Have you been on any kind of drugs? Do you need to pass a drug test? How to pass a drug test ready clean?
We present on this article a time table that allows you to check how long you need to wait to do a drug test and be sure it will turn out negative after using drugs. Most drugs do take some time to get out of your body completely so we encourage not to use them when you need to prove you are drug free. However if you did use them and you need a clear drug test you should wait the times on the time table bellow before testing. If you don’t have that time you may want to use special kits like the ones available on the market like the ones selling on this site here.
Did you know alcohol can stay in your body for 2 days? Nicotine (tobacco, cigarettes or cigars) can take 4 days to test clean and Cocaine can take 5 days to be out of your body for good? Some benzo-diazepines medicines like Xanax or Valium can take 6 weeks to test clean and Cannabis (marijuana or weed) can take up to 11 days. Just check the time tables bellow (one in image and a PDF link bellow that one) to know how long will most drugs take to leave your body and test clean.
Take note that some people may keep the drug inside their bodies a little more than the average listed on the table bellow. This being said if you used drugs and you’re having a drug test just wait a few more hours or days than the ones listed on that table if you want to be 100% sure your test will come out clean. Or if you can’t wait be sure you use drugs ready clean test kits otherwise the probability that your test will say you use drugs is huge.
Earlier, blood from umbilical cord was regarded as the ultimate reserve for stem cells. Only those who have given birth at anytime of their life were able to preserve the stem cells as they were obtained from umbilical cord. But researchers have now discovered and successfully harvested stem cells from menstrual blood making it possible for all the women including those who have never given birth to preserve stem cells for themselves. The discovery of stem cells in the menstrual blood has given a new meaning to menstruation for women who earlier considered menstruation as nothing but a painful and necessary evil.
Stem cells have the unique quality of differentiating into any type of cell. As these cells are immunologically immature in nature, they are able to contribute successfully in the cell survival after a transplant. Researchers have harvested stem cells from menstrual blood under laboratory conditions and the harvested cells were successfully differentiated into nerve cells in vitro under lab culture conditions that were controlled. When the differentiated cells were infused into an animal model of stroke, these cultured stem cells reduced behavioral impairments in the stroke model.
It is now established that endometrial wall of the uterus has unique quality of regeneration. There is a thick growth of blood cells which are dispelled every month and the uterus prepares a new endometrial lining and prepares itself for pregnancy. The shed blood contains varied cells some of which have regenerative properties. Researchers tried to find out the practicality and feasibility of collecting menstrual blood in order to harvest the stem cells. They performed several types of analysis of the shed blood and found that these cells can not only be harvested but they also differentiated into specific cells like cartilage, neural tissue or adipose tissue. When menstrual stem cells were induced to the adipogenic lineage, chondrogenic or osteogenic lineage, they displayed histological characteristics such as the presence of fat vacuoles in adipocytes or calcium deposits for bone.
The Menstrual stem cells (MeSC’s) have a great importance for clinical translation of regenerative therapies. The studies demonstrate that these are a unique population of cells that can be safely isolated and can provide us with an expandable source of stem cells from women until they reach menopause. Considering their relevance and importance in treatment of rare diseases including certain neuro disorders, it becomes crucial for women to preserve their menstrual blood in the Menstrual Blood Bank.
Menstrual Blood Banking enables women to store their menstrual blood under required conditions and preserve it for future. These banks charge minimal annual fee for storage and preservation and allows you to have lifelong benefits from them. Although Menstrual Blood banking is still new and lot of research is still going on menstrual blood, if its benefits are utilized, it can prove to be very beneficial for all women who want to give themselves the gift of good health. The process for collection of menstrual blood is simple; like tampon, a silicone cup is inserted in the vagina on the day of heaviest flow. The cup needs to be placed inside the vagina for at least three hours so as to collect approximately 20 milliliters of blood. This is then poured in the collection kit and is sent back to the menstrual blood bank laboratory where it is processed, frozen and stored. What makes this method user friendly is that it is completely painless and non invasive. Also, any woman who wants to preserve stem cells for future can do so without having to wait for delivery of baby.
Menstrual Blood Banking has a wide scope as the need for regenerative therapies incorporating cells that can engraft and differentiate is vast. Though Menstrual Stem Cell technology is yet to be utilized in human treatments and therapies, the research has established the beneficial properties of these cells and their potential use in treatment of several medical conditions like atherosclerosis, diabetes, stroke, rheumatoid arthritis, Parkinson disease and many more. Alongside, menstrual blood can overcome the problem of immune rejection during the transplant, allowing the female patients to use their own stem cells for the treatment. Thus, it can be said that Menstrual Blood Banking has a vast scope in future and is the next big thing in the medical world.
Far from being simply a relaxed state, meditation is a period of heightened activity in the brain—one that can actually reshape your brain. People as diverse as David Lynch and the Dalai Lama have touted the benefits of meditation, claiming that it can increase attention, combat stress, foster compassion, and boost health. And in the past two decades, neuroscientists have begun to understand the biological substrates of these claims. Research suggests that long-term meditation increases the orbitofrontal cortex, the hippocampus, and the thalamus, potentially increasing one’s capacity for attention as well as compassion.
People who meditate grow bigger brains than those who don’t.
Researchers at Harvard, Yale, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found the first evidence that meditation can alter the physical structure of our brains. Brain scans they conducted reveal that experienced meditators boasted increased thickness in parts of the brain that deal with attention and processing sensory input.
In one area of gray matter, the thickening turns out to be more pronounced in older than in younger people. That’s intriguing because those sections of the human cortex, or thinking cap, normally get thinner as we age.
“Our data suggest that meditation practice can promote cortical plasticity in adults in areas important for cognitive and emotional processing and well-being,” says Sara Lazar, leader of the study and a psychologist at Harvard Medical School. “These findings are consistent with other studies that demonstrated increased thickness of music areas in the brains of musicians, and visual and motor areas in the brains of jugglers. In other words, the structure of an adult brain can change in response to repeated practice.”
The researchers compared brain scans of 20 experienced meditators with those of 15 nonmeditators. Four of the former taught meditation or yoga, but they were not monks living in seclusion. The rest worked in careers such as law, health care, and journalism. All the participants were white. During scanning, the meditators meditated; the others just relaxed and thought about whatever they wanted.
Meditators did Buddhist “insight meditation,” which focuses on whatever is there, like noise or body sensations. It doesn’t involve “om,” other mantras, or chanting.
“The goal is to pay attention to sensory experience, rather than to your thoughts about the sensory experience,” Lazar explains. “For example, if you suddenly hear a noise, you just listen to it rather than thinking about it. If your leg falls asleep, you just notice the physical sensations. If nothing is there, you pay attention to your breathing.” Successful meditators get used to not thinking or elaborating things in their mind.
Study participants meditated an average of about 40 minutes a day. Some had been doing it for only a year, others for decades. Depth of the meditation was measured by the slowing of breathing rates. Those most deeply involved in the meditation showed the greatest changes in brain structure. “This strongly suggests,” Lazar concludes, “that the differences in brain structure were caused by the meditation, rather than that differences in brain thickness got them into meditation in the first place.”
Lazar took up meditation about 10 years ago and now practices insight meditation about three times a week. At first she was not sure it would work. But “I have definitely experienced beneficial changes,” she says. “It reduces stress [and] increases my clarity of thought and my tolerance for staying focused in difficult situations.”
Controlling random thoughts
Insight meditation can be practiced anytime, anywhere. “People who do it quickly realize that much of what goes on in their heads involves random thoughts that often have little substance,” Lazar comments. “The goal is not so much to ‘empty’ your head, but to not get caught up in random thoughts that pop into consciousness.”
She uses this example: Facing an important deadline, people tend to worry about what will happen if they miss it, or if the end product will be good enough to suit the boss. You can drive yourself crazy with unproductive “what if” worry. “If, instead, you focus on the present moment, on what needs to be done and what is happening right now, then much of the feeling of stress goes away,” Lazar says. “Feelings become less obstructive and more motivational.”
The increased thickness of gray matter is not very much, 4 to 8 thousandths of an inch. “These increases are proportional to the time a person has been meditating during their lives,” Lazar notes. “This suggests that the thickness differences are acquired through extensive practice and not simply due to differences between meditators and nonmeditators.”
As small as they are, you can bet those differences are going to lead to lots more studies to find out just what is going on and how meditation might better be used to improve health and well-being, and even slow aging.
More basic questions need to be answered. What causes the increased thickness? Does meditation produce more connections between brain cells, or more blood vessels? How does increased brain thickness influence daily behavior? Does it promote increased communication between intellectual and emotional areas of the brain?
To get answers, larger studies are planned at Massachusetts General Hospital, the Harvard-affiliated facility where Lazar is a research scientist and where these first studies were done. That work included only 20 meditators and their brains were scanned only once.
“The results were very encouraging,” Lazar remarks. “But further research needs to be done using a larger number of people and testing them multiple times. We also need to examine their brains both before and after learning to meditate. Our group is currently planning to do this. Eventually, such research should reveal more about the function of the thickening; that is, how it affects emotions and knowing in terms of both awareness and judgment.”
Slowing aging?
Since this type of meditation counteracts the natural thinning of the thinking surface of the brain, could it play a role in slowing – even reversing – aging? That could really be mind-boggling in the most positive sense.
Lazar is cautious in her answer. “Our data suggest that one small bit of brain appears to have a slower rate of cortical thinning, so meditation may help slow some aspects of cognitive aging,” she agrees. “But it’s important to remember that monks and yogis suffer from the same ailments as the rest of us. They get old and die, too. However, they do claim to enjoy an increased capacity for attention and memory.”
But what is actually happening in the brain as we seek nirvana?
Meditators have long described their experiences as transformative states that are markedly different from normal consciousness, but only recently have researchers found the evidence to back this up.
Richard Davidson is one of the foremost researchers of meditation’s effects on the brain. A Harvard Ph.D graduate and a friend of the Dalai Lama, he was chided early in his career for wanting to study something as unscientific as meditation. But in 2004 he became an overnight scientific celebrity for discovering that Buddhist monks exhibit vastly different brainwaves during meditation than normal people. Brainwaves are produced as the billions of neurons in our brains transmit action potentials down their axons to the synapses where they trigger the release of neurotransmitters. These action potentials are essentially electrical charges that are passed from neuron to neuron. By placing sensors on the scalp, researchers can detect not the individual firings of neurons—they are far too small and numerous to differentiate—but the sum total of this electrical activity, dubbed brainwaves for their cyclical nature.
Using this electroencephalograph technology, Davidson asked his monks, each with 10,000 to 50,000 hours of meditation practice over their lifetimes, to concentrate on “unconditional loving-kindness and compassion.” A group of inexperienced meditators were also trained for one-week and then instructed to do the same. The results were dramatic, revealing two important things: first, the monks exhibited a higher ratio of high frequency gamma brainwaves to slower alpha and beta waves during their resting baseline before the experiment began; and when the monks engaged in meditation, this ratio skyrocketed—up to 30 times stronger than that of the non-meditators. In fact, the gamma activity measured in some of the practitioners was the highest ever reported in a non-pathological context. Not only did this suggest that long-term mental training could alter brain activity, it also suggested that compassion might be something that could be cultivated.
New neurobiological research bolsters the idea that meditation effects a permanent restructuring of the brain. In 2008 a team of researchers from UCLA led by Eileen Luderscompared the brains of long-term meditators with those of control subjects. In the brains of the meditators, they found larger volumes of gray matter in the right orbito-frontal cortex and the right hippocampus, areas thought to be implicated in emotion and response control. “It is likely that the observed larger hippocampal volumes may account for meditators’ singular abilities and habits to cultivate positive emotions, retain emotional stability, and engage in mindful behavior,” Luders writes. They also discovered a marked increase of gray matter in the thalamus, which is thought to act as the brain’s switchboard, relaying information between the cerebral cortex and subcortical areas. The change in size might allow for the meditators’ enhanced sense of focus during their practice.
And it turns out, you don’t have to be a yogi to reap the benefits of meditation. Even those who participate in short-term training courses can alter their brains, according to research published this summer: In a collaborative study between the University of Oregon and the Dalian University of Technology in China, neuroscientists discovered that a Chinese meditation technique called integrative body-mind training (IBMT) could alter the connectivity in the brain after just 11 hours of practice. Using a type of magnetic resonance called “diffusion tensor imaging,” the researchers examined the white matter fibers connecting different brain regions before and after training. The changes were most dramatic in the anterior cingulate, an area implicated in emotion control.
Brain Waves and Meditation
“Given the popularity and effectiveness of meditation as a means of alleviating stress and maintaining good health, there is a pressing need for a rigorous investigation of how it affects brain function,” says Professor Jim Lagopoulos of Sydney University, Australia. Lagopoulos is the principal investigator of a joint study between his university and researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) on changes in electrical brain activity during nondirective meditation.
Constant brain waves
Whether we are mentally active, resting or asleep, the brain always has some level of electrical activity. The study monitored the frequency and location of electrical brain waves through the use of EEG (electroencephalography). EEG electrodes were placed in standard locations of the scalp using a custom-made hat
Participants were experienced practitioners of Acem Meditation, a nondirective method developed in Norway. They were asked to rest, eyes closed, for 20 minutes, and to meditate for another 20 minutes, in random order. The abundance and location of slow to fast electrical brain waves (delta, theta, alpha, beta) provide a good indication of brain activity.
Relaxed attention with theta
During meditation, theta waves were most abundant in the frontal and middle parts of the brain.
“These types of waves likely originate from a relaxed attention that monitors our inner experiences. Here lies a significant difference between meditation and relaxing without any specific technique,” emphasizes Lagopoulos.
“Previous studies have shown that theta waves indicate deep relaxation and occur more frequently in highly experienced meditation practitioners. The source is probably frontal parts of the brain, which are associated with monitoring of other mental processes.”
“When we measure mental calm, these regions signal to lower parts of the brain, inducing the physical relaxation response that occurs during meditation.”
Silent experiences with alpha
Alpha waves were more abundant in the posterior parts of the brain during meditation than during simple relaxation. They are characteristic of wakeful rest.
“This wave type has been used as a universal sign of relaxation during meditation and other types of rest,” comments Professor Øyvind Ellingsen from NTNU. “The amount of alpha waves increases when the brain relaxes from intentional, goal-oriented tasks.This is a sign of deep relaxation, — but it does not mean that the mind is void.”
Neuroimaging studies by Malia F. Mason and co-workers at Dartmouth College NH suggest that the normal resting state of the brain is a silent current of thoughts, images and memories that is not induced by sensory input or intentional reasoning, but emerges spontaneously “from within.”
“Spontaneous wandering of the mind is something you become more aware of and familiar with when you meditate,” continues Ellingsen, who is an experienced practitioner. “This default activity of the brain is often underestimated. It probably represents a kind of mental processing that connects various experiences and emotional residues, puts them into perspective and lays them to rest.”
Different from sleep
Delta waves are characteristic of sleep. There was little delta during the relaxing and meditative tasks, confirming that nondirective meditation is different from sleep.
Beta waves occur when the brain is working on goal-oriented tasks, such as planning a date or reflecting actively over a particular issue. EEG showed few beta waves during meditation and resting.
“These findings indicate that you step away from problem solving both when relaxing and during meditation,” says Ellingsen.
Nondirective versus concentration
Several studies indicate better relaxation and stress management by meditation techniques where you refrain from trying to control the content of the mind.
“These methods are often described as nondirective, because practitioners do not actively pursue a particular experience or state of mind. They cultivate the ability to tolerate the spontaneous wandering of the mind without getting too much involved. Instead of concentrating on getting away from stressful thought and emotions, you simple let them pass in an effortless way.”
Take home message
Nondirective meditation yields more marked changes in electrical brain wave activity associated with wakeful, relaxed attention, than just resting without any specific mental technique.
Positive thinking is an important part of a patient’s recovery, but it’s hard to muster in a place with drab fluorescent lighting. So Philips is hoping to improve the mood of hospital rooms with their color changingHealWell lighting system.
In recent years Philips has been really gung-ho on the idea of chromatherapy improving our lives with their Ambilight TV system and color changing lamps. But their new HealWell lighting system—designed for hospital recovery rooms—is a more practical application of that technology.
The system uses an overhead fake sunlight combined with accent lighting and a bedside reading lamp that can all be controlled by the patient to create a mood that makes them most comfortable. The lights can also run autonomously, cycling through colors that best match the time of day and look of real sunshine. The HealWell system recently completed a nine monthfield test in the Netherlands, where it was found that patients slept longer and fell asleep quicker, which helps reduce recovery times.
Having successfully completed the testing, the Philips HealWell lighting system will be officially released at the end of January. So if you were planning to spend some time in the hospital in the near future, you might want to hold off for a while. [Philips via designboom]
As humans, light influences our health and well-being much more than we realise. Independent research has shown that there is a clear and positive relation between exposing patients to sufficient light during the day and their health and well-being.
The more time patients spend in daylight, or artificial light that mimics natural daylight, the better it is for them. In fact, light can improve patient satisfaction, comfort, mood and quality of sleep.
The effect of light on our biological clock is also important as it influences many aspects of our physical and emotional well-being. This biological clock is regulated by light and darkness, by the daily cycles of night and day and the time we spend asleep and awake.
‘healwell’ night lighting
In the morning, when the sun comes up and light levels increase, we wake up and become active and alert. In the evening, when the sun goes down, we unwind, relax and prepare for sleep. Our body’s hormone levels rise and fall with these light cycles. Cortisol production increases with morning light and decreases throughout the course of the day. Melatonin levels increase as darkness sets in and decrease as morning approaches.
In our modern society, we spend much of our time indoors – at home, in a school, office, shop or hospital. Those who have to stay indoors for significant parts of their time, like hospital patients, can be particularly at risk of getting insufficient light during the day to set their biological clock properly.
HealWell uses an intelligent networked control system. It automatically manages a rhythm of dynamic daylight as well as allowing patients and staff to control settings individually.
The total lighting system can be implemented in your hospital as a turnkey solution. Philips will provide a complete service on project management, lighting design, installation and training for staff. The resulting HealWell experience will create a unique and differentiating healing environment in your hospital.
By combining state-of-the-art technology, scientific knowledge and end-user insights, we can transform the experience for everyone in your hospital by having a positive impact on the healing environment.
How your brain sees your body: Meet the cortical homunculus
We all know what bodies look like from the outside. This cortical homunculus is how your brain sees your body from the inside.
In the 1930s, Wilder Penfield performed surgeries on patients with epilepsy. While he had a live brain on the table, he figured he might as well poke around a bit. The doctor gathered data, finding out which parts of the cerebral cortex control which voluntary body functions and feeling. What he discovered was a vastly distorted view of the human body: the cortical homunculus.
The cortical homunculus represents the importance of various parts of your body as seen by your brain.
There is little need for the brain to know what’s going on in the arms and legs. All these limbs need to do is stay out of an open flame and get your hands and feet to the right places. The hands, the tongue, the genitals, and the facial features are extremely important, and give people a ton of sensory information. As a result, they take up a lot of brain space.
Although the cortical homunculus is a curiosity, Penfield’s work in mapping the brain’s relationship to the body was invaluable.
There Is a Super-Entity Inside the Human Brain
Super-entities are not just limited to dominance of the globe. Just as the economy is intertwined and largely controlled by asmall and powerful core network, so too is your brain.
Researchers have long known that some areas of the brain are deeply connected to other regions – but now a team from Indiana University and the Netherlands says these connected brain regions form strong connections to each other, creating a cerebral “rich club.”
This club comprises 12 hub regions, which the researchers say are involved in complex human behavior and cognitive tasks. If any of the members of this club were damaged, the effects would be wide-ranging; if brain areas outside the club were damaged, a patient would see localized effects but the overall brain’s information flow would be uninterrupted.
Led by Martijn van den Heuvel, a professor at the Rudolf Magnus Institute of Neuroscience at University Medical Center Utrecht, the team looked at MRI scans of 21 healthy men and women. With a technique called diffusion imaging, they were able to map the brains’ large-scale connections. The 12 ultra-interconnected regions are found in the precuneus; superior frontal cortex; superior parietal cortex; subcortical hippocampus; the putamen and the thalamus. Most of these areas are involved in complex information processing.
Van den Heuvel called it the “G8 summit of our brain.”
“It’s a group of highly influential regions that keep each other informed and likely collaborate on issues that concern whole brain functioning,” he said in a statement. “Figuring out what is discussed at this summit might be an important step in understanding how our brain works.”
This could have implications for various mental health disorders, for instance. Neuroscientists could examine how the rich club is affected in patients with schizophrenia. Or they could study how degenerative brain diseases impact the rich club and its connections.
The tightly woven connections among these regions were surprising, said Olaf Sporns, a professor in IU’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. “All these regions are getting all kinds of highly processed information, from virtually all parts of the brain,” he said.
Sporns is among an international team of researchers trying to map all the connections in the brain, what’s known as the connectome. “It’s a fundamental step toward understanding the brain as a networked system,” Sporns said.
