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Saturday, June 19, 2010

Nine Tips for Healthy Hair


No matter what type of hair nature blessed you with, there are things you can do to keep it healthy, lustrous, looking its best. Here are some tips for a healthy head of hair from the tradition of Ayurveda, the 5,000-year old healing tradition that originated in India:

1.Like everything else about true, lasting beauty, healthy hair begins within your body. Start with your diet. Include lots of green leafy vegetables and sweet juicy fruits. Dairy products such as milk and fresh yogurt will also help. Fresh coconut is also considered excellent "hair food" - sprinkle grated coconut over salads, diced fresh fruit, or rice.

2.Cut down on refined, processed and canned foods. Ayurveda considers foods with artificial preservatives and chemical additives stripped of their inherent "intelligence" and therefore not helpful in supplying nutrition to your body and mind. Ice-cold beverages also hamper the process of digestion and assimilation of nutrients.

3.Cooking with certain spices adds flavor to your food and provides nourishment for your hair. Cumin, turmeric and black pepper are some "hair-friendly" spices. Add a healthy pinch of each to single-portion soups and stews as they are cooking. Saut - 1/8 - 1/4 teaspoon each of the three spices in a teaspoon of ghee (clarified butter) or olive oil and add to cooked veggies. Roasted ground cumin and ground black pepper can be sprinkled over fresh yogurt.

4.Stress can be seriously injurious to long-term health and color of hair. Try and manage your time and tasks to minimize time-related pressures. Practice relaxation techniques such as meditation. Seek out tranquil sights in nature to help restore balance to your mind. Relaxing or uplifting music can be therapeutic. Get adequate, good quality sleep to help the natural process of rejuvenation.

5.Ayurvedic herbs that help hair health include Eclipta alba and Gotu Kola. Eclipta alba is called "Bhringaraj" - literally, king of tresses. It nourishes the hair and helps resistance to stress as well. Brahmi, sometimes called Gotu Kola, also helps balance the mind and nourishes the hair and scalp. Since Ayurveda considers the health, color and luster of hair so dependent on overall mind/body health, synergistic Ayurvedic herbal preparations for hair can also include herbs such as Country Mallow, which is supposed to strengthen the physiology, and Winter Cherry, which aids resistance to stress.

6.Stay away from harsh chemical topical products that can damage hair over time. Look for gentle, natural cleansers and conditioners, especially if you wash your hair more than three times a week. Shampoos and conditioners that contain nourishing botanicals are even better. Read labels carefully - sometimes, products that say "herbal" or "natural" can include no-no chemicals.

7.A warm oil scalp massage two or three times a week will help stimulate and moisturize the scalp. You can use good quality coconut, almond or olive oil Ayurvedic hair oils also contain some of the herbs mentioned earlier. Apply some mildly warmed oil to your hair and gently massage into your scalp evenly with your fingertips. Leave on overnight if you can, if not, leave on for at least an hour or two, then get it out by shampooing your hair. The scalp massage helps you relax and aids sound sleep as well.

8.Never attack wet hair with a brush, no matter how rushed for time you are. Tangles in wet hair are best removed with a wide-toothed comb. Use a wooden comb if you can find one; it won't generate static electricity. Excessive blow-drying can damage hair in the long-term, making it brittle and causing split ends. If you can, let your hair dry naturally, then brush into place.

9.Last, but not least, brushing your hair regularly to stimulate the scalp will keep it looking healthy and lustrous. Brush each night in all directions in turn - left to right, right to left, front to back and back to front Use smooth long strokes from scalp to hair-tips.
Your hair can indeed be your crowning glory if you treat it right!

How to Build Muscle Fast


You have to give special attention and effort to finish any task and bodybuilding is no different. To build your muscles, you should follow a special routine and diet. Without relevant determination, commitment and information, muscle building cannot be achieved within few days. As it takes considerable time frame, the person's patience is of paramount importance, as being impatient can spoil the exercise agenda as well as the dietary system.

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Brooke Greenberg - Girl frozen in time may hold key to ageing



Brooke Greenberg (born January 8, 1993), is a now 17 year old girl from Reisterstown, Maryland, who has remained physically and cognitively similar to a toddler, despite her increasing age. She is about 30 inches (76 cm) tall, weighs about 16 pounds (7.3 kg), and has an estimated mental age of 9 months to 1 year.
Brooke's doctors have termed her condition Syndrome X.
American scientists are keenly studying the DNA of a 17-year-old girl who still has the body and behaviour of a baby

Brooke - 17 years (left) and sister Carly - 14 years (right)
Scientists are hoping to gain new insights into the mysteries of ageing by sequencing the genome of a 17-year-old girl who has the body and behaviour of a tiny toddler.

Brooke Greenberg is old enough to drive a car and next year will be old enough to vote — but at 16lb in weight and just 30in tall, she is still the size of a one-year-old.

Until recently she had been regarded as a medical oddity but a preliminary study of her DNA has suggested her failure to grow could be linked to defects in the genes that make the rest of humanity grow old.

If confirmed, the research could give scientists a fresh understanding of ageing and even suggest new therapies for diseases linked to old age.

“We think that Brooke’s condition presents us with a unique opportunity to understand the process of ageing,” said Richard Walker, a professor at the University of South Florida School of Medicine, who is leading the research team.

“We think that she has a mutation in the genes that control her ageing and development so that she appears to have been frozen in time.

“If we can compare her genome to the normal version then we might be able to find those genes and see exactly what they do and how to control them.”

Such research will be the focus of a conference at the Royal Society in London this week to be attended by some of the world’s leading age researchers.

It follows a series of scientific breakthroughs showing that the life span of many animals can be dramatically extended by making minute changes in single genes.

The work began with tiny worms known as C elegans, which normally live for only about a fortnight. Researchers have been able to extend their life span by up to 10 weeks by making small changes in certain genes.

Scientists have gone on to discover that mutating the same genes in mice had the same effect.

“Mice are genetically very close to humans,” said Cynthia Kenyon, professor of biochemistry at the University of California, San Francisco, who is a key speaker at the Royal Society.

“The implication is that ageing is controlled by a relatively small number of genes and that we might be able to target these with new therapies that would improve the quality and length of human life.”

The laboratory findings have been supported by research into humans, focusing on families whose members are long-lived. In one recent study Eline Slagboom, professor of molecular epidemiology at Leiden University, Holland, collected data on 30,500 people in 500 long-lived families to find the metabolic and genetic factors that make them special.

“Such people simply age slower than the rest of us,” she said. “Their skin is better, they have less risk of diseases of old age like diabetes, heart disease and hypertension and their ability to metabolise lipids and other nutrients is better. The question is: what is controlling all these different manifestations of slow ageing?

“So far, the evidence suggests that there could be just a few key genes in charge of it all. If we can find out where they are and how they work, it opens the way to new therapies against the diseases of ageing that could work in all of us.”

Walker and other researchers, including Kenyon, believe that finding the cause of Brooke Greenberg’s condition could be one way to pinpoint some of those genes.

Superficially, Brooke, who lives with her parents Howard and Melanie Greenberg and her three sisters in Reisterstown, a Baltimore suburb, is frozen in time. She looks and acts as if she were a small toddler — for 17 years her family has changed her nappies, rocked her to sleep and given her cuddles.

Brooke has shown some development, including crawling, smiling and giggling when tickled but she has never learnt to speak and still has her infant teeth.

But she has also suffered a succession of life-threatening health problems, including strokes, seizures, ulcers and breathing difficulties — almost as if she were growing old despite not growing up.

Howard Greenberg, Brooke's father, said he wanted the genome research carried out in the hope it might help others.

He said: "Brooke is just a wonderful child. She is very pure. She still babbles just like a 6 month old baby but she still communicates and we always know just what she means."

Walker and his colleagues, who are working with Brooke’s parents to ensure she benefits from any research findings, have just published a research paper which suggests that in reality some parts of her body have indeed aged — but slowly and all at different rates.

“Our hypothesis is that she is suffering from damage in the gene or genes that co-ordinate the way the body develops and ages,” he said.

“If we can use her DNA to find that mutant gene then we can test it in laboratory animals to see if we can switch if off and slow down the ageing process at will.

“Just possibly it could give us an opportunity to answer the question of why we are mortal.”