Heartbreaking And Powerful Photo Of Parents Both On Life Support Saying Goodbye To Each Other (8 pics)

Jim Minnini, 58, has was diagnosed with lung cancer and has been fighting it with the support of his caring sons and a loving wife, Cindy Ireland, for eight years. But his condition worsened in the last few months. 

Cindy worried so much about her husband that she suffered a heart attack and was put on life support herself. First they were in the different hospitals but his dad's last wish was to see his wife once again before he dies.

They were married for 23 years and Jim was "adamant" he wanted to be with his wife in his final moments. That was the first time in the history of hospital that they accepted two patients on life support to be brought into the same room to be together.

Some People Have Really Bizarre Sexual Fantasies (18 pics)

How Tea Prevents Arterial Aging

Our endothelium, the inner lining of our blood vessels that controls the function of every artery in our body, “appears to play a critical role in a variety of human disorders, including peripheral vascular disease, stroke, heart disease, diabetes, insulin resistance, chronic kidney failure, [cancer, and blood clots]….”

Unfortunately, endothelial cells only live about 30 years, and their replacements don’t seem to function as well. So, “[a]s men and women approach the ages of 40 and 50, there is a progressive decline in endothelial function.” At age 50 or 60, we “can no longer tolerate this risk-factor burden that [we] were once able to tolerate at age 10 or 20,” thanks to this progressive decline in endothelial function.

However, there is increasing data to suggest that age is not an immutable risk factor—the decline in artery function is not just an inevitable consequence of aging.

Researchers did not see the same progressive decline in a Chinese population studied. The older Chinese people in their 60s had the arterial function of young folks in their 20s. “These data suggest that progressive endothelial dysfunction is not an inevitable consequence of aging but might be related to prolonged exposure to environmental factors more prevalent in westernized countries than in China.” What could it be? 

Traditional Chinese diets include green tea, which has been shown to have a beneficial effect on endothelial function within 30 minutes of consumption, lasting about two hours. It wasn’t the caffeine, which alone had no effect. They suspect it was the flavonoid phytonutrients in the leaves.

Black tea appears to work about just as well as green tea, but then why is green tea associated with lower heart disease risk while black tea is not? In fact, in two British studies, tea consumption was associated with an increased risk of coronary artery disease. Maybe it’s because the Brits commonly drink their tea with milk, whereas green tea is typically drank straight? If only there were a country that drank black tea, but without milk. There is. The Netherlands. In those studies, black tea was associated with the same drop in risk as the green tea studies. So, maybe it is the milk. But you can’t really know until you put it to the test.

Researchers found the “addition of milk to black tea completely prevents the biological activity of tea in terms of improvement of endothelial function.” So, that could explain it. It appears the milk protein casein is the culprit, though soy protein was recently found to have the same nutrient binding effect.

The European Society of Cardiology issued a press release about the study showing the protective effect of tea “is totally wiped out by adding milk” and suggested consumers should consider cutting down. Milk-drinkers were not amused: “As long as the reported results are not confirmed in a fair number of humans who drink their tea outside the lab setting, we will continue to add milk to ours.” The researchers responded, challenging the notion that their study wasn’t big enough. They had 16 subjects, and the results were highly significant. Across those 16 people, the “addition of milk to tea not only reduced, but completely blunted the effects of tea….The rationale for drinking tea in a lab setting was that only under these conditions could the influence of other beverages and food be controlled for.”

They were doing an experiment after all. Were they supposed to drag the equipment to a Starbucks or something? “As doctors,” the milky tea drinkers asserted, “we would not prescribe a new drug to patients if it was studied only in one small study. In analogy, milk abstinence should not be recommended to tea drinkers…” They apparently were forgetting that the reason we don’t prescribe drugs without overwhelming evidence is that drugs can kill. So the benefits better outweigh the risks, but what’s the downside of a little milk abstinence?

Are Energy Drinks the Real Gateway Drugs to Substance Abuse?

Energy drinks might have you living more of the rock star life than you actually want. No, they won’t result in paparazzi following you around or photographers trying to snap your photo at every turn. But research shows energy drink consumption is linked to substance abuse later in life. While people continue to argue whether alcohol is the gateway drug to harsher substances, new research shows that energy drinks may be the real gateway drugs that can lead to alcohol or other substance abuse problems later in life.

A study published in the medical journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence found that young adults in their twenties who regularly consume energy drinks are far more likely to become illicit substance abusers later in life. The researchers found that those who regularly drank energy drinks were far more likely to use cocaine, non-prescription stimulants and excessive alcohol later in life.

While people of many ages drink energy drinks, the largest users of energy drinks are males between the ages of 18 and 34. The World Health Organization (WHO) also warns that energy drinks may pose a threat to public health, particularly to the health of children and adolescents. Sadly, energy drink consumers are often children and adolescents, who make up a large portion of the users for these beverages. An estimated 68 percent of adolescents and 18 percent of children below the age of 10 drink energy drinks, which could have unsafe amounts of caffeine and sugar for their developing bodies and nervous systems. The American Academy of Pediatrics already warns parents not to let their children consume these beverages. 

Substance abuse later in life is not the only alarming potential side-effect of these beverages. Some other side-effects of drinking energy beverages can include: flushing, headaches, nausea, lethargy, abnormal heart rate, loss of consciousness and even death.

Some brands of energy drinks contain as much as 500 mg of caffeine, or the equivalent of drinking 14 cans of soda in a single sitting. That’s an alarming amount of caffeine even for fully-grown adults but a shocking and unacceptable amount for children. Caffeine stimulates the cardiovascular system and may lead to heart abnormalities.

Additionally, drinking energy beverages often leads to a water consumption shortfall since the drinks may replace the necessary water people need to consume in a day. Sufficient water intake is needed for every single function in the body, from cellular energy production to ensuring proper brain signalling. Remember: water conducts electricity and we are electrical beings—that’s actually how our brain and nervous systems optimally function.

A diet high in fruits and vegetables should provide all the energy people need in their life. Stimulants of any kind are unnecessary when people cut out the excessive amounts of sugar and refined carbs that fill their diet. That’s because sugar and refined carbs cause rapid energy increases but they also cause severe energy drops soon afterward. This energy rollercoaster causes us to feel exhausted and crave stimulants to pick us up, but the result of choosing stimulants like energy drinks is a severe energy crash later in the day. Then we crave another pick-me-up…and so the cycle continues.

Based on the research, energy drinks could be labelled the gateway drug to alcohol abuse, cocaine use or non-prescription stimulant abuse, but I’m guessing you won’t see that in any advertisements currently in use. It doesn’t exactly hold as much appeal as the current ads used to promote these stimulants to children and other individuals, now does it?

Dandelion Root: The Ingredient Your Smoothie is Missing

Now that smoothies are all the rage, I am regularly asked what type of smoothies I drink. I always tell people dandelion smoothies are my all-time favorite. It’s no joke:  they’re not just great from a health perspective but they are absolutely delicious too.

By now, I’m used to peoples’ eyes bugging whenever dandelion smoothies are the topic of conversation, but I always ask people to give roasted dandelion root smoothies a chance.

First, let me share that dandelion has been undergoing extensive research, especially at Canada’s leading medical university for its potent anti-cancer properties (published in the journal Molecules). It has even been effective against chemotherapy-resistant cancers! These types of cancers don’t respond to chemotherapy. Both dandelion root and greens are serious liver boosters as well. Research in the Journal of Medicinal Food found that dandelion helps to protect the liver against damage from other drugs, including painkillers like acetaminophen.

And that’s just the beginning of dandelion’s therapeutic properties. It is high in the essential but mostly overlooked mineral boron that is necessary for bone-building, it purifies the blood and is even a powerful natural antibiotic. 

But even if you’re just interested in a delicious smoothie, adding roasted and ground dandelion root is tastes similar to an iced and blended coffee. Here’s how to make it:

Ingredients

2 cups almond milk
½ cup raw, unsalted cashews
1 teaspoon honey or a dash of stevia (optional, I make mine unsweetened)
2 tablespoons ground, roasted dandelion roots
6 ice cubes
Add the almond milk, cashews, honey or stevia, and dandelion root to a blender. Blend until smooth. Add the ice cubes and blend again. Serve immediately.

How to Roast Dandelion Roots

Dandelion is best picked away from high-traffic areas or areas that have been sprayed with pesticides. Ideally, pick dandelion root after a rainfall since the roots seem to come out easier.

Clean the roots and cut off the tops (you can save the young greens as an addition to salads or sautéed in a little olive oil and minced garlic and tossed with some fresh lemon juice and sea salt). Place on a baking sheet in a 200 degree Fahrenheit oven and roast for 1-1/2 to 3 hours, depending on the root size and desired level of roast.

Dandelion is similar to coffee with light and dark roast options. Remove from the oven and let cool. Grind to a fine powder in a coffee or spice grinder. You can also use a high powered blender with a dry ingredients canister. Store the powder in an airtight jar and use as desired. Alternatively, if it is too much work or you don’t have access to good quality dandelions, you can also purchase pre-roasted and ground dandelion roots in packages at many health food stores and online.

Fighting Lupus with Turmeric

Different autoimmune diseases tend to target different organs. If our immune system attacks the insulin-producing cells in our pancreas, we can end up with type 1 diabetes. If it attacks our thyroid gland, we can end up with hypothyroidism. But, in the autoimmune disease lupus, our immune system attacks the very nucleus of our cells, often producing antibodies and attacking our DNA itself.

So, lupus can damage any organ system and result in almost any complication. Women are nine times as likely to get it, and the peak age of diagnosis is too often at the peak of life. Hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of Americans suffer from this dreaded disease. One of the most common organ-threatening manifestations is kidney inflammation, occurring in as many as half of the patients.

Kidney inflammation is also one of the most serious effects of lupus, caused by the disease itself “or as a result of intense immunosuppressive drug toxicity.” Chemotherapy drugs like Cytoxan (cyclophosphamide), for example, can have severe, life-threatening side effects that may include leukemia and bladder cancer, and many women lose their hair and become permanently infertile. There is a desperate need for better treatment options. 

Oral supplementation of turmeric decreases proteinuria, hematuria, and systolic blood pressure—the cardinal clinical manifestations in patients suffering from relapsing or refractory (meaning, untreatable) lupus kidney inflammation—according to a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. The study looked at proteinuria, the spilling of protein into the urine, “an ominous prognostic sign.” In the control group, three people got better, three people got worse, and the rest pretty much stayed the same. In the turmeric group, one got worse, one stayed the same, but the rest all got better.

Note that the researchers used turmeric, the whole spice, and not curcumin, which is an extracted component often given in pill form. They took women with out-of-control lupus and had them take a quarter teaspoon of turmeric with each meal for three months. From my local supermarket, that would come out to be about a nickel a dose, comparedwith $35,000 a year for one of the latest lupus drugs. Which of the two treatments do you imagine doctors are more likely to be told about?

Can Alcohol Help You Sleep Better?

It’s not uncommon to enjoy a beer or glass of wine at the end of a long day of work. Many people take their drinks with friends or alone at home as they unwind and ready themselves for bed. And these days, it’s hard not to enjoy the variety of craft beers as well as cocktails available on the market.

Aside from the variety of beverages and social quality of drinking, alcohol has long been thought of as a de-stressor and sleep aid. Have one drink and drift off to sleep. And while alcohol does help you get to sleep faster and deeper in the first half of the night, you’ll be surprised to learn that alcohol inhibits deeper sleep during the second half of the night.

THE SLEEP STAGES

Sleep is an important part of healthy living. It’s common knowledge now that too little sleep can lead to an overactive and overstressed body. You need sleep to settle and calm the nervous system and reset your internal clocks. This reset is crucial to your body performing at optimal levels. Often this overstressed state causes some to have a harder time falling asleep, which is why they reach for a glass of wine or a bottle of beer. 

There are four main stages of sleep…

Stage one: In this stage, you enter a light sleep where your body begins to doze off and all your bodily process slow down. Your eye movements slow down and your brain produces alpha and theta waves. It’s a relatively short stage of sleep, only lasting about seven minutes. You can be easily woken up at this point.

Stage two: By now it’s a little harder to wake you up, although it’s still a lighter stage of sleep. You’ll spend most of your sleeping time in this stage. For naps, you’d want to wake up after this stage. And by now your brain creates waves known as sleep spindles.

Stage three and four: Stage three is the beginning of deep sleep. You’ll spend about a quarter of your sleep time in this stage. You’re much less likely to respond to environmental stimuli. And often this stage blends with the fourth stage. Your brain produces delta waves as you dive deeper into restorative sleep. This is the stage in which your body restores muscles, boosts your immune system, stimulates growth and creates energy.

Rapid Eye Movement (REM): About 90 minutes into your sleep cycle, you’ll enter the REM phase of sleep, and the average adult experiences five to six cycles of REM in one night. This is the dreaming state. Your brain waves and body are active. You might even jerk yourself awake. REM plays an important role in memory consolidation.

ALCOHOL’S IMPACT

Everyone experiences these stages of sleep when sleep goes undisturbed. But when you throw alcohol in the mix, you get a whole other experience. As mentioned above, alcohol does help you get to sleep faster. That means entering the first stage of sleep right away. Studies show that you get to sleep faster and deeper in the first half of the night, while your body is still under the effects of alcohol.

But eventually, your body will begin to process the alcohol out of your system. At which point, you become susceptible to little noises and sounds in your environment. And according to one study, alcohol fragments your REM sleep. The REM stage could be longer or shorter than normal. And this fragmentation causes you to teeter between wakefulness and sleep, which inhibits the restorative third stage.

So it’s time to dispel the pervasive belief that a drink before bed relieves stress and aids in sleep. Ultimately, alcohol impairs quality sleep states and leaves your body feeling unrested and overtired the next day. When you go for your next beverage take into consideration the time of day and think twice before drinking before bed.