Best and worst brain foods

I was reading today about foods that are good and bad for your brain. Being three quarters of the way done with this semester, which has been hell I might add, I wanted to see what I should be consuming/avoiding. At this point I'll try anything. So here's what I've found.




To help you concentrate: Studies found that the scent of peppermint is supposed to help you focus and boost performance. Better yet, when you have a long drive peppermint helps you to remain more alert and less anxious.


For sharpened senses: Include a tablespoon of ground flaxseed daily to your diet. You can sprinkle it on salads or add it to a smoothie or shake. Flaxseed is a healthy fat that improves the function of the cerebral cortex.



For good moods: Eat more leafy greens such as spinach, chard or arugula. According to a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience Nursing, a lack of B6 can cause nervousness, irritability, and even depression.

Looking for an energy boost: Stay away from a high-carbohydrate breakfast such as pancakes or bagels. Choose instead a high-protein breakfast. Two hours after eating, the carb eaters had tryptophan levels four times higher than those of the people who had eaten protein.

Short-term memory boost needed: Coffee is the ultimate brain fuel. Caffeine has been shown to retard the aging process and enhance short-term memory performance. However, too much caffeine, especially from late afternoon onward can have a negative effect on the short-term memory as well. Too much caffeine can interrupt your normal sleep pattern. Sleep is reboot time for your mental computer, and you don't want to mess with it.

Here's one that I know.



Long-term memory boost: Eat blueberries. Blueberries contain antioxidants which protect the brain from free-radical damage and lower your risk of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. If you can find wild blueberries, they have even more antioxidants than the cultivated variety. Another tip within this tip is if your favorites are out of season, buy them frozen. Freezing them locks in flavors and nutrients, so the berries' antioxidant capacity is maxed out. It's better consuming the off-season berries.

Spreading the word......

This is for my beautiful niece....Love you Sweetie!!!

Friday March 26th is Epilepsy Awareness Day....Wearing purple on Friday demonstrates support for epilepsy sufferers, showing them that they are not alone.

Message heard around the world

Creative advertising is said to be the best way to get your message across about your product. However, one of the new commercials by GlaxoSmithkline has crossed a line.....or has it? The commercial is titled "Message in a Bottle" and the message is Cervical Cancer Kills. GlaxoSmithkline has a new vaccine to compete with Merck's Guardasil and GS is not taking the subtle approach. But is scaring the best method of educating us to the preventative measures to take for cervical cancer?

The reviews are mixed. Some are horrified and have gone so far as to post on Ihatecommercials.com that the marketing technique GS has used is one they do not like. When I first saw this commercial I was taken back. I was wondering what new perfume was on the market. What a surprise it was to me to see on the pretty bottle the words, "Cervical Cancer." Another commercial in GS's campaign to educate America was an instant message conversation between two friends concerning another girlfriend who wasn't able to partake in drinks with the girls. When the other girl questions "why not?" the response is that "she just found out she has cervical cancer." GS is getting down and dirty about this subject.

I agree that cervical cancer is nothing to take lightly. My family has been crushed by the loss of a very young mother of two to cervical cancer. So our fear was one of reality and enough to have the women of our family to have anual Papsmears, educate our friends, and to simply speak openly about it with our children. I also support parents vaccinating their daughters, as I myself have chose to do with my own.

So is the new commercial harsh and tasteless??? It has many women talking about it...therefore bringing awareness to the reality of cervical cancer.....so yes it's a strong message....but one that is being heard. Knowledge is power. Learn about cervical cancer prevention at helppreventcervicalcancer.com

Workout Prep?

On The Doctors today they discussed how having a cup of coffee could ease the muscle soreness brought on from working out. I decided to research it being that I suffer from a little muscle soreness after a workout. My workout includes a half an hour of cardio and an hour and a half of weight machines.

I researched this online and found mixed reviews. Studies have been done to show that some women have reported consuming about two cups of coffee prior to a workout eased muscle soreness during their workout. In one study, the pain relief from caffeine was stronger than from painkillers such as Tylenol or Aleve. Research has also shown that Ibuprofen has shown inconsistent results, and it hasn't been proven in delaying muscle soreness

However, before consuming coffee before a workout, it is recommended to consider the possible side effects of doing so. Caffeine can increase anxiety, heart palpitation, and blood pressure. Careful consideration should be used when choosing the caffeine route. Obviously, if you're hypersensitive to caffeine, you'd be at a higher risk for these side effects.

Bottom line is that it's not going to work for everyone, however, I'm going to give it a go to see if it helps me.

Peace

I want to thank PioPio (NYC's West Side location) for yet another amazing night out of great food and festivities. Since we chose to celebrate with an early dinner, we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves. It also helped that the weather was horrid. We counted 4 destroyed umbrellas flying by the restaurant's windows. The waitstaff was amazed by the size of the cake but they added the candles, got together a group of five waiters, dimmed the restaurant lights, and came over in a group with the music blaring and even added horns to their customary birthday song.

Needless to say my daughter had a great birthday dinner and she loved her cake. Spending time with family is always fun, but coupled with something to celebrate makes it all the more enjoyable.

Proper Pairing Aids in Digestion

So we've all heard the claim that pairing the correct wine with your meal makes the meal that much better. Always searching for a new reason to indulge in a glass of wine with my meal, I was delighted to hear of the newest claim of how correct pairing can aid with digestion. This has been a great debate for sometime now with scientists. Some have found that alcoholic beverages speed the digestion, stimulate gastric acid, while others are steadfast that one has nothing to do with the other.

The unwritten rule with wine is to drink light-to-dark and pair with meals delicate-to-heavy. This is why red wines are better paired with heavier foods such as beef. Which follows the one studies research that concluded protein softened the wine's tannins and in return the red wine also helps counteract Malondehydes (MDA), potentially harmful substances, which are released when meat is digested.


White wines are best served with appetizers or lighter dishes such as fish and poultry. In another study, it was found that a serving of dark meat from turkey elevated those same MDA in a subjects blood. Further founded, coupling this meal with a glass of cabernet sauvignon, the increase of the substance was "completely prevented."

Moral of the story? Pairing the right wine with your meal is not just about flavor, it also aids in digestion.

Uh-Oh....Look who's a teenager.

So my daughter is going to be thirteen this coming week. I have learned that it's not like the terrible twos that starts just about at two years of age. The terrible teen attitude was developed around her tenth birthday. She's actually perfected it at this point. This new "tween" attitude started when she was ten years old. I don't recall being a tweenager...but I absolutely remember becoming a teenager.

Every birthday I think back to the day she was born and remember every detail. I usually run through this reminiscing for about a week or two before her birthday. I kept a journal from before she was born, until her third birthday or so and then from then on it was the milestones that I would document. I love that I can open up to any page and flashback to that exact moment and remember just about every detail.

With her upcoming celebration we asked her what she wanted to do. She wants dinner in NYC at Pio Pio and to be able to bring a friend. Hmmmm...I can do that. That works for me. But I wanted to do something a little special. So I invited friends and family that she hasn't seen in over a year or so which I'm sure will delight her. But I wanted to order her a custom cake. So off to the internet I went to google some ideas.

Who would have thought that it would be so difficult to find a cake? I spent less time finding the design for my wedding cake. The cakes ranged from simple to extreme. The cake is for fifteen people so I don't see why I need to order one for a hundred plus. Then it dawned on me....I have a friend that bakes cakes and she's pretty darned good. So I posted on her Facebook page and she responded right away. I told her what my daughter was into and we decided on a peace sign cake. Crazy as it is in 2010 I've got a kid that loves peace signs. I guess I should be grateful that it's not skulls that she's into.


So the cake is ordered and I cannot wait to see the expression on her face when she sees people she hasn't seen in so long come to celebrate her breaking into teen-hood and to eat her custom peace sign cake. I will be sure to post pictures of the cake.

Cherry Coke Zero....Fighting the Addiction

I kicked the soda habit over two years ago because I had turned over a new leaf. More so for my daughter, but still also for myself. My new drink of choice was water, or flavored waters. I really didn't miss the soda which was a surprise for me. Even when I was out to eat I'd ask for a glass of water with a slice of lime. I'd been fine all this time having cut soda out of my diet. Until a few weeks ago when the school store was out of flavored water. Now, I have a prefererred brand of bottled water. I prefer Aquafina. There are also brands that I don't like and Dasani is one of them. Unfortunately, the college store sells Coke products, so Dasani was all that was available. Which wasn't too bad when it was at least a flavored version. But this day there were no flavored Dasani's to be found. Feeling that it wouldn't be a big deal for one day, I picked up a Cherry Coke Zero.



And that my friends is where my short addiction to Cherry Coke Zero began. It was two weeks, but it was two weeks of CCZ bliss. I would look forward to class ending to get to the school store to buy my bottle of CCZ to quench, not my thirst, but my addiction. It got so bad that one day the school store hadn't received their soda shipment and there were no CCZ's for the taking and I had to settle for a Sprite Zero. It did not comfort the craving. I left school that day and went grocery shopping. I went directly to the soda aisle, an aisle I hadn't been in for a very long time, and anxiously looked for the black capped, black labeled bottle of CCZ. One bottle...are you kidding me? There's only one bottle left on the shelf? I was grateful that my fellow addicts left me at least one beautiful, 2 liter bottle.

I completed shopping and made it home and cooked dinner. All the while I was thinking about how good my tall glass of CCZ was going to taste with dinner. Needless to say no one was allowed to touch my bottle of CCZ. I did, however, hesitantly offer a sip to my husband. I imagine that my face told the true tale of not wanting to share, because he chuckled and declined my offer. Phew, that was close. I enjoyed that bottle, alone, as if it were a good year of chardonnay.

After only a week of my new addiction I was feeling the effects of it's ingredients. Now Coke Zero products are not to be mistaken with diet sodas. It's its own separate category of drink with its own list of ingredients. So how can a drink without sugar and calories taste so darned good and yet be oh so bad? The headaches, abdominal pain and lower back pain I was experiencing was no joke. As I evaluated what in my diet had changed recently there was only one culprit, Cherry Coke Zero.

I did some research on the internet and found other fellow addicts as well many conflicting opinions, professional and non, regarding the sweeteners in my beloved CCZ. Acesulfame Potassium is one of the newest sweeteners used in CCZ and the controversy surrounding it is that it hasn't been extensively tested. But the FDA did approve it for use in certain products. There's actually a list of products it can be used in. The other culprit...ummm...I mean sweetener is Aspartame which has been surrounded by so much controversy.

So much information to contemplate but the deciding factor for me was the way I felt. I know the only change to my diet prior to my symptoms was the CCZ and as much as I enjoyed it, I wasn't going to subject my body to it any longer. I'm back to water and it's been only a week, but I feel much better. I carry a bottle of water with me now to school so I don't have to go to the school store. Lesson learned.