Author: Jenny

I am a public health nutrition counselor with fifteen years experience in the field of prenatal and early child health and lactation education (breast feeding support). Autoimmune disease, Autism Spectrum Disorders, and genetic defects that can cause nutrient deficiencies are also research interests.
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Exercise may protect myelin

After just one day of increased stretching exercises in addition to my usual hiking my legs are feeling better. The stretching exercises for lymphedema shared in a video link in the last post help move fluid by muscle power. Lymphatic vessels run parallel somewhat to the blood vessels but have no heart pumping action to circulate the fluid to the lymph nodes where it mingles with blood vessels and immune system white blood cells. The movement of the surrounding muscles is needed to help move fluid through the lymphatic vessels. They are near the skin surface so very gentle massage motions towards the areas of drainage can also help. Lymphatic massage is a special type of massage that may be medically recommended after lymph node surgery or for lymphedema. (Read more: How to Perform Lymphatic Drainage Massage.)

Exercise can help reduce inflammation by promoting the movement of the fluid around cells and in the lymphatic vessels to lymph nodes for detoxification and eventual excretion once it is absorbed into the blood vessels. Exercise has also been found helpful for mitochondrial health which help provide the body energy and protect against myelin loss. (1)

Disclaimer: Opinions are my own and the information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use. While I am a Registered Dietitian this information is not intended to provide individual health guidance. Please see a health professional for individual health care purposes.

  1. Parikh S, Saneto R, Falk MJ, et al. A Modern Approach to the Treatment of Mitochondrial Disease. Current treatment options in neurology. 2009;11(6):414-430.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3561461/
  2. Advances in Cellular Neurobiology, Chapter: Demyelination, by F. J. Seil (1982), Unrelated to exercise: Figure 1, Bovine basic myelin protein structure includes 25 molecules of glycine within a chain of 169 amino acids and this type of protein was thought to be involved in encephalopathy. page 242, What was related to lymph nodes was on page 263, the serum of patients with demylinating disorders can cause demylination in lab animals so autoimmune type antibodies against myelin were suspected to be present. Science isn’t easy and takes a long time. My take home point: I will continue to exercise in the kitchen preparing meals with foods that were not grown with glyphosate containing herbicides such as Roundup.   https://books.google.com/books?id=R5niAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA261&lpg=PA261&dq=lymph+nodes+and+demyelination&source=bl&ots=RHxSRpXesy&sig=7HAJMmHVjCARnAFlwNfCy2F54As&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjsvYW3vtTcAhVNWq0KHYIFDtw4ChDoATACegQICBAB#v=onepage&q=lymph%20nodes%20and%20demyelination&f=false

The importance of glycine within the Bovine basic myelin protein seemed visually obvious, however I itemized all of the amino acid chain just to double check. Glycine is most prevalent and the other point that became clear is that most amino acids (cysteine is not included) are incorporated so having a good variety of protein foods in the diet including all the essential amino acids would be important:

  1. Gly – glycine – 25     (Conditional, may be needed in diet)
  2. Arg – arginine – 18   (Conditional, may be needed in diet)
  3. Ser – serine – 18        (Conditional, may be needed in diet)
  4. Ala – alanine – 14      (Nonessential, we can make it)
  5. Lys – lysine – 13          (Essential in the diet)
  6. Pro – proline – 12       (Conditional, may be needed in diet)
  7. His – histidine – 10       (Essential in the diet)
  8. Leu – leucine – 10         (Essential in the diet)
  9. Asp – aspartic acid – 9   (Nonessential, we can make it)
  10. Gln – Glutamine – 8        (Conditional, may be needed in the diet)
  11. Phe – phenylalanine – 8   (Essential in the diet)
  12. Thr – threonine – 7        (Essential in the diet)
  13. Tyr – tyrosine – 4           (Conditional, may be needed in the diet)
  14. Ile – isoleucine – 3         (Essential in the diet)
  15. Val – valine – 3               (Essential in the diet)
  16. Asn – asparagine – 2      (Nonessential, we can make it)
  17. Glu – glutamic acid – 2  (Nonessential, we can make it)
  18. Met – methionine – 2      (Essential in the diet)
  19. Trp – tryptophan – 1      (Essential in the diet)
  • Ac -acetyl group – 1
  • N -nitrogen, an element – 1
  • COOH – a carboxyl group – 1
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Fact checker – the search engine

I call the search engine Fact Checker because it is generally reliable and quick at producing answers to questions. The information needs to be screened for how credible the sources of the information and how prevalent – the weight of evidence – in support of the answer. Odd phrases or terms can be easier to find then words that have a variety of meanings or are also used for businesses. Search results can become to numerous to sort through occasionally.

Research into how having instant answers available to us may affect us suggests that it may leave the user with a better impression of their own intelligence even though it was the quick access to what is essentially an encyclopedia or a dictionary with a search feature. See this article and podcast interview for more information: How Search Engines Make Us Feel Smarter than We Really Are. (2015).

Fact Checker – the search engine provides answers but it is up to the reader to evaluate the sources for accuracy/reliability and it is up to the reader to remember the information for future use or bookmark the source/file the information in a way that can be accessed again if long term learning or ability to use the information in the long term is to occur.

My blog is my personal notebook with a built in search feature. I can store notes with a variety of tags to help me find information that I read years previously. In general it is wonderful compared to older styles of handwritten notes but recording information in some logical way is part of learning – filing the information in the brain in a way that can be accessed again. I have to remember that I read something about such-and-such years ago and that I took notes and filed them under such-and-such a title or with some specific tag.

The search engine is only as useful as the questions you ask it. You have to collate the information for yourself and store it in a way that you will be able to find it again within your own internal memory or in your external memory devices whether handwritten, digitally written, or audio recorded. We all vary somewhat in how well we remember things. I do better with written or visual information then with remembering things I hear while other people may be very good at remembering lectures or lyrics that they hear.

The podcast interview included a brief description of the research study format – participants were told that a more active brain is more intelligent – however that is not what actual brain scans suggest. The person with a more intelligent brain seems to have learned how to conserve energy possibly by having more organized pathways to quickly find information and there is less electrical activity.  (The Neuroscience of Intelligence,  Richard J. Haier, a book mentioned in a previous post Intelligence and the Weight of Evidence)

The participants (How Search Engines make Us Feel Smarter) took part in several variations of the research design. The experimental group were asked to look up answers to somewhat obscure questions using the internet  and the control group were given the answers. In some variations of the basic experimental design the experimental group obtained search results that included accurate answers to the questions, in other sessions they obtained not very helpful results for the questions, and in other sessions they obtained results that provided inaccurate answers to the questions. In all variations the experimental group afterwards rated their intelligence/ability to answer other questions more positively than the control group who had been given answers. The research author made clear that this doesn’t mean the internet is making us stupider, just that it may give us a false impression of our intelligence.

To me the results suggest that we feel more intelligent when we try to solve problems for ourselves rather than when we are provided answers, and having asked questions and read answers, we may have learned something if we remember the answer and have improved our ability to evaluate information for accuracy.

My blog is my notebook, I share a few pages publicly in case the information or ideas or experiences might help someone with their own health or with their research or business. (currently: 197 public/1374 total posts – I love my blog.) Sharing helpful resources and saving the links an ideas for my own use in the future are goals. Putting together information that I learn today with information that I learned years ago often requires finding the link from years ago to review for more detail.

Evaluating project goals and improving how we learn as individuals or as teams includes reviewing how we do things – or learning and trying methods used by others.

A software design consultant has shared a series of posts on strategies to help small groups evaluate project goals and team communication issues. The series might be helpful for individuals and teams in other industries in addition to software development: Design Thinking Toolkit, Introduction What is Design Thinking?; Activity 13 – Hopes & Fears, by Kimberly Wolting, spin.atomicobject.com.

This book, mentioned in a previous post, is also helpful for improving decision making strategies:

For more information on thinking creatively and effectively working towards a better solution to difficult decisions rather than feeling forced to choose one of two less preferred choices I recommend the book Creating Great Choices: A Leader’s Guide to Integrative Thinking, by Jennifer Riel and Roger L. Martin (2017, HBR) (hbr.org/Creating Great Choices)

Digital toolkits can contain a variety of software apps and services to help make organizing and sharing information easier, a variety are shared in this helpful list: Resources – Digital Discovery.

Remembering where you filed something in your memory or in a digital or physical filing system can require labeling the items with a tag or variety of tags that you are likely to remember. This post about my nickname for search engines – Fact Checker – was based on a conversation I had online about a trivia fact shared by a space oriented social media comment. The trivia fact – It would take us only an hour to reach space if we were able to drive a car straight up. There were a few questions in response along the lines of “How fast would you have to drive?” or “Really?“

The account hadn’t provided more information and a simple check of the search engine confirmed the factoid – the atmosphere is considered to be about 62 miles/100 kilometers thick, (space.com/Karmin Line), so a car driving 62 miles per hour could reach the edge of outer space – if that was possible, which it isn’t, however as a visual image it does make it easy for me to remember the trivia fact. Our atmosphere is like the thin peel of an orange or apple around the more solid earth. Am I stupid for not having known a basic fact about our planet’s atmosphere? Or am I smart for having access to a search engine in order to look up the fact? Or am I smarter now because I was curious and took the time to find more details about the topic and the visual image (driving a car straight up) linked with the more detailed information (62 miles per hour) turned the fact into something that I am now likely to remember even if I don’t need to know it?

The search engine doesn’t make us smarter or more stupid but using it and storing the information in some sort of memorable way can make us more knowledgeable. Putting information together in useful ways is applying knowledge. Air pollution and weather is part of our atmosphere – our thin peel of life-giving oxygen and blanket of radiation-protecting ozone – and we need our atmosphere for our survival so we should protect it.

These are facts that I am trusting the source to provide accurately. It is not information that I obtained through direct measurements of my own – that would be a type of direct research that is independent, and which might provide results that agree or disagree with the information other researchers found by their methods of measurement or mathematical analysis. Fact Checker found a fact for me and I evaluated the source as being fairly trustworthy but I didn’t do any independent research to confirm the reliability of the fact. The Internet can be a very fast encyclopedia and dictionary but the results may vary in reliability. Science also varies somewhat though as our methods of measurement and mathematical analysis improve we may get slightly or very different results from past answers, aka “facts.”

The concept of “weight of evidence” brought up by Haier in his book The Neuroscience of Intelligence is the important point to remember when looking up information online. I tend to skim through all of the results on the first page, and occasionally the first few pages, of search results in order to get a rough overview – what does the consensus of results suggest?

(More trivia about our planet – the planet is about 8000 miles wide (12,800 kilometers) if we could dig a hole from one side straight through to the other side. The crust, the solid part made of rock and soil, is about 1802 miles/2900 kilometers wide, and the interior molten core is 4349 miles/7000 kilometers wide – visual, picture a Tootsie Pop type lollipop with a crunchy exterior around a soft caramel interior. (livescience.com) (1 mile = 1.60934 kilometers, 1 kilometer = .62 miles))

Learning is fun – in my opinion.

Disclaimer: Opinions are my own and the information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use. While I am a Registered Dietitian this information is not intended to provide individual health guidance. Please see a health professional for individual health care purposes.

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Pomegranate extract update – has similar mechanism to NSAIDs

Update, 8/18/2018, for anyone interested in phytonutrient biochemistry or herbal medicinal foods: Wintergreen and wintergreen berries are also a natural source of a painkiller in the NSAID group – aspirin. The plant can also be a source of phytonutrients that activate TRPA1 channels which can affect fluid balance and other symptoms. Winterberries are in the cranberry family and have a minty flavor. They are in season currently and eating more of them seems to increase my symptoms of inflammation and swelling more than the pomegranate extract or pomegranate seeds. Having too many variables in an experiment makes it unclear which factor might be a cause or if both may be involved. Experimental method tries to narrow variables to one factor at a time. Stopping both pomegranate products and wintergreen berries helped but other symptoms got worse, adding pomegranate back to my diet didn’t make the inflammation/swelling symptoms much different but more recently adding the wintergreen berries back into my diet did make the symptoms of lower leg inflammation/swelling and pain worse.

An excerpt from one of my other websites, G3.6.1.5: People with overactive TRPA1 channels may be sensitive to:

  • “(Winter-green),” (G3.67); Wintergreen is a natural flavoring herb in the mint family. It is typically used as an essential oil as a flavoring in many foods and other types of products. It has medicinal benefits related to it containing the chemical that acts as the pain killing ingredient of aspirin.(G3.73) (effectivecare.info, G3)

My ongoing self study of pomegranate extract for my mental and physical health symptoms has led me to use a fairly small dose, daily though is still best. Missing even a few days seems to increase mood and anxiety problems but using a very large serving has some side effects. Lower leg and foot swelling is associated with some physical health problems but it can also be a side effect of NSAIDs pain killers such as ibuprofen. (7) Pomegranate extract has been shown to reduce pain and inflammation by the same mechanism as NSAIDS – inhibition of cyclooxygenase enzymes (COX1 and COX2,  with more inhibition of COX2 than COX1). It also may have an anti-inflammatory effect by reducing inflammatory cytokines that signal increase in production of Nitric Oxide (NO) and Prostaglandin E2 (PGE2). (1) Prostaglandin E2 is made from arachidonic acid and is involved in the inflammation associated with rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis. (2) Nitric oxide can be beneficial but it can also transform into reactive oxidative species and add to the antioxidant burden of metabolism. (5) (9) Other studies including an animal study on obesity found pomegranate extract reduced inflammatory biomarkers and increased nitric oxide, which might make it helpful for Metabolic Syndrome. (6)

Pomegranate extract was found helpful in a dose related level against mammary tumerogenesis in an animal study, (0.2-5 gram/Kg body weight was used). Reducing COX2, heat shock protein 90 (HSP90), nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) pathways, and increasing Nrf2 pathways were found to be part of the mechanism for benefit. (4) That amount could be quite a lot. Equivalent amounts for a 75 kilogram/165 pound human would be 15-375 grams per day or roughly one tablespoon (15 grams approximately)-13.4 ounces/27 tablespoons per day. (Mammary tumerogenesis means the initial onset of breast cancer tumors.)

It helps to prop my feet when sitting or even lay down with my feet above my heart. I’m getting better at typing while laying down. Better mood and having feeling in my fingertips is worth it. There may some other health or diet issues affecting the leg swelling. Heart or kidney or vein problems can be a cause. (7) I do have vein problems and may have heart issues, which can be an increased risk with hyperthyroidism. Cutting back on salt, daily exercise, and elevating the lower legs above the level of the heart several times per day for a half an hour is recommended, wearing compression socks is also a recommendation and that makes me feel old. (7) Maybe 52 is old.

Lymphedema – lower leg swelling due to reduced drainage from vein problems may be the best fit for my personal history, and lack of stretching exercises lately may be part of the reason the problem has become worse lately. Physical therapists explain the problem and provide exercise, massage and compression wrapping suggestions in a free video available online. (8) The exercise routine is similar to what I generally do when I do stretching exercises – so that seems like a good habit to return to my daily schedule.

Lower leg swelling has been a symptom for me at various stages of previous ill health and with some other medications I’ve used in the past, but currently it does seem worse when I use larger amounts of the pomegranate extract. One teaspoon a day helps with the stable mood and I haven’t had numbness in my fingertips in months with the ongoing daily use of pomegranate extract in larger amounts, 2-3 tablespoons was typical. I stopped use of it altogether when the leg swelling became a problem to see if the swelling would get better but the mood symptoms got worse again after having seemed fine for quite a while – quite a while while using pomegranate extract daily and the leg swelling didn’t get a lot better. Being not well is unpleasant and some side effects can be better than being unwell.

Breast cancer treatments currently may cause hair loss, severe vomiting and may leave the patient with cognitive decline afterwards, and pomegranate extract doesn’t cause any of those symptoms in the amounts that I’ve tried. It is a diuretic and causes increased urination which I cope with by drinking extra fluids and using the pomegranate extract early in the day rather than at night. I may be preventing breast cancer tumor development (4) while drinking extra fluid and urinating in increased amounts – getting old isn’t great but the alternative isn’t better. I may go buy my first pair of compression socks and feel young at heart if not in body.

Industry math – one pomegranate peel makes about six cups of extract by my method which would provide 288 teaspoons/96 tablespoons. It may have improved somewhat but the worsening in mood was more obvious.  From an industry perspective getting 288 servings of a mood and nerve treatment from one pomegranate peel seems like it could be profitable. Dehydrating one teaspoon into a capsule serving also seems possible. Side effects with psychiatric medications are unfortunately common and can include swelling/edema of the lower legs or more severe edema including facial edema.

/Disclaimer: This information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use. While I am a Registered Dietitian this information is not intended to provide individual health guidance. Please see a health professional for individual health care purposes./  

  1. Shukla, Meenakshi & Gupta, Kalpana & Rasheed, Zafar & A Khan, Khursheed & Haqqi, Tariq. (2008). Bioavailable constituents/metabolites of pomegranate (Punica granatum L) preferentially inhibit COX-II activity ex vivo and IL-1beta-induced PGE2 production in human chondrocytes in vitro. Journal of inflammation (London, England). 5. 9. 10.1186/1476-9255-5-9.
  2. Jean Y. Park, Michael H. Pillinger, Steven B. Abramson, Prostaglandin E2 synthesis and secretion: The role of PGE2 synthases, Clinical Immunology, Vol 119, Iss 3, 2006, pp 229-240, ISSN 1521-6616, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clim.2006.01.016.
    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1521661606000453 (2)
  3. Arachidonic Acid – an overview, ScienceDirect, https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/arachidonic-acid (3)
  4. Mandal A, Bhatia D, Bishayee A. Anti-Inflammatory Mechanism Involved in Pomegranate-Mediated Prevention of Breast Cancer: the Role of NF-κB and Nrf2 Signaling Pathways. Nutrients. 2017;9(5):436. doi:10.3390/nu9050436. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5452166/ (4) From Abstract: “Mammary tumor samples were harvested from our previous chemopreventive study in which PE (0.2–5.0 g/kg) was found to reduce mammary tumorigenesis in a dose-dependent manner. The expressions of COX-2, HSP90, NF-κB, inhibitory κBα (IκBα) and Nrf2 were detected by immunohistochemical techniques. PE decreased the expression of COX-2 and HSP90, prevented the degradation of IκBα, hindered the translocation of NF-κB from cytosol to nucleus and increased the expression and nuclear translocation of Nrf2 during DMBA-induced mammary tumorigenesis.” From Introduction:”During the last decade, pomegranate fruit has been gaining a widespread reputation as a dietary supplement as well as a functional food due to emerging scientific evidence on potential health benefits, including prevention and/or treatment of cardiovascular ailments, neurological disorders, oncologic diseases, dental problems, inflammation, ulcer, arthritis, microbial infection, obesity, diabetes, acquired immune deficiency syndrome and erectile dysfunction [,,,,,]. Pomegranate fruit contains phytochemicals, including flavonoids (e.g., anthocyanins and catechins), flavonols (e.g., kaempferol and quercetin), flavones (e.g., apigenin and luteolin), conjugated fatty acids, hydrolyzable tannins and related compounds which are thought to be responsible for various biological and pharmacological activities [,,,,,]. Based on preclinical and clinical studies conducted by various laboratories worldwide, pomegranate-derived substances, such as juice, extracts and phytoconstituents exhibited cancer preventive and therapeutic effects against colon, liver, lung, prostate and skin cancer [,,,,]. Various extracts, fractions and phytochemicals from pomegranate fruit, peel, seed and flower demonstrated cytotoxic, antiproliferative, proapoptotic, antiangiogenic, anti-invasive, and antimetastatic properties against estrogen receptor-positive and ‑negative breast cancer cells [,,,,,,,,,,,,,]” (4)
  5. Matsubara K, Higaki T, Matsubara Y, Nawa A. Nitric Oxide and Reactive Oxygen Species in the Pathogenesis of Preeclampsia. Miller FJ, ed. International Journal of Molecular Sciences. 2015;16(3):4600-4614. doi:10.3390/ijms16034600. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4394437/ (5)
  6. Filomena de Nigris, Maria Luisa Balestrieri, Sharon Williams-Ignarro, Francesco P. D’Armiento, Carmela Fiorito, Louis J. Ignarro, Claudio Napoli,
    The influence of pomegranate fruit extract in comparison to regular pomegranate juice and seed oil on nitric oxide and arterial function in obese Zucker rats, Nitric Oxide, Volume 17, Issue 1, 2007, pp 50-54, ISSN 1089-8603, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.niox.2007.04.005.
    (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1089860307000432) (6)
  7. Swollen Legs: Causes and Treatments, WebMD, https://www.webmd.com/dvt/why-legs-puffy#1 (7)

  8. Bob Schrupp, Brad Heineck, 10 Exercises for Leg Lymphedema (Swelling or Edema of the Lower Extremities). physicaltherapyvideo, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t8Kp99e50k&feature=youtu.be (8)

  9. Aouache R, Biquard L, Vaiman D, Miralles F. Oxidative Stress in Preeclampsia and Placental Diseases. International Journal of Molecular Sciences. 2018;19(5):1496. doi:10.3390/ijms19051496.   https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5983711/ (9)