I found this on blisstree and it was a fascinating article.

Have you ever wondered why Coke comes with a smile? It’s because it gets you high. They took the cocaine out almost a hundred years ago. You know why? It was redundant.

• In The First 10 minutes: 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system. (100% of your recommended daily intake.) You don’t immediately vomit from the overwhelming sweetness because phosphoric acid cuts the flavor allowing you to keep it down.
• 20 minutes: Your blood sugar spikes, causing an insulin burst. Your liver responds to this by turning any sugar it can get its hands on into fat. (There’s plenty of that at this particular moment)
• 40 minutes: Caffeine absorption is complete. Your pupils dilate, your blood pressure rises, as a response your livers dumps more sugar into your bloodstream. The adenosine receptors in your brain are now blocked preventing drowsiness.
• 45 minutes: Your body ups your dopamine production stimulating the pleasure centers of your brain. This is physically the same way heroin works, by the way.
• >60 minutes: The phosphoric acid binds calcium, magnesium and zinc in your lower intestine, providing a further boost in metabolism. This is compounded by high doses of sugar and artificial sweeteners also increasing the urinary excretion of calcium.
• >60 Minutes: The caffeine’s diuretic properties come into play. (It makes you have to urinate.) It is now assured that you’ll evacuate the bonded calcium, magnesium and zinc that was headed to your bones as well as sodium, electrolyte and water.
• >60 minutes: As the rave inside of you dies down you’ll start to have a sugar crash. You may become irritable and/or sluggish. You’ve also now, literally, urinated away all the water that was in the Coke. But not before infusing it with valuable nutrients your body could have used for things like even having the ability to hydrate your system or build strong bones and teeth.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve had several people asking me about the nervous system and the function of the brain lately.  Many people fear Alzheimer’s Disease and our deteriorating memory, and I was really looking for something to help them.  Are there some things you can do to improve your brain function?  Well, last Saturday gave me the answers I had been looking for.  And while I promised in the last newsletter that I wouldn’t focus on nutrition for a while, there are some things that will creep back in with this particular topic.  But I find that absolutely fascinating that the brain can be affected by what you eat.

In relation to the way we age, brain function is very important.  Personally, I feel it’s very important to understand what we are dealing with, and then go into more and more specifics over time.

Are you Right or Left Brained?
It’s a common miconception to hear that we are either Right Brained (creative) or Left Brained (academic).  However, recent research has shown this isn’t exactly true.  What actually happens is the left side of the brain looks at the details first, and the right side looks at the big picture first.  Dr. Leaf gave an example of this in her seminar and in her books:

Take the equation 2 X 2 = 4

The left side of the brain sees this as 2 X 2 = 4 and the right side of the brain sees this formula as 4 = 2 groups of 2.  Dr. Leaf’s research concludes, “When you put these two together, you have deep understanding.  If you don’t, you will only have partial understanding.” 

For instance, play the video below.  Which way is she turning?  
 

Are you sure?  Maybe you should look again.

The Corpus Callosum is the structure in the brain the connects the two together and allows us to make sense of things.

I know what you are thinking.  Jason, stop with all of the information….I can only hold so much in my head.  Actually, research is now showing we only use 0.001 percent of our brain.  If we were to use our brain to the full capactiy, we could hold 3 millions years worth of data.  “So when you feel like you cannot fit another thing into your brain, it’s not because it’s full; it’s because you have built your memory poorly”, says Leaf.  It’s a shame we can’t defrag our brain like we can a computer.  But maybe you can.

A lot of what I’m going to talk about in the newsletter in the coming weeks deal with brain function, memory, how you can improve it, and the things that you are doing that is destroying it.  Interestingly, a lot of it has to do with Dendrites, seen in the video below.

Interesting Fact: “Up to 35 to 75 percent of information can be lost if the memory is incorrectly built.”  Let’s see if we can improve your memory over the next few weeks.

If you are impatient and want more information, you can visit Dr. Leaf’s website and order the products I have as well.  (I have all of them, but you can pick the one’s that you feel will be the most beneficial for you.)

Disclaimer: This is not for everyone.  Considering we live in a world that is obsessed with having a perfect body, some of this information might be a little too much for you.  If you can enjoy it and appreciate it for what it is, without being down on yourself because you don’t fit the “perfection” mold, read on…..

Why is this important?
That really depends on the individual.   For most people, this isn’t important at all, for others, it will be just what you are looking for.

Who is this not for?
If you just want to be healthy, this might not be important to you at all.  It’s so much more important to move than to look a particular way.  Also, if you have a tendency to go a little overboard at times with your health and fitness, don’t let this cause another obsession for you.

Who is this for?
I would say this is for those who want to look their best.  They are in great shape and want to take things to a new level.

How does this work?
It’s all based on math.  Just like pyramids or Leonarda Da Vinci’s Vitruvian man, there are proper proportions to create balance and some would say beauty.  People have applied this idealogy to bone structure, the face, and muscles. 

What are some examples?
Leonardo described the proportions in this way:

• a palm is the width of four fingers
• a foot is the width of four palms (i.e., 12 inches)
• a cubit is the width of six palms
• a pace is four cubits

• a man’s height is four cubits (and thus 24 palms)
• the length of a man’s outspread arms is equal to his height
• the distance from the hairline to the bottom of the chin is one-tenth of a man’s height
• the distance from the top of the head to the bottom of the chin is one-eighth of a man’s height
• the distance from the bottom of the neck to the hairline is one-sixth of a man’s height
• the maximum width of the shoulders is a quarter of a man’s height
• the distance from the middle of the chest to the top of the head is a quarter of a man’s height
• the distance from the elbow to the tip of the hand is one-fourth of a man’s height
• the distance from the elbow to the armpit is one-eighth of a man’s height
• the length of the hand is one-tenth of a man’s height
• the distance from the bottom of the chin to the nose is one-third of the length of the head
• the distance from the hairline to the eyebrows is one-third of the length of the face
• the length of the ear is one-third of the length of the face
• the length of a man’s foot is one-sixth of his height

There is a lot of research out there based off Fibonacci, the Golden Ratio, Divine Proportion, etc…

I have seen the proper body proportions of muscles for males and females and it was based off pyramids, ratios, and a host of other things.  So if I find them, I’ll be sure to update this post.  But there are general rules for proper proportions for the human body.  One was done by the US Army in the 1970’s.  The link will take you to a calculator that will determine the proper proportions for the human body.  Bodybuilders have also come up with their own ratios for competing.

In regards to the every day, normal fitness enthusiast, the only person I know who dug deeply into this subject was Dr. Bruce Nadler.  He was a plastic surgeon that changed his career into personal training.  He wrote a book entitled The Nip Tuck Workout.  I have not read the book, so I don’t know how deep he dives into the subject in it.  I do have a DVD of a seminar of him speaking one time.  I’ll pull it out one day and see if he gets deeper into the subject.  If anyone has an interest in learning more about this subject, let me know and I will share what I find with you.

Pepsi is one of the companies coming out with new Pure Sugar Soft Drinks

moving this way right now.  Two of the pure sugar soft drinks comes from Pepsi and Mountain Dew.  These are produced by the same company.  The pure sugar soft drinks they are producing will start coming out around April, but will only be available for a limited time.  They are called Pepsi Throwback and Mountain Dew Throwback.

Snapple is the other group coming out with a new pure sugar version of their drink.  While it’s not exaclty a soft drink, it does get away from the high fructose corn syrup. 

I’m not sure if this is going to be a new trend or a temporary fad, but I think that will be determined by the sales of the pure sugar soft drinks that hit the market.

1) Don’t donate something that you give away for free on a normal basis. If you list on your website that you are giving away a certain item to everyone that gives you their e-mail address, no one should pay money to get it an auction. Because the moment they see that they paid for something they could have had for free, you lost the respect of that individual.
2) If someone wins your auction item, they shouldn’t have to pay for something to use it. My wife recently won something.  We paid for it, outbid everyone else, and was ready to redeem it, only to find out there was a catch.  It turns out that she had to purchase something at the store in order to get the raffle item.  Now I can understand if she had to purchase something in order to use it on what she won, but this wasn’t the case.  She just had to buy something, completely unrelated to what she won, just so she could be put in their computer system to redeem the prize.  This makes no sense to me, but if someone can explain it to me, please do.

With all that being said, I am donating to some local auctions.  I donated personal training sessions to the Katy Chamber Gala recently, I am donating to Bonnie Holland Elementary, and I have another auction I will be donating to soon as well.  I almost always donate several personal training sessions to these auctions.  (By the way, if you have a fundraiser that you would like a donation for, let me know.  I’d be glad to help.)  I never discount my personal training sesssions, but sometimes you can get a great deal on a block of personal training sessions with me when you go to one of the auctions.  So bid on them when you see them, and let’s raise some money for some good causes.  I look forward to helping the winners of the auctions get in great shape, and I can assure you, you will get your money’s worth.