The Food Hospital, a weekly television programme on Britain’s Channel 4 has conducted an experiment to find if blueberries enhance brain function.

Volunteers were workers in a small advertising sales business who need to stay alert all day to maximise sales. The doctors provided one smoothie to each worker at 10am every working day for two weeks.

During the first week they were given a banana drink, the second week a handful of blueberries in a smoothie.

The results were decisive. During the banana week, the team showed a small improvement in function in the mornings, but a significant drop off in the afternoons.

In the blueberry week, there was a marked improvement in the mornings and, contrary to the banana results, a continued superiority in the afternoons.

There is no question that the blue antioxidant, anthocyanin, in the blueberries did improve both brain efficiency and longevity of functioning.

If you have ever been diagnosed as suffering from depression, or suspect you may have a depressive illness, take heart.

Professor Jerome Wakefield of New York University believes sadness and depression are essential tools of evolution that prompt “sufferers” to become high achievers in life. He cites Winston Churchill, Beethoven, Abraham Lincoln and Isaac Newton as depressives who made good.

Wakefield says: “When you find something this deeply in us biologically, you presume it was selected because it had some advantage, otherwise we wouldn’t have been burdened with it. We’re fooling around with part of our biological makeup.”

He further believes that medical diagnoses of depression and its treatment with powerful drugs, like Prozac, is an unnecessary and dangerous fad. His book, The Loss of Sadness: How psychiatry transformed normal sorrow into depressive disorder states that sadness helps us learn from our mistakes. “I think one of the functions of intense negative emotions is to stop our normal functioning — to make us focus on something else for a while.”

So, if you are feeling down and are tempted to pursue the chemical route to “salvation”, consider that a deep part of yourself may be attempting to convey something to you.

At least try to find out what it is before heading for the doc’s surgery.

What’s your idea of a good night’s sleep? Is it seven, eight, nine, or even 10, or more, hours?

Well, it could be much less.

According to some authorities sleep is much overdone in modern times. Our ancestors made do on much less slumber at night. They were partly nocturnal and made up by napping for a few hours during the day.

The problem is that when we sleep, parts of our consciousness leave the physical envelope of the body. If that period is too long, it causes muscle inflexibility and, in some cases, lower mental performance.

It’s a well-known fact that an hour’s nap in the afternoon boosts our energy and overall thinking skills. NASA, which has studied the performances of astronauts in space, believes that a nap during the day is of immense benefit to everyone.

The optimum pattern of sleep would be four or five hours at night, plus a two-hour nap during the afternoon.

If pressures of work make that impossible, any system of splitting sleep up to reduce one big slab of unconsciousness will be beneficial.

For example, two periods of three hours is preferable to one of eight hours.

As people differ in their requirements, it’s a good idea to experiment with your personal needs, but a split sleep pattern may well deliver enormous benefits to your life.

Many people are chained to a low salt diet for chronic or acute medical reasons. High blood pressure and kidney disease probably top the list.

Some people go onto low salt regimes to improve mental function which is responsive to salt intake. It’s known that the normal body needs only half a gram of salt a day, way below the official guidelines of 6 – 7 grams.

If you ask them which foods they miss most, they will likely say “cheese”. Its particular flavor and texture can be quite addictive.

However, cheese is very high in salt.

There are exceptions. Some soft versions, like cream cheeses — usually not proprietary brands — can be salt-free. The problem is they don’t really taste or feel like cheese at all.

One solution is Swiss Emmental which is low in salt, but tastes very much like cheese. The Tesco brand contains only 0.2 grams per 30-gram typical serving. Others may vary, so check the labeling.

Bear in mind also that a value for sodium needs to be multiplied by 2.5 to get the full salt content.

Cheese needn’t be a no-go area for low salt dieters.