Botox and Emotions

It's been a while since I read something truly innovative and interesting, worth posting here. What this article is referring to is the brain-body-emotion feedback loop between the facial muscles and the emotion centers of the brain. -jd

It turns out that Botox can actually short circuit a person’s ability to feel unhappy. Because of the apparent validation of something called the, “Facial Feedback Hypothesis”, the fact that Botox prevents frowning… also short circuits one’s ability to fully feel the emotions associated with it.

David Havas of the University of Wisconsin-Madison decided to study people who had received Botox treatments that paralyzed one pair of their corrugator muscles, which cause the forehead to constrict into a frown.

The idea was to see whether Botox affected the ability to feel certain emotions.

He had 40 volunteers who were planning to be Botoxed in two weeks read statements with particular emotional charge segmented into three categories:

Angry (”the pushy telemarketer won’t let you return to your dinner”)
Sad (”you open your e-mail inbox on your birthday to find no new e-mails”),
Happy (”the water park is refreshing on the hot summer day.”).

After reading each sentence, the volunteers pushed a button to indicate they had understood it.

Then, two weeks after their Botox injections, they repeated the exercise, reading and understanding another list of emotion-producing sentences. The volunteers pressed the “I’ve read and understood this” button just as quickly when the sentence conveyed something happy.

But when it conveyed something infuriating or unhappy… people took longer to read and understand it.

The emotions simply did not compute as easily as before their sadness and anger muscles were paralyzed.

“Normally, the brain would be sending signals to the periphery to frown, and the extent of the frown would be sent back to the brain,” UW-Madison professor emeritus of psychology Arthur Glenberg (and Havas’s adviser) said in a statement.

“But here, that loop is disrupted, and the intensity of the emotion and of our ability to understand it when embodied in language is disrupted.”

The research is part of a exciting field called “embodied cognition,” which posits that all our cognitive processes are rooted in, and reflected in, the body. I think this is very interesting.

Some very interesting questions come to mind if this is replicated. Can we simply paralyze certain expressions out of existence? Can we simulate “happy” expressions somehow in order to help people experience deeper levels of happiness?

This also seems to demonstrate just how complicated our emotional lives are. It kind of flies in the face of the notion that all you have to do is think yourself into certain states of being - it appears you need a body that can cooperate!

Anyway, I would love to know what you think about this! Please do comment.

*source: University of Wisconsin

http://exploringthemind.com/botox-and-emotions/
Copyright 2010 Exploring The Mind! - All Rights reserved.

Food Fun: Brussels Sprouts

I have been eating more Brussels sprouts lately, and found this handy Wiki-How article on a few different ways to prepare them with more taste enjoyment. One of the keys to cooking this tasty vegetable that is not really a baby cabbage but looks like one, is to cut into the stem end, or cut up the sprout. My mother used to cook them whole/uncut and there is a fine line between done and over-done with a whole uncut sprout!

How to Lessen the Strong Taste of Brussels Sprouts

Earlier Bedtimes May Fight Teen Depression

Teens Who Regularly Sleep 5 or Fewer Hours Are 71% More Likely to Report Depression
By Bill Hendrick
WebMD Health News
Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD

Jan. 1, 2010 -- Adolescents whose parents set earlier bedtimes are significantly less likely to suffer from depression or have suicidal thoughts compared to youngsters who hit the sack later, new research indicates.

Youngsters in the study whose parents set bedtimes of midnight or later were 24% more likely to suffer from depression and 20% more apt to have thoughts of suicide, compared to youngsters with bedtimes of 10 p.m. or earlier, researchers report in the Jan. 1 issue of the journal SLEEP.

This suggests sufficient sleep may offer youngsters some protection from depression and thoughts of suicide, the researchers say.

Adolescents who reported they usually sleep five or fewer hours per night were 71% more likely to report depression, and 48% more likely to have thoughts of committing suicide, compared to young people reporting eight hours of sleep nightly, the study shows.

"Our results are consistent with the theory that inadequate sleep is a risk factor for depression," says study researcher James E. Gangwisch, PhD, of Columbia University Medical Center in New York.

He and his colleagues collected data on 15,659 adolescents and their parents who had participated in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a school-based sample of students in seventh to 12th grades, between 1994 and 1996.

The researchers found that:

* The average sleep duration was 7 hours and 53 minutes. The researchers note that adolescents need 9 hours of sleep daily.
* Nearly 70% of youngsters said they went to bed at a time that complied with the weeknight limit set by their parents.

The researchers say lack of sleep may produce moodiness that hinders the ability to cope with stresses of daily life, harming relationships with peers and adults. They say educating adolescents and their parents about the benefits of healthier sleep practices may be beneficial.

The researchers conclude that parents of adolescents should set earlier bedtimes to make sure their teens get adequate sleep.

One of the researchers, Gary K. Zammit, PhD, of Columbia, reported receiving research support from GlaxoSmithKline and other pharmaceutical companies. He also disclosed he has financial interests in two companies involved in sleep research.

SOURCES:
News release, American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

Gangwisch, J. SLEEP,2010; vol 33.
© 2010 WebMD, LLC. All rights reserved.
WebMD does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. See additional information.

Prayer/Meditation, Dalai Lama

May the poor find wealth,
Those weak with sorrow find joy.
May the forlorn find new hope,
Constant happiness and prosperity.

May the frightened cease to be afraid,
And those bound be free.
May the weak find power,
And may their hearts join in friendship.

Taken from, 'An Open Heart' (2001)

Happy New Year, Welcome 2010!!!

Different yet the same

Take some time today
to celebrate your uniqueness
while honoring our Oneness.

~Theresa Rose

Rekindle your spirit

A recipe from the Institute of HeartMath
to rekindle your
spirit for the holidays:

Into your heart, pour generous quantities of love and
care. Stir gently and sincerely. If the mixture is lumpy,
add compassion and forgiveness and continue stirring ’til
the lumps are dissolved. You may find bubbles of hope
rising to the surface. Taste-testing at this point is
encouraged. Although you will find the mixture already
flavorful, you can enhance it by adding appreciation.
Appreciation for the qualities of your heart, for friends
and family, or for this special time of year are all excellent
flavor choices. Garnish with a sprig of joy and serve in
large spoonfuls to everyone you meet this holiday season.

"The holidays are a good time to renew your heart connection with people. Make that your focus and priority. Spend more time enjoying people and their holiday spirit and it can help rekindle your holiday spirit. A great way you can enjoy more of the holiday spirit is by keeping your focus on genuinely appreciating and caring for others. Ask yourself each morning, "Who can I show a little more appreciation to, or who can I express more genuine care for today?" It can be as simple as opening the door for someone or telling people that you appreciate them. Genuine gestures of care and appreciation are often remembered long after the holiday glitter is gone. You’ll find this is a fun gift for others and a big gift to yourself."

– Excerpts from Tips To Prevent Holiday Stress And Avoid Faking The Holiday Spirit article,
Huffington Post Dec. 2009 by Doc Childre and Deborah Rozman, Ph.D.

Be mindful about your "bad" habits

I thought you might enjoy these remarks by Theresa Rose, after the rather heavy downer about sugar I posted today! jd

If you have a particular vice -- smoking cigarettes, drinking wine, eating chocolate, watching reruns of Beverly Hills 90210 -- I encourage you to perform them consciously. Sure, some of our choices are healthier than others, but don't let anyone or anything convince you that you are wrong, weird, or broken because you do them. You aren't; you're only human. Perform every activity guilt-free, even the so-called "bad" ones. Just consider the reasons why you have chosen to do them.

Theresa Rose, Daily MoJo 12/11/09
Serious Mojo Publications | P.O. Box 390373 | Edina | MN | 55439

Sugar Overload at the Holidays??

Understanding How Sugar Kills
Dr Clark Store and Self Health

Sugar is everywhere around us, in every festivity such as Christmas.

It’s common for a person to consume 150 lbs of sugar in one year. The more sugar we eat, the sicker we get. Soon, sugar becomes a necessity and we do everything to get it. Many of us are sugar addicts, a socially accepted addiction.

Eating too much sugar, in different ways causes diseases such as coronary artery disease. It causes constant lower back pain as it depletes minerals in our body. Too much sugar causes us to lose minerals such as calcium, magnesium and others that are needed for good bone health.

Here is how it works
Minerals empower enzymes stored in your body. When the minerals are out of balance the enzymes can’t fully digest the food you eat. Dr. Nancy Appleton, a leading health advocate and author of numerous books and DVDs on sugar, claims “You may cause mineral imbalances by eating too much sugar”. As stated on her great documentary Sweet Suicide, “Eating too much sugar throws our minerals out of balance and this robs our enzymes the ability to break down the food into nutrients. So particles of undigested food pass through our intestinal walls to the blood stream, where they don’t belong. They body sees them as toxins and summons the immune system to send out white blood cells”. Our body is not designed to be fighting emergencies all the time!

So, if we keep consuming a lot of sugar, our blood cells simply give up. Our immune systems become depressed from fighting sugar-toxins in the blood and our body becomes toxic throughout. In this way we are leaving the door open for diseases such as diabetes, arthritis, obesity, chronic back pain, mental illness and heart disease to come in.

Sugar can even give rise to cancer, according to many doctors. Oxygen, which the body needs to have to stay healthy is reduced by depleted minerals. Without oxygen body fluids and organs become acidic and cells ferment the sugar lodged in the system resulting in cancer. Otto Warburg, Nobel Prize winner in 1930 and 1934 stated “The cause of cancer is the replacement of the respiration of oxygen in normal body cells by the fermentation of sugar”. I can "hear" you say it! “I will substitute sugar with healthy organic agave, maple syrup or honey”. Sorry! It will still have undesireable effect. They are less processed (less toxic) and assimilate slower but that’s about it. The best thing you can do is to eat less sugar, even if you eat purer and slower assimilating sugar!

Dr. [Hulda] Clark did not come out with clear guidelines on how much sugar is OK to consume, but she was adamant about securing sugar from countries other than the US. She used stevia, agave, raw sugar and maple syrup. She used sugar very sparingly. The average person eats 41 teaspoons (or 201 grams) of sugar per day. The nutritional fact boxes indicate how much sugar is in products, unfortunately though it is stated in grams when most of us think in terms of teaspoons.

Remember this: 4 grams = 1 teaspoons Max 8 grams = 2 teaspoons

Dr. Nancy Appleton warns that more than 8 grams or two teaspoons in the blood system at any given time begins affecting mineral balance and our ability to digest even healthful foods. So imagine the harmful effects of drinking an 8 oz glass of cranberry juice delivering 41 grams, more than 10 teaspoons of sugar. Now calculate how much sugar you ate for breakfast!

If you want to slow down your addiction to sugar consider chromium, to curb your appetite for sugar. Niacin may also help both your cardiovascular system and your craving for sugar.

from www.DrClarkStore.com, Dec. 2009 Newsletter