MEN AND THE BIG 40

Now I did say when I created this blog it was also for men, so here we are I came across this article from the Daily Mail. As you know I am a counsellor and many of the problems that I do come across relate to men when they hit 40. Generally it's their wives and girl friends that contact me. 

Now we are all aware that around middle aged women approach the menopause, we are all familiar with this, but this midlife crisis men appear to have would appear to be the male equivalent.

Many men seem to take stock of their life around this time and its almost as if they want to cram everything in they have missed out on for some. Relationships get stressed, they become irritable. Some men do experience a fall in testosterone levels and this can make them irritable and depressed and cause changes in libido and men are notorious for not wishing to discuss this with their doctor. Sadly rather than discuss all of this with their partners, they create a distance between themselves and its not uncommon for relationships to break up at this time.

The good news is the majority men do pass through this stage in their lives, but why go through what can be an unsettling time on your own. So I urge you guys to talk to your girlfriends and wives as to how you are feeling, you would be surprised how much this can alleviate how you are feeling and please if you are feeling depressed lethargic etc do go and talk to your doctor that is what he is there for

Why mid-life health kicks can WRECK men's bodies: Jogging and low-fat food will make you fatter and damage your heart

Hitting 40 marks a turning point for many men and their health.

Their metabolism slows, leading to the dreaded belly and the first signs of ageing and long-term disease — raised blood cholesterol and high blood pressure — begin to appear.

Last week, came the gloomy prediction that almost two thirds of men aged between 40 and 100 will be obese by 2040, risking type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke and early death.

Running into trouble? David Cameron, 45, and Boris Johnson, 47. Jogging is almost as much a rite of passage for the middle-aged man as buying a fast car

The thickening waist and heightened sense of mortality is often enough to kick start a new regimen, which usually means choosing low-fat foods and taking up jogging (indeed, jogging is almost as much a rite of passage for the middle-aged man as buying a fast car, with David Cameron and Boris Johnson recently spotted pounding the pavements). 

But these are actually the worst things the middle-aged man can do, says Dr Charles Clark, a consultant surgeon and expert on diabetes. 

Like a growing number of experts, Dr Clark (an honorary research fellow at the University of Glasgow), says low-fat diets could be making our long-term health worse. 

That’s because they are often high in sugar and carbohydrates. 

Dr Clark and others believe sugar, and its effect on the hormone insulin, is the real dietary evil behind our ever-rising obesity levels and our frightening incidence of heart disease. 

In a new book, he claims that controlling insulin is the key to protecting a man’s heart, and also protecting him against a host of potential killers — raised cholesterol, diabetes, cancers — as well as reducing his risk of arthritis and obesity, and even boosting his libido. 

It is a controversial view, but Dr Clark has strong medical credentials, having published more than 80 scientific research articles in high-profile journals such as  the British Medical Journal. 

As for jogging, Dr Clark says if you’re unfit, it’s a quick-fire way of destroying your hip and knee joints and placing a tremendous strain on your heart and lungs. 

But all is not lost, for Dr Clark believes men can dramatically improve their health, and reduce their risk of killer diseases, in as little as two weeks by making a few very simple changes. 

Here are some of his key recommendations.

AVOID ‘LOW-FAT’ FOODS

Dr Clark says low-fat diet foods are very often pumped with extra sugar (file picture)

We’ve long been told that high-fat  foods (such as cream and cheese) clog up the arteries. So, for most men, going low-fat would seem the obvious way to eat healthily. 

But Dr Clark says dietary cholesterol accounts for just 15 per cent of the total cholesterol in our bodies — the rest is manufactured by the liver. 

As he explains it, the problem is sugar. In response to sugar in the blood, the body produces the hormone insulin.

This in turn instructs the liver to metabolise dietary fat and convert any extra food in the blood into triglycerides (a form of blood fat). 

These triglycerides are bundled into globules transported through the blood to be taken up by the fat cells. That’s how excess food makes us fat.

Insulin also controls the extent to which the liver creates and pumps out cholesterol. Scientists believe high insulin levels are more likely to trigger the production of ‘bad’ LDL cholesterol. 

When insulin levels are reduced, the liver cells find it harder to convert the fat in food into cholesterol and tends to pump out more ‘good’ HDL cholesterol.

Dr Clark says low-fat diet foods (yoghurts, ready-meals, biscuits, even salad dressings) are very often pumped with extra sugar to make them palatable and people on low-fat diets are very likely to fill up on carbohydrates, both of which raise insulin levels, increasing LDL and triglycerides.

FORGET JOGGING

Exercise plays an important role in keeping insulin levels under control. 

But while jogging is an excellent form of exercise when you are fit, it is also an excellent way of precipitating a heart attack when you’re not, says Dr Clark.

If you are overweight with poor muscle tone, jogging is a fast track to ruining your hip and knee joints and put unbearable strain on your heart and lungs. 

Instead, start exercising slowly and build up your fitness gradually by walking for 20 minutes five times a week, and adding some gentle muscle-building exercises (such as lifting light weights) and stretching. 

EXERCISE YOUR SMOOTH MUSCLE

We all start to lose our muscle tone with age, but while exercise will help, don’t forget your smooth muscles. These make up the intestines, the bladder and the muscle in internal organs and their health is vital. Like any other cell, they need food and oxygen.

These come in the form of nutrition from your diet and good profusion, or blood flow, to the tissues. Healthy smooth muscle prevents constriction of the arteries by cholesterol and stress.

To ‘exercise’ the smooth muscles, you need roughage (such as green vegetables). This stretches the muscle fibres and helps to press food through the bowel. If you don’t have roughage in your diet, the bowel isn’t stimulated and it becomes dormant — a major cause of bowel cancer.

Water is also vital — drink regularly, not just when you feel thirsty. This keeps the bowel’s contractor muscle moving, prevents constipation and prevents many of the typical diseases that occur in middle age such as cancer, irritable bowel syndrome, colitis and peptic ulcers. 

SIT UP STRAIGHT

Correct posture is vital for the health of bones and muscles — but Dr Clark says sitting and standing properly are also crucial for the internal organs to function effectively. It enables unrestricted expansion of the internal organs, allowing for blood flow, breathing and gastroeintestinal function.

So be aware of your posture at all times. When sitting, standing or walking, consciously pull your shoulders back and lift your head to draw the body into a balanced position and help prevent upper and lower back pain.

Additionally, learn to sit with the feet directly in front with the toes pointing forward. This will help stop excessive rotation in the hip joint, which can lead to injury, and prevent strain on the hip muscles.

BREATHE DEEPLY

When we’re under stress, the body produces the hormone cortisol. 

One of its actions is to force the liver to release sugar into the blood, providing instant energy to help you fight or flee. This triggers yet more insulin, high levels of which can lead to obesity and disease.

If you’re under constant stress, your insulin levels will inevitably be high. 

Stress can cause such powerful chemical changes in the body that it can trigger the start of diabetes, raise blood pressure (cortisol also instructs the arteries to narrow, forcing the heart to pump harder and faster), reduce your immunity, affect your testosterone levels, and even increase the risk of osteoporosis and certain cancers.

De-stressing is therefore vital: eat healthily and at regular intervals (hunger and poor diet put extra stress on the body), get plenty of sleep and exercise, and try relaxation techniques and deep breathing exercises.

Sit quietly for five minutes each day, close your eyes and focus on nothing but your breathing and your heartbeat, and try to breathe evenly and slowly.

For days when negative thoughts take over, use ‘stress Elastoplasts’ such as a good book (reading something of interest to you for as little as six minutes can reduce stress by 68 per cent), listening to music (it can lower stress by 32 per cent) or massage (a weekly massage brings down stress levels by 27 per cent).

DRINK WINE, NOT FRUIT JUICE

Dr Clark recommends alcohol consumption is limited to two small glasses of red wine per day (file picture)

Dr Clark recommends drinking at least ten cups of water a day. He says fruit juice is ‘far too high in sugar for general consumption’, coffee causes dehydration and should be restricted to two cups a day, tea to three cups (herbal tea is unlimited), but alcohol is allowed, in moderation. 

‘Beers have high carbohydrate content and therefore a greater likelihood of promoting the development of diabetes than those drinks with a low carbohydrate content, such as red wine,’ he says, recommending alcohol consumption is limited to two small glasses of red wine per day.

SAVE YOUR SEX LIFE

Testosterone levels naturally fall with age (at a rate of 1-2 per cent per year after the age of 40), but a dwindling libido can also be a symptom of excessive stress and poor diet.

Poor nutrition causes physical and mental fatigue, leaving little left over for social interest, let alone sexual activity. 

Obesity itself also limits libido. In one French study, obese men were 69 per cent less likely to have had more than one sexual partner in a year than men of normal weight. 

Another problem at this age can be impotence, which can be an early sign of coronary heart disease and diabetes. It can also be due to atherosclerosis, a systemic condition where plaque builds up inside the arteries, leading to restricted blood flow in the penis.

So how to resolve a flagging libido? Once again the process is simple, says Dr Clark: Reduce refined carbohydrates, reduce stress levels and take more exercise. All will help ensure the body is working at optimum levels. 

TUCK INTO A STEAK

For every meal, energy should, instead, come from protein

Modern diets have become dangerously carbohydrate-heavy, says Dr Charles Clark.
All carbohydrates consist of sugar molecules joined together — the typical Western diet can contain as much as 66 teaspoons of sugar in one day.
While public health advice recommends carbohydrates form a major part of a healthy, balanced diet, most carbohydrates are completely surplus to our bodily requirements, Dr Clark suggests.
Refined carbohydrates such as white bread, pasta and rice provide only energy, he says.
They don’t provide any form of nutrition at all. What’s more, if your diet is dominated by these you could be producing too much insulin.
Insulin is the master hormone for weight management, commanding the body to convert excess sugar in the bloodstream into fat — which is stored primarily in the abdomen.
Keep carbohydrates to no more than 50g a day (a slice of wholemeal bread has 18g of carbs; a small, 5cm diameter, baked potato has around 15g).
For every meal, energy should, instead, come from protein (in the form of meat, fish, eggs and cheese) and a wide variety of fruit, vegetables and salads.
When we consume proteins, the body breaks them down into amino acids, which are absorbed through the wall of the bowel and form skin, bones, muscles, tendons, and all the organs such as the brain and the heart.
Avoid all refined carbohydrates for two weeks to kick-start any healthy-eating plan.

Adapted from Health Revolution For Men by Dr Charles Clark and Maureen Clark (Piatkus, £12.99). 

© 2012 Dr Charles Clark and Maureen Clark. To order a copy for £10.99 (incl. p&p) call 0843 382 0000.

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THE STIGMA OF MENTAL ILLNESS

This caught my eye in the Daily Mail today and pertains to a book being released later this month details at the bottom of this article here. 

For too long there has been a stigma with mental illness as I see it, mental illness can have its roots in a physical cause as many mental illnesses, such as depression are caused by an imbalance in brain chemistry, namely neurotransmitters making it no different to say diabetes or a thyroid disorder so why should it have this stigma?

As a young nurse one of my placements was to what was known at the time as a "Psycho geriatric" ward, most of the patients were suffering from Dementia however there were a couple who technically had no reason to be in there at all. They had had an illegitimate child back in the 1940's which was seen as a huge scandal in those days, so their babies were put up for adoption and they were sectioned under the mental act for their so called crime. Because they had become institutionalised they were now unable to be released to normal life as they would have been unable to cope. It's really quite shocking to see where what was needed was support and compassion, instead the vulnerable were locked up out of sight.

Perhaps if people weren't so ignorant and were willing to understand mental illness there would not be the stigma it still has albeit it is a bit better than in Victorian times. Attitudes need to change, for we never know what is round the corner, due to stress, and people living longer Mental Illness is on the increase, it's time to drop the stigma and be compassionate and learn to understand its no different from any other illness, after all next year, it might be you or a loved one who succumbs

Sent to the asylum: The Victorian women locked up because they were suffering from stress, post natal depression and anxiety 

These days, work stress, postnatal depression and anxiety are addressed with compassion. But just a few generations ago, the women who suffered from these conditions, were confined to an asylum.

The compelling portraits shown here, taken by Victorian photographer Henry Hering in the mid-19th century, have a haunting quality.

But apart from the women’s pensive expressions and drab clothing, there is little to indicate that the photographs had been taken in an asylum. If you took away the period gowns and hairstyles, their mournful faces might be looking out of the window of a bus or café today.

Emma Riches. Diagnosis: Insanity caused by childbirth

Eliza Josolyne. Diagnosis: Insanity caused by overwork

Then, however, women could find themselves labelled insane and locked up in madhouses for a range of conditions – from postnatal depression to alcoholism or senile dementia, and even for social transgressions such as infidelity (‘moral insanity’).

These photographic records exist because some influential doctors, including keen photographer 
Dr Hugh Diamond, believed that the then new science of photography could help to diagnose mental illness by capturing what he called the ‘exact point that had been reached in the scale of unhappiness’.

The idea that your face could be used to read your mind – and that how you looked in a photo could determine your fate – fascinated and horrified me. I was already interested in mental health. As in most families, there have been mental health issues in mine.

In the late 1960s, my gentle grandmother was plunged into a serious depression after the sudden death of her husband from a heart attack. A daring and sporty young woman, who grew up in a lively family, she found the loneliness and grief of widowhood in her 50s unbearable.

I was 11 or 12 when she became ill; the stigma around mental distress was stronger than it is now and my parents tried to protect me from it. But I noticed how Gran’s round shape changed to a drastically reduced outline and was aware of my parents’ worried conversations about her, of emergency phone calls and sudden dashes to see her in hospital, where, I later found out, she was admitted more than once after attempts on her own life. 

Sarah Gardner. Diagnosis: Insanity caused by anxiety

Elizabeth Thew. Diagnosis: Epilepsy

My grandmother’s grief might today be recognised as such, and treated with bereavement counselling rather than being labelled ‘depression’, as it was in the 60s, and treated with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). She never mentioned the treatment to me and I can only imagine that it increased her sense of isolation. She was helped by moving to a new village to be near her sister, where she acquired new friends and a beloved dalmatian. 

However horrific the idea of ECT seems to my generation, which associates it with the shocking scenes in the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, how much worse, I wondered, would her situation have been 100 years earlier. I started further research into the subject of women in Victorian asylums and learnt that much of the mental health provision then was still in private houses, often run by nonmedical men who did little more than keep patients locked away. With their living coming from the profit, there was little incentive to discharge patients who could be detained. 

Anyone who could persuade two doctors to sign certificates of insanity could put away inconvenient or embarrassing relatives in a madhouse. Women – with lower social status, and usually less power and money – were more vulnerable.

Wendy Wallace as a baby with her grandmother, who was later to suffer from depression

In the archive of Bethlem Hospital (once popularly known as Bedlam) I found original prints of female patients, made by photographer Henry Hering, who worked at the hospital in the 1850s. Matching their handwritten case notes to their photographs was a powerful experience. These women seemed very close, their distressing plight very real. 

When I came across the story of Elizabeth Thew, admitted to Bethlem from prison after supposedly murdering her two-month-old baby, my blood ran cold. A sweet-faced woman, neatly dressed and holding an enormous piece of white lacework, Elizabeth looked out of her photograph with a resigned half-smile. According to her notes, she was not mentally ill at all but suffered from severe epileptic fits. Was she convicted because her epilepsy made her seem somehow mad enough to kill her own child? She languished in the asylum for ten years before being transferred out of it – and granted a royal pardon for the crime. 

Eliza Josolyne, 23, was admitted to Bethlem in February 1857, with the cause of her apparent insanity recorded as ‘overwork’. She looks distraught and her face bears marks of injury. Eliza had been the only servant in a 20-room house and was unable to keep up with the work over the hard winter months when every room would have required a fire burning in its grate and lamps to be lit early. Would doctors now diagnose burnout and acute stress?

Might Eliza have sought help from a GP or even a union before she reached such a point of physical and mental overload? We cannot know. Her notes state that Eliza ‘has frequently tried to injure herself by knocking her head against doors and walls, and has slept in the padded room on this account’. 

Women could find themselves labelled insane and locked up for infidelity

Self-harm remains a common symptom of mental distress, especially in young women. These days, medication and therapy can relieve painful feelings. But chillingly, Eliza’s notes end with her transfer a few months later to the Incurables Department. Emma Riches, a 27-year-old mother of four, fared better. Her newest baby was four weeks old when Emma was admitted to Bethlem with ‘puerperal insanity’, or what we would now call postnatal depression. 

She had suffered from the illness after the births of each of the children, and been admitted to the same hospital before. In the photograph the hand of an attendant can be seen, restraining Emma’s own hand. Emma wears a ‘strong dress’, a form of canvas shift that could not be torn by distressed patients. Her notes record: ‘She never speaks nor appears to notice anything… She cares for nothing, will not eat unless she is forced to do so, nor dress nor undress herself.’

There is no clear indication of how Emma was treated by doctors, beyond a remark that the drugs they tried were ineffectual. Nurses are likely to have attempted to persuade her to sew or help out in the kitchens. Uneducated, Emma could not have read books to pass the time or provide an escape from the tedium of her asylum – where she would have been without all of her four children. A second photograph shows her restored to health, wearing her own smart clothes again and about to be discharged back to her family. After almost a year in hospital, her postnatal depression had passed. 

Sarah Gardner, a 26-year-old servant from London, felt worthless and wanted to kill herself but was ashamed of her suicidal feelings when admitted to Bethlem. She had been much distressed by the social stigma and gossip about her situation as a single woman working for a man. She’d also been jilted by her fiancé. She stayed for only a couple of months before being discharged cured. 

Women were thought to be at particular risk of mental illness caused by supposed disorders of the reproductive system. Cases of melancholia associated with the menopause were treated with leeches to the pubis. The male doctors of the day saw ‘hysteria’ – from the Latin for womb – everywhere; almost any form of behaviour, such as excited chattering with other women, could be diagnosed as hysteria. 

Mercury, known as calomel, was considered an effective treatment for hysteria but, like most of the medicines prescribed for mental illness, was highly toxic. Antimony, a toxic chemical now used in fire retardants, was employed to keep patients in a state of nausea, making acts of violence less 
likely. It was an early example of the ‘chemical cosh’. 

Women’s sexuality was a prime focus of male Victorian physicians. Erotomania (hypersexuality) was considered a constant danger in female patients and could accompany hysteria. Physician Thomas Laycock noted that ‘the cold bath, the shower bath, the douche and cold applications to the regions of the uterus have all been employed with advantage’. 

Patients’ blood was seen as in need of cooling and thinning. ‘Cerebral congestion’, deduced from unusual or manic behaviour, was treated by leeches to the temples, perhaps followed by cold lotions to the shaven scalp. Cold showers were used to cool overheated and overstimulated brains. French physician Jean-Etienne Esquirol recorded subjecting a young woman to a 15-minute cold shower, ‘after which a shivering came on, her jaws chattered violently, her limbs were unable to support the weight of her body, and the pulse was small, slow and contracted’. On waking, ‘reason had returned,’ he pronounced.

Antimony, a toxic chemical now used in fire retardants, kept patients in a state of nausea, an early example of the ‘chemical cosh’

Mental distress has not gone away. In fact, it is rising in England, according to mental health charity Mind. Melancholy and mania have been replaced by terms such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Mixed anxiety and depression is the most common illness now, suffered by more than half of those with a disorder. Women are more likely than men to be affected – 19.7 per cent of all women in the UK have a mental health disorder, according to Mind, compared to 12.5 per cent of men. ECT, refined over the decades, is in continued use to treat depression, with recently published research from the University of Aberdeen finding that it can turn down an overactive connection between parts of the brain. Drug treatments were revolutionised in the 20th century but remain imperfect. Current NHS funding cuts mean that the ‘talking cures’ are likely to be available to ever fewer people. 

While great strides have been made, we can’t dismiss entirely the Victorian efforts to understand 
the mind. Indeed, compared with the early asylums – rough, brutal places where the most disturbed patients were chained in windowless rooms with straw bedding – the mid-Victorian era was positively progressive. Theories that still hold today, such as the value of occupational therapy, were becoming fashionable. It was here that the shift away from the idea of control from without – via chains and shackles – and towards control from within, via treatment or cure, began.

The Painted Bridge by Wendy Wallace will be published by Simon & Schuster on 24 May at 
£12.99. To order a copy for £10.99 with free p&p, contact the YOU Bookshop on 0843 382 1111 
(you-bookshop.co.uk). wendywallace.co.uk

Maggie Brown (Author)

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MY LEGACY LATEST BOOK

Me with a copy of "MY LEGACY'

Finally received my personal copy of "MY LEGACY" This is quite a thick book as it contains 700 of my love and inspirational poems. At present I am working on my next collection which is called "WHISPERED FANTASIES" "MY LEGACY" is available  worldwide and can be found in 'Barnes and Noble' Amazon and all good book stockists. It's also available on Kindle

An example of the interior

Maggie Brown

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SOUL RESCUE

Soul rescue is the process of releasing an attached spirit and helping it to move to the spirit realms This is done in a compassionate and non-confrontational way. It is not like orthodox exorcism, which attempts to banish the attached spirit by force.

Upon death some spirits remain earthbound and can attach to places or persons. This is called spirit attachment. Reasons for this include a traumatic death, concern over some unfinished business or anxiety for a loved one on Earth. More often than not earthbound spirits are simply trying to get our attention and mean no harm. By attachment I mean they like to hang out with someone in particular, so they go wherever that person they are attached to, so by moving house for example the attached spirit may well follow. The spirit often feels an affinity with someone as perhaps they feel they are like someone they knew or have something in common with. 

This is not necessarily a frightening experience, I was a patient in hospital once when an old lady passed over and she attached herself to me and followed me home. She was harmless enough and used to just wander around picking up items and looking at them, she was very fond of looking at my jewelry and would rummage amongst it. I did eventually persuade her to go over to the light and two of her friends came to meet her from the spirit realms. It wasn't just me who was aware of her but other family members heard her. She was a lovely old lady and because she had passed suddenly, she simply was not aware she had passed.

Not all attachments are of human origin. Curses or psychic attacks tend to be dismissed in the West, but their impact can be far reaching. They are not necessarily intentional; merely thinking badly about someone or wishing them harm can cause an impact, they create what is known as a "Thought form" as thoughts are energy, which is why we should not think ill of anyone. The source of the attachment can also be due to negative energies from a place. This can be if someone occupied a home where they were always arguing, this creates a tangible  energy albeit a negative one. The remedy here is to cleanse the home by smudging

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FREE DOWNLOAD OF MY BOOK ON KINDLE FOR 24 HOURS

The journey to Spirit by Astrid Brown TODAY FREE DOWNLOAD ON KINDLE amazon.com/dp/B007QFWWDU/… via @amazon
— Maggie Brown (@astridestella) May 3, 2012

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PREDICTIONS WHY ARE THEY NOT ACCURATE?

The subject of predictions comes up time and time again a lot on forums about psychics or on rating sites, so I feel its time to enlighten people about psychics and predictions.

Often I see comments, referring to predictions psychics have made and the client is unhappy it's not come to pass on July 1st or whenever so they start a tirade saying they have wasted money. I cannot speak for other psychic/mediums I can only speak for myself, however predictions are notoriously difficult so let me explain why this is.

Firstly its impossible to predict the future because there is so much that can influence it, this does not mean there never was any kind of planned destiny, far from it, we all have a planned destiny for we plan our lives before we incarnate on earth and psychics are able to tap into this plan for we hold this plan in our Aura. Your Aura holds a record of your past, your present and your planned destiny. Now if this is the case how come psychics get it so wrong? Who says they are wrong? After all maybe they are right. Your Aura doesn't lie, so whats gone wrong? The problem lies with the client i.e. ourselves and those people who interact with us and this problem is called 'FREE WILL'. It is free will that compromises predictions.

You see we all plan our destinies right down to every detail with other souls from our soul groups. Trouble is some of which we plan for ourselves won't be very nice, life isn't meant to be easy or nice all the time for we are all incarnated on Earth to learn and grow from these experiences. If we knew what was ahead of us, we may not go through with it, so our memory from previous lives including time in spirit is wiped so we have no recollection. There is a latent memory there though and we do have it deep in our subconscious and also in our Auras and of course the psychic can tap into this to give predictions.

So how can these predictions be so wrong? its because of 'FREE WILL' and we all have free will, so all those from our soul groups who interact with us are all able to use free will and thus compromise our destiny. Because some of these experiences we plan won't be so pleasant God wants us to willingly go through with them for although they are not pleasant to go through, those experiences will enable us to learn and grow and we will learn a lot from doing so. We are subconsciously trying to stick to the plan, though sometimes we wander off the plan and if everyone else who we interact with in our time here, wanders off the plan too can you see how difficult it is to predict accurately, it cannot be done with accuracy its impossible.

For example. A psychic has predicted Jane will meet a new boyfriend in July his name is Martin. Now Jane and Martin are part of the same soul group, so both have planned to meet up in July 2012, the psychic can see this from Jane's Aura. Jane is happy she is going to meet a new guy. July comes and goes and no new guy turns up, so she leaves a bad rating for the psychic, saying her predictions are rubbish. The psychic clearly saw there was a meeting in July so what went wrong? Well Martin had planned on going to the same bar Jane was going to on the 25th July, however Martin changed his mind he had been looking to meet someone new, but he hadn't in a while and thought it would be pointless going out after all it was raining. Martin used his 'FREE WILL'.

Now Jane goes to another psychic the psychic tells you will meet someone with the initial M in November, November comes along it so happens Martin has gone to Jane's favourite bar, Jane was planning on going out but decided to watch TV instead. So Jane complains psychics are useless and gives her a bad rating. Jane used her 'FREE WILL'.

Jane has another reading from a different psychic, this psychic tells her she will meet someone in February. Martin isn't sure about going out but a friend tells him he won't meet anyone staying at home. Meanwhile Jane is also undecided about going out but her friend persuades her too. So on a Friday evening in February Jane and Martin meet and immediately they click as its as if they've known one another before. Jane now thinks this psychic is great and the others previously were terrible. They haven't been, they stated what they saw, Jane would meet a guy called Martin, but because it didn't happen when they saw it was supposed to Jane thought them as useless.

Now that was just a simple example of how 'FREE WILL' complicates predictions.

So before you go complaining that predictions haven't happened when the psychic said they would remember it might not be the psychic's fault, it could have been you or another person in the equation who exercised 'FREE WILL'

Myself I don't claim to offer accurate predictions. I'm not a fortune teller, I'm a Medium and my job is to provide survival evidence that life exists after physical death and to pass on messages from loved ones in the Spirit Realms. Occasionally   I will give the odd prediction but timing cannot be accurate because of free will and I will say this.  If I feel strongly that something is going to happen, its like those other psychics I have picked something up from the client's Aura but like all other psychics, nothing is written in stone because of 'FREE WILL'

If you want to read more on this subject about predictions and free will you can in my book "THE JOURNEY TO SPIRIT" which is available in paperback and on Kindle

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HELP STAVE OFF MENTAL DECLINE

Article from the Daily Mail and again evidence that eating red and purple fruits which are rich in flavonoids are beneficial to our health. These fruits are also rich in anti oxidants, which fight free radicals, free radicals cause ageing not just in looks but in every cell in the body, so it stands to reason this has to be beneficial to blood vessels and nerve cells in the brain. Strawberries as well as tasting lovely have a high Vitamin C content, one of the anti oxidant vitamins.

As we are all growing older more Dementia cases are going to come to light so anything that helps stave off the onset of this disease has to be good.

How to live to a ripe old age: Regularly eating strawberries and blueberries can stave off mental decline by more than two years

Berry good: Scientists said women could easily up the amount of strawberries and blueberries they ate

Eating blueberries and strawberries may stave off mental decline in later life, claim researchers.

They found brain ageing could be delayed by up to two and a half years in elderly women regularly eating high amounts of the berries.

The findings come from an ongoing study of nurses which involves only women, but may also apply to men.

Experts believe the benefits are derived from the high content of flavonoids in berry fruits, antioxidant compounds found in plants which can protect against a wide range of diseases.

The US research team used data from the Nurses’ Health Study, involving 121,700 female, registered nurses between the ages of 30 and 55 who completed health and lifestyle questionnaires beginning in 1976.

Since 1980 participants were surveyed every four years regarding their frequency of food consumption.

Between 1995 and 2001, cognitive function was measured in 16,010 women over the age of 70 years, at 2-year intervals, says a report in the Annals of Neurology journal. 

The findings suggest increased consumption of blueberries and strawberries slows cognitive decline in older women.

Those who had higher berry intake delayed cognitive aging by up to 2.5 years.

The authors warn they cannot rule out the possibility that women who eat more berries also have other healthy habits, such as exercising more, which may play a part in the overall findings.

However, they found a greater intake of anthocyanidins and total flavonoids was also associated with less cognitive deterioration.

Experts believe that stress and inflammation contribute to cognitive impairment and that increasing consumption of flavonoids could mitigate the harmful effects.

Brain cells are particularly sensitive to free radicals, destructive groups of atoms made as a by-product of metabolism that can damage cell membranes and DNA.

Experts said the study strengthens evidence that eating berries can stave off dementia

Antioxidants help to neutralise free radicals, Dr Elizabeth Devore with Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, said ‘Our study examined whether greater intake of berries could slow rates of cognitive decline.

‘We provide the first epidemiologic evidence that berries may slow progression of cognitive decline in elderly women.

‘Our findings have significant public health implications as increasing berry intake is a fairly simple dietary modification to test cognition protection in older adults.’ 

Derek Hill, CEO of IXICO and Professor of Medical Imaging Sciences, University College London, said: ‘Later this year, two major drug trials targeting the proteins in the brain associated with Alzheimer’s Disease will announce their results. Many experts fear these drugs will be added to the long list of potential dementia treatments that fail to demonstrate conclusively that they slow cognitive decline.

‘This latest research suggesting that a diet high on berries can slow cognitive decline in the elderly population is therefore especially welcome.

‘It is a large and well-designed study that significantly strengthens the evidence that changes to diet may be able to delay onset of dementia symptoms.

‘This suggests that we can take further steps to tackling the scourge of dementia in society while we await the arrival of effective new medicines.’ 

Dr Eric Karran, Director of Research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: ‘Population studies like this can provide useful clues about the effects of lifestyle and diet on cognition, but we must be sensible when interpreting the results. The study suggests a link between eating berries and slower cognitive decline, but there could be many factors at play.

‘It is not possible to say whether the increased consumption of berries resulted in an increased, beneficial level of flavonoid antioxidants in the brain.

‘Further research will be needed to conclude whether antioxidants in berries are beneficial in the brain and we can’t assume that simply eating berries could protect against cognitive aging or dementia.

‘Previous evidence has shown that eating fruit as part of a healthy diet in midlife could help to reduce our risk of dementia and so eating a healthy balanced diet is something we should all be thinking about.

‘With 820,000 people in the UK living with dementia, there is an urgent need to understand more about how to reduce the risk.’ 

Carol Brayne, Professor of Public Health Medicine, University of Cambridge, said: ‘Broccoli, blueberries, Mediterranean diet, Sudoku.....it is very difficult indeed to be sure that this is not residual confounding as these kinds of dietary patterns are associated with many other positive attributes, which themselves are associated with healthier ageing.

‘Blueberries have been of interest for many years and it’s certainly worth further investigation, but for definitive evidence we have to await well designed trials as this is another observational study.’ 

The range of consumption in the study was women eating less than one serving of blueberries a month, between one and 3 servings a month and more than one serving a week, and from less than one serving of strawberries a week to more than two a week.

Maggie Brown (Author)

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PSYCHIC COMPANIES FEEDBACK

This is something that has really ruffled my feathers. 

It is no secret I work on The Circle and have had years of experience both as a reader and as a client. of all the psychic companies offering readings I have to say The Circle is the best. It has been from the beginning from the early days when it was set up for I was a client in those days, and like many other psychic mediums I am unable to read for myself. I love working at The Circle and I wholeheartedly recommend using The Circle for readings all readers are throughly tested and vetted. And no I am not flogging myself but I vouch for all readers

One of the great things about The Circle is the complete transparency of the company, clients are urged to give feedback, readers are NOT allowed to remove or adapt any of the comments. In fact the comments stay regardless if they are negative or positive so you can be absolutely sure all feedback is genuine from clients and not made up.

So what has ruffled my feathers, this is NOT the case with some other psychic sites, it has come to my attention there is at least one company (I won't name them) who claims to offer the same transparency  this is NOT the case, if a reader is rated anything less than 3 stars, they remove the rating and comment. So in effect you are NOT getting a true reflection of the readers ability, why what have they got to fear?

I will round this blog off by saying I wholeheartedly recommend the readers at The Circle as a highly ethical and honest service who genuinely have their clients' interests at heart.

Maggie Brown (Author)

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