Study Shows Intermittent Fasting’s Effect on Long Term Memory
With cognitive decline on the rise, a search for solutions has never been more pressing. A groundbreaking recent study on intermittent fasting suggests that the way we time our eating may play a significant role in our brain health.
For thousands of years, people have been fasting for religious and spiritual reasons while reaping a host of physical benefits. Today, however, the standard western diet has left many overfed and undernourished. While fasting practices are not new, there is a host of new research showing they may be an important key to preserving health in a time of disease.
Dr. Edward Group is a naturopathic physician who has been incorporating fasting in his practice for years with great success.
“Fasting is something that has been used for thousands of years actually, and it’s nothing more than really giving your body the time it needs to heal itself,” Dr. Group said. “The human race, right now, probably eats ten times, or more, the amount of food that we need to repair and regenerate.”
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Scientists Finally Finished Mapping the Human Genome
Scientists announce they have finally completed the map of the entire human genome. Will the information contained within unlock our true potential for health and wellbeing, or is there another more expansive perspective on the role genes play in our lives?
After decades of research, scientists have recently announced the completion of the human genome, what some call “the genetic instruction book.” Widely used for guiding biomedical research, many experts herald this as a crowning achievement in the field.
Dr. Bruce Lipton is a cellular biologist and a pioneer in the field of epigenetics, which takes a comprehensive, cutting-edge approach to the understanding of our relationship to our genes.
“Most people are really excited about the fact that the human genome has been deciphered; they’ve identified how many genes are in the human genome,” Lipton said. “The original reason for the human genome was, it was thought the genes control all the characteristics of our life and therefore if I had a compendium of all the genes I could fix anybody who has a characteristic they want to change. Francis Crick, one of the cofounders of the story, came up with something called “the central dogma,” the belief that genes are the source of biological information.
“They’re translated into another form of nucleic acid called RNA. So, DNA goes into RNA which is like a xeroxed copy of the DNA, and then the RNA is used as a template to make the proteins of the body,” he said. “According to the central dogma, information only flows in one way — it flows from the DNA to the RNA to the protein. This led to an understanding called ‘genetic determinism.’ Genetic determinism is the belief that the genetic blueprint of your life is carried by the DNA that you inherited at the moment of conception.”