On April 30th, this region of Mercury’s surface will have a new crater! Traveling at 3.91 kilometers per second (over 8,700 miles per hour), the MESSENGER spacecraft will collide with Mercury’s surface, creating a crater estimated to be 16 meters (52 feet) in diameter.
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On April 29, 1990, the Space Shuttle Discovery approaches for landing on a concrete runway at Edwards Air Force Base to complete a highly successful five-day mission during which the Hubble Space Telescope was released into orbit.
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NASA astronaut Scott Kelly delivers remarks from onboard the International Space Station during the Space Shuttle Enterprise dedication ceremony Monday, April 27, 2015, at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City. Enterprise was dedicated to the fallen crews who gave their lives in pursuit of space exploration.
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To learn more about the minerals and surface processes on Mercury, instruments aboard NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft have been collecting surface measurements since MESSENGER entered Mercury orbit on March 17, 2011.
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If you are looking for a quickie but goodie, this salmon is sure to please! Make your spice mixture ahead of time and you can have dinner on the table in less than 15 minutes. Serve with a little homemade or store-bought guacamole to add extra flavor, texture and healthy fats.
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Published: April 24, 2015
If you are looking for a quickie but goodie, this salmon is sure to please! Make your spice mixture ahead of time and you can have dinner on the table in less than 15 minutes. Serve with a little homemade or store-bought guacamole to add extra flavor, texture and healthy fats.
from Dr. Mark Hyman http://ift.tt/1IQFsyW
In this April 25, 1990, photograph taken by the crew of the STS-31 space shuttle mission, the Hubble Space Telescope is suspended above shuttle Discovery’s cargo bay some 332 nautical miles above Earth.
from NASA http://ift.tt/1DHC056
The science of food addiction is clearer now than ever before. A powerful study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition proves that higher-sugar, higher-glycemic foods are addictive in the same way as cocaine and heroin.
In this groundbreaking study, Dr. David Ludwig and his colleagues at Harvard proved that foods with more sugar—those that raise blood sugar quickly or have what is called a high glycemic index—trigger a special region in the brain called the nucleus accumbens known to be ground zero for conventional addictions such as gambling and drug abuse. When this pleasure center becomes activated, it makes us feel good and drives us to seek out more of that feeling.
Previous studies have shown how this region of the brain lights up in response to images or when someone eats a sugary, processed, or junk food.
However, many of these studies compared very different foods. If you compare cheesecake to boiled vegetables, the pleasure center will light up to the cheesecake and not to the vegetables for many reasons. Maybe the cheesecake tastes better or looks better. In other words, interesting data, but not hard proof of addiction.
This newer study took on the hard job of proving the biology of sugar addiction. To confirm their results, the researchers did a randomized, blind crossover study using the most rigorous research design. They took 12 overweight or obese men between 18 and 35 and gave each a low-sugar, low-glycemic-index (37 percent) milkshake.
Four hours later, they measured the nucleus accumbens, the brain area that controls addiction. They also measured blood sugar and hunger levels.
Days later, researchers had the same subjects back for another round of milkshakes. This time, they switched them. The new milkshakes tasted and looked exactly the same as the first round— except in how much and how quickly they spiked blood sugar.
In contrast to the first shakes, this second batch of milkshakes contained more sugar with a high glycemic index (84 percent).
Not only were the two sets of shakes engineered to deliver precisely the same flavor and texture, they also had exactly the same amount of calories, protein, fat, and carbohydrate. Think of them as trick milkshakes.
Participants didn’t know which milkshake they were getting, and their mouths couldn’t tell the difference, but according to the study results, their brains sure could. Each participant received a brain scan and blood tests for glucose and insulin after drinking each version of the milkshake.
Without exception, they all experienced the same response: The high-sugar, high-glycemic-index milkshake caused a much greater spike in blood sugar and insulin levels, and also yielded reports of increased hunger and cravings four hours after they consumed it.
This part of the study findings was not surprising and had actually been shown in many previous studies. The breakthrough finding: When the high-glycemic shake was consumed, the nucleus accumbens lit up like a Christmas tree.
By contrast, the low-glycemic shake triggered no response in the nucleus accumbens. This pattern occurred in every single participant and was statistically highly significant.
This study proved two things.
In other words, this study proved food addiction is very real. In fact, it’s the root cause of why so many people are overweight and sick. They become stuck in a vicious cycle of cravings. They eat sugary foods that spike their blood sugar, and their brain’s pleasure center lights up. This triggers more cravings, driving them to seek out more and more of the substance that gives them this “high.”
These people become powerless against their brain’s hardwired response to seek out pleasure. It’s no wonder so many people feel trapped!
How Do You Know Whether You’re Addicted?
My friend and colleague Kelly Brownell, PhD, while at Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, created a scientifically validated food questionnaire to help you determine whether you are a food addict.
Here are some clues you may be addicted to sugar, flour, and processed food. The more intensely or more frequently you experience these feelings and behaviors, the more addicted you are:
If you find yourself nodding to these clues, don’t worry— you’re far from alone. Millions of people in every corner of the world have fallen into the food addiction trap.
Lack of Willpower isn’t the Problem
The important thing to remember is that food addiction is not your fault. It is not because you are lazy or lack willpower to resist sugary, processed foods. It makes me furious to see patient after patient blame himself or herself for his or her weight problems and diabesity.
The real blame for our weight and health problems lies less with the individuals who’ve inadvertently become addicted to processed foods than with the food companies that designed food products with highly addictive properties in the first place.
Yes, we all have choices, and personal empowerment and responsibility play roles here, but they are not enough if we are trapped in a food coma induced by the toxic influences of sugar and processed foods.
No one chooses to be fat. Think about it. If you grew up not being able to identify a vegetable because you never ate one, if your school had only deep-fried food or the kind that came out of a box or a can and was stocked with vending machines full of sweetened sports drinks, juices, or sodas, or was ringed by convenience stores where you could buy a 64-ounce Big Gulp on your way home every day, it’s no surprise that your habits and taste buds got wired that way.
If nearly every restaurant chain near you serves jumbo portions of sugar and fat and salt (what David Kessler, MD, calls “hyper-palatable” foods), if your workplace lunchroom is a toxic food dump, good luck staying healthy.
If, unbeknownst to you, your yogurt contains more sugar than a Coke, and the main ingredient in your barbecue sauce is high-fructose corn syrup, how can the food industry point the finger at you for not taking personal responsibility?
Peer pressure to fit in is strong, and Big Food knows this. Big Food preys on people’s desire to be eating and drinking the “in” thing and uses manipulation to get customers hooked. Remember the Coca-Cola ad, “I’d like to buy the world a Coke”? Let’s get the whole world hooked! Now North Korea and Cuba are the only countries to which Coke is not distributed. Mission accomplished!
There are specific biological mechanisms that drive addictive behavior. Nobody chooses to be a heroin addict, cokehead, or drunk. Nobody chooses to have a food addiction either.
These behaviors arise from primitive neurochemical reward centers in the brain that override normal willpower and, in the case of food addictions, overwhelm the ordinary biological signals that control hunger.
Why is it so hard for obese people to lose weight despite the social stigma, despite the health consequences such as high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, and even cancer, and despite their intense desire to lose weight?
It is not because they want to be fat. It is because in the vast majority of cases, certain types of food— processed foods made of sugar, fat, and salt combined in ways kept secret by the food industry— are addictive. We are biologically wired to crave these foods and eat as much of them as possible.
The Science of Addiction
While some of us may be more genetically predisposed to the addictive properties of food (or heroin or alcohol), if you examine your own behavior and your relationship to sugar in particular, you will likely find that your behavior around sugar matches up perfectly with why you can’t control your diabesity.
Based on psychological criteria and new neurological research, many of us, including most obese children, are “addicted” to industrial food. Let’s review some of the scientific findings confirming that food can, indeed, be addictive:
If you want to understand more about how the food industry keeps us addicted, please read The End of Overeating. In this riveting book, Kessler, the former head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), describes the science of how food is made into drugs by the creation of hyper-palatable foods that leads to neurochemical addiction.
12 Ways to Curb Cravings and Crush Food Addiction
I hope you’re beginning to understand the science of food addiction and why it is not your fault. Far from succumbing to being an addict and feeling doomed, you can take control to regain your health and taste buds while reversing your diabesity risk with these 12 strategies:
Take the Blood Sugar Solution Challenge
Is there a way out of food addiction? Is there a way to free yourself from the control that processed food and sugar have over your behavior and wellbeing?
Yes, there is. If we can agree that there is biological addiction, then the only solution is to detox to break the cycle.
Try asking a cocaine or heroin addict to “cut down.” Forget it. I wish it weren’t so, but I am simply the messenger for the science of food addiction.
This is why I decided to write The Blood Sugar Solution 10-Day Detox Diet: to give people powerful tools to painlessly detox from sugar and processed food and reset, reboot, and restore their body to health.
Just to be clear, the Blood Sugar Solution 10-Day Detox Diet is not a magic cure or a gimmicky weight loss scheme. It is a comprehensive, science-based approach to ending food addiction and creating rapid, safe weight loss and long -term optimal health.
The Blood Sugar Solution 10-Day Detox Diet is for anyone who wants to experience what true wellness feels like, and for most people, that realization is just 10 days away.
If you’ve struggled with food addiction, what one food was especially challenging to break free from? Share yours below or on my Facebook page.
References
Brownell KD, et al. The public health and economic benefits of taxing sugar-sweetened beverages. N Engl J Med. 2009 Oct 15; 361( 16): 1599– 605. Epub 2009 Sep 16.
Colantuoni C, Schwenker J, McCarthy P, et al. Excessive sugar intake alters binding to dopamine and mu-opioid receptors in the brain. Neuroreport. 2001;12( 16): 3549– 52.
Gearhardt AN , Corbin WR, Brownell KD. Preliminary validation of the Yale Food Addiction Scale. Appetite. 2009;52( 2): 430– 36.
Gearhardt AN, et al. Food addiction, an examination of the diagnostic criteria for dependence. J Addict Med. 2009;3: 1– 7.
Lenners BS, et al. Effects of dietary glycemic index on brain regions related to reward and craving in men. Am J Clin Nutr. 2013 Sep;98(3):641-7. doi: 10.3945/ajcn.113.064113.
Malik VS, Schulze MB, Hu FB. Intake of sugar-sweetened beverages and weight gain: a systematic review. Am J Clin Nutr. 2006 Aug; 84( 2): 274– 88. Review.
Volkow, ND, Wang, GJ, Fowler, JS, et al. “Nonhedonic” food motivation in humans involves dopamine in the dorsal striatum and methylphenidate amplifies this effect. Synapse. 2002;44( 3): 175– 80.
from Dr. Mark Hyman http://ift.tt/1yWB1lF
The brilliant tapestry of young stars flaring to life resemble a glittering fireworks display in the 25th anniversary NASA Hubble Space Telescope image, released to commemorate a quarter century of exploring the solar system and beyond since its launch on April 24, 1990.
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In this photo taken from a chase plane, the Boeing ecoDemonstrator 757 flight test airplane –with NASA’s Active Flow Control technology installed on the tail — makes a final approach to King County Boeing Field in Seattle, Washington.
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This 15,000-by-15,000-pixel image of southern Africa and the surrounding oceans took six orbits of the Suomi NPP spacecraft to compile.
from NASA http://ift.tt/1aPhuIp
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, currently on a one-year mission on the International Space Station, posted this image of the successful capture of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft with the space station’s robotic arm.
from NASA http://ift.tt/1Jnghnr
In this Chandra image of ngc6388, researchers have found evidence that a white dwarf star may have ripped apart a planet as it came too close. When a star reaches its white dwarf stage, nearly all of the material from the star is packed inside a radius one hundredth that of the original star.
The destruction of a planet may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but a team of astronomers has found evidence that this may have happened in an ancient cluster of stars at the edge of the Milky Way galaxy.
Using several telescopes, including NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, researchers have found evidence that a white dwarf star – the dense core of a star like the Sun that has run out of nuclear fuel – may have ripped apart a planet as it came too close.
More information.
Image Credit: NASA
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Dr. Hyman explains how you have to remove, replace and repair the foods in your diet to help heal chronic stomach issues.
Part 2: Cathy Describes Her Constant Stomach Pain.
Cathy shares how her schedule revolves around her constant stomach pain and explains why she needs help.
Part 3: How to Reintroduce Common Food Allergens Back Into Your Diet
Dr. Hyman explains why if you suffer from stomach issues you should slowly add dairy, grain, soy, beans and eggs back into your diet after a week of elimination.
Part 4: How to Repair a Leaky Gut With Food
Dr. Hyman explains how omega-3 fatty fish, cabbage and coconut oil help heal inflammation in your gut.
from Dr. Mark Hyman http://ift.tt/1Jcffe0
In this Chandra image of ngc6388, researchers have found evidence that a white dwarf star may have ripped apart a planet as it came too close. When a star reaches its white dwarf stage, nearly all of the material from the star is packed inside a radius one hundredth that of the original star.
The destruction of a planet may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but a team of astronomers has found evidence that this may have happened in an ancient cluster of stars at the edge of the Milky Way galaxy.
Using several telescopes, including NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, researchers have found evidence that a white dwarf star – the dense core of a star like the Sun that has run out of nuclear fuel – may have ripped apart a planet as it came too close.
More information.
Image Credit: NASA
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“Honoring #JackieRobinson today! #42″ wrote NASA astronaut Terry Virts, wearing a replica Jackie Robinson jersey on orbit in the cupola of the International Space Station.
April 15, which was baseball’s opening day in 1947, has now come to commemorate Jackie Robinson’s memorable career and his place in history as the first black major league baseball player in the modern era. He made history with the Brooklyn Dodgers (now the Los Angeles Dodgers) and he was inducted to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.
Image Credit: NASA
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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station carrying the Dragon resupply spacecraft on the sixth commercial resupply services mission to the International Space Station. Liftoff was at 4:10 p.m. EDT, Tuesday, April 14. Research that will help prepare NASA astronauts and robotic explorers for future missions to Mars is among the two tons of cargo on its way to the International Space Station aboard Dragon.
The mission is the company’s sixth cargo delivery flight to the station through NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services contract. Dragon’s cargo will support approximately 40 of the more than 250 science and research investigations that will be performed during Expeditions 43 and 44, including numerous human research investigations for NASA astronaut Scott Kelly’s one-year mission in space.
Image Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett
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Expedition 43 Flight Engineer Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency (ESA) photographed the giant solar arrays on the International Space Station on Feb. 12, 2015.
The space station’s solar arrays contain a total of 262,400 solar cells and cover an area of about 27,000 square feet (2,500 square meters) — more than half the area of a football field. A solar array’s wingspan of 240 feet (73 meters) is longer than a Boeing 777’s wingspan, which is 212 feet (65 meters). Altogether, the four sets of arrays can generate 84 to 120 kilowatts of electricity — enough to provide power to more than 40 homes. The solar arrays produce more power than the station needs at one time for station systems and experiments. When the station is in sunlight, about 60 percent of the electricity that the solar arrays generate is used to charge the station’s batteries. At times, some or all of the solar arrays are in the shadow of Earth or the shadow of part of the station. This means that those arrays are not collecting sunlight. The batteries power the station when it is not in the sun.
Image Credit: ESA/NASA
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