PujariCenter's blog

Q. My neighbor just built a sauna. I’ve heard that sitting in a sauna is good for my high blood pressure. Should I take my neighbor up on his offer to use his sauna whenever I feel like it?

A. There have been a few studies that look at saunas as therapy for high blood pressure. First, though, ask your neighbor if his sauna uses radiant heat or infrared heat. Radiant heat saunas are usually wood-paneled rooms using radiant heaters that put out dry or heat or wet steam. However, the two best studies I know of regarding saunas for lowering high blood pressure use infrared saunas; these rooms are warmed by infrared heat lamps.

Study: Dr. Gene Bowman and his colleagues studied 104 healthy, well-educated non-smokers without memory or thinking problems, reports a recent Medical News Today article [: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/239762.php]. In this study reported in Neurology online on December 28, 2011, the researchers studied nutritional markers in the participants’ blood. Each person underwent memory and cognitive testing and 47 people also had MRI scans to quantify their brain matter.

Letting Go Clears Space for Something New

 Recently I had a dream about my son John. In it, I sensed he had been having troubles the night before. When I called him and expressed this, he confirmed this – girlfriend trouble, more specifically. He was feeling crushed and emotionally overwhelmed. When emotionally intense situations have arisen in the past, my son has often turned to drug and alcohol to alleviate his feelings.

Q.  Can you use theanine (aka L-theanine) for anxiety? A young woman recently told me she was using it, and said it helped, but I wasn’t sure what it was, and if it really worked. 

A. L-theanine is a common amino acid found in tea leaves and some types of mushrooms. Green teas usually contain 1 to 3 percent of L-theanine. This amino acid may help ease anxiety by increasing levels of certain relaxation promoting neurotransmitters including dopamine and serotonin, which are so-called “happy chemicals” your brain uses to elevate your mood.

   Want to lower your cholesterol, have fewer heart attacks, or have better blood sugar control?  Try laughing! Amazingly, it may be better for you than even taking a medication.

 Let’s take a look at a few studies. During a Loma Linda University study, Lee Burk, DrPH, MPH, divided 20 diabetic patients at high risk for getting heart disease into a laughter and a non-laughter group. The participants of the laughter group watched a funny video for thirty minutes every day for a year. At the end of the year, the people in the laughter group saw their good cholesterol (HDL) rise by 26 percent, and had a 66 percent decrease in the inflammation markers in their blood compared to the control group. This is important because both HDL and inflammation have been shown to be important risk factors for developing heart attacks.

I have a friend who thrives on wanting to be helpful. He’s observant, experienced and insightful, applying new things to his life all the time. Sometimes, though, he’s convinced whatever works for him should work for you, and insists on you taking action. If you don’t, there are subtle and not-so-subtle feelings that he’s judging you for your unwillingness to do as he thinks is best for you.

This desire to change others and not accept them as they are may be a mirror of what is going on inside of us. We all are in a state of growth, but if the imperative to change comes from a need to control or a sense that we’re imperfect, we are like the proverbial dog, always chasing our tail. We are never going to love ourselves fully because there’s some other way we could’ve been “better.” On the other hand, if we love ourselves completely and unconditionally, we can listen to our whole being, making changes from a place of love and desire to expand.

How do you change your own self-critical nature? And how do you change the feelings of inadequacy if you’re on the receiving end of a critical person’s attention?

Meditation is in the news again, thanks to a study published this week which compared experienced and  beginning meditators.

Study:  Researchers at Yale did functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans on 24 participants: half of whom were experienced meditators and half who were novices.  Functional MRI is a form of imaging which allows you to map blood flow changes in the brain as it works. The 12 experienced meditators had reduced activity in a part of the brain called “the default mode network” but had more activity in the posterior cingulate, dorsal anterior cingulate and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex  - all parts of the brain that manage “self-monitoring or thought control”.

Living in Balance this Winter  

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was within me an invincible summer.-Albert Camus                    

Q. Can taking a vitamin D supplement be bad for your heart?

A. The recent uproar over taking vitamin D supplements comes from a study reported in this MSNBC article [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45325473/ns/health-diet_and_nutrition/t/vitamin-d-warning-too-much-can-harm-your-heart/]. What’s at the heart of this matter? On November 16^th, scientist Dr. Jared Bunch, director of electrophysiology research at the Intermountain Medical Center in Murray, Utah, presented a paper that said too much vitamin D can more than double the risk of developing atrial fibrillation, which is a potentially dangerous heart condition associated with heart failure and stroke. In this study that followed 132,000 patients, those participants with the highest vitamin D levels (above 100ng/dl) were 2.5 times more likely to develop atrial fibrillation.

Attitude of Gratitude May Benefit Your Health and Well-Being

Study: Researcher R.A. Emmons divided 201 undergraduate college students into three groups, and gave them one of three assignments. The first group wrote down things they were grateful for, small or large, one time a week for nine weeks. The second group wrote down hassles – events which irritated them - once a week for nine weeks. The third group simply listed events that had happened, with no good or bad qualifiers.