Having a good memory has more to do with your strategy than it does with your mental hardware.  The people that have great memories follow a strategic process, based on the technology of Neuro-Linguistics Programming (NLP).

There are an infinite number of ways to learn how to spell.  Most of the average to poor spellers learn phonetically.  That means learning to spell based on the sounds of the letters and words -- an auditory strategy. It turns out that this strategy is not the most effective way to become a great speller; the real trail-blazers learn how to spell visually -- a visual strategy.

If you want to improve your memory, start using a visual strategy.  You can start right away with these 3 tips:

1.    Begin to access your visual cues. Access the visually memorable part of your brain by looking up and to the left.  When you look up and to the left you access your visual memory.  These are the pictures, images and movies that have flashed on your mind from the past.

2.    Another way to use this approach is in conversation. The next time you speak with someone, be sure to play with the visual strategy. When someone is speaking to you, start to create pictures and images in your mind.  Listen to people as if they were telling you a story.  And as they tell you their story, build a motion picture in your mind.  The richer the pictures, the easier it will be to remember.

3.    Practice changing your physiology. Make sure to speak to someone by keeping your head up and shoulders back.  Stand up straight when possible.  This makes it much easier to look up and make pictures.

A Northern California company is recalling two products, "Uncle Chen" white and black peppers and "Lian How" dry spices, after health officials identified Lian How-brand white pepper as the culprit in a recent salmonella outbreak.

At least 42 people have fallen sick in the ongoing, four-month outbreak. Many of the victims had eaten at Asian restaurants before feeling sick, and the FDA has translated its recall notice into Chinese in order to reach more non-English speakers.

Consumers are instructed to immediately stop using the spices.

A series of bills introduced in Oregon have proposed a variety of ways of dealing with toxins in everyday items, such as flame retardants in furniture, which pose health and environmental risks. Some of the bills suggest that the manufacturers should pay for recycling, while other bills suggest banning certain toxins altogether.

The presence of mercury in florescent bulbs, BPA in baby bottles, and flame retardant decabrominated diphenyl ether (deca-BDE) in mattresses and other furniture, raises questions about the safety of these products for the consumer and for the environment.

A number of states and even some companies are taking steps to eliminate BPA.

At the age of 97 years and 4 months, Shigeaki Hinohara is one of the world's longest-serving physicians and educators, He has been healing patients at St. Luke's International Hospital in Tokyo and teaching at St. Luke's College of Nursing since 1941.

He has published around 150 books since his 75th birthday, including one "Living Long, Living Good" that has sold more than 1.2 million copies. As the founder of the New Elderly Movement, Hinohara encourages others to live a long and happy life, a quest in which no role model is better than the doctor himself:

Energy comes from feeling good, not from eating well or sleeping a lot. Hinohara says we all remember how as children, when we were having fun, we often forgot to eat or sleep. He believes that we can keep that attitude as adults, too, and that it's best not to tire the body with too many rules such as lunchtime and bedtime.

All people who live long -- regardless of nationality, race or gender -- share one thing in common: None are overweight. For breakfast Hinohara drinks coffee, a glass of milk and some orange juice with a tablespoon of olive oil in it. His lunch is milk and a few cookies. His dinner is veggies, a bit of fish and rice, and, twice a week, 100 grams of lean meat.

Always plan ahead. His schedule book is already full until 2014. In 2016 he plans to attend the Tokyo Olympics!

There is no need to ever retire, but if one must, it should be a lot later than 65. The current retirement age was set at 65 half a century ago, when the average life-expectancy in Japan was much lower.

Share what you know. Hinohara gives 150 lectures a year, some for 100 elementary-school children, others for 4,500 business people.

When a doctor recommends you take a test or have some surgery, ask whether the doctor would suggest that his or her spouse or children go through such a procedure. Contrary to popular belief, doctors can't cure everyone -- so why cause unnecessary pain with surgery? Hinohara thinks that music and animal therapy can help more than most doctors imagine.

To stay healthy, always take the stairs and carry your own stuff. He take two stairs at a time, to get his muscles moving.

Pain is mysterious, and having fun is the best way to forget it. Hospitals must cater to the basic need of patients, and we all want to have fun.

Don't be crazy about amassing material things. Remember: You don't know when your number is up, and you can't take it with you to the next place.

Hospitals must be designed and prepared for major disasters, and they must accept every patient who appears at their doors. Hinohara helped designed St. Luke's so that it was possible to operate anywhere: in the basement, in the corridors, in the chapel. Most people thought he was crazy, but on March 20, 1995, he was unfortunately proven right when members of the Aum Shinrikyu religious cult launched a terrorist attack in the Tokyo subway. St. Luke’s accepted 740 victims and in two hours figured out that it was sarin gas that had hit them. Sadly they lost one person, but they saved 739 lives.

Science alone can't cure or help people. Illness is individual. Each person is unique, and diseases are connected to their hearts. To know the illness and help people, there is a need for liberal and visual arts, not just medical ones.

Life is filled with incidents. On March 31, 1970, when Hinohara was 59 years old, he boarded the Yodogo, a flight from Tokyo to Fukuoka. The plane was hijacked by the Japanese Communist League-Red Army Faction. He spent the next four days handcuffed to his seat. As a doctor, he looked at it all as an experiment and was amazed at how his body slowed down in a crisis.

Find a role model and aim to achieve even more than they could ever do. Hinohara’s role model was his, who father went to the United States in 1900 to study at Duke University in North Carolina.

It's wonderful to live long. Since the age of 65, Hinohara has worked as a volunteer. He still puts in 18 hours seven days a week, and loves every minute of it.

A group of scientists has proposed a sweeping new theory of autism that suggests that the brains of people with autism are structurally normal but dysregulated, meaning that the symptoms of the disorder might be reversible.

The central tenet of the theory is that autism is caused by impaired regulation of the locus coeruleus, a bundle of neurons in the brain stem that processes sensory signals from all areas of the body. The theory stems from decades of observations that some autistic children seem to improve when they have a fever.

The locus coeruleus-noradrenergic (LC-NA) system is the only brain system involved both in producing fever and controlling behavior. It is involved in a variety of complex behaviors, such as attentional focusing. Poor attentional focusing is a defining characteristic of autism.

The researchers hypothesized that in autism, the LC-NA system is dysregulated by the interplay of environment, genetic, and epigenetic factors.

A group of prominent physicians have proposed drastic measures for limiting drug company influence on doctors and patient care, saying that medical associations and their leaders should reject almost all industry funding.

"It has not always been flattering to see how physicians' relationships to industry appear to have colored their judgment," said Dr. Steven Nissen, a co-author of the proposal and a former president of the American College of Cardiology.

Examples include disease treatment guidelines recommending certain drugs (written by doctors who own stock in the companies that make those drugs), and medical meetings where doctors tote around book bags, pens and identification badges emblazoned with drug company logos.

This proposal joins the growing calls for more restrictions to prevent inappropriate drug company influence on patient care. Some medical schools, doctor and industry groups have already adopted limits or sought more disclosure.

The omega-3 fat docosahexanoic acid, or DHA, reduced the size of tumors in mice and made a chemotherapy drug more potent while limiting its harmful effects.

The findings add to evidence showing a range of health benefits from eating omega-3 fats.

Researchers looked at how DHA affected solid tumors growing in mice, and how well it interacted with the chemotherapy drug cisplatin. At the molecular level, DHA reduces the accumulation of white blood cells, systemic inflammation, and a harmful condition marked by decreased antioxidant levels -- all of which have been linked to tumor growth.

Their experiment also showed that the fatty acid reduced toxicity and injury to kidney tissue caused by the chemotherapy drug.

Growing up with at least one girl in the family makes people more able to cope with their problems. The researchers believed that daughters and sisters tie loved ones closer together and encourage them to communicate their emotions more effectively.

According to Professor Tony Cassidy, who carried out the study with other researchers, "Sisters appear to encourage more open communication and cohesion in families. However, brothers seem to have the alternative effect. Emotional expression is fundamental to good psychological health and having sisters promotes this in families."

Girls who had sisters also tended to be more independent and achievement-oriented.

The study questioned close to 600 young adults about the make-up of their families and their emotional well-being.

The U.S. FDA has ordered 14 drug makers to stop using “misleading” ads on Internet search engines. The agency faulted the companies for failing to identify product names and side effects in sponsored search results.

Companies and interest groups pay search engine operators like Google to post links to their Web sites in a sidebar after someone types in a related search term. With drug advertisements, the links usually include a headline and blurb about the relevant medical condition or product.

The companies receiving letters were Bayer, Biogen Idec, Boehringer Ingelheim, Cephalon, Eli Lilly, Forest Laboratories, Genentech, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche and Sanofi-Aventis.

In small amounts, dark chocolate has many benefits:  it can help keep your heart healthy and even provide some anti-cancer benefits. Now scientists say it may even help you with math.

In a new study, participants given large amounts of flavanols, which are compounds found in chocolate, did better when asked to count backwards in groups of three from a random number between 800 and 999. Flavanols increase blood flow to the brain, according to researchers.

However, when the participants were asked to count backwards by sevens, the chocolate didn't help -- apparently that's a more complex task that uses a different part of the brain.

Compact fluorescent light bulbs, or CFLs, are sold with promises of energy savings that have prompted the federal government to dictate their use. However, consumers of the new technology are finding the product doesn't always live up to the promise. They have found cause for complaint in both faulty bulbs and unexpected side-effects, including problems with pets and serious safety concerns.

Tests on CFLs have shown that 5 of 29 models failed to meet promised the lifespan, luminosity and on-off cycling. And installing the bulbs in some places, such as enclosed light fixtures, where heat is likely to build up, can significantly shorten their longevity.

A number of consumers are also complaining that their pets react adversely to the new bulbs. People have complained about dogs barking at the ceiling and growing agitated in rooms that use CFLs. Some believe the bulbs produces an ultrasonic noise that disturbs animals.

What’s more, compact fluorescent light bulbs contain the poisonous liquid metal mercury. A study released last year shows the level of mercury vapor released from broken bulbs skyrockets past accepted safety levels. Breaking a single compact fluorescent bulb on the floor can spike mercury vapor levels in a room -- particularly at a child's height -- to over 300 times the EPA's standard accepted safety level.

With fuel escalating to historically high prices, many people are looking for ways to reduce their monthly expenditures on gasoline. One popular idea is that a device could be made which uses the electricity from a car's battery to electrolyze water in an onboard cell, and then burns the resultant hydrogen-oxygen mix in the engine.

In theory, the burning hydrogen provides extra energy, reducing the amount of gasoline you need to move. There are dozens of websites touting such devices, guaranteeing anywhere from 15 percent to 300 percent improvement in fuel economy.

There’s only one problem:  it won’t work.  It takes more energy than you get back to make the hydrogen/oxygen mix. Basically, more chemical energy from the gasoline you're burning in the engine is needed to spin the alternator to make the electricity -- far more than will be generated by the HHO. In fact, it's not even close.  Multiply all the inefficiencies in the system and you only get a few percent of the energy back, certainly not the over-100-percent promised by these systems.

But some of the more savvy HHO proponents have altered their claims as this fact becomes more widespread. They now claim that the extra fuel economy actually comes from hydrogen's ability to facilitate the combustion process, producing more power from the engine with the same amount of gasoline. But this is also nonsense.

by Dr. Mercola

A widespread and silent killer that’s worse for your health than alcohol, nicotine and many drugs is likely lurking in your kitchen cabinets right now.[1] “It” is monosodium glutamate (MSG), a flavor enhancer that’s known widely as an addition to Chinese food, but that’s actually added to thousands of the foods you and your family regularly eat, especially if you are like most Americans and eat the majority of your food as processed foods or in restaurants.

MSG is one of the worst  food additives on the market and is used in canned soups, crackers, meats, salad dressings, frozen dinners and  much more. It’s found in your local supermarket and restaurants, in your child’s school cafeteria and, amazingly, even in baby food and infant formula.

MSG is moore than just a seasoning like salt and pepper, it actually enhances the flavors of foods, making processed meats and frozen dinners taste fresher and smell better, salad dressings more tasty, and canned foods less tinny.

But while MSG’s benefits to the food industry are quite clear, this food additive could be slowly and silently doing major damage to your health.

What Exactly is MSG?

You may remember when the MSG powder called “Accent” first hit the U.S. market. Well, it was many decades prior to this, in 1908, that monosodium glutamate was invented. The inventor was Kikunae Ikeda, a Japanese man who identified the natural flavor enhancing substance of seaweed.

Taking a hint from this substance, they were able to create the man-made additive MSG, and he and a partner went on to form Ajinomoto, which is now the world’s largest producer of MSG (and interestingly also a drug manufacturer).[2]

Chemically speaking, MSG is approximately 78 percent free glutamic acid, 21 percent sodium, and up to 1 percent contaminants.[3]

It’s a misconception that MSG is a flavor or “meat tenderizer.” In reality, MSG has very little taste at all, yet when you eat MSG, you think the food you’re eating has more protein and tastes better. It does this by tricking your tongue, using a little-known fifth basic taste: umami.

Umami is the taste of glutamate, which is a savory flavor found in many Japanese foods, bacon and also in the toxic food additive MSG. It is because of umami that foods with MSG taste heartier, more robust and generally better to a lot of people than foods without it.

The ingredient didn’t become widespread in the United States until after World War II, when the U.S. military realized Japanese rations were much tastier than the U.S. versions because of MSG.

In 1959, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration labeled MSG as “Generally Recognized as Safe” (GRAS), and it has remained that way ever since. Yet, it was a telling sign when just 10 years later a condition known as “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” entered the medical literature, describing the numerous side effects, from numbness to heart palpitations, that people experienced after eating MSG.

Today that syndrome is more appropriately called “MSG Symptom Complex,” which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) identifies as "short-term reactions" to MSG. More on those “reactions” to come.

Why MSG is so Dangerous

One of the best overviews of the very real dangers of MSG comes from Dr. Russell Blaylock, a board-certified neurosurgeon and author of “Excitotoxins: The Taste that Kills.” In it he explains that MSG is an excitotoxin, which means it overexcites your cells to the point of damage or death, causing brain damage to varying degrees -- and potentially even triggering or worsening learning disabilities, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Lou Gehrig’s disease and more.

Part of the problem also is that free glutamic acid is the same neurotransmitter that your brain, nervous system, eyes, pancreas and other organs use to initiate certain processes in your body.[4] Even the FDA states:

“Studies have shown that the body uses glutamate, an amino acid, as a nerve impulse transmitter in the brain and that there are glutamate-responsive tissues in other parts of the body, as well.

Abnormal function of glutamate receptors has been linked with certain neurological diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease and Huntington's chorea. Injections of glutamate in laboratory animals have resulted in damage to nerve cells in the brain.”[5]

Although the FDA continues to claim that consuming MSG in food does not cause these ill effects, many other experts say otherwise.

According to Dr. Blaylock, numerous glutamate receptors have been found both within your heart's electrical conduction system and the heart muscle itself. This can be damaging to your heart, and may even explain the sudden deaths sometimes seen among young athletes.

He says:

“When an excess of food-borne excitotoxins, such as MSG, hydrolyzed protein soy protein isolate and concentrate, natural flavoring, sodium caseinate and aspartate from aspartame, are consumed, these glutamate receptors are over-stimulated, producing cardiac arrhythmias.

When magnesium stores are low, as we see in athletes, the glutamate receptors are so sensitive that even low levels of these excitotoxins can result in cardiac arrhythmias and death.”[6]

Many other adverse effects have also been linked to regular consumption of MSG, including:

• Obesity
• Eye damage
• Headaches
• Fatigue and disorientation
• Depression

Further, even the FDA admits that “short-term reactions” known as MSG Symptom Complex can occur in certain groups of people, namely those who have eaten “large doses” of MSG or those who have asthma.[7]

According to the FDA, MSG Symptom Complex can involve symptoms such as:

• Numbness
• Burning sensation
• Tingling
• Facial pressure or tightness
• Chest pain or difficulty breathing
• Headache
• Nausea
• Rapid heartbeat
• Drowsiness
• Weakness

No one knows for sure just how many people may be “sensitive” to MSG, but studies from the 1970s suggested that 25 percent to 30 percent of the U.S. population was intolerant of MSG -- at levels then found in food. Since the use of MSG has expanded dramatically since that time, it’s been estimated that up to 40 percent of the population may be impacted.[8]

How to Determine if MSG is in Your Food

Food manufacturers are not stupid, and they’ve caught on to the fact that people like you want to avoid eating this nasty food additive. As a result, do you think they responded by removing MSG from their products? Well, a few may have, but most of them just tried to “clean” their labels. In other words, they tried to hide the fact that MSG is an ingredient.

How do they do this? By using names that you would never associate with MSG.

You see, it’s required by the FDA that food manufacturers list the ingredient “monosodium glutamate” on food labels, but they do not have to label ingredients that contain free glutamic acid, even though it’s the main component of MSG.

There are over 40 labeled ingredients that contain glutamic acid,[9] but you’d never know it just from their names alone. Further, in some foods glutamic acid is formed during processing and, again, food labels give you no way of knowing for sure. 

Tips for Keeping MSG Out of Your Diet

In general, if a food is processed you can assume it contains MSG (or one of its pseudo-ingredients). So if you stick to a whole, fresh foods diet, you can pretty much guarantee that you’ll avoid this toxin.

The other place where you’ll need to watch out for MSG is in restaurants. You can ask your server which menu items are MSG-free, and request that no MSG be added to your meal, but of course the only place where you can be entirely sure of what’s added to your food is in your own kitchen.

To be on the safe side, you should also know what ingredients to watch out for on packaged foods. Here is a list of ingredients that ALWAYS contain MSG:

These ingredients OFTEN contain MSG or create MSG during processing:[10]

So if you do eat processed foods, please remember to be on the lookout for these many hidden names for MSG.

Choosing to be MSG-Free

Making a decision to avoid MSG in your diet as much as possible is a wise choice for nearly everyone. Admittedly, it does take a bit more planning and time in the kitchen to prepare food at home, using fresh, locally grown ingredients. But knowing that your food is pure and free of toxic additives like MSG will make it well worth it.

Plus, choosing whole foods will ultimately give you better flavor and more health value than any MSG-laden processed food you could buy at your supermarket.