Alternative Health Supplements and … Your Hypothalamus

As far as biological science has progressed, much of the way the brain works remains a mystery to us! Along the way we have learned a few things about how the brain works, and alterntive health products as well as common sense mainstream methods for treating various conditions. If you are just discovering the enormous range of alternative health products and wondering about the regions of the brain they refer to, today we are investigating the hypothalamus, its functions, pathologies and how its function can be improved in some cases of deficiency.

What does the hypothalamus look like, and where is it?

The hypothalamus is located just above the brain stem, and directly below another region known as the thalamus (from which it derives its name). It is one of the older parts of the brain, speaking in evolutionary terms. It is also very, very small -- roughly the size of an almond in humans.

What does the hypothalamus do?

This little gland has various functions related to maintenance of normal body processes. Its jobs include:

• Communicating with the pituitary gland to link the nervous system (sensory inputs) to the endocrine system (your glands and the hormones they produce)
• Controlling body temperature
• Controlling hunger and thirst
• Helping regulate fatigue, sleep and waking cycles.

It is one or an assortment of these functions which alternative health products that focus on the hypothalamus generally aim to correct.

How does this little almond know what it is doing?!

We mentioned that this region of the brain links the sensory inputs from the nervous system to the hormonal outputs of the endocrine system. It does this using information from:

• Light inputs
• Pheromones and other odors
• Information that the brain relays to it from the activity of the heart, lungs, stomach and reproductive system including the gonads
• Stress
• Blood-borne stimuli, such as insulin, leptin and ghrelin (which change in response to the food you eat)

Alternative health products for the hypothalamus

Support for your hypothalamus from the alternative health products industry often comes along with thalamic and pituitary-support factors. These include substances like medulla concentrate, anterior lobe, ascorbic acid, pineal extract, papaine, and support for the limbic lobe, anterior lobe and posterior lobe.

Possible Side Effects of Mood Disorder Drugs: Alternative Health Products for Mood Support

With the recent release of findings that mood-disorder drugs could cause psychiatric disorders later in life, people are again turning to natural mood support methods to help. Drug free treatment of depression with alternative health products is becoming more and more popular, as people have more and more concern about standard medical treatments and their possible long term effects. We look at the recent finding, and your alternatives for mood support if you are concerned.

The Research

The study was done on animals, by researchers at the Georgetown University Medical Center. The results were released in October of 2009. The research builds upon an earlier finding that there are some neurons in the brain which die when these drugs are given to immature animals. We do have to temper the results with the realization that animals aren’t humans; however, when behavioral tests that determine autism and schizophrenia were given to the animals later in life, abnormalities were detected. This finding wasn't limited to the drugs that are known to cause neuronal death, either.

The study also named drugs which have little or no effect -- as understood currently. If you are concerned about the effects of traditional mood drugs on your brain, what can you do?

1. Exercise

Almost every person in the Western world currently gets less exercise than our bodies require for optimal functioning. The way our economy is set up, there is now little physical activity required to meet everyday demands, whether you are working in paid employment or cleaning the house. Exercise is also vital for proper brain function, and plays a critical role in maintaining good mood, even more than alternative health products. In most cases, being able to get more exercise involves a rethink of your priorities, and the realization that you may need it to actually enjoy life!

2. Drug free treatment of depression and other mood disorders

For those who have started to feel low already, it can be difficult to drag yourself out of the cycle of television and bad food to build yourself back up from down. You can get a great kick-start with some of the many alternative health products on offer, including:

• Sublingual adrenal cortex extract, for help with stress-induced fatigue and exhaustion, withdrawals from alcohol or other drugs, general fatigue, and low everyday moods.
• Sublingual melatonin, which improves mood naturally by improving the quality of sleep. It is rapidly absorbed, and some formulations are made to avoid the traditional hangover effect the next day.
• 5-hydroxytryotphan is part of the conversion process of L-trytophan, another popular alternative health product, and eventually becomes serotonin.

Focus on Amino Acids: Glutamine

There are dozens of different amino acids in the world, and around twenty that are used in the human body. They are vital in many bodily functions, and are sometimes prescribed in the hope that they will help patients lose weight, find increased energy, improve mental fatigue and better tolerate stress. Today we are looking at a common non-essential amino acid supplement in depth: glutamine.

The Basics

The scientific name for L-glutamine amino acid is (2S)-2,5-Diamino-5-oxopentanoic acid. Its molecular formula is C5H10N2O3, which translates to 5 atoms of carbon, 10 of hydrogen, 2 of nitrogen and 3 of oxygen. All those common substances put together play an important role in our body! It is the most abundant free amino acid in our body, and is founding healthy blood samples in concentrations of 500-900 micromol per liter.

Functions

Amino acids are all involved in the synthesis of different proteins within the body. The body makes its own glutamine -- the major source of this is the muscles. Around 90% of all the glutamine in the body comes from a person's muscle mass, which leads some to believe that if you have lower muscle mass, you may also be deficient in L-glutamine and require amino acid supplements. In addition to protein synthesis, L-glutamine:

• Is a source of cellular energy, as glucose is
• Produces ammonium in the kidneys to help regulate your body's acid-base balance
• Provides nitrogen in anabolic processes

When are glutamine amino acid supplements necessary?

If you suffer from a catabolic illness or injury, you may need to derive l-glutamine from your food or supplements -- your body may not be able to make enough on its own. 10-15 years of study have been performed on glutamine, and it is considered useful for treating burns, injuries, and helping with the side effects of cancer treatment.

Supplements and food sources

Supplements are one of the richest sources of L-glutamine, and unlike with some supplements, higher dosages do not seem to result in reduced effects. You can also supplement your L-glutamine intake by eating foods like:

• Beef, chicken and fish
• Milk and other dairy products
• Cabbage
• Beets
• Spinach
• Parsley
• Beans

Depression: Helping Yourself Through

Depression is a cruel disease. Other illnesses simply don’t rob you of your very motivation to get better the same way that depression does. You feel that nothing will ever change, so there is no point trying. One of the key things to understand is that depression can be caused by simple imbalances in your hormones and the nutrients within your body … while it makes life at large seem idiotic and pointless, your life isn’t usually the cause of your depression. If drugs only make you feel worse (as they do for many depression patients) and you're undergoing natural treatment of depression, today we are looking at some strategies to help make this period of your life nothing but a memory.

Early treatment

This is critical … while we hear this about many illnesses, it is especially true in depression. When you think or feel a certain way, neuronal pathways in the brain are activated. The longer they stay activated, or the more repetitively they are activated, the easier it becomes for signalling to work on that pathway in future. If you fail to get help early, you are literally teaching yourself to be depressed. If you know what the doctor is going to say and you don’t like it, there are plenty of natural treatments for depression that you can try.

Nutritional Supplements

When you are depressed, you don’t necessarily eat right -- and this only contributes to the cycle. Break it with effective nutritional support for depression.

Do something you love

Depression takes all the color out of activities, I know… I've been there too! But it is essential when you are feeling depressed to do things that you like doing, that once inspired you and energized you. This is a key step in the natural treatment of depression.

Set realistic goals

Understand that you are ill -- although it might not have been caused by a virus, the way your body reacts is not completely under your control when you are depressed. If you can’t do the ironing AND make dinner, don't stress. Don’t be afraid to ask for help if you need it -- that's what loved ones are there for.

Avoid alcohol and drugs

The term "self-medicating" is very much a misnomer with depression. Alcohol frequently makes the problem worse -- when you are hung over the next day, it often triggers a massive bout.

Exercise

Exercise is one of the most potent natural treatments of depression -- it is both preventive and cure. Make sure it is an activity you like -- take an mp3 player walking, go swimming and enjoy the calm and quiet underwater, or find a nice outdoor spot for some individual yoga.

Why Your Adrenal Glands Could be the Cause of Your Weight and Mood Problems

Okay, I'd just like to qualify the above statement a little. Your adrenal glands aren't actually tiny villains sitting above your kidneys, plotting to make your life hard! However, when we expose our adrenal glands to constant stress (from our environment), adrenal fatigue can result. If you've tired the poor little guys out, you are probably experiencing poor concentration, low moods, low tolerance to noise and stressful situations, and often difficult to shift excess weight. We explain the process of adrenal fatigue, and look at alternative health products and lifestyles to cure it.

What do the adrenal glands do?

The outer layer of the adrenal glands produces cortisol. The center of the gland produces adrenaline.

These hormones help our body go into a fight-or-flight state when faced with a stressful event. However, this state takes precedence over all other metabolic functions -- basically, if your stress hormones are constantly kicked in, they prevent the rest of your body from working properly.

Events that affect your adrenals

The stressful events that trigger the adrenal response (and overtake all your other functions) are prevalent in modern life. This is why there have been plenty of alternative health products developed to compensate! These events can include:

• Death of a loved one
• Relationship troubles
• Work stresses
• Financial trouble
• Reliance on stimulants like caffeine and sugar
• Skipping meals
• Illness and infection

The functions these events impair

We mentioned that other metabolic processes are shunted to the side when stress occurs. These processes can be things like:

• Normal healing
• Bone growth
• Hormone production, including melatonin, serotonin, dopamine, thyroid hormone, etc
• Digestion
• Mental function -- electrical transmission in the brain
• Immune function

DHEA - Where alternative health products come in

DHEA is the antidote to cortisol, if you will. It is the hormone that helps us calm down after something stressful occurs. When cortisol is produced in large amounts, consistently over time, we lose the ability to make normal levels of DHEA. Taking an alternative health product containing DHEA can help you overcome low mood and energy levels, decreased sex drive, anxiety, weight that can’t be shifted (a stressed body wants to hang onto its energy stores!), and even allergies.

Inflammatory Depression

Depression is now seen to be in the top three illnesses affecting the aging population. The leading cause of death people younger than 35 in some areas of the world, according to a recent Australian study, is actually suicide. Untreated chronic depression is linked with a whole host of other diseases, including dementia, Alzheimer's and coronary heart disease. New schools of thinking are starting to suggest that inflammation could play a part in developing depression. Today we are looking at the rationale behind that thought, and the alternative health products that can reduce inflammation in your body to help reduce your risk of becoming depressed.

Chris Meletis, a naturopath, points to a growing body of evidence that the natural mood enhancers that are often prescribed to treat depression (Specific Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors or SSRIs, for example) also have anti-inflammatory properties, and these may actually be the reason that people feel better after taking them.

Evidence for the above

Male patients with increased early life stress have shown an enhanced inflammatory response to psychosocial stress later in life. (Published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, September 2006)

Patients with bipolar disorder were also found to have higher serum levels of the inflammation marker C-Reactive protein. (Published in the Programs of Neuropsychopharmacological Biological Psychiatry October 2006).

Possible remedies through alternative health products

Melatonin is a critical part of this equation, and alternative health products that provide glandular support to the pineal gland may be of special use in treating depression. We know that going without sleep makes us feel depressed, and we also know that going without sleep decreases our melatonin levels. It is a fact that melatonin is involved in regulating the anti-inflammatory response, as well as being responsible for circadian rhythms. Alternative health products that provide the support the pineal gland needs to function properly could help depressed patients feel better with much more natural substances.

Drug free treatment of depression

You can give those alternative health products a boost along their way to your better health by doing the following:

• Stop eating foods that produce an inflammatory response -- trans fats, refined carbohydrates and gluten are the number one offenders. For some people, dairy, eggs, soy and nuts may also be.
• Eat plenty of essential fatty acids -- if you don’t eat fish, get these through a natural health supplies store.
• Eat plenty of fruit, vegetables and fresh herbs and spices such as garlic, oregano, turmeric, ginger and green tea.

Oo, Baby! Five Benefits of Colostrum

Colostrum is a yellowish, thin milky substance produced by new mothers of every mammalian species in the first days after they give birth, before their breast milk comes in. It is enormously rich in immune factors and growth factors, and packed with nutrients. We don’t need to stalk new mothers in hospital and replace their babies with ourselves, however -- sources from goats and cows are almost as effective as human colostrum. Today we are looking at five of colostrum nutritional supplement's most significant benefits.

Warding off colds, flus, irritable bowel syndrome and diabetes

Research by Immuron, an Australian company, is showing promising early results that suggest that hyper-immunized colostrum nutritional supplements (which are available when the cow has been immunized against certain pathogens), could help prevent diseases like irritable bowel syndrome, diabetes and even the gastrointestinal consequences of AIDS.

Athletic ability

Double blind studies at the Australian Institute of Sport by trainers (as reported on science program Catalyst) have shown that athletes who take colostrum increase their muscle strength by 5-10% over those taking a placebo, recover faster, and also miss fewer days of training due to minor illnesses like influenza.

Gastric diseases

Colostrum has been found by some studies to be especially effective against gastric diseases, especially bugs like Escherichia coli, salmonella, helicobacter pylori, and others such as clostridium and staphylococcus.

Potential stress effects

Some studies have suggested that colostrum can also have an effect on the brain for natural treatment of depression and low moods -- lambs that were tube fed colostrum as compared to saline (directly into their stomach, so taste was not a factor) reduced their distress bleating. The effects of colostrum can be seen in the hypothalamus, the insular cortex and amygdale.

Proteins and Vitamin A

Vitamin A is a powerful antioxidant, and this natural source is one of the best ways to ensure you have enough of it. Protein is one of the most useful ingredients in milk itself (the fat we can live without!), meaning that colostrum nutritional supplements has a high concentration of what we want from milk, but not what we don't.