Food scientists at The Florida State University conducted a pilot study of four men and five postmenopausal women, all aged 51 to 57 and prehypertensive. All nine participants showed improved arterial function and lower aortic blood pressure, suggesting that watermelon can be an effective natural weapon against prehypertension, a precursor to cardiovascular disease. In the first investigation of its kind in humans, researchers administered six grams of the amino acid L-citrulline/L-arginine from watermelon extract to the subjects on a daily basis for six weeks. L-citrulline is converted in the body to L-arginine which is required for the formation of nitric oxide essential to the regulation of vascular tone and healthy blood pressure. Although L-arginine is available as a dietary supplement, for many people it can cause nausea, gastrointestinal tract discomfort, and diarrhea, whereas watermelon has none of those effects. Dubbing watermelon a "functional food," the lead author, FSU Assistant Professor Arturo Figueroa, suggested that it has a vasodilatory effect which may prevent prehypertension from progression to full-blown hypertension, a major risk factor for heart attack and stroke. His co-author, FSU Professor Bahram H. Arjmandi, defined "functional foods" as those "scientifically shown to have health-promoting or disease-preventing properties, above and beyond the other intrinsically healthy nutrients they also supply." According to the study published in the American Journal of Hypertension, watermelon is the richest edible natural source of L-citrulline, and is also a good source of vitamins A, B6 and C, as well as fiber, potassium and the antioxidant lycopene. L-citrulline is also available as a supplement and the authors believe that supplementation might allow a reduced dosage of drugs prescribed to control blood pressure. A previous study by Dr. Figueroa showed that four weeks of L-citrulline supplementation slowed or weakened the increase in aortic blood pressure in response to cold exposure which, combined with hypertension, is associated with higher rates of myocardial infarction.

That’s what the US Surgeon General concluded in an 85-page advisory released in May 2023, drawing on decades of research into how isolation actually affects human mortality. Data tends to back it up. Meta-analyses tracking over 3.4 million people found that social isolation increases all-cause mortality by roughly 29%, loneliness by 26%, and living alone by 32%. Those numbers put the mortality effect of chronic loneliness on par with well-established risk factors like smoking and above the effect of obesity. Sounds bad. Even worse when you consider the scale of the problem: Half of American adults, according to the data cited in the report, were experiencing loneliness even before the pandemic made it worse. Most, hearing that loneliness increases mortality, may conclude that suicide is the driver behind the increased mortality. It fits. Lonely people are more likely to be depressed. Depression increases the risk of suicide. Far more of the deaths come from physical health impacts. Loneliness has been linked to diseases such as: - Cardiovascular disease - Stroke - Type 2 diabetes - Dementia - Alzheimer's This is because chronic loneliness drives measurable elevations in: - Cortisol - Inflammatory markers like C-reactive protein - Blood pressure - Lipid dysregulation It also suppresses immune function and can accelerate cognitive decline. It kills you the way smoking kills you, through the same physiological pathways, just with a different upstream trigger.

There is a nerve in your body that connects your brain directly to your heart, your lungs, and your gut. Scientists call it the vagus nerve. What it does when you worship will change how you think about praise. The vagus nerve is the longest cranial nerve in the human body. It runs from the brainstem all the way down through the neck, chest, and abdomen. It is the primary pathway of what researchers call the parasympathetic nervous system, the system responsible for rest, recovery, digestion, and immune function. When the vagus nerve is activated, heart rate slows, blood pressure drops, inflammation decreases, and the body shifts from survival mode into restoration mode. Researchers have identified three primary activators of the vagus nerve. Deep, rhythmic breathing. Cold water exposure. Singing. Not listening to music. Singing. The act of producing sustained vocal tones activates the vagus nerve directly through the muscles of the throat and the vibration in the chest cavity. Psalm 100:1-2 says make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come into his presence with singing. The Hebrew word for joyful noise is rua, meaning to shout, to raise a battle cry, to produce a loud, sustained vocal sound. God did not design corporate worship as a warm-up for the sermon. He designed it as a full-body, neurologically active, physiologically restorative event that shifts your entire system from survival mode into the mode your body needs to heal, receive, and function at its highest level. When you lift your voice in genuine worship, you are not just expressing gratitude. You are activating a nerve God designed that tells every organ in your body it is safe to restore. Your voice was built to heal you. Use it. Dr. Zac Breckenridge

The COSMOS trial has given us one of the first randomized looks at whether a supplement can measurably slow biological aging. COSMOS itself assigned more than 21,000 older adults to a daily multivitamin, a cocoa extract, both, or neither; in a prespecified substudy of 958 of them, researchers tracked five DNA methylation clocks (epigenetic markers that estimate biological rather than chronological age) over two years. Writing in Nature Medicine, they reported that the multivitamin slowed two of the second-generation clocks: PCGrimAge advanced 0.11 years less per year than placebo, and PCPhenoAge 0.21 years less. Cocoa extract showed no effect on any of the five. On PCGrimAge, the benefit was concentrated in people who started out biologically older than their chronological age, which fits what I saw clinically, since the further you are from optimal the more room there is to move. The trial used a generic, off-the-shelf multivitamin built on synthetic nutrient forms. So imagine if they used a real food multivitamin?? The results would have been ever more amazing!

If you haven't seen the MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) Movie, you need to watch it as soon as possible! It is a 16 part series of documentaries highlighting why we are so sick as a nation and what we can do about it. It reinforces everything we do here at Mind and Body and contains SO much valuable information - I have to share it with everyone I know. Watch it and share with all of your friends and loved ones! https://mahamovie.com