Regular consumption of coffee may reduce risk mental decline

Can coffee slow the gradual mentally decline associate with normal aging? Regular coffee consumption may reduce the risk of mental decline, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. The caffeine in coffee increases alertness and improves short term mental performance.

An important European study from the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Netherlands, suggests that drinking three cups of coffee a day can reduce the risk of mental decline in old age and cut the risk of Alzheimer’s by half.

The elderly have a higher level of adenosine a brain chemical that weakens gamma rhythms, which are involved in memory and learning processes. The caffeine appears to reduce the risk of memory loss and Alzheimer’s by blocking the effects of adenosine.

The Maastricht aging study, which included individuals ranging from 24 years to 81 years of age, found that the consumption of coffee appear to improve certain aspect of cognition such as long-term memory and motor speed relative to age-matched peers (Hum Pshychopharmacol 15, 573-581).

Given the high coffee consumption worldwide and the aging population in many countries, coffee’s apparent ability to protect cognition could have important implications.
Regular consumption of coffee may reduce risk mental decline

Mental illness

Mental illness refers to alteration in thinking, emotions, and/or intentional behavior that produce psychological distress and/or impaired functioning.

It is a clinically significant behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in person and that is associated with present distress or disability or with a significantly increased risk of suffering, death, pain, disability or an important loss of freedom.

Anxiety, fear, anger, sadness and the need to be alone are feelings experienced at different level of intensity by most people at various time.

Because mental functions are carried out by the brain, very often mental illness is associated with disease, infection, drug/toxin-induced alterations in brain biology, and abnormal physical conditions and biological changes in the brain.

Symptoms of mental illness include changes in personal habits, social withdrawal and changes in mood and thinking.

Mental illness accounts for more than 15% of the burden of disease in developed countries, which is greater than that from all cancers.
Mental illness

Health benefits of sleeping

The most complete kind of rest for mind and body is sleep. To maintain good health the body needs rest and sleep. People spend one-third of time in sleeping every day.

During sleeping, the body and mind relax, growth take place. It’s that time when human bodies are still but are actually very busy doing so many things.

The deeper the sleep the less distinct will be the dreams. The amount of sleep needed by various people differs greatly.

A young child needs twelve hours out of the twenty four for sleep, a growing boy or girl about ten, while most grown people require only about seven or eight. 

After sleep or rest body feel fresh and work better. Researchers in Sweden surveyed a sample of about 1200 adults, asking questions about their health and sleep patterns.

Twelve years later, they found that men sleeping 5 or fewer hours nightly had a nearly 3 times greater risk of developing diabetes. Men reporting difficulty staying asleep were almost 5 times more likely to develop diabetes.

Among people who have difficulties, sleep deprivation has been linked to poorer blood sugar control. Apart from diabetes, there are other long term dangers including: weight gain, compromised mental abilities, work related accidents, cardiovascular disease and shortened life span.
Health benefits of sleeping

Health and Wellness

Because wellness is dynamic can continuous, no dimension of wellness functions in isolation.

When you have a high level of wellness or optimal health, all dimension are integrated and functioning together.

The whole is made up of four components: mind, body, spirit and emotions.

To recognized our own health status, the person must remind itself that they are more than just physical bodies. The person must come to appreciate the true integration, balance, and harmony of mind, body, spirit and emotions.

The person’s environment (including work, school, family, community) and his or her physical, emotional, intellectual, occupational, spiritual and social dimensions of wellness are in tune with one another to produce harmony.

Wellness can be characterized as an integrated state of optimum function, a continually evolving and changing process.

Health educators commonly refer to six dimensions of health and wellness emotional, intellectual, spiritual, occupational, social and physical.
Health and Wellness

The Environmental Model of Health

The Environmental Model of Health
The environmental model of health emerged with modern analyses of ecosystems and environmental risks to human health. In this model is defined in terms of the quality of a person’s adaptation to the environment as conditions change.

This model includes the effects in personal health of socioeconomic status, education, and multiple environmental factors.

Unlike the medical model, which focuses in diseased organs and biological abnormalities, the environmental model focuses on conditions outside the individual that affect his or her health.

This conditions include the quality is air and water, living conditions, exposure to harmful substances, socioeconomic conditions, social relationships, and the health care system.

In many respects the environmental model of health is similar to ancient Asian and Native American philosophies that associate health with harmonious interactions with fellow creatures and the environment.

In particular, as the environment changes, one’s interaction with it must change to remain in harmony. Illness is interpret as disharmony of human and environmental interactions.
The Environmental Model of Health

How to define Health and Wellness

How to define Health and Wellness 

Health, like love or happiness is a quality of life that is difficult to define and virtually impossible to measure. 

Health is defined differently among experts, but all definition have a common theme: self responsibility and adopting a healthy life style. 

 

Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or uniformity – World Health Organization, 1947. 

Wellness has been defined as: an approach to personal health that emphasize individual responsibility for well being through the practice of health promoting lifestyle behaviors. – Hurley and Schlaadt, 1992. 

Wellness is many times referred to in a broader context than health which sometimes means only physical health. 

How to define Health and Wellness

Positive Mind

Positive Mind
Many people believe that good health is related primarily to proper nutrition and physical fitness.

Whereas both are vital to health, the most important factor that determines your state of health is your mind.

Positive thoughts about yourself and others and positive emotions such as contentment and love contribute to vitality, optimism and joy which can motivate living healthfully, aid healing and recovery from illness and injury and increase longevity.

Negative thoughts and emotions contribute to depression, pessimism and decreased health and longevity.

In Western culture, they are accustomed to thinking of health and healing in terms of dugs, medical treatments and surgery.

In other cultures, past and present, health and healing are accomplished by mental processes such as faith, magic and spiritual practices.

Even in our culture we recognize that attitudes play an important role in promoting health and recovering from illness.

All physicians are aware that a person’s attitude greatly affects the probability of recovery from illness.

The mind affects health and well being because the mind and body make up a single, unified organism. No body exists without a mind; no mind exists without a body.

The mind and body communicate with each other by means of the nervous, endocrine (hormone), and immune systems, allowing thoughts, beliefs and feelings to change body chemistry and physiology.
Positive Mind

Healthy Mind

Healthy Mind
There is more to good health than just a physically healthy body: a healthy person should also have a healthy mind. A person with a healthy mind should also be able to think clearly, should be able to solve the various problem faced in life, should enjoy good relations with friends colleagues at work and family and should feel spirituality at ease and bring happiness to other in the community. It is aspects of health that can be considered as mental health.

Even though we talk about mind and body as if they were separate, in reality they are like two sides of the same coin. They share a great deal with each other, but present a different face to the world around us. If one of the two is affected in any way, then the other will almost certainly also be affected. Just because we think about the mind and the body separately, it does not mean that they are independent of each other.

Just as the physical body can fall ill, so too can the mind. This can be called mental illness. Mental illness is “any illness experienced by a person which affects their emotions, thoughts or behavior, which is out of keeping with their culture beliefs and personality and is producing a negative effect on their lives or the lives of their families”.
Healthy Mind

How Yoga Benefit Our Body

How Yoga Benefit Our Body
One of the most rewarding aspects of yoga practice is discovering how mind and body can unite in a harmony of movement and coordination. We will open to new vistas of understanding about ourselves. While participating in many other forms of exercise, it is possible to allow our mid to wander. In yoga, our mental focus on the stretch, coordinated with deep and regular breathing, produces an internal and external unity that gradually increases with practice. This concentration eventually becomes a form of mental discipline that be applied to all phases of our life.

Yoga is extremely beneficial for anyone of any age. With continued practice of this versatile system of exercise, we can see results quickly because as we release tensions, we liberate our vast resources of energy.

Practicing yoga also promotes high levels of organic health. It can help us to keep a youthful bearing and outlook that radiate feelings every woman wants: energy, beauty and poise.

Yoga increases circulation and flexibility. Our spine provides the housing for the central and autonomic nervous systems, and thus our entire body benefits as our spine becomes to function with greater ease, and our muscles start to work more smoothly and efficiently.
How Yoga Benefit Our Body