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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


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