—essentially, together; they promote the accumulation of lead in the water supply!

“In fact the two of them have been combined, and I believe patented to be put together so that they could extract lead,” Green says. “… In fact, you’ve seen from reports in Washington D.C. about the lead content [in the local water] that this combination can have tremendous effects.”

Studies have also showed that hydrofluorosilicic acid increases lead accumulation in bone, teeth, and other calcium-rich tissues. According to Green, this is because the free fluoride ion acts as a transport of heavy metals, allowing them to enter into areas of your body they normally would not be able to go, such as into your brain. Green says:

“Industry prizes what we call fluoride compounds. What’s amazing is there is so much [information] out there that’s never explained to the general public. But [fluoride] is… the most aggressive seeker of another electron. It’s the most electromagnetically negatively charged element in the entire world. It basically is the most interactive of all the elements… It will give up whatever it’s with to be with something else…

So it’s prized by industry because it actually disrupts molecular bonds… Industry also wants it because it creates tighter molecular bonds. So Scotchgard, Stain Master, Gore-Tex, ski gear… These are all fluoride-type compounds as well because they actually make it a tighter molecular bond that is more impervious to penetration.

… By the time you get to the enzyme activity, and knowing what it can do to disrupt enzyme activity, the effects are so widespread, it’s just amazing… Once [people] learn the nature of fluoride, they would never want to put it in their water.”

Are Health Epidemics Spurred by Water Fluoridation and Pesticides?

While fluoride has been linked to a long list of health problems, two that are currently epidemic are thyroid disease and neurodegenerative diseases.

“I think the important thing is to realize that fluoride affects your endocrine system,” Green warns. “… [I]n December 2006… the National Academy of Sciences… came to the unanimous conclusion that the levels of fluoride thought to be the maximum contaminant level and was safe to be in the water, weren’t protective of human health at all… and that the places where you could see that very dramatically would have to do with the endocrine system.”

Fluoride also calcifies your pineal gland, which can lead to a number of health problems, from precocious puberty to cancer—both of which are also burgeoning epidemics… So, what, if anything, can you do to protect your health if you suspect you’re getting too much fluoride?

One early sign of over-exposure to fluoride is dental fluorosis, which typically begins as white specks on your teeth, which then progress to more unsightly yellow and brown mottling of the enamel. At the first signs of dental fluorosis, if you haven’t done so already, you’ll want to immediately eliminate as many sources of fluoride as possible.

But, according to Green, you also need to make sure you have certain nutrients in your system. These three will help bind the free fluoride ions, allowing it to be excreted from your body more effectively:

• Magnesium
• Calcium
• Vitamin C

Join the Fight to Get Fluoride Out of Drinking Water

In summary, it would seem like most rational people would conclude you should avoid using fluoride for its “preventive” benefits. You can easily choose not to take fluoride supplements or buy fluoride-free toothpaste and mouthwash. You can also dramatically reduce your fluoride exposure by opting for organic foods, on which fluoride-based pesticides are not permitted to be used. However, you’re still going to be stuck with whatever your community puts in the water, and as discussed, it’s very difficult to filter out of your water once it’s added. Many do not have the resources or the knowledge to do so.

It’s really time to stop the archaic practice of water fluoridation.

Earlier this year I joined forces with Dr. Paul Connett to help put an END to water fluoridation in the U.S and Canada. The Fluoride Action Network has a game plan to do just that. Our fluoride initiative will primarily focus on Canada, since 60 percent of Canada is already non-fluoridated. If we can get Calgary and the rest of Canada to stop fluoridating their water, we believe the U.S. will be forced to follow. I urge you to join the anti-fluoride movement in Canada and the United States by contacting the representative for your area below.