Want to boost your brainpower? Get moving

Working out may help you grow new brain cells, small study shows
Reuters News Service

WASHINGTON - Exercise boosts brainpower by building new brain cells in a brain region linked with memory and memory loss, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.

Tests on mice showed they grew new brain cells in a brain region called the dentate gyrus, a part of the hippocampus that is known to be affected in the age-related memory decline that begins around age 30 for most humans.

The researchers used magnetic resonance imaging scans to help document the process in mice — and then used MRIs to look at the brains of people before and after exercise.

They found the same patterns, which suggests that people also grow new brain cells when they exercise.

“No previous research has systematically examined the different regions of the hippocampus and identified which region is most affected by exercise,” Dr. Scott Small, a neurologist at Columbia University Medical Center in New York who led the study, said in a statement. See: Exercise gives a boost to brain cells

African Hebrew Development Agency Promotes Healthy Pregnancies in Ghana

Titbit's of sound and safe delivery
Ghana News Agency
by Audrey Dekalu

Accra, GNA - Spotlessness should be the catch phrase of every woman carrying a baby in her womb. It is not costly to her health and that of her unborn baby. In fact she is not better off without it. Cleanliness is also a special glow that gives a pregnant woman the freshness and beauty she must enjoy during the pre-natal and post-natal periods.

A relaxed and positive mind is another added value to pregnancy. She must not cultivate rigid and other negative emotions that would affect her unborn baby.

Meditation should be the key. A pregnant woman should recite positive affirmations and pray without ceasing.She must also be careful of what she observes around her and maintain a healthy and balance diet.

"Regenerative Health and Nutrition" project being implemented by the Ministry of Health on pilot basis and made available to the Ghana News Agency observed that during the pre-natal period, there is an increase in the hormone level that causes more oil and perspiration to be released as well as vaginal secretions. The project, supported by the African Hebrew Development Agency from Dimona in Israel, is also to introduce plant-based nutrition for pregnant women.

It focuses on exercises during pregnancy, including deep relaxation techniques that are beneficial to management of pain in labour thereby improving the health of expectant mothers during the pre-natal period. These decrease the chances of complicated labour and delivery and facilitate the delivery of a healthy infant. See Complete Article: Health News of Thursday, 8 March 2007

SHANA TOVAH - HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!

KNN Staff

"This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you." - Exodus 12:2

Today is the beginning of the Hebraic New Year. On Behalf of KNN and it’s Staff we would like to wish all of you a blessed Shana Tovah – Happy New Year.

We would also like to thank all of you for “Plugging In” to KNN this past year. Last year we had over 11,000 visitors to the KNN blog site from all over the World. This coming year promises to be even better that last year. Thank-you again for all of your support. Keep on “Plugging In” to KNN-Your One Stop Kingdom News Source!!!!!

Feel free to tell us what this New Year means to you. What would you like to do better this year? What would you like to perfect this year? Place you comments in the comment section below….Your words of inspiration may be a help to someone else.

Also feel free to add your special Shana Tovah Greetings to your friends and family. Seasons Greetings!!! Yah Khai!!!!

Michael Baisden to host our own Dr. Baruch

Listen to the Michael Baisden Show Weds. March 21st at 5:00 p.m. EST as he hosts "Our Very Own" Dr. Baruch, founder of Everlasting Life and CEO of Eat The Cure. The Michael Baisden is local in 52 different markets and reaches millions of listeners both on the radio and internet.

For more information contact Dr. Baruch at getwell@drbaruch.com or by phone at (240) 744-0437. Also visit: www.drbaruch.com

Drinking water can lower risk for coronary heart disease

By Dr. Baruch

In 1999, nearly 530,000 people died from coronary heart disease. More than half of them had no previous symptoms of heart disease. Drinking high levels of water can significantly reduce the risk of coronary heart disease, say researchers at Loma Linda University.

In a press conference held Thursday, April 25, the results of a study to be published in the American Journal of Epidemiology (Vol. 155, No.9) reveal that drinking high amounts of plain water is as important as exercise, diet, or not smoking in preventing coronary heart disease.

“Basically, not drinking enough water can be as harmful to your heart as smoking,” warns Jacqueline Chan, DrPH, principle investigator and lead author of the article. Dr. Chan and Synnove Knutsen, MD, PhD , second author, chair of epidemiology department, found that California Seventh-day Adventists who drink five or more glasses of plain water a day have a much lower risk of fatal coronary heart disease compared to those who drink less than two glasses per day.

The study, “Water, Other Fluids, and Fatal Coronary Heart Disease,”indicates that whole blood viscosity, plasma viscosity, hematocrit, and fibrinogen which are considered independent risk factors for coronary heart disease, can be elevated by dehydration. The water study is part of the original Adventist Health Study, which began in 1973. Both researchers are also co-investigators for the new Adventist Health Study.

The results from this study show that by drinking more plain water, healthy people—without any history of heart disease, stroke, or diabetes—reduced their risk of dying from a heart attack by half or more. This is as much or more than if they had adopted any other well-known preventive measure, including stopping smoking and lowering cholesterol levels, increasing exercise or maintaining ideal weight.

While not as glamorous, the degree of benefit from drinking plain water surpasses that of drinking a moderate amount of alcohol intake and aspirin with none of the adverse side effects (social or physiological). Because drinking more plain water is a simple life stylechange that anybody can do, this simple practice has the potential of saving tens of thousands of lives each year with minimal cost.

Neither total fluid intake, nor intake of other fluids combined showed this reduced risk. Instead, for women, high intake (5 or more glasses aday) of other fluids showed a greatly increased risk of coronary heart disease. “People need to be made aware that there is a difference, at least for heart health, whether they get their fluids from plain water or from sodas,” says Dr. Chan.

According to Dr. Chan, this is the first study to record the association between high water intake and reduced risk of coronary heart disease. “This study needs to be replicated, and if similar results are found,then this would be the cheapest and simplest method of preventing coronary heart disease that could be imagined,”adds Gary Fraser, MD,PhD, cardiologist at the LLU Heart Institute, and principal investigator for the new Adventist Health Study.

For more information, pleasecall (240) 744-0437 or visit the website www.drbaruch.com.

U.S. swamped with passport requests

Associated Press-Yahoo News
Submitted from Dimona by Ahtur Yatsiliel

Thirteen-year-old Eli Rogatz applied months ago for a passport so that he could fly to Israel with his family for his bar mitzvah. To his family's great relief, it finally came through on Friday, with just days to spare. "Given what else is being spent, we want to make sure he's there," Mitch Rogatz, a book publisher from the Chicago suburb of Glencoe, grumbled as he camped out in a federal office building for at least four hours, waiting for the passport.

Similar waiting games are being played out at passport processing sites across the country as the State Department wades through an unprecedented crush of passport applications. They are pouring in at more than 1 million per month.

Passport requests usually shoot up this time of year ahead of the busy spring and summer travel season. But the department has been really swamped since the government in late January started requiring U.S. airline passengers — including children — to show a passport upon their return from Mexico, Canada or the Caribbean.

Passport applications filed between October and March are up 44 percent from the same period a year ago, the department told lawmakers this week. In February alone, applications were up 25 percent.

Because of the glut, it could take 10 weeks instead of the usual six to process routine applications, according to the department. And expedited requests, which cost an extra $60 on top of the normal $97 fee, could take four weeks instead of two.

The State Department said it is working overtime to handle the load and hopes to have an additional 400 passport adjudicators by the end of next year.

That is little solace to travelers like Lisa Purdum, a newlywed from Yardley, Pa., who was told her husband's passport would not arrive until weeks after their planned April 2 honeymoon to Mexico. Worse, her birth certificate, which accompanied her own passport application, was reported missing, she said.

She was one of dozens of people waiting in a line that spilled into the lobby in Philadelphia's regional passport office Friday. "My husband's is a month behind and mine is missing altogether and our honeymoon is in two weeks, and I'm either losing half my money or all of my money," she said. People who had not received their passports two weeks before their trips were generally told to go to one of 14 big-city passport offices across the country. There, they were mostly confronted with long lines and no guarantee they would leave with a passport.

Jackie Moore drove overnight from Columbus, Ohio, to Chicago, hoping to pick up a passport for her 8-year-old grandson. The family had a 6 a.m. flight Saturday for a vacation in the Dominican Republic, and the boy was the only one whose passport had not arrived.

"My little grandson is going to be heartbroken if we don't get him on this plane," she said.
The line curled around the block outside the passport office in downtown Miami, where 29-year-old Qandeel Sakrani stood with her husband and their two young daughters, hoping to get a passport so she could travel to Pakistan next month. "I haven't seen my parents in 18 months, and I haven't seen the rest of my family for five years," she said.

Lawndale, Calif., accountant Emilia Moreno sent in an application to renew her passport four weeks ago, only to discover there were no records it ever got there. The 48-year-old woman spent most of the week fighting for an appointment with the passport agency in Los Angeles so she would be able to travel to Italy and France for vacation on Wednesday.

"My employer already told me she's going to buy me a pizza, for me to think that I'm in Italy," she said. For others, it may already be too late. Judith Jones was supposed to fly to Jamaica on Friday for a vacation with friends. Instead, she spent a second day in line in Chicago, trying to track down her passport.

"It's supposed to be a girls' trip. The girls are there, but I'm not yet," said the 41-year-old from Griffith, Ind. About 12 million passport applications were processed in 2006, and as many as 17 million are expected this year, according to the State Department said. Some 74 million Americans have valid passports.