healing | Ascension Lifestyle

24 Jun 2023
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8 Steps To Boost Your Manifestations With Dance

Did you know that dancing is not just about grooving to the rhythm but can also be a profound tool for manifesting our desires?

When we surrender ourselves to the music and let our bodies sway, we create a harmonious connection between our physical and energetic selves.

By moving our bodies through dance, we unlock a realm of boundless potential and we:

Amplify our energy. Dancing raises our vibrations to align with the frequencies of our desires. As we lose ourselves in the rhythm, our movements become a physical representation of our intentions, sending powerful signals to the universe.
Embody our visualizations. With each step, twirl, or leap, we can imagine ourselves already living our desired reality. This visualization helps to reinforce our intentions and brings them closer to manifestation.
Release our emotions. When we dance, we tap into our deepest feelings, allowing any stagnant energy or limiting beliefs to be released. By releasing what no longer serves us, we create space for abundance and positive transformations.
Align through joy. When we move our bodies freely, we connect with our true essence and align ourselves with the frequency of joy. Joy is a powerful magnet for manifesting our desires, attracting experiences that resonate with our happiness.

Use These 8 Steps To Boost Your Manifestations Through Dance

Set Your Intention. Clarify what it is that you want to manifest. Write it down or hold it firmly in your mind.
Choose Uplifting Music. Select music that resonates with your intention and uplifts your spirits.
Create Sacred Space. Find a quiet and comfortable space where you can move freely without distractions.
Tune Into Your Body. Close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and center yourself. Allow yourself to be fully present and become aware of any sensations or emotions within you.
Let the Music Guide You. Start playing your chosen music and let the rhythm guide your movements. Trust your body’s natural instincts and let it express itself authentically.
Visualize Your Intention. As you dance, visualize your intention as if it has already manifested. See yourself living the reality you desire. Imagine the details and emotions, and immerse yourself fully in the visualization.
Express Emotion and Gratitude. Allow yourself to express your emotions through movement, whether joy, passion, sadness, or frustration. Also, use the dance to express gratitude for the manifestation already on its way.
Close with Stillness. After your dance, take a moment to stand still and absorb the energy you’ve created. Reflect on the experience and feel the vibrations of your intention radiating throughout your body.

So, let the music guide your intentions, and start moving, shaking, and swirling to get your manifestations in motion.

Original article here

21 Jun 2023
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Walking Correctly Takes Work—Here’s How to Improve Every Step

Chances are, you learned to walk when you were just a toddler and you haven’t really thought about it much since. It’s easy to nerd out on other fitness activities, like running or weight lifting. But, walking is something we often take for granted.

During the current pandemic, however, walking is having a moment (this article was written in May 2020). A simple stroll can go a long way to clear the mental cobwebs and stop your fitness tracker from screaming at you due to your newfound Jabba the Hutt lifestyle.

Before you start putting in the miles, it’s worth taking a look at how you walk. After all, it’s a repetitive motion and thousands of steps per day can put a lot of stress on your entire body—not just your legs and feet. Here are some tips from orthopedic experts on how to go for a walk without abusing your body.

Understand the Mechanics

Having a clear idea of what a step actually involves can help you visualize how to walk correctly. Every step happens in two phases: stance and swing. Jessica Rose, a professor in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Stanford University and director of the Motion & Gait Analysis Laboratory at the Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital provides the following description: “Typically, the stance phase starts with the leading foot making heel contact with the ground, followed by a heel-toe progression of the weight-bearing foot. The Swing phase starts with rapid hip, knee, and ankle flexion to clear the foot from the ground, the knee then rapidly extends to prepare for the next step. To assist with balance and forward momentum the arms swing in a reciprocal manner, the opposite arm swings forward with the leading foot. A single gait cycle of stance and swing typically lasts about 1-second.”

Your brain does all of that instinctively, but understanding the parts can be valuable in assessing where you might have weaknesses and can help doctors assess any pain you’re having.

Pick the Right Shoes

Choosing the wrong pair of shoes can wreak havoc on your feet, obviously, but those ill-effects can travel all the way up your body. “There’s no perfect shoe for everyone,” says Lew Schon, Director of Orthopedic Innovation Institute of Foot and Ankle Reconstruction at Mercy Medical Center, “but stability is crucial. You don’t want to wear flip-flops or anything that isn’t tight to your foot. They can cause weird stresses and injure your skin.” Blisters from a shoe rubbing against your foot will end your walking initiative in a hurry.

When it comes to padding, though, more isn’t always better. If the sole is too soft, your foot can sink deeply into it and create awkward stresses on your bones and joints and make it difficult to balance. Dr. Schon recommends starting with a standard amount of padding and increasing its thickness if you have a higher body weight. Too much padding, however, can reduce the positive effect the repetitive impacts will have on bone density, which is especially important for older people.

Many shoemakers offer options with corrective structures to try and provide support in needed areas or even correct problems. “You can look at the sole of your shoes and see how your shoes are wearing,” says Wendi Weimar, Director, Sports Biomechanics Laboratory Lab at Auburn. “If they’re wearing too much on the inside, then you might need something that gives you a little more arch support. If they’re wearing more quickly at the heel and causing pain, then you might need a little more cushioning.” She’s careful, however, to explain that it’s not an exact science, especially when you’re doing it on your own. Adding arch support when you have a low arch isn’t necessarily going to fix the issue. A trained orthopedist will use testing and specialized tools.

If you’re unsure about the shape of your step, sticking with a neutral shoe is a good place to start unless you’re having specific pain or are getting a personal assessment.

Tie Your Shoes Correctly

No matter what shoe you buy, tying it correctly will make a big difference in the way it performs. “For a typical eight-eyelet shoe, there are more than 200 ways to tie them based on your feet, walking pattern, and body composition,” says Weimar. “We have tied shoes of people with peripheral neuropathy and it has actually improved the condition. I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it.”

Weimar suggests starting with a tying pattern known as the runner’s loop, which helps to pull your foot back into the heel of the shoe to reduce its ability to move around. That will drastically cut down on blisters and reduce the chances of an awkward impact on the wrong part of the sole.

Pay attention to whether you’re favoring one side of your body.

It’s possible for your body to have an injury that you won’t even notice and that can negatively affect your body with every step. “If you find that you lean to one side, this may indicate weakness, pain or injury on that side,” says Rose. “We lean over to the weak or painful side, shifting our center of mass to alleviate forces on that limb.” That imbalance can cause problems throughout the body.

If you start to recognize an imbalance, professionals don’t recommend trying to fix it by forcing yourself into the right position because that could make it worse. Rather, finding the underlying cause with a doctor can help eliminate the source of the problem rather than simply addressing the symptom.

Stand Up Straight

Slouching is almost universally bad, but that’s especially true during a walk. “You want to pull your shoulders back, keep your bum tucked underneath you, and your head parallel to the ground,” says Weimar. “When you lift your chin up and stop slouching, it will automatically help bring your head in line with your pelvis.” If you’re used to slouching at a desk all day (like I am) you may actually find that your back, neck, and shoulder muscles feel sore after a long walk since they’re not used to that kind of engagement.

In order to keep your body upright, muscles throughout your body have to activate. “It involves your abdominal muscles as well as your glutei,” says Rose.” They tend to get neglected, but they keep your trunk and pelvis in a good position.” That’s not to say that you have to squeeze your abs and butt as hard as possible as you walk, but they should be engaged, not relaxed.

Keeping your eyes up and parallel to the horizon will also help you keep your balance, which may suffer if you’re staring at a downward angle.

Don’t Try to Force Your Feet Straight

Your feet likely have a natural angle that prevents them from facing perfectly straight ahead. “Your feet point where your legs tell them to,” says Rose. “It’s not something someone should try to correct on their own, but it is something they should try to understand where it’s coming from.” Forcing your feet forward against their natural rotation can put undue torque on the ankles, hips, and feet.

It can become an issue if you’re pushing off with the wrong part of your foot. ”We want the foot to become the best lever it can be. ” says Weimar. “When you roll off the front of your foot, you want the center of pressure to come off between your big toe and your second toe.” Pushing off too far to one side can cause common issues such as bunions.

Choose the Right Surface and Location for Walking

A walk around the neighborhood is great if you have the opportunity because it’s quick and doesn’t require driving. But streets aren’t perfectly flat—they’re sloped to improve drainage—and that uneven surface can be an issue in the long term. “Your outside leg strikes the ground lower than your inside leg. That leg close to the curb strikes lower which is going to cause a mismatched pelvic girdle position and get everything out of whack,” says Weimar. “If you walk out on the right side of the road, walk back on the other to try and even those things out.” She also recommends walking on the flatter part of the street instead of directly in the gutter if you can safely avoid it with traffic.

Walking on slightly irregular surfaces like trails can help build strength in the muscles and joints as your legs adapt to the irregular orientations of each strike. Dirt also provides a softer surface that won’t tax your feet and joints as much.

Hit the Hills

Going up and down hills during your walk can crank up the cardiovascular benefits of a walk, but the technique changes slightly. “When you walk up a hill, you want to lean into the hill,” says Weimar. “You want your center of gravity to get a little bit in front of your feet so when you step, the propulsion part of your step is pushing your body up the hill.”

Coming down the hill requires a different kind of effort from your muscles. “That uses eccentric muscle action, which tends to be a lot tougher on the muscle than concentric,” says Weimar. “A lot of people will get sore from walking downhill because of that new loading pattern.” She recommends going slow and trying not to stomp your feet too hard into the ground.

Don’t Over-Stride

Once you’re a more experienced walker, it’s tempting to try and up your pace and distance. But doing too much can cause problems with your stride and limit your workout capabilities. Taking too big of a stride will require your pelvis to rotate too far to step out in front of you. Plus, as Weimar explains, “it puts stress on your lower back and puts a lot of stress on your heel as it impacts the ground. It also takes more energy to get your body up over that lead foot.” Increasing the overall speed of your steps can help you increase your pace without compromising your technique.

Original article here

15 Jun 2023
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Make Peace with Your Unlived Life

Tina was at a crossroads. Her daughter had recently left for college, and her husband had his own pursuits. And although she’d once enjoyed banking, she now bore little interest in her work. For some time, she had been asking herself whether she should quit. But what would her colleagues and bosses think of her?

This stream of consciousness carried Tina to deeper, more revealing questions. What if all her choices had been in response to what others expected? She had always been her parents’ golden child – a star student who married a man they approved of and went into the same industry her father and grandfather had pursued. Now, at the age of 45, she was wondering if these choices were really pseudo-choices, given the pressure her family had put on her? And even more frightening: what other choices did she have at this point in her life?

Tina increasingly began to question herself. Where was all of this coming from? Was there a hidden part of herself she didn’t understand – or maybe even know about? She remembered how as an adolescent she had always been preoccupied with: “What do people want me to do? And who do they want me to be?” Perhaps, the time had come to revisit these questions—to take an honest look at what she really wanted to do, not what others expected her to do. But what did the “True Tina” really want?

The idea of a “true self” and a “false” or “shadow” self has long preoccupied psychologists. For example, Carl Jung introduced the notion of the shadow side of our personality. He viewed “the shadow” as our unknown, dark side—made up of the primitive, negative, socially depreciated human emotions such as sexuality, striving for power, selfishness, greed, envy, jealousy, and anger. But although the shadow personifies everything that we fear, and therefore refuse to acknowledge, it remains a part of us. Jung believed that unless we come to terms with our shadow side, we are condemned to become its unwitting victim.

Similarly, Erik Erikson, another famous psychologist, introduced the idea of the identity crisis. Erikson, like Jung, suggests that identity formation has its dark and negative side. There are parts of us that are attractive but disturbing and therefore tend to be submerged. In the process of becoming an adult, we not only internalize what’s viewed as acceptable, we also internalize (be it only subliminally) parental and societal attitudes about undesirable qualities and characteristics. For many of us, these “undesirables” turn into “forbidden fruits”–things we are attracted to To feel more authentic, we may have to integrate these forbidden fruits into our sense of identity.

Donald Winnicott elaborated on the idea of the “true self” and “false self.” He explained that beginning in infancy, all of us, in response to perceived threats to our well-being, develop a defensive structure that may evolve into a “false self.” He suggests that if our basic needs are not acknowledged—not mirrored back to us by our parents—we may presume they are unimportant. Complying with our parents’ desires, we may repress our own desires, not actualizing what we really like to do. We may believe that non-compliance endangers our role in the family. In addition, we may internalize our parents’ dreams of self-glorification through our achievements. But this acquiescence to the wishes of others is an emotional lie. It comes at the price of suppressing our own needs. In our efforts to please others, we hide and deny our “true self,” which in turn leads to self-estrangement. If that’s the case, the “false self” will get the upper hand. It becomes a defensive armor to keep the “true self” at bay and hidden.

If there is too great a discrepancy between the “true” and the “false” self, it will make for a vulnerable sense of identity. And if we are unable to acquire a stable sense of identity—we may end up one day unraveling as Tina did. After a lifetime of complying to others’ expectations, Tina was experiencing what Erikson would call a delayed identity crisis. At a certain point in her life, it became difficult for her keep up the lie.

What Tina’s case also illustrates is that the journey of identity exploration that often begins at adolescence doesn’t stop there. In her case, the tension between “false self” and “true self” came to a head, contributing to a renewal of the confusion she had experienced at an earlier stage of life. Not living a full, complete life—not integrating these other parts of herself, call it her shadow or negative identity—turned out to be extremely draining, contributing to life choices that didn’t accommodate her real needs. Ignoring her shadow side was taking an enormous amount of energy, depleting her of her inner creativity, and contributed to various stress symptoms, including depressive reactions.

But the “return of the repressed” should not be looked at as a purely negative experience. Although a person might view these parts of herself as a representation of her unlived life, a delayed identity crisis can also contain the seeds of psychological renewal—the motivation to enter new directions in life. Romancing your shadow—accepting these unlived parts of yourself and learning to read the messages that are contained in it—can lead to a deeper level of consciousness, as well as spark your imagination. When a person is ready to accept these parts—and not try to push them aside — she or he may discover all sorts of creative, positive ideas begging for fulfillment. These buried desires will help them to reflect not only on the question of “Who am I?” but also “Who do I want to be?” This can turn a negative spiral of self-pity turned into the opposite.

That’s what happened in Tina’s case. She came to grips with her previous life experiences. She captured her dreams in a journal, and wrote about the associations that came to her. She wrote letters to her past and future self. She told her husband about her dreams and the emotions they evoked. Together, they talked about her feelings of frustration and anxiety. Her husband began sharing some of his dreams with her, as well. Their conversations eventually took a more concrete turn, as they discussed their future together, including their careers, finances, and upcoming life choices. Her self-exploration gave her greater awareness both of her inner theatre and what her life journey had been up till this moment.

Reassured and invigorated, Tina took a hard look at her work responsibilities and saw ways that she could make changes that would benefit the bank as well as herself. She even got into an argument with her father at the dinner table about politics, and to her great surprise, he seemed to respect her opinion.

Most of us find this difficult, confusing work, as Tina did. But learning to sort out our inner demons can be liberating. Questioning, reflecting, and having meaningful conversations with important people in our lives can help us come to terms with our shadow sides and create the rapprochement needed between our “false” and “true” selves. To do this, we have to figure out how to accept what we learn about ourselves without judgment. And to do that, we must approach self-knowledge with curiosity, as if it were a fascinating adventure – an exploration of the riches contained in this previously unknown world inside the self.

Original article here

10 Jun 2023
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How Dreams Reveal Brain Disorders

For 30 years Isabelle Arnulf, head of the sleep disorders clinic at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, has studied sleep and its associated disorders. During her career, Arnulf, who is also a professor of neurology at Sorbonne University in France, has researched a broad range of sleep conditions: sleepwalking, rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder, lucid dreaming, sleep in Parkinson’s disease and hypersomnia, or excessive daytime sleepiness. As part of these studies, Arnulf investigated how these disorders affect dream states. In an interview with Scientific American’s French-language sister publication Pour la Science, the neurologist talks about whether depression or trauma affects dreaming and whether one should worry about recurring nightmares.

[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]

Our dreams are often bizarre and disturbing and are sometimes frightening. Do some betray a pathology?

Attempts have been made to identify “dream types” that are characteristic of various mental disorders, but this has not gone very far. People with a psychotic disorder, especially people with schizophrenia, have particular dreams that resemble their way of reasoning during the day—flat, disjointed, limited and undiversified content that portrays the dreamer in everyday life situations. Autistic patients also have fairly lackluster dreams, but the reverse is not true; it is not because you have this kind of dream that you are autistic or schizophrenic. In other words, dreams alone are not enough to diagnose mental illness. Some of the characteristics of a dream may yield some hints, however. For example, the frequency of nightmares is generally higher in people with a mental disorder, whether depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder.

Could frequent nightmares provide a warning about a person’s mental health risks?

The link has been particularly well established with the risk of suicide among young people, which has been on the rise in recent years. Doctors are wrong half the time about projecting someone’s suicide risk. This is why recurrent nightmares have recently begun to be included in the diagnosis because they are correlated with a higher risk of suicide. The stakes are high, because this would make it possible to direct young people with depression to get help earlier with programs such as VigilanS, coordinated by Guillaume Vaiva at the Lille University Hospital in France, which monitors people who have attempted suicide to prevent repeat attempts.

Are there specific qualities that characterize the nightmares of depressed people?

In depression, dreams are very negative, mirroring the mental state of depressed people during the day. This parallel was brought to light in the early 2000s by researcher Dieter Riemann and his colleagues at the University of Freiburg in Germany. By analyzing the dreams of depressed patients treated with antidepressants, they discovered that as the treatment began to take effect after several weeks, the content of these dreams became less and less gloomy, and the mood of the patients improved.

At first glance, one might think that the overall tone of the dreams reflects the depressed state of the patient. But things are not so simple, unfortunately, because in the first weeks of treatment, antidepressants often suppress REM sleep—the phase when we dream the most—and it usually takes a month for patients to remember their dreams again. It’s difficult to understand the link between dreams and depression and to know which of the two is influencing the other. To better understand this link, we can study two categories of dreamers—those who have what are called lucid dreams and people with REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD).

What is special about these dreamers?

In RBD, which we have been studying for 15 years, patients try to implement the actions in their dreams: some eat an imaginary sandwich while sleeping, and others struggle in bed, grappling with invisible adversaries. This enactment is usually caused by a lesion of the brain stem, which means that their movements, often inhibited in a normal dream, are not blocked during REM sleep. And this, unfortunately, involves the risk of accident or injury for them or, [say], their spouse because they do not control what they are doing. But this phenomenon also offers direct access to dreams, much more than the often imprecise stories that sleepers tell when they wake up if they remember [their dreams].

What about lucid dreamers?

They actually recognize that they are dreaming without waking up. As a result, it is possible to agree beforehand on a code for them to communicate certain information to us during their dreams.

In one experiment, we asked lucid dreamers to find a swimming pool in their dream and to turn their eyes to the right twice when they dipped underwater and when they emerged. We have thus shown that our breathing during sleep reflects how we breathe in our dreams; the periods spent underwater corresponded to remarkable apneas of the sleepers! But of course, these types of signals are not always easy to arrange in certain dreams—for instance, in an intense sequence of dream events like a chase. Today we try to use simpler signals, asking the dreamer to punctuate the pleasant parts of their dreams with three small smiles and the unpleasant parts with three slight frowns, which we capture with electrodes placed respectively on the zygomaticus muscles and on those of the forehead.

These two categories of dreamers, in any case, offer privileged access to dreams. If we could find a few who suffer from depression—which is what our team member Jean-Baptiste Maranci of Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital is trying to do—then we would have a unique way of studying the links between dreams and mood.

What form would a study take?

One of the characteristics of depressed people is that they wake up sadder in the morning than in the evening, whereas normally it’s the opposite: we tend to be happier when we wake up than when we go to sleep. We therefore believe that sleep and dreams serve to attenuate negative emotions and that this process is dysfunctional in people with depression. Maranci’s project consists of identifying markers associated with positive and negative feelings experienced in dreams, among all the signals recorded in the sleep laboratory. A sudden feeling of joy could, for example, result in a change in cerebral activity that is associated with particular eye movement and increased heart rate and breathing. We conducted this research “live” in lucid dreamers who communicated their emotions through signals agreed on with the team of experimenters. Our idea is then to use artificial intelligence for the analyses in order to take into account a large number of parameters.

After this first phase, we will try to find the emotional markers identified in sleepers like you and me. The goal is to better understand how we regulate our emotions during sleep and how quickly we relive and “digest” negative emotions. Then the same research will be carried out in depressed people in order to determine why this mechanism works badly in them.

What is the “emotional digestion” in dreams?

Matthew Walker, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, has suggested that the function of sleep and dreams is to degrade emotional memories of the day—to reset the amygdala (the brain region where the emotions are experienced) to preserve the memories associated with the emotions but without the emotions themselves. This is currently the leading theory.

According to Walker, dreams are a kind of mental theater where we relive the trials that have happened to us but integrated into more or less crazy scenarios. The peculiarities of dreams make this repetition of a day’s events easier to live with. Difficult events are replayed without the physical manifestations of strong emotions. Researchers have observed, for example, sleepers who suffered horrors in dreams (as evidenced by the stories they shared when they woke up). But they didn’t show the slightest quickening of a heartbeat. On the other hand, these events are sometimes mixed with positive or bizarre elements. You might be reprimanded by your boss in the dream when suddenly a kitten comes to lick his ear, which lessens the emotions you’re experiencing in the dream.

In the end, this re-exposure to the events of the day could lead to the progressive extinction of negative emotions. In our brain, a dialogue occurs between the amygdala, which is very strongly activated during REM sleep, the hippocampus, where the information of the day is stored, and the neocortex, the seat of long-term memory. Thanks to this three-way dialogue, the brain stores the new information by ridding it of its emotional context to consolidate it in a more definitive way in the neocortex.

Do you mean that negative dreams are good for us?

Yes, absolutely. But be careful; it is believed that in nightmares, this beneficial mechanism malfunctions to the point of interrupting the dream in progress and waking the sleeper, so the process of emotional integration cannot go to the end. Why does the sleeper wake up? There are several possibilities. Maybe the person was just sleeping badly, or the emotional intensity of the nightmares was too strong. This is particularly the case in post-traumatic stress disorder, following various types of extreme ordeal—torture, war, rape. The emotion to be appeased is then so violent that the brain cannot manage it. It constantly repeats the traumatic memory, which awakens the sleeper. Finally, about 5 percent of the population has had nightmares since birth without anyone knowing how to explain it.

How should one react to a recurring nightmare?

For a long time, we approached recurring nightmares through the prism of psychoanalysis, [which explained them as] unresolved trauma that we would have to work to resolve. But the fact is: we don’t know.

In the case of repeated nightmares, before going to see a psychologist, in my opinion, it is necessary to make a medical diagnosis rather than be diverted down the wrong pathway. When I started my research, a journalist from Le Monde came to see me for a sleep apnea screening. In the course of the conversation, he told me that he has been having the same nightmare for 10 years in which he was sticking his head through the neck of a bottle and choking. With his psychoanalyst, they came to the conclusion that he was reliving his birth. In fact, he was really choking, with one apnea incident each minute of sleep each night. We offered him a CPAP [continuous positive airway pressure] machine, and the nightmares were gone the first night!

In some cases, a psychological origin can be involved. We have bad dreams during a stressful period, probably because the brain has a greater need to digest negative emotions and wants to simulate the threats we face, which is another purported function of dreams.

In general, there are many forms of nightmares, which have different origins and which a doctor will be able to differentiate. Young people who scream at night and sometimes get out of bed are thus subject to night terrors, a disorder that is similar to sleepwalking but that is not associated with mental health problems. Others [experience] a phenomenon of half awakening called “sleep paralysis”: a very unpleasant moment when the sleeper tries to wake up without being able to move, often with the feeling that a harmful creature is crushing their chest or that the person is possessed by a demon. Lack of sleep facilitates this phenomenon. Others who suffer from RBD make the motions of fighting in their bed to defend themselves against lions or attackers. Some nightmares are caused by drug treatments, for which a doctor can offer alternative medications. So it is necessary to exclude each of these possibilities before starting a therapy targeted specifically for nightmares.

Nightmares are not inevitable. We have to stop thinking that all it takes to stop a round of nightmares is to have things go well when we’re awake during the day. Bad nights themselves produce an unpleasant feeling in the morning, and people then fear going to bed and repeating the same scenario, which maintains this vicious cycle. This was shown by several British and North American teams as early as the 1980s. So tackling bad dreams is a therapy in itself that is actually effective.

What are some of the treatments for nightmares?

Techniques such as mental image rehearsal, as well as drug therapies, are highly effective, according to at least one review of scientific literature. The principle is to slightly modify elements of the nightmare and mentally visualize the new scenario before falling asleep. To give you an example, a patient abused by a priest at the age of 11 who came to consult me for another problem told me that she dreams every night that a devil in a red cassock wants to rape her. I suggested that she try to imagine something happening to the devil, perhaps his foot tripping over his cassock or something else. She decided that a large crucifix would fall on him. By mentally repeating this new scenario in the evening, she managed to transform her nightmare and calm herself.

Confronting the bad dream is therefore therapeutic on its own. Although, I repeat, it is better to start by consulting a doctor, ideally a sleep specialist, in order to exclude a number of organic causes. This is all the more important because certain types of dreams point to neurodegenerative pathologies, such as Parkinson’s disease or Lewy body dementia.

Are there dreams that can help diagnose neurodegenerative diseases?

Agitated dreams—those in which patients mimic everything they are experiencing in a dream—are characteristic of RBD. More than 80 percent of patients suffering from this disorder develop a neurodegenerative pathology within 10 to 15 years of the onset of RBD. Most often, it is Parkinson’s disease. In fact, the brain’s failure to inhibit movements during dreams is a sign that the brain is already beginning to be damaged because [this phenomenon] results from the damage to the area of the brain stem that normally inhibits movement. It is therefore a very strong warning sign.

But we must be careful not to confuse this disorder with somnambulism. In RBD, the affected person is rather restless at the end of the night, is generally more than 50 years old and does not get out of bed, whereas a sleepwalker often wanders around the house and is often much younger. Sleepwalking does not signal any hidden disease, neither neurological nor psychiatric. The studies that have investigated it have just observed that patients are slightly more anxious than average.

In general, do people with Parkinson’s have different sorts of dreams?

According to a 2011 study at Egas Moniz Hospital in Lisbon, their dreams have a more aggressive tone and more often involve animals. In addition, the unusual qualities of their dreams appear to correspond to damage in their frontal lobes.

What about people with Alzheimer’s disease?

The difficulty is that they remember their dreams less. In addition, because their cortex is damaged first, the characteristic patterns of sleep are less discernible on their electroencephalograms, which complicates research. Many also awaken early, which doesn’t make things any easier. We only know that there is no physical acting out, unlike in dreams of RBD patients.

This information is crucial because it makes it possible to distinguish Alzheimer’s disease from another pathology, Lewy body dementia, which represents the third leading cause of dementia globally, after Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia. Affecting up to 5 percent of the [older people in the] general population—30 percent of dementia cases—it is manifested by cognitive losses similar to those observed in Alzheimer’s disease and is often confused with it. But [Lewy body dementia] is accompanied by RBD, which is not the case with Alzheimer’s disease. As a result, this readily available biomarker can distinguish between these two dementias, and it is necessary to avoid giving neuroleptics (antipsychotics) to people with Lewy body dementia (which is sometimes done for an Alzheimer’s patient but can be toxic if it is administered to patients with Lewy body disease).

Dreams are therefore likely to provide valuable information about our mental and neurological health. They are still not made use of enough because they have long been the preserve of psychoanalysis. But things are progressing: more and more doctors are interested in them, having understood that taking them into account can help in diagnosis.

Original article here

27 May 2023
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The Dutch solution to busyness that captivated the world

The Hague, where I live, has 11km of gorgeous coastline with rolling dunes and sandy beaches. In summer, I often see locals in Scheveningen or Kijkduin (the city’s most famous beaches) sunbathing, strolling in nature or riding their bikes, then sitting down on one of the many benches available. Sometimes, they’re reading or chatting with their friends, but just as often, they’re engaging in niksen.

Niksen is a Dutch wellness trend that means “doing nothing”. It first caught the attention of the world in 2019 as a way to manage stress or recover from burnout. At the time, many people were complaining about exhaustion and depression caused by overwork and were looking for solutions – which is why concepts such as Japanese ikigai or Danish hygge also entered the English lexicon. As a linguist myself, I loved the idea that you could express the whole concept of doing nothing in one short and easy-to-pronounce word.

In my book Niksen: Embracing the Dutch Art of Doing Nothing, I define it as “doing nothing without a purpose” – so not scrolling on Facebook or engaging in meditation. Whereas mindfulness is about being present in the moment, niksen is more about carving out time to just be, letting your mind wander wherever it wants to go. And as we’re slowly recovering after the pandemic, it’s important to rethink the way we work and spend our time.

Linguistically, niksen (doing nothing) is a verb created from “niks“, which means “nothing”.

“It fits with the tendency of the Dutch language to create verbs out of nouns. From from ‘voetbal’ (football) to voetballen (playing football), from ‘internet’ to internetten, from ‘whatsapp‘ to whatsappen etc. I think this is something that happens in Dutch in particular,” said Monique Flecken, a psycholinguist at the University of Amsterdam, who researches how the languages we speak affect the way we see the world. Essentially, it’s much less work to say “niksen” instead of “to do nothing”. “The Dutch are a practical, direct people and their language reflects that,” she said.

In the Netherlands, the word can be used in a variety of ways, both positive and negative. Flecken said: “A parent might say to their kid, “Zit je weer te niksen?” (Are you doing nothing again?). And I would also say ‘lekker niksen’, which translates to ‘delicious doing nothing’, when talking about an evening blissfully free of any tasks or work.”

To Thijs Launspach, a psychologist, TEDx speaker and author of the book Crazy Busy: Staying Sane in a Stressful World, niksen means “doing nothing or occupying yourself with something trivial as a way of enjoying your own time. Not doing nothing entirely but doing as little as possible,” he said, pointing out that this mostly applies to elderly people who have more unstructured free time. Younger generations, on the other hand, are more stressed out than ever – even in the Netherlands, a country traditionally applauded for its work-life balance.

It’s not necessarily bad to be for a moment in a state of stress, where you’re really on and focused. The problem is when this is getting out of hand

There are plenty of reasons for that. “Our lives and our jobs have become increasingly complex. We tend to spend a lot of time with computers. There is a lot of pressure on being the best version of yourself, be it in our jobs, or the expectations of parents [or] from social media. There is a lot of pressure to perform,” Launspach said.

Of course, some stress can be good, as Leiden University psychology professor Bernet Elzinga points out. “It’s not necessarily bad to be for a moment in a state of stress, where you’re really on and focused. The problem is when this is getting out of hand,” she said. But niksen can help with that. “When you do nothing, you connect to your default mode network. And that network is responsible for mind-wandering and reflection,” Elzinga explained.

Paradoxically, niksen can also make us more productive, simply because breaks allow our brains to rest and come back with better focus and sustained attention. This is probably why, while the Dutch don’t work long hours, they tend to be very efficient at work. Working overtime is not encouraged due to the “just be normal, that’s already crazy enough” attitude prevalent in the Netherlands – a nod towards the country’s honest and egalitarian culture.

And it seems to work: the Dutch are a creative nation. Just think of all the famous painters like Rembrandt, Vermeer or Escher, as well as the innovative solutions the Dutch have found to battle the recurring threat of floods, such as huge dams and floating houses.

The Dutch also like to enjoy life, as shown by the word lekker. This means “delicious” but can be used to refer to anything nice and pleasant, like lekker warm(deliciously warm), lekker slapen (sleeping deliciously), and, of course, lekker niksen, or “deliciously doing nothing”. This available architecture of leisure makes it more possible for people to do nothing more easily.

Locals like spending their time in active ways, such as cycling or hiking, allowing time for clearing the mind. And each time the sun comes out, the Dutch flock to cafes and terraces en masse, even in the winter. For me, these are perfect places for doing nothing.

However, Launspach is not a fan of doing nothing as a stress-preventing measure. “I’m a little bit sceptical of the idea that you should create a buffer between you and stress. I don’t know if that’s even possible in the way that we live and work now,” he said.

Elzinga believes that it’s much better to do some sort of physical activity to distract you from your daily worries, preferably in nature. But luckily, in the Netherlands, there is a way to combine all these things – niksen, nature and movement.

While the country is not commonly known for its natural resources , the Dutch appreciate the little natural areas they have. Many dune areas – my favourite thing about The Netherlands – are a part of a large network of hiking and cycling routes crisscrossing the country. Even in large cities such as Rotterdam, The Hague or Amsterdam, you’re never too far away from a trail.

In a cooperation with the Dutch Railway system, Wandelnet – a foundation devoted to creating and maintaining hiking routes – has created NS Wandelingen, a system of hiking routes that are easy to reach by train or other public transport. They range between 7km and 22km in length, making them perfect for a day trip. And given the many benches along the way, it’s even possible to fit in a little niksen break.

This leisure time is possible for the Dutch because the Netherlands is a country with an excellent welfare system, and while people tend to work hard, they also take (and are granted) many days off.

“Having a good social support system, having lower stress level relates to feeling secure and in balance. So, I wouldn’t overestimate the importance of that,” said Elzinga.

And with everything going on in the world – the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine – relieving stress is more important than ever.

Original article here

22 May 2023
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How To Worry Less And Enjoy Your Life More

Did you know that worrying is like a rocking chair?

It gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you anywhere.

Excessive worrying is exhausting and can become a great waste of time and energy. It puts your mind in overdrive and distracts you from doing the more important things, as well as preventing you from having a healthy, happy life.

Most people worry on a regular basis, as a natural part of life. However, the worry habit can become problematic when it becomes too intense and chronic. Some people even worry about worrying. When you are plagued by thoughts that are persistent and out of control, they end up causing interference and paralysis in your daily life.

The bad news is that constant worrying eventually takes a toll on your emotional and physical health, as well as your self-esteem, relationships, and career. When you keep hitting the panic button, the stress response is triggered, which leads to fear, then more stress and anxiety, and then more worry. An endless worry cycle is created.

The good news is that worrying is a mental habit that can be broken. You can train your brain to stay calm and remain positive. You are in charge of your thoughts and imagination. How you choose to use your mind is your responsibility. Do you continue to misuse your imagination and keep focusing on the negative or do you choose to switch to the positive?

The reason most people worry too much is often rooted in fear – ultimately a fear of something happening that cannot be controlled. When we anticipate something negative happening in the future, it is based on irrational thoughts. We are afraid of the worst-case scenario, as we have allowed our minds to wander too far on the negative side.

9 Practical Tips To Minimize Worrying

Learn to distinguish between what you can control in life and what you can’t. The things you can change need an action plan with a list of concrete steps you can take to solve the problem. And for the things you cannot change, you need to learn acceptance. The Serenity Prayer sums it up perfectly: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Recognize your trigger points. Find out the source of your worries and gain a clearer picture of what’s driving them. Your worries will start losing power, and you will start regaining control of your mind. Self-awareness is the first step to changing your mindset.
Re-frame your thoughts and change your perspective. Instead of saying, “I can’t handle this,” become more self-confident and start believing that you can handle it. Make a list of the negative messages you are feeding your mind and replace them with positive affirmations. Make sure you challenge those thoughts. No amount of worrying will make life any more predictable.
Break the worry cycle by limiting your worrying time. Schedule a worry time each day to keep the worry contained and prevent it from contaminating your whole day. Sit down for 15 minutes and make a list of all the things you want to worry about, and then proceed to worry about them. At the end of the exercise, you will come to the realization that worrying is futile. You can become more mindful of your thoughts and where you place your energy. Choose to focus on what really matters in your life and become more productive.
Get up and move. Take a 20-minute walk. Stretch out and do some yoga. Exercise is a productive activity that can interrupt your worries and shift your body’s energy. It releases endorphins, which get rid of the tension and break the cycle.
Breathing exercises, meditation and relaxation techniques also interrupt your train of thoughts and calm the body’s response to stress. This dynamic trio helps relax your body, guide your thoughts, and keep them from getting caught up in worries.
Ground yourself in the present. Become mindful of your thoughts and activities. Make time to unplug and take a look at the bigger picture. Ask yourself if what you are worrying about is really going to matter in five years from now. If not, let it go and don’t spend more than five minutes worrying about it. If it does matter, then make a list of one or two things you can do now to solve the problem. Keep in mind, you may not resolve the whole problem right then and there, but at least your thoughts will be clearer and calmer, and you will be able to move forward by focusing on what matters instead of worrying about things that don’t really matter.
Stop overthinking and dwelling on your worries by finding a healthy distraction like reading a good book, watching a funny movie, listening to great music, taking up hobbies that you enjoy, or doing something different, such as trying a new recipe.
Build a support network. Enlist the help of your trusted friends and family. By sharing your thoughts and tuning into your feelings, it can help you process them as you feel supported. In some cases, chronic worry can be a symptom of GAD or generalized anxiety disorder. You can seek the help of a therapist or join a support group. Don’t keep your worries to yourself. This will cause them to build up and become overwhelming.

Next time you catch yourself worrying, instead of pressing the panic button, reach for the pause button and ask yourself, “What’s important now?” Coach Lou Holtz came up with the acronym W.I.N. or What’s Important Now. This enables you to prioritize your decisions, choices and actions. The antidote for worrying is to maintain calm, clarity, and focus. Also, by having a grateful mind, you can look for the positive in every situation.

Strengthen your mind by learning to turn off those worrying thoughts and regain control. Look at life from a less fearful and more balanced perspective.

Original article here

15 May 2023
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Crying can teach you a lot about yourself

Here is a non-exhaustive list of things that have made me cry: Any time I must chop, dice, or mince ingredients; a group of sea lions barking in the sun; sad music; receiving a free hot dog; the film 500 Days of Summer; a messy house.

The one emotion tying all of these experiences together, according to Ad Vingerhoets, an emeritus professor at Tilburg University and one of the world’s preeminent experts on crying, is a sense of powerlessness. Even in the context of positive tear-jerking events — like encountering a very small puppy or watching your best friend walk down the aisle at their wedding — there is a feeling of overwhelm, Vingerhoets says. “You also feel small and helpless and humble,” he says.

Humans come into the world crying, and we never really stop. As babies, we cry in order to get attention from our parents, signaling to them that we’re angry or scared or in pain or hungry or tired. In childhood and adolescence, we cry from physical pain, like a scraped knee, but as we develop empathy in our teenage years, external catalysts — like books, movies, and other people’s pain — elicit tears. As we get older, we may be moved to tears by beauty, awe, wonder, and sentimentality, says Lauren Bylsma, an associate professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Pittsburgh.

For some people, the well of tears has run dry. The stereotype that criers are seen as weaker or less masculine contributes to the well-trodden notion that boys (and men) don’t cry. Indeed, women report crying more frequently than men and with shorter gaps in between crying episodes than men. Then, there’s that thorny feeling of vulnerability associated with sobbing; to betray the veneer of stoicism is deeply uncomfortable for some, to admit you need help can be seen as a failure.

But have you ever stopped to consider why you’re crying? The root cause of the sadness or overwhelm? What about what you can learn from your tears? Mining the depths of your emotions can shed light on deeper insecurities, fears, pleasures, and relationship complications.

What our tears tell us

The presence of tears signals one basic message, says Randolph Cornelius, a professor of psychological science at Vassar College: I need help. “We’re asking other people to aid us,” he says. Research suggests tears are so effective at eliciting help because criers are seen as sadder, more helpless, less aggressive, and in need of interpersonal connection. According to one of Vingerhoets’ 2017 studies, people are more likely to offer help to a crying person compared to just a sad person with a dry face. “Recognizing that people [are] crying and in need of help is a pretty automatic process,” Cornelius says.

Throughout the entire lifespan, some of the most common triggers of tears, Vingerhoets says, are bereavement, heartache, and homesickness. (Though women do cry more often in general over more mundane and conflict-driven situations, “the difference between the sexes is not that big” when it comes to these main motivators of crying, Vingerhoets says.) Then there are the positive cries: Weeping not just over a separation, but a reunion; crying out of relief and not fear; shedding tears when receiving a gift, not only when having it taken away. “All of these negative situations that provoked tears, they all seem to have their opposite,” Vingerhoets says, “which also induces tears.”

We receive the most support when we cry in front of a partner or a friend, Bylsma says, someone who is best equipped to console and emotionally support us. Research shows that the presence of visible tears can also bring people closer together and promote social bonding. “If you are stressed, it’s important that you receive social support from others,” Vingerhoets says, “because that can buffer the negative effects of stress on your well-being.”

Subliminally or not, we may realize that turning on the waterworks gets us what we want. “I have a 10-year-old grandson and he can turn crying on and off,” Cornelius says. “Kids learn how to manipulate adults and so that stays with us.” Much has been written about the weaponization of tears, especially by white women, in order to protect privilege and garner sympathy. Research finds that fake criers are seen as manipulative, less reliable, less warm, less competent, and less accepted as friends, colleagues, or neighbors. But usually, Cornelius says, adults keep their tears in check, having learned the socially appropriate places to cry (in private, on the side of the road when you have a flat tire) and opting not to cry at our desks at work when we feel frustrated. That is, unless the situation is uniquely overwhelming, Cornelius says, like in the face of an unexpected tragedy.

Why the context of the cry matters

Popular convention maintains that crying is a cathartic experience, that we feel cleansed and weightless following a good weep. “That’s not always the case,” Bylsma says, “and it really depends on various contextual factors.” We’re likely to reap the most benefit from crying if we can shed a few tears in a safe place, Bylsma says. “We found in research if someone were to cry in a place where it might be embarrassing, where people might react in a negative way, like crying in front of people you don’t know well in a workplace setting, for example, someone’s going to feel worse after crying,” she says, “versus if you cry in a more supportive environment, like in front of a partner or friend that you’re more likely to have a benefit from.”

In one of Vingerhoets’ and Bylsma’s studies, they found that people who are depressed, anxious, or experiencing burnout cry more, but they did not feel relief after crying. Those who felt shame and embarrassment were less likely to feel better following a cry, too. People find more catharsis after crying when the situation that made them weepy was controllable — like a fight with their partner — as opposed to an uncontrollable event, like a death.

Bylsma also notes that chronically suppressing tears is associated with negative emotional effects, like less empathy and emotional support, based on surveys. So if you feel the need to cry in the middle of a work meeting, try to get yourself to a bathroom and let it out. On the contrary, for those who have no reason to cry and forgo weeping for a long time, even years, there’s no harm in that, Vingerhoets says. However, persistent bouts of crying and ruminating over the same issues might be a sign you need to change your approach to crying, Bylsma says. Try seeking the help of a therapist or mental health professional who can help you cope.

What crying reveals

Regardless of what made you cry, whether it be a sad movie or a beautiful sunset, there is a deeper meaning. The presence of tears reveals what matters to you. “Sometimes our tears are signals to ourselves about the significance of events,” Cornelius says.

Consider the last time you cried. Was it an argument? An exhausting day? A delicious cupcake? What about those situations stirred up emotions? In the moment of the crying episode, try to process what, exactly, is making you cry, Cornelius says. “We do have an inner drive to know ourselves,” he says. “I think recognizing our emotions, giving them their due, allows us to do that.” Over time, you may recognize patterns in your emotions: I feel resentful in these situations, those comments make me feel embarrassed.

Having this bit of insight can help you reframe the situation: This isn’t an argument about taking out the trash, it’s an argument about respect. Sometimes tears can help reveal these underlying messages.

“When you have a realization about yourself, and that allows you to see yourself in a different way, you do feel empowered,” Cornelius says.

Original article here

04 May 2023
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Eat fibre first – and ditch the juice: five quick and easy tips for a much healthier meal

Whilst researching my latest book, Food for Life, I learnt that we’re very short of practical advice on food choices which are the most important things we can do for our health (humans and our gut microbes) and also to help the planet. I also learnt that how we eat can be as important as what we eat. Here are my top five, practical everyday tips to help you make small but sustainable changes across the year that will be far better for you than a few weeks of crash dieting or restrictive eating.

Start your meal with fibre and a simple vinegar and extra virgin olive oil dressing

One of the simplest ways we can help our bodies thrive and prevent over-eating is to change the order in which we eat our food. Reaching for the bread basket or bowl of crisps at the start of a meal results in a rapid increase in blood glucose levels and a subsequent insulin response. This will likely leave you feeling tired, hungry and irritable just a few hours later. This is because glucose is rapidly absorbed from starchy foods, and this is even quicker on an empty stomach.

Why not start with a grilled vegetable platter, a selection of crunchy veggies or zesty fresh chopped herbs with a simple extra virgin olive oil and vinegar or lemon dressing. The extra acidity can reduce overeating on your next course, by reducing hunger signals and may also reduce harmful blood sugar spikes.

Choose high-quality, non-meat protein

This can be grains, legumes, fungi or sustainable seafood sources. The importance of good quality protein in our diet is well known but what is less understood is that the classic combination of “meat and two veg” is not the only way to ensure we get the protein we need. Smoked tofu is surprisingly tasty and can be added to salads and stir fries for added protein.

I realised that not all fish is that healthy for us or the planet, but shellfish, such as clams and mussels, are an untapped source of sustainable, nutrient-rich seafood protein. These small and delicious foods are packed with protein, zinc, iron and B vitamins, as well as choline and iodine, making them a great addition to our diet.

Another unsung hero group in our diet is mushrooms. Mushrooms can replace meat in many dishes, bringing umami flavour, nutrients, protein and even vit D, if left on a sunny shelf, with a satiating and satisfying texture plus a positive impact on the environment.

Choose your drinks wisely

Many of us find plain water a bit boring and Brits are world famous for their love of builder’s tea: the mix of black tea, milk and sugar can contribute quite significantly to our energy intake, especially when it’s the gateway to a biscuit or two.

Try some of these delicious swaps, to make your next drink choice healthier by choosing something polyphenol-rich, probiotic or both.

If you like hot drinks, simply opting for black coffee over your builder’s brew will make a big difference. Coffee is rich in polyphenols and contains fibre and won’t contribute to excess energy intake if you drink it black or with a drop of unsweetened plant or whole cow’s milk. Green tea, especially matcha powder, has a host of well-known benefits thanks to specific polyphenols, including green tea catechins and fibre.

For cold drinks, avoid fruit juices and soft drinks. Opt instead for unsweetened live kombucha, which has a natural fizz and flavour with the added benefit of probiotic strains and no added sugar as it is fermented by the microbes.

For a hearty, filling alternative to shop-bought milkshakes and smoothies, natural kefir (made yourself or shop-bought) is a delicious and healthier alternative for adults and children alike. Add some almonds for crunch or chopped fruit for different flavours.

Add colour to your plate

The colours in our plants are there thanks to chemicals called polyphenols, also known as phytonutrients. These chemicals are produced by plants to protect themselves against environmental stressors, including drought, cold weather, hot weather, insects and parasites. A great example of this is the dark red colour of the oranges which grow in the foothills of Mount Etna in Sicily, where the nights are very cold and the days are very hot and dry.

It turns out these protective chemicals are also helpful for humans. This is why you should aim to eat lots of different colourful plants, choosing variety over the same familiar favourites, like iceberg lettuce and apple.

Different polyphenols are beneficial for different things. Beetroot is well proven to improve blood pressure and post-exercise recovery. Black beans are a staple in some of the longest-living humans and are the beans richest in polyphenols. A great way of introducing polyphenols is also to opt for colourful versions of your favourites, such as sweet potato and purple potato, purple carrots and purple sprouting broccoli, too.

Make simple tweaks to your daily staples like bread and yogurt

Pick bread with high levels of fibre, seeds and no added sugar. Many supermarket breads have lots of added ingredients to make them last longer on the shelf and increase their palatability. True sourdough bread only needs a simple base of flour, with the sourdough starter, water and salt, which can be found in supermarkets (thanks to brands like Bertinet bakery) or can be made at a local bakery or at home. Choose to eat breads with whole grains, seeds and different types of flour, like dark rye, and always look for a high fibre content, rather than a healthy-looking label.

Before doing the ZOE programme, I thought my breakfast of muesli with skimmed milk was exactly what I needed for the day ahead. I soon learned that this breakfast, washed down with a glass of orange juice, pushed my blood sugar to diabetic levels and I quickly changed the menu. Adding mixed nuts and seeds to plain natural yoghurt with some polyphenol-rich berries is a great way to enjoy a nutritious breakfast that won’t spike your blood sugar.

Natural yoghurt is also a great way to introduce probiotics to your diet so, if you want to give your yoghurt an extra probiotic boost, simply add a splash of kefir. This is also great for those who don’t yet love the taste of kefir and want to find a way of including it in their diet. Kefir is also a great addition to soups and stews; just make sure you don’t actually cook the kefir as it will kill the live microbes.

Another easy way to include more fermented foods every day is to use miso paste, rather than stock cubes, to add flavour and umami to your dishes. Simply stir a teaspoon of miso into your pasta sauce or into your steamed greens or to add flavour to a fish recipe.

Finally, swapping white rice and white pasta with whole grains is an easy win. Replace white rice with pearled barley, choose buckwheat over couscous (which is just mini pasta balls), and enjoy spelt spaghetti instead of plain white spaghetti, keeping your favourite dishes but making them more nutritious with these simple tweaks.

Original article here

28 Apr 2023
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Why Six Hours Of Sleep Is As Bad As None At All

Not getting enough sleep is detrimental to both your health and productivity. Yawn. We’ve heard it all before. But results from one study impress just how bad a cumulative lack of sleep can be on performance. Subjects in a lab-based sleep study who were allowed to get only six hours of sleep a night for two weeks straight functioned as poorly as those who were forced to stay awake for two days straight. The kicker is the people who slept six hours per night thought they were doing just fine.

This sleep deprivation study, published in the journal Sleep, took 48 adults and restricted their sleep to a maximum of four, six, or eight hours a night for two weeks; one unlucky subset was deprived of sleep for three days straight.

During their time in the lab, the participants were tested every two hours (unless they were asleep, of course) on their cognitive performance as well as their reaction time. They also answered questions about their mood and any symptoms they were experiencing, basically, “How sleepy do you feel?”

Why Six Hours of Sleep Isn’t Enough

As you can imagine, the subjects who were allowed to sleep eight hours per night had the highest performance on average. Subjects who got only four hours a night did worse each day. The group who got six hours of sleep seemed to be holding their own, until around day 10 of the study.

In the last few days of the experiment, the subjects who were restricted to a maximum of six hours of sleep per night showed cognitive performance that was as bad as the people who weren’t allowed to sleep at all. Getting only six hours of shut-eye was as bad as not sleeping for two days straight. The group who got only four hours of sleep each night performed just as poorly, but they hit their low sooner.

One of the most alarming results from the sleep study is that the six-hour sleep group didn’t rate their sleepiness as being all that bad, even as their cognitive performance was going downhill. The no-sleep group progressively rated their sleepiness level higher and higher. By the end of the experiment, their sleepiness had jumped by two levels. But the six-hour group only jumped one level. Those findings raise the question about how people cope when they get insufficient sleep, perhaps suggesting that they’re in denial (willful or otherwise) about their present state.

We Have No Idea How Much We Sleep

Complicating matters is the fact that people are terrible at knowing how much time they actually spend asleep. According to the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey, as reported by the CDC, more than 35% of Americans sleep less than seven hours in a typical day. That’s one out of every three people. However, those who suffer from sleep problems don’t accurately estimate how much they sleep each night.

If you think you sleep seven hours a night, as one out of every three Americans does, it’s entirely possible you’re only getting six.

Research from University of Chicago, for instance, shows that people are as likely to overestimate how much they sleep as underestimate it. Another sleep study published in Epidemiology, indicates people generally overestimate their nightly sleep by around 0.8 hours. The same study also estimates that for every hour beyond six that people sleep, they overestimate sleep by about half an hour. If you think you sleep seven hours a night, as one out of every three Americans does, it’s entirely possible you’re only getting six.

So no one knows how much or little they’re sleeping, and when they don’t sleep enough, they believe they’re doing better than they are.

Even just a little bit of sleep deprivation, in this case, six rather than eight hours of sleep across two weeks, accumulates to jaw-dropping results. Cumulative sleep deprivation isn’t a new concept by any means, but it’s rare to find research results that are so clear about the effects.

Fixing Sleep: Easier Said Than Done

Figuring out how to get enough sleep, consistently, is a tough nut to crack. The same advice experts have batted around for decades is probably a good place to start: Have a consistent bedtime; don’t look at electronic screens at least 30 minutes before bed; limit alcohol intake (alcohol makes many people sleepy, but it can also decrease the quality and duration of sleep); and get enough exercise.

Other advice that you’ll hear less often, but which is equally valid, is to lose excess weight. Sleep apnea and obesity have a very high correlation, according to the National Sleep Foundation. What’s more, obese workers already suffer from more lost productive time than normal weight and overweight workers.

Other causes of sleep problems include physical, neurological, and psychological issues. Even stress and worry can negatively affect sleep. The CDC has called lack of sleep a health problem, and for good reason. Diet, exercise, mental health, and physical health all affect our ability to sleep, and in return, our ability to perform to our best.

Fixing bad sleep habits to get enough sleep is easier said than done. But if you’re functioning as if you hadn’t slept for two days straight, isn’t it worthwhile?

Original article here

26 Apr 2023
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Questing Greatness

I’ve been watching for how greatness shows up lately. For example, how Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney sourced Wrexham AFC into super winners with such grace, generousity and community spirit, and how Iam Tongi is winning the hearts of so many on American Idol this year.

Here are some insights into what I’ve gleaned from my recent questing into greatness …

* Genuine authenticity and kindness matter. We are looking for super heroes who personify these traits along with greatness.

* People matter. Animals matter. The Earth and Nature matter. There is great Love in greatness for these things.

* Making the world a greater place is an exhilarating, high vibing, Joy-filled adventure. As Ryan Reynolds put it, it’s addictive.

* Once you surrender your smallness, greatness will flood you with everything you need to make it so. Ideas, innovation, great creativity, laughter, sunshine emanating from you and more.

* Saying YES to greatness is one of the best things we might ever do in our lifetime. It opens the door to adventure and super herodom, even if you might be the only one who knows it’s so. Because it’s not about fortune and fame, you see. It’s about contribution and being moved so profoundly that Life is forever changed by the very presence of greatness in our world.

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.