Tuesday 24 September 2013

Boost Your Brain-1

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Click to go back to the main menu for Mickie Kent's Love Your Mind, Body and Soul Series

“We should always remember that our mind is a physical organ, too. Show love to your brain by watching what you eat.”
— Mickie Kent

The fitness of the brain is the hot topic of our times. We all wait for the next transformative set of developments that could accelerate our knowledge of the brain, and this popular interest means that we talk about our brains as though they have a separate, unique identity.

That might not be such a bad thing - especially if we look at what we eat in terms of how it affects our brains, and not just our bodies. But really our body is so interconnected with our organs that it's better to think of it as what affects one, affects all.

This is true when we look at research that suggests a brain affliction like Alzheimer's disease may find solutions with blood pressure aids, or that our sense of smell may even help in its prevention - proving that our smell is connected with our cognitive function. As we strive to understand the individual in the human species, the secret to boosting your brain is to understand its interconnectedness, while focusing on its uniqueness.

We are told often that diet is important; and are provided with general guidelines to eat a healthy, balanced diet including five or more portions of fruit or vegetables every day, fish more than twice a week, and pulses more than once a week. Something as simple as ramping up the amount of fruits and vegetables we eat can dramatically drop your risk of heart disease. Fish oil is another big-time protector of heart health. And when it comes to cholesterol red yeast rice is suggested to be better than drugs.

Top foods for immune health.

In the United Kingdom, January has become a temporary teetotal month, and not drinking in the first month of year is chiefly about getting healthy after Christmas excess - and excess, especially for us lucky enough to have Western citizenry, is a major problem.

We will catch on the latest horror story about processed foods, or check the latest buzz about health foods, or every week read about the super food du jour experts are raving about based on numerous food studies. But we are not often told that the excesses of food and drink are equally important to control.

Researchers who have looked at global disease and dietary patterns say that eating fast food three times a week may lead to asthma and eczema in children, while fizzy-drink giant Coca-Cola is addressing obesity for the first time in an advert on television. With excessive intake also thought to cause death, some believe soft drinks companies need to display clearer warnings on their beverages.

All foods contain calories, and if we eat more than we expend, then we will put on weight, but it is not just weight that some experts say is the issue. Our eating habits can also affect our brains.

Your brain is under constant attack from free radicals, experts say, and what could be raising your risk of Alzheimer's disease is exposure to everyday toxins. These toxins are described by some as the common threat to your memory and brain.

We are exposed to toxic heavy metals, pesticides and other chemicals each day in a number of items we've become reliant on. For example, each time you use over the counter medications, antiperspirant, take an antacid, or drink soda or beer out of a can, your body is exposed to aluminium. Research shows people with Alzheimer's disease have a higher than average level of aluminium in their brains.

Learn how to treat your brain right.

Mercury is another metal known to harm your brain. A study at the University of Calgary Medical School found that even small amounts of mercury can kill brain cells. And mercury is found everywhere: in gasoline fumes, air conditioner filters, dental fillings, medications and vaccines and much more.

Articles on eating healthier and how to combat mercury poisoningClick here to read tips to eating healthier and how to combat mercury and cadmium poisoning in the image above.

You're also constantly exposed to lead, since it's found in newspaper ink, ceramic mugs, cosmetics like mascara and even toothpaste (which has other carcinogen chemicals) - it's also found in paint on the walls of many older homes. As you may know, lead is linked to impaired brain development and decreased IQ in children - but it also causes memory loss and mental decline in adults.

Does green tea guard against dementia?

Exposure to toxic metals causes your brain to "age" much faster. A four year study at Johns Hopkins University found that adults with high levels of lead in their bodies suffered a much greater decline in mental performance making their brains at least 5 years older than their actual age.

Another overlooked cause of memory problems and Alzheimer's is a change in your brain that happens as you age. Some believe your brain shrinks as you age starting around 60, the thinking portion of your age begins to waste away, and the hipposcampus - the part of the brain believed to be involved in memory forming, organising, and storing - often becomes damaged.

Although this is a brain series on food and brain boosting foods, outside a nutritious diet there is more we can do for the benefit of our brains. Asking life's little (or big) questions may offer big brain benefits. In a recent study, older adults who had a strong sense of purpose in their lives were significantly less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease or cognitive impairment over the long haul. A purpose driven life can help us keep our brain fit.

Don't underestimate what forced isolation or stress can do to you. Through mental torture we can even confess to things we haven't done. Experts advise we elevate our energy vibrations by thinking positively, and steering clear from negativity and negative thoughts.

Love-zap your stress.

Scientists have found that three simple changes in your attitude can even turn back the ageing clock and protect your body in ways that can actually be measured in your cells. Adjusting our attitude, removing stress from our minds, and orientate it inward with meditation seems to help boost the ability of our brains - and thus our bodies.

Some say there is an element of luck involved. Although there are measures we can take to help us live a long and healthy life and brain span, there may be an element of luck involved - depending on our DNA. Others believe that through scientific gene therapy and brain powers we can "cure" or rewrite our DNA. A few suggest meditation may improve a person's psychological well-being and that in turn these changes are related to activity in our cells, which has the potential to promote longevity in those cells.

Can you rewrite your DNA?

Activities that increase a person's sense of well-being may have a profound effect on the most fundamental aspects of their physiology. Some believe that our states of mind affect everything - even how (or if) we fall in love, and who we find attractive. While some believe love is just a state of mind, and that there is a science to our comparability.

Read about the science of twin flames.

There are some that go further to say that who we are - our memories and our soul - is even beyond the brain, acting only as an intermediary for the self. We always assume that all scientists believe the brain produces the mind, but in fact there are plenty who are not certain of that. Even prominent neuroscientists, such as Sir John Eccles, a Nobel prizewinner, believe that we are never going to understand mind through neuronal activity.

But what is true is that today every area of inquiry that used to be tackled by religion or philosophy is now tackled and explained by science. And what science tells us about boosting our brain is that our diet is a very important key not only to longevity of life and good health, but to an extended, supercharged brain span.

Brain boosting foods

A brain milkshake?

A brain-boosting milkshake that is said to reduce symptoms of early Alzheimer's has gone on sale in the United Kingdom.

Food is fuel. It provides our bodies with its energy, especially if we exercise our bodies and brains. Some believe you can't out-exercise a bad diet, and it has been well documented that water may boost brain power, while rearing babies on breast milk said to enhance a child's IQ. Experts say your brain can naturally clean itself of toxins and keep memory strong. But you have to feed it the right foods to fuel this mind-saving process.

Articles on eating healthier for better cognitive functionClick here to read tips to eating healthier for better cognitive function in the image above.

For instance, fruit has been proven to be the foe of many brain-related illnesses, while a study has indicated that hot chocolate can help stave off Alzheimer's. Drinking two cups of cups of cocoa a day were found to boost memory in elderly people by nearly one-third. The results are thought to be due to chocolate’s ability to increase blood flow to the brain.

37 Superfoods to start eating today.

Moreover, experts suggest sticking to fresh organic (pesticide-free) fruits, vegetables, poultry/fish products, and some dairy. Mental health research has shown that B vitamins, especially B1, B6 and B12 (take 1 B-complex daily), can be very helpful in mood disorders as well as dementia. Natural Vitamin E, 400 mg daily, is helpful, while omega-3 oils (fish, krill, flaxseed) help fight depression (-1-2,000 mg daily).

With your brain amongst one of your very best friends (it's what makes you, you after all), why poison it? There are a lot of articles out there informing us about all the chemicals we consume in our processed foods and drink that should be banned, and yet we still consume these with a gluttony that surpasses belief.

Somehow we feel like real food is unacceptable for a modern age, but research shows that some of the best foods to keep the brain detoxed are blueberries, strawberries and acai berries. These berries contain polyphenolics, compounds that help lower inflammation in brain cells.

Other brain foods we should consider to add to our shopping list (depending on our dietary needs) amongst others are milk, cherries, tomatoes, fish, chicken, almonds, pulses (beans), oats and celery. More brain food for you include red grapes, black berries, raspberries, grape juice and (although processed to an extent) high quality red wine (Merlot grape wines are deemed the best for the brain). All should be taken in moderation.

When the father of modern medicine Hippocrates said, "Let food by thy medicine and medicine be thy food" it's doubtful he knew just how important they would be thousands of years later. Eating healthy foods means eating healing foods that will boost you in all areas of your body and life - especially for your brain. So if you want to think better and for longer, you have to think about what you eat.

Think about what you eat

Sometimes even food we think of as healthy can be so heavily processed before it reaches our tables that it holds little or no benefit for our bodies, so experts say that any "brain foods" we consider to boost our mental mojo should be whole foods. Nutritionists say we should consider processed foods to be similar to synthetic drugs, and many believe we need to cut out the processed, synthetic products we put into our bodies. Many believe their kitchen cupboards holds a whole lot of properties with medicinal powers.

For instance, skin care products that combine natural ingredients with science, and teeth hygiene products, too, are much more popular today - there are a lot of kitchen ingredients such as lemon, lime, baking powder, honey that can be used in creams for rashes and cuts due to their antibacterial properties, and because they are natural, our body won't reject them, or feel them have to create an immunity against them.

This is a major benefit over synthetic drugs in my opinion, but we must never shrug conventional therapies either, without first consulting a trusted, medical practitioner. Plus, we also need to be sure we don't overdose - just because we know they are natural, even herbs or vitamins taken in high doses can be dangerous. So I would add such proviso we anything we put into our bodies, moderation and balance is key to our diet, whether it's to boost our overall bodies, or boost our brains.

Read about 6 foods to keep your mind young.

Moreover, it turns out the key to keeping your brain firing on all cylinders as you get older may have been in your kitchen all along. But this time I'm not talking about a superfood you should be putting ON the menu. Rather, it's a food you should steer clear of instead.

This should be easy, though - these are foods you should already have banned from your fridge. New research from the Mayo Clinic finds that eating a lot of carbohydrates and sugar puts you at higher risk for mild cognitive impairment as you age. That translates to problems with memory, thinking, and judgement. Mild cognitive impairment is also considered an early sign of Alzheimer's.

The study involved 940 people between the ages of 70 and 89. All of these folks were clear of cognitive problems at the beginning of the study. Within four years, though, 200 of them were starting to show signs of mild cognitive impairment. The study participants who ate the most carbs were about twice as likely to have mild cognitive impairment compared to those who were relatively carb-free. The highest sugar intake was associated with being 1.5 times more likely to develop mild cognitive impairment.

But, it's when fat, protein, sugar, and carbs were considered together, that things got really scary. Then, the people with the highest carb intake were 3.6 times more likely to develop cognitive impairment. The scientists think that the raised risk that comes from carbs and sugar could be because carbohydrates affect glucose and insulin metabolism. They point out that sugars provide fuel for the brain - so you shouldn't cut them out completely. But too much sugar can actually keep the brain from using that fuel properly. It's basically the same effect you see with type 2 diabetes.

But be sure that when you start cutting those carbs and sugars that you're replacing them with good fats and healthy proteins. People with the highest intake of fat were 42 percent less likely to develop mild cognitive impairment than people who ate the least. And those in the group with the highest intake of protein were 21 percent less likely.

Nutritionists do warn, however, that some patients develop might depression when first making the switch to a low-carb diet. This is because carbs allow the amino acid L-tryptophan to penetrate your brain. And L-tryptophan, of course, is the amino acid that triggers the "feel good" hormone serotonin.

The advice offered suggests taking supplemental tryptophan so there's more of it to penetrate the brain. Some doctors may typically recommend either 1,500 milligrams twice daily or, if that causes drowsiness (which is rare, but possible), all 3,000 milligrams can be taken at bedtime.

Just make sure not to take it when you're eating protein. It's best to take tryptophan with whatever small amount of carbohydrates you do eat. Over-the-counter L-tryptophan can be found in a few natural food stores and compounding pharmacies. If you have trouble finding the over-the-counter version, a physician skilled in natural medicine should be able to help you obtain a prescription for it. Seek medical advice before taking any supplements.

Show your brain some love

Although some have likened our brain to a computer - for example Stephen Hawking has expressed the brain to be a programme of the mind, which he says is a computer - others believe this to be a myth of an organ we understand very little about.

Read the popular misconceptions of neuroscience.

Certainly as of 2013, there is no computer as yet powerful enough to help us map our brains for a better understanding of how it works, but many believe that our brains are more powerful than any computer in general. This was the boast of chess world champion Garry Kasparov, who lost to an IBM computer named Deep Blue.

The match was a real-life battle of the human brain versus the power of a machine. Kasparov's defeat made headlines across the world in 1997 - tapping into the public's fears and expectations from science fiction.

But imagine if you were able to supercharge and reprogramme your mind into a super computer. The possibilities for achieving anything are endless. What if there was a way you could activate your brain like a switch? Some believe we all have this awesome power within us, most people just have no clue how to turn it on, or where to find the right switch.

You won't even notice the software re-programming your brain for success. But underneath your conscious mind, new instructions are being stored and carried out, beyond your ability to forget them, and it changes the actual information being sent/received in your brain, so your entire life changes. We can't change for the better, until we better ourselves; but it doesn't matter what you want to improve, reduce or remove completely, experts say if it's in your brain, it can be changed.

Read a formula for supercharging your brain.

The latest scientific research has shown that lifestyle and certain exercises can improve the health of your brain, no matter what age you are. This is due to neuro-plasticity which allows the neurons (nerve cells) in the brain to change their connection to compensate for injury or disease, and to adjust their activities in response to new situations or to changes in their environment.

The amazing thing about this discovery is that it suggests our brain health is now completely in our hands. Outside a nutritious diet, there are mental and physical exercises it's believed you can do to strengthen and rework your neural connections. For example, imagine being able to improve your memory with certain simple techniques.

Or boost your intelligence, because physical exercise may improve brainpower by strengthening the cardiovascular system. Increasing blood flow to the brain offers a significant boost to cognitive function. Exercising for 20 to 30 minutes a couple of times a week not only slashed Alzheimer's risk by as much as 60 percent in a study, but also cut the risk of regular dementia in half.

Most people, especially those who are not as intelligent as Albert Einstein, would want to have a boost of their brain power. If you are one of those people who want to think better, your brain power boost might be just a few steps away if such theories are correct.

Is your brain a supercomputer?

But whether we adhere to this way or not, there is general consensus over practical steps we can take to show our brain some love. Experts suggest these seven steps might help you in your quest to keep your brain working perfectly fine.

  1. Engage yourself in regular exercise. Do simple exercises like a simple walk or jog. It may not be as intense as a full-blown work-out. You just have to keep your body physically fit and active. Simple work-outs may trigger the release of neuro-chemicals known as endorphins. These chemicals are responsible for making us feel happy and by feeling happier, a more positive effect on the brain can be observed.

    Many suggest employing yoga to overcome anxiety, combat depression and awake the chemicals in your brain by influencing our thoughts and feelings believed to illicit happiness. As well as good for increasing flexibility, physical ailments and as an aid to sleep, yoga gurus suggest you can improve a bad mood with yoga exercises.

    If life's got you feeling frazzled or blue, they say you can adjust your bad mood for the better by striking a few yoga poses. According to a small study, this popular joint-loosening, muscle-toning exercise cranks up brain levels of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), a neurotransmitter that helps take the edge off anxiety and helps bust up blue moods.

    Why do yoga exercises boost a bad mood? It may have something to do with your nerves. In particular, a thing called your vagus nerve. This long nerve helps turn on your parasympathetic nervous system - the part of your central nervous system that's responsible for boosting GABA and making you feel happy and relaxed. And, as it turns out, yoga does a mighty fine job of activating the vagus nerve, enabling that whole chain of feel-good events in your body to happen.

    In fact, in the study, yoga exercises even bested walking when it came to improving a bad mood. Folks who practised an hour of Iyengar yoga three times a week experienced greater jumps in GABA levels and felt happier, more tranquil, and more energised than a control group that engaged in 3 hours of equally intense walking each week. So although all forms of exercise do a great job of increasing feel-swell brain chemicals like serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins, it's probably not a bad idea to mix in a yoga session or two each week for extra-happy measure.

    Click here to get physical.

    Moreover, as well as being only one workout from a good mood, you could even be just a workout away from even better sex. A German study from Cologne University Medical centre found that physical exercise can be effective as Viagra with over 80% of participants.

  2. Supplement your diet. Some experts suggest natural supplements to have a good effect on the brain. These supplements are believed not only keep your body healthier, they also maintain the fitness of your brain; thus resulting to better brain power. These supplements are so popular that they can be found anywhere, from your local health and food store up to the web pages of the internet.

    Are vitamin pills dangerous?

  3. Use your brain. If you are to exercise your body, you should exercise your brain as well. Use your brain muscles more often - think and learn. You may read, talk with other people or even play educational games. Any activity that can keep your brain working effectively may be tried out.

    Playing brain games regularly will also help you prevent brain-ageing. Some of the brain training games available online are scientifically designed by neuroscientists and help with improving both speed and focus. Your cognitive abilities can be maintained or improved by exercising the brain. Playing chess or bridge and other brain training games will help improve your memory and brain abilities.

    The brain, like many parts of the human body, needs regular exercise in order to maintain strength and vitality. Scientifically speaking, consistent mental challenge by novel stimuli increases production and interconnectivity of neurons and nerve growth factor, as well as prevents loss of connections and cell death. Some more common brain strengthening exercises include fun activities like crossword puzzles, Sudoku, and other word- and number-based brain teasers. These may not make you smarter, but they can help you train your brain.

    There are other more academic ways as well, like completing maths, word problems and exercises relating to spatial relationships and geometry. Such games rely on logic, word skills, maths and more. These games are also fun. You'll get benefit more by doing these games a little bit every day, spend 15 minutes or so, not hours. Even simply reading this article gives your brain a slight workout.

    Top tips for brain training and fitness.

    But if these ideas are a little too scholarly for you, try simple things like mixing up your routine. Just brushing your teeth with the opposite hand or walking a different way to work forces your brain to work harder than usual, which is ultimately what you want to do. Sex is also a brain booster. Orgasms are proven to be better than crosswords to keep the mind young; sex makes us feel good, and good sex in a trusting relationship not only boosts the relationship, but our brains, too. It's a positive, reinforcing cycle.

    One activity experts suggests is doodling, another is talking to yourself. These are not only said to alleviate mental maladies, such activities can help you problem solve, too. If you've got a a tricky problem you've been noodling for days, experts say you'll solve it faster if you talk it out. Whether you're rearranging the living room furniture, planning a party, or doing complicated maths calculations, research shows that problems get simpler when you discuss them out loud. The key to a sharp mind is to process the problem verbally.

    In a recent study, researchers found that college-level mathematicians who talked themselves through solving problems got faster, more accurate answers than the number-crunchers who kept their mouths shut. Sketching and scribbling while they worked seemed to give students the problem-solving edge as well.

    Talking and drawing stimulate those little grey cells inside your noggin. A very good thing, because getting more brain centres involved helps you grasp a problem more quickly and analyse solutions more effectively. So do right by your brain, and help your brain do its best work by using it efficiently and effectively.

  4. Play games. Choose games that will definitely have a good effect on your brain. Refrain from playing games which are "no-brainer." Nowadays, most computer games are designed to exercise your brain, so all you have to do is to choose well the games that you will play. Gaming consoles are also following the fad into increasing brain function. So, do your part in boosting your brain power, play games that will increase your brain power. Skip the violent games, and go for ones that challenge your thinking.

    Can brain training make you smarter?

  5. Enjoy an educational hobby. Choose a hobby that will give you some lessons at the end of the activity. This will not be such a difficult task since most of the time, we learn something from our experiences. Just be sure to do things that are not monotonous. Your hobby should be something that will help you learn new things every time you perform it. This way, you will be able to use some parts of your brain which are left unused before.

    Learn a new language, or to play a musical instrument. get trained in a new craft, or just do something new. Shaking up your brain, and getting it to experience new things, or doing old routines in a new way. Simply listening to new music has been shown to benefit the brain in studies, or just help you to relax.

    Read 5 ways to be more creative.

  6. Sleep well. Wakeful exercises for the brain are great and necessary to help improve brain function so you can get smarter. But what about sleep? Not a whole lot is known about sleep, but we know now that scientists were wrong for years with the belief that the brain simply shut down during sleep to recharge.

    Sleeping is the time when your body rebuilds and recharges itself. It varies from person to person, but between six and eight hours of sleep for adults is generally recommended. Some professionals believe that you can divide this into "two-sleeps".

    Aside from these hours, you should also try to take ten-minute power naps. What our elders have known for generations is that the cure for existential angst, morbid self-doubt and overwhelming anxiety is not always a very expensive course of therapy. Sometimes, it is just a good old-fashioned nap.

    After these refreshing sleeps and naps, you will surely feel energised to take on more activities for the day. Do not deprive yourself of sleep, and you will then realise that your brain will function better with more hours of sleep.

    Learn how to love your sleep.

    Studies suggest that lack of sleep blights pupils' education and late nights can sap children's brain power. We all know that a bedtime routine, plenty of sleep, a healthy and varied diet and a lot of love will give a child the very best start in life. The same is true for adults.

    Experts think it's a great idea to have an hour "no technology" time before your normal sleep time. Some professionals suggest a three hour gap, which means cutting out phones, laptops, tablets, TV for about an hour to three before your normal sleep time. It really allows your brain to relax. You may even find that you are sleeping slightly less, but feel more "awake" in the morning.

    Sleep is also important because our brains need to dream. With scientists claiming to have found a way to "read" dreams, the importance of dreams will become ever more clearer. We're at the lightest level of consciousness bar waking when we are dreaming, where rapid eye movement (REM) occurs, so-called because the eyes can be seen moving rapidly from side to side. But dreaming is essential.

    Although we have discussed further above about the erroneous brain-computer analogy, some scientists liken the brain to a computer continually sorting and analysing information when we are awake. They believe the subconscious mind serves as your personal computer. It regulates your heart, plays chemist for your digestive system, and analyses input from your senses like an ultra sophisticated computer. So to prevent it blowing a fuse if the circuits become jammed, it dreams to clear itself of redundant information at night.

    Research now indicates that the brain may actually do a little night time filing during sleep. The information from the previous day is catalogued and put in the proper mental folders so it can make the journey from short-term memory to long-term. Sleeping problems have been known to exacerbate other brain issues, so it makes sense that a good night's sleep can help increase the brain's function and ability to focus.

    This theory is supported by the fact that brain cells only manufacture the essential chemicals needed for intellectual functioning while we dream. Dream cycles occur on average four times a night, the first almost immediately after falling asleep, and the last just before we wake. If dreaming is suppressed by something like a sleeping pill, we can feel hungover the morning after.

  7. Relax. Because of the complexities of our society today, your brain is exhausted just as much as your body. Thus, you should take the time to relax and cleanse your mind of the worries and stresses that might overwhelm your thoughts. You may want to try on spas or meditations to give your mind a break from all the hassle.

    Taking a sauna is also believed by some to be a form of meditation. Sauna for your mind can really help you to calm down in a modern society where it is never quiet. You enter this meditative place, because it's dark and it's usually so hot that you don't want to speak. After the relaxation, you will feel that you are prepared to take on another complex day! This is how you make better your brain's health and performance.

    To learn how to calm yourself click here.

    For thousands of years, we've known the benefits of meditation. The practice of meditation can be different for each person, but it generally involves quiet, focused breathing exercises in which the practitioner is able to achieve a state of mental calm.

    Regardless of whether you believe that this mental calm is an enlightened state of consciousness, no one can deny the benefits of relaxed, focused breathing. FMRI scans have revealed that regular meditation also affects the actual structure of the brain.

    Researchers believe that memory, function, attention span and focus all benefit from meditation. One study showed that regular daily meditation can even increase the size of parts of the cerebral cortex. Not surprisingly, some of the world’s leading and forward-thinking corporations offer meditation classes for their employees.

    Such methods can also help you focus your brain to achieving your goals - to strengthen willpower and motivation and help beat procrastination. For example, focus in one goal you want to accomplish in the next 30 days - monetary goal, love goal, personal goal - be specific about what you want and don't want, so e.g. by the first of January next year I will be in a better job, and in return for this I will have done whatever is necessary and appropriate in a inspired and fun manner. This gives your brain purpose, and drive, and boosts its power.

    Click here to rewire your mindset for success!

    Spend at least 10 minutes creating a mental picture of you having achieved your goal in the exact date specified. You will have to close your eyes and make it as vivid as possible, involving the physical senses of smell, sight, touch, hearing and taste as fully as possible in the picture you create in your mind's eye. Such a process is also believed to strengthen your memory and brain capacity, too.

    Do this the first thing thing upon waking up and 10 minutes before bedtime. Remember in the theatre of the mind, repetition is vital.

    Also keep in mind you can slow down your efforts to boost your brain power into manageable steps, allowing new healthier habits and behaviours to arise over time that make self-control easier overall and wellness restoration an achievable goal.

And as you boost brainpower and keep your mind fit with the expert tips above, in the next part of this mini series we shall go into more detail about the foods we should eat, why we should eat them, and how to supplement our diet with the correct nutrients and vitamins necessary to supercharge our brains - and in doing so, charging our bodies and our lives with the very vigour of life.

Because it's never too late to make smart lifestyle changes that will protect your health in years to come and boost the brain.

Read more in this series: -1 -2 -3

Yours in love,

Mickie Kent





Main Sources:
1. Be Purpose Driven For Brain Fitness, Sharecare
2. Five simple steps to detoxing your body of disease-causing mercury and heavy metals, Natural News
3. How To Detoxify Mercury, Advanced Techniques For Overcoming CFS, FMS and GWS
4. Two Simple Steps to Detox Mercury and Other Heavy Metals, Body Ecology
5. Chakra Balancing Foods, Brain Food and How to Improve Brain Function, BeWellBuzz
6. Protect Your Mind with Brain Foods, WikiHow
7. Meditate with Your Inner Voice, WikiHow
8. Ten Foods to Boost Your Brainpower, BBC Good Food
9. Brain Smart, BBC Scotland
10. Ten ways to give your memory a boost, MSN UK
11. Ten Ways to Boost Your Brainpower, Fox News
12. Deepak Chopra's Secrets to a Better Brain, CNN
13. Top Five Ways to Get Smarter, How Stuff Works
14. Ten Tricks to Reboot Your Brain and Seven Brain Games To Make You Smarter, Prevention
15. Eight Ways To Prevent Alzheimer's Disease, Prevention

Tuesday 17 September 2013

The Power of Invisible Worlds

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high speed photography

“We often think there is a clear dividing line between those who seek the spiritual and those that seek science, but science is just as much involved with hidden forces and things we cannot see with the naked eye alone, as those of us looking inward. The point is how you look, and as I always say, when we look with love, it's the best torch to take with you as you venture into the dark of the unknown.”
— Mickie Kent

In my previous post "How Big Is Your Love?" I touched upon science and the "unseen", notably over the search for dark matter that still goes on. It's evidence that the existence of something cannot always be proved with sight alone.

For example, it was a scientist, not a photographer, who first showed us a world we had never seen before, by developing high speed cameras to reveal a hitherto hidden reality. Harold Edgerton, a professor of electrical engineering, even developed a camera that could photograph the first moments of an atomic explosion, with exposures of 100 millionth of a second. He first used strobes to study electrical motors, but very quickly extended their use to photographing everyday objects. With those kinds of images which we see today that capture to the second movement or explosions not visible to the naked eye, it opened a window to us that had previously moved quickly for us to see.

Scientists have constantly tried to shine a light into these hidden worlds all around us that we usually can't see - including some we have only just become aware of. In getting to grip with these hidden forces, they have explored invisible worlds to help us tune up our own senses to allow us to see, hear and feel things which are normally beyond us. And they have unearthed an astonishing cornucopia of wonders.

From the ecosystem of microbes and liquids with gravity-defying powers to taking the plunge into the nanosphere where things are not always what they seem.

The brave new world of the nano

Twenty years ago it looked like nanotechnology could change our lives. We were promised an era of atomic machines, crafted from individual atoms. Instead all we got was PR stunts, and the closest thing to a nanobot was an animated Atomic Man. But now, nanotech is getting real. Today scientists are looking for practical applications and many of them have turned to nature for inspiration.

Delving into the nanoworld to see what tricks we can steal from nature - from an amazing new way of beating some of our biggest killers to the question of are we ever going to be invisible - going small in science seems to unleash great benefits. But does "nanotechnology" actually have a specific definition?

Experts in the field of biotech, biomedical materials and regenerative medicine, say its something we can think of in a couple of ways. It's a particular size scale - so you could think of it as being a thousand folds smaller than a human hair, for example. But it's also about how different materials act differently once they're at the nanoscale.

This seems especially true for regenerative frameworks, essentially scaffolding for tissue and bones too rebuild themselves. The idea is that if you've had, for example, a fracture that can't heal or a knee had got damaged, or maybe you've had a heart attack and part of your heart has died, you want to be able to help the body regenerate itself, because it won't always heal spontaneously. Thus, the sort of things researchers in this field have been doing is to think about the kind of things we have in nature - such as the tissues in your body, which are cells surrounded by a nanoscale mesh of tissue which has lots of different things like proteins and fibres - and make materials to help our bodies heal quicker.

One such example is the production of a gel-type structure called hydragel - a water-swollen network of material - held together by nanoscale building blocks, little zippers that hold the material together which you can hold cells to put into the body. Depending on how it is designed, the belief is this will trigger the cells of the body to perform whatever necessary action it wasn't previously performing to heal. Scientists can add lots of features; it is described a sort of blank slate that you can tailor to the task at hand.

It is still a long from the clinic, but the aim is thereby, onto something as tiny as a drop of gel, at the very smallest level, for researchers to be able to encode information that will make the body's own cells grow back - cartilage in the knee, or wherever necessary. Starting as a liquid, it is injecting into the requisite area of the body, with the ability to fill a complex space, and within about five minutes become a gel, fill the volume and help in regeneration.

In other nano-developments, scientists are manipulating nature to make materials stronger and more resistant. For example, scientists have created a surface structure inspired by the lotus leaf. Intricate patterns engineered at the nanoscale mimic the natural structure and achieve the same hydrophobic effect. In short, drop some water on it, and it bounces off. Spoons coated with the same stuff can repel water, or materials can be self-cleaning as the droplets of water rather than being soaked into the fabric, roll about over it to collect the dust on the surface.

Some believe that the technology can do even more ground-breaking stuff by creating new advanced materials. Copying natural nanotechniques is one thing, but some researchers are in effect learning how to play God, by tweaking nature's building methods to create entirely new stuff. For example, the iridescent colours in butterfly wings and berries are based on the special way their nanostructures reflect light.

Scientists have made their own versions, to create the same beautiful iridescence you see in the natural world. The complex structures that make these colours could be exploited to make inks that never fade. Or tag banknotes with patterns that are impossible to forge. It's easy to make; you provide the right conditions and it makes itself. And that provides a powerful paradigm for working at nanoscale - we can copy nature's self-assembly mechanisms and tweak them to create entirely new synthetic materials.

A miracle material that will change the world?

Scientists say an intriguingly named material known as graphene could revolutionise technology and make the internet 100 times faster. It's been hailed as the miracle material of the 21st Century, but what is graphene and why is it so important?

Theoretically possible since the 1940s, graphene was discovered – and produced – by Konstantin Novoselov and Andre Geim at the University of Manchester in 2004. Both scientists won the Nobel Prize in 2010 for their pioneering work, and since then the race has been on to make graphene a commercially viable industrial material.

Almost a decade later that race is well under way, and along the way scientists are discovering even more miracle properties of graphene, uncovering an array of possibilities that could change the world around us.

Two hundred times stronger than steel, graphene sheets are described as 'chicken wire made of carbon atoms'. It's a near-transparent sheet of carbon graphite molecules just one atom in thickness.

Graphene does have problems with its on-off state if it is to replace silicon in transistors, but a team of scientists at the University of Manchester made a significant breakthrough, demonstrating that graphene can be made magnetic, and that this magnetism switched on and off at the press of a button.

With magnetic materials so integral to electronic gadgets using hard disks, memory chips and sensors - all use miniature magnetic components - this opens the doors for new magnetic devices that are atomically thin and can be easily controlled externally with the application of ordinary electric fields.

Scientists say that graphene-related patents suggest the wonder material could soon be used in smartphones, electric vehicles, aircraft, medical diagnostic devices, sports equipment, renewable energy systems and buildings, with a key to revolutionise telecommunications. Researchers have already demonstrated incredible speeds over 100 times the current speed of the internet backbone in transmitting information.

At present, optical switches, which route information over optical cables, respond at a rate of a few picoseconds – around a trillionth of a second. With graphene, it's believed this can be improved to one hundred femtoseconds, which is almost 100 times quicker than at present.

This tendency for self-organisation is also being exploited to create other advanced materials. Carbon nanotubes were discovered 20 years ago in samples of soot. Each cylindrical lattice of atoms is extremely strong and light, but on their own they're of limited use.

Carbon is one of the lightest elements, and when structured in a hexagonal way of connecting to itself, the bonds that hold the carbon together are really strong intermolecular bonds, so you have strength at a molecular level with extremely light elements. The dream of stringing them together to make a useful fibre has eluded nano-engineers for a long time, but now scientists are perfecting a new technique to spin nanotubes into a useful fibre.

For a long time carbon nanotubes were lab curiosities, beautiful, but invisible and impractical, but now a scientists can produce a thread of carbon nanotubes into an exotic material, super fine and super strong, with a practical purpose in areas such as engineering. The properties of the material far eclipse materials like silk or steel, or Kevlar or even carbon fibre composites; this stuff is lighter, stronger, more flexible.

This means that the next generation of bridges, cars - even planes - could well be made of this stuff. It's also a great conductor, and carbon could potentially replace high-cost copper wires as a much cheaper, and lighter solution. Theoretically it sounds like the most wonderful structure around, and if it becomes a working reality, proponents say its potential is limitless.

The theory of "self-assembly", where if you create the right kind of environment - whether it be the right temperature, materials, mixtures etc. - they will fold themselves into these useful shapes also makes this technology very appealing. Pioneers in biomedical engineering say that much of chemistry is about self-assembling, and DNA is a very famous example of nanoscale self-assembly. The applications for such technology can be applied in biology, material science and many areas of developing science.

For instance, in cancer therapy there is research in using nanotechonology to target tumours, by designing materials to be able to do that as accurately as possible, without needing conventional surgery. Investigation into such exciting technologies shows there are worlds invisible to the eye, but that once discovered can be used in ways that previously were not possible. It's a real glimpse into the future thanks to the invisible worlds at work around us.

Hiding in the world of invisible fields

Shining a spotlight on large, unseen worlds, has also meant that scientists have looked at invisibility itself. Ask most people what superpower they'd most like to have, top of the list has got to be invisibility. Ever since Plato, we have been telling each other tales of how cool it would be to disappear in the crowd. But the idea has remained resolutely in the realm of science-fiction, and our fantasies of doing incredible things whilst invisible - like opening doors unseen - have remained just fantasy.

However, some believe that science fact might have finally arrived for invisibility - just not in the way we might have expected it. Creating metals invisible to microwaves, and shields that bend light around objects as advanced camouflage are some of the concepts being put forward, and if these developments manage to escape the laboratory out into the real world, then it will mean changes in all our lives.

The refractive index

In his book about an invisible man, HG Wells used the refractive index, which is the amount or speed at which light is bent as it goes into a different medium - for example water. Thus, if you have a medium with a very similar refractive index to water, it will appear invisible because it wouldn't bend the light. A polymer that came out of the florist industry for absorbing lots of water - good for putting into flower vases to keep them hydrated - can do exactly that.

Scientists believe invisibility in real life will happen, as there are already existing prototypes of invisibility shields, for example, which do what they say on the label. Basically, light is diverted around an object to make it appear invisible to the human eye - and there are materials that can do that called "metamaterials" - but as of 2013 these invisibility shields cannot be made big enough to cover a person, pioneers in this field have managed to make microwaves invisible. However the technology is increasingly fast as our understanding grows.

It's reasonable to say that being able to achieve an invisibility of sorts on one part of the scale, means it is only a matter of time until we can create shields for larger masses. On the electromagnetic spectrum, from microwaves, being able to move up to infra-red, which is heat and the same type of electromagnetic radiation but a bit smaller wavelength, doesn't seem impossible. Then we have visible light, which we see, and then ultraviolet, which we can't, X-ray and gamma ray - and if the science community can achieve invisibility of sorts back at the other end of the scale with microwaves, then moving it up to the visible doesn't seem beyond the realms of possibility.

electromagnetic spectrum
The electromagnetic spectrum is the range of all possible frequencies of electromagnetic radiation, not to be confused with the "electromagnetic spectrum" of an object, which means the characteristic distribution of electromagnetic radiation emitted or absorbed by that particular object.

When we talk of unseen worlds, and we look at the electromagnetic spectrum, we only see the small bit visible to us. Look at the diagram above and see just how much is out of the line of vision of our naked eye and it is incredible. There are some animals that see in the infra-red such as snakes, which is the sort of invisible light that is basically heat, and in the ultraviolet that we can't see, bees can see in that. Plants use ultraviolet pigments to guide bees in; it's a type of way the plant can communicate with the bee to direct it to the pollen - and so the fields we can't see have all sorts of advantages for those creatures that can. Just because we can't see something, doesn't mean it's not there.

In terms of using technology to help us delve into invisible world and what we see or don't see around us, a piece of old 1950s technology was the Geiger counter to detect radiation, for example, while many other gadgets to detect electromagnetic fields to our very own brainwaves have all been developed to get us closer to the invisible worlds around us - which sometimes affect us without us knowing.

The secret world of electricity that fights crime

The dark underworld of crime is another place where nothing is as it seems, for instance, and the fight against crime has taken forensic science into many hidden worlds, from fingerprints to DNA. But could any criminal have ever imagined that the noise from a fridge could put them behind bars?

Each time you use your phone, you're leaving a trail of potentially incriminating information behind you. Theoretically, the record of our calls can be used to pinpoint exactly where we are, and now it can even be ascertained when a specific, potentially incriminating, conversation was made. This is something an itemised phone bill can't do - and it's all down to the electric hum from your fridge, or your cooker, or hi-fi system - in fact anything connected to the mains.

It all comes down to the power of electricity. In Britain, the huge plants that power millions of homes can, as well as its massive power generation, is also doing some rather subtle - a code is being generated and it is going down every cable into every home and office. Although these titans of engineering boom out their power to us, they also whisper their secret code down the wires - a unique code that is part of all our lives. It provides a faint audio fingerprint and a connection between our phones and Britain's National Electricity Grid. This fingerprint comes from the way our AC, or alternating current, is generated.

The electrical current should alternate at exactly 50 times a second, 50 hertz - but crucially it doesn't. It oscillates, goes up and down, depending on who is using what electricity.

Imagine it like a huge pool of energy, where the minute you touch it anywhere it changes the entire thing. Electricity is constantly equilibrating itself, and it has a particular frequency - so you change one bit in Scotland and it will have an effect all the way through the land. Whether you're putting your kettle on, or whether some massive factory is starting up, and this pattern - just an accidental outcome from the National Grid really is a kind of code, because it has a unique shape at every moment in time.

That code is now being used to precisely date a phone call. Invisible and inaudible, electrical appliances are coded with a fingerprint of the alternating current, which is in the room and some will leak into a phone conversation leaving a tell-tale trace of exactly when it was made. Both the police and professional sound recording analysts have been recording the National Grid's hum for many years. By comparing their archive of the data with the hum of the phone call in question, they can pinpoint exactly when it was made. It has been used in crime cases to help solve the crimes, with murder convictions being secured on the basis of this technology.

Physics can often be reduced down to a series of fields, or different forces, and we can't see them obviously, but we can see their effect, like gravity and magnetism, for example. We live on a giant magnet, and magnets have been around for a long time. But the latest neodymium magnets are ceramic rather than metal, and they are so strong for their weight and size, they are getting into everything - in fact, electric car technology in a way relies on such magnets.

Is the magnet a mini model of all things?

And they're useful for other stuff, too, the latest use is to clean up oil slicks. Traditional clean up methods include running a line around it and essentially scooping it up off the top, but now there are ways to clean up oil spills using magnetism using a foam-like material which can suck up the oil when sprinkled on top of it in the water. Then the little magnetic particles in the foam means it can be easily scooped up from the water using a magnet.

Another idea using magnets to clean up oil slicks, instead of absorbing the oil, some have had the idea of making the oil itself magnetic, or at least respond to a magnet. These types of ferrofluids, liquids with tiny little magnets so small that they have bonded to the water, and thus like iron filings you may have played with as a child in school, it affects the water to make an invisible field visible. The theory is if we could turn an oil slick into a ferrofluid, then it may be possible to confine the liquid with the use of magnets.

Some say the attraction-repulsion of magnets is the way the entire universe works, but scientifically it's fascinating how these invisible fields and energies can be used to heal and make our world better.

Discovering the dangers of the unseen

The world of the very tiny harbours some real nasties, too however, and chief amongst these is the virus. The smallpox virus alone ended half a billion human lives before it was eradicated 50 years ago. And pandemics are still the stuff of nightmares. We are fighting back, and some are looking to discover new ways of tackling these viral invaders.

Viruses are tiny natural invasion machines. They sneak into the cells of living organisms and use those cells as a breeding ground to make more viruses. And that makes the host ill. But now scientists are taking everything they know about how a virus works and using it to beat the virus at its own game.

A cell is basically a chemical factory; depending on the genetic material inside it, it will produce different things. The body's immune system recognises the shape of a virus' outer shell, and to disable them, it produces antibodies that latch on to this shell, preventing it from attacking healthy cells. Vaccines work by training the body to produce those same antibodies, which ultimately gives us immunity to the disease.

Traditionally, vaccines are made from inactive versions of the real virus, so they can stimulate the production of the right antibodies without actually infecting our cells. But those traditional vaccines are far from perfect, because it involves the live virus, the production of these vaccines is a dangerous process. And in the body they can break down quickly, so the immune response they provide can be weak and ineffective.

So, a team of British scientists set out to make an entirely new vaccine, a synthetic vaccine designed to mimic the real virus to trigger an immune response, but without any risk of infection. To create a synthetic vaccine, the team's first step was to use one of the world's most powerful microscopes - a synchrotron - able to reveal the atomic structure of the crucial outer shell of the virus for the very first time.

A normal microscope uses visible lights, but this powerful one uses X-rays. Electrons are accelerated through a ring, and as they bend to go around them emit intense pulses of X-ray radiation. And it's these powerful X-rays that allow scientists to see right down into the structure of matter, and to image even the smallest virus particles, atom by atom.

Using the structure of a virus revealed by the synchrotron, the scientific team designed a vaccine with the same outer shell as the original target virus, but without the infectious material inside. It will become the synthetic vaccine, and the next step is to take this blueprint and grow the vaccine in the lab. The only way to know if the synthetic vaccine is going to works is to match it with the real virus to the last atom. To be certain of that, the British team have used a synchrotron.

Once designed, as far as the body is concerned the synthetic and the real is indistinguishable, apart from the fact that the synthetic one holds an empty cavity within it, while the virus would contain the genome of the virus, which is what causes the infection. These scientists have for the very first time developed a safe, synthetic vaccine for a dangerous virus - a new type of vaccine and a whole new weapon in the fight against disease.

It's also astonishing that as well as allowing for a cleaner way to produce vaccines, the speed with which we can now build vaccines has increased. It also males it much safer to make, and there is no danger of it ever becoming active. It is really useful technology, that can be deployed very quickly - which could mean the saving of lives in a pandemic.

Previously, we had to second guess to an extent, which flu would be the one to dominate that year, as it takes about nine months to create a new vaccine. This is the normal period of time from the first sort of diagnosis to getting a vaccine into the clinic for patient use. With this new technology, scientists think they could do it in three weeks, if they knew what the virus was. This would also mean we don't have to take the gamble of stockpiling lots of vaccines that we might not use, because the thing to remember about viruses is that they mutate, which makes it very difficult to deal with them safely in any way with 100% certainty.

Viruses are always changing, for example, the bird flu virus has lots of different forms and it could mutate into a form which will spread between humans, and that's potentially an enormous thing to happen. But until that mutation happens, we won't know exactly what the new virus will look like. With this new method, we can identify the new virus very quickly, create a vaccine and get it shipped out, and in effect, nip a pandemic in the bud before it starts.

What is intriguing is how all this is now achievable because we can see further and more into worlds which were once invisible to us, but surround our lives. In healthcare, the applications are just massive - in regenerating tissue, detecting disease earlier as an advanced diagnostic tool, in the drugs that will help heal us, and if pharma medicine is not your thing, they will also be in all the personalised medicine, where you decide what you take tailor made to your specific physical, genealogical requirements.

One hundred years ago, not everyone was convinced there were atoms or not, and now look at where we have come. It's a real rapid rise in technology, and the level at which we can manipulate individual atoms brings greater understanding that there are invisible worlds out there for us to explore. In our own lives, it can also make us bring factor in on how we view the world around us.

We are beginning to understand and utilise the power of the unseen for the greater good, and what does that remind us of? Why love, of course. These technologies discussed here don't just show our developing prowess at the control we are wielding over the tiniest blocks of life, it shows us that there are in fact worlds out there invisible to the naked eye, and unless we know how to look for it, we won't even know they are there.

Yours in love,

Mickie Kent

Monday 2 September 2013

How Big is Your Love?

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how big is your love

“As a species we are preoccupied with size. Men want to be big, women want to be thin. Men want length and girth, women want the best shaped hips to give birth. When we boil nature down to its fundamentals, it is all about size - just not in the way we might necessarily think. Size is an issue, but don't make an issue out of your size. Big is not always better, and small is not always insignificant, or vice versa. The real question you should ask is: How big is your love?”
— Mickie Kent

Why is size so important to us? Why does size matter for life forms? What did it mean for a dinosaur to be big and an ant to be small? Why is a giant redwood tree giant and the dwarf salamander dwarf? What effect did their size have on what they could do? Why are we the size we are? Well, size governs everything that an organism can do. It's a most important factor and it boils down to us being 3-dimensional beings, with an area and volume. When you get bigger or smaller, the ratios of those two things changes and that governs what you're allowed to do.

For example, elephants can't dance or jump, while insects can walk on water, again because of the surface to volume ratio. In my mini-series on the science of twin I have already talked about why size matters in nature, and what size means to our species. As humans our bodies are very well proportioned, and the measurements offer up golden examples of symmetry - e.g., the span of our arms stretched wide equals our height; our forearm is the same length as our foot. From the minuscule to the enormous, science is closely involved with size and discoveries at either end of the scales are changing the way we view the universe.

It's become a du jour of sorts, wondering what the future will be like and whether the human species has a future at all. The general consensus is that unless we learn to cooperate and work together, our end of times might come sooner than the one many see approaching its natural conclusion around the year 3000 (mid-March 2880 to be precise) or 4000 (some predict the year 3797) with the collision of an asteroid - similar to one that is believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs.

Tracking the dangers of space

We live in a solar system that is littered with debris, and images released by NASA, a culmination of 8 year's work, shows the paths of 1,400 asteroids that have been tracked by NASA scientists. What is special about these ones is that they're classed as potentially hazardous, which means they are quite big, and also come within 7.5 kilometres of Earth.

None are thought to be a threat, at least not in the next 100 years, but by tracking and observing these asteroids, NASA can refine its estimates of where they are. All this could also help us identify near-Earth objects for future humans or robots to explore.

It's believed that evolution constantly goes through this cycle, until the planet itself will ultimately reach its own expiry date with that of the Sun, which after using up its fuel supply will collapse within 7 billion years. Life on Earth will have ended a little before that though as there will be an agonising period of repeated swelling, as our life-giving star grows into a red giant.

And even with so many nations around the world "seeing red" currently, with upheaval in the Middle East and elsewhere, some still believe that the dawn of a new human "golden age" is just around the corner - 2016 to be precise. Whether this prediction will come to fruition is anybody's guess, and only those reading this in that time will know for sure, but even those "golden age" predictions only seem to last about four years. Others predict a more gloomy affair with nuclear warfare laying waste to historical cities such as Rome, and that even nature will seem at war with us, with increased seismic activity becoming common place until 2025.

How will the world meet its end?

It seems that our world and our live will be filled with ups and downs for a long while yet. Predictions continue through the chaos to a hopeful resolution, where semi-world peace is achieved in 2050 (about 57% of the planet) - but again things get worse according to the soothsayers of times past. The year 2076 may bring about a fourth World War (if we ever survive a third) which is thought could last a record 25 years and turn most of the world into a barren dessert. If our human species does indeed fulfil such dark destinies, some might sat it would have been better if the cosmos sent an asteroid sometime earlier in the next two thousand years, before all the Sun has left to give life to is a dead planet, a true sister to Mars.

Michel de Nostredame was a 16th-century French
Michel de Nostredame (aka Nostradamus) was a 16th-century French "seer", best known for The Prophecies, a collection of French quatrains published in 1555. Nostradamus studied astrology and various "occult" sciences and used those to predict the future. Some believe these prophecies are worthy predictions of the future while others say they are merely vague observations retrofitted to match past events.

The see-saw of life, and fate and destiny seemed to be intertwined in such predictions, as although we constantly come to a brink, we seem to pull ourselves back at the eleventh hour - or so the soothsayers would have us believe. After this fourth world war, world peace will finally come it is believed in 2106 to last a thousand years. This will be a real golden age some predict, where the standard of living will rise to heights we cannot comprehend, and innovations in science, medicine and technology will rise accordingly. Naturally, nothing lasts forever, and in 3750 a new war and new fears that have never been faced up to that age will face our species once again, with the year 3797 seen by some as a turning point of humankind's evolution.

There are some that believe it heralds the end of our species, others predict that we will have evolved to achieve immortality. But these are distant futures that we cannot even comprehend. What is certain, however, is that change will always take place. We don't need to be soothsayers to predict that. Life is all about change, and so is science. So, we have looked at what some would consider the hokum of the future, what does science have to say about where humankind is heading?

How much is a millisecond worth? And at what cost to the Earth?

The banking crisis made us realise the astronomical sums of money that are traded around the globe - around 4.5 trillion every day. In the banking world, time very much is money, and the margins are incredibly fine. In New York City, for example, a lot can happen in a very short space of time. Light can travel at 186 miles in just one millisecond, and on Wall Street they want to make deals at the speed of light, because time is literally money.

The annual trades on the New York Stock Exchange are worth 35 trillion. That's more than the combined GDP of the UK, China and the USA. Half of those transactions are done by people, poring over screens, keeping track of price changes. The remainder are now done by computers, automatically and remotely all across the US, with no direct human involvement.

This is no game, however; our global economy is increasingly based on machines making decisions for themselves, as fast as the technology will allow them. The computers are doing what the humans are doing, but much faster. In the world of electronic trading, high frequency trading, a computer can do a thousand of trades in seconds. Computers speaks in electronic speeds of data that could flow between them at the speed of light - but that's in free air. The cables between computers slow that signal down. It's not by a huge amount, but because the trades are so fast these days, the length of wire between computers is becoming a real issue. In this new high speed world, every millisecond, every metre counts, and so the computers thousands of miles away from New York lose out, as vital milliseconds are wasted as their data travels, for example, from Los Angeles, or Chicago, and across the country.

To remove that disadvantage, the stock exchange built a huge data centre just outside New York. It's the size of three football pitches, and the whole process is to set a fair and level playing field to give everyone equal access to the market. But the financial race against time doesn't end there. Electronic traders on the New York Stock Exchange might now all be in one room, but the US is so big it has more than one giant trading centre. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange is a massive financial hub in its own right, but it's also vital that Chicago connects to New York at the highest possible speed.

So, in 2010, one company tunnelled through mountains and under cities to lay their own optical fibre cables the whole way. That reduced the time it took for information to flow between Chicago and New York, from 14.5 milliseconds to 13.1 milliseconds. It cost them more than 100 million dollars.

However, it took just two years for that bold step to be outdone. A line of 22 microwave towers stretching all the way from New York to Chicago. because sending information through the air is even faster, then sending it by optical fibre. Microwaves travel at the speed of light, they're only slowed down a fraction by the air they travel through. And even though it cost 30 million dollars, they slashed the connection time by another 5 milliseconds. In effect, each millisecond costs 6 million dollars - but how much is a millisecond worth to a trader? Billions.

In the crazy world of high speed trading, this race to save time sounds incredible, but it has its critics. For the sake of money, some say we have damaged and dug up the environment, and built unsightly microwave towers that emit waves that may with long term exposure detrimentally affect the surrounding people and its environment. Spending all that money to make up a tiny margin of advantage is deemed necessary by algorithmic traders, as the competition is so intense, and every millisecond is incredibly important to the trading companies. There are people suggesting that because the New York and London Stock Exchange needs to communicate faster and faster, people may fly drones across the Atlantic to make sure that connections work as fast possible across there. In effect some say its like sending trading decisions backwards in time. But the ethos that we will do whatever it takes to make money, is seen as a dangerous route to take for the future.

The future, whatever shapes it takes, will be one with an ever more populated planet. From 1460 AD, which seemed a very manageable amount of population compared to the level which that has grown through modern medicine to seven billion and growing, we have known that we will need to be ever more careful with all our resources, and how we expend that and balance that with our desire for financial expansion. In tandem with that, resources are strained, and if we all expect to eat the meals that the developed world eats, we need to be a lot more fairer when it comes to distribution, and more educated when to comes to wasting our resources.

As I began this post, really it is all to do with size - from the size of the prediction that seems too fantastic for rational brains, to the science of size itself - where we are preoccupied with inter-galactic scale of an expanding universe right down to our battle to live harmoniously with the smallest creatures on Earth - survival is ultimately seems to be concerned with how big or small we are. What will secure or incinerate our survival will be the course we take and what we choose to expand on. Focusing on science at least gives us hope for a better future.

Investigating the incredibly vast and infinitesimally small is helping us solve some really big problems. For instance, on the subject of food resources becoming increasingly restricted in the future, some are suggesting that more of the world could take their protein from tiny insects - which expend far less to be reared than the equivalent cattle and poultry. Meanwhile, big data - as it is called - can provide us with new ways of understanding ourselves and how we work and so save lives, while understanding the scientific effects of size, and hunting for the most elusive part of our cosmos - dark matter - can bring us closer to a greater awareness about our environment. The more aware we are about the world we live in, the more geared up we can be to live more consciously - and achieve our greatest desires.

So first, to a group of tiny creatures, among the first life forms on Earth. Bacteria are responsible for keeping our own ecosystem ticking over, but when they attack us it is an ugly sight. Superbugs like MRSA are a major danger, especially in hospitals - I can't speak for other countries, but in England our hospitals have been struggling for decades with this issue. It's interesting, therefore, that science is now suggesting that the Victorians - of all people - had the answer all along.

Bacteria are the most successful life forms on the planet. They are everywhere around us in unimaginable numbers. Most of them are harmless, but some have become our most formidable enemies. Our fight against antibiotic-resistant bacteria, the so-called superbugs, is going to be one of the key health issues over the next ten years. The question many scientists have been asking is this: What if there was a way to kill the bugs before they get to us, instead of using anti-biotics after we get infected - to literally stop them in their tracks?

Bacteria
Bacteria: Are these are greatest enemies?

Scientists have spent years trying to find a way to intercept and kill superbugs before they even have a chance to infect us. And the solution they've found is easier than anyone ever imagined. It is believed that one of the oldest metals known to humankind, it's cheap and abundant and was known to the ancient Greeks and Egyptians. It's copper and we've been using it for more than five thousand years. Who knew copper had superbug-battling credentials? It's due to the natural reactivity of copper, as soon as the bacteria land on its surface the copper floods into their cell. They stop the bacteria from respiring, so they can't breathe, and destroy their DNA.

It reckoned that 80% of superbug infections are actually transmitted by touch. Even with through cleaning its really difficult to stop a chance encounter. The problem is we are a very tactile animal; we as humans are brilliant at spreading bacteria. We don't realise how much we touch things without thinking about it.

Think of all the things you touched today, how many handles you touched, how many surfaces, how many rails, how many buttons - and now think about how many times you touched your face, your ear or slightly picked your nose! Then think about how many other people touched those surfaces surrounding you, and it only takes one of them to be infected and it will rapidly spread.

This isn't about making you paranoid, but with increasing urbanisation and cities becoming more populous, it is an issue we need to tackle. Unless everyone in hospitals, doctors, consultants and visitors are hermetically sealed off with masks and white suits, its virtually impossible to keep the bugs out.

We have a big, increasing problem of antibiotic resistance of all bacteria. Most people have heard of E-coli, and increasingly klebsiella, and their numbers are growing greater because of the rate they can multiply and their spontaneous mutations. Some believe we are in danger of returning to a pre-antibiotic era, mid-19th Century situation - a frightening scenario of sepsis, with people dying from surgical operations, transplants, wound infections and most cancer care for example.

Designer drugs for bacteria?

Every year five and half million of us get a stomach bug, but it looks as though we could be on the way to neutralising the bug's main weapon. Yersinia is a bacterium that can cause stomach pains, fever, diarrhoea. It works using little syringe-like structures on the outside of it, which poke into our cells and inject toxic chemicals. For the first time, researchers have been able to see these structures in great detail, and the idea is the more we understand about their tiny structures and how they work, the better we'll be able to design drugs to block them. And this knowledge could not only be useful for this bacterium, but it could also work against other stomach bugs like salmonella.

In the 1830s, Britain wasn't particularly health-concious. Few cared whether you lived or died. After a number of lethal epidemics, it was decided that trying to preserve the lives of its citizens might be a good idea, so the role of Chief Medial Officer was created to help change lives and expand lifespans, and help preserve the health of the nation and become the health conscience of the country. Precariously balanced between medicine and politics for 150 years, under its auspices sewage disposal was revolutionised, it oversaw the difficult births of institutions like the National Health Service, and pushed for greater awareness over the dangerous effects of cigarettes.

It is also the CMO's job to advise the government (appointed by the civil service as an independent advisor), and in the case of antibiotics it has had been raising the alarm as one of the major health challenges we have to face. There is the flu in China, a novel coronavirus coming out of the Middle East and as well as that we have new epidemics. Meanwhile, in the interim, we haven't had any new antibiotic classes since the late 80s. We've begun to rely on antibiotics for routine healthcare, so it's a serious risk, and is something that will threaten our existence long before climate change, if we go on as we are.

This is where copper comes in with the potential to dramatically impact our modern health system; just by adding copper to intensive car units - such as the hand rails, bed rails and tables - scientific studies in America show that superbug rates were slashed by an astonishing 60%. It's incredible that something so simple and commonplace as copper could become a key weapon in our battle with superbugs. It is potentially a way provided by the laboratory of nature to reduce the number of bugs around us whether they are resistant to our medicines or not.

It's not just copper, either, alloys of copper with 60% of copper in them, which includes brass, and the Victorians used brass all over the place, especially for making doorknobs and handles. Phyllis J. Kuhn, a bacteriologist - and an unsung scientific hero - originally recognised this in the 70s-80s, but it has taken 40 years or so to get real trials done on hospitals.

It's incredible how an idea can get going and spread - while in other areas people have known about this all the time. The wine-growers in France use a Bordeaux mix, which is a copper-rich solution to kill fungus on their vines. The Egyptians knew about copper and its ability to heal wounds. It is evidence that sometimes the solutions we seek are right there, staring us in the face.

We must also be careful in thinking solution we find are a complete solution, without do the science thoroughly. There are also studies coming out that suggest a lifetime of too much copper in our diets may be contributing to Alzheimer's disease. However, opinion is divided, with other studies suggesting copper may actually protect the brain. More research is necessary, and there was no true consensus on the role of copper we ingest as a mineral in Alzheimer's disease.

In a related example, our size also governs how we cope in a fall. How big we are will matter whether we survive or not. Sometimes having some extra subcutaneous fat, especially around our hips may cushion a fall, whereas being very think might make us prone to broken bones. Many doctors would advise however that the ideal shape to be would be to have that fat as muscle, and a healthy lifestyle with regular exercise - including some short-intense cardio and weight training - with a correct diet is the way to go.

It raises the important point that our health is not just about health protection from bacteria, it also includes non-communicable diseases like lifestyle ones. Size is an issue because we over-consume food, abuse of alcohol particularly in our young, especially our women, and lack of exercise. Exercise is seen as many as a magic bullet. In this way we are creating the optimum size for the proportions we have been given, for the best chance of survival.

However this size ration can change if we are falling from a large height - when objects smaller with much the same body plan - have a greater chance of surviving the fall, then their larger counterparts. Due to our generic size, we're not going to survive large falls, and yet small animals with a very high surface to volume ratio (like cockroaches) can. This shoes another issue about surface to volume ration, which is not just the pressure on the ground on point of impact, it's also about the air resistance. For something as small as a cockroach the air resistance is appreciable, and that's to do with how much area you present. Thus the terminal velocity of a cockroach will be much lower than ours.

People always say what's your height, or weight, but your surface to volume ration is more important for your survival. But it isn't just living things where the surface to volume ration changes. Inanimate objects depending on their size will crash and break, or even explode. Such dangers have been the cause of a lot of explosions in flour mills where people have lost their lives - any place that creates powders that have a calorific value. The powder mixed with the air has energy trapped inside it that can be explosive.

big data
Big data can be used to save lives

Size is important, and in today's electronic world we generate and capture incredible amounts of information. And if we know what to look for, we have the computing power to analyse it and make unexpected discoveries. In Toronto, Canada, big data is being used to help premature babies by predicting when they might fall ill, for example. If we could spot an infection before it became an illness, then it would buy valuable time, especially for prematurely born babies, whose immune systems are particularly weak. Even in the developed world, if a premature baby contracts one of the most serious forms of infection, they'll have a one in five chance of not making it through their first weeks of life.

Thanks to the huge amount of data generated by newborn babies, that can now happen. To any newborn baby, the world is a hostile place, but with this new science of informatics we have the potential to make it a safer one. Using all the data that is generated, by saving it and learning from it, with computing systems in place necessary to analyse the sheer volume of data, it is believed that more babies can be given a chance at life.

How it works is this: Premature baby wards generate constant streams of data, about heart rate, respiration and blood oxygen levels. A computer system can be created to scan all this data and look for extremely subtle changes in heart rate. For example, in one such system in Toronto the data revealed something that no doctor had seen before - that if a premature baby had a stable heart rate it was an advanced warning of a serious infection. Such a system in effect could help make a diagnosis up to a day before doctors see any visible signs of illness, and clinicians are excited by the prospect of being able to treat babies 24 hours earlier, leading to better outcomes.

We've obviously been measuring things and gathering information for a long time, but it's only just now become possible to do this, as the software we have now allows us to record that information in real time, process it as a stream of data and produce useful information that someone like a doctor can use in enough time to help save lives. We finally have the memory hardware in which to store all this data, we also have the computing speed to do it quickly.

We live in an ocean of data - smartphones, Twitter, Facebook, all of these things. We have sensors in every direction, we have cameras pointing all over the place, and we are collecting information all the time. We're just streaming data all around us, leaving a digital trail for anyoe who wishes to follow it. Leaving aside questions of privacy, having such data benefit people is a great usage of such information, and no one could wish for an environment where you would want advances more than caring for babies in need.

This shows that big data isn't just the fact that we can source lots of materials, but that we can do something with them to benefit humankind. And the data we collect increases immensely. Since computing began to up to 2003 we created something like 500 million gigabytes - we amassed that number every two days in 2011, and every ten minutes in 2013. Information is very easy to collect now, and its size matters just as much as what we can now do with it. Big data can be very abstract, but the studies with premature babies in Toronto show that we can put a human face to it.

Imputing big data into technology extremely fast so that it can keep track of the world around it in real time might even help push the concept of the driverless car into reality, with some believing that by 2045, 75% of all cars could be self-driving. Although this is one prediction that might not happen, it does offer up another example of how using big data will help to change the way we use our world.

This is just the tip of why science says size matters. There are plenty of illustrations of the different scales in our universe, from the smallest quantum foam to the largest limits of the observable universe. But what about the unobservable. Many who believe in the power of the spirit and the mind believe in things unquantifiable - as yet - by science, but what about science itself? Does it believe in things it cannot see?

When it comes to the size of the universe - it appears so. On the subject of size in the universe - why it is the the size it is - is a puzzle for scientists simply because we can't see enough matter in the universe, to explain why it's holding together the way it is. Some believe it should have expanded more, and some reckon there is a lot more matter that we simply can't see - dark matter. But does it actually exist, or is it just the figment of a physicist's overwrought imagination?

Why is it so elusive? The key to observing anything in nature, is to watch it interacting with our world and that is something dark matter rarely does. The exact nature of dark matter is one of the top mysteries in science. From the most powerful telescopes in space, to the Large Hadron Collider, scientists all over the world are looking for this cosmic dark horse, but so far this elusive material has refused to show itself. Here we are in the 21st Century, and we still don't know what the majority of the universe is made of, but should we care?

It's all great from a curiosity point of view to hunt down dark matter, but what does it mean in the bigger picture of things? Well, its believe that our universe as a whole would be fundamentally different if it wasn't for the presence of dark matter, and we probably wouldn't exist, either. This isn't just about weird stuff out there in the universe; if dark matter is real - and the evidence is growing that it is - then it's passing through us right now, we just can't see it.

It's a really strange counter-intuitive idea, and that's what scientists say is infuriating about dark matter. It will pass completely thorough the Earth with very little probability of it interacting, so if it exists, it is almost unobservable. It is supposed to far outnumber conventional matter, we can only guess it's there from its influence on how it holds the universe together. And how can you even catch a particle that can slip through our world without even touching it?

There are many dark matter experiments going on throughout the world, with atom matter locked away in detectors built deep in the crust of the Earth - away from cosmic rays in as a pure environment as possible - waiting for the moment a particle of dark matter will interact with the atoms and give off a release of energy in a resulting flash of light, which is directly measurable. These detectors are waiting to record one such dark matter event with their light sensors - the moment a particle of dark matter collides with our world - and when that happens, it will open a new chapter to a much bigger story.

All the stuff that we see and take for granted is thought to be like a tiny detail on top of what the universe is really made of. We could be on the edge of a real revolution is conventional human thinking. This is not a new idea to those investigating the evolution of the universe, but we are looking for stuff that is invisible to us, and which we can only see its effects. The measurements that initially made humans suspect that there was more to the universe that we can see, was during studies of how galaxies spin around - as they needed many more times the space to rotate at the speed they were.

Size, does indeed, point out the mysteries we need to focus on. By looking out at the biggest things in the universe like galaxies, we can see where dark matter must be, but we can't see what it is. The underground detectors are trying to bridge that gap, to get at what it actually is, and the only way to do that is to look right in at the smallest scales. The chances of dark matter hitting, or interacting, with normal matter, is so small and rare, that we have to put it into a pure environment and wait for a long time. Then we get a chance to see what it is, because the way it interacts will tell us about itself.

People can understandably be very cynical about this level of physics, because according to these theories we're trying to observe the unobservable. It kind of puts physics into the realm of the spiritualists, but in a very real sense science has observed that the universe hasn't expanded as much as it should, yet is this enough of a reason to believe in dark matter? We've also observed that on another scale, we're expanding for reasons we don't know, and again have put forward the theory of dark energy as the reason. It adds up to us calling 93% of the universe dark.

Scientists argue that all the different measurements are pointing to the same thing, but it's like the analogy of blind men looking at an elephant. Each ones feels a different part of the elephant (a truck, ear or leg) and thinks it must be different to the others, and the search for dark matter is proceeding a little in this way. There is something there, but no one knows exactly what it is. It is hoped the final picture will be built with a collection from all experiments together to unlock one mystery and lead us to many more.

Discoveries abound in our world. From the very, very small, to the very, very huge - the University of Central Lancashire discovered this year what they believe to be the largest object in the universe. It's a giant cluster of galaxies, and its four billion light years across. And back again to the very, very small, where scientists have made an animation with very small molecules - in effect making atoms that star in their very own movie. It would take about 1,000 of the frames of the film laid side by side to span a single human hair. It is a showpiece for efforts trying to design next-generation data storage solutions based on single atoms.

What is so amazing about nanotechnology - which is essentially what this is - is that for a long time we could see what was going on in that "world" but we couldn't manipulate it. Even more interesting, is that to be able to manipulate atoms in such a way the conditions had to be as close to absolute zero as possible, as atoms only stay still in freezing conditions, because most atoms are moving constantly. If this technology ever came to be a reality for storage use, it would hit the limit of Moore's Law, that says our storage capacity doubles every 18 months or so.

Although to reach that atomic scale of storage will be an obvious limit, its believed that once reached, it will be the point where your smartphone could store every movie ever made. Arguably it is not just the storage of our lives, but - as we have seen throughout this article - where the science of our life could lead us that is indeed fascinating.

A lot of it has to do with size, but as we close, one thing holds true throughout it all - from the tiniest atom to the largest galaxies the cosmos holds - it is the interconnecting passion that holds us steady on our path. It is the one true focus that - when used as a GPS system in our lives - will guide us to not only safer shores, but more beautiful ones.

All we have read shows us that size does matter in all things, but the only real question for us really should be to ask first and foremost - how big is our love, for it is love that shines the way to a better future.

Yours in love,

Mickie Kent