Mind-Body Media
Once you begin considering that many physical symptoms may be stress related, not only do you react to your own aches and pains differently, the news starts to take on a different meaning. That’s why Dr. David Schechter repeatedly asks in his MindBody Workbook what kind of messages you’ve been getting in the media about pain symptoms. Here, a couple of those very stories:
Fibromyalgia Affects Mental Health of Those Diagnosed and Their Spouses, Study Finds
Use of Alternative Therapy for Pain Treatment Increases With Age and Wealth
The message? Different from Dr. Schechter’s.
For more about mind-body medicine, try Dr. Schecter’s website, this interview I did with therapist Alan Gordon, and/or the stress illness section of this site.
On Blinking
At ScienceDaily, Blinking Eyes Indicate Mind Wandering:
When your mind wanders, you’re not paying attention to what’s going in front of you. A new study suggests that it’s not just the mind, it’s the body, too; when subjects’ minds wandered, they blinked more, setting up a tiny physical barrier between themselves and the outside world…
Free Workbooks
I post links to potentially helpful worksheets at Therapy Worksheets. Here’s a find from there that warranted double-posting: A set of free workbooks from the Centre for Clinical Intervention, a CBT-based program in Western Australia. Available there as of today:
- Back from the Bluez – Coping with Depression
- Keeping Your Balance – Coping with Bipolar Disorder
- Shy No Longer – Coping with Social Anxiety
- Panic Stations – Coping with Panic Attacks
- What? Me Worry!?! – Mastering Anxiety
- Improving Self-Esteem
- Put Off Procrastinating!
- Assert Yourself!
- Perfectionism in Perspective
- Overcoming Disordered Eating
Worth a look.
Laughter as Exercise
Best medicine department: Repetitive Laughter Response Is Similar To The Effect Of Repetitive Exercise, according to researchers in Loma Linda, CA.
Their studies have shown that repetitious “mirthful laughter,” which they call Laughercise, causes the body to respond in a way similar to moderate physical exercise. Laughercise enhances your mood, decreases stress hormones, enhances immune activity, lowers bad cholesterol and systolic blood pressure, and raises good cholesterol (HDL).
Chocolate and Depression
In a study, a group was divided into three levels of chocolate consumption, and…
The people who consumed 8.4 servings of chocolate screened for possible depression. Those that consumed 11.8 servings exhibited signs of major depression. The smaller consumption group was just fine.
Good news to very few.
Depression Meds and Heart Health
A study of a set of psych meds (SSRIs) shows a side effect you may actually be interested in–improved heart health.
“There is clear evidence that depressed patients have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, and we want to eliminate that. Since depression can be treated with an SSRI, maybe the cardiovascular disease risk can also be decreased.”
On Yawning
Hard to read about without opening wide and breathing in deep, but here’s an article about recent thought on yawing:
According to psychologists and researchers who study such things, yawning has nothing to do with boredom, rudeness, or even fatigue. Quite the contrary. Yawning helps cool down our brains so they function better…
Dreams and Memory
A study looks at how dreaming improves memory. Given a maze test, subjects who napped for 90 minutes improved performance on a retest.
“Our findings suggest that if something is difficult for you, it’s more meaningful to you and the sleeping brain therefore focuses on that subject – it ‘knows’ you need to work on it to get better, and this seems to be where dreaming can be of most benefit.”
Mind Over Meds
Mind Over Meds or “how I decided my psychiatry patients needed more from me than prescriptions”–a psychiatrist’s story, from the NYT Magazine.
[L]earning the formal techniques of therapy was like navigating without a compass. While I learned how to form an alliance with my patients and begin a good dialogue, becoming a skillful therapist requires much more practice than busy psychiatry residencies allow.
Your Brain on God
Nifty interactive brain at NPR.org links to series of stories about science and spirituality.
[S]cientists…are using new technologies to analyze the brains of people who claim they have touched the spiritual — from Christians who speak in tongues to Buddhist monks to people who claim to have had near-death experiences. Hear what they have discovered…