Watch Your Body

This week has been a week of pains in GTF Infozone. The previous post was all about how tart cherry does wonders in muscles recovery. But for today, you are about to see another amusing fact, which it might come in very handy for yourself whenever you feel painful in certain parts of your body.

Scientists from UCL (University College London) and University of Milano-Bicocca from Italy did a research recently about how to reduce pain without using any medications or consumptions of any edible things. What they found in their study was pretty amazing. They claimed that by looking at the body parts which are painful, somehow it has an effect where it can reduce the pain of the person.

What they did on the study, was they picked a number of participants (18 of them) and had a heat probe on their left hand. The idea behind this study was to increase the heat temperature very gradually. When the participants feel that they began to experience pain, the foot pedals provided play an important role, when this pedal was activated, the whole process comes to a halt. Throughout the process, scientists used mirrors to manipulate what the participants saw during the experiment.

Results showed that those who looked closely to their left hand could sustain the pain for as much as 3 degree celcius higher than those who did not look at their left hand, or those who looked at the wooden box which was placed near their left hand. The effect appeared to be even clearer when scientists next started to use convex or concave mirrors to show the hand, where it can enlarge or reduce the size of what the participants see during the process. When the picuture of the hand as enlarged, participants could tolerate up to even greater levels of heat before feeling pain. But when the picture was reduced in size, participants reported feeling pain compare to the moments where they were looking at their hands at normal size.

Researchers thus suggested that the pain is closely associated with brain maps of the skins. Hence, if pain strikes you in the future, if allowed, please remember to look at the parts which trouble you, so that your biological painkiller can be put into good use!

Cherry & Muscles

Recognize this little fruit you see above? It's cherry (or some people call it tart cherry, or just simply tart) ! Though cherries are small in size, but it contains a spectacular substance which helps in human health, a substance called anthocyanin. Anthocyanins are substances which acquire high content of antioxidants, and various studies showed that such substance has the ability to reduce inflammation in rats. Recently, there was another study which shows how such substance worked in human instead!

As we all know, athletes are individuals who often work extra hard, and they too always try to push their limits to a higher level. When such are the requirements in being a great athletes, they tend to suffer certain "side effects". At times, they would experience muscles pain after a few rounds of strength training.

One of the latest article which was published in the American College of Sports Medicine's journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise showed that tart cherries can offer great outcomes against such problems. In order to make such study valid, researchers from UK given 10 trained athletes an ounce of tart cherry juice. and they were asked to drink twice daily in seven days. Such process was carried out two days prior and after the training session.

Results showed that these athletes experienced even quicker muscle recovery after they consumed the tart cherry juices. According to the researchers, the recovery of muscles appeared to be at about 85% overnight. But after the consumption of tart cherry juices with the mentioned frequency, the athletes seemed to have their muscles recovered for as much as 90%, a significant increment in percentage.

In Memories of Metabolic Syndromes

Older people would sometimes tell the young ones about their stories in the past, and in many times, they would tell them how their health conditions are, lamenting that the older you get, the less useful you become to the society. What actually interests us in their lamenting, is about how they put those words into phrases. Sometimes they just mention that the diseases they are fighting against, are like "abang dan adik" (siblings), as they like to come together all at the same time.

When people think that these diseases are besieging the individuals who suffer, they are very likely have poor health and various problems. For people who have high blood pressure, they should not experience any excessive external impacts from others, for those who have diabetes, they should not consume foods which contain high sugar content. For arthritis sufferers, they should not push themselves into doing certain exercises which could worsen their conditions. This list can go on forever. But, there is one common effect of all these metabolic syndromes, and it relates to our memory.

According to a study published in the online issue of Neurology this month (February, 2011), older people who have any of these metabolic syndromes which include high blood pressure, larger waistlines, would possibly experience higher risk of memory loss.

In the study, more than 7,000 participants in France had been gathered and investigations were conducted on these people. These participants came from three different cities in France and they were senior citizens with age of 65 years or above. Among these individuals, 16 percents of them were metabolic syndrome sufferers. They were given three types of memory tests after two and four years respectively. These test included normal memory test, visual memory test, as well as word fluency test.

As expected, the results showed that those who had metabolic syndromes were 20 percents of declination in memory test. To top it all, they were also 13 percents more likely to experience cognitive visual memory decline, compare to those who were relatively healthier (those who had no metabolic syndromes). This definitely sheds new light to the researchers to look for the root of the problems.

Metabolic syndromes are infamous problems in GTF Worldwide Sdn Bhd. Every distributor from our company would tell you that the only way to curb and improve the condition, is to consume GT&F Products, as they were formulated to specifically treating metabolic syndromes and diabetes. So what are you waiting for? Impeding memory loss? GTF is the answer for you!