Musing through Yellow

I knew banana's were good, were a complete food per Dr. Mindell, but there is more good news! They are also wonderful for High Blood Pressure, who knew? Loaded with a hefty dose of potassium, which is best known as a blood pressure regulator. Many cardiologists believe that High Blood Pressure is caused as much by low potassium as by high sodium. According to Eva Obarzanek of National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, "High Blood Pressure is not an inherent part of aging," aren't we all happy to hear this! Unfortunately, the western diet that consist of processed food, is stripped of the potassium that we need. Two hundred years ago, the average person consumed eight times more potassium than sodium. Today, that ratio is one to four in the opposite direction (accoding to The Color Code: A Revolutionary Eating Plan for Optimum Health). No wonder hypertension is practically a national epidemic. Get your Yellow ON! eat more banana's!

Combining Color and Scent, well, just makes a lot of sense. Considering how the Sun has all the colors in the rays which feed the plants, that we use to feed and heal ourselves, we are then getting our color through the plants as well. When using Aromatherapy with Color Therapy look to the essential oils of bergamot, Birch, Cardamom, Celery, Coriander, Cajeput, Citronella, Cumin, Lemon, Lemongrass, Marigold, Grapefruit, Basil, Fennel, Vetivert, Cinnamon, Camphor (yellow), Angelica, Aniseed, Caraway, Cedarwood, Ginger, Oregano, to name a few. To find out more on this subject, there is a great book by Suzy Chiazzari, Colour Scents.
For Chakra Therapy and Yellow, we would look to the Solar Plexus Chakra / Navel Chakra / Manipura /10-leaf-lotus. When looking here we find that this Chakra is associated with our sense of self-esteem and self-worth. It is also a place where we tend to feel strongly the emotion of fear and intimidation. It is the area that governs the pancreas, adrenals, liver and stomach. The Bija Mantra for the Solar Plexus is Ram (pronounced RUM).

Chakra Tonic: ~~Papaya Pineapple Smoothie~~

Papaya is the "acknowledged universal healer" in the INDONESIAN healing tonic tradition of Jamu. The enzyme papain seems to be able to digest almost anything. It is found in the juice of the fruit and is highly concentrated in the leaves of the plant. Pineapple contains the enzyme bromelain, which is also an appetite suppressant.
1/2 pineapple cut into small pieces
1 small papaya or 1/4 to 1/2 large papaya cut into small pieces
1 cup apple juice or 1 cup purified water

Bonus super ingredients; 1 teaspoon probiotic formula, or small vial of Siberian ginseng for adrenal support.

Place ingredients in a blender and puree at high speed. Serve and enjoy this tropical cleansing/digestive smoothie.

For this and other tonics grab the book, Chakra Tonics: Essential Elixirs for the Mind, Body, and Spirit, Elise Marie Collins


Yellow is used for the nerves and brain; is a motor stimulant and a nerve builder. It has a stimulating, cleansing and eliminating action on the Liver, Intestines, and the Skin. As well, it purifies the blood stream and activates the Lymphatic system. To the ancients, yellow was the animating color for life; it suggests joy, gaiety, merriment. It is the color of the intellect, of perception rather than reason. (Color Therapy, R.Ambers)

This is just the beginning of my Musings through Yellow...

The Correlation between Light and Sleep Disorders

The University of Michigan Sleep Laboratory

JACKSON, MI – July 29, 2009 – In May of 2008, the University of Michigan opened its Sleep and Chronophysiology Laboratory, which is one of the world’s first laboratories devoted solely to research on how sleep and biological rhythms influence depression, substance abuse and other aspects of mental well-being. Research shows that light strongly affects a person’s sleep and circadian rhythm, so installing the right kind of light in the laboratory was crucial to its success. After meetings with many companies and designers, the University chose Full Spectrum Solutions to design and install its new lighting system for the laboratory.

To ensure the most accurate results, the bedrooms are structurally isolated from the main building using a suspension system. Full Spectrum Solutions designed the lighting control system using LabView Programming Software from National Instruments. In conjunction with UltraLux® T5 fluorescent high bay fixtures using a combination of BlueMax™ High Definition lamps yielding an amazing 96CRI at three different color temperatures of 3,500K, 5,900K, and 10,000K , researchers are able to vary the light to create any condition. “We worked closely with lighting scientist, Professor Mojtaba Navvab at the Enhanced Spectrum Laboratory at U of M and the doctors at the sleep lab to create a one of a kind lighting system,” said Michael Nevins, lighting engineer and CEO of Full Spectrum Solutions. “You can simulate almost any lighting condition you would like, even what it would be like on Mars.”

The light system can glow as bright as 20,000 Lux, a measurement equal to the brightest sunny day, and can be dimmed to just a red glow that doesn’t register in the brain in a way that affects melatonin (sleep hormone). “The program can be formatted to simulate lighting conditions in any time zone,” said Cal Nevins, control system engineer for the project. “For example, researchers can easily program the daylight structure to match Alaska’s so they can study the effect light, or the lack thereof, has on residents of Alaska.”

The center is set up so that a research volunteer can be entirely closed off from the outside world, for a couple of days or weeks, unable to tell what time of day it is. “What makes this lab unique is the ability to manipulate the light to create any condition,” said Professor Navvab. “After 72 hours, research participants have no true concept of time. They can only assume the time based off of the lighting levels at that time.”

The suites are specially equipped with banks of lights on the walls and ceiling that can be adjusted precisely by the center’s staff to simulate all times of day or night. This can allow a volunteer’s innate circadian rhythms — patterns of rest and activity in both body and mind — to be monitored or even altered temporarily. The facility can also be used for light therapy to combat problems such as depression.

“Already, we know that people with depression, seasonal affective disorders, anxiety disorders, alcoholism, and many more conditions suffer terrible disruptions to their sleep patterns, and that in turn, a lack of good-quality sleep worsens their conditions,” said Roseanne Armitage, a professor of psychiatry at the U-M Medical School, and director of the laboratory. “But there are so many unanswered questions about why this happens, how early in life it begins, and how it might be treated or prevented. This lab will help us do just that.”1

When asked how the lighting system is performing a year after the opening of the sleep center, Bob Hoffmann, Assistant Director of the lab reported, “I am pleased to say that it is a remarkable system. Light temperature and intensity are easily controlled and setting up a schedule for them is very simple with the LabView front end.”

Full Spectrum Solutions, Inc. supports lighting research through its affiliate memberships and partnerships with medical and scientific researchers. For more information, visit HUwww.fullspectrumsolutions.comUH, or email Lindsey Edwards at HUlindsey@fullspectrumsolutions.comUH

http://www.bignews.biz/?id=808230&pg=1&keys=lighting-sleep-depression-disorder

Humans Glow in Visible Light

By Charles Q. Choi, LiveScience
(July 22) - The human body literally glows, emitting a visible light in extremely small quantities at levels that rise and fall with the day, scientists now reveal.
Past research has shown that the body emits visible light, 1,000 times less intense than the levels to which our naked eyes are sensitive. In fact, virtually all living creatures emit very weak light, which is thought to be a byproduct of biochemical reactions involving free radicals.
(This visible light differs from the infrared radiation — an invisible form of light — that comes from body heat.)
To learn more about this faint visible light, scientists in Japan employed extraordinarily sensitive cameras capable of detecting single photons. Five healthy male volunteers in their 20s were placed bare-chested in front of the cameras in complete darkness in light-tight rooms for 20 minutes every three hours from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. for three days.
The researchers found the body glow rose and fell over the day, with its lowest point at 10 a.m. and its peak at 4 p.m., dropping gradually after that. These findings suggest there is light emission linked to our body clocks, most likely due to how our metabolic rhythms fluctuate over the course of the day.
Faces glowed more than the rest of the body. This might be because faces are more tanned than the rest of the body, since they get more exposure to sunlight — the pigment behind skin color, melanin, has fluorescent components that could enhance the body's miniscule light production.A light-senstive camera shows a man's upper body, especially his face, emitting visible light in small quantities that vary during the day.


Since this faint light is linked with the body's metabolism, this finding suggests cameras that can spot the weak emissions could help spot medical conditions, said researcher Hitoshi Okamura, a circadian biologist at Kyoto University in Japan.
"If you can see the glimmer from the body's surface, you could see the whole body condition," said researcher Masaki Kobayashi, a biomedical photonics specialist at the Tohoku Institute of Technology in Sendai, Japan.
The scientists detailed their findings online July 16 in the journal PLoS ONE.
http://news.aol.com/article/humans-glow/584160?icid=main|htmlws-main|dl1|link6|http%3A%2F%2Fnews.aol.com%2Farticle%2Fhumans-glow%2F584160

Green Tea: A New Weapon Against Prostate Cancer?

Many medical “discoveries” have occurred quite by happenstance. For instance, consider the story of Green Tea which began some 5,000 years ago when, as Chinese legend has it, leaves from a nearby Camellia sinensis tree fell into an emperor’s boiling pot of water. The leaves turned the water a light-brown color and gave off a delightful aroma. The emperor, upon taking a sip, found it also had an excellent taste and proclaimed it as “heaven sent.” Since then, the delectable brew has been considered a health-promoting beverage in China; used to treat everything from headaches to depression.

Today, a wealth of studies has provided hard evidence for its positive effects on health. Drinking green tea is reputed to promote heart health, lower high cholesterol levels, lessen free radical damage to cells, fight obesity, inhibit the abnormal formation of blood clots, and slow the progression of age-related cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers now say that certain compounds in green tea may actually slow the progression of prostate cancer, a disease that kills more men each year in the United States than any cancer other than lung cancer.

Previous studies have shown that green tea may be linked to a reduced incidence of prostate cancer, and its polyphenols have been regarded as a potential cancer therapy. But last year, the FDA announced that the evidence for green tea benefits was inconclusive, because people consume relatively small quantities. So, Dr. James Cardelli, and his colleagues at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in Shreveport, carried out a clinical trial to determine the effects of short-term supplementation with increased amounts of the active compounds in green tea on the progression of prostate cancer.

The small study consisted of 26 men between 41 and 68 years of age who had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and were scheduled for radical prostatectomy. The men were put on a daily dose of four capsules containing a total of 1.3 grams of polyphenon E, equivalent to about 12 cups of normally brewed concentrated green tea, for 12 to 73 days (with an average time of 34.5 days), until the day before surgery. Blood tests showed a significant reduction in serum levels of three biomarkers associated with the growth and spread of prostate cancer: hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), and prostate specific antigen (PSA).

On an average, HGF decreased 18.9 percent, VEGF decreased by 9.9 percent and PSA dropped by 10.4 percent. Some patients demonstrated reductions of more than 30 percent. The researchers said that in vitro, EGCG (the main catechin in polyphenon E) swiftly blocked the production of HGF, and the block “seems to be at the level of transcription.” EGCG also blocked the production of VEGF, which plays a critical role in the angiogenic process in cancer-associated fibroblasts, they noted. Age, race, and time on the drug did not have a significant effect on the changes in serum biomarkers.

Previous studies have suggested that high levels of EGCG may have adverse effects on liver function, but in this study the liver function of the patients remained normal. “Our results show a significant reduction in serum levels of PSA, HGF, and VEGF in men with prostate cancer after brief treatment with EGCG (Polyphenon E), with no elevation of liver enzymes. These findings support a potential role for Polyphenon E in the treatment or prevention of prostate cancer,” the researchers concluded.

Dr. Cardelli admits that the study is still in an early stage and that the findings need to be verified by larger, placebo-controlled trials. “Green tea can keep cancer from growing very fast, but it may not be able to shrink tumors,” he said. “But it can be a good addition to traditional therapies, like chemotherapy or radiation.”

“We think that the use of tea polyphenols alone or in combination with other compounds currently used for cancer therapy should be explored as an approach to prevent cancer progression and recurrence," Dr. Cardelli said. “There is reasonably good evidence that many cancers are preventable, and our studies using plant-derived substances support the idea that plant compounds found in a healthy diet can play a role in preventing cancer development and progression.”

John Neate, chief executive of the Prostate Cancer Charity, says though there have been a number of studies into the potential benefits of green tea, there is no conclusive evidence. “The results of this study do suggest that there is merit in further research into the effects of extracts of green tea, both in relation to its impact on the prevention of prostate cancer and in controlling progression in men already diagnosed with the disease, as was investigated in this instance,” he said. “These initial positive findings could indicate that green tea could have a place in ‘active surveillance’, where a slow-growing, low risk tumor is monitored for changes and men want to take something which could help keep progression at bay.”

“Potentially, this could mean completely avoiding, in some cases, any of the more usual medical interventions and their associated side effects,” Neate said.

Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death among American men. According to the American Cancer Society, prostate cancer will be diagnosed in 192,280 men and will kill 27,360 in 2009. Men over 50 are urged to get tested for the disease annually, however very few do, putting them at risk of being diagnosed at a later stage rather than earlier in the cancer process.

The study is published in the journal Cancer Prevention Research.
By: Madeline Ellis
Published: Monday, 22 June 2009
http://www.healthnews.com/natural-health/green-tea-a-new-weapon-against-prostate-cancer-3339.html

Color can be a prescription for stress relief and body balance

More Health News 03:25 PM Mountain Standard Time on Wednesday, February 18, 2009 Brandy Aguilar, Special Projects Producer
9 p.m. Extra: Color Therapy

“There's the outside stress which is something I can't control and with the economy and I'm in real estate and there are things I just have to deal with,” admits Kerri Shearer.

She feels like a lot of people these days...stressed out. To help her wind down she turned to Naturopathic Dr. Donese Worden. Shearer says, “I was completely open to it and it didn't scare me. I thought it was actually interesting.”

She is hoping color can conquer her stress. Dr. Worden explains, “Our cells communicate to each other through light frequency. We are literally beings of light and that's how our cells and blood, everything we’re made of, communicates so it makes sense we put in different frequencies and, in this case color, it makes a big difference physiologically to the patient.”

Color therapy can be used to balance energy in areas of our bodies that are lacking vibrance, whether it be physical, emotional, spiritual or mental. Dr. Worden says, “We’re just giving the body the energy it needs to fix itself. If they have depression, we will use orange or red and give them energy and pull them out. If they’re stressed out we don't want to use red. We use blue or green.”

Dr. Worden says blue and green are supposed to give off a relaxing effect. She explains, “The most powerful chemical we've got, even beyond drugs, are what are own brain makes so if we’re ready and receptive for this type of therapy we'll get a better effect then if we have resistance.”

Other tools that can be used in conjunction with color therapy are aromatherapy, lasers, and acupuncture.” Dr. Worden says, “Most people in their first session within just a matter of minutes are feeling it. They can notice it, they feel it and it's not something that takes long periods of time to change the body.”

As for Shearer, she says her stressful days are long gone. “It felt good because I felt like I was on this little journey, emotionally, but physically I know it was helping as well.”

http://www.azfamily.com/news/local/stories/Phoenix-health-news-021809-color-therapy-9pm-extra.2bc45212.html

Alain Parkinson Luminarium at Budapest's Sziget Music Festival

Alain Parkinson is a British artist who designed an inflatable 'Luminarium' to serve as a chillout space during the Budapest Sziget Music Festival. The festival is held on an island on the Danube river running through the city, and has been running since 1993. In 2006 attendance neared 400,000, and this year it seems that it will reach that capacity again.

Circadian math: 1 plus 1 doesn't always equal 2

Researchers have found that the circadian system may be able to distinguish between lights of different colors. Credit: Rensselaer/Lighting Research Center

Like a wristwatch that needs to be wound daily for accurate time-telling, the human circadian system — the biological cycles that repeat approximately every 24 hours — requires daily light exposure to the eye's retina to remain synchronized with the solar day. In a new study published in the June issue of Neuroscience Letters, researchers have demonstrated that when it comes to the circadian system, not all light exposure is created equal.

The findings have profound implications for exploring how lighting can be used to adjust our bodies' clocks, and they could redefine the way lighting is manufactured, according to Mariana Figueiro, lead author of the paper and assistant professor in the Lighting Research Center (LRC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Short-wavelength light, including natural light from the blue sky, is highly effective at stimulating the circadian system. Exposure to other wavelengths — and thus colors — of light may necessitate longer exposure times or require higher exposure levels to be as effective at "winding the watch."

In some instances, exposure to multiple wavelengths (colors) of light simultaneously can result in less total stimulation to the circadian system than would result if either color were viewed separately, a phenomenon known as "spectral opponency." The LRC scientists have shown that the circadian system shares neurons in the retina — which exhibit spectral opponency and form the foundation for our perception of color — with the visual system. Thus, in principle, the circadian system may be able to distinguish between lights of different colors.

More than meets the eye

To demonstrate that the circadian system exhibited spectral opponency formed in the retina, the researchers exposed 10 subjects to three experimental conditions: one unit of blue light to the left eye plus one unit of green light to the right eye; one unit of blue light to the right eye plus one unit of green light to the left eye; and half a unit of blue light plus half a unit of green light to both eyes and then measured each individual's melatonin levels, a natural indicator of the circadian clock.

"The first two conditions — exposure to a single color in each eye — did not result in a significant difference in melatonin suppression, while the third condition — exposure to both colors in both eyes — resulted in significantly less melatonin suppression," said Figueiro. "Even though the amount of light at the eye was the same in all three conditions, when the two colors of light were combined in the same eye, the response of the system was reduced due to spectral opponent mechanisms formed in the retina."

This indicates that spectral opponency is a fundamental characteristic of how the human retina converts light into neural signals in the human circadian system, according to Figueiro.

The findings also verify the accuracy of a new quantification system LRC researchers developed in 2006 to calculate the "circadian efficacy" of different light sources. Called the model of human circadian phototransduction,
the tool correctly predicted the circadian system response demonstrated under each of the three experimental conditions.

The model appears to correctly predict the circadian response to any light source, and can be used as the foundation for a new system of circadian photometry, much like the current system of photometry based on human vision.

Quantification of light as a stimulus for the circadian system provide new scientific insights into how the human body processes light for the circadian system, according to Figueiro.

Nocturnal melatonin, a hormone produced at night and under conditions of darkness, is used as a marker for the circadian clock. Scientific evidence suggests that disruption of the circadian system — and thus the melatonin cycle — may result in increased malignant tumor growth, as well as poor sleep quality, lack of alertness, seasonal depression, and immune deficiencies.

Now that the model can predict circadian efficacy for any light source, Figueiro and her research partners have begun studying the way time of night affects the potency of light exposure. Once complete, the comprehensive model will allow manufacturers to develop light sources that most effectively stimulate and, importantly, do not stimulate the circadian system.

Source: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
http://www.physorg.com/news132055021.html
Published: 10:57 EST, June 07, 2008