Food For Thought | Ascension Lifestyle

10 Feb 2024
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12 Ways to Improve Your Circulation for Healthy Blood Flow

You might not think about it as much as you do eating healthy, exercising, and getting enough sleep, but maintaining good circulation is one of the most important building blocks to keeping your health on the rails.

“The circulatory system of the body delivers vital oxygen and nutrients to all of our muscles and organs,” says Vincent Varghese, D.O., a cardiac interventionist at Deborah Heart and Lung Center in New Jersey. “When plaque or arterial blockages develop, normal blood flow is hindered and can lead to devastating effects, such as heart attack, stroke, or even leg amputation [in severe cases].”

The process of plaque build-up is a slow one and usually takes decades, he adds, yet studies have shown the precursors of plaque developing as early as our twenties. A sedentary lifestyle, unhealthy eating, high blood pressure, diabetes, smoking, and a family history of early heart or vascular disease can all contribute to poor circulation.

“The most common symptom of impaired circulation to the legs is claudication,” says Caitlin W. Hicks, M.D., a board-certified vascular surgeon and associate professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. “It’s a condition where you may experience pain in the buttocks or calves when walking that goes away with rest.”

Cold extremities, leg swelling, and foot wounds that take a while to heal, especially if you have a family history, are all signs you should check in with a vascular specialist.

How to improve your circulation

Go on regular walks.

Walking can benefit both the arteries and veins. “Contraction of the calf muscles causes venous blood to be pushed back up to the heart,” says Misty Humphries, M.D., a board-certified vascular surgeon and associate professor of vascular surgery in Sacramento, CA. “The arteries dilate when patients walk and improve blood flow all throughout the body.” Aim for a minimum of 30 minutes of walking three times per week.

But if walking’s not your thing, any type of sweat session can improve circulation. “When you exercise, your muscles need greater blood flow, which supplies oxygen and other nutrients,” says Nachiket Patel, M.D., a board-certified interventional cardiologist and clinical assistant professor of medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Phoenix.

Shoot for 20 minutes of heart-pumping cardio (think: cycling, elliptical, HIIT) four to five times per week. (Note: If it’s been a while since your last workout, you may want to consider checking in with your doc before starting a new routine).

Take more work breaks.

The perks of taking more work breaks is two-fold: It helps you get into the habit of alternating between sitting, standing, and walking, so there’s less demand on the circulatory system (blood flow slows down while you’re sitting and can cause blood to pool in your legs, resulting in muscle pain and fatigue); and it can keep your stress levels from getting out of whack.

“By keeping stress levels down, you’re less likely to binge eat or smoke,” says Dr. Humphries. “Both of these habits can lead to atherosclerosis (plaque buildup) in the arteries that results in a narrowing of the vessels.” Do your best to take stretch breaks every 15 to 20 minutes, and get-up-and-go breaks from sitting every hour—even if it’s just a power walk around your home.

Eat more fruits and veggies.

Besides reducing your sugar and fatty food intake to steer clear of high blood pressure, plaque formation, and diabetes, adding more fruits and veggies to your repertoire leads to more nitrates and other compounds in your diet, says Dr. Patel, which your body then uses to create nitric oxide—a chemical compound we exhale that boosts blood flow by relaxing blood vessels.

Foods that are high in nitric oxide converters include leafy green vegetables (spinach, kale, swiss chard, bok choy, arugula), beets, cauliflower, carrots, broccoli, citrus fruits, watermelon, and pomegranates. The more colorful your plate looks, the better off you will be.

Stay hydrated.

“Your blood is about half water, so staying well-hydrated will help keep it moving,” says Dr. Patel. When you’re dehydrated, not only does the amount of blood circulating through your body decrease, but your blood retains more sodium, causing it to thicken and making it that much harder for your circulatory system to do its thing.

The easiest way to make sure you’re getting enough fluids is to check your pee: Straw-colored or clear means you’re hydrated—anything darker than that means you need to up your H20 intake.

Quit smoking.

Smoking causes a build-up of plaque in your arteries that can ultimately lead to peripheral artery disease (PAD). “Symptoms of PAD can range from leg pain with walking (claudication) to pain at rest to gangrene (tissue death caused by a lack of blood flow),” says Dr. Hicks.

Quitting smoking slows the process of plaque formation and vessel damage. The process of quitting is different for everyone, but there is medication available through your doctor if you find yourself struggling.

Manage your blood pressure.

High blood pressure messes with your circulation by making your heart and blood vessels worker harder and less efficiently. This creates itty bitty tears in the artery walls, which is what gives plaque (from bad cholesterol) the chance to make itself at home. “A cholesterol blockage can occur in any type of artery, including heart and peripheral arteries,” says Dr. Patel.

Exercising, cutting back on sodium, and reducing stress are some of the lifestyle factors that can help lower your blood pressure and improve your circulation in the process. Aim for a blood pressure less than 120/80mmHg.

Control your blood sugar.

Elevated glucose levels can cause damage to the lining of your small blood vessels and this can mess with your circulation. Diabetes also promotes the formation of plaque in the body, increasing your risk of PAD. The fatty deposits narrow the blood vessels (especially in your legs and feet).

“Aim for a hemoglobin A1C less than 6.5% if you have diabetes,” says Dr. Varghese. Your diet plays a big role here, and loading up on foods that can help lower your blood sugar naturally, such as leafy greens, whole grains, lean proteins, and legumes, can make a big difference.

Wear compression socks.

“Wearing compression socks adds a layer of support to your veins,” says Dr. Humphries. “It helps to prevent the superficial veins that aren’t wrapped in muscle from dilating.” As veins dilate from standing or sitting over long periods of time, they can become varicose veins (twisted, enlarged veins) that cause pain and swelling.

Wear compression socks from morning to evening to steadily squeeze your legs so your veins can move blood more efficiently. They’re available through pharmacies and medical supply stores and even online—prescription-strength are also available if your varicose veins are causing symptoms.

Elevate your legs.

Elevating your legs (at or above heart level) improves blood flow to the rest of your body by keeping the blood from pooling in your lower legs. “When you elevate your legs it helps take the pressure off your veins, since they don’t have to work against gravity to get blood back to the heart,” says Dr. Patel.

The most convenient time to elevate your legs would be when you’re watching TV or having a nap—lie down and prop your legs above heart level (a leg elevation pillow can help you comfortably hold the position) for 15 minutes or more at a time.

Drink green tea.

Green tea contains catechins, which are compounds that help to improve blood vessel function. “Catechins have been shown to inhibit oxidation (an imbalance of free radicals and antioxidants in the body), decrease blood vessel inflammation, as well as arterial plaque buildup,” says Dr. Patel. It’s thought green tea relaxes blood vessels so the body can pump blood more easily, but more research is needed to understand its full impact.

Take it easy on the booze.

“Alcohol consumption at levels above one to two drinks per day is associated with high blood pressure,” says Dr. Patel. When you sip those cocktails, your body has to work harder to pump blood and puts additional stress on your veins.

Spread out your alcohol intake as much as possible—and when you do indulge, stay within the recommended daily intake for alcohol, which is two drinks or less for men and one drink or less for women.

Finally, have a family meeting.

“If there’s a family history of early heart or vascular disease, before the age of 55 in men and 65 in women, you should see a specialist at least 10 years before you reach that age,” says Dr. Varghese. “Even without classic risk factors, your genetics and family history play a key role in plaque development.”

Original article here

05 Feb 2024
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What was it like when the last antimatter disappeared?

Things happen fast in the earliest stages of the Universe. In the first 25 microseconds after the start of the hot Big Bang, a number of incredible events have already occurred. The Universe created all the particles and antiparticles — known (as part of the Standard Model) and unknown (including whatever makes up dark matter) — it was ever capable of creating, reaching the highest temperatures it ever attained. Through a still-undetermined process, it created an excess of matter over antimatter: just at the 1-part-in-a-billion level. The electroweak symmetry broke, allowing the Higgs to give mass to the Universe. The heavy, unstable particles decayed away, and the quarks and gluons bound together to form protons and neutrons.

But that only gets us so far. At these early stages, there may be protons and neutrons in the Universe, as well as a high-energy bath of photons and neutrinos-and-antineutrinos, but we’re still a long way from the Universe as we recognize it today. In order to get there, a number of other things must occur. And the first of those, once we have protons and neutrons, is to get rid of the last of our antimatter, which is still incredibly abundant.

You can always make antimatter in the Universe, so long as you have the energy for it. Einstein’s most famous equation, E = mc², works two ways, and it works equally well for both applications.

It can create energy from pure matter (or antimatter), converting mass (m) into energy (E) by reducing the amount of mass present, such as by annihilating equal parts matter with antimatter.
Or it can create new matter from pure energy, so long as it also makes an equivalent amount of the antimatter counterparts for each matter particle it creates.

These annihilation-and-creation processes, so long as there’s enough energy for creation to proceed smoothly, balance out in the early Universe.

Early on, when the Universe was very hot, this process easily allowed us to create all of the particles and antiparticles contained within the Standard Model, as even the most massive particle (or antiparticle) known — the top quark — can be created quite easily: so long as there’s more than ~175 GeV of energy (the rest-mass energy of the top quark and antiquark) available for new particle (or antiparticle) creation with each typical collision that occurs.

So that’s how the hot Big Bang starts off: with this hot particle-antiparticle soup made up of all allowable species. In the earliest stages, it’s the heaviest particle-antiparticle pairs that disappear first. It takes the most energy to create the most massive particles and antiparticles, so as the Universe cools, it gets progressively less and less likely that the quanta of energy that interact can spontaneously create new particle/antiparticle pairs.

By the time the Higgs gives mass to the Universe, this primordial particle/antiparticle soup is too low in energy to create top quarks or W-and-Z bosons. Shortly thereafter, it becomes no longer possible to spontaneously create:

bottom quarks,
tau leptons,
charm quarks,
strange quarks,
or even muons (in that order).

Right around that same time that muons and antimuons annihilate and decay away, quarks-and-gluons bind together into neutrons and protons, while antiquarks bind together into antineutrons and antiprotons.

While there was plenty of energy available to create free up/anti-up and down/anti-down quarks, the onset of what we call “confinement” (or the hadron era) in the Universe means that such interactions are no longer possible; you must create whole protons/antiprotons or neutrons/antineutrons, which are much more massive that the quarks that compose them. The energy available in the Universe is far too low for that to occur, so all the antimatter, in the form of antiprotons and antineutrons, annihilates away with as much matter as it can find.

However, since there is somewhere around 1 extra proton (or neutron) for every 1.4 billion proton/antiproton pairs, we’re left over with a small excess of protons and neutrons.

All of the proton/antiproton and neutron/antineutron annihilations give rise to photons — the purest form of raw energy — along with all the prior annihilations that gave rise to photons as well. Photon-photon interactions are still going strong at this early, energetic stage, and they can spontaneously produce both neutrino-antineutrino pairs and electron-positron pairs. Even after we make protons and neutrons, and even after all the antiprotons and antineutrons have disappeared, the Universe is still rife with antimatter: in the form of antineutrinos and positrons.

It’s important to remember, even at this relatively late stage in the game (tens of microseconds after the start of the hot Big Bang), how hot and dense things still truly are. The Universe has had just a fraction of a second go by since the Big Bang, and particles are packed tighter everywhere than they are, today, within the center of our Sun. The ambient temperatures would have to be measured in the trillions of degrees: more than 100,000 times as great as in the Sun’s core. And perhaps most importantly, there are a slew of interactions constantly occurring that can transform one type of particle into another.

Today, we’re used to the weak nuclear interactions occurring spontaneously in one context alone: that of radioactive decay. Higher-massed particles, like a free neutron or a heavy atomic nucleus, emit daughter particles that are less massive, giving off some energy in accord with that same equation Einstein put forth: E = mc². But at these stages of the Big Bang, even after the electroweak symmetry breaks, the weak interactions continue to play a more important role than simply being responsible for radioactive decays for some time.

In the hot, dense, early Universe, there’s a second role for the weak interaction to play, enabling protons and neutrons to convert into one another. So long as the Universe is energetic enough, here are four extreme reactions that occur spontaneously:

p + e– → n + νe,
n + e+ → p + νe,
n + νe → p + e–,
p + νe → n + e+.

In these equations, p is for proton, n is for neutron, e– is for electron, e+ is for positron (antielectron), while νe is an electron-neutrino and νe is an electron-antineutrino.

You’ll also notice that, when it comes to these four equations, equations #1 and #3 are simply the inverse of one another, while equations #2 and #4 are also the inverse of one another. This is an indication to us that these reactions can proceed either forward (e.g., where protons and electrons interact, resulting in a neutron and neutrino) or backward (e.g., where neutrons and neutrinos interact, resulting in a proton and electron), so long as the weak interactions and the amount of available energy both allow these reactions to proceed.

So long as temperatures and densities are high enough, all of these reactions occur spontaneously and at equal rates. Under these conditions:

the weak interactions are still important,
there’s a strong enough coupling between protons/neutrons and electrons/positrons/neutrinos/antineutrinos,
there’s enough matter and antimatter for these reactions to occur frequently,
and there’s enough energy to create higher-massed neutrons out of lower-massed protons.

While protons/neutrons form and the excess antiprotons/antineutrons are all gone only a few tens of microseconds after the start of the hot Big Bang, the aforementioned conditions are all met for about the first full second after the Big Bang. During this time, everything is in equilibrium, and the Universe interconverts protons-and-neutrons at will, giving us about a 50/50 split between protons and neutrons while this is the case. Each time you convert a proton into a neutron, it’s just as easy to convert a neutron into a proton, and these reactions happen at about the same overall net rate.

But this doesn’t remain the case forever, or even for that long. As the energy inherent to each particle drops, it becomes just a little bit more energetically favorable to produce a proton than a neutron from these interactions. The neutron, remember, is just a little bit more massive than the proton, and is even a little more massive than a proton and an electron combined. As a result, when the temperature of the Universe drops to a value that corresponds to that energy difference, the proton population begins to slightly dominate the neutron population. This occurs right around the time the Universe reaches an age of one second after the Big Bang.

But then, at that moment, two additional things happen in rapid succession, forever altering the course of the Universe.

The first is that the weak interactions freeze out, meaning that the proton-neutron interconversion interactions stop occurring. These interconversions required neutrinos to interact with protons and neutrons at a certain frequency, which they could so long as the Universe was hot and dense enough. When the Universe gets cold and sparse enough, the neutrinos (and antineutrinos) no longer interact, meaning that the neutrinos and antineutrinos we’ve made at this point simply ignore everything else in the Universe. They should still be around at present, with a kinetic energy that corresponds to a temperature (assuming neutrinos are massless, which they aren’t quite) of just 1.95 K above absolute zero.

On the other hand, the Universe is still energetic enough that when two photons collide, they can still spontaneously produce electron-positron pairs, and where electron-positron pairs annihilate into two photons. This continues for just a tiny bit longer: until the Universe is about three seconds old (as opposed to the one second freeze out for neutrinos). This “second additional thing,” occurring just slightly after the weak interactions freeze out, means that all the matter-antimatter energy that was tied up in electrons and positrons goes exclusively into photons, and not into species of neutrinos-and-antineutrinos, when they annihilate.

This annihilation, of electrons and positrons into photons, represents the Universe losing the last of its antimatter. After this event, only antineutrinos, which already stopped interacting with the other particles in the Universe something like ~2 seconds ago, remain and persist up through and including the present day.

This has a big implication for the temperature of the leftover photon background — known today as the Cosmic Microwave Background — that it should be exactly (11/4)1/3 times hotter than the neutrino background: a temperature of 2.73 K instead of 1.95 K. Believe it or not, we’ve already detected both of these backgrounds and measured their temperature (for photons) or temperature-equivalent (for neutrinos/antineutrinos), and they match with these explicit predictions from the Big Bang perfectly.

The Cosmic Microwave Background, although it was first detected in 1964, required a very high precision set of measurements to determine its temperature. Although many efforts and improvements occurred throughout the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, the CMB’s temperature was only first measured to this incredible precision back in 1992, with the first data release of NASA’s COBE satellite.

However, the neutrino background imprints itself onto the CMB and in the large-scale structure of the Universe only in a very subtle way, and the evidence for that neutrino background and its properties wasn’t first detected until 2015. When it was finally discovered, the scientists who did the work found a phase shift in the Cosmic Microwave Background’s fluctuations that enabled them to determine, if neutrinos were massless today, how much energy they’d have at this early time.

Their results? The Cosmic Neutrino Background had an equivalent temperature of 1.96 ± 0.02 K, in perfect agreement with the Big Bang’s predictions. Later work, in 2019, found additional evidence for the Cosmic Neutrino Background imprinted in the Universe’s large-scale structure, but with less precision than the CMB method.

You might wonder why it’s worth belaboring such a tiny detail in the early Universe, and the answer is profound. Because of the brief amount of time that:

the weak interactions were important (during the first ~1 second after the hot Big Bang),
and antimatter also persisted (during the first ~3 seconds after the hot Big Bang),

the Universe is not evenly split, 50/50, between protons and neutrons any longer. Rather, the split has shifted substantially: to be more like 85/15, in favor of protons over neutrons. With the neutrinos and antineutrinos completely decoupled from all the other particles in the Universe, they simply move through space freely, at speeds indistinguishable (but slightly lower than) the speed of light. Meanwhile, the positrons (i.e., antielectrons) are all gone, and so are most of the electrons.

When the dust clears, what’s left over are exactly as many electrons as there are protons, keeping the Universe electrically neutral. There are over a billion photons for every proton or neutron, with another background of about 70% as many neutrinos-and-antineutrinos as photons. The Universe is still hot and dense, but it’s cooled tremendously in just the first 3 seconds. Now that all the antimatter is gone, the raw ingredients to begin building the Universe as we know it are finally in place.

Original article here

27 Jan 2024
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Laundry Is A Top Source Of Microplastic Pollution – Here’s How To Clean Your Clothes More Sustainably

Microplastics are turning up everywhere, from remote mountain tops to deep ocean trenches. They also are in many animals, including humans.

The most common microplastics in the environment are microfibers – plastic fragments shaped like tiny threads or filaments. Microfibers come from many sources, including cigarette butts, fishing nets and ropes, but the biggest source is synthetic fabrics, which constantly shed them.

Textiles shed microfibers while they are manufactured, worn and disposed of, but especially when they are washed. A single wash load can release several million microfibers. Many factors affect how many fibers are released, including fabric type, mechanical action, detergents, temperature and the duration of the wash cycle.

My research focuses on coastal ecology and water pollution, including work in New York and New Jersey marshes and estuaries that are heavily affected by human activities. Here are some things to know about reducing microplastic pollution from your washing machine.

From Fabric To Water And Soil

Once garments release microfibers in washing machines, the fibers enter the wastewater stream, which generally goes to a wastewater treatment plant. Advanced treatment plants can remove up to 99% of microfibers from water. But since a single laundry load can produce millions of fibers, treated water discharged from the plant still contains a huge number of them.

Microfibers that are removed during treatment end up in sewage sludge – a mix of solid materials that is processed to remove pathogens. In many cases, treated sewage sludge is applied to soil as a fertilizer. This allows microfibers to enter air and soil, and to be transferred to soil organisms and up the terrestrial food web or taken up by crops.

Microplastics that wash into rivers, lakes and bays can have many harmful effects. They may be consumed by fish and other aquatic animals, affecting their biochemistry, physiology, reproduction, development or behavior. These microplastics contain chemical additives, including substances like phthalates and bisphenol A that can leach out and may have health effects in humans and animals, including effects on the endocrine system.

Textile microfibers also contain additional chemicals that have been shown to be toxic, such as fabric dyes, anti-wrinkle agents and flame retardants. In addition, contaminants that are present in the water, such as metals and pesticides, can stick to microplastic particles, turning them into a veritable cocktail of contaminants that may be transferred into animals that eat them.

Washing More Sustainably

Not all fabrics shed microfibers at the same rate. A loosely woven fabric that feels fluffy or fuzzy, such as fleece, sheds more than a tightly woven one. While garments made of natural fibers, such as cotton and wool, would appear to be a solution, unfortunately they also shed microfibers that can pick up pollutants in the environment.

Some textile scientists and manufacturers are developing fabrics that shed less than existing ones, thanks to features such as longer fibers and coatings to reduce shedding. Meanwhile, here are some ways to reduce microfiber shedding from your laundry:

Do laundry less often. Washing full loads instead of partial loads reduces release of microfibers because garments are exposed to less friction during the wash cycle.
Use cold water, which releases fewer microfibers than hot water.
Use less detergent, which increases microfiber release.
Use a front-loading washing machine, whose tumbling action produces less microfiber release.
Dry laundry on a clothesline. Running clothes in dryers releases additional microfibers into the air from the dryer vent.

Several types of products collect microfibers in the washer before they are released with wastewater. Some are laundry bags made of woven monofilament, a single-polyamide filament that does not disintegrate into fibers. Laundry is washed while enclosed in the bag, which traps microfibers that the garments release. A study of one such product, Guppyfriend, found that it collected about one-third of released microfibers.

Another device, the Cora Ball, is a plastic ball with spines topped with soft plastic discs that capture microfibers. It reduces microfibers by about 25% to 30%, but may not be suitable for loose knits because it can snag on threads and damage clothing.

Filter Your Washwater

Several brands of external filters are available that can be retrofitted onto existing washing machines. External filters can remove up to 90% of microfibers from rinse water. Their average cost is about US$150. Owners need to clean the filters periodically and dispose of the collected microfibers with other solid waste, not down the drain, which would put them back into the wastewater stream.

In a 2021 study, researchers installed washing machine filters in 97 homes in a town in Ontario, Canada, which represented about 10% of the households in the community. They found that this significantly reduced microfibers in treated water from the local treatment plant.

Some companies are now manufacturing washers with built-in microfiber filters. France has enacted a requirement for all new washing machines to be equipped with filters by 2025, and Australia has announced that filters will be required in commercial and residential washers by 2030.

In the U.S., a similar requirement was passed by the California legislature in 2023, but Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the bill, saying he was concerned about the cost to consumers. An economic study commissioned by Ocean Conservancy found that filters would increase the price of washing machines by only $14 to $20 per machine. Several states are considering regulations that would require filters in washers.

In my view, requiring manufacturers to add filters that can trap microfibers to washing machines is a reasonable and affordable step that could rapidly reduce the enormous quantities of microfibers in wastewater. The eventual solution will be reengineered textiles, which won’t shed, but it will take some time to develop them and move them into clothing supply chains. In the meantime, filters are the most effective way to tackle the problem.

Original story here

24 Jan 2024
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4 brilliant ways to respond to someone gaslighting you

There’s nothing more frustrating than people who try to gaslight you.

The form of emotional abuse, where someone seeks to make a person doubt their own sanity, is something experienced by many – particularly women, who, according to a 2018 policing report, account for 95% of all gaslighting victims.

Being able to respond to gaslighting can be just as tricky as identifying it – and one person highlighting the best way to respond to this form of abuse is Dr Pria.

The clinical psychologist and popular TikToker has shared four assertive responses to people who try to gaslight you in a video that has been viewed over 864,000 times.

In the clip, Dr Pria says the first assertive response people should say is, “I know what I experienced.”

Next, she says, “We remember that differently” is a good way to respond to someone who is gaslighting you, followed by “I hear you, but that’s not my experience.”

Lastly, Dr Pria says, “My emotions are not up for debate” is the fourth and final assertive response worth using to shut down gaslighters.

The video, which has been liked by over 103,000 people, saw many take to the comments to share their experiences being gaslit, while sharing the phrases they use.

One commented that her go-to response is “This conversation is over” while another wrote: “You can’t tell me how I felt”.

“The phrase I like to use is ‘We remember that differently’”, another commented. “This usually shuts them down.”

A fourth said: “I say ‘perception is everything’ doesn’t matter what he/she says their intent was. How you perceive something is always more important.”

Commenters also shared how they planned to use these responses going forward.

“Currently making flashcards so I can memorise these responses,” one said. “I freeze up and lose my train of thought every time I get gaslit by the narc.”

“Definitely going to be implementing these phrases going forward,” another wrote. “I experience this so frequently and I never know how best to respond but this has changed things for me.”

Original article here

19 Jan 2024
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The Rise of the Accidentally Permissive Parent

My friend Hannah, a single mother of two boys, ages 6 and 9, remembers the first time a teacher brought up her older son’s behavior at school. She had left New York City in the midst of his public-school kindergarten year to temporarily hunker down near family during the pandemic. A few months later, she enrolled him in an in-person private school near where they’d relocated. At an introductory play date there, a teacher, who had been at the school for 40 years, “very nicely said to me, ‘This is a young gentleman who needs to learn some boundaries.’” Now settled back in Manhattan, Hannah recently received a similar note about her younger son, who is in kindergarten. “I met with the school psychologist because I had noticed a lot of disrespect at home,” she said. The psychologist said the same thing as the small-town kindergarten teacher: The kid needed boundaries.

Hannah readily admits that she might be a tad permissive as a parent. She has a hard time holding the line with screen time on school nights and gives in to stop the mind-numbing negotiating her kids have perfected. On a recent visit to a friend’s house, where her kids didn’t want to eat the breakfast that was offered, Hannah marveled as the dad of the house told them there were no other options and they could take it or leave it. “I thought, We can do that?” Hannah laughed. “I am making toast and sausage for one kid, eggs for another, running around.”

She doesn’t name her philosophy as “gentle parenting” or “respectful parenting” or “intentional parenting” — though she’s familiar with these buzzwords. They cloud the air that modern parents, myself included, breathe. Instead, she says she is simply trying to be less punitive than her own parents, to break up the patterns (namely, screaming and spanking) that she and many of her fellow Gen-X parents experienced growing up. According to a new, still unpublished study, this is exactly how parents of young children who are attempting to practice gentle parenting see the movement. Researchers Alice Davidson, Ph.D., a professor of developmental psychology at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, and Annie Pezalla, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, asked 100 parents to choose adjectives that describe their own parenting style versus their parents’. “Those who identified as ‘gentle parenting’ parents used more terms to describe their approach: gentle, affectionate, conscious, intentional. All the words are synonymous,” says Davidson. “Whereas they use fewer, more simplistic words to describe their parents,” she says — words like reactive or confrontational. “Even for respondents whose parents showed a lot of love and warmth, they want to do that and then some,” says Davidson.

This softer approach, however, doesn’t necessarily get results. When Hannah’s kids misbehave, she finds that talking about what they’re feeling or taking a few deep breaths in the other room doesn’t seem to help. And while she is convinced that her kids don’t “walk all over” her, she knows she isn’t consistent with expectations and limits. She is getting tired of the escalating back talk, throwing, and ruthless negotiating. She tells me she wonders if she’s been too soft. No one wants to usher in a generation of entitled jerks. But are well-meaning gentle parents doing just that?

“Jerk” sounds harsh. (Dr. Becky Kennedy, one of Instagram’s most popular parenting experts and the author of a best-selling book, Good Inside, calls these children “good kids who are having a hard time.”) But if you are a parent, you’ve seen the hard time up close, possibly in your own house. Kids on playdates who throw the applesauce pouch across the room after demanding graham crackers. Kids who hit with no punishment. Kids who act as if there are no rules, only suggestions.

“I had a second-grader and her mother over to play, and at one point, the child slapped her mother because she didn’t get something she wanted. And the mother did nothing! She didn’t even seem embarrassed!” says Elsie, a mother of three in Harlem, who says her own parenting style leans more traditional, with a big emphasis on respecting adults. Jill, a public-school teacher in Harlem and private tutor throughout Manhattan, says she frequently deals with kids in her tutoring sessions who seem to have the upper hand over their parents. “Kids refuse to participate in a tutoring session, they pull out their iPads, one locked himself in the bathroom,” she says. “That’s typical of kids. It’s the reaction of the parents that’s telling. They just throw up their hands.”

No expert promoting gentle or respectful parenting would condone a kid slapping her mother. None of the books tell parents to abdicate the household throne to their toddler or let every tantrum slide. The problem, however, is that it’s not straightforward to describe or explain what gentle parenting says these parents should do instead. “Parents who identified as gentle in our study usually note three things: They regulate their own emotions in the middle of a conflict and try to name their child’s emotions (‘You look angry. Do you feel angry?’), they try to give the child coping skills, like sitting with their feelings, and they give affection,” says Pezalla. “There is a lot of hugging it out. When we asked about a time their children misbehaved and how they handled it, many parents said, ‘I asked my child if they needed a hug.’”

From my experience with gentle-parenting content — on Instagram, which is fertile ground for this stuff — these tenets sound right. There is copious listening, helping kids process their emotions, and remaining firm and calm in the face of chaos, abstaining from knee-jerk punishments or rewards to coerce good behavior. Davidson and Pezalla say it’s a philosophy that grew out of the primordial goo of attachment parenting but does not have roots in academic scholarship or study. “There has been so much evidence that documents the importance of not dismissing big feelings, of validating emotions,” says Davidson. “My concern is that people going deep on gentle parenting are going too far. Do we have to indulge every last emotional experience? Sometimes you have to move on.” Davidson and Pezalla found that of the parents in their study who adhered to gentle-parenting principles, 40 percent said they actually didn’t know what they were doing. Many said they felt “exhausted,” “overstimulated,” and “hanging on for dear life.”

Frankly, those words could describe any parent at various points in the day, regardless of your approach to raising kids. Parenting is, on the sunniest days, complicated and time-consuming. But to me, the gentle-parenting movement has taken a valid idea — respecting our children’s emotions — and pushed it to the point where the power dynamic is flipped, and kids are running the show. Pezalla and Davidson agree. “It’s as if there is a democratic approach to parenting. Parent and child are on the same level, and in some cases, the child is above the parent,” says Pezalla. In the process of evolving away from traditional discipline and toward gentler strategies that might not be instinctive, many of us have ended up in a weird place.

My concern is that people going deep on gentle parenting are going too far. Do we have to indulge every last emotional experience? Sometimes you have to move on.— Dr. Alice Davidson

I live on the Upper West Side, but I grew up in the Deep South and addressed most adults with “Ma’am” or “Sir” well into my 20s. So I care a lot about respect and manners and tend to be on the stern side with my three kids. I’ve threatened to wash mouths out with soap, like my own mother did. I’m certain I’ve said, “Children should be seen and not heard” only half-sarcastically in the past six months. (Somewhere, a gentle parent just lost her wings.) Still, I long to be a little more of an empathetic guide and less of a ranting dictator.

Like many parents, I was introduced to parenting coaches and Instagram gurus during the pandemic, when life at home felt so untenable with small children. This is when the gentle-parenting wave really began to roll; again, it has gained traction not through research but through TikTok and Reels. But as I watch gentle-parenting advocates post videos on Instagram and try to remember Dr. Becky’s wise scripts when my 5-year-old is thrashing naked on the floor instead of walking out the door to school, I wonder, Am I being indulgent? Am I focusing too much on my kids’ feelings at the expense of my own? Or the rest of the family? And most importantly: As I decide what to do, am I thinking about an Instagram graphic I read or listening to my gut? Social media has given parents an alternative to their instincts.

If a kid is screaming for a third cookie, and a parent is trying to avoid a response like, “You won’t ever get dessert acting like that,” or “Eat another bite of broccoli, and then we’ll see,” the other choices are these: Give the kid the cookie to make the screaming stop (not great) or explain that you’ve already discussed the rules about dessert beforehand (because that’s what gentle parents do, obviously) and affirm your child’s disappointment while holding the line, even as the storm rages for minutes or even hours. Meanwhile, good luck having a much-needed conversation with your spouse who you haven’t seen all day or making a phone call. I’d hand over the cookie for peace. Or maybe yell, “Stop crying, or I’m canceling Christmas,” but that’s just me. Of course, I’d pay the price; it is harder to hold the line later on when you’ve caved. The gentle way is better, but very, very hard. It’s no wonder parents often choose the “easy” out — and unintentionally indulge their kids.

Kathleen, a mother of two teens and a first-grade teacher at a private school in Manhattan, affirms that the pandemic ushered in an era of parents bending and twisting to their children’s desires in new ways. “There has been a significant shift. It’s as if parents feel their children missed out on something” and now want life to always feel special, with no disappointments, she says. Kathleen hasn’t noticed an uptick in overly disruptive behavior, but more of a “It’s my world, and everyone should revolve around me” mentality. Where she used to see kids rolling with a paper cut, lately they need a Band-Aid “now!” Kids refuse to carry their backpacks, and parents are more than happy to oblige them. “Kids are less resilient. They don’t know how to compromise,” she tells me.

Manhattan mom Jennie Monness, a parent educator and founder of Union Square Play, posts videos and personal stories about navigating challenges with her children for her 91,000 Instagram followers. In her videos with her two young daughters, Monness embodies the calm, respectful parenting model. But scrolling her feed, I notice that mixed in with the “YES. THIS” comments about, say, having natural consequences instead of using time-outs, a few parents are asking something along the lines of, “Sounds good, but what are the natural consequences for biting a sibling?” or “Yeah, what if the natural consequences are that I’m late for work and miss an important meeting?”

On the @biglittlefeelings feed, the Instagram account run by Kristin Gallant, a parent coach, and Deena Margolin, a child therapist, which has more than 3 million followers, some recent posts read, “Stop Telling Your Kid to Go Say Sorry,” and “Why We Shouldn’t Try to Stop Our Kids’ Crying,” both of which are, of course, styled to get eyeballs but also follow familiar scripts of respectful parenting. Like Monness’s followers, most commenters are enthusiastic and grateful for the guidance. But there are also those who struggle to implement the strategies in real life and have questions: “What if they are throwing themselves all over the place?” “What if they’re also screaming at me?” “Aren’t we raising self-absorbed kids?” One commenter on the apology post wrote, “If another child hurt mine and didn’t apologize, and the parent didn’t ask them to, quite frankly, I’d be horrified, and my child would be confused.”

I bring up these accounts not to criticize what these influencers are doing — I think there is a place for Instagram experts to offer bite-size tips and encouragement to parents where they’re at (on their phones) — but rather to point out that gentle parenting, at its best, is complicated and hard to do well. And I haven’t even broached the fact that many experts say excavating your own childhood traumas and patterns is a requirement for the system to work. Being a respectful parent starts with therapy, it seems. I feel for my fellow parents who watch influencers’ beautifully curated videos of magical teaching moments and think, Oh my gosh, who has the time? And who silently, even guiltily, wonder, If I can’t do this gentle-parenting thing well, because I’m overwhelmed with multiple kids and a stressful job, is it better to keep trying and failing, or should I forget the whole thing and go with something like … time-outs?

“First of all, time-outs can be an effective approach when used correctly, and you can absolutely tell your kids to put on their shoes and get going in the morning!” says Rebecca Hershberg, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist in Dobbs Ferry and author of The Tantrum Survival Guide. Hershberg also posts parenting tips on Instagram, even ones that encourage parents to support their children’s feelings, but emphasizes a “love and limits” framework focused on what she describes as high levels of warmth and high levels of boundaries. “I don’t think anyone is in favor of disrespectful parenting. But there is a lot of misunderstanding of what gentle parenting is,” she says.

I asked Hershberg, “Why is gentle parenting so hard for parents, and why does it often turn into being too permissive and indulgent? Are we afraid of doing it wrong, so we end up doing nothing? Are we too overwhelmed and exhausted to talk through our toddlers’ feelings yet again before breakfast?” The answer is yes — to all of it, she says. “What is most exhausting for parents is thinking there’s an exact way to do things and a wrong way to do things and walking around with the pressure that you’re going to ruin your kids because you used a sticker chart,” she says. Davidson and Pezalla point out that our generation of parents are starting from an earnest place but are intent on going above and beyond — and we are killing ourselves to curate the perfect parenting philosophy, even though that doesn’t really exist.

In other words, the parents standing idly by and smiling while their child hurls toys against the wall aren’t checked out or uninformed; they may be the opposite — oversaturated. And if their well-meaning, gentle-parenting tactics have left them with a tiny despot, have some compassion. Those parents may be suffering the most. They are trying to raise children amid confusing messages, and it’s maybe not going so well. Their children are acting like rabid squirrels, which is annoying at a birthday party, but think of it this way: They have to live in the same house as said squirrels. And maybe they don’t have a single second (let alone a spare three hours) to talk through a child’s feelings or reexamine the missteps of their own upbringing because they are caring for an aging parent or doing their taxes or filling out school forms. Every parent deserves a little grace. It’s hard, thankless work to parent with proper love and limits. It’s equally hard to think you’re doing right by your kid only to get slapped in the face on a play date.

“All of type-A, New York City parents would love to think they’ve figured out the best way to parent,” says Hershberg. That goes for hard-core gentle proponents, traditionalists, and hybrids in the middle. “It’s harder to accept that it’s complicated.”

Original article here

13 Jan 2024
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How loneliness changes the way our brains process the world

If there’s one thing we as humans seem to have in common, it’s that most of us have felt lonely at one time or another. But is the pain that comes with feeling socially isolated simply a part of being human? Why does the world seem so different when we’re feeling lonely?

Recent research has begun to provide some answers. And it turns out that loneliness can affect your perception and cognition.

Although no one enjoys the feeling of loneliness, scientists have argued that humans evolved to feel this way for good reason.

Social relationships are crucial, providing safety, resources, opportunities to have children, and so on. The fact that we find the feeling of loneliness so unpleasant often motivates us to reconnect with others, bringing with it all of these benefits.

But it’s not as simple as that. Feeling lonely can also induce social withdrawal and types of negative thinking, which can make it harder to connect with people.

The lonely brain

Studies have identified differences in brain areas associated with loneliness. In lonely young adults, areas of the brain related to social cognition and empathy have less dense white matter (a large network of nerve fibres that allows the exchange of information and communication between different areas of your brain). But in lonely older adults, brain regions important for cognitive processing and emotional regulation are actually smaller in volume.

A recent study found that the brains of lonely people process the world idiosyncratically. The researchers asked participants to watch a series of video clips while inside an fMRI scanner and found that non-lonely people showed very similar neural activity to each other, whereas lonely people showed brain activity that was dissimilar to each other and to the non-lonely participants. So lonely people appear to view the world differently to others.

Finding friends in fiction

This is also evident in how lonely people view fictional characters. Researchers in the US carried out brain scans on fans of the television series Game of Thrones while these fans decided whether various adjectives accurately described characters from the show. The authors of the study were able to identify activity in the brain that distinguished between real and fictional people.

While the difference between these two categories was clear in non-lonely people, the boundary was blurred for lonelier people. These results suggest that feeling lonely may be associated with thinking of fictional characters in a way similar to real-world friends.

However, given the design of the study, it’s unclear whether the findings suggest loneliness causes this way of thinking or if considering fictional characters in this way causes people to feel lonely. And there’s always the possibility that a third factor causes both outcomes.

Another recent study, this time by researchers in Scotland, provided more evidence of how loneliness can affect your cognition. This study focused on inanimate objects. Participants were shown images of products containing pareidolic faces (face-like patterns) and were asked to give several ratings like how eager they were to explore the product and how likely they were to buy it.

The results showed that lonelier participants (compared with those lower in self-reported loneliness) were more likely to attend to, engage with, and purchase products that showed “happy” configurations. These findings may again provide evidence that loneliness is associated with the drive to find connection, even if it’s with objects.

Indeed, this makes sense in the light of previous work showing that lonelier people are more likely to anthropomorphise gadgets or their own pets.

If we look at these studies and what they seem to be telling us, loneliness is not only the perceived absence of others, but also a desire for connection. Whether that’s thinking of fictional characters like real friends or being drawn to happy objects, our brains seem to search for social connections wherever they might find them, especially when we don’t feel like other humans are providing enough of these for us.

Original article here

08 Jan 2024
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The Plastic Chemicals Hiding in Your Food

By the time you open a container of yogurt, the food has taken a long journey to reach your spoon. You may have some idea of that journey: From cow to processing to packaging to store shelves. But at each step, there is a chance for a little something extra to sneak in, a stowaway of sorts that shouldn’t be there.

That unexpected ingredient is something called a plasticizer: a chemical used to make plastic more flexible and durable. Today, plasticizers—the most common of which are called phthalates—show up inside almost all of us, right along with other chemicals found in plastic, including bisphenols such as BPA. These have been linked to a long list of health concerns, even at very low levels.

Consumer Reports has investigated bisphenols and phthalates in food and food packaging a few times over the past 25 years. In our new tests, we checked a wider variety of foods to see how much of the chemicals Americans actually consume. The answer? Quite a lot. Our tests of nearly 100 foods found that despite growing evidence of potential health threats, bisphenols and phthalates remain widespread in our food.

The findings on phthalates are particularly concerning: We found them in almost every food we tested, often at high levels. The levels did not depend on packaging type, and no one particular type of food—say, dairy products or prepared meals—was more likely than another to have them.

For example, we found high levels in, among other products, Del Monte sliced peaches, Chicken of the Sea pink salmon, Fairlife Core Power high-protein chocolate milkshakes, Yoplait Original French vanilla low-fat yogurt, and several fast foods, including Wendy’s crispy chicken nuggets, a Chipotle chicken burrito, and a Burger King Whopper with cheese. Organic products were just as problematic: In fact, the highest phthalate levels we found were in a can of Annie’s Organic cheesy ravioli.

Yet some products had much lower levels than others. A serving of Pizza Hut’s Original Cheese Pan Pizza, for example, had half the phthalate levels of a similar pizza from Little Caesars. Levels varied even among products from the same brand: Chef Boyardee Big Bowl Beefaroni pasta in meat sauce had less than half the level of the company’s Beefaroni pasta in tomato and meat sauce.

“That tells us that, as widespread as these chemicals are, there are ways to reduce how much is in our foods,” says James E. Rogers, PhD, who oversees product safety testing at CR. Read more about how CR tested foods for phthalates and bisphenols (PDF).

The trouble is, there are so many ways these chemicals enter our food.

Early efforts to limit exposure to them focused on packaging, but it’s now clear that phthalates in particular can also get in from the plastic in the tubing, conveyor belts, and gloves used during food processing, and can even enter directly into meat and produce via contaminated water and soil.

There are few regulations restricting the use of these chemicals in food production, or requiring that manufacturers test foods for them. But our guide can help you learn how plasticizers get into your food, how to reduce your exposure, and how key changes by industry and regulators could make our food safer.

The Problem With Plastic Chemicals

Bisphenols and phthalates in our food are concerning for several reasons.

To start, growing research shows that they are endocrine disruptors, which means that they can interfere with the production and regulation of estrogen and other hormones. Even minor disruptions in hormone levels can contribute to an increased risk of several health problems, including diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, certain cancers, birth defects, premature birth, neurodevelopmental disorders, and infertility.

Those problems typically develop slowly, sometimes over decades, says Philip Landrigan, MD, a pediatrician and the director of the Program for Global Public Health and the Common Good at Boston College. “Unlike a plane crash, where everyone dies at once, the people who die from these die over many years.”

Another concern is that with plastic so ubiquitous in food and elsewhere, the chemicals can’t be completely avoided. And though the human body is pretty good at eliminating bisphenols and phthalates from our systems, our constant exposure to them means that they enter our blood and tissue almost as quickly as they’re eliminated. And plasticizers in particular can easily leach out of plastic and other materials. In addition, the chemicals’ harmful effects may be cumulative, so steady exposure to even very small amounts over time could increase health risks.

All that makes it difficult to trace any particular bad health outcome—say, a heart attack or breast cancer—to the chemicals. And it makes it hard for regulators to set a limit for what is considered safe for any food. “As a first step, the key is to determine how widespread the chemicals are in our food supply,” Rogers says. “Then we can develop strategies, as a society and individually, to limit our exposure.”

High Risks Even at Low Levels

To help figure out the scope of the problem, CR tested a wide range of food items, in a variety of packaging.

Specifically, we tested 85 foods, analyzing two or three samples of each. We looked for common bisphenols and phthalates, as well as some chemicals that are used to replace them. (Read more about these chemical substitutes.) We included prepared meals, fruits and vegetables, milk and other dairy products, baby food, fast food, meat, and seafood, all packaged in cans, pouches, foil, or other material.

The news on BPA and other bisphenols was somewhat reassuring: While we detected them in 79 percent of the tested samples, levels were notably lower than when we last tested for BPA, in 2009, “suggesting that we are at least moving in the right direction on bisphenols,” says CR’s Rogers.

But there wasn’t any good news on phthalates: We found them in all but one food (Polar raspberry lime seltzer). And the levels were much higher than for bisphenols.

Determining an acceptable level for these chemicals in food is tricky. Regulators in the U.S. and Europe have set thresholds for only bisphenol A (BPA) and a few phthalates, and none of the foods CR tested had amounts exceeding those limits.

But “many of these thresholds do not reflect the most current scientific knowledge, and may not protect against all the potential health effects,” says Tunde Akinleye, the CR scientist who oversaw CR’s tests. “We don’t feel comfortable saying these levels are okay,” he says. “They’re not.”

The decision to allow these chemicals in food “is not evidence-based,” says Ami Zota, ScD, an associate professor of environmental health sciences at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York City, who has studied the risks of phthalates.

For example, one of the most well-studied phthalates is called DEHP. Studies have linked it to insulin resistance, high blood pressure, reproductive issues, early menopause, and other concerns at levels well below the limits set by American and European regulators. It was the most common phthalate that we found in our tests, with more than half of the products we tested having levels above what research has linked to health problems.

In addition, Akinleye says that with exposure to these chemicals coming from so many sources—not only food but also other products, such as printed receipts and household dust— it’s difficult to quantify what a “safe” limit would be for a single food. “The more we learn about these chemicals, including how widespread they are, the more it seems clear that they can harm us even at very low levels,” he says.

Plastic Chemicals in Foods: What Our Tests Found

The 67 grocery store foods and 18 fast foods CR tested are listed in order of total phthalates per serving. While there is no level that scientists have confirmed as safe, lower levels are better. Our results show that although the chemicals are widespread in our food, levels can vary dramatically even among similar products, so in some cases you may be able to use our chart to choose products with lower levels.

Making Food Safer

Growing concerns about the health risks posed by these chemicals have led U.S. regulators to meaningfully curtail the use of these chemicals in a number of products—but not yet food.

For example, the federal government has banned eight phthalates in children’s toys. But, with the exception of a 2012 ban on BPA in baby bottles (extended in 2013 to infant formula cans), there are no substantive limits on plastic-related chemicals in food packaging or production. Although the Food and Drug Administration no longer allows certain phthalates in materials that come into contact with food, the agency updated its regulations only after those chemicals were no longer in use. And just last year, it rejected an appeal from several groups calling for a ban on multiple phthalates used in materials that come into contact with food.

An FDA spokesperson told CR that in 2022 it asked the food industry and others to provide the agency with additional data about the use of plasticizers in any material that comes into contact with food during production, and might use that information to update its safety assessments of the chemicals.

CR’s food safety scientists and others say such a reassessment by the FDA and other agencies is overdue and essential. “Since bisphenols and phthalates are hazardous chemicals, they should not be allowed at all in food-contact materials,” says Erika Schreder, the science director at Toxic-Free Future, an advocacy group.

Supermarket and fast-food chains, as well as food manufacturers, should also be required to take action, Rogers says, and should set specific goals for reducing and eliminating bisphenols and phthalates from all food packaging and processing equipment throughout their supply chains.

CR contacted certain companies in our tests that had products with the highest phthalate levels per serving, and asked them to comment on our results. Annie’s, Burger King, Fairlife, Little Caesars, Moe’s Southwest Grill, Wendy’s, and Yoplait did not respond to our requests for comment.

Del Monte, Gerber, and McDonald’s emphasized that they abide by existing regulations. Gerber added that it requires its suppliers to certify that its food packaging is free of BPA and phthalates. Chicken of the Sea said it requires its suppliers to certify that neither products nor packaging has intentionally added BPA or phthalates, but it acknowledged that fish live in water that is often polluted with phthalates.

More chemical companies need to step up, too, by creating safer, more sustainable materials. “We want things to be functional, but also nontoxic and biodegradable and renewable,” says Hanno Erythropel, PhD, at the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering at Yale University in New Haven, Conn.

That may be tough, he acknowledges, but it should be possible: An entire field called green chemistry is working to develop just these sorts of alternatives.

Original article here

02 Jan 2024
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Can 4-7-8 Breathing Really Help You Fall Asleep Faster?

Carving out time for mindfulness often feels like an indulgence, but it’s necessary. And unlike everything else on your to-do list, there are simple ways to pause and reset—like the 4-7-8 breathing technique. A controlled breathing pattern intended to help the mind and body relax, the 4-7-8 technique has helped many transition from a stressful storm into a more focused, present self.

“Breath work is an active meditation that helps reframe the nervous system’s response to trauma and triggers,” says Jasmine Marie, founder and CEO of Black Girls Breathing. “Decreasing anxiety and stress and regulating the nervous system’s response to anxiety and stress are some of the many benefits experienced by those who incorporate the practice into their daily and weekly routines.”

The benefits of deep breathing are plentiful. Research has found that slow, conscious breathing exercises, like the 4-7-8 technique, are linked to mental function, in that they can enhance emotional control and psychological well-being.

So what is 4-7-8 breathing?

The 4-7-8 breathing method, also referred to as “relaxing breath,” is based on principles of pranayama, the ancient yogic ritual of directing energy through control of the breath. While breathing techniques of this nature have been developed over centuries, the technique known as 4-7-8 breathing specifically is credited to American doctor Andrew Weil, who had a particular focus on alternative medicine. The simple technique involves breathing in for four seconds, holding the breath for seven seconds, and then breathing out for eight seconds.

“The 4-7-8 breathing method is a well-known and widely practiced technique that involves breath regulation,” explains Caroline Leaf, Ph.D., cognitive neuroscientist and host of Cleaning Up the Mental Mess podcast. “With the 4-7-8 method you are controlling the duration of your breathing, how long you hold or release your breath, as well as the frequency of your exhales and inhales, which can help calm many neurophysiological reactions in the brain and body.”

It’s in this sense that breathing exercises for anxiety are often used as a tool. Many practitioners find belly breathing and lung exercises have a relaxing, centering effect; others use deep breathing to help them fall asleep. Those who find themselves waking up with anxiety may try 4-7-8 breathing to see how it might help reframe their morning, but more on that later.

First, how to perform the 4-7-8 breathing technique

As we mentioned earlier, the exercise is straightforward: Breathe in for four, hold for seven, and then release for eight.

But there are ways to get the most out of it. Thimela Garcia, author, yoga teacher, and certified holistic practitioner, suggests finding the right time and place as a start. “I usually choose a suitable time during the day and place where to perform this breathing technique,” says Garcia. “I practice at nighttime before I go to bed as this is a very relaxing breathing technique.”

Choose whatever and whenever works best for you, though Garcia warns there are some exceptions: “4-7-8 breathing can be practiced at any time and anywhere except while driving or while executing a task that requires full attention.”

Also helpful: Get low and comfortable. The technique can be done while standing up, but experts say it helps to be as physically relaxed as possible. “I find a comfortable sitting position, whether on my bed or the floor sitting on a cushion,” says Garcia. “I like to rest my palms facing up over my knees or clasped hands over my lap. This breathing technique can be performed with the eyes either open or closed.”

You might not always be in an environment where you can close your eyes, but Garcia recommends choosing a time and place whenever possible because it helps block out any potentially distracting visual stimuli and allows one to immerse deeper into the exercise.

Once situated in the right environment, there’s one last thing someone can do to prepare. “Take a few conscious breaths and fully empty the lungs before beginning 4-7-8 breathing,” says Garcia. “Despite it being a very simple exercise, it has a very specific way to be executed.” After that, it’s time for the main event. “Inhale through the nose for a count of four, hold the breath for seven, and then exhale forcefully for a count of eight through a pursed lip, making the whooshing sound and keeping the tip of the tongue on the tissue behind the top front teeth.”

What you do afterward is totally up to you. Garcia prefers to do a few cycles of 4-7-8 breathing and then simply remain still and relaxed. “Once I finish, I breathe normally and stay there for a couple of minutes simply enjoying the stillness and total relaxation I feel after performing this breathing technique,” says Garcia. “Slowly I start opening my eyes.”

Garcia notes that people new to the technique might feel a little lightheaded at first, so it helps to remember that it takes practice and knowing one’s limits. “Please be aware that this technique should only be performed up to four times at one time and for at least one month before attempting to increase the number of cycles,” says Garcia.

And there are ways to modify the practice to fit an individual’s preference. According to Dr. Leaf, our minds are constantly in action. So when she performs the 4-7-8 breathing technique, she likes to add three words to incorporate deliberate and conscious mind-in-action thinking: “When our mind is chaotic and unruly, the 4-7-8 breathing can help calm down our neurophysiology and neurochemistry,” she explains. “Adding the words, ‘think, feel, choose’ when I do this breathing technique highlights what my mind-in-action is doing while I am processing what is going on in the moment, and it can help me intentionally start to control the chaotic thinking, feeling, and choosing that has been triggered and is causing stress.”

Does the 4-7-8 breathing method really help someone fall asleep faster?

For those who feel like they jump into bed only to spend the next two to three hours entertaining every thought that flies into their head, don’t worry: You are not alone. These types of everyday anxieties are normal. But if you’re wondering how to fall asleep fast, experts say this breathing exercise can help.

“The breath work pattern used in the 4-7-8 technique can be a great practice coupled with a bedtime routine to decrease the stressors of the day and its impact on the body and mind, which can allow for a deeper, more uninterrupted sleep,” says Marie.

Just remember, it’s all a process, so it might involve patience and regular practice before it works. “This technique should be performed twice a day to see great results and to cultivate a regular practice that can be more useful as a prevention tool,” says Garcia. “I have practiced the 4-7-8 technique when I have woken up in the middle of the night and within minutes I have felt calmer and ready to go back to sleep.”

While there are many supposed hacks to falling asleep, the bedtime benefits of deep breathing are rooted in physiology, specifically how the brain responds to increased oxygen levels. “The combination of saying ‘think, feel, choose’ and breathing deeply results in increased oxygen in the frontotemporal lobe, which can lead to increased connectivity between the amygdala and frontal lobe,” explains Dr. Leaf. “This connectivity brings a balance of energy into the left and right sides of the brain, which can help calm anxiety and help to improve the sleep cycle by facilitating the release of melatonin and making it easier to enter into a state of relaxation.”

What are other deep breathing benefits?

As we’ve mentioned, 4-7-8 breathing is often cited as a way to help reduce anxiety. According to Dr. Leaf, people are often dysregulated when they encounter stressful or triggering stimuli, and the body can often occupy one of three states: fight, freeze, or flight mode. “There are many experiences that can lead to this heightened state, including trauma, a traumatic brain injury, or any mental health stressors,” she says. “When we feel distressed, we often can’t think clearly until we calm down our brains and bodies, which is what makes deep breathing so great—it can have a very soothing effect on the mind, brain, and body, which in turn can help us get into a mental state where we can get to the root of our stressors.”

Deep breathing can also be a way to increase feel-good hormones, a.k.a. endorphins. “When we pause our breathing and hold it in, we are filling our cells with oxygen,” says Dr. Leaf. “As we force the air out, we force oxygen into our brains. This increases the amount of oxygen that flows throughout our bodies in our blood. This oxygen goes to the heart and lungs and increases the number of endorphins in the brain.”

While the method is used by many as a way to prepare mentally for a stressful event or to prevent the onset of anxiety, the experts say it can also be helpful during a panic attack. “4-7-8 breathing allows people to feel in control of their breath,” says Garcia. “This technique can be performed during an anxiety episode and hyperventilation. Long and deep exhalations trigger the vagus nerve and calm the mind and body almost immediately.”

Another benefit of this approach to mindfulness is that it is simple, subtle—and free. It can be performed while passing time in a busy airport or at a work desk in between meetings. And it doesn’t require a yoga mat or a slew of meditation apps. Plus, it’s easy to remember: 4-7-8. The simple counted approach provides structure to the exercise, so one can properly focus on their breathing.

However, this approach might not work for everyone, as all our bodies and limits are different. “I personally do not teach any techniques that are based on counting,” says Marie, “as everyone has a different lung capacity and the focus on being able to hold or expand the breath for a certain amount of time most times makes the participants be in their head more than their body and trusting their body for the duration of the practice.”

Original article here

30 Dec 2023
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I’ve researched time for 15 years – here’s how my perception of it has changed

Time is one of those things that most of us take for granted. We spend our lives portioning it into work-time, family-time and me-time. Rarely do we sit and think about how and why we choreograph our lives through this strange medium. A lot of people only appreciate time when they have an experience that makes them realise how limited it is.

My own interest in time grew from one of those “time is running out” experiences. Eighteen years ago, while at university, I was driving down a country lane when another vehicle strayed onto my side of the road and collided with my car. I can still vividly remember the way in which time slowed down, grinding to a near halt, in the moments before my car impacted with the oncoming vehicle. Time literally seemed to stand still. The elasticity of time and its ability to wax and wane in different situations shone out like never before. From that moment I was hooked.

I have spent the last 15 years trying to answer questions such as: Why does time slow down in near death situations? Does time really pass more quickly as you get older? How do our brains process time?

My attempts to answer these questions often involve putting people into extreme situations to explore how their experience of time is affected. Some of the participants in my experiments have been given electric shocks to induce pain, others have traversed 100-metre-high crumbling bridges (albeit in virtual reality), some have even spent 12 months in isolation on Antarctica. At the heart of this work is an attempt to understand how our interaction with our environment shapes our experience of time.

Thinking time

This research has taught me that time’s flexibility is an inherent part of the way in which we process it. We are not like clocks, which record seconds and minutes with perfect accuracy. Instead, our brain appears to be wired to perceive time in a way that is responsive to the world around us.

The way in which our brain processes time is closely related to the way in which it processes emotion. This is because some of the brain areas involved in the regulation of emotional and physiological arousal are also involved in the processing of time. During heightened emotion, the activation caused by the brain attempts to maintain stability, which alters its ability to process time.

So, when we experience fear, joy, anxiety or sadness, emotional processing and time processing interact. This results in the sensation of time passing more speeding up or slowing down. Time really does fly when you’re having fun and drag when you’re bored.

Changes in our experience of time are most profound during periods of extreme emotion. In near death experiences, like my car crash for example, time slows to the point of stopping. We don’t know why our brains distort sensory information during trauma.

Ancient adaptations

One possibility is that time distortions are an evolutionary survival intervention. Our perception of time may be fundamental to our fight and flight response. This insight into time has taught me that in times of crisis, knee jerk responses are unlikely to be the best ones. Instead, it would seem that slowing down helps me succeed.

Being a time-nerd, I spend a lot of time thinking about time. Before COVID, I would have said that I thought about it more than most. However, this changed during the pandemic.

Think back to those early lockdown days. Time started to slip and slide like never before. Hours sometimes felt like weeks and days merged into one another. Newspaper headlines and social media were awash with the idea that COVID had mangled our sense of time. They were not wrong. COVID time-warps were observed around the world. One study found that 80% of participants felt like time slowed down during the second English lockdown.

We no longer had a choice about how and when we spent our time. Home-time, work-time and me-time were suddenly rolled into one. This loss of control over our schedules made us pay attention to time. People now appear less willing to “waste time” commuting and instead place a greater value on jobs with flexibility over where and when you work. Governments and employers still appear unsure how to grapple with the ever-changing time landscape. What does seem clear however is that COVID permanently altered our relationship with time.

Unfortunately, one downside to having greater awareness of time is greater realisation of just how finite it is. This year I turned 40, my eldest child started high school and my youngest started primary school. What made these events so sobering for me was the fact that in my head, I am still only 23 years old. How can I already be halfway to 80? Is there anyway that I can slow time down?

Knowing that my actions and emotions can have a profound impact on my sense of time opens the tantalising possibility that one day I might be able to control my own experience of time. I often wonder if we may be able to harness the brain’s ability to distort time and somehow re-purpose it so that we can control how we experience it. Then, trips to the dentist could feel like seconds not minutes and holidays would no longer be over in the blink of an eye.

Even though we may be a long way from controlling time, my research has taught me just how precious time is.

Original article here

27 Dec 2023
Comments: 1

Tips for Creating a Brilliant Future in 2024

About the Author:

Soleira Green is a visionary author, quantum coach, ALLchemist & future innovator. She has been creating leading edge breakthroughs in consciousness, quantum evolution, transformation, innovation, intelligence and more over the past 25 years, has written and self-published eleven books, and taught courses all over the world on these topics.