The Dave Thomson Blog

Multivitamins Improve Mental Fatigue and Stress in Healthy Men

2011-10-25T15:42:00.000-04:00

At A Glance:
In a recent study of healthy adult men, multinutrient supplementation led to improved ratings of stress, vigor, mental health, and cognitive performance during intense mental processing.

A major percentage of the general population reports regular use of multivitamin supplements. Among the common reasons given for doing so are helping combat mental fatigue and stress, although there are few studies that have analyzed the relationship between multivitamin supplementation and mental performance in healthy, non-elderly adults.

In a recent article published in the journal Psychopharmacology, researchers reported that multivitamin and mineral supplements taken daily for a month improved mental fatigue and stress levels in adult men.

Participants in this double-blind study included 215 healthy men between the ages of 30 and 55 who were regularly exposed to mental fatigue and stress in their full-time employment. Subjects received either a placebo or a multivitamin and mineral supplement which they took daily for 33 days. The multivitamin included moderate levels of vitamin C and the B vitamins, as well as the minerals magnesium, calcium and zinc.

Previous to and following the last day of treatment, subjects completed questionnaires that measured mood states, perceived stress, and general health. On the final day, further testing evaluated cognitive performance and task-related changes in mood and fatigue while walking on a treadmill.

When compared to the placebo group, participants receiving the multinutrient supplement experienced a significant improvement in perceived stress, general health and vigor, cognitive function, and mental fatigue.

While it isn’t possible to identify the specific mechanism of action responsible for these improvements, the results of the study support results from previous research indicating that supplementation of multivitamin/minerals in healthy, normal populations may provide beneficial effects on mental health, adaptation to stress, and cognitive function.

Kennedy DO et al. Effects of high-dose B vitamin complex with vitamin C and minerals on subjective mood and performance in healthy males. 2010. Psychopharmacology (Berl)

Lost Blog - recovered!

2011-10-25T10:41:00.001-04:00

After trying many times over the last 5 years I finally recovered this blog account! WOOHOO!

Thank you to Google & the Blogger Team.

I'm quite happy about this! While I could have simply started another blog, I wanted to keep my name in my web address so I kept trying.

Now it's time to update this, the look, to integrate posts from social networks and other platforms - basically to modernize my blog.

Lots of plans and little time! Stay tuned...

Vitamin D is AMAZING

2010-08-21T15:34:00.000-04:00

In a newly published study, researchers examined whether serum vitamin D levels are predictive of the risk of Parkinson’s disease.

Participants included 3,173 Finnish men and women aged 50-79 determined to be free of Parkinson’s disease at the beginning of the study. Vitamin D samples were taken at the beginning of the study and frozen. During 29 years of follow-up, 50 documented cases of Parkinson’s disease were recorded among study participants.

Serum vitamin D levels were determined from the frozen samples taken at the beginning of the study. The relationship between serum vitamin D concentration and Parkinson’s disease incidence was then calculated.

Participants with the highest levels of vitamin D (more than 50 nmol/L) had a 67 percent lower risk of developing Parkinson's disease than those with the lowest vitamin D levels (less than 25 nmol/L). The difference was validated after adjustment for sex, age, marital status, education, alcohol consumption, leisure-time physical activity, smoking, body mass index (BMI), and month of blood draw.

(WHILE I'M NOT A RESEARCHER OR A DOCTOR, 67% LOWER SOUNDS VERY PREDICTIVE DOESN'T IT? - Dave)

The results of this study are consistent with the suggestion that high vitamin D status provides protection against Parkinson’s disease. The scientists acknowledge that there may be other factors involved in the results, however, so further research is warranted.

Knekt P, et al. Serum Vitamin D and the Risk of Parkinson Disease. 2010. Arch Neurol 67(7):808-11.

Writer's block!

2005-07-03T23:48:00.000-04:00

While other things in life suck more than writer's block, at the moment I can't think of any of them. The last two weeks I've been seriously distracted - I just can't seem to settle down. Is it nervous energy? Seriously, I have no idea, but it's annoying the holy shit out of me.

I think that the idea is sound, the concept, but if I keep on like this I'll never get anything done. Somehow I need to add structure to the project, a place to focus on. The outline I've prepared just isn't right, it's close but it's just not there. Frustration!

Go see Batman Begins!

2005-06-19T19:30:00.000-04:00

I just saw Batman Begins the other day, and I have to say, I really enjoyed it. Were I to rate it I'd give it a solid A, perhaps 4.9 of 5 stars.

Batman Begins actually tells a story. Many may not be into the whole superhero film-thing but for those that are, Batman Begins is among the best of them. It has a great script, solid acting -- a whole bunch of great actors are in this thing -- and a director who takes the story as a serious one, not as an excuse for campy dialogue and a schlock plot.

Having endured the 4 previous Batman movies - complete with poor scripts and soulless hollywood glitz, for the most part I was not looking forward to Batman Begins. I mean seriously, that one with George Clooney, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Uma Thurman was appallingly bad. It remains the one and only movie that I walked out of early to get my money back.

Between the Tim Burton butcherings that started off okay and got worse, and the shear unadulterated crap that Joel Schumacher called a movie, quality-wise the Batman franchise was in ruins. It wouldn't be a stretch to call the Batman films the worst series of movies, ever. A new telling of the story had nowhere to go but up.

I'd never heard of the Batman Begins' director before, a guy named Christopher Nolan, but I really think that he's rescued Batman from the idiocy of previous directors. This film is great and well worth the ticket money. If Nolan's next films are of this type of quality, he's someone to watch.

Morgan Spurlock's show "30 Days"

2005-06-16T22:15:00.000-04:00

Perhaps his name doesn't ring a bell right away, but Morgan Spurlock is the guy from the Super Size Me documentary who ate nothing but McDonald's food for 30 days and lived to tell the tale (barely - his liver began to function poorly and he gained about 25 pounds). While I have lived that life of eating too much fast food, I haven't seen the movie.

However, I watched his new TV show last night (on FX, the network that has The Shield), and I have to say that 30 Days is some of the best television that I've seen in a long time. The show takes his 'Super Size Me' experiment to various scenarios such as being a Muslim in America, binge drinking, and 'living off the grid', each experiment lasting -- you guessed it! -- 30 Days. The first show dealt with living on only minimum wage.

It was eye-opening to watch him and his girlfriend work difficult jobs for very little money. Between taking the bus and walking to and fro, sometimes their work day lasted 18 hours. Add to it a few basic medical problems they had -- with no health insurance to pay the surprisingly large bills -- and their lives were incredibly stressful with their expenses near impossible to keep up with. They even borrowed a couple of kids from his brother to show how quickly having them around raises the cost of living.

What amazed me most from the show is that it demonstrated just how much luck one must have to live on such a small amount of money. Life on minimum wage was possible assuming almost nothing bad or unexpected happens.

Somehow Congress hasn't passed a minimum wage increase in 9 years. Nine. I'm far from being a socialist, but please, that's absolutely ridiculous and even shameful. Worst of all, and I do mean awful, is that on this issue I agree with Ted Kennedy. That the shameless and bloated lout and I agree on anything is very difficult for me to accept.

Signs of the apocalypse?

2005-06-16T18:10:00.000-04:00

1.) The best rapper is white.
2.) The best golfer is black.
3.) The French call Americans arrogant.
4.) The Germans don't want to go to war.
4.) Switzerland won the world championship in sailing.
5.) The Red Sox won the World Series.
6.) Deep Throat has been revealed.
7.) The Mac will soon have "Intel inside."
8.) Dell CEO Michael Dell mentions that he would offer OS X to customers if Apple were so willing.

I keep looking up to see if pigs are flying yet...

Something new.

2005-06-15T23:58:00.000-04:00

First post!

Began writing my book the other day. Since I'm me, I had a tough time settling on one particular application for the work and had to try a few. Mac OS X has so many great writing tools it was hard to settle on one over another. Most people begin and end such a search by starting Microsoft Word, clearly the standard for word processing now and in the foreseeable future. But in a word, Word sucks. Okay, it's fine for some things, but as a creative tool it leaves much to be desired.

Several choices felt icky after using them a while so I kept looking. I really didn't fear losing any data because transitioning from one to another choice was cut-and-paste simple since all I'm working with is text. Anyway, I ended up choosing an unlikely writing tool, OmniOutliner Pro.

It's an outliner, but works like it's something far more. I chose it because it functions as a thought organizer for me, a way to craft something clean and clear in less time.

I have a feeling I'm going to live in this program; it's simply amazing. From the innovative interface, the sections feature, the solid formatting options, inline notes, file attachments, and the wide array of export options, OmniOutliner will be my new home for a while. Heck this thing even has a voice recorder. Now I can justify talking to myself - just have to leave my computer on. Built-in excuse! Actually they say that talking to yourself is a sign of intelligence; however, if the people who claim that also happen to be the ones talking to themselves, not only are they biased but they are also clearly nuts.

I've been pretty productive with it for the last few days. Most of my time has been sorting my thoughts and ideas, but I've also got some writing done. I want to get the overall structure and central ideas down before I jump in feet first and try to string together a whole bunch of nouns, verbs and adjectives. Still, with this program, things are starting to gel together I think.