Ginger water health benefits

Ginger is one of the most used spices in India. We use this spice along with garlic in many dishes to enhance flavor. It is impossible to think of Indian cuisine without this humble root. Ginger is a stem part which actually grows underground and is called rhizome. But we usually call it ginger root.
Fresh Ginger Root
It’s not something new that ginger has been used as a medicine since a long time. We have a tradition going back a long time of using ginger root in some of the most prominent ayurvedic and siddha medicines.
It is known that we use ginger in our cuisine. But do you know that you can treat and prevent many ailments and illnesses by consuming ginger home remedies alone?

How to make ginger water?

Ginger juice with lemon wedge, cinnamon and star anise It is as simple as making lemonade. Wash the ginger root in running water to remove soil and impurities. Scrape off the outer skin. Cut into slices and put them in a skillet. Add enough water and let it boil for 15minutes. Switch off the flame. Let the ginger water cool down to room temperature. You can add lemon juice and honey along with it or can have it plain as well.

Benefits of Ginger water

Digestion

The volatile oils in the ginger stimulate the production of saliva. Drinking ginger water in regular manner strengthens your digestive system. It stops heartburn immediately and cures indigestion. It helps relieving morning sickness during pregnancy.

Diabetes:

Doctor checking blood sugar levels Ginger contains zinc which affects the insulin production in the body positively. Ginger aids in the digestion of sugar in a proper manner. It prevents type2 diabetes.

Blood pressure:

Ginger root helps to melt the cholesterol in the body and flush them out. As it maintains optimum blood pressure and clears the blood vessels of cholesterol it promotes heart health.

Treat Alzheimer’s:

It is scientifically proven that ginger helps to lower the amount of cell degradation in the brain. It promotes regeneration of cells in the central nervous system. Ginger is packed with anti oxidants. Drinking ginger water on a regular basis keeps your brain health optimum and it can even prevent occurrence of Alzheimer’s disease in old age.

Muscle pain:

Ginger root is an effective pain reliever. It has anti-inflammatory properties. Drink a glass of ginger water to get relief from muscle and joint pain. The volatile oils in ginger help in relaxing the muscles. You can even apply ginger juice topically on the pain spot to relieve from excruciating pain.

Common cold:

If you do not already know ginger is anti-microbial. Have ginger water with ground peppercorn during cold. Get relieved from sore throat fast. Ginger has the ability to dry up the mucus and flush it out of the body.

Anti-inflammatory:

Drinking ginger water reduces the inflammatory response when the body is in a healing stage especially in post operational conditions. It relaxes the blood vessels around the inflammation and helps to heal fast. However consult with your doctor before starting ginger water regime.

Absorption:

Ginger helps to absorb the nutrients in the food intake. It helps in breaking down food molecules as it stimulates the production of gastric juices in the intestines and helps to absorb the nutrients.
So next time when you see fresh ginger in the market, get it without a second thought to make ginger water as it is not only therapeutic but also preventive.

This is only for your information, kindly take the advice of your doctor for medicines, exercises and so on.     

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Infusion of Young Blood Reverses Age-Related Impairments in Mice

A newly published study from Stanford University found that an infusion of young blood can counteract and reverse pre-existing effects of brain aging at the molecular, structural, functional and cognitive level in mice.

Something — or some things — in the blood of young mice has the ability to restore mental capabilities in old mice, a new study by Stanford University School of Medicine investigators has found.

If the same goes for humans, it could spell a new paradigm for recharging our aging brains, and it might mean new therapeutic approaches for treating dementias such as Alzheimer’s disease.

In the study, published online May 4 in Nature Medicine, the researchers used sophisticated techniques to pin down numerous important molecular, neuroanatomical and neurophysiological changes in the brains of old mice that shared the blood of young mice.

But they also conducted a critical experiment that was far from sophisticated, said Tony Wyss-Coray, PhD, the senior author of the study and a professor of neurology and neurological sciences. The scientists simply compared older mice’s performance on standard laboratory tests of spatial memory after these mice had received infusions of plasma (the cell-free part of blood) from young versus old mice, or no plasma at all.

“This could have been done 20 years ago,” said Wyss-Coray, who is also senior research career scientist at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System. “You don’t need to know anything about how the brain works. You just give an old mouse young blood and see if the animal is smarter than before. It’s just that nobody did it.”

Wyss-Coray has co-founded a biotechnology company, Alkahest, to explore the therapeutic implications of the new study’s findings. He serves as the director of Alkahest’s scientific advisory board.

The study’s lead author, Saul Villeda, PhD, now has an active lab of his own as a faculty fellow in anatomy at the University of California-San Francisco. Villeda was a graduate student at Stanford and, briefly, a postdoctoral scholar under Wyss-Coray’s direction when the bulk of the work was performed.

Reversing impairments

“We’ve shown that at least some age-related impairments in brain function are reversible. They’re not final,” Villeda said.

Previous experiments by Wyss-Coray, Villeda and their colleagues, described in a paper published in 2011 in Nature, had revealed that key regions in the brains of old mice exposed to blood from young mice produced more new nerve cells than did the brains of old mice similarly exposed to blood from old mice. Conversely, exposing young mice to blood from old mice had the opposite effect with respect to new nerve-cell production, and also reduced the young mice’s ability to navigate their environments.

But that earlier work didn’t directly assess the impact of young mouse blood on older mice’s behavior. This time, the researchers checked both for changes within nerve circuits and individual nerve cells and for demonstrable improvements in learning and memory. First, they examined pairs of mice whose circulatory systems had been surgically conjoined. Members of such pairs, known as parabiotic mice, share a pooled blood supply.

Wyss-Coray’s group paid special attention, in these parabiotic mice, to a brain structure called the hippocampus. In both mice and humans, this structure is critical for forming certain types of memories, notably the recollection and recognition of spatial patterns. “That’s what you need to use when, for example, you try to find your car in a parking lot or navigate around a city without using your GPS system,” Wyss-Coray said.

Experience alters hippocampal activity and anatomy. Studies have found, for instance, that a veteran London cabdriver’s hippocampus is larger than it was when the driver was first hired, and larger than the average person’s. The hippocampus is also extremely vulnerable to the normal aging process, showing early erosion in function as people grow older. In dementia such as Alzheimer’s disease, this hippocampal deterioration is accelerated, leading to an inability to form new memories.

“We know that detrimental anatomical and functional changes occur in the hippocampus as mice and people get older,” said Villeda. “This is just from natural aging. We’re all heading in that direction.”

When the investigators compared hippocampi from old mice whose circulatory systems had been conjoined with those of young mice to hippocampi from old mice that had been paired with other old mice, they found consistent differences in a number of biochemical, anatomical and electrophysiological measures known to be important to nerve-cell circuits’ encoding of new experiences for retention in the cerebral cortex.

Recharging old brains

The hippocampi of older mice that had been conjoined to younger mice more closely resembled those of younger mice than did the hippocampi of older mice similarly paired with old mice. The old mice paired with young mice made greater amounts of certain substances that hippocampal cells are known to produce when learning is taking place, for example. Hippocampal nerve cells from older members of old-young parabiotic pairs also showed an enhanced ability to strengthen the connections between one nerve cell and another — essential to learning and memory.

“It was as if these old brains were recharged by young blood,” Wyss-Coray said.

Villeda, Wyss-Coray and their associates next subjected regular older mice to a test in which the mice were trained to quickly locate a submerged platform in a water-filled container. The mice had to speedily orient themselves using memory cues provided by their surroundings. The investigators injected old mice intravenously with plasma from young or old mice and ran them through the test. Typically, untreated older mice did poorly compared to young mice, as they did when injected with plasma from old mice. But if they were infused with young mice’s plasma they did much better.

This was likewise the case on another test in which mice were trained to freeze in fear when plunked into a particular environment. The better they recognized that environment, the longer they would freeze. Older mice typically freeze for a shorter period of time than younger ones do. Again, “freezing” times for older mice given young plasma, but not old plasma, increased significantly.

Finding the factors

In both tests, the improvement vanished if the plasma provided to the old mice had first been subjected to high temperatures. Heat treatment can denature proteins, so this hints that a blood-borne protein, or group of them, may be responsible for the cognitive improvements seen in old mice given young mouse plasma.

“There are factors present in blood from young mice that can recharge an old mouse’s brain so that it functions more like a younger one,” Wyss-Coray said. “We’re working intensively to find out what those factors might be and from exactly which tissues they originate.”

“We don’t know yet if this will work in humans,” he said, adding that he hopes to find out sooner rather than later. A near-term goal of his company is to test this proposition through a clinical trial.

This is only for your information, kindly take the advice of your doctor for medicines, exercises and so on.     
https://gscrochetdesigns.blogspot.com. one can see my crochet creations  
https://gseasyrecipes.blogspot.com. feel free to view for easy, simple and healthy recipes    
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New VR tool may help boost mental health, well-being:

Researchers are developing a personalised, therapeutic virtual reality (VR) tool which may enable new forms of self-reflection, and help improve and maintain positive mental health. The VR tool being developed by researchers can be used by people with common mental health problems to create an immersive version of their journey through life.

The tool allows people to capture life events, upload relevant digital content and reflect on their thoughts and feelings in great detail, researchers said.

As well as helping with better mental health, this approach could also be beneficial for people in the early stages of dementia, those receiving end-of-life care and those with addiction problems or long-term physical conditions.
this is only for your information, kindly take the advice of your doctor for medicines, exercises and so on.   
https://gscrochetdesigns.blogspot.com. one can see my crochet creations 
https://gseasyrecipes.blogspot.com. feel free to view for easy, simple and healthy recipes    
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Home Treatments That Can Help Manage Ankylosing Spondylitis

Ankylosing spondylitis is a rare inflammatory condition that can be really difficult to live with, but you can help manage the symptoms of this debilitating disease with smart lifestyle choices, ranging from a specific exercise plan to more unusual treatments like acupuncture. This article focuses on these at-home treatments that will make life with this condition easier, can slow down the progression of the disease and prevent the development of dangerous complications.

What Are the Signs and Symptoms Of Ankylosing Spondylitis?

The symptoms of ankylosing spondylitis (AS) vary greatly, with some patients reporting back pain and stiffness in their late adolescence, and others starting to experience pain or immobility in other parts of the body as late as their mid-40s. Since the causes of the condition are still unknown, it is difficult to predict why people develop AS, but it is known that it may have a genetic component.

Also, men are more likely to suffer from AS than women, and in women, the condition more often manifests itself differently than in men, making diagnosis even more challenging. AS typically starts in the lower back, but it can affect most joints, such as:

• The joint between connecting the spine with the pelvis
• Vertebrae, especially the lower back
• Hips
• Shoulders
• Ribs and the breastbone.​

Despite the great variability, AS can be characterized by the following symptoms depending on the stage of the development of the disease:

• Back pain
• Stiffness
• Symptoms typically worsen during periods of inactivity, such as sleep or long periods of sitting
• Poor posture or stooped shoulders
• Pain and lack of flexibility in the feet
• Loss of appetite
• Low-grade fever
• Weight loss
• Fatigue
• Anemia or low iron.

If left untreated, the vertebrae in the lower back can fuse together, causing a characteristic tilt forward of the upper body. The complications of the disease include eye damage, problems breathing and even heart damage. Medical interventions and surgery are the traditional ways of managing the symptoms of AS, but doctors urge AS patients to stay active to slow the progression of the disease, as there is no cure for AS.

Below, we discuss natural treatments and why they are beneficial to AS patients.

Yoga and Stretching

Retaining your flexibility and range of motion is one of the main goals for an AS patient, as it helps your posture and reduces the pain. Yoga and stretching on a daily basis can make your spine and joints more flexible and improve your strength. 

Heat and cold therapy

Hot and cold temperatures are your friend if you’re experiencing stiffness or if your joints feel inflamed and painful. A warming shower or heating pads can decrease the pain and stiffness that come with AS, and ice packs may be helpful at reducing inflammation.

Exercise

Exercises that aim to stabilize and strengthen the joints are very beneficial to AS patients. These include range-of-motion exercises and strength training exercises. Strength exercises will also help you maintain a healthy weight, which is very important for AS patients.

Posture training

As we have discussed above, bad posture is one of the symptoms of AS, as the stiffness and the pain in the spine affect one’s posture. Practice good posture, give yourself reminders and be aware of how you carry your weight on a regular basis. You can also use special devices, such as chairs and seats that encourage good posture.

Therapeutic Massages

Therapeutic massages are beneficial for people suffering from AS, as they can help with the range of motion. Both relaxing and invigorating massages are beneficial, just make sure to mention to your massage therapist that you have AS, as deep tissue massage and joint massage is usually prohibited for patients with AS, and therapists use a specific kind of technique to relieve the pain and inflammation for this condition.

Acupuncture

This Ancient Chinese medicinal technique is known for stimulating specific points in the body, which triggers the release of pain-relieving hormones in the brain so this treatment can be beneficial for relieving pain for some AS patients. If you’re considering acupuncture to treat AS, look for a trained professional who works in a clean environment and uses sterile or disposable needles.

In summary, there are a variety of different home treatments of ankylosing spondylitis that will help people suffering from this condition maintain an active and fulfilling life, but each treatment should be discussed and supported by a medical professional for your safety.

See my next post for yoga poses for strengthening spine, thanks

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'Cell therapy may replace need for kidney transplants'

Regenerating damaged tissues using therapeutic cells may prove to be a promising new approach to treat chronic kidney disease, scientists say.

Researchers found that harnessing the unique properties of human amniotic fluid-derived stem cells could potentially help recover organ function in a pre-clinical model of kidney disease. 

"Our results indicate that this type of stem cell could be used as an off the shelf universal cell source and may provide an alternative therapeutic strategy for patients suffering from this chronic and debilitating disease," said a Prof.


Amniotic fluid-derived stem cells can be used as a universal cell source because they have the ability to become different cell types as well as the ability to be anti-inflammatory, making them a potential source for regeneration.

Unlike pluripotent and adult stem cells, amniotic fluid-derived stem cells are not as likely to provoke an immune system response.

Their use does not lead to risks of tumours or ethical concerns, as with embryonic stem cells, researchers said.

The study found that amniotic fluid stem cells injected into a diseased kidney in a pre-clinical model led to improvement of kidney function based on measured waste levels after 10 weeks.

Biopsy findings showed reduced damage to the cluster of capillaries where waste products are filtered from the blood.

"Our studies demonstrate that treatment with amniotic fluid stem cells had positive effects on functional improvement and structural recovery of the kidney," said  a researcher that CKD is a worldwide public health problem and can manifest in acute and chronic symptoms.

Transplantation is the only definitive treatment method that restores kidney function, but has its own challenges with rejection and life-long immunosuppression.

There also are not enough donor organs to meet demand.

"It remains to be seen whether injecting more cells or more efficient engraftment of the infused cells enhances improvement of organ function," said a research fellow.

THIS IS ONLY FOR INFORMATION, ALWAYS CONSULT YOU PHYSICIAN BEFORE HAVING ANY PARTICULAR FOOD/ MEDICATION/EXERCISE/OTHER REMEDIES.                                    PS- THOSE INTERESTED IN RECIPES ARE FREE TO  VIEW MY BLOG-                                                                                           https://gseasyrecipes.blogspot.com/                                                                                                                                                         FOR INFO ABOUT KNEE REPLACEMENT, YOU CAN VIEW MY BLOG-                                                  https:// kneereplacement-stickclub.blogspot.com/           

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