Have you ever noticed how easy it is for the mind to dwell on negative thoughts, or how hard it is for the mind to be grateful? Thoughts tend to enter the mind unbidden and to control one’s mood, and therefore one’s behavior. Anyone who has ever suffered from insomnia, or who struggles with depression, or who has to fight various addictions, knows the difficulty of controlling the influence of thoughts that enter the mind, and that in some cases seem to exert control over the whole person.

For a long time scientists, including cognitive behaviorists and others, have believed that the mind is controlled by external circumstances, or the environment.  The idea is that the way you were raised more or less totally shapes the way you think. What is happening around you controls what happens in the mind. Others assert that the mind creates various thoughts and emotions completely based on chemical processes that occur in certain sections of the brain.

More recent theories, however, suggest that the mind and the brain are far more flexible than anyone had imagined.  While both environment and genetic or chemical processes certainly are involved in the way the mind operates, or the way the brain functions, it may be that the brain is more than the passive object in the way the mind actually works. Rather than understanding the way we experience life through the mind as a direct result of what is happening in the brain, recent discoveries have shown that it is possible that the mind can influence the way the brain itself is hardwired.

In the late 1990s a scientist at Princeton named Elizabeth Gould found that the brain is more malleable than previously thought, and that new neurons and new connections could be created through learning new behaviors. In other words, rather than the mind influencing the way we act (for instance, negative thoughts creating foul moods and bad behaviors), actions could also influence the connections the brain makes, and therefore the way the mind thinks.

Another scientist named Richard Davidson from the University of Wisconsin built upon this discovery and found that changing the way one thinks can rewire the way the brain works. In other words, the traditional assumptions had it wrong: the brain does not, through genetics or chemical processes, have absolute control over the mind and therefore over the way we think and feel, but the mind can actually change the way the brain is wired, so that we can be less reactive to intrusive thoughts and more stable in the way we live and behave.

One of the primary methods Davidson used in his inquiry into the way the mind and brain function together was through mindfulness meditation. He discovered that the monks of the Dalai Lama generated far more gamma waves than other, average, healthy people. Those who practice meditation tend to use the mind to physically change the hardwiring in the brain in such a way that far more positive thoughts and emotions are generated than negative ones.  The implications are extraordinary. Not only is there a potential for naturally overcoming intrusive thoughts, which sometimes result in mental disorders, but also for healing Alzheimer disease and other afflictions that are rooted in brain functions.

Please Share with your friends

I don't remember if I did that or not...

OCD is a type of anxiety disorder that involves intrusive, uncontrollable thoughts and fears that can eventually take over the person’s life. Although to others the OCD sufferer may seem paranoid or even psychotic, in most cases the person realizes their thoughts and actions are irrational, making them feel even more alienated from those around them. It’s one of the more common mental illnesses, diagnosed nearly as often as asthma and diabetes. It’s important to note that OCD is different from other compulsive behaviors like overeating, gambling or sex addiction, where the person derives at least some short-term pleasure from the behavior. OCD sufferers get no pleasure or satisfaction from their behavior, yet they find it impossible to stop. OCD sufferers may also be diagnosed with conditions like Asperger syndrome, bulimia, social anxiety disorder, Tourette syndrome or major depressive disorder, among others.

It’s believed to have biological roots, and has been associated with abnormalities with the neurotransmitter serotonin, which is thought to have a role in how the brain regulates anxiety. This sort of imbalance of serotonin may be related to abnormal brain development; it’s suspected that children who have had a Group A streptococcal infection may be more prone to OCD later in life.

What Are OCD’s Symptoms?

OCD manifests itself in a set of compulsive behaviors that give the person “relief” from their anxieties. A typical person with OCD might be preoccupied with disease, God, the Devil or germs, all things that can cause tension and give the person the feeling that their life can never proceed as normal. Other obsessions might involve dirt and contamination; the person may be frightened or apprehensive about things like household chemicals, pets, newsprint, radioactivity, and of course their own bodily secretions or excrement.

Others have sexual obsessions that they can never be rid of, or may be extremely averse to sex. An OCD sufferer knows that their thoughts, behaviors and habits are out of step with the rest of the world, which just feeds their anxieties and doubts even more.

Typical obsessive behaviors or rituals might include:

· Skin picking

· Hair plucking

· Counting, which can come into play by counting specific things (such as footsteps or floor tiles) or counting specific ways (odd or even numbers, for instance)

· Hand washing or showering

· Throat clearing or verbal tics

· Behaviors that are preoccupied with order, such as putting items in a straight line, touching objects a set number of times, turning lights on and off, stepping on only a certain color of floor tile, checking that their car is locked several times over before leaving it, or only walking up or down a flight of stairs in a certain fashion (i.e. always starting and ending on the same foot)

How did it come to this?

Hoarding

Hoarding is an offshoot of OCD that has come to the public eye in recent months with hoarding-related TV shows. Hoarders might think that inanimate objects (teddy bears, documents, electronic devices, anything) are sentient beings with thoughts and emotions. In other cases, hoarders might never be able to break associations between those objects and a person or a past phase of their lives, and hang onto them as “mementos” or “keepsakes.” Often this might be linked to the trauma of a death or divorce. Nonetheless, hoarding can be just as destructive and just as crippling as any other form of OCD.

Management And Treatment

The first line of treatment for OCD has always been psychotherapy (and in some cases, dynamic psychotherapy). Newer therapies, though, have involved behavioral modification and medication. Behavioral modification for OCD might involve “exposure and ritual prevention,” where the person gradually is conditioned to let go of the anxiety associated with neglecting to go through their ritual behavior. The person might touch something only mildly “contaminated,” or might check the lock on their house only once when leaving, rather than going back and rechecking it. From there, the person is habituated to tolerate their anxiety in increments (touching something a little more “contaminated,” not checking a lock at all or only washing their hands once instead of repeatedly).

Other behavioral work has concentrated on “associative splitting” to reduce obsessive thoughts. It’s a concept that encourages neutral or positive associations in the network of OCD-related anxieties. For instance, a person who is obsessed with fire meaning “danger” or “destruction” might instead be steered towards thinking of fire as fireworks, fireflies, fireplaces, candlelight dinners, campfires or other pleasant associations.

The brain chemistry involved with OCD suggests using SSRI type drugs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) such as paroxetine, fluoxetine, escitalopram or tricyclic antidepressants such as clomipramine. SSRI’s block excess serotonin from being directed back into the original neuron that released it; instead, they bind serotonin to receptors of nearby neurons, sending chemical signals that can help head off anxiety and obsessive thinking. Some newer-generation antipsychotics have been found useful in treating OCD; paradoxically, some of these drugs have been seen to cause obsessive-compulsive symptoms in patients who didn’t have OCD before.

Some experimental drug treatments have been observed to act on serotonin and neurotransmitters:

· The naturally occurring sugar inositol

· Vitamin and mineral supplements (some believe that nutritional deficiencies contribute to OCD)

· Opioids such as morphine and synthetics such as tramadol. It’s not clear exactly how these work, but they sometimes rapidly alleviate OCD symptoms

· Psychedelics such as LSD and peyote

· Nicotine treatment (again, the jury is still out on this one)

· Anticholinergics, to head off the anti-dopaminergic effects of choline

Will I ever be myself again?

Although there is still a lot of research to be done on OCD, the last several years have seen significant advances. Medical science has gone a long way towards understanding the biological roots of OCD; between treating the root causes and readjusting the behaviors of the OCD sufferer, many with OCD (and many with related anxiety disorders) have been able to go back to leading a fairly normal, routine life again.

Please Share with your friends

Nature is Against You

While your mind can be your biggest ally in your struggle to lose weight, it can also sabotage your efforts in ways you might not even know about. It can be quietly working in the background subconsciously, undoing all the good you do consciously. There are a lot of physiological and psychological factors that make us want to eat, and understanding these, and learning how to counteract them are paramount to losing weight.

Before you try any diet, consider the following:

• Your body is designed to process food efficiently. That means that your body naturally regulates your metabolism to be quick when you have a lot of food, and slow when you don’t have as much.
• No amount of willpower will make you not want fatty and refined foods. The mind is hardwired by evolution to want these things, because they translate into easy, quick energy. Celery, on the other hand, requires a lot more work for the body to get nutrients from.
• It’s common to resist physical activity. The mind is telling you not to work out, because it means you will be using up energy to no purpose. Your brain is trying to tell you to save that energy in case you need to hunt, or run from a predator.
• Cleanse and Flush diets aren’t doing anything that your body is not doing already. We have a liver, kidneys, and a pancreas to flush out toxins for us.
• The mind closely associates food with comfort, because plentiful food is an indicator of security. It’s common to eat food in order to feel safe and comfortable.

The mind gets its cues from your genes

Your mind also tends to trick you into eating with hormones and chemicals. A diet high in fatty and highly processed foods works in much the same way a drug might. An injection of, for example, highly refined flours and sugars in a piece of cake will cause your blood sugar to spike, and will also cause a release of Dopamine, which your body translates as a small high. When you come down from that high, you become depressed, which will cause you to want to eat more fatty processed foods in order to get that feeling again. To fight this kind of cycle, willpower alone just won’t cut it. Find a way to remove yourself from these situations. Don’t keep these foods at home, or make it difficult to go get them (for example, by parking your bike behind you car, so that going out to grab fast food will require moving it, or just taking the bike.) You can also fight this by keeping yourself distracted in an activity, like playing a video game, or working on a hobby project.

The mind can tempt you to eat when you don’t need to in several ways. One of the biggest self-defeating culprits is rationalization. It’s that voice in your head that says, “This one piece of candy won’t hurt; you’ve been working out so regularly!” or “Go ahead and have that extra serving of dinner…you did an extra half mile on the treadmill this morning!” And the worst part of rationalization is, that it usually works. Your mind is making you fat, and you don’t even know it.

One way to avoid the rationalization pitfalls (and the guilt that usually accompanies it) is to set more realistic goals for yourself. If you’ve put yourself on a strict diet and exercise regime, for instance, go ahead and build in a few rewards for yourself. Having a predetermined reward as a goal to shoot for sets your mind up to build up towards the end game, to not have to “cheat” to get what it wants anyway. Say you’re on the treadmill for an hour a day, with a limited calorie diet to look forward to every day for the next few months. Try working in a day a month where you get to go off-diet, even just a little, as a reward for the consistent effort you have put in all the other days. If your mind doesn’t feel like it’s cheating, you’ll avoid the guilt that might also be making you fat. Guilty eating as a result of bad work/rewards ratios is as difficult a problem to overcome as the overeating in general. No matter what is at work in your brain putting food in your mouth that is not healthy for you or is making you fat, you can counteract the effects by making more positive decisions on goal-making.

Another hurdle to fairly easily overcome is that of “self-talk.” That’s where you tell yourself negative things like, “You’ll never lose the weight; you’re too fat” or “You can’t do this because you’re worthless.” The mind trick here is to stop the talk in its tracks. If you hear negative talking in your head, you say to yourself, “I would not let a stranger say these things to me, therefore, I do not have permission to say them to myself.” It is positive reinforcement towards your self-image that can play an important role in not only helping you to keep working at your weight loss, but at life in general. A positive mental attitude will help with your confidence and ability to make more healthy decisions for you. If you think that you deserve to feel better and look better, then your chances of making exactly that happen are greatly improved.

Remember, forgive yourself for mistakes, set more realistic goals and don’t let your mind sabotage your good intentions.

Please Share with your friends

Do you really wanna know what I think?

It may be hard to believe, but those dirty words you’ve been told all your life are bad are actually good for you.  Ever stub your toe and let loose with a barrage of cussing that would make a sailor blush?  Ever cut your finger and immediately unleash a demonic onslaught of curse words that would make your mother cry?  A recent study suggests that because of the link between curse words and emotional response, the release of dropping an F-bomb might just help you cope with pain better.  It turns out, it might even ease pain to let loose with curse words when you’re wounded.

Brought about by one of the researchers noticing that his wife let loose with long bursts of cussing during childbirth, he was interested in learning if such utterances actually helped ease the pain of birthing a baby.

Scientists gathered a group of study participants and formulated an experiment to seek answers to just that question.  The study was conducted by asking participants to write down five words they might use after striking their thumb with a hammer.  Of these five words, people who used their favorite pejorative as a mantra after receiving a painful stimulus (holding their hands in icy water for as long as possible) were able to withstand that pain for a greater length of time.  Not only were they able to withstand pain for a longer time, but they reported decreased perception of pain.  They were not able to take the painful stimulus as long while repeating a more benign word than their cuss word of choice.

I am so tired of repeating myself!

The study also found that women are more affected by the release offered by cussing than men, showing elevated heart rates more often than men.  Women indicated a larger drop in perceived pain after experiments with holding their hands in cold water and cussing.  This is believed to be because of the fact that in general, women curse less.  Also, the study seems to indicate that cussing might signal the start of a flight-or-fight response in women, raising endorphins and heart-rate, allowing women to be able to tolerate or ignore pain better.

From a scientific standpoint, swearing is a fascinating subject that is certain to be studied more.  Its benefit for pain relief and tolerance open a number of doors towards lessening the need for pharmacological aids, for one thing.  From a strictly moral standpoint, however, it doesn’t seem that cussing is going to become the norm any time soon.

The connection between cursing and pain relief is certainly unclear, and many more studies will be required before researchers fully understand the phenomenon.  It also raises questions such as why do we curse?  When did it start?  Why is it socially unacceptable, and has it ever been acceptable?  Certainly, researchers are discovering that curse words, as opposed to “normal” words, are capable of eliciting responses from the right, emotional side of the brain.  According to the scientists, the emotional response brought about by cursing is certainly worth further exploration.

Please Share with your friends