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Positive thinking

Transforming Anger To Light

Give Your Anger To The Earth ……...click & see.
As humans, we all have anger, sometimes more than others. A healthy way of purging our anger from our bodies is to give it to Mother Earth. We can imagine ourselves being grounded as the electrical energy passes from us into Mother Earth below. We can see that energy go straight to the earth’s core where it becomes part of the continuous growth process of our planet and is transformed from negative to positive, from dark to light. When we choose to give our anger to the earth, we trust our connection with the natural world we live in and the great universe that fuels it all. Mother Earth will lovingly transform your anger into light so no need to feel guilty about unloading to her.

We can make this offering of our energy from any location, whether many stories up or on a ship at sea. We know the earth is below us, supporting us and sustaining us. If we have the opportunity to physically connect to the earth by going outdoors and touching unpaved ground, we may find it easier to connect to nature’s energy flow. It may also be easier to receive the flow of positive, calming, healing energy that comes to fill our bodies when we have emptied ourselves of our anger. To begin, sit and breathe deeply, ask Mother Earth to accept your anger, and imagine it coming down your spine out of your tailbone, and into the earth’s deep core. To finish, be sure to honor and thank the earth for her loving service.

When we work with our anger this way, we acknowledge that like everything else it is merely energy that can be used positively or negatively. During our grounding meditation, we may be given direction to channel this energy for its best use. We may find that the earth can help us cleanse misplaced energy to use for its rightful purpose. When we do this with gratitude, we know that we are not misusing the earth for our own selfish purposes. Instead we are connecting ourselves with the energy of our homeland, and when we do this we nurture the earth as it nourishes us.

Source:Daily Om

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News on Health & Science

Getting a Grip on the Winter Blues (SAD)

It is that time of year again, when despite the ratcheting up of festivities for the holidays, fully one person in five in the United States ratchets down. The cause is a now well-known but still infrequently treated disorder, winter blues or SAD, for seasonal affective disorder.

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There are several remedies to help those affected by SAD escape an affliction that leaves many wanting to climb into bed, put their heads under the covers and not come out until spring. Indeed, some experts refer to SAD as a form of hibernation.

The problem typically starts gradually as the days become shorter in late summer or fall and peaks in midwinter in regions where there may be just 9 or 10 hours of daylight, if that.

For the estimated 14 million severely affected American adults, SAD can send them into a tailspin that makes it difficult if not impossible to fulfill daily responsibilities and derive any joy from life. An additional 33 million people are less severely affected but may experience declines in energy, cheerfulness, creativity or productivity in the dark days of winter.

The most commonly used treatment is exposure for up to several hours a day to high-intensity artificial light, in an effort to simulate the longer days of summer when people with SAD function at top speed.

Jet Lag and Circadian Rhythm
Dr Alfred J. Lewy, a psychiatrist who has been studying the biology behind SAD, describes it as a form of jet lag, a concept he proposed 20 years ago. He recently published experimental evidence that he says attests to the validity of this theory. If true, this would make SAD a disturbance in the circadian rhythm, the 24-hour pattern that normally aligns the sleep-wake cycle with all the other bodily rhythms. Dr. Lewy suggests that with the delayed dawn and shorter days of fall and winter, the rhythms of people afflicted with SAD drift out of phase with the sleep-wake cycle, as if they had traveled across many time zones.

With jet lag, recovery occurs over a matter of days, and the circadian rhythm once again becomes synchronized with day and night. “In people with SAD, this adjustment takes five months,” Dr. Lewy said.

If his theory is substantiated by further research, it may one day be possible to treat SAD with tiny daily doses of time-released melatonin, the substance in the brain that regulates the sleep-wake cycle. Melatonin naturally increases in the evening, causing sleepiness, and falls off as morning approaches. The idea would be to tailor the administration of melatonin in a way that realigns the out-of-sync circadian rhythm in people with SAD, just as tiny doses (much smaller than those typically sold in health-food and drug stores) of melatonin can be used to speed recovery from jet lag.

In his study, conducted with three colleagues at Oregon Health Sciences University, Dr. Lewy identified two types of SAD patients. About two-thirds required morning light or evening melatonin to correct their body clocks. The remainder needed evening light or morning melatonin to put their body rhythms back on track. Currently, there is no commercial source of time-release low-dose melatonin that could be used, with or without light therapy, to help people with SAD.

Current Remedies
Dr. Norman E. Rosenthal, a native of South Africa who discovered his own serious problem with SAD while a resident in psychiatry at the New York State Psychiatric Institute in 1976, has become an expert in diagnosing and treating the problem. His knowledge and experience in helping himself and countless patients afflicted with SAD are summarized in “Winter Blues: Everything You Need to Know to Beat Seasonal Affective Disorder,” whose revised edition the Guilford Press published this year.

Dr. Rosenthal aptly describes SAD as “an energy crisis.” Patients are not depressed in the usual emotional sense, but rather feel as if their batteries have run down.

The symptoms of SAD do mimic those of serious depression. Patients say they have to drag themselves out of bed in the morning, even after 10 hours of sleep, and force themselves to perform necessary chores. They feel leaden and would just as soon not see anybody or do anything. They find it difficult to concentrate and think clearly and quickly.

Sex drive often dwindles markedly but is often replaced by an insatiable appetite for carbohydrates — breads, pasta, potatoes, rice and sweets — that results in weight gain. Many people with SAD have two wardrobes, the one for winter being two sizes larger.

The most common remedy is light therapy. But not just any light. Patients are advised to sit in front of a specially designed light box that emits about 10,000 lux from a fluorescent bulb, most often in the morning for at least 45 minutes. Some patients require hours of light therapy each day to ward off the symptoms of SAD, which may mean having one light box at home and a second at work.

Among commercial sources for these light boxes is the Center for Environmental Therapeutics, which sells them for $200. Its Web site, www.cet.org, is a useful source of information about SAD.

Among other light-enhancing suggestions from Dr. Rosenthal are planning a winter vacation in a sunny climate or relocating to someplace nearer the Equator, where the days are longer in winter. (But, he cautions, first be sure you can tolerate the summer there.)

Helpful Machines and Therapies
For those who remain in northern latitudes, Michael and Jiuan Su Terman of the New York State Psychiatric Institute at Columbia University, who have conducted pioneering studies of SAD remedies, suggest considering a “dawn simulator.” This device gradually turns on a bedroom light every morning while you are still asleep, helping ease SAD symptoms by making the body think that it is experiencing the early sunrises of summer.

This might also help people who do not have SAD but who hate getting up in the morning when it is still dark out.

The Termans have also found another helpful gadget, a negative-ion generator. They showed that sitting in front of a machine that emits negative ions at a high rate for 30 minutes every morning was as effective as sitting in front of a light box for the same time. The generators are available for $165 from the Center for Environmental Therapeutics (Michael Terman is the president of its board). The advantage of this device is that it can be used while sleeping.

A third approach that has proved effective is cognitive behavioral therapy, when used with or without light therapy. Kelly J. Rohan of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., (and currently of the University of Vermont) found that this therapy, a brief form of psychotherapy that helps people change negative thoughts and behaviors, was as effective as light therapy in a study of 23 patients with SAD.

And unlike light therapy used alone, cognitive behavioral therapy helped prevent a relapse of SAD symptoms the next winter.

Dr. Rosenthal also recommends eating a diet relatively high in protein and low in carbohydrates and performing regular physical exercise, which is especially helpful if it is outdoors in the morning or, if indoors, in front of a light box.

Source:The New York Times

Categories
News on Health & Science

Moderate drinking may prolong life

Moderate drinking may lengthen your life, while too much may shorten it, researchers from Italy report. Their conclusion is based on pooled data from 34 large
studies involving more than one million people and 94,000 deaths……..click & see

According to the data, drinking a moderate amount of alcohol    up to four drinks per day in men and two drinks per day in women  reduces the risk of death from any cause by roughly 18%, the team reports in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

However, “things radically change” when consumption goes beyond these levels, study leader Augusto Di Castelnuovo, from Catholic University of Campobasso, said in a statement. Men who have more than four drinks per day and women who have more than two drinks per day not only lose the protection that alcohol affords, but they increase their risk of death, the data indicate.

The reason why men are protected at up to four drinks per day, while women lose the
protection after two glasses has to do with how men and women metabolize alcohol,
researchers say. It’s been shown that when men and women who drink the same amount of alcohol, women experience higher blood alcohol levels than men.

Therefore, women who consume more than two glasses of alcohol per day may be at increased risk for diseases of the liver and certain types of cancer.

“Our findings, while confirming the hazards of excess drinking, indicate potential windows
of alcohol intake that may confer a net beneficial effect of moderate drinking, at least in
terms of survival,” the Italian team concludes.

“Heavy drinkers should be urged to cut their consumption
, but people who already regularly consume low to moderate amounts of alcohol should be encouraged to continue,” they add. The manner in which alcohol is consumed also appears to be important.

“Little amounts, preferably during meals, this appears to be the right way,” said Giovanni
de Gaetano of Catholic University, another author on the study
.

Source:The Times Of India

Categories
Fruits & Vegetables Herbs & Plants

Coconut

Florida Keys Coconut Palm (Cocos nucifera)
Florida Keys Coconut Palm (Cocos nucifera) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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Botanical Name : Cocos nucifera .
Family: Arecaceae
Subfamily: Arecoideae
Genus: Cocos
Kingdom: Plantae
Order: Arecales
Tribe: Cocoeae
Species: C. nucifera


Habitat
:The coconut has spread across much of the tropics, probably aided in many cases by seafaring people. Coconut fruit in the wild is light, buoyant and highly water resistant, and evolved to disperse significant distances via marine currents. Fruit collected from the sea as far north as Norway are viable. In the Hawaiian Islands, the coconut is regarded as a Polynesian introduction, first brought to the islands by early Polynesian voyagers from their homelands in Oceania. They are now almost ubiquitous between 26°N and 26°S except for the interiors of Africa and South America.

Description:
The coconut (Cocos nucifera) is a member of the family Arecaceae (palm family). It is the only accepted species in the genus Cocos, and is a large palm, growing up to 30 m tall, with pinnate leaves 4–6 m long, and pinnae 60–90 cm long; old leaves break away cleanly, leaving the trunk smooth. The term coconut can refer to the entire coconut palm, the seed, or the fruit, which is not a botanical nut. The spelling cocoanut is an old-fashioned form of the word.

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...
The coconut palm is grown throughout the tropics for decoration, as well as for its many culinary and non-culinary uses; virtually every part of the coconut palm can be utilized by humans in some manner. In cooler climates (but not less than USDA Zone 9), a similar palm, the queen palm (Syagrus romanzoffiana), is used in landscaping. Its fruits are very similar to the coconut, but much smaller. The queen palm was originally classified in the genus Cocos along with the coconut, but was later reclassified in Syagrus. A recently discovered palm, Beccariophoenix alfredii from Madagascar, is nearly identical to the coconut, and more so than the queen palm. It is cold-hardy, and produces a coconut lookalike in cooler areas.

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The flowers of the coconut palm are polygamomonoecious, with both male and female flowers in the same inflorescence. Flowering occurs continuously. Coconut palms are believed to be largely cross-pollinated, although some[which?] dwarf varieties are self-pollinating. The meat of the coconut is the edible endosperm, located on the inner surface of the shell. Inside the endosperm layer, coconuts contain an edible clear liquid that is sweet, salty, or both.

The Indian state of Kerala is known as the Land of coconuts. The name derives from “Kera” (the coconut tree) and “Alam” ( “place” or “earth”). Kerala has beaches fringed by coconut trees, a dense network of waterways, flanked by green palm groves and cultivated fields. Coconuts form a part of daily diet, the oil is used for cooking, coir is used for furnishing, decorating, etc.

Coconuts received the name from Portuguese explorers, the sailors of Vasco da Gama in India, who first brought them to Europe. The brown and hairy surface of coconuts reminded them of a ghost or witch called Coco. Before it was called nux indica, a name given by Marco Polo in 1280 while in Sumatra, taken from the Arabs who called it  jawz hind?. Both names translate to “Indian nut.” When coconuts arrived in England, they retained the coco name and nut was added.

You can find many ways to incorporate coconut oil into your daily diet, and you will read about the science behind the diet with links to the research that backs up the wonderful truth about this incredible oil.

Today thousands of people testify that Virgin Coconut Oil has tremendous health benefits, related to not only weight loss, but to such things as increased metabolism, helping sluggish thyroids, increased energy levels, killing Candida and yeast infections, improving cholesterol levels, clearing up skin infections, killing viruses, improving digestive health, and more! All across America health care practioners, including MDs, chiropractors, nurses, nutritionists, naturopaths, and others are seeing positive results in their patients or clients when using Tropical Traditions Virgin Coconut Oil.

Cultivation:The coconut palm thrives on sandy soils and is highly tolerant of salinity. It prefers areas with abundant sunlight and regular rainfall (150 cm to 250 cm annually), which makes colonizing shorelines of the tropics relatively straightforward.[7] Coconuts also need high humidity (70–80%+) for optimum growth, which is why they are rarely seen in areas with low humidity, like the Mediterranean, even where temperatures are high enough (regularly above 24°C or 75.2°F).

Coconut palms require warm conditions for successful growth, and are intolerant of cold weather. Optimum growth is with a mean annual temperature of 27 °C (81 °F), and growth is reduced below 21 °C (70 °F). Some seasonal variation is tolerated, with good growth where mean summer temperatures are between 28–37 °C (82–99 °F), and survival as long as winter temperatures are above 4–12 °C (39–54 °F); they will survive brief drops to 0 °C (32 °F). Severe frost is usually fatal, although they have been known to recover from temperatures of ?4 °C (24.8 °F). They may grow but not fruit properly in areas where there is not sufficient warmth, like Bermuda.

The conditions required for coconut trees to grow without any care are:

*mean daily temperature above 12-13 °C every day of the year
*50 year low temperature above freezing
*mean yearly rainfall above 1000 mm
*no or very little overhead canopy, since even small trees require a lot of sun
The main limiting factor is that most locations which satisfy the first three requirements do not satisfy the fourth, except near the coast where the sandy soil and salt spray limit the growth of most other trees (Palmtalk).

The range of the natural habitat of the coconut palm tree is delineated by the red line in map C1 to the right (based on information in Werth 1933, slightly modified by Niklas Jonsson).

Coconut trees are very hard to establish in dry climates, and cannot grow there without frequent irrigation; in drought conditions, the new leaves do not open well, and older leaves may become desiccated; fruit also tends to be shed.

Coconut palms are grown in more than 80 countries of the world, with a total production of 61 million tonnes per year.

Harvesting
In some parts of the world (Thailand and Malaysia), trained pig-tailed macaques are used to harvest coconuts. Training schools for pig-tailed macaques still exist both in southern Thailand, and in the Malaysian state of Kelantan.[11] Competitions are held each year to find the fastest harvester.

Use of Coconut

Once I heard some one to say Coconut is such an amazing fruit which can quench your thrust with its sweet water and meet your hunger with its good and neutritious pulp.Coconuts are a way of life for millions of people around the world today in tropical climates. Known as the “tree of life,” the wonderful fruit of the coconut palm is rich in specific fats that have incredible health benefits. Traditional tropical populations that consume a lot of coconut oil are seldom overweight, and traditionally have been free from the modern diseases that afflict most western cultures.

The Coconut Diet picks up where traditional diets fail. Low-fat diets don’t work. The body needs a proper balance of good fats, but in recent years traditional, healthy saturated fats have been substituted with harmful trans fatty acids in the US food industry. We now know that these harmful trans fatty acids that are found in most vegetable oils are not the healthy oils they were once thought to be, and they are considered one of the major culprits in modern diseases and obesity. The Coconut Diet replaces these highly refined harmful fats with one of the healthiest fats known to mankind: coconut oil.

The Coconut Diet is a not one specific diet plan, but a way of life! Most diet plans are temporary and tell you exactly which foods to eat, how much to eat, how to count calories or carbs, etc. Statistics prove that those starting diet plans are usually doomed to failure before they even start, because while they may temporarily lose weight on specific diet plans, they will almost always regain that weight and more as soon as they stop using the diet plan. We have seen traditional people in the tropics follow these dietary principles and live very long, healthy lives with coconut oil as the main dietary oil in their diet.

The dark, fibrous shell breaks, and fragrant coconut liquid begins to ooze out. Using a sharp knife, you separate the luscious white flesh from its shell; then grate it to make rich, delicious coconut milk. The milk will add delicate flavor and a smooth creamy texture to your lentil soup simmering on the stove.

But it is not only for its taste that the coconut is valued, says The Council of Maharishi Ayurveda Physicians. Coconut is considered a divine plant in the Vedic tradition. Whenever you perform a sacred ceremony like a yagya, a coconut must grace the occasion. Thus, the coconut enjoys the hallowed status of a select few herbs and fruits-like holy basil and amla-in the Vedic tradition.

What’s in a Coconut?
A recent research study from the Department of Biochemistry in the University of Kerala states that the fatty-acid composition of coconut changes as it grows. This change in composition is being studied by scientists in many places. But ayurvedic scholars knew many centuries ago that coconut has different properties at different stages of its life.

In the ayurvedic nighantus or classical texts which talk about raw materials or fruits, the coconut is actually divided into three types of coconuts —

  • Baal: tender or baby coconut
  • Madhyam: half-mature coconut
  • Pakva: fully mature coconut.

The Three Coconuts
Baal or Tender coconut: This type is 90 to 95 percent water. The liquid from this coconut is at its purest and most healing. It is considered the best for its cooling properties, for it is a proven pitta-pacifier. While unclogging the body’s channels, tender coconut water lubricates the dryness caused by ama. It repairs the gastro-intestinal tract, and its snigdha or sweet quality gives it a pranaropana-life-restoring-capacity.

Madhyam or Middle-aged coconut: In addition to water, the coconut at this stage has some soft pulp. Madhyam coconuts have less water than tender ones, but more water than mature coconuts. The water is slightly milky at this age. In the classical ayurvedic texts called Raj Nighantus, the middle-aged coconut is said to be the most nutritious. This type generally has more carbohydrates, protein, minerals, phosphorus, and Vitamins A, B, and C than the other two forms.

Mature or Pakva coconut: This type of coconut has firm “meat” or pulp, and very little water. Ancient ayurvedic scholar Bhav Mishra wrote that when a coconut becomes mature, it becomes heavy to digest, and it can also aggravate pitta or vata if the digestive agni of the individual is low. Mature coconuts can also build up toxic ama by interfering with digestion. If large quantities of this variety are consumed daily, then a person can suffer hyperacidity, and worse still, elevated cholesterol levels.

Therefore, people who have low agni or digestive power are not advised to eat mature coconut, unless it is combined with ingredients that balance its negative properties. In the south of India, for instance, a popular way to eat coconut is in the form of chutney. Combined with healthful ingredients like roasted chickpea flour, curry leaves, mustard seeds, and oil, the coconut is used in smaller quantities, and can actually be beneficial.

Click to read more about Thyroid & Coconut Oil

Click to read more about the benefits of Coconut oilÂ

Benefits of coconut oil

Details of coconut plant, use etc

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut

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