HANDLING HYPERTENSION, BEFORE IT HANDLES YOU

Is your blood pressure creeping up? ... Not quite in the high blood pressure range, but not normal, either?
That's prehypertension. And though it's not high blood pressure -- yet -- it may not be as harmless as you thought.
Here's what you need to know about prehypertension, and why you need to nip it in the bud.
First, the numbers:

• Normal blood pressure is below 120/80.
• Prehypertension is blood pressure that ranges from 120-139 for the top number or 80-89 for the bottom number.
• High blood pressure (hypertension) is 140 or higher for the top number, or 90 or higher for the bottom number, or you are taking a blood pressure medication.

The top number is your systolic pressure, which is the force of blood against your arteries as your heart beats. The bottom number is diastolic pressure, which is the pressure on your arteries when your heart relaxes between beats.

Stroke Risk

Having prehypertension may make you more likely to have a stroke, especially in people younger than 65, a recent study shows.
"If you have prehypertension, and you're under 65, it really matters," says researcher and neurosciences professor Bruce Ovbiagele, MD, of the University of California, San Diego. "Most people who get to 65 already have hypertension."
Ovbiagele's team also found that stroke was more likely for people at the upper end of the prehypertensive range. But even if your blood pressure is not that high, it's wise to take action if your blood pressure is heading in the wrong direction.
"No matter what you consider your break point, any increase in blood pressure is generally a bad thing," says Richard Stein, MD, who directs the exercise, nutrition, and cardiovascular program at New York University's Center for Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease.
"It's causing the heart muscle to beat against a higher pressure, so [the heart] is becoming thicker," Stein says, adding that high blood pressure is also stressful for the kidneys.

Stealth Threat

Prehypertension, like hypertension, doesn't show signs or symptoms. Many people don't know they have it, and doctors often overlook it.
How do you know if you have it? The only way to know is to check your blood pressure. In otherwise healthy people, elevated systolic and/or diastolic blood pressure on two separate occasions -- taken two or three days apart -- is enough to be diagnosed with high blood pressure. You can take your blood pressure at home with a blood pressure monitor, or use the machine at your local pharmacy or grocery store, if it has one.
If it's consistently within the prehypertension range, tell your doctor so that you can get it under control before it becomes hypertension.

Taking Charge of Your Blood Pressure

The good news is, you can slow the progression to hypertension. Here's what experts recommend:

• Eat healthfully. Consider following the DASH diet, which focuses on eating more fruits, vegetables and whole grains, and less saturated fat, total fat, and cholesterol. It also restricts sodium, which can raise blood pressure, and emphasizes foods rich in calcium, potassium, and magnesium, minerals that help lower blood pressure.
• Watch the salt. Although a recent study showed that lowering your salt intake may raise cholesterol and triglycerides, most experts still recommend cutting back on salt. Be on the lookout for sodium in canned, prepared, and processed foods. Avoid sprinkling too much salt on foods. The American Heart Association recommends limiting your intake to 1,500 mg a day.
• Move more. Get at least 30 minutes of moderate activity every day, most days of the week.
• Get to a healthy weight. Extra pounds make prehypertension more likely. Physical activity and healthy eating can help you shed extra weight.
• Limit alcohol. Try to drink no more than two drinks a day if you're a man or no more than one if you're a woman. If you don't drink, don't start.
• Curb stress. It's unclear whether chronic stress, by itself, can raise your blood pressure in the long run. But it can make you more likely to overeat and to skip exercise, Stein says. So try to change your circumstances, or at least how you deal with them, by practicing stress reduction techniques such as meditation.
• Check your blood pressure. If you can, buy a home monitor, and take your blood pressure twice day: once in the morning and once at night, Stein says. "One very high reading is concerning, but one alone isn't enough," he says. "You want to see how it changes over time."

Source: WebMD

LACTOSE: HOW MUCH CAN YOU TAKE?

If your doctor has just broken the news that you’re lactose-intolerant, don’t jump to the conclusion that you’ll never be able to savor another bite of ice cream again.
At first, many people fear that they’ll have to give up all dairy products. But with some experimentation, most people with lactose intolerance discover that they can eat small amounts of dairy without triggering distressing symptoms, such as bloating, gas, abdominal discomfort, diarrhea or nausea.

Who Gets Lactose Intolerance?

Lactose intolerance occurs when the body doesn’t make enough of the enzyme lactase, which digests lactose, the sugar found in milk and other dairy products. Infants produce high levels of lactase in order to digest milk. After weaning, though, lactase levels decrease, meaning that eventually, as people age, many can no longer digest as much lactose.

Although lactose intolerance is viewed as a disorder, about 75% of all people around the globe have some degree of lactase deficiency. Lactose intolerance is much more common among Asians, Hispanics and blacks than in people of Northwest European descent.
Lactose intolerance is actually a misleading term, says Yuri A. Saito-Loftus, MD, MPH, an assistant professor in the Mayo Clinic’s division of gastroenterology and hepatology.
“The majority of the world population is lactose intolerant. It’s actually the people who are lactose tolerant that are the minority group.”

Find Out How Much You Can Eat

If you’re not sure which foods you can handle, or how much, start experimenting with one dairy food and see how much you can eat without prompting symptoms, Sandquist says. For example, start out by drinking a half-cup of dairy milk and see how well you tolerate it. If milk doesn’t agree with you, try other dairy products that have less lactose. For example, an ounce of American, Swiss, cheddar, or Parmesan cheese has 1 to 2 grams of lactose, compared to 10-12 grams in one cup of milk, she says.
Typically, any discomfort from lactose intolerance arises 30 minutes to two hours after a person eats milk or dairy products. If a food triggers symptoms, you can still try to cut back on amounts to see if you can handle a smaller portion. You can also try a variety of lactose-free dairy options or find a substitute non-dairy product.
Although some people keep a mental tally of foods or amounts to avoid, others might gain better understanding by jotting down notes. “A diary is extremely helpful because then they can log what symptoms they have, what they’ve eaten,” Sandquist says. “They can look back and see if there’s a pattern.”
To reduce symptoms, also try eating dairy products with other foods to slow digestion. “I think that makes a huge difference,” Saito-Loftus says. “If you eat [lactose] with other foods, it mixes and it empties out of your stomach at a slower rate. It’s not like eating ice cream and suddenly, you have all this lactose coming out all at once. If you eat dairy with meat or rice or other such things, it gets mixed in and diluted. It’s easier for your body to tolerate in that context.”


More reading: http://www.webmd.com/digestive-disorders/features/how-much-lactose?src=RSS_PUBLIC

RECIPE FOR HAPPINESS

ONE IS HAPPY ONCE HE KNOWS THE NECESSARY INGREDIENTS OF HAPPINESS: SIMPLE TASTES, A CERTAIN DEGREE OF COURAGE, SELF DENIAL TO A POINT, LOVE OF WORK, AND ABOVE ALL, A CLEAR CONSCIENCE.

WHAT DID JESUS SAY ABOUT "LOVE"?

 

 

Love was for Jesus probably the most vital ingredient in the way people should live. He said the two most important commands in the Hebrew scriptures were the one that said love God and the one that said love people.
This love, of course, is not to be confused with “lurve”. For Jesus, love was nothing much to do with feelings, but all to do with how you treat people. Neither was it a case of just being generally vaguely well-disposed to the human race. It meant actively doing for others what you would want if you were in their shoes. And more, it meant repaying evil with good.
Jesus made it clear that for himself love meant dying for the good of the world.
For Jesus love was not so much a nice feeling as a hard and often painful way of life…
“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone hits you on the cheek, offer them the other cheek. If someone takes your cloak, don’t stop him taking your tunic. Give to everyone who begs, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. After all, if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them” (Luke 6:27-32).

Do the Blind Literally "See" in Their Dreams?

A Critique of a Recent Claim That They Do

 

Abstract

This article provides a critique of a recent inaccurate claim that the congenitally blind literally "see" in their dreams, which flies in the face of findings that were established in 3 careful previous studies. It first shows how this claim arose through a blurring of the distinction between actual seeing through the visual system and imagery that preserves spatial and metric properties without specific reliance on the visual system. It then discusses the 3 mistaken reasons for this blurring. This correction is important beyond the specific issue of seeing in dreams because the original findings lend important support for a cognitive theory of dreaming by showing that the imagery necessary for dreaming develops between ages 4 and 7.

READ MORE: DREAM RESEARCH

EMBODIED COGNITION

Cognition is embodied when it is deeply dependent upon features of the physical body of an agent, that is, when aspects of the agent's body beyond the brain play a significant causal or physically constitutive role in cognitive processing.
In general, dominant views in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science have considered the body as peripheral to understanding the nature of mind and cognition. Proponents of embodied cognitive science view this as a serious mistake. Sometimes the nature of the dependence of cognition on the body is quite unexpected, and suggests new ways of conceptualizing and exploring the mechanics of cognitive processing.
Embodied cognitive science encompasses a loose-knit family of research programs in the cognitive sciences that often share a commitment to critiquing and even replacing traditional approaches to cognition and cognitive processing. Empirical research on embodied cognition has exploded in the past 10 years. As the bibliography for this article attests, the various bodies of work that will be discussed represent a serious alternative to the investigation of cognitive phenomena.
Relatively recent work on the embodiment of cognition provides much food for thought for empirically-informed philosophers of mind. This is in part because of the rich range of phenomena that embodied cognitive science has studied. But it is also in part because those phenomena are often thought to challenge dominant views of the mind, such as the computational and representational theories of mind, at the heart of traditional cognitive science. And they have sometimes been taken to undermine standard positions in the philosophy of mind, such as the idea that the mind is identical to, or even realized in, the brain.

Source (read more): STANDFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY

WAKING UP TOO EARLY IN THE MORNING CAN INCREASE A PERSON'S RISK OF HEART ATTACK & STROKE...

Late to bed and rising early ups heart risk

 Are you among those who get up early but go to bed very late? Beware, your sleeping habit may be a “ticking time bomb” for your health and it could lead to heart attack and stroke, scientists claim.

Going to bed late but waking up early because of hectic work schedule has become a trend for many, but scientist said having such a habit means inviting serious health hazards. Researchers at the University of Warwick Medical School in the UK found those who could not afford to sleep for at least six hours a day are more likely to die from a heart attack or stroke. 

“The trend for late nights and early mornings is actually a ticking time bomb for our health so you need to act now to reduce your risk of developing these life-threatening conditions,” said Francesco Cappuccio who led the study. “There is an expectation in today's society to fit more into our lives. But in doing so, we are significantly increasing the risk of suffering a stroke or developing cardiovascular disease resulting in, for example, heart attacks,” Cappuccio was quoted as saying by the Daily Mail. 

For their study, Cappuccio and colleagues looked at the sleeping habits of 475,000 participants from 15 previous studies across eight countries. It was found that those who slept for less than six hours were 48 per cent more likely to develop or die from heart disease and 15 per cent more likely to develop or die from a stroke. According to them, not having enough sleep decreases the levels of leptin in our blood, which means we do not feel as satisfied after eating. 

Experts recommend adults get at least six or seven hours' shuteye a night to stay healthy.

(Source: TNN)