Green tea is on "Brain Food" menu

Some foods are so beneficial to your brain that they're almost like pharmaceuticals. Fish rich in omega-3 fatty acids are one category of such foods. Foods rich in antioxidants — especially polyphenols — are another:

One group [of antioxidants] that has been evaluated, the polyphenols, has been shown in rodents to reduce oxidative damage and to boost the ability to learn and retain memories. In particular, these chemicals affect changes in response to different types of stimulation in the hippocampus (a part of the brain that is crucial to the formation of long-term memories, and which is the region most affected by Alzheimer’s disease).

And guess which green beverage is rich in polyphenols? That's right — green tea.



She's improving her mind in two ways: reading and drinking green tea.



Green tea appears prominently under "Beverages".


—Mellow Monk

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How our bodies age (and how to prevent it)

In graphical format, how the body ages:

Aging is the natural wear and tear of the body's component parts. It's inevitable, and endlessly intriguing. While many age-related changes cannot be prevented, a lifestyle that includes exercise and a well-balanced diet will slow or minimize many problems related to aging.

Read about green tea and aging here.



Click on the image to see the huge full-sized version.


—Mellow Monk

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Resistance stretching, a swimmer's secret weapon

Get ready for the next fitness craze — resistance stretching, which 41-year-old record-breaking swimmer Dana Torres calls her secret weapon.

By essentially pitting muscle against muscle, resistance stretching could be seen as a variation of Charles Atlas's dynamic tension, although the emphasis is on improving not just strength but flexibility as well, and without bulking up.

In other words, the goal is to become what Ox would call a "lean, mean fighting machine."



She's 41 and mother of a 2-year-old daughter.


—Mellow Monk

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Improve your posture

The Alexander Technique is a system of rules and guidelines for improving your posture.


A posture-improving exercise I've had excellent results with is wall angels—like snow angels, but performed while standing against a wall. Just remember, never do any exercise that hurts, and if you have any doubt at all about whether an exercise is right for you, talk to your doctor first!


P.S. There's been a lot of talk lately about who invented the modern "dolphin kick" that's revolutionizing competitive swimming, but we all know that it was really the Man from Atlantis [YouTube link].



The bad, the good ... and the bad.


—Mellow Monk

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Less-junky junk food

Let's face it—it's not always possible to eat healthy. When pressed for time or on the go (or when the craving hits), junk food is hard to resist.


But even then, there are eco-friendly, less-junky junk food alternatives.





—Mellow Monk

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America's unhealthiest drinks

Numbered lists seem to be popular again—by "again" I mean, do you remember the Book of Lists?


For instance, Men's Health magazine has a list of the 20 unhealthiest drinks in America.


Hmm . . . if those are the unhealthiest drinks, then I wonder was the healthiest drink could be.



A cool, thirst-quenching version—perfect for summertime—of the world's healthiest drink.


—Mellow Monk

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Slow down ... fast!

Slow Down Fast is wonderful site by lifecoach and author David Bohl that's full of tips on living a less-hectic, more mellow life.


Here's an excerpt from the article "How to Boost Your Subjective Well-Being":

4. Shut off the television. Exposure to television is directly correlated with unhappiness. Regular television viewers consistently rate themselves as less satisfied with their financial status, more insecure about life in general and dissatisfied with themselves and their relationships. One possible reason is that commercials, and the exaggeratedly wealthy and exciting lifestyles of television characters, work together to make us feel bad about our own normal lives and possessions. Another issue is that physically ideal people are incredibly over-represented on television, therefore making us unhappy and unsatisfied with how our own looks, and the physical attractiveness of those around us, fares in comparison.

"Let's see, what would Mellow Monk do in this situation..."


—Mellow Monk

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Green tea could help prevent osteoporosis

A study at Australia's Edith Cowan University showed that women who drink tea have higher bone density and less bone loss than non-tea-drinking women.


The study was published in the The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.



Osteoporosis explained. Yikes!


—Mellow Monk

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In praise of massages

At Mellow Monk, we're all about mellow — getting mellow and staying that way. Green tea can be more than just a drink; it can be the center of stress-busting tea breaks.


But sometimes to relax the mind, you need to relax the body, and a great way to relax the body is with a modern version of an age-old art: massage.


To find a massage therapist, start by asking around. (Or try this site.) Ask your co-commuters or coworkers (or your company may even have someone who comes onsite). Or ask the guy at Starbucks you're chatty with. (Why do I have a feeling that every Starbucks has at least one employee who is or knows a massage therapist.)


After you've tried one massage therapist a couple of times, try a different one. You'll probably find that you like one more than the other, because of a difference in technique or professionalism, for instance. That knowledge will help you shop smarter next time.


You may find in the end that massage just isn't for you. Then again, you may find that getting a good massage can be the key that unlocks the door to releasing a whole lot of stress that's accumulated in your body over the years. That's how it was for me.








—Mellow Monk

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The song was wrong — green tea ginger ale is too sweet

Remember that series of Canada Dry Ginger Ale commercials from the '70s, in which celebrities like Isaac Hayes and Jack Elam sang the jingle "It's Not Too Sweet" to the tune of "Ain't She Sweet"?


Well, it seems that whoever at Canada Dry was in charge of concocting the company's Green Tea Ginger Ale never saw those commercials, because this review concludes that the drink is just too loaded with sugar:

Chug the whole [bottle], as I imagine many (most?) will do, and you've consumed the equivalent of 15 Domino sugar cubes. So now I have a few questions for Canada Dry. What were they THINKING?

As with so many other green tea-containing beverages out there, looks and labels can be deceiving. In other words, Grasshopper, if you want all the health benefits of green tea, then you should [drumroll, please] drink green tea.



Canada Dry, say it ain't so.


—Mellow Monk

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Sitting up straight is bad for you?!?

Talk about turning conventional wisdom on its head — researchers in Scotland are claiming that sitting up straight places excessive strain on the lower back, and that the ideal sitting position is leaning slightly back.


What they should have added, however, is that when leaning back, it's important to keep your neck straight, too. For this, a chair with a headrest is highly recommended — especially if you can get your boss to pay for it.


[What about us, Monk? —Your faithful employees.] What's the matter? You don't like those new chairs I got you?






The guy on the right is setting himself up for neck problems.


—Mellow Monk

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Your shoes are wrong

I bet you thought you knew how to walk properly, didn't you?


Well, so did I, but it turns out we're wrong. Or, more specifically, our shoes are wrong. All wrong. (Especially high heels.)


The new trend in footwear is shoes that keep our feet in a more natural state.



If these shoes look like they're paint on, it's because they are.


—Mellow Monk

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Reduce stress, boost willpower.

Alright, everyone. Brew up a cup of green tea and sit back and relax, because today's article is a little on the long side.


But bear with me, because the payoff is there at the end.


First, the bad news — which we all knew, really — is that willpower is a limited resource. Using willpower to refrain from one bad habit, or to force ourselves to do an unpleasant task, depletes the willpower left over for other unpleasant tasks. For instance:

[R]estraining our consumer spending, in the short term, may cause us to actually loosen the belts around our waists. What’s the connection? The brain has a limited capacity for self-regulation, so exerting willpower in one area often leads to backsliding in others.

But the good news is you can avoid backsliding by using your limited willpower strategically:

For example, if you do not want to drink too much at a party, then on the way to the festivities, you should not deplete your willpower by window shopping for items you cannot afford. Taking an alternative route to avoid passing the store would be a better strategy.

And there's more good news: Willpower is like a muscle — the more you exert it, the stronger it gets:

In psychological studies, even something as simple as using your nondominant hand to brush your teeth for two weeks can increase willpower capacity.

Anyway, this is all according to the authors of Welcome to Your Brain, which does seem like an interesting read.


But there's another way of looking at it: How much willpower you have depends on how much stress you have.


Stress is a killer. It wears us down. In fact, that's what stress is — the use of too much of our limited mental energy on some chronic problem or obstacle in our lives, leaving us too little energy left to devote to the important things.


It's like a little kid nagging, nagging, nagging for ice cream, until Mom is so worn down she gives in.


Then again, maybe Mom would have had the strength to keep saying "No" if other things in her life hadn't already worn down her willpower.


Some stress is unavoidable. Life ain't easy, after all. But you can zap a big chunk of your stress just by learning the art of relaxation. Things like deep breathing, meditating, yoga, exercise.


And, of course, green tea.


You may laugh. But do not underestimate the power of green tea, Grasshopper. The power to relax you. The power to mellow you out.


And green tea isn't just a beverage. It's a philosophy. A way of life.



Reduce your stress and you increase your resolve to resist the many temptations out there (and there are a lot of them).


—Mellow Monk

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Doc, there's a spider in my room

"Count your blessings" is a one way of expressing one of the most fundamental philosophies of Mellowness. Another way of expressing this attitude is "No matter how bad things are, they could always be worse."


For instance, the next time you have a problem with HMO or your hospital, just remember — at least it's not infested with poisonous spiders.
--
Clarification:


A reader wrote:

"Things Could Be Worse" is quite a different attitude than "Count Your Blessings". The attitude behind it is bordering on paranoid and seems against the spirit of "mellowness", at least to me.

To which I replied:

You are quite right, Anonymous.

However, achieving Mellowness is for many people a slow, gradual process (sort of like learning how to operate a new DVD player).

Learning to always keep in mind that "things could be worse" is taking one step towards the much higher level of Mellowness expressed by "Count your blessings."

Or, as the Master says, "Before achieving perfect Mellowness, one must first stop punching the wall."

Knowwhatimean?



With apologies to arachnophobes, here it is, Australia's redback spider.


—Mellow Monk

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Societies, pathogens, and tea

Some societies emphasize the individual, whereas others place priority on the interests of the larger group. This "individualism–collectivism" split is one of the most fundamental differences between cultures.


For years, scientists and other bright types have wondered why "collectivism declines with distance from the equator, and why living in colder regions should promote individualism."


Well, some folks think they have finally found the answer — pathogens:

[C]ertain behaviors make you less likely to contract an infectious disease. A reluctance to interact with strangers can protect against pathogens because strangers are more likely to carry strange microbes that the group lacks immunity to . . . . Respect for traditions also works: ways of preparing food (using hot pepper, say, which kills microbes), rules about hygiene and laws about marriage (wed only in-group members, whose microbes you're probably immune to) likely arose to keep pathogens at bay. "Conformity helps maintain these buffers against disease," says Corey Fincher of the University of New Mexico; mavericks are dangerous.

This theory also ties in with a theory about why the tradition of tea-drinking first developed in Asia thousands of years ago: Tea provided protection against pathogens, which became more and more problematic as humans began living in denser concentrations.


And now, thousands of years later, humankind is rediscovering the power of tea to fight pathogens, including the so-called superbugs.



Continuing a time-honored — and healthy — tradition.


—Mellow Monk

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Willpower waning? Blame your accumbens

The part of the blame responsible for some of the really silly, short-sighted things that people do is known as the nucleus accumbens:

Think of the nucleus accumbens as appetite central. It's part of the primitive brain, and it has evolved to light up and get us moving forward at the sight of almost any kind of reward. It doesn't matter whether it's a piece of chocolate cake, a BMW M5 sports car, Scarlett Johansson in a party dress or a stock that gets the kind of hype Enron used to enjoy.

What to do when faced with a potential impulsive act? The trick is to relax. Take a deep breath. Mellow out, dude:

In one MRI study reported at a recent conference, the nucleus accumbens predictably lighted up when test subjects saw a blue square, which they understood to represent a possible cash reward. But when Rutgers University neuroscientist Mauricio Delgado asked the subjects to think of something else on seeing a blue square -- the sky or sea, instead of the cash -- that reduced the sort of brain activity associated with risky decisions.

And so, Grasshopper, drinking relaxing, mellowness-inducing green tea can also help you resist the many temptations we all face out there.



"There he is, Officer. That's the guy who made me eat the whole box of Oreos."


—Mellow Monk

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Breast cancer inhibited by green tea

Not too long ago I blogged about a study suggesting one way green tea inhibits the growth of breast cancer cells — by disrupting the cancer cells' metabolism of fatty acids, which they need to survive.


Now a new study suggests yet another way that green tea fights breast cancer cells — by suppressing angiogenesis, or the growth of blood vessels in tumors.


The magical substance in green tea responsible for these cancer-fighting effects is epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), which is found only in green tea.



A "first day of tea harvest" event in Japan.


—Mellow Monk

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Alligator blood is good for you!

A few days ago I blogged about how green tea can make antibiotics more effective against drug-resistant superbugs.


Well, now comes a story about a superbug cure that sounds like it's straight out of a cheesy horror movie: alligator blood.


Scientists had long wondered why alligators, who are notorious for their bloody territorial fights, seldom get infections from the gory wounds they inflict on each other.


Some researchers finally got around to taking a close look at alligator blood, and what they found was bacteria-fighting blood as tough as the alligators themselves:

Chemists in Louisiana found that blood from the American alligator can successfully destroy 23 strains of bacteria, including strains known to be resistant to antibiotics.

In addition, the blood was able to deplete and destroy a significant amount of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

And if blood from an ordinary alligator can do all that, imagine what pharmacological wonders await discovery in the blood of a standing alligator.



"Uh, sorry Mr. Alligator, but would you hold still a sec while we take a sample of your blood? That's a good alligator."


—Mellow Monk

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Rabies as a drug-delivery system

Talk about turning a negative into a positive.


Rabies is "one of the few viruses known to be nearly 100% deadly to mankind." What makes the virus so pernicious is its ability to work its way from a cut or other wound anywhere on the body, into the bloodstream, through the blood-brain barrier and into the brain, where it wreaks havoc.


Now, the blood-brain barrier — a layer of tissue that surrounds the brain and spinal cord — usually does a very good job of keeping out viruses and other harmful particles. In fact, it's so good at its job that it even blocks "good" substances, such as anti-tumor drugs injected into the blood stream to target a brain tumor.


So, a smart groups of researchers hit on the idea of taking the rabies virus's negative — its ability to cross the blood-brain barrier — and turning it into a positive: They found the protein in the out layer of the virus that is responsible for pulling the whole virus through the blood-brain barrier, then figured out a way to attach drugs to the rabies protein. The protein pulls the drug through the blood-brain barrier and into the brain, where, instead of wreaking havoc, the drug does its job of zapping a tumor or whatever else it way designed to do.


Maybe there's a lesson in this for all of us. Is there a negative in your life that could, with a little outside-the-box thinking, be turned into a positive?



Priti Kumar (left), lead author of the paper on using a rabies virus protein to deliver drugs to the brain.


—Mellow Monk

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Green tea boosts antibiotics—even against superbugs

A study announced at a meeting of the Society for General Microbiology in Edinburgh, Scotland, found that green tea makes antibiotics more effective against germs, even the drug-resistant bacteria known as "superbugs."





—Mellow Monk

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The secret to happiness: good health, giving, and green

Waaaay back in the days of black-and-white TV, Jack LaLanne — the "immortal fitness sensei" — talked about the secret to happiness, and his advice still rings true today:





Another secret to happiness is giving:

Think you'd be happier if you won the lottery or just had a few extra bucks in your pocket? Think again. Overturning classic economic wisdom, new research shows that it's not how much you have that matters, it's how you spend it. People who donate their dollars to charities or splurge on gifts for others are more content than those who squander all the dough on themselves.

Another thing that can contribute to your sense of well-being is — yes, you guessed it — green tea.



"Those who donate are happier than those who do not."


—Mellow Monk

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Green tea, the superfood

At the AARP Magazine website, green tea appears [look in the column on the right-hand side of the linked-to page] on the list of "superfoods" named by Dr. Toni Bark, director of the Center for Disease Prevention and Reversal.


And drinking green tea is better for you than taking green tea extracts. Says Dr. Bark: "Your body will absorb vitamins better through foods than through supplements. ... Diet is the basis of our building blocks."



Why, look who's on the cover.


—Mellow Monk

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When it comes to treating heart attack victims, have we been getting it backwards?

This is the most interesting science news story I've read in quite a while. Simply put, this is a fascinating development.

When a person has a heart attack on the street, by the time he reaches the emergency room, his body has been deprived of oxygen for an average of 15 minutes. Doctors have always assumed that by this point, heart and brain cells and other cells in the body are past the point of resuscitation.

But it turns out not to be the case:

That dogma went unquestioned until researchers actually looked at oxygen-starved heart cells under a microscope. What they saw amazed them, according to Dr. Lance Becker, an authority on emergency medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. "After one hour," he says, "we couldn't see evidence the cells had died. We thought we'd done something wrong." In fact, cells cut off from their blood supply died only hours later.

But if the cells are still alive, why can't doctors revive someone who has been dead for an hour? Because once the cells have been without oxygen for more than five minutes, they die when their oxygen supply is resumed.

The reason for this phenomenon has to do with a cell's "power plants," the mitochondria:

Mitochondria control the process known as apoptosis, the programmed death of abnormal cells that is the body's primary defense against cancer. "It looks to us," says Becker, "as if the cellular surveillance mechanism cannot tell the difference between a cancer cell and a cell being reperfused with oxygen. Something throws the switch that makes the cell die."

The key to improving post-heart-attack survival, then, is not getting the victim oxygen as quickly as possible:

Instead, Becker says, we should aim to reduce oxygen uptake, slow metabolism and adjust the blood chemistry for gradual and safe reperfusion.

The mitochondrion, the cell's power plant.

—Mellow Monk

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Skip breakfast and gain weight

Did you eat breakfast today?


A study done by the University of Minnesota has found that "[t]eens and adolescents who eat breakfast every day are less likely to become overweight or obese in the near future and they typically lead a more active, healthier lifestyle than their peers who skip breakfast."



Hey, Junior, that citrus juice is a great thing to add to your green tea.


—Mellow Monk

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Does relaxation, not stress, make us sick?

The term is "leisure sickness," and the theory behind it is counterintuitive to say the least: It's not hard work and stress that make us vulernable to cold and flu viruses, but rather downtime that makes us sick.


The evidence cited by proponents of this theory boils down to this: Look at how often people get sick while they're off work.


Many are skeptical of this theory—including yours truly. I don't doubt the correlation between vacation time and getting sick, but I think the explanation has less to do with psychology and more to do with the reality of downtime: When we're off work, we're more likely to, say, get together with friends and family we don't see every day, or go places we don't normally go. In short, we're more likely to be exposed to new viruses and whatnot when we're off work.



Tilburg University in the Netherlands, where the cited study was performed.


—Mellow Monk

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Dr. Oz's anti-aging checklist

Dr. Mehmet Oz—known as "Dr. Oz" and author of books such as You on A Diet—has put up his "Ultimate Anti-Aging Checklist" at Oprah.com.


Number 4 on the list is—drumroll, please—green tea.



Dr. Oz says you should drink about four cups of green or white tea a day.


—Mellow Monk

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Zero-calorie sweeteners make us fat

A while back one of my kids asked me what the word "paradox" means. I explained that it's something that seems like it couldn't be true but is, or a situation that is the opposite of what you'd ordinarily think it would be.


At the time I couldn't think of a good example to illustrate the concept, but now I have one:


Researchers have found that zero-calorie artificial sweeteners like saccharine can actually make you fatter than if you had