Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Processed Food Linked to Depression

The British Journal of Psychiatry recently published an article showing that a diet heavy in processed and fatty foods increases the risk of depression. Researchers also found that a diet including plenty of fresh vegetables, fruit and fish could help prevent the onset of depression.They compared participants -- all civil servants -- who ate a diet largely based on "whole" foods with a second group who mainly ate fried food, processed meat, high-fat dairy products and sweetened desserts.Taking into account other indicators of a healthy lifestyle such as not smoking and taking physical exercise, those who ate the whole foods had a 26 percent lower risk of depression than those who ate mainly processed foods. People with a diet heavy in processed food had a 58 percent higher risk of depression.The high level of antioxidants in fruits and vegetables could have a protective effect, as previous studies have shown higher antioxidant levels to be associated with a lower risk of depression. Eating lots of fish may protect against depression because it contains high levels of the sort of polyunsaturated fatty acids which stimulate brain activity. They said it was possible that a "whole food" diet protects against depression because of the combined effect of consuming nutrients from lots of different types of food, rather than the effect of one single nutrient. All the more reason to gradually modify your diet to reduce fast foods, all packaged foods, high fat foods, and sugar.

Neurofeedback proves effective in treating numerous disorders

I recently discovered an article published a few years ago in the San Antonio Business Journal.  The State of Texas passed a law that mandates insurance companies cover neurofeedback for the treatment of traumatic brain injury (TBI).  The article goes on to say, “Research shows that neurofeedback, a computer-based, brain-training technique, helps the body and the brain improve the way they function. Results have included success in regulating hard-to-treat disorders such as migraines, sleep disorders, panic attacks and attention deficit disorder (ADD) and improving performance in athletes, musicians and test-takers.

Through neurofeedback, therapists monitor which brain waves are most active and which are least active. Then, through a series of sessions, they equalize those waves into a healthy pattern, allowing for the regulation of symptoms or the clearing of the mind for peak performance.

While it is possible to observe the same phenomenon through medication, the learning curve is much more obvious in neurofeedback. In neurofeedback nothing happens unless the brain chooses to do so. The therapist only provides the information. The brain must take the initiative to do something. Thus, neurofeedback may become a more permanent, drug-free solution.

The benefits of neurofeedback research are overwhelming. Follow up studies on children with ADD who received neurofeedback training showed significant increases in academic and behavior scores. Some children even jumped as much as two years in grade level achievement and boosted their IQ by about 15 points. Studies are also being done on neurofeedback and addiction. After a month-long neurofeedback treatment, alcohol addicted patients achieved an 80 percent abstinence rate. A follow-up review showed that 70 percent remained abstinent.

It makes sense that a better-functioning brain can improve so many aspects of a person's life. In fact, many patients see a change in multiple symptoms over time as neurofeedback beings to train the brain to regulate itself better. Nonverbal autistic children begin to speak and teenagers with ADD begin to find focus and school success. As more research is conducted and positive results documented, neurofeedback will only grow in acceptance and use, helping thousands with its unique way of encouraging the brain to function in a more stable and holistic way.”

You can read the full article at:

http://sanantonio.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/stories/2004/12/06/focus4.html?surround=etf&ana=e_article

Neurofeedback: An ADHD Treatment That Retrains the Brain?

This is a summary of Megan Johnson’s report found in the December 2009 edition of US News & World Report. Neurofeedback, also called EEG biofeedback, has been under investigation as a treatment for epilepsy and ADHD since the 1970s. Studies suggest that in ADHD, the brain generates insufficient beta waves, which are associated with focus and attention, and an overabundance of lower-frequency theta waves, produced during periods of daydreaming or drowsiness. Praising and rewarding a child when he steps up production of beta waves by concentrating on the game or movie should therefore teach him how to focus at will in other settings, such as doing homework assignments or cleaning his room. And at least for some children, that seems to have happened. The article goes on to report how one child after 60 neurofeedback sessions had his reading scores jump up from second- to fifth-grade level, and his IQ scores jump from low average to high average. He later graduated from college. While neurofeedback works in theory and has had anecdotal successes, it was largely dismissed by ADHD experts until recently. Newer research has begun to build a promising foundation. A German study published earlier this year, which found that neurofeedback improved attention and reduced impulsivity and hyperactivity, was fairly large (94 children ages 8 to 12) and included a control group. Fifty-nine of the children received 36 sessions of neurofeedback over three to four weeks, while the other 35 children were trained in a different technique designed to improve attention. Observations by the children's parents and teachers indicated that most kinds of ADHD-related behavior improved much more in the neurofeedback group than in the control group. The study and 14 others were analyzed in the July issue of the Official Journal of the EEG and Clinical Neuroscience Society. Ten of the studies, involving a total of nearly 500 children, used a control group. "The clinical effects of neurofeedback in the treatment of ADHD can be regarded as clinically meaningful," the authors concluded. Still, as evidence of benefit accumulates, increasing numbers of parents will ask themselves whether neurofeedback may be worth trying. The question is whether the expense is justifiable. Forty to 60 sessions, typically costing $100-130 per session, are generally recommended; most health insurance plans consider neurofeedback an alternative treatment and will not cover the expense. Drug treatment can be more expensive over the long run—about $180 a month for some stimulants—but generic medications can cost as little as $10 a month. Kids might go five to eight years on medication before reaching the amount spent on neurofeedback. And if the family has health insurance, most plans cover much of the cost of drugs. While many practitioners envision neurofeedback as a drug-free solution, others see it as a complement to drug therapy. Neurofeedback alone does not produce the immediate and dramatic results of medication. The catch with drugs is that many children stop taking them. In one large study, more than 60 percent of the children on stimulants discontinued them within eight years. Parental concern may be a factor—side effects are not uncommon, and lately some of the drugs have been linked to stunted growth. That's why Kim Sanders of Aubrey, Texas, decided to try neurofeedback a few years ago with Macy, now 15, and Trent, 14. The stimulants they were taking for their attention disorders, says Sanders, inhibited their growth. She has seen a "night and day" difference in Trent's behavior and a "remarkable" improvement in Macy's performance in school. They no longer take medicine. To read the full article, go to http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/brain-and-behavior/2009/09/10/neurofeedback-an-adhd-treatment-that-retrains-the-brain.html

Amino Acid May Help Reduce Cocaine Cravings

In addition to my program for cocaine addiction using neurofeedback, I am now recommending that clients who are addicted take 1000mg of the supplement N-acetylcysteine (NAC) three times daily. A recent study reported in Science Daily found that NAC restored normal functioning to the brain circuits in rats that had been previously addicted to cocaine. Repeated exposure to psychoactive drugs such as cocaine causes an imbalance in the brain circuits regulating reward and cognitive control. NAC reverses the changes in the brain's circuitry associated with cocaine addiction. This reversal appears to lessen the cravings associated with cocaine, thus providing protection against relapse. Clearly, this will help the brain stabilize and make the work with neurofeedback even more effective. The findings on NAC were presented at Neuroscience 2009, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience and the world's largest source of emerging news about brain science and health. I recommend using Douglas Labs brand for its pharmaceutical grade NAC.

Scientists find clue to anxiety drug addiction

Anxiety is one of the most common mental health problems in the US. According to the US National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), just over 18 percent, or about 40 million American adults aged 18 and older, have an anxiety disorder. The most common medical treatment for this disorder is a class of prescription anti-anxiety medications called benzodiazepines, such as Ativan, Xanax and Valium. Many people become addicted to these drugs, but researchers did not understand why until very recently. In the February 2010 edition of the Nature journal, researchers from Switzerland and the United States reported how anti-anxiety drugs use the same "reward pathways" in the brain as heroin and cannabis. Dopamine is the “feel good” neurotransmitter and benzodiazepine drugs increase its activation. Another recent study in Denmark found that people with higher levels of dopamine in the brain tend to be more prone to addictive behavior, which may explain why some people fall into addiction more easily than others, whether the substance of choice is a prescription drug or an illicit drug. If you are a person born with high density of dopamine receptors, you may find it much easier to get addicted to anti-anxiety drugs, pain pills, alcohol, or marijuana. Physicians are advised to prescribe benzodiazepines for short-term use only. When people take them on regular basis for a long term, they are prone to develop chronic cognitive impairment. Because addiction to benzodiazepines is common, stopping them abruptly can result in a withdrawal syndrome similar to what is seen with alcohol withdrawal, including sweating, agitation, confusion, hallucinations and even seizures. My office offers an alternative to addictive anti-anxiety prescription medications. I combine several approaches, including teaching effective stress management tools, neurofeedback, the Alpha-Stim SCS, and nutraceuticals.

Brain rewires itself every day

In August 2009. ScienceDaily reported on a discovery that the brain rewires itself following an experience. Researchers, Henry Markram and Jean-Vincent Le Bé, at the Brain Science Institute in France showed that this process of changing, strengthening and pruning brain circuits takes place on a scale of just hours, suggesting that the brain is evolving considerably even during the course of a single day. "The circuitry of the brain is like a social network where neurons are like people, directly linked to only a few other people," explains Markram. "This finding indicates that the brain is constantly switching alliances and linking with new circles of "friends" to better process information." This finding fits perfectly into the model of neurofeedback. Brain training of this sort creates new connections and strengthens existing ones. There is a new adaptive rewiring that takes place, and the brain becomes more stable and more functional. With the Othmer Interhemispheric Low Frequency Training, I am now often seeing positive changes within one session. Symptoms such as anxiety, depression, ADHD, insomnia, headache, and autism all noticeably improve. With repeated trainings, the improvement become permanent. The brain truly is neuroplastic and readily makes changes when presented with the right challenges.

Brief Diversions Vastly Improve Focus

A new study in the 2011 journal Cognition overturns a decades-old theory about the nature of attention and demonstrates that even brief diversions from a task can dramatically improve one's ability to focus on that task for prolonged periods. The brain gradually stops registering a sight, sound or feeling if that stimulus remains constant over time. For example, most people are not aware of the sensation of clothing touching their skin. The body becomes "habituated" to the feeling and the stimulus no longer registers in any meaningful way in the brain. University of Illinois psychology professor Alejandro Lleras and postdoctoral fellow Atsunori Ariga tested participants' ability to focus on a repetitive computerized task for about an hour under various conditions. Simply having subjects take two brief breaks from their main task allowed them to stay focused during the entire experiment. Those who did not take a break had declining performance over time. Those who took even two brief breaks saw no drop in their performance over time. "Constant stimulation is registered by our brains as unimportant, to the point that the brain erases it from our awareness," Lleras said. Prolonged attention to a single task actually hinders performance "We propose that deactivating and reactivating your goals allows you to stay focused," he said. "From a practical standpoint, our research suggests that, when faced with long tasks (such as studying before a final exam or doing your taxes), it is best to impose brief breaks on yourself. Brief mental breaks will actually help you stay focused on your task!" My comment is that your brain functions best at work and school when you take periodic brief breaks. I call these microbreaks and suggest you perform an open focus exercise where you concentrate on everything at the same time but not single anything out. Its taking in all sensory information simultaneously without separating any of it. Its opening up your awareness to all inputs at the same time. This places the brain in an alpha state, recharges, refreshing, and making it ready to return to narrow focus again after a few moments. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110208131529.htm