I love easy to use remedies for common health issues. Vitamin C powder is super effective for colds, drinking lots of water can ease hunger pangs while encouraging weight loss and deep breathing can lower blood pressure almost immediately.
One of my favorite simple strategies for improving health involves using spices. Not only can they have medicinal value, but spicing strategically will make foods taste better and you’ll find that if you’re eating generously spiced foods you’ll feel fuller faster.
One of the most helpful of spices is cinnamon. It’s tasty and can help enhance the sweetening powers of sugar and honey. And, as it turns out, cinnamon can also help lower blood sugar too!
While there are dozens of types of cinnamon, the most readily available are Ceylon cinnamon (also known as “true” cinnamon), which is valued for its gentle sweet taste and Cassia (Chinese) cinnamon which has a spicier, stronger and more intense flavor. You can tell the difference between the two forms by their appearance; Cassia cinnamon is dark/reddish brown with a thick hard texture while the Ceylon type is light tan and tends to be thin and brittle.
No matter what form of cinnamon you chose to use, all have therapeutic properties. According to the Mayo Clinic, a 2012 review of scientific research found that using cinnamon had a “potentially beneficial effect” for sugar control. And another study from 2009 found that a 500 mg capsule of cinnamon taken twice a day for 90 days improved sugar levels, as measured by hemoglobin A1C levels, in people with poorly controlled type 2 diabetes.
Dr. Richard Anderson of the Human Nutrition Research Center, a division of the US Department of Agriculture, says that cinnamon contains a nutritional compound called MHCP which makes fat cells more sensitive to insulin, thus improving the body’s sugar handling capacity. In addition, cinnamon can slow down stomach emptying time reducing dramatic changes in blood sugar, which can again improve the effectiveness of insulin.
And that’s not the only health benefits cinnamon can provide. Cinnamon is packed with anti-oxidant compounds that slow down the aging process. It may act as an anti-inflammatory reducing the pain and stiffness associated with arthritis. For those prone to sticky prone-to-clot blood, cinnamon contains a natural blood thinner called “coumarin”, which can help improve blood flow and circulation. For those on anti-coagulant medication who want to avoid coumarin’s blood thinning effects, best to lay off the Cassia cinnamon, which contains lots more of the clot busting phyto-nutrient than the less popular Ceylon version.
If you’re a diabetic or don’t want to be one, try adding ½ a teaspoonful to your breakfast and or dinner time dessert and see what happens. It can be especially tasty on savory veggies like onions and shallots.
The universe is filled with a lot really cool things, from neutron stars that are so dense that they are capable of crushing all known matter into one homogenous mass, to quantum substances that flash in and out of existence in nanoseconds, to the cell, the fundamental unit of biology, that can produce over 100,000 different molecules a second, all in the space of 1/00th the size of head of a pin. But nothing, absolutely nothing is more interesting, intriguing or more fascinating than a virus.
Viruses are the most abundant biological entity on earth. They’re about a hundred times smaller than a typical human cell. While viruses are mysterious, what most of us do know about these enigmatic entities is that we don’t like them. The dictionary uses terms to define word “virulent” (virus-like) such as severe, harmful, poisonous, toxic, lethal and fatal, among other awful descriptors of doom. Many of the scariest health challenges anyone can have to deal with, from polio to AIDS to smallpox to cancer to Covid-19, have been associated with these mysterious entities. But what exactly is this enigmatic entity that is the cause of so much consternation and concern?
As it turns out, potheads may be keeping themselves healthy and high at the same time. That’s because marijuana is loaded with active medicinal plant compounds. Generically called cannabinoids, (THC, the stuff in pot that causes cannabis’s characteristic intoxication is most well-known of these molecules) they are responsible for many of the effects associated with smoking or eating the evil weed and desired by dopers. These phytochemicals are little chunks of protein (peptides) that mimic a family of substances called endocannabinoids that are naturally found in the human nervous system and they have become the latest darlings in the world of brain biochemistry.
Boost your metabolism
It’s true: Certain foods have a very high thermogenic effect, so you literally scorch calories as you chew. Other eats contain nutrients and compounds that stoke your metabolic fire. Feed your metabolism with these.
1. Whole grains
Your body burns twice as many calories breaking down whole foods (especially those rich in fiber such as oatmeal and brown rice) than processed foods.
2. Lean meats
Protein has a high thermogenic effect: You burn about 30% of the calories the food contains during digestion (so a 300-calorie chicken breast requires about 90 calories to break it down).
3. Low-fat dairy products
Rich in calcium and vitamin D, these help preserve and build muscle mass—essential for maintaining a robust metabolism.
4. Green tea
Drinking four cups of green tea a day helped people shed more than six pounds in eight weeks, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reports. Credit EGCG, a compound in the brew that temporarily speeds metabolism after sipping it. To up your intake, keep a jug of iced tea in the fridge.
Albumin, which is derived from the Greek word for white (as in albino or even album, which was originally a book with a bunch of white pages), is a multi-functional Swiss army knife type protein, with a chemical structure that allows it to perform many different biological roles. It’s primarily produced in the liver and measuring its levels is one of the ways physicians determine hepatic health. Deficiencies can be indicative of cirrhosis or liver disease.
Albumin’s most well-recognized function involves its ability to act as a water trapping or water attracting “sponge” in the blood. Albumin has an ability to pull water. It’s technically called osmosis, but you can just think of a sponge. Dip a sponge in water and the water gets sucked up automatically. That’s called osmosis and that’s exactly how albumin works in the blood. Sponges are made of long chain sugars that trap water and while albumin is more like a magnet than a trap, the water pulling or absorbing effect is the same. One of the most obvious consequences of an albumin deficiency is swelling and edema. That’s because without albumin trapping fluid it tends to leak out of the blood and into the tissues. Albumin can also be thought of as a fluid expander for the blood, without it blood can become thick and sludgy and more prone to clot. Albumin levels can drop significantly in with burns or blood loss. This loss of albumin can be serious and if it’s severe it can even be life threatening and doctors will inject a pharmaceutical version of albumin into the blood as a replacement.
