#boise #idaho
When's the last time you really considered what a culinary marvel the smoothie is? Think about it -- you can literally put a head of kale, an entire banana, half a box of strawberries, and a cup of yogurt into a blender, and get something you can slurp down in no time at all. And unlike with fruit juices, you don't lose any fiber from the fruits and vegetables -- it's just in a more "sippable" form. (Plus, it's nice to know you could be lowering your risk of premature death as you enjoy your concoction.)
To celebrate the smoothie, we asked nutrition and fitness experts to share their favorite recipes (and just in time for spring!). Check out five of them below.
Editor's note: We added a few ice cubes to each of these recipes to make them thicker, but feel free to add or omit ice cubes per your taste preference!
Green Smoothie
1 cup spinach
1 cup kale
1/2 banana
A small handful of almonds
3 to 5 raw brazil nuts
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1-2 tablespoons cacao or carob powder
1/2 can of full-fat coconut milk
-- Ben Greenfield, fitness and triathlon expert, Get-Fit Guy podcast host
Carrot Mango Smoothie
1 medium mango, peeled and cubed
1/2 cup shredded carrots
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup coconut water
1/4 cup water
-- Dawn Jackson Blatner, RD, CSSD, LDN, certified specialist in sports dietetics
Kale Banana Smoothie
1 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk
1 ripe banana
1 cup loosely packed chopped kale
1/4 cup water
-- Dawn Jackson Blatner, RD, CSSD, LDN, certified specialist in sports dietetics
Chocolate Beet Berry Smoothie
1/2 cup peeled chopped raw beet
1 banana
1 cup strawberries (may sub blueberries or raspberries)
1/2 cup coconut water
1/4 cup water
1 teaspoon unsweetened cocoa powder
-- Dawn Jackson Blatner, RD, CSSD, LDN, certified specialist in sports dietetics
Raspberry Almond Smoothie
1/2 cup almond milk
1/2 cup low-fat plain greek yogurt
1/2 medium banana
1/2 cup fresh (or frozen) raspberries
1/8 teaspoon almond extract
1 tablespoon honey
-- Keri Gans, RD, author of "The Small Change Diet"
Bon appetit!
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Hundreds of Tetris fans plan to gather in Philadelphia for a skyscraper-sized version of the classic video game, a spectacle that organizers hope will inspire onlookers and players to think about the possibilities of technology.
The 29-story Cira Centre, which has hundreds of LED lights embedded in its glass facade, normally displays colorful geometric patterns at night. On Saturday, images of supersized shapes will "fall" on two sides of the mirrored tower as competitors use joysticks to maneuver them into place.
The spectacle kicks off a citywide series of events called Philly Tech Week. It also celebrates the upcoming 30th anniversary of Tetris, a game revered as the epitome of elegance and simplicity, said Frank Lee, a digital media professor at Drexel University.
Lee, a game designer who oversaw creation of the giant display, said putting it on an office building is like making a huge virtual campfire.
"What I wanted to create was essentially a shared moment for the city of Philadelphia," he said.
This won't be the first time Tetris has been played on a building. But the 100,000-square-foot "screen" — which includes the north and south faces of the structure — could be a record.
Lee already holds the Guinness World Record for the world's largest architectural video game display for playing Pong on one side of the Cira Centre last year. Pong, the granddaddy of all video games, is an electronic version of paddleball developed by Atari in 1972.
Tetris, created by Russian computer programmer Alexey Pajitnov in 1984, challenges players to rotate and arrange falling shapes into complete rows.
It became a global phenomenon in the late 1980s after game designer Henk Rogers, who had seen Tetris at a trade show in Las Vegas, acquired the rights and struck a deal to put it on Nintendo's original Game Boy.
Rogers said he can't believe the longevity of Tetris, which decades later continues to mesmerize players on more than 30 platforms.
"If a game lasts a year, that's amazing," said Rogers, now managing director of The Tetris Co. "They usually go out of style very quickly."
Rogers, who plans to attend the event in Philadelphia, said several new Tetris products and initiatives are planned for release around its June 6 anniversary. He declined to discuss details.
City resident Melissa Koenig, 27, also expects to be part of the crowd at Eakins Oval, an outdoor plaza with a long view of the Cira Centre and a busy interstate below. She played supersized Pong last year, an experience she called "kind of thrilling."
"You could see the cars kind of slowing down to look at it," Koenig said. "It was just really cool and really beautiful."
___
Online:
http://ift.tt/1dNRFHq
www.tetris.com
___
Follow Kathy Matheson at http://ift.tt/UywVHM
A new study published this week in the Journal of Psychopharmacology found that approximately one-third of patients with what researchers referred to as "treatment-resistant depression" experienced a significant mood improvement after being treated with up to six intravenous ketamine infusions over the course of several weeks.
"Three days after the last infusion, the depression scores had halved in 29 percent of the patients," said a news release on the study, which was conducted by United Kingdom researchers at Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Oxford. "In those that responded to the treatment, the duration of benefit varied widely, lasting between 25 days and 8 months"
Lead researcher Dr. Rupert McShane said some of the patients involved in the study had lived with depression for 20 years. "It really is dramatic for some people," he told the BBC of the improvements seen in some of the study's subjects. "It's the sort of thing really that makes it worth doing psychiatry, it's a really wonderful thing to see."
McShane's study had a small sample of just 28 patients, but his isn't the first to link ketamine -- a Schedule III drug known on the street as "Special K" or simply "K" -- with effective treatment for depression.
Several studies conducted in the past decade or so supported the idea that ketamine could treat major depression effectively and quickly. In 2012, for example, researchers from Yale University said ketamine seems to "produce rapid antidepressant responses in patients who are resistant to typical antidepressants."
"It's exciting," Ron Duman, co-author of that study, told NPR at the time. "The hope is that this new information about ketamine is really going to provide a whole array of new targets that can be developed that ultimately provide a much better way of treating depression."
Another study, conducted by researchers at Houston's Baylor College of Medicine and New York's Mount Sinai School of Medicine, had similar results. Published last year, the study -- said to have been the largest of its kind -- found that 64 percent of patients who had been treated with ketamine reported fewer depression symptoms.
Though ketamine's purported ability to relieve depression for some individuals has been welcomed by many experts as a possible step forward in the search for better treatments for depression, there are many health risks associated with the drug.
Commonly used as an anesthetic for both humans and animals, ketamine is described by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration as a dissociative anesthetic with hallucinogenic properties. Some users say that, when taken at high enough doses, the drug can induce a terrifying out-of-body experience known commonly as a "K-hole." The drug is also known to cause anxiety, amnesia and cognitive difficulties.
Medical experts have strictly warned against self-medicating with ketamine. In clinical studies, the drug is typically administered only in small doses, and patients are always supervised closely. Even then, some patients have been known to exhibit unpleasant side effects.
#mentalhealth
http://bit.ly/13Y6UVy
from Anxiety Agoraphobia Bipolar Disorder Evaluations and Treatment in Boise, Treasure Valley, Idaho http://ift.tt/1fNzmmX