Never Go To Bed Angry

By Anahad O’Connor, the New York Times: Most people have heard the old saw about going to bed upset: Never do it, the saying goes, or the hard feelings will fester and resentment will build.

Some say it goes back to the Bible, in Ephesians 4:26. “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.” Regardless of its origins, the adage has been scarcely researched. But in a recent study in The Journal of Neuroscience, scientists found there might be a nugget of truth to it: Going to sleep after experiencing negative emotions appears to reinforce or “preserve” them.

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Little Things That Make a Big Difference: Balance Exercise

By Cathie Dunal, MD, MPH: One of my patients, a lovely lady of about 60–let’s call her Sandra–had a bad fall a few years ago. It was an icy February, and the sudden collision with a sidewalk took a toll on her back and neck. She went to physical therapy for several months.

This past spring, when Sandra came in for her annual visit, she had a big smile. “I didn’t fall once during the winter,” she beamed, “and I think I know why.” I took the bait: “Why?”

“Because I did the balance exercise you taught me all through the winter. I’m sure that’s why I didn’t fall. I had a few close calls.” She said that she told her friends about the balance training I’d prescribed, and they were doing the exercise too.

Balance exercise? It’s actually incredibly simple to do a tiny bit each day to maintain and improve your balance, and I’d like to share it with you, too:

Stand on one foot. This can be done at any time; I prefer to do it when I’m brushing my teeth–if you brush your teeth for two full minutes, as the dentist recommends, that’s a minute balancing on each foot. Twice a day.  Or while waiting for a pot to boil, a download to finish…during commercials.

It’s that simple. Continue reading »

NutritionFacts.Org

What’s better for you than green tea?  Cold-steeped green tea! Here is great info about antioxidants in tea, and more:

There is much more research-based information on Dr. Michael Gregor’s comprehensive website: NutritionFacts.Org — Meet Dr. Gregor:

Lose weight sleeping, supress cancer growth, decrease inflamatory markers, destroy cholesterol, lower risk of heart attack — with these tasty snacks?  Continue reading »

Building Smarter Beings

By Riddhi Shah of the HuffingtonPost: Over the last decade, interest in the science of meditation has skyrocketed. We now know more than ever before about just how meditation affects our minds and bodies. Increased research has led to a plethora of fascinating discoveries: Take, for instance, the fact that meditation can prevent heart disease. Or that it reduces stress. Or that it can significantly lessen ADHD symptoms, and in many cases, beats medication.

Still, much is left to be discovered. We know more but we definitely don’t know everything. While we wait for science to catch up with ancient wisdom, check out this slideshow on the complex effects of the simple act of focused breathing [here are its salient points]:

• [S]ustained meditation leads to something called neuroplasticity, which is defined as the brain’s ability to change, structurally and functionally, on the basis of environmental input. For much of the last century, scientists believed that the brain essentially stopped changing after adulthood. But research by University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Richard Davidson has shown that experienced meditators exhibit high levels of gamma ray activity and display an ability — continuing after the meditation session has attended — to not get stuck on a particular stimulus. That is, they’re automatically able to control their thoughts and reactiveness.

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Meditation For ADHD Teens & Adults

Mindfulness meditation significantly helped three-quarters of the participants in a study described here by Dr. David Rabiner: Because of the wide spread interest in new ADHD interventions — particularly non-pharmaceutical approaches — I try to cover credible research in this area when ever I come across it. I was thus pleased to learn about a very interesting study of mindfulness meditation as a treatment for adults and adolescents with ADHD that was published in the Journal of Attention Disorders.

Although medication treatment is effective for many individuals with ADHD, including adolescents and adults, there remains an understandable need to explore and develop interventions that can complement or even substitute for medication. (…)

In recent years, mindfulness meditation has been used as a new approach for stress reduc­tion and incorporated into the treatment for a variety of psychiatric dis­orders, including depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. Of special rele­vance to the treatment of ADHD are findings that meditation has the potential to regulate brain functioning and attention. For example, research has demon­strated that mindfulness meditation can modify attentional networks, modulate EEG patterns, alter dopamine levels, and change neural activity.

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