Stress Fixes for Better Sleep

Target the Enemy!

When stress interrupts your sleep on a nightly basis, it sets you up for a chronic insomnia that can send you sliding down the rabbit's hole toward sleeping pills, alcohol, and chocolate cake at night and a zillion cups of coffee during the day. Here's how to step back from that precipice.

Target the enemy. "Every night a couple of hours before bed, sit down and make a list of all the issues, problems, and things you have to deal with," says Donna Arand, Ph.D., clinical director of Kettering Hospital Sleep Disorders Center in Dayton, Ohio. "Next to each item, write a solution or plan." If you're mad at your mother-in-law, for example, the solution could be to call her and talk it out.

Even if it's not something you want to do, write down your ideas for dealing with each stressor you've listed, urges Dr. Arand. Then mull the solutions over.

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Can you control your dreams?

A lucid dreamer is a person who is aware that he or she is dreaming and is able to manipulate the plot and outcome of the dream, like a video game. It is not uncommon, and in children it can happen frequently, even as an expression of creativity, said Gary Schwartz, professor of psychology and neurology at the University of Arizona.

It appears that Jared Loughner, allegedly responsible for the shooting at a supermarket in Tucson, Arizona, on Saturday, took a keen interest in the phenomenon. In the YouTube video called My Final Thoughts: Jared Lee Loughner! that is said to belong to him, he talks about conscious dreaming and reflects a blurring between waking life and reality -- "Jared Loughner is conscience (sic) dreaming at this moment / Thus, Jared Loughner is asleep," he writes.

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Life’s missing white space

I'm not a designer, but I've always been in love with the design concept of white space.

It's the space in a design that isn't filled with things — as you can tell from the design of Zen Habits and my other blog, mnmlist, it's something I use (perhaps too) liberally.

But white space can be used in the design of our lives as well, not just the design of magazines and websites and ads. By using white space in our lives, we create space, balance, emphasis on what's important, and a feeling of peace that we cannot achieve with a more cramped life.

Let's look briefly at how to do this....

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Aerobics for the Brain

As people age, brain function slowly declines. Aside from improving physical fitness and overall health, exercise may also help improve brain function in older adults, researchers report.

In a study published in the journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, researchers evaluated brain function by performing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans on 70 sedentary (but otherwise healthy) adults who were 60-80 years old. The participants were randomly divided into an aerobic walking group or a non-aerobic control group, which performed toning, stretching and strengthening exercises. Each exercise session lasted 40 minutes and was performed three times weekly for one year. The MRI scans of the older individuals were again taken after six months and one year, and compared to MRI scans of 32 healthy younger individuals (age 18-35).

No beneficial effects were observed in the aerobic group after six months of exercise. However, after one year, several improvements in brain function were noted in the aerobic exercise group.

Earlier studies suggested that impaired function in a brain circuit called the default mode network (DMN) may be a sign of aging or neurological conditions, such as Alzheimer's. The DMN is active when a person is at a state of wakeful rest, such as daydreaming. In the present study, researchers found that DMN activity significantly improved in the aerobics group compared to the control group. The subjects in the aerobic group also experienced significant improvements in another brain network, the frontal parietal network, which is important for complex tasks.

By the end of the study, participants in the aerobics group experienced significant improvements in cognition, including memory and attention, compared to the control group.

While the results are promising, additional research is warranted in this area.

For more information about aerobic and non-aerobic exercise, please visit Natural Standard'sSports Medicine database.

From Natural Standard Sources

Find stillness to cure illness

It's a busy day, and you're inundated by non-stop emails, text messages, phone calls, instant message requests, notifications, interruptions of all kinds.

The noise of the world is a dull roar that pervades every second of your life. It's a rush of activity, a drain on your energy, a pull on your attention, until you no longer have the energy to pay attention or take action.

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Heart Disease Risk Varies by Education Level

 Risk for stroke and heart disease falls as education levels rise in high-income countries, but not in nations where earnings are considerably lower, a new study shows.

The findings are published in the September 2010 issue of Circulation.

The study examined data on 61,332 people from 44 countries who had been diagnosed with heart disease, stroke, or peripheral arterial disease -- or who had cardiovascular risk factors such as smoking or obesity.

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Organizing Disorganized People

Imagine this scenario: After a week of hard work, you send an important report to your colleague. His task is to edit the wording and make a few key decisions to finalize some of the content. The deadline is still three weeks away, but you hope he'll finish it early because you'll have more work to do once he gives you his input.

Your colleague, however, delays making the changes. After numerous reminders from you, he sends it back the day before your deadline. This means that you have to rush to complete your final changes in time. His delay has caused you some serious stress, and it's not the first time that this has happened.

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Too Little Sleep May Raise Heart Disease Risk

 People who sleep for less than seven hours a day, including naps, are at a higher risk of cardiovascular disease. Sleeping fewer than five hours a day, including naps, more than doubles the risk of chest pain, heart attack, or stroke, according to a study conducted by researchers at West Virginia University's (WVU) faculty of medicine.

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Can a mother's affection prevent anxiety in adulthood?

Babies whose mothers are attentive and caring tend to grow into happy, well-adjusted children. But the psychological benefits of having a doting mother may extend well beyond childhood, a new study suggests.

According to the study, which followed nearly 500 infants into their 30s, babies who receive above-average levels of affection and attention from their mothers are less likely than other babies to grow up to be emotionally distressed, anxious, or hostile adults..

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Predicting the Unpredictable

People who suffer from anxiety tend to worry a lot, especially those who suffer from Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) which is a common type of anxiety involving excessive worry on an almost daily basis. It is generally accompanied by various physical symptoms such as fatigue, restlessness, and tension. Those with GAD often seem to believe that worrying can protect them from harm–as though their worry will help them see and avoid any number of potential calamities that may lie ahead.

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How to Simplify When You Love Your Stuff

Simplicity. It is a lovely ancient spiritual tradition that has seen a recent resurgence in popularity.  As we try to make sense of our erratic economy and the accompanying financial anxiety, it is natural to leap to a less risky lifestyle extreme — stop spending, scale back, live lean.

If you are a regular reader of Zen Habits, you are probably intrigued by the idea of simplifying. In fact, you may have even given up many material things and actively live a very simple life. People who have adopted this level of  simplicity, especially in the land of consumerism, are incredibly inspiring and fascinating.

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Ovulation gives women's brains a boost

THE size of a woman's brain changes throughout her menstrual cycle, with some areas growing by as much as 2 per cent in the run-up to ovulation, when women are at their most fertile.

So say Belinda Pletzer and colleagues at the University of Salzburg, Austria, who took MRI scans of the brains of women during their monthly cycles.

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How to Find Your Life's Passion When You Are Broke

Have you always had a problem achieving your goals? Do you feel like you have read every "How to" goal book ever written, but yet, you still fail at your goals?

Perhaps the problem is not you, but your goals. Do you know what you really, really want out of life?

We tend to want so much out of life. We feel like we will die if we don't get the new car, but a few weeks after getting the new car and the "newness" wears off, we realize the car no longer makes us happy. This happens because the car was not what we really, really wanted in the first place. We simply thought the car was what we wanted.

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Risk

In fact, as researchers are discovering, the psychology of risk involves far more than a simple "death wish." Studies now indicate that the inclination to take high risks may be hard-wired into the brain, intimately linked to arousal and pleasure mechanisms, and may offer such a thrill that it functions like an addiction. The tendency probably affects one in five people, mostly young males, and declines with age. It may ensure our survival, even spur our evolution as individuals and as a species. Risk taking probably bestowed a crucial evolutionary advantage, inciting the fighting and foraging of the hunter-gatherer.

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The elements of living lightly

Think about it: when we have expectations, and things don't go the way we expect (which happens quite often, as we're not good prognosticators), we are disappointed, frustrated. It's our expectations that force us to judge whether something is good or bad.

When you expect something of a friend, co-worker, family member, spouse, and they don't live up to that expectation, then you are upset with them, or disappointed. It causes anger. But what if you had no expectations — then their actions would be neither good nor bad, just actions. You could accept them without frustration, anger, sadness.

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Experiencing the Planetary Shift on an Uptilt...an energetic sparkle in the air.....

When you feel genuine hope, care and compassion, your heart is sending harmonious and coherent signals to the brain/ mind, replacing feelings of separation with a sense of connection. The heart and brain are aligned and in sync. The higher cortical functions are enhanced, facilitating objective, sober assessment and intuitive perception. You perceive more wholeness, and solutions to problems are more apparent. 

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How does multitasking affect memory

The human mind can shift rapidly between tasks, on the order of a few hundred milliseconds. Recent research has uncovered supertaskers, the 2.5 percent of the population who are better than everyone else at texting and driving. But the average mind prefers something closer to a second or two between changes in input. The faster this shift, the less sense we can make of the information....

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Cutting the Cord to Materialism

In America and much of western culture, our infatuation with materialism comes from the opportunity to have such. Being a minimalist pre-cable/satellite television was not just a fad. It was a way of life. People were these things called ACTIVE and ENERGETIC. Once television became such a monumental part of our lives, we began being consumed by this sedentary form of life that co-existed with unhealthy and unfit lives.

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The Large Hadron Collider May Allow us to Read the Mind of God

Today the LHC may have the potential to explain the origin of all four fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. Physicists believe that at the beginning of time there was a single superforce that unified these fundamental forces. Finding it could be the crowning achievement in the history of science.

Through the LHC, we hope to finally prove the existence of the Higgs boson, which is the only particle yet to be observed by the Standard Model. There is a hypothetical, ever-present quantum field that is supposedly responsible for giving particles their masses; this field would answer the basic question of why particles have the masses they do or why they have any mass at all. According to CERN, "The answer may be the so-called Higgs mechanism. According to the theory of the Higgs mechanism, the whole of space is filled with a 'Higgs field,' and by interacting with this field, particles acquire their masses. Particles that interact intensely with the Higgs field are heavy, while those that have feeble interactions are light. The Higgs field has at least one new particle associated with it, the Higgs boson. If such a particle exists, experiments at the LHC will be able to detect it."

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Java Technologies to Build Social Capital to achieve UN -MDGs- Java World Congress-Sri Lanka

How to integrate Open source Java Technologies to Build Social Capital to achieve United Nations Millennium Development Goals ( MDGs) will be the theme of the Java World Congress to be held in Colombo, Sri Lanka from 26-28 Nov this year. Humans are social animals. From time immemorial history is replete with a plethora of examples of how humans interacted with family, small groups, society , country and the world at large to transact his business. While these social contacts are salutary to building health networks, others have used them to build tension, conflict and anxiety in our dealings. While interacting with a global village we observe how the multi-faceted technology and communication expansions have brought us very close to each other redefining the old boundaries.

If we go deeper into social capital we observe that Social capital is an instantiated informal norm that promotes cooperation between two or more individuals. The norms that constitute social capital can range from a norm of reciprocity between two friends, all the way up to complex and elaborately articulated doctrines like Christianity or Confucianism. They must be instantiated in an actual human relationship: the norm of reciprocity exists in potentia in my dealings with all people, but is actualized only in my dealings with my friends. By this definition, trust, networks, civil society, and the like which have been associated with social capital are all epiphenominal, arising as a result of social capital but not constituting social capital itself.

Not just any set of instantiated norms constitutes social capital; they must lead to cooperation in groups and therefore are related to traditional virtues like honesty, the keeping of commitments, reliable performance of duties, reciprocity, and the like. A norm like the one described by Edward Banfield as characterizing southern Italy, which enjoins individuals to trust members of their immediate nuclear family but to take advantage of everyone else, is clearly not the basis of social capital outside the family

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World Congress

DNA Can Be Influenced and Reprogrammed by Words and Frequencies -Russian DNA Discoveries

Selected extracts from idea expressed by  Grazyna Fosar and Franz Bludorf

The human DNA is a biological Internet and superior in many aspects to the artificial one. The latest Russian scientific research directly or indirectly explains phenomena such as clairvoyance, intuition, spontaneous and remote acts of healing, self healing, affirmation techniques, unusual light/auras around people (namely spiritual masters), the mind's influence on weather patterns and much more.

In addition, there is evidence for a whole new type of medicine in which DNA can be influenced and reprogrammed by words and frequencies WITHOUT cutting out and replacing single genes.

Only 10% of our DNA is being used for building proteins. It is this subset of DNA that is of interest to western researchers and is being examined and categorized. The other 90% are considered "junk DNA. The Russian researchers, however, convinced that nature was not dumb, joined linguists and geneticists in a venture to explore those 90% of "junk DNA". Their results, findings and conclusions are simply revolutionary!

According to them, our DNA is not only responsible for the construction of our body but also serves as data storage and communication. The Russian linguists found that the genetic code, especially in the apparently useless 90%, follows the same rules as all our human languages. To this end they compared the rules of syntax (the way in which words are put together to form phrases and sentences), semantics (the study of meaning in language forms) and the basic rules of grammar.

They found that the alkalines of our DNA follow regular grammar and do have set rules just like our languages. So human languages did not appear coincidentally but are a reflection of our inherent DNA.

This means that they managed, for example, to modulate certain frequency patterns onto a laser ray and with it influenced the DNA frequency and thus the genetic information itself. Since the basic structure of DNA-alkaline pairs and of language (as explained earlier) are of the same structure, no DNA decoding is necessary. One can simply use words and sentences of the human language!

This, too, was experimentally proven! Living DNA substance (in living tissue, not in vitro) will always react to language-modulated laser rays and even to radio waves, if the proper frequencies are being used. This finally and scientifically explains why affirmations, autogenous training, hypnosis and the like can have such strong effects on humans and their bodies. It is entirely normal and natural for our DNA to react to language. While western researcher cut single genes from the DNA strands and insert them elsewhere, the Russians enthusiastically worked on devices that can influence the cellular metabolism through suitable modulated radio and light frequencies and thus repair genetic defects.

This way the entire information was transmitted without any of the side effects or disharmonies encountered when cutting out and re-introducing single genes from the DNA. This represents an unbelievable, world-transforming revolution and sensation! All this by simply applying vibration and language instead of the archaic cutting-out procedure! This experiment points to the immense power of wave genetics, which obviously has a greater influence on the formation of organisms than the biochemical processes of alkaline sequences.

Esoteric and spiritual teachers have known for ages that our body is programmable by language, words and thought. This has now been scientifically proven and explained. Of course the frequency has to be correct. And this is why not everybody is equally successful or can do it with always the same strength. The individual person must work on the inner processes and maturity in order to establish a conscious communication with the DNA. The Russian researchers work on a method that is not dependent on these factors but will ALWAYS work, provided one uses the correct frequency.

But the higher developed an individual's consciousness is, the less need is there for any type of device! One can achieve these results by oneself, and science will finally stop laughing at such ideas and will confirm and explain the results. And it doesn't end there. The Russian scientists also found out that our DNA can cause disturbing patterns in the vacuum, thus producing magnetized wormholes! Wormholes are the microscopic equivalents of the so-called Einstein-Rosen bridges in the vicinity of black holes (left by burned-out stars).

These are tunnel connections between entirely different areas in the universe through which information can be transmitted outside of space and time. The DNA attracts these bits of information and passes them on to our consciousness. This process of hypercommunication is most effective in a state of relaxation. Stress, worries or a hyperactive intellect prevent successful hypercommunication or the information will be totally distorted and useless. In nature, hypercommunication has been successfully applied for millions of years. The organized flow of life in insect states proves this dramatically. Modern man knows it only on a much more subtle level as "intuition". But we, too, can regain full use of it.

An example from Nature: When a queen ant is spatially separated from her colony, building still continues fervently and according to plan. If the queen is killed, however, all work in the colony stops. No ant knows what to do. Apparently the queen sends the "building plans" also from far away via the group consciousness of her subjects. She can be as far away as she wants, as long as she is alive. In man hypercommunication is most often encountered when one suddenly gains access to information that is outside one's knowledge base.

For years, a 42-year old male nurse dreamt of a situation in which he was hooked up to a kind of knowledge CD-ROM. Verifiable knowledge from all imaginable fields was then transmitted to him that he was able to recall in the morning. There was such a flood of information that it seemed a whole encyclopedia was transmitted at night. The majority of facts were outside his personal knowledge base and reached technical details about which he knew absolutely nothing.

Now that we are fairly stable in our individual consciousness, we can create a new form of group consciousness, namely one, in which we attain access to all information via our DNA without being forced or remotely controlled about what to do with that information. We now know that just as on the internet our DNA can feed its proper data into the network, can call up data from the network and can establish contact with other participants in the network.

Remote healing, telepathy or "remote sensing" about the state of relatives etc. can thus be explained. Some animals know also from afar when their owners plan to return home. That can be freshly interpreted and explained via the concepts of group consciousness and hypercommunication. Any collective consciousness cannot be sensibly used over any period of time without a distinctive individuality. Otherwise we would revert to a primitive herd instinct that is easily manipulated.

 

 

 

 

 

Vitamin C and Brain Development

	Vitamin C and Brain Development

Vitamin C deficiency during the first weeks of life may impair early brain development, according to a new animal study.

In the study, 30 newborn guinea pigs were randomly assigned to receive a standard diet or a vitamin C-deficient diet for two months. Guinea pigs, like humans, are only able to obtain vitamin C through the diet.

Spatial memory was assessed using a water maze and nerve cells in the brain (called hippocampal neurons) were evaluated with brain scans. The researchers found that vitamin C-deficient guinea pigs had significantly poorer spatial memory and 30 percent fewer hippocampal neurons than the control group.

Because vitamin C concentrations are the highest in neurons compared to other cells in the body, the authors suggested that the vitamin may play an important role in brain activity. However, it is unclear if similar results would occur in humans.

For more information about vitamin C, please visit Natural Standard's Foods, Herbs & Supplements database.

To comment on this story, please click here to enter Natural Standard's blog.

From Natural Standard

Useful health discoveries

The fat that blasts away cancer 

You've been told cancer runs in families. You've been told what to eat and what NOT to eat -- including LESS fat. 

Yet Dr. Steven Pratt says there'sone fat you should eat MORE of. It's the monounsaturated fat called oleic acid, found in olive oil! It should come as no surprise. After all, olive oil is a staple of the Mediterranean diet. And people inSpain and Greece are far less likely to develop cancer than in the U.S. 
But what's really interesting is how olive oil not only prevents cancer, it blasts away cancer cells that already exist! So if you're even the slightest bit worried about cancer, this is oneSuperFood you don't want to be without! 

NEW prostate-protecting champ trumps tomatoes! 

Unless you've been asleep under a rock for the past decade, you've heard the news about tomatoes. They contain a potent antioxidant calledlycopene that's been proven to reduce the risk of certain cancers -- in particular, prostate cancer. 

A famous Harvard study back in 1995 found that out of 48,000 men surveyed, those who ate 10 or more servings of tomatoes a week reduced their risk of prostate cancer by more thanone-third. What's more, they lowered their risk of aggressive prostate tumors (the kind that are really tough to treat) byHALF! 
But before you reach for that slice of pizza or bottle of ketchup, listen up. What if I told you about a sweet, refreshing food Dr. Steven Pratt recommends that's even better for your prostate than tomatoes? 
This NEW prostate protecting champ is watermelon! Ounce for ounce, watermelon is even richer in lycopene than tomatoes. And since you probably eat more watermelon in one sitting than you do tomatoes, you don't have to gorge on it 10 times a week in order to slash your cancer risk! Just a few times a week should do it. 
 Knock out an ulcer with broccoli?! 

About 25 million Americans will suffer from a peptic ulcer at some point in their lives. To get rid of their ulcers, most will take an antibiotic likeamoxicillin. 
Pretty tame stuff, right? Wrong! Amoxicillin can bring with it unwanted side effects like fever, nausea, stomach pain, diarrhea, headache, even a yucky condition called "hairy tongue"! 
And if you think that's bad, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the cost of treating an ulcer with antibiotics over an average 17-day period can run upward of $1,000!

Fortunately, there's oneunconventional treatment with NO side effects Dr. Pratt swears by. "Eat broccoli!" he says. Why?
Broccoli contains a remarkably potent compound called sulforaphane, that kills off the H. pylori bacteria that cause most ulcers. Not only can it knock out an ulcer, eating one serving a day for a month might run you 20 bucks... a fraction of the cost of drugs.

MANAWA SARANA

At a recently held convocation of the Institute of Psychology, Counselling, Psychotherapy and Allied Professions of Sri Lanka (Incorporated by Act of Parliament), Prof.Madurasinghe was conferred with the award " MANAWA SARANA" as a recognition of his invaluable services and dedication towards Counselling, Psychotherapy and Mental Health in Sri Lanka.

CONFIDENCE -- Feeling Good about You is the Key to Success and Happiness -

By Anne Hartley

Recently a client told me that I was her role model for being a confident person. This set me to wondering as to how I became a confident person, what happened, and when, so I created a timeline where I went back to a time when I lacked confidence and found that was when I left school, many aeons ago.

When I left school I planned to be a hairdresser and had an apprenticeship lined up. After working at the hairdresser's during the holidays, they told me to rethink my career because I wasn't suited to it. I don't know if it was because I knocked over a perm tray, spilled tint on a customer's back, or wet another customer's clothes while washing her hair. Being young, I felt totally shattered that my dream had come to an end, and it was a time when I was totally lacking in confidence and I didn't know what I wanted to do.

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Flipping The Brain's Addiction Switch Without Drugs

"Flipping The Brain's Addiction Switch Without Drugs"

When someone becomes dependent on drugs or alcohol, the brain's pleasure center gets hijacked, disrupting the normal functioning of its reward circuitry. Researchers have found a naturally occurring protein that gets rats addicted with no drugs at all.

http://digg.com/d1sQsb?e

Are You Open-Minded?

Video

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Parallel Universes: More than a Figment of Our Imagination?

While it hasn’t been proven yet, many highly respected and credible scientists are now saying there’s reason to believe that parallel dimensions could very well be more than figments of our imaginations.

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Can Positive Thoughts Help Heal Another Person?

For decades, scientists have tried to test the power of prayer and positive thinking, with mixed results. Now some scientists are fording new, and controversial, territory...they're asking a different sort of question. Can a husband's love for his wife affect her body?

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Sunbathing 'could boost your intellect and prevent dementia'

Being a sun worshipper could make you cleverer in later life and ward off dementia, claim scientists.

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Are Spiritual Encounters All In Your Head?

According to polls, there's a 50-50 chance you have had at least one spiritual experience — an overpowering feeling that you've touched God, or another dimension of reality.

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Top 5 Unsolved Brain Mysteries

Until fairly recently, scientists lacked the equipment to accurately study the brain. With the advent of brain imaging technology, it's possible that they'll continue to learn more. We can dive into the current thinking on some of the brain's famous unsolved mysteries...

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Smoking Interferes With Recovery From Alcohol-related Brain

Alcohol-use disorders (AUDs) can damage the brain, particularly the frontal and parietal cortices, although this damage is at least partially reversible with sustained abstinence from alcohol. Chronic smoking is extremely common among individuals with AUDs.

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50% of the World Has a Mind-Bending Brain Parasite: Do You?

The parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, has been transmitted indirectly from cats to roughly half the people on the planet, and it has been shown to affect human personalities in different ways. Research has shown that women who are infected with the parasite tend to be warm, outgoing and attentive to others, while infected men tend to be

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Experts' Best Diet Tips for Weight Loss

Hoping to lose a few pounds in time for bathing suit season -- and tired of all the hype about "miracle" weight loss cures? To help you get answers about what really works for weight loss, WebMD turned to eight noted diet and nutrition experts for their own favorite diet tips.  

Here are their top 10 diet tips and tricks for weight loss success:

Expert Diet Tip No. 1: Never Go More Than 3-4 Hours Without Food.

Eating several times throughout the day helps keep hunger at bay while keeping your energy up, experts say.

"Fight the battle of the bulge by filling up with smaller meals featuring protein and fiber that are spaced evenly throughout the day," says Elizabeth Ward, MS, RD, a nutrition consultant who has written several books on diet and nutrition.

If the mini-meal approach doesn't appeal, plan a healthy snack between lunch and dinner so you don't get too hungry at night. "A midday snack gives you energy to finish your work day and hit the gym on your way home," says Pamela Peeke, MD, Discovery Health TV chief medical correspondent for nutrition and fitness.  

And, what makes a healthy snack? "The key is to include protein and not rely on carbs alone, like pretzels and a piece of fruit," Peeke says.

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LEADERSHIP -- Managing the Unimaginable

"It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves." Sir Edmund Hillary (1919-2008) New Zealand mountaineer and explorer.

If you are someone who is overworked, stressed out, burned out, under-paid, and underappreciated, then read on to see what successful people do to be winners in their lives.

In today's environment you are being pulled in umpteen different directions at once. Each direction wants a part of you. The parts are getting exhausted and worn out, but you keep plugging along believing there is no other way. And you sincerely want to be your best, do your best, and be the fixer, problem solver all-in-one.

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Brain Scanners Can See Your Decisions Before You Make Them

This schematic shows the brain regions (green) from which the outcome of a participant's decision can be predicted before it is made. Courtesy John-Dylan Haynes.

You may think you decided to read this story -- but in fact, your brain made the decision long before you knew about it.

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Here is another article that appeared today in " Neuromarketing"

Some people worked it out; others did not. The significant point, though, was that the EEG predicted who would fall where. Those volunteers who went on to have an insight… had had different brainwave activity from those who never got it. In the right frontal cortex, a part of the brain associated with shifting mental states, there was an increase in high-frequency gamma waves (those with 47-48 cycles a second). Moreover, the difference was noticeable up to eight seconds before the volunteer realised he had found the solution. Dr Sheth thinks this may be capturing the "transformational thought" (the light-bulb moment, as it were) in action, before the brain's "owner" is consciously aware of it. [Emphasis added. From The Economist - Incognito - Evidence mounts that brains decide before their owners know about it

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Four Traits Of A 'Power Manifestor'

I get a lot of questions from people about how to get actual real world results from the Law Of Attraction. It's not so difficult to manifest an empty parking space or a beneficial coincidence, but it takes something more to manifest the bigger things like first class travel, houses, cars, jobs, relationships, health and material wealth.

There are a small percentage of people who regularly and consistently manifest the big things. I call these people Power Manifestors.

Over the years, I've noticed that the more I developed certain qualities within myself, the more powerful I became at manifesting the bigger things regularly and consistently. I've put together a list for you of some of the traits that helped me become a Power Manifestor. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but the four traits below are the most fundamental to making the Law Of Attraction work for you more often...

TRAIT #1: BEING IN FLOW
Here's a powerful metaphor for you. Have you ever watched a river flow from the top of a mountain down to the sea? If you have, you'll have noticed that the river always seems to take the path of least resistance to reach the sea. It will find the most effortless way to get down the mountain. You won't find a river trying to flow uphill!

Your life can flow like a river too, always seeking the most effortless path to your destiny. When your life begins to flow, your problems that once seemed insurmountable, naturally work themselves out as your life leads you on the path of least resistance to success.

So, what is flow? The best definition I have ever heard is from a great book called 'The Power Of Flow' by Charlene Belitz and Meg Lundstrom: "Flow is the natural, effortless unfolding of our life in a way that moves us toward wholeness and harmony."

Have you had times when your obstacles suddenly disappeared, one after another? When you felt you were in the right place at the right time and events in your life came together in a beneficial way? That's when you were in the flow. So, what does flow have to do with the law of attraction or manifesting? EVERYTHING!

You see, until you find your flow, you will not be able to consistently work the Law Of Attraction to your advantage and will find yourself struggling to see real world results from your visualization efforts. Like many others, your manifesting will be limited to empty parking spaces...

How can you get into your flow? Power Manifestors regularly do activities that keep them in flow. One of the easiest ways to step into your flow is to do the things that bring you joy and do these things often. For example, I love taking a week off and riding my motorcycle somewhere exotic, like Africa or Central Europe, camping on the side of the road and living out of a backpack with just a few pairs of clothes and a laptop.

Whenever I go away on a trip like this (I make sure I get away at least once a month), magical things begin happening in my life. It's almost as if the joy of the open road and the wind in my hair blows away any negativity I might have collected and my attraction abilities increase tenfold.

Here's another example of a flow state. Have you ever had the experience of time speeding up or slowing down? That's a good indicator that you are in a flow state. Take a moment and write down what you were doing when you had these experiences? Was it a hobby, a sport, an activity at work? Are you doing these activities as much as you would like to? If not, make a commitment to yourself to do these activities more often.

By Bruce Muzik : Click to read full article

ATTITUDE

 Impossible Is Just A Word


Everyone, at some point of his or her life, has dreamed of being somebody special, somebody big. Who hasn't fantasized about being the one who hits the game-winning homer? Who hasn't dreamed of being the homecoming queen? And how many times have we dreamed of being rich, successful, or happy with our relationships?

Often, we dream big dreams and have great aspirations. Unfortunately, our dreams remain just that -- dreams. And our aspirations easily collect dust in our attic.

This is a sad turn of events in our life. Instead of experiencing exciting adventures in self actualization, we get caught up in the humdrum of living from day-to-day just barely existing.

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Managing Anger by Seeing the unseen cause

Like many fields of therapy that deal with emotional problems, anger on the surface seems to be nothing more than an exasperated emotion. A person gets mad and we assume either he has anger management issues or there was something legitimate that elicited the response.

Even in people who have difficulty managing anger, there is usually something that triggers it, no matter how irrational the trigger might be perceived. So in this article, we are going to talk about all the different cause of anger and the many ways it is elicited in people.

However, we are not going to talk about the obvious causes, like someone violating your personal space or possession or something bad happening. We can all agree that these are all valid reasons, even for a person who rarely gets angry, to become angry.

Instead, we are going to focus on the not so obvious triggers; those that set us off without us really being aware as to why. These are the unseen, hidden reasons we don't realize that get us heated, livid, and outraged.

Listed below are 6 of the more common unseen cause of anger that can throw us into a fiery emotional state and a brief discussion of each. By seeing what sets you off, you can be more level-headed when similar circumstances arise, allowing you to have a better grasp of the feelings.

1. Overwhelmed

Getting overwhelmed is one of the main cause of anger. It is seen in people who have difficulty handling the day-to-day stresses in their lives. They lack the ability to deal with stress, which causes them to get overwhelmed. These overwhelming feeling make them feel trapped and unsure of what to do, so they lash out.

These people easily shout and blow their top at someone or something because that's the only way they know how to release the build-up of the overwhelmed feelings.

2. Retaliatory

Retaliating at a person who is angry at you is another cause of anger. The reaction is a direct response to someone getting angry at you. That is, you get heated for no other reason than the mere fact someone else is mad at you.

This is no doubt a defense mechanism reaction to another person's frustration with you, which you threatens your well being, especially if you believe there is no cause or reason for the other person to be mad at you.

If you are the type who gets defensive or offended easily, you more than likely retaliate against people who are angry at you by you getting angry yourself. The problem here is, when two retaliatory angry people get into it with each other, the confrontation can and tends to escalate into something dangerous really fast.

3. Paranoid

Paranoia can also be a source of anger in people, specially those that feel they are being taken advantage of. These people don't necessarily need to be taken advantage of to trigger anger, they just need to feel as though they are.

It is normal for anyone to get upset if someone is trying to take advantage of you, but paranoid people go too far. When a they see a sign, any sign, whether or not it is rational, that suggests someone is trying to pull a fast one on them, they defend themselves against the hurt feelings by erupting into anger.

These people usually have trust issues and low self-esteem, which causes them to get easily offended and insulted by other people's actions, which they express through anger.

4. Threatened

Being threatened is a huge trigger for people. This is usually exhibited when an action or setting goes against or "threatens" someone. The threat could be anything. It could be a person, circumstance, or event that jeopardizes what someone has planned or what they want to have happen.

That someone will get angry for two reasons. First, they will get upset for not getting what they want, and second, they will use anger as a way to flex their muscle to take back control over the situation. Their anger is a way to communicate to the party causing the threat that something is amiss which requires immediate attention and/or remedy.

5. Judgmental

Getting judgmental is another trigger that can spark anger. When you judge someone or some situation, your judgment can easily get you all worked up. Prejudice people are the most guilty of this. They often pre-judge people and circumstances, and when their pre-judgment is mean and spiteful, it is but natural that temper and rage consumes them.

6. Chronic

There is nothing that triggers chronically angry people to be annoyed, irritated, or mad. They are just unrelentingly angry and look for any and every reason to be so. They find reasons in their lives, with themselves, with the people around them, and the whole world in general.

Chronically angry people have no definite cause for feeling the way they do. They, more or less, are addicted to the feeling of anger, so they remain in that state for no apparent reason at all.

Now that you have seen some of the unseen and lesser know cause of anger that put us into a fumingly heated state of mind, review them in detail and figure out which of them elicit anger in you.

Are you easily overwhelmed, do you needlessly get defensive, do you have trust issues, do you get angry when things don't go your way, are you unreasonably judgmental, or are you just chronically angry with no legitimate cause for your ill state?

Once you know what sets you off, learn ways to cope with it. Find an outlet that neither harms you or others. Deep breathing, Emotional Freedom Technique, and exercising are some of the many useful anger management tips that can help you in managing anger. Also, there are some anger management tips that teach you how to release tension and calm yourself through meditation.

Remember, you may not be able to completely change a person or a situation, but what you can change is the way that you deal with your feelings by learning how to react positively to it and not letting it get the better of you.

Mike C.Powers

Habit

"Man is a creature of habit."

This simple statement is deceptively profound. Most people's lives are comprised of a collection of habits that dictate many of their physical, emotional and mental actions and reactions. Depending on the level of conscious awareness you invest in a habit's creation, habits can either enslave you, turning you into a mindless automaton, or free you to pursue creative, joyful activities that enhance and give meaning to your life. Most people have a mixture of good and bad habits.

Habit is defined as an acquired behavior pattern followed until it has become almost involuntary. Habits can be good or bad, productive or non-productive. Good habits lead to skills, such as learning to ride a bicycle. They also save you time and energy by automating the performance of desirable actions. Brushing your teeth or driving a car are examples. These acquired behavior patterns free your mind from having to concentrate, as would be required of unfamiliar actions.

Bad habits predispose you to undesirable outcomes. Excessive drinking, smoking, drug use and overeating are examples of bad habits that can harm your body and impair your judgment, aside from wasting your time.

Common sense tells us that you want to replace bad habits with good ones, which is the basis of all self-development and evolution. But as almost everyone who has ever tried to quit smoking will tell you, this is not always as easy as it would seem.

Smokers are addicted to nicotine. But according to modern brain science, all habits induce emotional states that produce chemicals in your brain. Consequently, you become addicted to the chemicals secreted by your brain no matter what kind of habit you create!

With every thought or action you undertake, you create electrical pathways in your brain. As Joseph Dispenza says in the movie What the Bleep do We Know?, "neurons which fire together, wire together." Repetition etches these patterns more deeply into your brain.

To replace a bad habit with a good one, you need to break the association with your emotions and the chemicals you've grown accustomed to, and rewire your brain. This requires concentration and will.

If you are unaware or unwilling to acknowledge your non-productive habit, you will have a hard time replacing it. If you are not convinced a particular habit is bad for you, you will have no incentive to change it. But, if you are aware of your unwanted habit and are willing to devote your attention to it, then it can be changed. Deeply focused concentration, such as during a visualization exercise, increases the potency of your thoughts and more deeply affects your brain's rewiring.

Remember, it took regular action to install your unwanted habit - possibly over the course of several lifetimes - so it will take regular action to undo it. This is where your will comes in.

You strengthen your will, as well as your habit, with repetition. Every time you consciously reject the urge to give in to your bad habit, you strengthen your will. Every time you consciously undertake an action to install a new, positive habit, it becomes easier. This is how you rewire your brain and overcome your addictions.

When these habits are of a positive nature, this self-reinforcing cycle produces positive results, but the contrary is also true. This demonstrates a principle that Jesus taught, "For he that hath, to him shall be given; and he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath."

In other words, consciously acting to install positive habits strengthens your will and further attracts more like experiences. Giving in to bad habits, weakens your will, not only making it harder to install good habits, but doing so may cause you to lose what good habits you already had. Can there be any better reason to develop your will and consciously establish positive habits?

The development of good habits is meant to improve your life, free you from the grip of negative habits and attract even more positive experiences to you. At the same time, always remember to be guided by wisdom and not convention. You should strive to perform good actions based on your own inner wisdom and conscious choice, not based on convention - not even good habits. This is the ultimate freedom.

By Edwin Harkness Spina She is an award-winning author and speaker.

Self-Esteem: You Are Not Who You Think You Are

David sat in front of me at one of my five-day intensive workshops. A successful businessman with a wife and two grown children, David believed that he was not good enough.

"I'm insufficient," he said. "I'm inadequate."

I looked at this kind man and felt deep sadness for him. He did not know who he was.

"Why do you believe that?" I asked.

"I didn't do well in school, and I've made lots of mistakes in my life."

"So you are basing your worth on your performance, right?"

"Of course."

David could not conceive of any other way of defining his worth other than through his performance – which he never saw as good enough.

I asked David to look inside – at the essence of himself - and tell me what he sees. All he saw was emptiness.

"David, please close your eyes. Now imagine a wonderful being who loves you very much. Who comes to mind?"

"My grandfather. He died when I was young, but he really loved me."

"Good. Now imagine that you are seeing yourself through the eyes of your grandfather. What does your grandfather see when he looks at you?"

"He sees a bright and creative little boy, who is very kind and caring. A loving little boy. A little boy who is funny and likes to laugh, and likes to make other people laugh."

"Is there anything wrong with this little boy? Anything inadequate or insufficient?"

"Oh no! He is a wonderful little boy."

"David, this is who you really are. You are not your performance. Your performance will come and go and at some point you might retire and not perform at all. Yet that does not mean that you are, therefore, worthless. Your worth is in who you are, not in what you do. Your worth in intrinsic."

David realized that, because of his highly critical and rejecting parents, he had always been trying to prove himself and always came up short in their eyes. As a result of seeing himself as unworthy and inadequate, he did not treat himself well. He treated himself the way his parents had treated him – with criticism and neglect. He was always trying to take care of everyone else, but rarely thought about taking care of himself. He was constantly abandoning himself emotionally, just as he had been emotionally abandoned by his parents.

"David, if you chose to see yourself as your grandfather saw you rather than how your parents saw you, how would you feel about yourself and how would you treat yourself?"

"I've just been thinking about that. I just realized that I treat my dog better than I treat myself! I would never judge my dog the way I judge myself."

"So what would you do differently if you saw yourself the way your grandfather sees you?"

"I would stop judging myself as insufficient and inadequate. I'm a really good person. I am not at all insufficient or inadequate as a person. And I choose my friends based on who they are as people – not on their performance. So I obviously value the very qualities that I possess!"

"What else would you do if you really valued who you are?"

"I would listen to my own feelings and take care of my own needs instead of taking care of everyone else's feelings and needs. I would no longer see it as selfish to take care of myself instead of taking care of everyone else. I would be at least as attentive to myself as I am to my dog!"

David was glowing. He was discovering who he really is, not who he thought he was.

People often think that their worth – who they really are – is based on looks and performance. Yet these qualities are transitory. What is real and eternal is who you are in your heart and soul. If you shift your definition of your worth from outer to inner, you will stop trying to prove yourself. You will know that you are already a beautiful being, totally deserving of love.

By Margaret Paul, Ph.D.

Beyond Fear and Addiction: Six Steps to Healing

There is a wonderful anachronism for FEAR:

False
Evidence
Appearing
Real

Much of the fear in our lives is based on false evidence.

Our bodies are designed to respond with the fight or flight mechanism to real and present danger - such as being physically attacked. In the face of real and present danger, the adrenaline flows and the blood drains out of our organs and brain and into our limbs to prepare us for fight or flight.

Yet many people spend much of their time in the anxiety and stress of fight or flight when there is no real and present danger. This is because the body responds the same way to imagined danger as it does to real danger. The body thinks that the false evidence coming from our thoughts is real.

This constant state of fear and anxiety often leads to various addictions in the hope of numbing out the difficult feelings. Food, alcohol, drugs, nicotine, gambling, sex, TV, shopping, approval, attention, work, anger, rage, violence to self and others – all can be used in attempts to block out painful feelings.

Yet, the addictions themselves are an abandonment of self, in that they are not a healthy and loving way of dealing with painful feelings. And it is self-abandonment that causes the most fear, anxiety, and depression.

Thus, many people are caught in a very negative circle based on self-abandonment:

• Thinking negative thoughts about the future - about rejection, failure, loss of others, loss of self, loss of money – creates fear in the body and is an abandonment of self.

We are abandoning ourselves when we allow ourselves to make up thoughts about the future that scare us. This would be like saying to a child, "You are going to end up alone. No one will ever love you. You will be out on the streets with no food and no help." Saying this to a child would be considered child abuse, yet many people tell these same things to themselves over and over when there is no objective truth to these statements.

• Once we have created fear with our negative thinking, we try to avoid the fear with our various addictions.

Avoid responsibility for creating our fear by turning to addictions is another self-abandonment. This is like offering a frightened child a cookie instead of addressing the source of the fear. The self-abandonment creates deep inner emptiness and aloneness, which perpetuates the addictive behavior. It also creates neediness, leading to pulling on others for love, approval and attention.

• Addictive behavior perpetuates the original fears – an endless vicious circle of self-abandonment.

Moving Beyond Fear and Addiction

There really is a way out of this! While the process of moving beyond fear and addiction is simple, it is not easy. It takes deep commitment and devotion to your peace and joy.

1) Choose the willingness to feel your painful feelings and take responsibility for creating them, rather than continue avoiding them with your various addictions. It is only when you are willing to be with your feelings rather than avoid them that you can learn about how you are creating your own pain.

2) Consciously decide that you want to learn about what you are thinking or doing that is causing your pain.

3) Dialogue with the part of you that is in fear and pain - you can think of this feeling part of you of a child within – about how you are causing the pain. Discover your thoughts and actions that are causing your pain.

4) Open to learning with a Higher Power – your own highest wisest self, an inner teacher or mentor, a guardian angel, God – about what is the truth regarding your negative thinking and what the loving action is toward yourself.

5) Take the loving action for yourself that you are guided to do in Step 4.

6) Notice how you feel. If you feel more peaceful, then you know that you have taken loving action. If not, then you need to go back through these steps to discover another loving action.

By Margaret Paul, Ph.D.