Soybean oil bad does not mean soy bad

On Facebook, Dr. Weil posted a short message "From the morning session of the Nutrition and Health Conf. in Boston: Consumption of soybean oil (usually labeled 'vegetable oil' and common in fried foods and cheap baked goods) has risen 1,000 percent over the last 100 years - a worrisome trend for American health.", followed by tens of comments. Some people are confused about the health benefit of soy because of this message. The reason is that not everything related to soy is bad, or is good. In one posting by Dr. Weil, "omega 6 fatty acids are the type prevalent in most vegetable oils, particularly soybean oil", and another, "Refined soybean oil, the second ingredient on the list, is a cheap vegetable oil that we should all avoid¸ because it is responsible for the excess of pro-inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids in the mainstream diet." Because our bodies already have plenty of Omega-6 ever since (perhaps) the Industrial Revolution, we don't need more of it even though we do need a small amount. The ubiquitous soybean oil just makes what we have excessive.

On the other hand, soy or soybeans are not necessarily bad, and may be good. Apparent contradiction about whether to take soy can be clarified, to some extent, by reading the entire Wikipedia Health benefits and Health risks sections. One interesting remark in the long article is by a 2011 research team, "soy isoflavones intake is associated with a significant reduced risk of breast cancer incidence in Asian populations, but not in Western populations". Genes are not created completely equal across all ethnicities. I'm sure more research is needed on non-Asian populations assessing the benefits and risks, but it's almost never a concern for the Asian women, who are generally encouraged to eat more tofu instead of less.

Another interesting, latest, finding is that animal experiment indicates that soy protein can reduce liver fat.

Short and long-term memory for a student

A highly educated person spends about 16 years or almost one-fourth of his lifetime in schools, from elementary school to the highest level of graduate studies. Over these years, he takes more than a thousand exams, tests or quizzes. Depending on the subject he studies in the last few years, it's safe to say half of the exams on average heavily rely on memory of the study materials, or facts and established conclusions on the facts. Memory can be categorized into short-term versus long-term. Which do you think is more important to a high score in those exams? I believe for the majority of them, it's the short-term memory. The teacher goes through a chapter and expects you to remember lots of details, soon followed by a test. These details are only minimally needed for future bigger tests, which are rare anyway. As a result, the students with better short-term memory win.

On the other hand, a professional job requires a good balance of short- and long-term memory. A medical doctor, whose profession strongly demands memorization of a large amount of information, can't do his job well if he easily forgets what he learned one or a few years ago. Even an engineer must have a good memory of certain incidents that happened a long time ago, together with its solution in general (whose details can be searched later). Without accumulation of these experiences, i.e. memory of past incidents, an engineer would remain "junior" in spite of his biological age.

And yet there's indeed benefit in emphasizing the merit of short-term memory, apart from its apparently unfair advantage in taking school tests. Anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that people with strong short-term memory are intelligent, understand complicated issues easily, and study new subjects fast. (I'll search to see if there's research to back this claim.) In addition, scientific study has shown association between Alzheimer disease and loss of short-term, not long-term, memory. Smartness, or intelligence, may indeed go hand-in-hand with short-term memory.

Low birth weight, depression, of mother, of child, brain lateralization

Low birth weight (LBW) of a baby is often associated with depression. But whose depression? The pregnant mother or the child when he/she grows up? The following are research articles on this subject.

Mother's depression associated with LBW of the baby:
http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/10/08/depression-linked-to-risk-for-low-birth-weight-baby/19277.html

LBW associated with depression when the baby grows up:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17339522
Interestingly, this research shows that only girls, not boys, are affected. However, there's conflicting research in this respect, which is the next article.

LBW not associated with depression when the baby grows up:
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/167/2/164.abstract
Even more interesting is that this same-year (2007) research was conducted by researchers at the same university, University of Southampton. (I don't know whether and how this group communicates with the other.)

Another aspect of LBW relevant to mental health is its connection to lateralization of brain function ("division of labor", so to speak, of the two brain hemispheres). And again, the Southampton scientists pioneered this research:
http://www.soton.ac.uk/mediacentre/news/2011/feb/11_18.shtml
which is published in a 2011 issue of Public Library of Science.
In short, LBW is associated with more right brain activity. According to Wikipedea, the right brain is responsible for pragmatic and contextual language capability, and the prosodic aspect (speech), but not grammar or vocabulary of it, and (not shown in the table on the page) depression.

What is the B.E.S.T. Chiropractic Method?

The following is a guest blog by "Allison Brooks". If you have any question, please send it directly to naturallie23 at gmail dot com.

What is the B.E.S.T. Chiropractic Method?
How the Bio Energetic Synchronization Technique works

Chiropractic therapy is thought to be easy identified, and when most talk about this therapy the first thought is “bone cracking”; but this should not be the case. There are over 20 different types of chiropractic techniques that are used to identify and correct glitches in neuromusculoskeletal functioning. There are many hands-on manipulations and muscle mobilizing movements used to correct issues, and one of these is called the Bio Energetic Synchronization Technique (B.E.S.T.).

B.E.S.T. is a great mixture of energy healing and chiropractic manipulation and was developed in the mid-1970s by chiropractor, Dr. Milton Ted Morter, Jr. It is practiced all over the world, especially in cultures that focus on mind/body healing because it balances the systems and energies of the body. B.E.S.T does not focus on physical correction like the other forms of chiropractics, but instead uses gentle pressures to resynchronize misaligned energy fields. The Bio Energetic Synchronization Technique can be used in a physical or emotional way.

Physical B.E.S.T. utilizes light pressures and stimulating pressure points to address certain imbalances. It is a non-invasive way to counter the stress and discomfort patterns surfacing from certain ailments or chronic conditions. Normally during a session, the practitioners apply pressures to troublesome muscles, spine, skull, and other noted points to remove the pain and restore healthy bodily patterns. Many patients claim to feel immediately relieved of painful symptoms after a B.E.S.T. session.

Emotional B.E.S.T. is another way patients can rid the body of stress and muscular pain. Since the brain controls every function of the body, negative or painful thoughts can actually affect how the body functions. When emotional thoughts like worry, fear, or jealously begin to override the memory, the interference of patterns becomes the body’s status quo. This interference can hinder the natural healing capabilities of the body. Emotional B.E.S.T. identifies what the emotional interference is and resets it, so that the body can focus on current situations and not the past. This in turns, promote healing and overall wellness.

Most practitioners suggest patients to take B.E.S.T. sessions when undergoing stressful conventional therapies or incorporate them with their daily wellness programs. Since the Bio Energetic Synchronization Technique focuses on managing pain and stress levels it is the cure-all for many symptoms. Many patients suffering from an unfavorable prognosis either for a chronic condition or an aggressive cancer, like non-hodgkin’s lymphoma or mesothelioma, swear by this chiropractic technique. Doctors recognize the capabilities of B.E.S.T. and other chiropractic techniques, and recommend them to cancer patients to relieve the symptoms of chemotherapy and/or radiation.

Trainability of body parts

For a long time I've had the notion that some parts, or organs, of the human body can be trained to function better, be stronger and more disease-resistant, while the others cannot. The heart and the lung can be trained by aerobic exercises, or made stronger by eating dark chocolate, or drinking a small amount of red wine. Muscles of course can be trained to be stronger, and by the same exercise for muscles, bones can be made denser, less prone to fracture in old age. Even the brain has plasticity, so that cognitive ability can be improved with seemingly monotonous drills such as learning to play the piano, or logical thinking such as playing crossword puzzles, or learning a foreign language.

On the other hand, most organs of the body cannot be trained. You can't directly train your stomach to have better digestive power, unless you improve your health in general, which indirectly improves the function of the stomach. (Chickens eat pebbles to help digest, which may be the way they directly train their stomachs. But humans are not chicks.) The liver cannot be trained. Can you drink a modest amount of wine every day to improve the function of the liver, in the same way immunization works? As far as I know, even a tiny amount of alcohol is harmful to the liver, although the little harm may be outweighed by the benefit to the heart and blood vessels.

Surprisingly, whether an organ is trainable is or will be identified unambiguously, a clear yes or a clear no. But there's more to it. An old Chinese doctor on TV claimed benefit of moving eyeballs. I always thought eyes belong in the untrainable category. But he says his good eyesight is due to his daily eye exercise, including rotating eyeballs counter-clockwise dozens of times, and then clockwise (with eyes closed), followed by kneading a few acupuncture points around the eyes. Unfortunately, like almost any TCM doctor, he has not done any controlled test, which is the gold standard in modern medical science. While I still believe an organ is either trainable or not, as time goes by, more organs may move from the untrainable to the trainable. Brains used to be thought to be fixed and rigid around age of 10 or younger. But discoveries in neuroplasticity throw doubt on it. Eyes may move to the trainable group in the future, and we're expected to prolong the onset of near- or far-sightedness, macular degeneration, glaucoma, etc.

I have yet to find published materials discussing this classification of human organs. Unless it turns out that all organs are trainable (or all untrainable), I believe this classification will prove to be a useful concept in health science.