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Posts Tagged ‘Trace Minerals’
UncategorizedOctober 23rd, 2009
Anxiety is very wide spread today because of our busy lifestyles and poor eating habits. I myself have struggled with anxiety and panic attacks for about 14 years. I have tried lots of different ways to cope or possibly cure my anxiety and thought I should share a few things that have worked for me.
One thing I learned is that the adrenal glands are very important in understanding anxiety. They are responsible for dealing with stress to the body in whatever form it takes. That means both mental and physical stress. In order to help your anxiety, you need to improve your adrenal health. Anxiety is almost always a sign of adrenal fatigue or overload.
The first thing you need to do is support your adrenal glands with the supplements below:
Vitamin C (2,000-4,000 mg/day)
Vitamin E w/mixed tocopherols (800 IU/day)
Vitamin B100 complex
Pantothenic acid (1200-1500 mg/day)
Magnesium citrate (800-1200 mg)
Liquid trace minerals
Adrenal Glandular
Two excellent herbs that will support your adrenal glands and give you immediate relief are ashwagandha and Siberian ginseng. Ashwagandha has been shown to have a sedating effect on the body and helps to rebuild the digestive and nervous system. I especially like using it to help me fall asleep when I’m feeling restless at bedtime. Siberian ginseng has been used traditionally to stimulate and nourish the adrenal glands and increase mental alertness. I like taking this in the morning.
I have also benefited from adding salt to my diet. First thing in the morning and before that time of day when you’re the most tired, put 1/8 to 1/2 teaspoonful of sea salt or Celtic salt into an 8 oz. glass of water and drink. I know you’ve been told salt isn’t good for you but if your adrenal glands are not functioning up to par you most likely have a sodium deficiency. Sea salt or Celtic salt are so much better for you than table salt and also supply up to 80 other minerals.
Adrenal fatigue can also cause low blood sugar or hypoglycemia, so eliminating all sugars from your diet will help tremendously. Instead of three meals a day eat five to six smaller meals or snacks throughout the day to keep your blood sugar balanced and you will feel better. Make sure these snacks are healthy foods with an equal ratio of fats, proteins and complex carbs.
You will do much better on a high protein diet along with healthy sources of saturated fats such as butter, coconut oil, and olive oil. Eliminate or reduce the amount of coffee you drink as it stimulates the adrenals and can cause further stress. For the same reason also avoid chocolate.
If you find yourself in the middle of a panic attack, here are some tips to help you get through it.
First thing you need to do, believe it or not, is relax. Sit down or lay down immediately. Begin to breath in very slowly and then exhale very slowly. Tell yourself that everything is alright. I thought this sounded so simplistic the first time I heard it, but it works. If you respond to the panic attack you begin to fuel the attack and make it worse.
As most panic attacks are caused by a dive in blood sugar you should then drink a glass or two of diluted fruit juice (all fruit no sugar). This will quickly bring your blood sugar back up to normal and you’ll feel a lot better. Eat something after the juice that has a combination of protein, fat and complex carbs. This will make sure that your blood sugar will not drop again right away.
I have found that supporting my adrenal glands with the above supplements, herbs and diet has stopped my panic attacks completely and has improved my anxiety greatly. I’m enjoying how calm I feel and I’m loving it.
Adrenal Fatigue, Adrenal Glands, Anxiety And Panic Attacks, Ashwagandha, Dealing With Stress, Eating Habits, Ginseng, Glass Of Water, Health Anxiety, Low Blood Sugar, Magnesium Citrate, Mental Alertness, Pantothenic Acid, Physical Stress, Sea Salt, Siberian Ginseng, Sodium Deficiency, Table Salt, Trace Minerals, Vitamin B100
In what seems to be a genuine concern of the effects of radon emissions in residential homes, a certain website from a non-profit organization out of Houston has made it a point to imply without scientific proof, that natural stone could be a major contributor of radon in a household.
The allusion that seems to be made, that natural stone installed in your home is dangerous to your health is raised repeatedly on the website and in a recent local Houston TV news program.
It’s interesting to note that the two major contributors of this non-profit organization are manufacturers of engineered stone. One of those contributing manufacturers has a marketing executive on the board of directors of this particular organization.
From what may be perceived on the surface as perhaps another “going green” ad campaign, seems to be a different slant on the ongoing battle of the engineered stone manufacturers against natural stone.
Keep in mind that granite as does most natural components found in building material, allows vapors to pass through them that might contain trace amounts of radon. There are very small amounts of uranium found in trace minerals such as biotite in some natural stones. When quarried if a large cluster of biotite is exposed the result initially would be a radon reading. However, once a piece of granite or natural stone exposed to a large amount of uranium rich mineral in the ground is removed from the source and exposed to the air, the radon vapor transmission would weaken drastically and then dissipate. Simply put, think of natural stone as a very dense sponge that allows water, air and yes radon to pass through the stone. Once the stone is removed from the source of radon (the earth) the stone has no radon to filter through it.
We do endorse Radon testing but to allude that natural stone is a main contributor seems ludicrous.
To Quote Donald Langmuir, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Geochemistry, Colorado School of Mines, & President, Hydrochem Systems Corp.
”To show how laughable are the concerns of radon emitted from natural stone, the typical granite countertop in our example will release 7.4 x 10 -7 pCi/L of air. This corresponds to 2.7 x 10 -8 atom decays per second (dps). This represents 0.85 decays per year. In other words, less than one atom of radon is produced by the countertop in one year. This is hardly worth getting excited about. I would suggest that a good way to reduce our exposure to the radon present in outdoor air would be to build an air-tight house out of granite countertops! There are certain properties of rocks that can increase their radon emanation efficiency, or in other words increase the release of radon from a given weight of rock. These are rock properties that maximize the exposure of internal or external rock surfaces to water or air, allowing any radon gas to escape. The author of ‘Granite and Radon’ argues that such properties, which include rock porosity, fissuring and mylonitization, will increase radon releases. This is probably true, however, a granite with such properties would be too brittle to make into a countertop, and too open to take a polish, and so would not be marketable as a countertop – unless the rock pores were first filled with a chemical sealant. Such sealing would also eliminate any possible radon release problems.”
In a more recent study that was conducted by L. L. Chyi, a Ph.D. and professor of Geochemistry and Environmental Geology at The University of Akron, Akron, Ohio. Dr. Chyi studied 13 of the most popular granites used throughout the United States as determined by an industry-wide survey. Due to their popularity these 13 granites, are believed to represent up to 85% of the granite countertop market in recent years. The granite types are as follows:
1. New Venetian Gold, Brazil; medium grained, yellow-beige gneiss with many dark red garnets
2. Uba Tuba, Brazil; A medium- to coarse grained, olive-green granite
3. Santa Cecilia, Brazil; A coarse-grained, yellow-grey gneiss with up to pie-sized, red garnets
4. Tropic Brown, Saudi Arabia; medium-grained, brown granite
5. Absolute Black, India; black basalt
6. Tan Brown, India; A black-brown igneous rock with big, shapeless, brown-red feldspar crystals
7. Giallo Ornamental, Brazil; coarse-grained, brown-yellow granulite with some brown-red garnets
8. Crema Bordeaux, Brazil; Juparana Crema Bordeaux (Brunello). A coarse- to very coarse-grained, pink to red granite with areas of quartz, alkali feldspar and quite a lot of ore
9. Baltic Brown, Finland; brown-black granite
10. Giallo Veneziano, Brazil; medium- to coarse-grained, ochre-yellow to golden-brown, also light pink, gneiss
11. Dakota Mahogany, USA; medium- to coarse-grained, brown-red granite
12. China Black, China, a fine-grained plutonic rock
13. Yellow Star, China, a medium-grained yellow to pink granite
The testing methodology was designed to measure the amount of radon which each granite type would add to the interior of a 2,000 square foot, normally ventilated home with 8 ft ceilings. The results show that Crema Bordeaux (the most active in terms of radon emissions) would contribute a concentration component of less than 0.28 pCi/L, or less than 7% of the EPA’s recommended actionable level of 4.0 pCi/L. This radon amount is well below a level which might cause health concerns. Tropic Brown and Baltic Brown, second and third in radon emanation based upon Dr. Chyi’s testing, amounted to only 1% of this action level. The other granites tested added almost immeasurable amounts of radon to the house. Radon atoms in pore spaces and fractures are of minimal concern in the case of granite countertops
“The average radionuclide contents of your building material samples are similar to other average granite samples and other common earth-derived building materials such as brick and soil. Thus, the amount of gamma radiation emitted from similar masses of these building materials will be approximately the same;
There is little sample-to-sample variation in the radon family radionuclide concentrations; the radon flux is somewhat larger for the counter-top squares than for the smaller samples. This indicates that the effective diffusion length is only on the order of the thickness of the counter-top samples, i.e. several centimeters. Thus, material thicker than 5 cm (2′) most likely will not emit more than the counter-top samples.
While we feel that health safety is a great concern especially in our homes, for an industry to attempt to gain financially by “scare tactics” or under the auspices of “Eco friendly” is reprehensible. We urge the consumer to not be taken in by these alarmist tactics.
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Biotite, Colorado School Of Mines, Donald Langmuir, Engineered Stone, Genuine Concern, Geochemistry, Granite Countertops, Houston Tv, Natural Components, Natural Stones, News Program, Non Profit Organization, Phd Professor, Professor Emeritus, Radon Emissions, Rich Mineral, School Of Mines, Trace Minerals, Vapor Transmission, Water Air