Everyone knows you can take melatonin to help you sleep but it’s actually involved in much more than brain health. In addition to being an important digestive hormone, melatonin is involved in supporting the body’s defense system, it has anti-inflammatory properties, it can help lower blood pressure, stabilize blood sugar and it’s been used medically for anti-fibrosis properties. And that’s not all. Savvy practitioners have used it to treat tinnitus and fibromyalgia as well. It can help build bone. And it’s a powerful anti-aging molecule that helps prevent cancer too; that’s a lot of benefits for a non-toxic supplement that will cost you less 2 cents a dose!
Levels of melatonin and the alertness hormone serotonin cycle back and forth, with dark of night and light of day. Serotonin, the hormone which promotes vigilance and awareness of the environment, is secreted in response to the sun as perceived by the pineal gland, while it’s production hormonal partner melatonin predominates at night. This back and forth dance of hormones with day-night cycles is part of what biologists call a circadian (daily) rhythm.
One of the key weapons in the so-called “War on Terrorism” is what the George W. Bush administration officials called Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. Featuring nebulous or mildly discomforting names like “waterboarding”, “the attention grab” and “long time standing”, that inspire confusing or perhaps mildly uncomfortable images, EITs are either lauded as wonderful tools for saving American lives or illegal government-sanctioned torture.
One of the most dramatic apparently is too severe to make the list of officially approved EITs. While no one officially owns up to it, according to at least one released prisoner, a British national, “one guard had told him that he was following orders by making as much noise as possible while detainees …tried to sleep”.
So what’s wrong with a little sleep deprivation? Can’t be that big a deal right? Wrong! Sleep deprivation is a big deal, a very big deal. Aside from the obvious grumpiness and irritability associated with a lack of shut eye, sleep deprivation can have serious consequences for overall health and wellness.
One of the best movies I’ve ever seen was the Rob Marshall adaptation of the Broadway musical Chicago. Not only was the historical depiction of the Windy City in 1920’s fascinatingly presented but watching funnyman John C. Reilly put out an Oscar worthy, if not Oscar winning performance, and listening to him belt out a tune was a pleasant surprise as well.
My favorite song in the film was Reilly’s character Amos Hart’s rendition of “Mr. Cellophane” a plaintive plea for recognition from an oblivious love interest that many of us can find familiar. "Mr. Cellophane" tells the story of the trials of an under-appreciated and misunderstood man in love. And, who among us can say that they never felt unrequited love from a guy or girl we simply wanted to acknowledge our affections.
When I think of unrequited love, sometimes I think of our human body and its parts. Like Chicago’s Amos Hart, our heart, and spleen and thymus and thyroid among other structures faithfully love us but remain unrecognized and unappreciated. And no organ in the body is more unrecognized and unappreciated than the pancreas. While everyone knows about the heart and the brain and the stomach and the skin hardly anyone ever give this little 2 or 3 ounce organ its due.
For over a thousand years diabetes was recognized as a deadly disease that caused those afflicted to waste away and die a painful death, but it took until the 7th century BC for the development of the disease to be linked to sugar. Doctors in ancient India were the first to make the connection, diagnosing the disease by observing whether ants were attracted to a patient’s urine.
Although it has been long assumed that once insulin producing cells die they can longer regenerate. However, according to the website diabetesselfmanagement.com, there is growing evidence that these cells actually can regenerate themselves. This is great news for type 1 diabetics who until now been told their disease is incurable.
The skin care business is, like many other businesses, steeped in and dependent on consumerism and marketing. Rather than having real effects, products have come to rely much more on sizzle; many purchases are the result of nothing more than hype and buying decisions are often functions of ignorance and ads. The world of cosmetic products as we know it today was birthed in the late 19th and early 20th century, at the same time that business enterprises were beginning to understand Freudian psychological theories of human motivations and buying behaviors and how to use them to exploit and manipulate consumer minds and emotions. No business has leveraged human desires and vulnerabilities via sales and advertising more than the business of beauty. We are endlessly manipulated and contorted into spending our hard earned cash via celebrity sales pitches, advertising slogans and the recommendations of dubious department store “advisers”.
But that all changed with the active ingredients dubbed “cosma-ceuticals” which worked as powerfully as prescriptions but were only regulated as cosmetics. The father of the cosmaceutical, Dr. Albert Kligman coined the term to distinguish inactive and superficial ingredients from those that went “…beyond mere camouflage…” and could achieve real and often long-term results. While it’s true that everything including water will inevitably alter the skin in some way, only true cosmaceuticals can provide the kind of performance most consumers expect and are (mis-)led to believe they’ll get when they purchase and apply their cream, lotion, toner and treatment skin care preparations and products.
