Category: Nutrition

Nutrition is bodywork from the inside!  There is so much information out there, and every one is different.  Nutrition is as much about small day to day choices as it is about a deep understanding of the subject.

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5 natural brain boosters for your overtired mind

5 brain boosters for your overtired mind.

TLDR: Tryptophan, GABA, saffron, Magnesium, and MSM are five substances that I use to support my cerebral health.

  • Tryptophan is an amino acid that is used to form serotonin.
  • GABA is an inhibitory neurotransmitter that gets used up by drinking booze.
  • Saffron is a potential SSRI alternative.
  • Magnesium helps the mitochondria generate ATP, the “cellular currency”.
  • MSM may help protect the brain from oxidative stress caused by ethanol (alcohol)
5 brain boosters for your overtired mind.

Brains these days are tired

Information overload. Shift work. Drug and alcohol use. An aging population. Social isolation. Processed foods. Phew. That’s enough to make anyone tired.

The brain is very, very busy

The “encephalon” is the body’s biggest glucose hog. Neurones in all areas of the noggin are constantly signalling to one another. There is a huge, constant load on the nervous system just to keep us alive. It is busy even when we are relaxed!

Quite apart from all the background work, the cerebrum is constantly managing the active work of both the mind and the body. Thinking, sensing, creating, exercising, working, playing, driving, even making decisions about what to buy at the grocery store: all of this and much, much more is managed by this one amazing organ.

And so, it seems only right to learn a little about how it works. It seems only right, furthermore, to support its health as much possible, so it serves us for as long as possible. I studied Chemistry and Biology at Undergraduate level, and Neuromusic at Masters level. I hope that my explanations are accessible and accurate.

Disclaimer

This is not intended as medical advice. I am offering some information from a balanced and scientific viewpoint. However, I am not a doctor. Consult your healthcare practitioner before making any changes to your diet or supplementation.

Remember: there is a difference between healing and curing. Keep that in mind when reading about anything health-related.

Biology Background

Before we get started on my boosters, let’s get some basics under our belts.

Neurones, neurotransmitters and synapses

Neurones communicate with each other by releasing and absorbing chemicals called neurotransmitters. Most people have heard of Dopamine and Serotonin. What these molecules actually do is cross the tiny little spaces, called synapses, between the end of one neurone and the beginning of another.

How long they stay in the “synaptic space” depends on the person. The famous SSRI class of drugs (prozac and its ilk) are drugs that make serotonin stay longer in the synaptic space. Ritalin, used for ADHD and hyperactivity, also sits in the synaptic space and stimulates the neurones, keeping them “entertained” and helping the person avoid seeking outside stimulus.

Of my supplement routine, GABA, Tryptophan, and saffron are there to support neurotransmitter production in my body. I will elaborate more on this in a later post.

Table 1: Neurotransmitters in the Human Brain

This list is not exhaustive, but here are some important neurotransmitters:

DopamineGABAHistamine
SerotoninGlutamateGlycine
OxytocinEpinephrinePurines
AcetylcholineNorepinephrine

Brainwaves and bio-electricity

Neural activity is bio-electrical in nature. Using specialised equipment, nerve oscillations can be measured and visualised. Brainwaves can oscillate between 0.5-80 times per second. The frequency at which they oscillate is written as “Hz” (Hertz).

Table 2: Brainwave Frequencies

Frequency bandFrequencyStates
Gamma (γ)above 35 HzConcentration; Flow state
Beta (β)12–35 HzAnxiety dominant, active, external attention.
Alpha (α)8–12 HzVery relaxed, passive attention
Theta (θ)4–8 HzDeeply relaxed, inward focused
Delta (δ)0.5–4 HzSleep

Magnesium and the energy needs of the neurones

The cerebrum is the body’s biggest user of glucose. All that bioelectrical and biochemical activity needs a fuel source. Magnesium is a mineral that is used in the process of cellular energy generation, in the mitochondria, which are like little cells within cells whose job is to turn sugars into fuel for the body.

Magnesium deficiency is extremely common in populations who consume a typically “Western” diet. It is, however, very difficult to test for Magnesium status. Magnesium deficiency has many consequences, but here we will focus on energy. If you are short of Magnesium, your mitochondria may struggle to fully “burn” glucose to generate ATP. This would affect your neurones and your synapses, and hence your neural function.

Alcohol, MSM, and the brain

Alcohol misuse has a devastating effect on our neurones. Not only does it cause dehydration, but elevated Blood Alcohol Concentrations, which occur when we drink more than one unit of alcohol per hour, cause oxidative stress on all organs, including the one in our head. MSM, methyl-sulfonyl-methane, is a powerful antioxidant which is also very safe to use. I have been taking MSM nightly for years.

Summing up

There is a lot to cover here. I will keep at it, and slowly explain my little supplement routine. Please feel free to comment below, and you can always drop me a like on social media, or even share this post on yours. Whatever works for you. Thanks for reading.

-Rachel

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Edible clays: An ancient healing practice of consuming certain types of clay (10/2023)

Edible Clays
Edible clays: An ancient healing practice of consuming certain types of clay.

Edible Clays

History

Clays have been used both externally and internally for many centuries.

Humans have been using clay for receptacles and for construction since time immemorial. Cave paintings in places like France and Spain are often made of mixtures of clay and other materials. People working with clay would undoubtedly have noticed the drying and healing effect that it has on skin. The earliest recorded medicinal uses of clay come from the Mesopotamian societies that flourished over 3,500 years ago.

Is clay not just dirt?

Clay differs from soil in one important way: the particles are much smaller, smaller than 2 µm. Since the particles are so tiny, the relative surface area of clay is very large. This is what gives clays their many wonderful properties.

There are at least two points that make clay minerals so active in natural processes, and became the key for their wide applications: (a) The very large surface area that arises from the tiny size of the particles (nanoscale), and (b) The fact that those particles are electrically charged, leading to relatively strong electrostatic interactions.

Clay Minerals as an Ancient Nanotechnology: Historical Uses of Clay Organic Interactions, and Future Possible Perspective (https://t.ly/vwpUfs)

Pelotherapy

The term “application of mud to the body for therapeutic purposes) has been in use since 1934. Since the external use of clays has such a long history, naturally, there existed many names for the practice. They coined the term “Pelotherapy” as an umbrella under which all the other mud therapy names could nestle.

Peloid, from the Greek TTAOS ( = mud), was adopted by the International Society of Medical Hydrology at its recent annual meeting in Switzerland as a generic name applicable to any naturally produced medium such as is used in medical practice as a cataplasm for external treatment. Such media are known in the various countries as boue, fango, gyttja, liman, moor, mud, peat, schlamm, etc., these names being used in confusion for both specific media and in a generic sense. The new word, with its derivatives pelology and pelotherapy, will avoid this confusion and allow the local terms to be defined and used in their restricted sense. 

https://www.nature.com/articles/133288a0

Geophagy

Geophagy is the practice of eating earth materials containing clay minerals.

Edible clays, for internal use, need to be sterilized using heat and pressure, such as autoclaving or steaming.

Different cultures consume clays in different ways. of course, this post is for information purposes only. Consult your healthcare provider before using clays for healing or detoxing.

Edible Clays: An ancient practice that is still alive today.

Gut health and clay

The importance of maintaining a healthy intestinal microbiome cannot be overstated. More and more research shows that the gut-mind connection is real. Serotonin is mainly produced in the gut. Inflammation in the colon directly affects the liver via the hepatic-portal circulation. A sluggish liver predisposes us to all sorts of metabolic problems. So, using edible clays, if it is appropriate, can be a huge part of any preventative medicine program.

The gut provides approximately 95% of total body serotonin, most of which exists in plasma. Although serotonin has intrinsic roles in the intestines and peripheral metabolism, it is capable of locally activating afferent nerve endings that are connected directly to the central nerve system.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6469458/

Types of Edible Clays

There are probably loads of different clays that can be consumed. I only have experience with bentonite clay (at a detox retreat in Thailand) and green clay (nowadays).

Clay Chemistry

Clays are minerals. This implies that the particles are not tightly connected like molecules, but rather they are held together by electrostatic forces within a well-defined structure. Minerals form crystals when they are arranged in regular, repeating sheets. That is why you can “shear” a crystal, or cut it along its fault line. It’s why a diamond can be faceted.

Montmorillinite is a mineral with the chemical formula Al2H2O12Si4 (Aluminum, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Silica). Bentonite is a type of clay that contains the mineral montmorillinite.

Montmorillonite is a subclass of smectite and a natural aluminomagnesium silicate clay, with potential protective effect for the digestive tract mucosa, and anti-inflammatory and anti-diarrheal activities. Although the exact mechanism of action has yet to be fully elucidated, upon administration, montmorillonite may adsorb bacteria, bacterial enterotoxins, viruses and other potentially diarrheagenic substances. It may also bind to mucin and modify mucus properties, thereby enhancing the mucus barrier function.

https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/71586775

French green clay

This is my favourite clay for everyday use. As it comes from France, quality control (QC) is assured. QC is important for sterilization and checking if the clay is free of contaminants.

I simply place a small amount of clay in a glass of water and leave it to soak overnight. In the morning, I drink the cloudy water, and leave the settled clay behind. Please, don’t gulp down the solid matter – this can cause blockage in the intestines.

Documentary: Eat White Dirt

And, so I leave you with this curious documentary that I came across while researching this post. Apparently, Georgia has abundant edible clays, but rather oddly, kaolin is the mineral of choice for these ladies.

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Rhythmic Breathing, lymphatic drainage and cerebrospinal fluid – 3 mind-blowing facts!

Did you know that

Read on….

HI everyone, it’s Rachel here again, Rose Tint Your Life.

Rhythmic Breathing

So, I thought I would do a little video about one of my favourite topics, which is breathing. I’m actually feeling a great need to share this information. I am feeling pretty sad right now because one of my longest-standing patients, or clients, has just left. He received a few months ago a very sad diagnosis of ALS which is a progressive, neurodegenerative disease. Most people might know it as Lou Gehrig’s disease, I think it’s what Stephen Hawking had. Anyway, ALS is incurable, we don’t know why people develop it, and obviously as it’s progressive, people get sicker and sicker. Some people have a longer period of living with it and some people have a shorter one.


He’s just left and I was giving him a lesson on breathing. His breathing is becoming increasingly troubled, he’s having difficulty swallowing, difficulty speaking. I gave the same piece of advice to him as I give to a lot of my yoga students, especially when I’m at SHA, where I do private classes, but also here when I do massage. I told him about rhythmic breathing.

The importance of rhythmic breathing.

A lot of people have been told at one point or another to breathe into their belly or whatever. They know that breathing is really important but maybe haven’t heard about rhythmic breathing. The way I try to describe it is by likening it to the pistons in a car. That’s an image that a lot of people can connect with. If you have four pistons in a car, they have to be moving in a synchronised rhythm because otherwise the car is either not going to go, or it’s going to shudder and judder all over the place.

Irregular breath rate

What I have observed in my many years of working as a therapist is that most people have a very, very irregular breathing rate. Rhythmic breathing without breath work or pranayama education is almost non-existent. Not only do people breathe too fast, 15-20 breaths per minute even in states of deep relaxation like whilst receiving a massage. I observe patterns where people will breathe in for 1-2 then out for 3…it’s all over the place, and people are just not conscious of the incredible impact that this has on the body.

Why should breathing be rhythmic?

The breath is like a pump. It’s like a piston. The diaphragm is moving up and down in the body and as it does so, it creates pressure differences in your thorax. The reason I know about this is from lymphatic drainage.

The lymphatic system

In lymphatic drainage we put a lot of emphasis on the breath and that’s because we know that deep breathing is one of the main if not the main motor of lymphatic flow. The lymphatic system doesn’t have a heart. It needs rhythmic breathing to push the lymph around the body. Of course there is also the muscle pump and there are little muscles on some lymph vessels. But what really moves the lymph is the pressure differences of the diaphragm pumping and pulling the lymph in the middle of your body. This push and pull, this pump, is created by rhythmic breathing.

Coming back to the piston thing, if you want to have an effective pump, say pumping water out of a well…you wouldn’t be going randomly, you would be pumping 1-2-1-2…because you need that rhythmic element.

Back to the case of ALS, which is a neurodegenerative disorder, and there are a lot of them out there, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, even Brain Fog, we don’t know what’s going on there.

Glymphatic System

The brain is a highly specialised organ, it is the prime user of oxygen and glucose in the human body. Every thought is a neurotransmitter…but the interesting thing about the brain is that it doesn’t have lymphatic drainage, or practically none. Now a couple of years ago some researchers were finally able to elucidate the glymphatic flow, or the glial lymphatic system. What they were able to understand is that there are these spirals that come down the nerves coming out of the brain and that helps to clean the brain.

Why is that important? The lymphatic system in the garbage collection system of the body. The way I just described it to the gentlemen is that it’s like leaves that fall off the trees in autumn. Of course if you leave them there on the ground they will eventually decompose, but they will rot, and smell bad and clog your drain, so it’s probably in your best interest to rake them up and put them in the compost.

By-products of metabolism

Well, it’s the same with the broken down neurotransmitters and all the by-products of metabolism of the human brain. Every single thought is a neurotransmitter, and when we metabolise we produce metabolic waste. In the rest of the body, the lymphatic system picks up this waste, but in the brain the lymphatic drainage is extremely limited. But, we are lucky because we have another system that can help to flush the brain: the cerebrospinal fluid.

Cerebrospinal fluid

The cerebrospinal fluid is somewhat similar to lymph (NOTE: It does not have lymphocytes). It is a clear, somewhat dense fluid that sits both in the sinuses inside of the head. Your brain isn’t completely full, there are some pockets of liquid, cerebrospinal liquid, and it sits in these sinuses but it also runs in the meninges.

Meninges

Most people know the word “meningitis”. Meningitis is swelling of the meninges. What are the meninges? The meninges are membranes. There are three of them. One of them is only in the brain but two of them go all the way down the spinal column. One of them goes all the way down to the tail bone!

These membranes are carrying lymph-like liquid that somehow has to move all the way from the top to the bottom and back. Now, we talked about the pump. Are you with me? What do you think moves the cerebrospinal fluid? The breath!

Cerebrospinal fluid flow in Alzheimer’s

There was an interesting piece of research published not too long ago about cerebrospinal fluid flow in Alzheimer’s patients. When there is deep breathing, the cerebrospinal fluid instead of just trickling along like a sewer or a river begins to flow in a wave-like motion—woosh! And they think that this could be more efficient to flush the brain and when we flush the brain we get rid of the by-products of metabolism.

I am not a physiologist and that’s as much as I know. I guess that if we are flushing these by-products out of the brain there must be linkages from the spinal column to the peripheral circulation or the central circulation. that’s something that I will have to check out for the next video.

Rhythmic breathing pranayama breath work lymphatic system cerebrospinal fluid.

For the time being, what I want you to understand is that rhythmic breathing moves the lymphatic system, moves the cerebrospinal fluid and it gives us a much better chance of cleaning up all the by-products of metabolism.

Rhythmic Breathing technique

It’s simple! The simplest technique of rhythmic breathing is this: All you do is you breathe in and out through your nose, and as you breathe in you count 1-2-3-4 and as you breathe out you count 4-3-2-1….

So you have some homework, try doing that, let me know in the comments how it goes for you, I would be happy to help you.