World's oldest person dies in Japan at 116

Would you want to live that long? Imagine talking to the world oldest person. The amount of stories they would have is incredible. I love old people because they are filled with stories. It is crazy to live that long and to be known as the world oldest person. Japan has the oldest population in the world, and I believe that is due to their good diet and frequent exercise.

Japan's Jiroemon Kimura, who had been recognized by the Guinness World Records as the world's oldest living person and the oldest man ever, died Wednesday of natural causes. He was 116.

Kimura, of Kyotango, Japan, was born April 19, 1897. Officials in Kyotango said he died in a local hospital, where he had been undergoing treatment for pneumonia.

According to Guinness, Kimura was the first man in history to have lived to 116 years old.

Kimura became the oldest man ever on Dec. 28, 2012, at the age of 115 years, 253 days, breaking the record set by Christian Mortensen, a Danish immigrant to the United States, whose life spanned from 1882-1998.

The title of oldest living person is now held by another Japanese, 115-year-old Misao Okawa, of Osaka.

Okawa, who was born March 5, 1898, is also the world's oldest living woman.

"Jiroemon Kimura was an exceptional person," said Craig Glenday, editor-in-chief of Guinness World Records. "As the only man to have ever lived for 116 years — and the oldest man whose age has been fully authenticated — he has a truly special place in world history."

Kyotango officials said Kimura's funeral would be held Friday.

"Mr. Kimura was and will always be a treasure to our town, to our country and to our world," said Mayor Yasushi Nakayama.

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Is there alternatives to expensive drugs?

Something interesting I was discussing with a fellow co-worker of mine was the price of medication being grievously high for most people due to patents held by companies. Some folks do not even receive vital medication because the cost is too high for the insurance company to cover it! In the UK for example, a liver cancer treatment costs £3,500 per month. In India, the same treatment costs £100 per month.
An old adage came to mind when I realized this "an ounce of prevention, is worth a pound of cure". It rings so true and makes so much sense to have the right diet/vitamins coupled with a healthy exercise plan to keep the doctor away.
With multi-billion dollar companies working against the average Joe to patent ever good thing we have out there... Its important to stay healthy and secure.

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Bayho.com Vitamin Brands

I think it is interesting that there are different ways to do yoga. It is great that yoga can adapt to whatever you like. Say, you like hip-hop, you can do hip-hop yoga, which suites your interest in yoga and hip-hop. It is also cool that you can do yoga in the water, such as paddle board yoga. I think I would want to try yoga in the water because it seems very relaxing. I have never taken a yoga class before, but I plan on taking one during Fall 2013 semester at my school.

By Mikaela Conley

April 13, 2013

The bendy brilliance attained by practicing yoga regularly has become a treasure sought after by many Americans. Hindu monks brought the 5,000-year-old practice to the West in the late 19th century, and by the mid-1980s, yoga was heralded as a way to cultivate strength, mindfulness and calm. And as yoga has gained popularity, newfangled ways of practicing have emerged.

Love the ocean? Had a few too many Appletinis last night? Want to be surrounded by "bro" energy? There's a yoga class for you.

It seems only natural that people who practice yoga will combine it with other interests.

"Yoga is constantly evolving," said Kaitlin Quistgaard, editor in chief of Yoga Journal. "Variety gives people an opportunity to approach yoga from different perspectives."

Here's a look at a few bends and twists from traditional yoga.

Hip-hop yoga

Want to hold side crow to some classic Notorious B.I.G.? At YogaHop, with studios in Santa Monica and Pasadena, you can do just that.

Blaring hip-hop, rock and pop music combine with a high-energy vinyasa flow practice. With a lightning bolt as its logo and brightly colored walls and TV screens, the studio is not what one might imagine as the neighborhood yoga class.

Nevertheless, co-owner Matthew Reyes, 44, has practiced yoga for 15 years, but he has taught spinning to booming pump-it-up music. He began to wonder, "How can I make a class so efficient that it has an element of all of these things?"

Six years ago, Reyes founded YogaHop, a practice that combines traditional poses, mainstream music and an intense workout.

Dian Evans, a family nurse practitioner and clinical assistant professor at Emory School of Medicine's School of Nursingwho has studied the influence of yoga on chronic back pain, wondered about the collision of hip-hop and yoga.

"It's fun to move your breath with sound, but I don't know how you can be doing yoga to hip-hop music and breathe in a controlled fashion," Evans said.

But Reyes countered that the end goal for all types of yoga is the same. "Yoga is a big tree with many branches. All the branches have something to offer. Our yoga and a traditional type of yoga all get to the same finish line; we just get there in a dynamic and fun way."

YogaHop

Paddle board yoga

Stand-up paddle boarding has grown exponentially popular in recent years. So why not try some yoga while balancing on a paddle board? That was Sarah Tiefenthaler's logic after taking her yoga-teaching course in Costa Rica and getting introduced to paddle boarding soon after her certification.

"I took the board out every week, and I just started putting together sequences while on the board," said Tiefenthaler, 30, of Los Angeles.

YOGAqua was soon born.

Tiefenthaler said the practice starts off slow, and the class is always held in calm waters. Students have about half an hour to get acquainted with the water and their board, and then their boards are anchored, so there is no worry that they will float away during the class. People shouldn't hesitate to try the class if they've never been on the board, she said. They'll catch on.

The practice works the core muscles even more than a typical practice because of the need to balance and stabilize, said Tiefenthaler.

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How To Prevent Jet Lag

I always wondered what would help prevent jet lag. I thought that if you will be arriving at your destination at night then you shouldn't sleep on the plane, but a 15-hour flight becomes very exhausting. I never thought that sunlight could be used to help prevent jet lag. This is an interesting article to take a look at when you are about to embark on a long journey to another time zone.

By Diderique Konig
Tue, Dec 11, 2012

Flying on an airplane can be an exciting experience. The thrill of seeing family, friends, or a new place causes millions of people to book flights each year.

Whether you are going near or far, chances are that you have suffered from jet lag as a result of flying.

Jet lag, which is a result of crossing multiple time zones rapidly, causes the circadian rhythm (internal body clock) to be thrown off.

The Mayo Clinic says, “jet lag can cause daytime fatigue, an unwell feeling, difficulty staying alert and gastrointestinal problems.”

It usually lasts about two days, depending on the number of time zones crossed, but there are several treatments available.

No medicine has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat jet lag, but natural remedies are plentiful.

The easiest treatment is not only free, but also natural.

Sunlight.

This powerful tool can put you back on track faster then any medicine.

Products containing lavender may also help with sleep.

Various sources have created online jet lag calculators, which can help optimize your sleep schedule by taking the sun into account.

British Airways, together with Dr. Chris Idzikowski from the United Kingdom, has created a widely used jet lag calculator.

Melatonin supplements can also be used to help aid sleep, since melatonin creates feelings of sleepiness. These are taken right before going to sleep so that they can help induce sleep.

MSNBC published an article on the topic in which they suggest using caffeine. This can be effective for alertness or as a booster when one is starting to feel tired in the middle of the day. However, caffeine needs to be consumed at least six hours before going to sleep, since it may cause sleeplessness in some people.

They mentioned an interview with Andrew Watterson, a management consultant based in Dallas, saying that "he plans his day accordingly, making sure not to schedule any important appointments around 3 p.m. Instead, he takes a coffee break."

Another mistake many people make is that they do not sleep on the plane, which aggravates the symptoms of jet lag, because you are depriving yourself of sleep.

Even though jet lag is experienced by people in a variety of ways, the key to conquering it seems to be knowing your own body.

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Easing Brain Fatigue With a Walk in the Park

I think any type of exercise will help erase brain fatigue. Exercise is a great way to relieve the brain of stress and fatigue. It also helps you remember things better and allows you to concentrate better. Every since I started the new semester of college, I have been taking fitness classes, which are activity based classes that are required for my major. I have absolutely seen the benefits that exercise has on my brain. I feel more energized and my brain is able to absorb the new information that I learn at school. 

Scientists have known for some time that the human brain’s ability to stay calm and focused is limited and can be overwhelmed by the constant noise and hectic, jangling demands of city living, sometimes resulting in a condition informally known as brain fatigue.

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

With brain fatigue, you are easily distracted, forgetful and mentally flighty — or, in other words, me.

But an innovative new study from Scotland suggests that you can ease brain fatigue simply by strolling through a leafy park.

The idea that visiting green spaces like parks or tree-filled plazas lessens stress and improves concentration is not new. Researchers have long theorized that green spaces are calming, requiring less of our so-called directed mental attention than busy, urban streets do. Instead, natural settings invoke “soft fascination,” a beguiling term for quiet contemplation, during which directed attention is barely called upon and the brain can reset those overstretched resources and reduce mental fatigue.

But this theory, while agreeable, has been difficult to put to the test. Previous studies have found that people who live near trees and parks have lower levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, in their saliva than those who live primarily amid concrete, and that children with attention deficits tend to concentrate and perform better on cognitive tests after walking through parks or arboretums. More directly, scientists have brought volunteers into a lab, attached electrodes to their heads and shown them photographs of natural or urban scenes, and found that the brain wave readouts show that the volunteers are more calm and meditative when they view the natural scenes.

But it had not been possible to study the brains of people while they were actually outside, moving through the city and the parks. Or it wasn’t, until the recent development of a lightweight, portable version of the electroencephalogram, a technology that studies brain wave patterns.

For the new study, published this month in The British Journal of Sports Medicine, researchers at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and the University of Edinburgh attached these new, portable EEGs to the scalps of 12 healthy young adults. The electrodes, hidden unobtrusively beneath an ordinary looking fabric cap, sent brain wave readings wirelessly to a laptop carried in a backpack by each volunteer.

The researchers, who had been studying the cognitive impacts of green spaces for some time, then sent each volunteer out on a short walk of about a mile and half that wound through three different sections of Edinburgh.

The first half mile or so took walkers through an older, historic shopping district, with fine, old buildings and plenty of pedestrians on the sidewalk, but only light vehicle traffic.

The walkers then moved onto a path that led through a park-like setting for another half mile.

Finally, they ended their walk strolling through a busy, commercial district, with heavy automobile traffic and concrete buildings.

The walkers had been told to move at their own speed, not to rush or dawdle. Most finished the walk in about 25 minutes.

Throughout that time, the portable EEGs on their heads continued to feed information about brain wave patterns to the laptops they carried.

Afterward, the researchers compared the read-outs, looking for wave patterns that they felt were related to measures of frustration, directed attention (which they called “engagement”), mental arousal and meditativeness or calm.

What they found confirmed the idea that green spaces lessen brain fatigue.

When the volunteers made their way through the urbanized, busy areas, particularly the heavily trafficked commercial district at the end of their walk, their brain wave patterns consistently showed that they were more aroused, attentive and frustrated than when they walked through the parkland, where brain-wave readings became more meditative.

While traveling through the park, the walkers were mentally quieter.

Which is not to say that they weren’t paying attention, said Jenny Roe, a professor in the School of the Built Environment at Heriot-Watt University, who oversaw the study. “Natural environments still engage” the brain, she said, but the attention demanded “is effortless. It’s called involuntary attention in psychology. It holds our attention while at the same time allowing scope for reflection,” and providing a palliative to the nonstop attentional demands of typical, city streets.

Of course, her study was small, more of a pilot study of the nifty new, portable EEG technology than a definitive examination of the cognitive effects of seeing green.

But even so, she said, the findings were consistent and strong and, from the viewpoint of those of us over-engaged in attention-hogging urban lives, valuable. The study suggests that, right about now, you should consider “taking a break from work,” Dr. Roe said, and “going for a walk in a green space or just sitting, or even viewing green spaces from your office window.” This is not unproductive lollygagging, Dr. Roe helpfully assured us. “It is likely to have a restorative effect and help with attention fatigue and stress recovery.”

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Lost Sleep Can Lead to Weight Gain

It seems like a lot of people now-a-days are not getting enough sleep. I find myself not getting enough sleep because of school and work. I learned in my anatomy class that when the body is stressed it releases cortisol, which is a stress hormone and when a person is stressed they store that hormone in the abdomen region. Therefore, people who don't get a good night's sleep may be prone to stress and which will lead to weight gain. I know Dr. Oz recommended Guna Sleep, and it seems like a lot of our customers have bought/tried it. I believe sleep is so wonderful, but it is always hard to get adequate restful sleep. 

The best path to a healthy weight may be a good night’s sleep.

For years researchers have known that adults who sleep less than five or six hours a night are at higher risk of being overweight. Among children, sleeping less than 10 hours a night is associated with weight gain.

Now a fascinating new study suggests that the link may be even more insidious than previously thought. Losing just a few hours of sleep a few nights in a row can lead to almost immediate weight gain.

Sleep researchers from the University of Colorado recruited 16 healthy men and women for a two-week experiment tracking sleep, metabolism and eating habits. Nothing was left to chance: the subjects stayed in a special room that allowed researchers to track their metabolism by measuring the amount of oxygen they used and carbon dioxide they produced. Every bite of food was recorded, and strict sleep schedules were imposed.

The goal was to determine how inadequate sleep over just one week — similar to what might occur when students cram for exams or when office workers stay up late to meet a looming deadline — affects a person’s weight, behavior and physiology.

During the first week of the study, half the people were allowed to sleep nine hours a night while the other half stayed up until about midnight and then could sleep up to five hours. Everyone was given unlimited access to food. In the second week, the nine-hour sleepers were then restricted to five hours of sleep a night, while the sleep-deprived participants were allowed an extra four hours.

Notably, the researchers found that staying up late and getting just five hours of sleep increased a person’s metabolism. Sleep-deprived participants actually burned an extra 111 calories a day, according to the findings published last week in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

But even though we burn more calories when we stay awake, losing sleep is not a good way to lose weight. The light sleepers ended up eating far more than those who got nine hours of sleep, and by the end of the first week the sleep-deprived subjects had gained an average of about two pounds.

During the second week, members of the group that had originally slept nine hours also gained weight when they were restricted to just five hours. And the other group began to lose some (but not all) of the weight gained in that first sleep-deprived week.

Kenneth Wrightdirector of the university’s sleep and chronobiology laboratory, said part of the change was behavioral. Staying up late and skimping on sleep led to not only more eating, but a shift in the type of foods a person consumed.

“We found that when people weren’t getting enough sleep they overatecarbohydrates,” he said. “They ate more food, and when they ate food also changed. They ate a smaller breakfast and they ate a lot more after dinner.”

In fact, sleep-deprived eaters ended up eating more calories during after-dinner snacking than in any other meal during the day. Over all, people consumed 6 percent more calories when they got too little sleep. Once they started sleeping more, they began eating more healthfully, consuming fewer carbohydrates and fats. Dr. Wright noted that the effect of sleep deprivation on weight would likely be similar in the real world although it might not be as pronounced as in the controlled environment. The researchers found that insufficient sleep changed the timing of a person’s internal clock, and that in turn appeared to influence the changes in eating habits. “They were awake three hours before their internal nighttime had ended,” Dr. Wright said. “Being awakened during their biological night is probably why they ate smaller breakfasts.”

The effect was similar to the jet lag that occurs when a person travels from California to New York.

Last fall, The Annals of Internal Medicine reported on a study by University of Chicago researchers, who found that lack of sleep alters the biology of fat cells. In the small study — just seven healthy volunteers — the researchers tracked the changes that occurred when subjects moved from 8.5 hours of sleep to just 4.5 hours. After four nights of less sleep, their fat cells were less sensitive to insulin, a metabolic change associated with both diabetes and obesity.

“Metabolically, lack of sleep aged fat cells about 20 years,” said Matthew Brady, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Chicago and the senior author on the study.

“These subjects were in their low 20s but it’s as if they were now middle-aged in terms of their response. We were surprised how profound the effects were.”

Both Drs. Wright and Brady noted that because their studies lasted only days, it was not clear how long-term sleep deprivation affects weight, and whether the body adjusts to less sleep.

Dr. Brady said that while better sleep would not solve the obesity problem, paying more attention to sleep habits could help individuals better manage their weight.

In the future he hopes to study whether a focus on better sleep could improve the health of people in middle age who are overweight or prediabetic.

“Telling someone they need to sleep more as a way to improve their metabolic health, we think would be more palatable,” said Dr. Brady. “We think sleep is very underappreciated.”

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Runners won't fade but colors will run

I've seen many of my friends on Facebook post pictures of themselves with very colorful chalk all over themselves. I had no idea why they were like that, but then I read it was for the color run. It looks really fun, but extremely messy. I also heard that you inhale a lot of colored chalky substance, which probably isn't to good for the lungs. Also, I can't imagine how dirty the inside of cars are after a long day of running through colored chalk. I personally don't like the mess of it, but it does look fun to volunteer for. Those who actually run or jog can get an extremely good workout from the color run. 


By Mary MacVean

March 9, 2013

Take your pick next weekend: a 26.2-mile sweat-slicked slog or a 3.1-mile jog in which you are likely to get blasted with powders in all the colors of the rainbow.

Guess which one is called the Graffiti Run?

"Most people, when they do their first 5K, it's daunting. We're really nonjudgmental," says Nadia Madesan, the run coordinator. "Our run is really friendly to everyone."

The website (www.thegraffitirun.com) says, "So feel free to run, walk, dance, crawl, roll, piggyback ride or somersault your way through the color madness."

The run was inspired by Holi, the Hindu springtime festival of colors.

"You get doused with color. It's photogenic. Kids love it," Madesan said.

The organization holds other running events too. Its first Graffiti Run drew 4,000 runners in Houston in December. And there are similar runs, including Color Me Rad, which has a June race planned in Los Angeles.

The March 16 run is at the L.A. Fairplex in Pomona; same-day registration is allowed if the event doesn't fill up.

After the run, there's a party with music and color packets that create big colorful clouds when tossed. The colored powder is a nontoxic, non-rash-inducing cornstarch-based product, the organizers said.

mary.macvean@latimes.com

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