This ratio between the “good” bacteria and the other bacteria becomes one of the critical factors determining your optimal health. Helpful bacteria prevent the growth of less desirable ones by competing for both nutrition and attachment sites in the tissues of the colon. These organisms also aid digestion and nutrient absorption — another boost to overall health

The term probiotics comes from the Greek “for life” (which gives you an inkling of what the word “antibiotics” really means). When ingested, these living microorganisms replenish the microflora in your intestinal tract. This results in the promotion of a number of health-enhancing functions, including enhanced digestive function.

History does tell us about the ways different cultures promoted their intestinal health before modern times. In the past, people used fermented foods like yogurt and sauerkraut — as food preservatives and as support for intestinal and overall health.  Fermented foods are part of nearly every traditional culture. As far back as Roman times, people ate sauerkraut because of its taste and benefits to overall health. In ancient Indian society, it became commonplace (and still is) to enjoy a before-dinner yogurt drink called a lassi. At the end of the meal, they’d have a small serving of curd. These Indian traditions were based on the principle of using sour milk as a probiotic delivery system to the body.

Other examples are all around us. Bulgarians are known both for their longevity and their high consumption of fermented milk and kefir. In Asian cultures, pickled fermentations of cabbage, turnips, eggplant, cucumbers, onions, squash and carrots still exist today.

Poor diet and the stress- and pollution-filled environment provide significant challenges to healthy digestion, strong immunity and overall good health. Processed foods also tend to upset the balance of bacteria needed to support overall intestinal health. What’s more, many food products today are pasteurized or sterilized during the production process, and this destroys the helpful bacteria needed to promote intestinal health.

To ensure that you have the right balance of “good/bad” bacteria include fermented foods such as natural yoghurt, kefir, miso, sauerkraut, tempeh, natto in your diet on a regular basis. Probiotic supplements are also a quick way to replenish beneficial gut bacteria. Look for a powdered probiotic with at least 8 billion organisms per gram . The most important strains of beneficial bacteria are Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria so your probiotic should contain these. Keep your probiotic refrigerated to ensure survival of the bacteria.

The addition of FOS provides the food that the beneficial bacteria need to survive in the intestine. However, FOS can cause a lot of uncomfortable flatulence so if you are having digestive problems; choose a probiotic without FOS just to be on the safe side. Start with a small amount and build up the dose to therapeutic levels.

If you would like to come along to the Taster Day, please call 090 974 9929 and reserve a place.

Outline of the Taster Day: Start 9.30am

• Introduction to the diploma course and the Institute of Health Sciences approach
• Introduction to Functional Medicine
  • What it is and why it is the healthcare of the future | Explanation and overview| Basic principles|Origins
• Break
  • Personal health questionnaire –fill in

• Presentation and group discussion on areas highlighted in the questionnaire.
• Cooking demo to show how superfoods can be incorporated into tasty dishes
• Discussion on how these superfoods can be used therapeutically to restore health
• Tasting session (lunch)
• Case study: using everyday and novel foods and supplements for therapeutic gain
• Q and A

Finish 2pm

A blood pressure reading is measured by two numbers. The top number referred to as systolic is the measure of pressure the blood exerts while the heart is beating. The lower number, diastolic, is the measure of pressure the blood exerts while the heart is relaxed. The suggested optimal blood pressure is 120/80.

Just how could celery juice affect this measurement? This versatile veggie contains active compounds named phthalides. These compounds provide health benefits by naturally relaxing the muscles in and around the walls of the arteries which cause those vessels to dilate, creating more space inside the arteries that permits the blood to flow at a lower pressure. Phthalides also have been reported to lower blood pressure and promote a healthy circulatory system by reducing what are known as stress hormones. This biennial vegetable also contains high amounts of magnesium, potassium, and calcium. The beneficial effect of these minerals in celery serves to calm the nervous system, automatically counterbalancing stress levels.

Although Hippocrates (a Greek physician considered the Father of Medicine, c. 460 BC – c. 377 BC) prescribed the juice of this leafy-topped stalk to patients suffering from nervous tension and although Chinese medicine has long recognized celery juice to reduce high blood pressure, only recently has it been studied in the Western world. The University of Chicago Medical Center (UCMC) is credited with one of the first studies of celery’s effects on blood pressure. In one instance, the father of a scientist at UCMC experienced a drop in his blood pressure from 158/96 to 118/82 after just one week of eating about four stalks a day.

To test this theory, a physician at the Whitaker Wellness Center and her father both drank celery juice for thirty days, mixing it with a little orange juice to camouflage the slightly bitter taste of juiced celery. Their results? The father’s systolic level dropped from 148 to 128, and the physician’s went from 120 to 105.

Including this most nutritious juice as a part of a healthy diet and lifestyle just may help keep the risks of high blood pressure from ever becoming an issue.

GABA stimulates the anterior pituitary gland and helps increase Human Growth Hormone (HGH). Body builders are known to take GABA for this reason. A study at the University of Milan showed that GABA supplementation induced a five-time increase of growth hormone into the blood stream.

GABA helps stabilize the theta waves of the brain. In a clinical trial in Japan, GABA was shown to increase alpha waves and decrease beta waves. GABA was tested against water (placebo) and L-theanine and only the GABA showed the change in brain wave activity.

At the end of the nerve is a sac. When stimulated, the sac releases neurotransmitters. These chemicals then help the nerve impulse to cross the space between the nerves, called the synapse. This is how nerves and brain tissue communicate. Neurotransmitters are responsible for most body functions, including emotions, movement and the ability to experience pain.

When the brain runs out of neurotransmitters, the signals between the nerves slow down. This is what happens under stress. Symptoms of a GABA deficiency include anxiety, low sex drive, headaches, heart palpitations, and even seizures. GABA affects epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease as well.

GABA is contained in many complex carbohydrates, such as pasta and grains. GABA can also be synthesized by the amino acid glutamine. Foods high in glutamine include bananas, halibut, lentils, oats, rice bran, walnuts, broccoli, beef liver, almonds, and spinach. Powdered glutamine can also be purchased as a nutritional supplement.

Two other amino acids have been shown to work with GABA to help its absorption. Taurine helps synthesize GABA. Both taurine and glycine are made in the body but can be supplemented to help with GABA production. Vitamin B6 is also needed for GABA synthesis. Taking the B vitamins as a complex is recommended.

The recommended dosage of GABA is 1000 to 2000 mg a day. GABA has difficulty crossing the brain/blood barrier, so vitamin companies are searching for other methods of delivery, for instance adding GABA to oil-based solutions. Other suggestions to aid absorption are to increase the precursors, taurine, glycine and glutamine, and let the body manufacture GABA itself.

The research, just published in the American Chemical Society (ACS) journal Chemical Biology, was headed by Sanford-Burnham scientist Kristiina Vuori, M.D., PhD, in collaboration with Phil S. Baran, Ph.D., of the Scripps Research Institute. The scientists tested the impact of sceptrin on multiple tumor cell types, including cervical, breast and lung cancer cells.

To encourage cancer cells to behave like those that spread in the body, the researchers cultured cancer cells with growth factor to stimulate their ability to move. The cells were then treated with varying amounts of sceptrin. The results? Remarkably, the sponge compound restricted cancer movement in all the cancer cell lines.

Sceptrin’s effectiveness in halting cancer cell movement was found to become stronger in increased concentrations. Additional tests revealed that the compound has the ability to put the brakes on malignant cell mobility because it keeps the cells from contracting — and the cells must contract in order to travel throughout the body.

The sceptrin research is significant because currently there is little that can be done to prevent metastatic cancer. When cancerous cells break away from a malignant tumor, they move through the bloodstream or lymph system and travel to other parts of the body, ending up in any organ or tissue. According to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the most common sites of metastasis are the lungs, bones, brain and liver.

Practitoners will recognize that the sceptrin study is another step toward proving scientifically that there are effective natural therapies for cancer. Other studies have found that mango fruit halts the growth of breast and colon cancer cells and tumeric and black pepper may not only prevent certain cancers but may also be helpful in treating malignant tumors.

Harvard Professor Richard Wrangham believes there is more to it than simply discovering meat. He thinks that it is not so much a change in the ingredients of our diet, but the way in which we prepare them that has caused the radical evolution of our species. “I think cooking is arguably the biggest increase in the quality of the diet in the whole of the history of life,” he says. “Our ancestors most probably dropped food in fire accidentally. They would have found it was delicious and that set us off on a whole new direction.” To understand how and when our bodies changed, we need to take a closer look at what our ancestors ate by studying the fossil records.

Our earliest ancestor was the ape-like Australopithecus. Australopithecus had a large belly containing a big large-intestine, essential to digest the robust plant matter, and had large, flat teeth which it used for grinding and crushing tough vegetation. None the less, it was Australopithecus that moved out of the trees and onto the African savannah, and started to eat the animals that grazed there. And it was this change of habitat, lifestyle and diet that also prompted major changes in anatomy. The eating of meat ties in with an evolutionary shift 2.3 million years ago resulting in a more human-looking ancestor with sharper teeth and a 30% bigger brain, called Homo habilis.

The most momentous shift however, happened 1.8 million years ago when Homo erectus – our first “truly human” ancestor arrived on the scene. Homo erectus had an even bigger brain, smaller jaws and teeth. Erectus also had a similar body shape to us. Shorter arms and longer legs appeared, and gone was the large vegetable-processing gut, meaning that Erectus could not only walk upright, but could also run. He was cleverer and faster, and – according to Professor Wrangham – he had learned how to cook. “Cooking made our guts smaller,” he says. “Once we cooked our food, we didn’t need big guts. “They’re costly in terms of energy. Individuals that were born with small guts were able to save energy, have more babies and survive better.”

Professor Peter Wheeler from Liverpool John Moores University and his colleague, Leslie Aiello, think it was this change in our digestive system that specifically allowed our brains to get larger. Cooking food breaks down its cells, meaning that our stomachs need to do less work to liberate the nutrients our bodies need. This, says Wheeler, “freed up energy which could then be used to power a larger brain. The increase in brain-size mirrors the reduction in the size of the gut.” Significantly Wheeler and Aiello found that the reduction in the size of our digestive system was exactly the same amount that our brains grew by – 20%.

Professor Stephen Secor at the University of Alabama found that not only does cooked food release more energy, but the body uses less energy in digesting it. He uses pythons as a model for digestion as they stay still for up to six days while digesting a meal. This makes them the perfect model as the only energy they expend is on digestion. His research shows that pythons use 24% less energy digesting cooked meat, compared with raw. So being human might all be down to energy.

Cooking is essentially a form of pre-digestion, which has transferred energy use from our guts to our brains. According to Professors Wheeler and Wrangham and their colleagues, it is no coincidence that humans – the cleverest species on earth – are also the only species that cooks.

The researchers recruited 76 people at ultra-high risk of progression to psychosis. Study participants were randomly assigned to receive daily placebo or 1.2g fish oil supplements (700mg EPA, 480mg EPA). Results showed that after 12 weeks, only 4.9% of the group taking omega-3 supplements had progressed to psychotic disorder, compared with 27.5% of the placebo group.

The researchers speculated that the benefit may be due to changes in cell membranes produced by the omega 3 fatty acids and interactions with neurotransmitter systems in the brain.

The risk factor for other diseases also increases with elevated levels of homocysteine. Diseases such as gout, rheumatism, cancer, leukemia, kidney disease, lupus, and even depression, go up as the homocysteine levels rise. Some doctors suggest a link between homocysteine and the thyroid gland as a link to these non-vascular disease states.

A healthy level of homocysteine in the blood is below 15 micro mol/liter, but some doctors recommend levels below 7. A simple blood test can be used for diagnosis.

Nutrients that reduce homocysteine are B12, B9 (folic acid), B2 (riboflavin), and B6. These nutrients act through various chemical pathways to break down homocysteine in the blood. Adding zinc and Tri-methyl Glycine (TMG) to the diet is also recommended. Physical exercise will decrease homocysteine levels, as will losing weight and reducing stress. A vegetarian diet reduces homocysteine levels as well.

The study compared the effects of St. John’s Wort with placebos and a range of old and new antidepressants, including Prozac and Seroxat and a new generation of SSRI drugs on over 5000 patients with mild to severe depression. Overall, St. John’s Wort was superior to placebo and similarly effective as standard antidepressants, with fewer side effects. St. John’s Wort is contraindicated with a number of medications, so do check before taking it.

Over a treatment period of 6 weeks overweight individuals with a high cardiovascular risk were supplemented with Quercetin at a dose of 150 mg per day. It was found that that Quercetin supplementation significantly reduced systolic blood pressure and that this effect was most pronounced in subjects aged 25–50 years. In addition, Quercetin significantly reduced plasma concentrations of atherogenic oxidised LDL.

The reason Quercetin was more effective in younger age individuals may be due to the ability of Quercetin to improve vasodilatation. Poor vasodilatation and endothelial function may be the major mechanism for high blood pressure in younger to middle age individuals. In older age people however hypertension is more likely related to vascular damage and atherosclerotic changes. Supplementing with Quercetin may provide rapid reductions in blood pressure, while increasing dietary sources i.e. fruits and vegetables would provide greater global cardiovascular risk reduction overtime.

Quercetin is found in red wine, grapefruit, onions, apples, and black tea. It is also found in lesser amounts in leafy green vegetables and beans. However, to obtain therapeutic dosages, one needs to take supplements.