Green Space and Health

I just read an article on green space and health. It was a large study done in Holland and looked at the health, not as individual's feelings of health, but rather on diseases present. They found that those who had green space around them such as parks were less likely to have disease present.

One of the most significant pieces was that those with green space around or near them were 90% less likely to have anxiety and depression, which we know accounts as the basis for most disease.

So find some green space near you!

Acupuncture

I had someone ask me yesterday about acupuncture. I realized that his questions were likely some you may have. I think most of you know that acupuncture is the use of needles, but you may not know that the needles are actually placed along the energy meridians.

Eastern philosophy sees acupuncture as affecting the flow of energy through the energy meridians. Western medicine reasons that the needles interact with our nervous system, triggering the release of hormones or chemicals that affect mood, pain perception, and immune response.

Since everything is energy, acupuncture can have a very profound affect on a variety of ills, pains, and even depression.

Feeling Good with Serotonin

More on Serotonin here. You may be aware of serotonin by the initials that are sometime used to refer to it's chemical structure. Serotonin is 5-HT. Many weight loss programs refer to having 5-HT in their product. One of the things that Serotonin does is to help regulate appetite. It's really not clear if this is a direct action or if by alleviating some depressive symptoms the individual actually eats less. Many individuals with depression eat more than usual and gain weight.

If you think about it, feeling good about yourself does not make you want to eat more. Not feeling good, can definitely make you want to eat more in the hopes that food will make you feel better.

So what can we eat to help promote serotonin production? More on this tomorrow.

Serotonin - Feel Good Hormone

Serotonin is what I refer to as our "feel good hormone." When we do not have enough serotonin, we tend toward depression. There are multiple research studies which link serotonin with depression and many of the newer drugs out for depression actually work directly on serotonin.

Serotonin is a hormone which is produced in our brains via a biochemical process which uses tryptophan. The actual process is not as important as understanding that if the process does not occur, there will not be enough serotonin in our brain to transmit information from one cell to the next. There are other problems that can occur regarding the receptor sites not being able to accept the serotonin to transmit information. In other words, you may produce enough but the receptor sites are not working. It's like connecting to the internet, if the phone line you want to use is not working(the receptor site), your computer (the serotonin) will not be able to connect to the internet to transmit information.

More tomorrow on Sserotonin