Sanjay's Self-Development Blog

Nicotine Addicts - Use This Spice To Alleviate Your Illnesses

2009-07-11T11:04:00.000-07:00

This Spice Can Stop Further Liver Damage
We all know how harmful nicotine is to health. The ubiquitous cigarette or pipe or bidi or cigar or whatever is your favorite smoking device, held to the lips, nowadays does not even conjure the image of the suave and dapper individual that films of yesteryears used to project. Today the image is anything but. The smokers know it too, of course, and despite that, stopping the hand from reaching out for that next puff is rather difficult. The body is no longer in one's control. That is what, after all, entrapping oneself to some addiction leads one to.

While research continues on a) how to get the tobacco smokers off their addiction, and b) how to genetically modify the tobacco itself to produce a more benign version --- it appears to be still some way off before a foolproof solution can be found that can guarantee 100% success in all cases. And while this research continues in the labs around the world, millions of human beings continue to merrily smoke their favorite brand, and correspondingly millions of precious livers continue to get perforated in this smoke. Till such time that some real breakthrough is obtained, can these livers be saved from further damage?

Turns out that this might not be an impossible task - of saving the smoked livers from further damage. Tobacco these days comes blended with a myriad variety of sweeteners and flavors. Researchers say there's one flavor that the addicts might do well to get hitched to. There is a whole bunch of papers published in peer-reviewed journals that points to the efficacy of this naturally-occurring pigment on restoring the liver to its original health. (And here is an article on the pigment, published earlier on this blog.) This pigment, in case you haven't clicked on the links already, is called curcumin, and is an important ingredient in a spice known as turmeric, grown in abundance in south-Asian countries, and used as a routine condiment in meal preparations in south-Asian homes.

Enterprising entrepreneurs amongst us might find it an attractive proposition to conduct a survey to find out whether anybody else has already brought a curcumin-filled cigarette filter in the market; and if not, then be the first off the mark to do so!

There is an interesting twist to the saga of nicotine addiction, and the application of curcumin to this twist is interesting too. Of late, a number of societies around the world have begun taking to a smoking device that originated in India centuries ago. Why and how it spread can be explained by the internet. Very slowly, an entire social culture and etiquette is building around this device. I am of course referring to the hookah, also known as Shisha or Nargeela or Argeela, depending on which community you are a product of or have come in touch with. Besides the languid glamour that has come to be associated with hookah, another (mis)conception that has added to its attractiveness is the notion that the nicotine loses some of its toxicity when it bubbles through boiling water, so you can still enjoy your high but with a reduced risk. Which, unfortunately is not true. This fad is growing to such an extent that niche cafes are springing up in the unlikeliest nooks and corners to cater to the fast growing clientele, the entire cuisine revolving around this ingenious contraption with burning coal in one container and water in another.

Cafes now offer hookahs with water laced in different flavors. Why not lace the water with curcumin? The interesting point is this: while it is confirmed that the boiling water makes no impact on tobacco's toxicity, it is confirmed that curcumin's extraordinary properties are further enhanced when it is mixed in water that is then boiled. The recipe suggested is to add 5mg of curcumin in every ml of water. Boiling the mix for ten minutes is all it takes for the contraption to turn from a liver-killer to a liver-saver.

So in case you are planning to launch the next hookah cafe in your town, you might consider adding curcumin-flavor to your menu-card, and tom-tom in the advertisement fliers about how your clientele's health-consciousness is your uppermost concern.

[Talking of health consciousness, here is an article that describes cultures whose inhabitants enjoy the best of health --- across generations, all because they are very conscious about it: "You've Entered The Blue Zone".]

Diabetics: Laugh And Be Inspired - Through Comic Strips

2009-07-01T06:06:00.000-07:00

Health Information, Delivered Humorously
Diabetics do not have it easy. While going through the daily humdrum of life, the mind keeps subconsciously scanning the newspapers, TV news, and whatever other information source available, for any breakthrough news about some cure for their condition. And when they are with friends and family, there is always somebody around with some sage piece of advice about how someone from some exotic land somewhere faraway has come up with this herb or that seed which has to be boiled in the oil extracted from snakes - of a certain color - that have just emerged from the cracks of their eggs. And the said concoction, if drunk at the stroke of midnight for three successive new moon nights, will provoke the pancreas to produce those juices that will balance the sugar level in the body. Some sage piece of advice this. But you get the idea.

Exasperated diabetics now have some funny stuff to tickle the rib. Soon, US-based newspaper readers will be able to get a daily dose of advice, laced in science and dabbed in humor, about prevention and treatment of the condition. (Online versions of these newspapers are available on the web too - some free, some paid.) This is courtesy Mr. Baldo Bermudez, the main character of the daily comic strip "Baldo" which is published in over 200 newspapers across the US.

The 15-year old teenager Baldo is soon going to realize that his dad, Sergio, is afflicted with diabetes. Poor Baldo thinks that it is he who has brought this condition on to his father with his mischief and antics. The boy and his sister Gracie will, in their typical tongue-in-cheek style, drive home the point about eating healthier, to pay more attention to physical exercise, to not succumb to bouts of sudden anger and intermittent sloth, and to try and remain calm and peaceful at all times.

The strip - published in English and Spanish - is a creation of Hector Cantu and Carlos Castellanos. The series on diabetes awareness, beginning June 30th, is an outcome of the duo's partnership with the National Alliance for Hispanic Health.

Looking at one's condition with humor in itself is a good therapy!

[While on the subject of diabetes, here is another angle to ponder and reflect upon: "Diabetes - Silent Killer? Or Awakener?".]

Luck By Chance

2009-06-23T07:31:00.000-07:00

Think Of Luck As Stable, Permanent, By Your Side Always
A dull, boring social gathering can be brought to animated life in very little time by throwing down the gauntlet of "whether success and fulfillment in life is obtained by 'luck' or by 'pluck'". It takes just one person to take a stand, to instigate some other person in the gathering to leap up to their feet and present a diametrically opposite stand, complete with their own anecdotal experiences and philosophy. For every human being who rose to the height of their aspirations by the sweat of their brow, there is another human being who won the lottery with a ticket that they had left behind in the back-pocket of their jeans when they shove it in the laundry machine. And usually, it takes a very tough moderator at the podium to ensure that the animation does not degenerate into mayhem.

The spectrum between believers of pluck and believers of luck is evenly distributed. People who believe in pluck think that one's actions directly affect one's outcomes. Period. But people who believe otherwise, think that there is this, the invisible Hand that guides destinies. And should the Hand so decide; the best of efforts and the most strident of actions will not fructify into the desired outcomes. And so this second set of people set forth to locate the Hand, and if that is an impossible goal, then at least to find ways and means to appease It. Taking a leaf out of the psychologist's book, the pluck-believers hold that the locus of control lies within them, while the luck-believers are open to the possibility of an "external" agency too controlling their destiny.

Nothing wrong with the doctrine of providence, which is what the belief in an external agency guiding one's destiny is. Everybody is walking on their own path of self-development, deserving all respect. The problem comes when we allow ourselves to be washed by circumstances away from the shore of our aspirations, when we succumb to the choppy waves of problems, and when we begin to drown in the sea of disaster and failure, moaning all the while that the Hand is no longer guiding us. We look at Luck as fleeting and impermanent. It is there for some of the time, and it "runs out" from time to time. This approach has a most unfortunate consequence of loss of persistence. The first sight of some problem, and we throw up our hands. Aw, Shucks! Luck is not by my side this time!

This particular category of luck-believers finds it hard to motivate themselves to not give up midway, but to exhaust all alternatives before concluding that there is really no way forward. And after acknowledging failure, this particular category finds it especially difficult to identify the problem in the core concepts of their thinking which led to failure in the first place, so that the core concepts can be reworked upon and the task begun afresh, in the same or a new avatar. Gradually, a pattern builds up which keeps recurring in all areas of their life, till a stage comes when such people give up taking all action and start leading a "vegetable" life of inaction. It is like a self-fulfilling prophecy, this belief in a) the concept of luck, and b) that luck is fleeting and impermanent. You can't get them to discard their favorite principle, but you also can't see them wither away. Then what do you do?

The key point here is the thought in the minds of some of the luck-believers that "luck is fleeting and impermanent". As self-developers, instead of taking any extreme-pole position of discarding the providence doctrine altogether, suppose we shift our thought from the fleeting and impermanence aspect of luck to one of luck being forever stable and forever permanent and forever on our side? Formulating this thought in the mind immediately leads us to strengthen our belief in ourselves. A confidence that, come what may, the victory cup is ours - grows in us. Faced with the choppy waves of problems, we will not succumb. We will not throw up our hands. Instead, armed with the "knowledge" that luck is by our side, we will be driven by the confidence that help is round the corner somewhere, and we have to "simply" seek it.

This eclectic approach has two advantages. One, the luck-believers do not have to root the doctrine of providence out from their value systems; usually ingrained by parents and seniors since childhood and therefore very difficult - if not plain impossible - to do so, and it is not required anyway. And two, they get to use the belief of a powerful, "supernatural agency" always being by their side to guide them at all times. If there is somebody you know who is leading a vegetable life of inaction because they fell prey to consistent bad luck, then - who knows? - this eclectic approach might transform them into a dynamo of action.

[Belief in oneself is the core driver for all successes. It is belief in the self that drove the pilot to successfully crash-land his plane on the surface of a lake so that everybody emerged unhurt and safe. Similarly, it is the belief in the self that drives a tiny little rail engine, entrusted with the task of freighting toys to the next station, to overcome all challenges and complete the mission. Would you like to read the inspiring story of this little blue engine? Here it is: "How Tillie Pulls Out Of The Avalanche".]

Getting A Ferrari By Wishing For One

2009-06-16T00:14:00.000-07:00

Critiquing The Principle Of "Ask, Believe, And Receive"
There has been a lull, of late, in news on the "Law of Attraction". There are no new websites being launched around this concept, on the contrary quite a number of sites set up with much fanfare, since Rhonda Byrne wrote her book, are quietly being shut down. It has been more than a year, if not more, since any of the gurus have made any fresh pronouncements on the matter. Spam mail senders too stopped flogging this law to entice me to make use of their services long ago, and have already reverted to informing me of the great fortune that has befallen me as some gullible innocent woman somewhere wants help to remove the treasure of her dead father or husband, and can she have my bank account details, please, where she can deposit the money?

Thanks to Ms. Byrne, several hundred careers got launched in the domain of self-development in these past three years. Suddenly, key words such as "ask, believe, receive", "attract abundance", "New Age" and of course "the secret" began being bandied about in the hip intellectual / semi-intellectual / pseudo-intellectual crowd at parties and social do's. Visiting cards proudly began proclaiming their owner's interest / expertise in the Law of Attraction. The book by Ms. Byrne began appearing on coffee tables in the drawing halls of houses of all economic strata, reminding the guests and visitors of the spiritual heights conquered by the dwellers. Never mind if even the first page has not yet been turned. Forums began being populated by discussion threads with members trying to outdo each other in their knowledge over the subject by quoting this or that author or expert, the discussion degenerating into slanging matches as it often happens.

Seminars began to be organized by "Gurus" who claimed to have known the concept of the LoA "much before Ms. Byrne discovered it". People began practicing before the mirror the "smile of serenity" that has come to stand for those who have imbibed the law in their style of living and tasted success, if not direct communion with The One Who Wrote The Law. A stage came when you could recognize these people from afar just by the wonderful smile of serenity they wore, and you would search for alleys to escape into before they could catch hold of you to listen to their profundities.

And websites, ah websites, that great vehicle for generating money 24X7, blossomed forth like lilies in spring. The same wonderful smile now came attached to a face which had a halo behind it, which we would like to believe was bestowed by The One Who Wrote The Law, but was most likely created using the latest version of Photoshop - "Give the halo a touch of sunny yellow at the periphery, Jonny" -. All their home pages beginning with a personal sad story, just like Byrne - and how they achieved their version of enlightenment and how they want to share their "new-found" knowledge with the rest of the world. In fact, some doctoral research student might find it immensely interesting to base their thesis on the subject of the websites created during the period 2006-2009, all clones of the "The Secret" theme.

Sensing the ebbing interest amongst consumers - if the seminar hall doesn't fill, then you end up paying for the hall's rent out of your own pocket; if the website doesn't generate money, then you end up paying for the site's rent from your own capital -, people did try to come out with mutants of the original LoA. "The things they hid from you in the film", "The second secret", "the untold secret"... grey cells went into overdrive coming out with the right turn of phrase that would keep them coming. However, every fashion has its expiry date; that is the Supreme Law of Nature; and the fashion of Law of Attraction is no exception. This is why the lull in the news about this New Age principle.

Now that the hype and the hoopla about the "Law" has all but died down, this might just be the right time, to dust the books and the material that got collected over these past three years and give them a relook. To blow away that which is fluff; and focus on that which is solid. To dip under the bonnet, so to speak, and understand which domain of knowledge this law fits in, what its axioms are, what its scope of operation is and where its limitations lie. It is sad when somebody launches a brilliant discourse on LoA, and recites entire passages from this or that author's work, but who grapples for words when they are simply asked to place the subject in perspective within the Body of Knowledge accumulated by mankind. Instead of being lulled by the beautiful quotes and sayings of the self-styled gurus and experts, it will do a lot of good if we reflect on how this "law" might have impacted one's own life in subtle ways already. And work out how we can use the principle to shape the quality of our thoughts.

[It is great to know that there exists a Law, called the "Law of Attraction", which governs our thinking. But is that the only law? Does this law fully and comprehensively explain all that there is to know about how Life functions in this Universe? Is this the only principle that one can base one's thoughts upon? As this article explains, there are several instances around us which the LoA does not explain, because they fall outside the scope of its operation: "The Law Of Attraction Is Not Enough!". Read, and reflect!]

Focusing On Happiness And Fulfillment

2009-06-08T01:23:00.000-07:00

Living Life Positively Psychologically
Mankind has been wrestling with, since Time immemorial, issues and questions about itself and about the Universe. We know that some of the questions have been answered, and that there are many more whose answers continue to elude.

Of these unanswered are some very deeply profound questions, such as "Who Am I?", "Whence I Came?", "What I Am Doing Versus What Am I Supposed To Be Doing?", "Where Shall I Go, Or What Shall I Be, After Death?", "What Came First - Chicken Or Egg" - which continue to jog the minds of philosophers and intellectuals, and which apparently will continue to do so for some more time to come. We are all waiting for that one out-of-the-box, ground-breaking idea or thought to rise in some ripened mind somewhere on this earth, a thought which has non-dogmatic foundations, and which will give a clue to the underpinnings of Life in general.

Leaving the eggheads to their devices while they wrestle with these profound issues, we ordinary mortals are happy if we keep receiving continued assurance that we live in a benign universe that has brought us to this planet and plunked us right in the midst of a family and / or community, not to heap on us hardship and strife and shortage and sorrow, but to make us feel happy and contented. This basic psychological need - that there is Someone or Somebody who is taking care of us -, is what drives the devout and the religious and the non-atheists amongst us in droves to our places of worship on designated days. The communion we seek to establish with an entity - who we have been conditioned since early childhood to look upon as our savior - in those silent, calm moments in the place of worship is sometimes the only bright stretch of time in an otherwise bleak day.

The past decade or so has witnessed a sea-change in our thinking about how we lead our lives. More specifically, this change has occurred in our view about how we view our lives - some sort of a "meta-view". While we have always been alert, since the ancient times, about what we think and why we think what we think and how our thoughts can impact our sense of happiness and fulfillment, it is thanks to the internet and a shrinking world that the body of knowledge on the entity called "mind" has been unlocked from the ivory tower of intellectualism and brought to the mainstream of human consciousness.

And, thanks to newly evolving knowledge such as positive psychology - of which self-development and self-help are a part, including this blog and this article that you are reading right at this moment -, the bright stretches of time have lengthened, and can easily cover the entire day to wipe away all bleakness, if we want to. Positive Psychology gives us the ability to look at our problems constructively, without suppressing them or repressing them or brushing them away beneath the proverbial carpet. This body of knowledge helps us to root ourselves firmly in the one singular thought that happiness and fulfillment are our birthright. While circumstances may conspire to give us some very bad times, it is ultimately the thoughts that we harbor in the mind that make all the difference. It is ultimately how we react to the circumstances that influences our sense of happiness. This is not self-delusion or fantasizing, but a "conscious" decision that we make that nothing, but nothing, should disturb our peace of mind.

Ever since the then President of the American Psychological Association chose positive psychology as the theme of his term as President in 1998, this body of knowledge has witnessed explosive growth. June 2009, 18th to 21st, will see the first "World Congress" on Positive Psychology being organized in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Here is where you can register for the event, and learn for yourself how you can keep your waking - as well as dreaming - hours bright and cheerful, despite the negativity of the situations you are in: http://ippanetwork.org/wcpp/world-congress.html.

[Thoughts have a way of tiptoeing into our mind when least expected. Every so often, the mind wanders to the past, analyzing incidents and events that appeared to be very insignificant and trivial at that point, but later turned out to have life-changing impact. It is but natural to be wistful. How we wish that we had acted or reacted differently from what we did! Usually, the line of thinking begins with two innocuous words, but which this article says are the two most dangerous words that can drag our mind back into the valley of emptiness and loss: "Two Most Dangerous Words To Beware".]

Men Live Sicker And Die Younger

2009-05-31T04:28:00.000-07:00

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The Son, The Brother, Lover, Husband, The Father,... Need To Visit The Physician More Often

It is a fact of life - men die younger and earlier than that other gender. Also, a bigger gaggle of diseases simultaneously make the bodies of men their home, than they do the females, from head to toe and across all organ systems. Of the top ten causes of death, men die at higher rates in nine. And this is true for not only the yang of the Homo sapiens species, but also for the yang of all the species Created by Him / Her / It on this planet Earth. For all his outward posturing of machismo and brawn, the creature from Mars is a very, very vulnerable creature indeed.

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* The Duke Nukem character in a computer game, wiki. Young lads enjoy the exploits of this hyper-masculine, egotistical, machismo-filled womanizer, as he goes about killing aliens that have invaded Earth. For the time they are playing the game, these boys feel as if they are Duke Nukem incarnate themselves! Well, what do these boys know! That deep down, despite his outward invincibility, their perpetually sneering smart-mouth hero is so vulnerable, and that he will fall on earth earlier than the buxom women he is surrounded by.
There must be something about the male's chemistry that makes him so vulnerable. What is it about the strong, aggressive, go-getter spermatozoon that causes it to decay and die earlier than the passive ovum? Perhaps it is his strength that paradoxically becomes his weakness? Metaphysical and philosophical pondering apart, it is also an observed fact that men do not see physicians for a physical exam as often as women do, which means preventive action, in time, is almost invariably bypassed. Somewhere on the way of growing up, it perhaps gets drilled into the male psyche that to suffer silently, to maintain a stiff upper-lip, is the sign of the perfect male.

The process of growing up for the typical male is also fraught with confusion and contradictions. Somewhere in this process he learns that he has to be good at table manners, and that he has to be particularly careful that he scratches his belly and touches his organ and gives himself the permission to burp without inhibition, only when no one is looking, especially when the female of the species is not around and not looking. He often finds himself in the crossfire of advice from peers about what image to project: should I keep the hair carelessly tousled, or should I comb them neatly back?

And as he grows up, he finds himself having to learn the fine balance required between social grace and aggression which will help win the mate who makes his heart stop and his knees weak. Competition for a mate has become more gentlemanly since the time of the caveman, who just had to smash the rival's head and drag the woman to the nearest cave -- and never mind what the woman thinks about him. To behave like a statesman with the lady or to genuflect and go down on all fours? To play Don Quixote or to be the Don Juan? To be a saint, or to be an all-out sinner, and who's worried about where it will lead to? Dating forums are full of questions from anxious Adonises - aged from teenage fourteen to very adult sixty - on appropriate behavior.

The transition to adulthood begins with a new competition: this time for resources. Resources that will help him set up his house - the four room house with a lawn in the front and a car in the garage -, resources that will help him pay his bills on time every time, resources that he can safely stash away when the time comes for him to hang those boots. The male warrior spends his entire lifetime in this ultimate battleground where he fights to gather and loot as much of the resources as possible, from the world, in as short a time. It is this battleground where he also begins to play host to the gaggle of diseases we were talking about earlier. The cultural drilling of deferring the visitation with the physician till it becomes absolutely necessary, doesn't help, either.

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'Two U.S. marines competing in a match' - wiki. To display any emotion that betrays anything less than un-manly is absolutely not done, in some cultures. What will the other tribesmen say?
After this competition is through, the man faces the next competition: the competition for status. To be known and respected by peers. The next higher rung on Maslow's ladder. Somewhere deep within the now-oozing-now-ebbing testosterones, the urge to be given some sort of a testimonial of a Life Well-Lived. Depending on the resources garnered during the lifetime, the urge may range from having his own statue erected in some Hall of Fame somewhere, to getting a street square - or an entire village if possible, why not - named after him, to setting up a Trust or a Foundation with a dignified-looking logo, to engaging some ghostwriter who will write the memoirs, to getting his photo on the front-page of some high-profile magazine, to getting some award or prize from some society or organization comprising other distinguished peers, to... well it all depends on how big the ego has ballooned till that point of time.

Competition for mates; competition for resources; competition for status --- tell me, with an entire lifetime spent in nothing but competing, is it any surprise that this creature gets to die before time?

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* 'Death of Adonis' - by Luca Giordano, wiki.
Ladies! If you have a male in your life in whatever form - be he a granddad, a father, an uncle, a brother, lover, husband, soul-mate, a son, or a grandson -, despite their I-can-take-care-of-myself act, deep inside they crave your love and care, and you know that, don't you, and so it might do this fellow a world of good if you discreetly find out when it was last that he visited the physician for his checkup. June is observed as Men's Health Month, and if you are in the U.S., June 15-21 is observed as National Men's Health Week --- you might want him to benefit. A male who is healthy is, you will no doubt agree, always good to have around. And go careful around the male ego, please. The balloon is very delicate and tender, and even the hint of a needle can prick it.

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Wear Blue logo - Men's Health Awareness.
[While on the subject of males and competition, it is interesting to see the spirit of competition alive and kicking even on the deathbed. Two friends, the best of pals from childhood, compete with each other for one last race: who gets to embrace death first. Read this poignant short story here: "The Newspaper Is Put To This Use, Too".]

Impulsive? Reactive? Aggressive? Get These Biomarkers Tested

2009-05-22T21:30:00.000-07:00

New Research Points The Way To Bring Aggression Under Control
You see that man in the crowd in the corner? Actually, you don't need to see him, you can hear him. His voice tears through the fabric of the hubbub like a sharp knife. Even a half-dozing person can sense the acidic aggression dripping from his body language. As if gearing up for a fight. Provoking the others to provoke him back. And here, look at this man, in this corner, slouching and sulking. But no, his face does not show that he is sulking - it looks as if he wants to blend in with the wall; he wants to become part of the brick-and-paint work.

Social withdrawal and aggression are two extremes of the scale of social behavior. And as with all extremes, both these social-behavior traits are potentially harmful for the individual concerned. Whether you are in a family setting, a workplace setting, or a peer friendship setting, your behavior trait is like an aura around you, whose shine helps others decide how to approach you and interact with you. Somewhere in the process of growing up, we mix our DNA blueprint with our life-experiences and build this aura. This aura both protects us from any "threat" - physical and emotional - as well as also shackles us, for we rarely if ever step out of it.

Social aggression - of the intense kind - is known to fall into two types: Reactive, which is impulse-prone and emerges as a rebound reaction to stress; and Instrumental, which is totally preplanned, premeditated, and has no ingredient of emotion. While reactive aggression is normally found in the average Joe and Jane, instrumental aggression is the stuff that people who James Bond meets during the course of duty are made of.

Outcomes of the latest research appear to suggest that the chemicals that seemingly dictate both these types of social aggression have been identified. What are these chemicals? They say that our behavior is modulated by two chemicals: testosterone and cortisol. A study conducted on 103 teenage boys in a delinquency diversion program has found that overt aggressive behavior is found when the testosterone is high and the cortisol is low. People with high testosterone levels pay more attention to cues that can instigate confrontation. However, a correspondingly high level of cortisol counterbalances the urge to surge forward, for it instills the elements of fear and self-protection, and to some degree, empathy.

An article published in the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry (available online here) takes one step further and suggests that the ratio of testosterone:cortisol be computed. When this ratio is high, then all bets are off, and it does not matter whether the aggression is reactive or instrumental or whatever. Such people are, in the words of the article-writers, a clear "danger to society". How high is "high"? Work is still in progress on this.

The solution to handling aggression? The article-writers suggest that appropriate therapy be worked out which rectifies the imbalance between testosterone and cortisol levels in the body. May be a time will come when people can walk into the local lab and get their aggression levels tested. Based on the testosterone:cortisol ratio, they might be prescribed injections, to be administered once or twice a week for four weeks and then come back for a follow-up test. Law enforcers - and James Bond too - will carry a tranquilizer kit to handle people they encounter in their line of duty.

[While waiting for the good doctors to develop those injections and pills, it might be a good idea to include in your regimen a perfectly-natural therapy that automatically restores and maintains the balance between the testosterone and cortisol levels. Here is one article that explains what this therapy is all about: "Workshop On Meditation - Exercising The Muscles Of The Mind".]

Sleepless? Here's A New Way To Detect Why

2009-05-13T02:30:00.000-07:00

A New Battery Of Tests Pinpoint More Accurately The Underlying Reasons

Do you remember "Sleepless in Seattle"? The 1993 movie starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan? The movie where the young son calls into a Radio Advice Show about how he wants a Momma for himself and a wife for his dad, and how his dad doesn't sleep in the night because he misses the wife who died from cancer? Who would forget how Annie weeps as she listens to Sam Baldwin talk about the woman who is no longer in his life? Sam's story of sleeplessness becomes famous in the community of the show's listeners, and lands him the mail from Annie the journalist that brings them to the Empire State Building. As the three - Sam, Annie and Jonah - go down the lift of the building in the denouement scene, one can only assume that Annie will cure Sam's sleeplessness. My oh my, some people get very beautiful solutions to their problems!

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* 'Sleepless in Seattle' - original film poster, wiki.
The complex neurocircuitry which closes the eyes and shuts down all the mechanisms in the body to bring the body to a state we all know as "Sleep" - is essentially a network of neurons that lies immersed in a cauldron of fluids that the brain keeps secreting time and again. During our lifetime, we go through a sleep/wake, sleep/wake, sleep/wake cycle which has a delicate rhythm of its own. It is the function of these fluids to regulate this rhythm. When this rhythm is disturbed, we experience what Sam Baldwin experienced - insomnia. The list of reasons why this rhythm can get disturbed is still in the process of being updated. Genetic and environmental factors figure in this list, as does stress.

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* The Neurotransmitter Link, courtesy NeuroScience, Inc.
Different factors can disturb the level of different fluids in the cauldron; say factor X increases this chemical while factor Y decreases that neurotransmitter, but their net outcome is the same: insomnia. So when a patient sits before the clinician moaning about how they couldn't sleep last night, the doctor has to sift through these factors, eliminating one-by-one the most improbable and zeroing down to the main culprit. Which factor is doing what damage? What chapter in the patient's life-story has had the most impact on the cauldron? And so therefore, out of the vast array of therapies that can be prescribed, exactly which therapeutic intervention will rectify the imbalance? The sifting through the factors and the elimination of the improbable has always been a tedious process, with a high-enough chance that the prescription the good doctor scribbles might be something less than the best, the most-optimum solution.

Well, if the son had called into the show today, the psychologist might in all probability advice the son to subject his dad to a newly-launched non-invasive lab test that measures not one, not two but a dozen bio-markers that give a pretty good snapshot of the imbalances in the body's hormones and neurotransmitters that are behind sleep regulation. Armed with the snapshot, the clinician might then be able to prescribe a more optimal therapy that is just right for Sam. And emerging from the therapy would be a much better Sam, who would have taken more seriously his son's advice to go meet Annie on the top of the Empire State Building on Valentine's Day, instead of wasting time with somebody who was proving to be a compromise choice anyway.

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* Scene from the movie 'Sleepless in Seattle' - Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Ross Malinger, film.Virtual-history.com.
And what is this newly-launched non-invasive lab test? It is part of a medical protocol called NeuroSLP, launched by NeuroScience, Inc. Here is the site where you can find further details about this new protocol: http://www.neurorelief.com/neuroslp.

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* Stained neuron, wiki.
Research of course is a never-ending process. So it is quite possible that as you read this, a thirteenth and the fourteenth biomarker too is on the way, to make the diagnosis even more accurate. Since you and I don't have anybody waiting for us on the top of the Empire State Building, sigh, let's hope that the new trick in medical trade will make the good doctor prescribe an appropriate enough therapy that will help get us a good night's sleep.

[While insomniacs struggle to find a cure to their condition, here is one situation where people have reported going to sleep when performing a particular task: "I Go To Sleep Whenever I Try to Meditate".

On a different note, are you a Nora-Ephron-Tom-Hanks-Meg-Ryan fan? Then you will enjoy reading this article on another of this gang's movies - "Don't cry, Shopgirl". Which movie does this article talk about? The article title is a giveaway!]

When Intimacy Turns Violent

2009-05-03T08:06:00.000-07:00

It Is The Wife-Battering Gene That Is The Cause
When the courtship stages take their predictable route and end up in marriage, it is but natural to presume that the happy times will continue to roll on. In some cases they do. But in some other cases, the mask of gentility and love begins to slip away very soon, and the beast within begins to emerge. And not necessarily only on nights of the full moon or the eclipses. The husband or intimate partner begins to reveal a side of his personality which he had so carefully hidden during those wonderful courtship days, which if the then-fiancee-and-now-wife/intimate-partner were to know then, she would have run away! And thus begins a saga of what is nowadays euphemistically called "Intimate Partner Violence", IPV for short.

Like the swine flu, IPV does not discriminate against race or skin-color, and affects wives and intimate partners across all cultures and continents with equal impartiality. A study conducted in ten countries covered 24,000 women, and the reasons that emerged give a peek into the spectrum of the wife-beater's psychopathology: from physically forcing sexual intercourse to insisting on knowing where she was at all times to getting angry because she spoke to another man to demanding more dowry to .... In fact, an entire journal dedicated exclusively to IPV is now in its fifteenth year of publication in 2009: Violence Against Women: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal.

'Violence Against Women: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal' - brought out by Sage Publications.
And to think that the husbands project such a genteel, civilized image of themselves when out of the house! The friendly wave to the neighbors and the chitchat with the colleagues, the staring at the floor while being given the dressing-down by the boss - it is hard to imagine what comes over him when he returns to the house and to the wife.

Another pattern that has been consistently found is that the beastly streak comes out in its full force when the wife is pregnant. It is a mystery that has baffled sociologists, psychologists and mental health researchers alike. The sight of the progressively swelling abdomen stirs something in the male soul. Intellectuals brush aside the idea that the increased incidence of violence during pregnancy is due to frustration arising out of limited sexual intercourse opportunities. After all, the male ego gets a huge boost as the crown of fatherhood is the best possible evidence of his virility, so possible pregnancy termination due to violence will actually puncture the balloon, will it not? Then, why? Does the male choose to use the three trimesters to assert himself, to re-proclaim his control over the relationship, and to remind the woman of her dependency on him during those emotionally vulnerable times? Or is it simply that it is only when women happen to visit healthcare centers for their routine pregnancy checkup that IPV incidentally comes to light, which otherwise would have remained hidden?

Depending on the culture they are embedded in, women themselves consider violence as an accepted part of married life. In fact, if the day passes by without assault, they worry and fuss over the poor husband, wondering if he is unwell or down with the flu or something. There is certain "learned helplessness" about these battered wives which prevents them from seeking legal redress or counsel. And it certainly doesn't help when the laws of the country do not have any provision for reporting and handling of IPV specifically. It is no surprise, therefore to find women being kicked around by husbands. And to find the women wrap themselves around the same legs that kicked them, begging to be "forgiven", promising that they will be "sweet" and do their "Master's bidding".

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The Battered Woman: Lenore E. Walker, Amazon.com. The phrase "learned helplessness" comes from this book.
There must be something in the male DNA, the portion that is the 'Y', which defines the male make-up, and which drives him to behave the way he does with the wife / intimate partner. If this something can be detected in advance, a helluva lot of problems can be solved before they crop up. If only governments would set aside some funds for scientists to come up with male-centric tests for the man who is in the market for marriage. There are two suggestions for these tests. One test will give a "PIPV Rating", short for "Proneness to Intimate Partner Violence Rating" which will have a scale from 0 to 10. A 0 (Zero) will indicate a genteel personality, who will not even raise their voice, let alone their hand-or-leg-or-whatever, in anger. A 10 will mean a RED ALERT marker, to STAY AWAY!!! The man may be good only for romance, but is definitely not husband material.

And the second test will give a "PVDP Rating", which is short for "Proneness to Violence During Pregnancy", which too will be on a scale from 0 to 10. A 0 (Zero) will indicate a loving, caring personality that will remain angelic throughout the three trimesters and keep his beastliness under control. A 10 rating will mean a RED ALERT, to STAY AWAY from him the moment the doctor declares that you are pregnant or when the abdomen starts swelling. Or better still, don't marry him at all and go find a better husband if it is your dream to have a large brood for yourself.

Once these two tests come in the market, ladies, then before you swoon and loose your control at the sight of your man kneeling down before you and holding your hand asking whether you will marry him... before you say yes, do yourself a favor, control yourself and ask that you be shown the lab report on these two tests first.

Taking this hyper-imaginative thread further, when these tests do come to the market, dating sites will have two additional fields which male users will be required to fill - "PIPV Rating:" and "PVDP Rating:". And when a relationship begins heating up, females will doubtless peek into these values, and if they are not filled, discreetly ask the other party why they are not filled.

Till that time comes when these and other such tests become commonplace, keep your fingers crossed and pray that the man you are tying the knot with will keep his beastly urges in check both when you are carrying and also when you are not.

[Some people enter into a marriage with love in their heart and dreams in their eyes, and then there are others who do so with reluctance driven by circumstances. While you are pondering this, here is another article that uses this theme to talk about the inner conflicts that wreck havoc in us, and urges us to resolve them at the earliest: "Resolving Inner Conflicts". Read and reflect!]

Bringing Them Into The Mainstream - Film On Autism

2009-04-24T21:57:00.000-07:00

Hope In The Midst Of Despair
This is for parents of kids on the autism spectrum: You might be interested in buying a DVD that has recently been released in the market, and that chronicles the lives of eight kids who were detected as autistic during infancy and who have returned to the mainstream since, all because the parents decided to not give-up-and-surrender, and because their doctors were motivated to find and / or work out better therapies from out of the box. The DVD, an hour-long documentary film titled "Finding The Words", takes the viewer through the trials and tribulations undergone by the families involved, to the final denouement where the kids' lives seamless mingle with the other kids in their respective "regular" schools.

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* Diagram of the brain explaining the major structures implicated in autism, wiki.
At a time when the gloomy prognosis in the scientific establishment is that "ASDs are lifelong conditions with no known cure" - these stories inspire cheer. While the film focuses on just eight kids, it is to be hoped that these kids are but a tip of a growing groundswell of similar such cases which might have gone undocumented, and compiling and collating these success stories in a fashion similar to the CDC studies can clean the stamp of "incurability" that the condition has come to acquire. This is especially considering that the CDC's revelation that 1 in 150 kids in the US is on the spectrum has marked out Autism as a candidate to be tagged as an "epidemic", to be tackled at the level of the society and the government and not just left to the individual devices of the parents.

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* Autism Society of America - April is Autism Awareness Month.
The DVD is available for purchase at Finding The Words. Here is a trailer of this video:

Internet Addicted? The Addiction Could Lead To Disorders

2009-04-15T09:38:00.000-07:00

Excessive Obsession With The Internet Is Dangerous
You must have come across quite a few jokes that kids share amongst themselves and pass on to their peers. One of them is reproduced here:

YOU ARE DIAGNOSED AS A "NET ADDICT" IF:

- You get up in the morning and your first ritual is to go online.

- You see something funny and you scream, "LOL, LOL". Instead of laughing, you say "hehehe".

- When you finally signed off early morning today, your screen said you were online for 3 days and 45 minutes.

- You have placed the refrigerator next to your computer; why bother to get up and go all the way to the other corner of the house whenever the binge-urge takes over?

- Tech Support calls YOU for help.

- You purchase a vanity car license plate with your screen name on it.

- You say "SCROLL UP" when somebody begs pardon and asks you to repeat what you just said. And when you are talking to somebody on the phone and want to excuse yourself for a minute, you say "BRB".

- There's an annoying person in your vicinity, and you desperately wish there was an IGNORE button to click on.

- You find divorce papers had been served on you six months ago.

The kids have a good titter; we scan the joke rapidly and move on, half-amused, to the more important mails in the mailbox. Unfortunately, the "NET ADDICT" story does not end here. If psychiatrists are to be believed, Net Addiction is now a prime candidate for official inclusion as a "Compulsive-Impulsive Spectrum Disorder" in the DSM-V manual of mental illnesses.

Let's focus our attention on these same tittering kids who play for pastime those internet games that go by the exotic name of MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game). As with every other indulgence indulged in by mankind, this MMORPG pastime also has led to the coinage of a new term for a variant of an ancient medical condition: MMORPG-induced seizures. A paper published in the 2006 issue of CyberPsychology & Behavior discusses an investigation carried out on ten patients who experienced epileptic seizures while playing some MMORPG. Who were the patients? Young, male adults - college students. As if life in the big, bad real world wasn't enough for us parents, we have without pausing to think let our children loose in the by-lanes and "bad" neighborhoods of the virtual world. A virtual world whose characters and plots and behaviors are remotely-controlled. Heaven knows what experiences the innocent minds must be getting exposed to, as they cover their ears with the headphone and watch the graphic scenes unfolding before their eyes in the privacy of their room. To be fair, these virtual worlds can also shape these minds and give them the best possible education that can turn them into well-rounded human beings. But, uh, isn't it time you spent some more time understanding the neighborhoods your child is frequenting in those virtual worlds?

Another study conducted on a bunch of students from four high schools in China has found a significant correlation between internet addiction and impulsivity: these kids had problems with maintaining attention and focus for basic minimum expected duration, they would give in too soon and would surrender too easily and faced difficulty persevering in their tasks, their self-control had gone for a toss, and they were very, very impulsive.

Without trying to be alarmist, it must be said that the papers being published on this subject appear to point to Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) being - if not an autonomous psychopathological condition standing on its own two feet - a comorbid condition that is found concurrently with such conditions as ADHD, major depressive disorder, and social phobia. What this mumbo-jumbo means is that people with IAD are also invariably found to suffer from all these other conditions. And that it is still early days to figure out as to what is the cause and what is the effect: whether people with these other conditions go on to develop IAD as well, or whether people first develop IAD, and then progress, with time, to the state of one or the other of these conditions. People addicted to the internet have been known to be generally withdrawn and / or reclusive when it comes to social interactions, and their shyness transforms to uninhibited abandon in the virtual world where one's identity is masked by those cute avatars and screen handles. They can, and do, reveal tidbits of their personal life which they will not talk about to their most intimate partner. And this, sadly, makes them vulnerable to exploitation of the kind that we see and hear about in the "bad news" section of the press and the TV.

So, how well do you know yourself? How addicted are you to the internet? If you would like to know, you can go - where else, but? - to a website on the internet, here: Center for Internet Addiction Recovery.

[While the internet encourages one to let go of all inhibitions, it also fosters great many friendships, associations, businesses, as well as intimate relationships. What the quality of your online relationships will be, is largely determined by your mental makeup and personality. And what are your mental makeup and personality? What should you do in order to ensure that your online relationships are mutually enriching and do not degenerate into parasitism? Read about it in this beautiful article that uses the theme of the movie - "You've Got Mail" to make its point: "Don't Cry, Shopgirl".]

Calm Those Inflammations, Naturally

2009-04-06T02:46:00.001-07:00

Natural Extracts To The Aid of Inflammations
Our body has in place a wonderful mechanism that springs into action no sooner some threat comes its way. Whether it is those tiny little masses of pollen floating in the air in search for that Perfect Mate during spring time and which accidentally enter our innards through our body's inlets; or it is the physical injury that gashes or tears or shears or crushes or mauls or does so many other things to our body; or it is the freeze of the weather that constricts the blood and its vessels near the skin; or a host of the other threats that can damage our body and our peace of mind --- whatever be the threat, Nature has given us some of the best tools and devices to counteract the threat and begin healing. Within certain limitations, of course.

After detecting the problem, or doing its best to detect the problem, the body's defense mechanism literally goes into red alert mode. Copious blood is brought to the scene of transgression; appropriate fluids begin to ooze from those exotic glands and stream to wherever they have to stream in order to surround and contain the damage; and warrior cells begin to divide and multiply in order to create a bulwark that will dam the toxins that will be generated in the battlefield and restrict the flow of toxins towards the defenseless civilian neighborhood. The portion of the body under this treatment is set on an invisible fire, and we say that inflammation has taken place.

Most of the time this innate mechanism works. Sometimes, however, the emergency button remains pressed, the sirens continue to bleat, the floodlights continue to flash, and something goes wrong. The switchover from the alert of the red to the peace of the green does not happen. Or, the problem is so severe that the mechanism, programmed as it is to ceaselessly keep up the attack _till_ the problem has been solved, keeps on and on. Admirable though this attitude may be, yet the end result is a runaway situation which has spiraled out of control. A stage comes when the nearby civilian cells begin to feel the brunt of the battle - imagine your neighborhood being torpedoed by wayward missiles! And the inflammation begins to spread and begins to become chronic. The warrior cells too, in their frenzy, become blind to who is the enemy and who is their own. And you know what happens when the great Superman himself changes into Evil, and instead of saving the innocent and the helpless, turns against them!

To drill sense into the rampaging warrior cells of our own body, we take recourse to drugs such as steroids and histamines. While these formulations are quite effective in most of the cases, they bring with them their own baggage of destruction - in the form of side-effects. Talk about solving one problem, and creating another!

The search for more nature-friendly solutions that can reduce the inflammation, pour oil over troubled waters, calm down the warrior cells, murmur reassuring words of platitude in the ears of the cowering civilian populace and generally broker peace in the war zone - has led to some interesting discoveries. One solution worth recording here is in the form of oils extracted from an aromatic plant called Teucrium.

There are close to three hundred species of this plant genus, found mostly in Mediterranean climes. A paper published in the July 2009 issue of Food Chemistry describes the soothing anti-inflammatory effect of the oils extracted from four of its species - flavum, montbretii, polium, and brevifolium. Ancient Greeks were known to be avid admirers of this plant, as its parts would calm their gastric ulcers and intestinal inflammation, besides healing their skin eruptions and wounds. Very observing and perceptive, the ancients were. Very much tuned in to Nature. Most likely, because their senses were not numbed by the constant bombardment of television and the internet. So what the researchers found out was that the oils from these plants have certain chemicals that can soothe the inflamed cells and calm their jumpiness.

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* Teucrium fruticans - wiki.
Another paper, published in the June 2008 issue of Bio-resource Technology, describes how the essential oil extracted from cinnamon (Cinnamomum osmophloeum) twigs can lower the dander of the warriors.

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* Cinnamomum verum - wiki.
So the next time you face an inflammatory situation in the body, may be you could try to find out if these new herbal extracts have arrived in the market, before popping those nausea-and-ulcer-inducing pills. The researchers say there aren't any side-effects. Nature indeed is benign. Nature thinks of everything.

[When some part of the body is inflamed, you pop those pills or you fetch the extracts of the herbs. But what do you do when there is some inflammatory situation in your life? When there is a threat to your body, the natural defense mechanisms immediately take over to engage the enemy. What mechanisms do you have to engage threats that come up in your life? Read about the mechanisms that we consciously need to inculcate ourselves, which unfortunately nobody teaches us in school - "Keep Those Trampoline Springs In Good Condition".]

Beware - The Zoster Lies In Ambush

2009-03-31T23:07:00.000-07:00

A Childhood Condition Resurfaces In Old Age - With Vengeance!
Follies and mistakes committed during childhood and early youth, even unknowingly and unintentionally, can come back to haunt at senescence. And no, we aren't talking promiscuity here. And we also aren't talking about the little fling with crack that we enjoyed along with the rest of the friends below the shade of the tree near the compound wall, where we thought we were safe and out of sight from the seniors who were anyway busy doing their thing and who were actually happy that the kids were out of sight.

We are talking papules and red blisters and dew-drops-on-rose-petals here. Remember the episode of chickenpox that you underwent as a child / youth? The red pockmarks all over the skin that you brought home from school, gifted to you by your best friend and classmate? The pockmarks that caused high fever and so forced you to take some rest, and prevented you from going to school that you always looked forward to going, and stopped you from experiencing the thrill of receiving home-assignments, if only for a week or ten days? Yes, that very episode. Now it so happens that after the pockmarks subside and the fever ebbs and you become normal and begin enjoying the daily home-assignments, you think that the chickenpox virus has been eliminated. And then you continue growing up and begin enjoying the surge of those youthful chemicals that begin creating, ah, other kinds of havoc in your body. And you disdainfully forget the pockmark episode and the chickenpox episode altogether.

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* Child with chickenpox, sxc.hu
Unbeknown to you, during those high-fevered days when it keeps you in its hot embrace at the core, cellular level, the virus itself falls for you - hook, line and sinker. The hunter becomes the hunted. And when your immunity guards finally manage to cool the lava of passion, the virus offers a truce. "Let me stay on! I beg thee!", the virus beseeches seductively. "I will keep my passion in check, I promise!" And magnanimous in victory, your immunity guards allow the virus to stay on, and give it shelter in one of the numerous nerve cell bodies. Unfortunately, this magnanimity is what proves to be our folly and mistake.

Days pass. Decades pass. You move on. Get married, or stay celibate. Bring forth children, or do not. Make a good career, or loaf off. Loll in money, or loll in penury. And then comes the golden period of life. The time when you hang up your boots and begin taking it easy. The time for navel-gazing and ruminating and dozing off in the middle of conversations. The time to forget whether the dentures and the glasses got left behind on the dining table or out in the hammock. The time when the need for companionship is acutely felt and the discovery is made that everybody around is too busy with their own lives to give you even five minutes, forget round-the-clock companionship. And that is when the old love decides to come out of its hiding. To give you round-the-clock companionship. The virus breaks its vow of silence and decides to give you company. And this it does with all the gusto and passion pent-up for all these years!

You see those red-colored rashes forming in very geometric patterns, suddenly being created in some specific area of the body's terra firma? That's your long-lost friend's style of surfacing and saying hello. As is its wont, the virus embraces you so tightly that you get headaches and fevers and the burning pain and the itching sensations --- well what else can you expect when you are coupling not with a fellow human being but with a virus? The chickenpox of childhood becomes the shingles of old age.

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* Herpes Zoster on the chest, wiki.
Herpes Zoster, as this virus is affectionately called, can zap all the zing from the golden years. As if to offset the decades of self-imposed abstinence, the virus indulges in some extreme forms of sadism, leading to a painful condition called Post-Herpetic Neuralgia (PHN), which lingers on and on, even after the rashes have healed, sometimes till the last breath.

The Zoster is said to affect up to half of all people who live to 85 years of age. Approximately one million people in the United States alone are said to be affected by the pain of PHN every year. The good news for those of us who want relief from this pain has been published in a paper in the April 2009 issue of the "Pain" Journal (available here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pain.2008.12.022). In a study involving 87 subjects from both gender, it has been observed that oxycodone is highly effective in relieving pain. One side-effect of this treatment is constipation, which the paper says can be addressed by initiating laxative therapy along with oxycodone treatment.

The moral of the story? To not get carried away by the crocodile tears of the enemy! In time, we will be able to persuade our immunity guards to not show magnanimity towards our enemies, howsoever bewitchingly seductive they might appear to be in those moments of surrender. Till that time comes, let's get on with the treatment of oxycodone combined with laxative therapy - or whatever new advances are made - under the care of the good doctor.

[The golden age is not only a time for meeting long-lost friends (and loves) and navel-gazing and introspection and forgetting where we left our glasses and dentures. It is also a time for a rediscovery. Read about it in this article here: "Rediscovering The Self: At Sunset Time".]

In Pain? Here's How To Reduce Narcotic Medication Intake

2009-03-23T03:29:00.000-07:00

It's A Very Natural Technique - As Natural As Sunshine!
If you have bumped into this post while writhing in agony over some pain throbbing some part of your body, or reading this post's title suddenly reminded you of some long-forgotten pain and now you can't wait till this post meanders on and finally reaches the climax where the trick to reduce narcotic medication intake during pain is dramatically revealed... then let me give you without further ado the long and short of it: increase your Vitamin D intake. Simply increase your intake of foods and fruits that are rich in Vitamin D, and watch your urge to take more of narcotics to numb the pain, drop.

If you are still with me and haven't rushed to the fridge to pick up the fruit that is abundant in this vitamin, or if you are back from the fridge and busily chomping away at the luscious pulp or sipping the tangy sherbet and now ready to satiate your curiosity about how this simple mantra was formulated in the first place - why aren't things in life so simple? -, then here is the lowdown: This is the conclusion of a paper published in the January 2009 edition of "Pain" (accessed here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pain.2008.11.010.)

There is now a clear, medically-well-established link between low levels of vitamin D in the body and the degree of chronic pain that one suffers in certain conditions. The paper documents, for example, how chronic backache in a group of post-menopausal women was ameliorated within three months of undergoing Vitamin D medication, and how another batch of 360 people, including 36 males, with chronic low back pain without any obvious cause too were cured miraculously with Vitamin D. Female asylum seekers suffering from Hypovitaminosis D3 and musculoskeletal pain, as well as people who were confined indoors for more than six months and suffering from unusual pain that was resistant to analgesics, too got to experience the magic that this very natural sunshine vitamin brought into their lives. Yet another study that the paper documents, has focused on 51 type-2 diabetics who were suffering from neuropathic pain, and whose pain subsided after Vitamin D intervention.

The irony of advances in modern medication is that we rush into the embrace of narcotic medication at the first hint of pain, because all this while, research has focused on how to numb the nerves and the sensations that travel from the point of pain to the brain. To not let the brain know that there is pain, we pull the wool over the brain's eyes. A shift in thinking in the same modern medication research now reveals that the solution does not lie in numbing the senses, it does not lie in pulling any wool over anybody's eyes; it lies in shoring up our healing powers with the energy that the Sun sprays at us in abundance, which it has been spraying in abundance for millions of years. So the take-home message is: Bask in the daily sunshine of vitamin-D dietary intake. And stay away from the dark alleys of narcotics.

The statutory caution here is this: in your zest to reduce pain, don't overdo it. Vitamin D intoxication is said to kick in if we go overboard in stuffing ourselves with foods and fruits containing the vitamin, or go sprawl in the sun for hours together.

[While taking care to keep our body free from physical pain, shouldn't we also do a favor to ourselves by working on keeping our soul too free from its associated pains? Here is one article that nudges you to heal the soul: "Heal Thyself - You Are Your Own Healer".]

Now, A Simple Blood Test To Diagnose Alzheimer's

2009-03-16T07:47:00.000-07:00

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* Alzheimer's Awareness Stamp - US Postal Service
This Test Can Replace More Costly And Less Reliable Diagnosis Techniques
Over nine months ago, while going through the recent advances made in early diagnosis and intervention techniques for Alzheimer's it was heartening to note the new and creative solutions being developed (a nasal spray that reverses some form of mild cognitive impairment was one such, read here). A recent research has reported a new breakthrough in early diagnosis of Alzheimer's - a simple blood test. A blood test is all that it will take to determine whether the condition is setting in, or even whether somebody is a potential candidate.

In an interesting study conducted on 118 adults (the press release on this study appears here), a high positive correlation was found between two antibodies - amyloid-beta and RAGE - whose concentration increases directly with the severity of dementia. They both serve as an advance party that warns of what is to come.

While RAGE is present at all times in our body, and its levels decline during maturity in normal aging, this protein is found to suddenly surge and throw its weight around in several pathological states, including diabetic nephropathy and inflammation of the vessel walls, besides Alzheimer's. The amyloid-beta is a mystery wrapped inside an enigma under the veil - whence it comes, and what or who produces it in the body, are factors still unknown. Independently, they are neutral folks, very genial, going about their own ways so affably. But the moment they bond together, all hell breaks loose across the blood-brain neighborhood. What brings them together; is it a chance meeting, or does Somebody Play Dice to introduce the two, nobody knows, yet. Hopefully shouldn't be much longer before we figure it out.

According to the research team, after collecting the blood sample, it presently takes three to four days to come out with the outcome - Alzheimer Positive or Alzheimer Negative. While they are working to reduce the processing period to one single day, the test is still considered more economical and less cumbersome - just a pinprick on the forefinger - than the functional MRI or PET scan that people have to undergo nowadays which try to detect brain plaque formation before it is too late.

Coffee - To Drink Or No?

2009-03-09T05:23:00.000-07:00

Confusion Abounds About This Brew's Relation With Our Health
Coffee. The beverage of choice for millions. The day begins with a cup of this brew. The liquid begins its action on the brain no sooner it washes down the mouth into the gullet - actually even the aroma is enough to trigger something in the brain. One sip of the hot decoction has the power to revive sagged spirits and tired muscles of a weary body. This one drink has been at the center of so many businesses - ask Messieurs Siegel, Baldwin and Bowker, the gentlemen from Starbucks or members of the Mathivat family that owns Les Deux Magots (I hope I got the owners' name right) - and they will be happy to tell you how they earn their living. The GDPs of entire swathes of countries are driven by the sale of the dark-brown beans. The culture of coffee has spun so many stories, weaved so many mysteries, and deepened so many relationships down the ages --- as one slogan on the banner of a coffee-shop says intriguingly, "A lot can happen over coffee".

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* The two Chinese mandarin statuettes adorning the walls at Les Deux Magots - www.paris-bistro.com. Coffee is said to have stirred the imagination and creativity of the likes of Sartre and Camus.
And perhaps because of its ubiquitousness at the coffee table (sigh), coffee is also surrounded by the usual controversies about its impact on health. Is drinking coffee good for health? Or bad?

Recent research suggests that consumed moderately, the brew is beneficial to health because of its inherent antioxidant properties. For certain individuals however, the beverage is a strict no-no. Plus, the preparation process from the raw beans to the dark-brown liquid that is poured into the cup also apparently makes a difference.

For instance, if you like your brew unfiltered-regular or decaff or boiled or French-pressed, then beware! These preparation processes let certain chemicals pass through into the cup that can raise your LDL, or bad, cholesterol. On the other hand, filtered coffee is safe - it holds back the LDL.

Do you also smoke while drinking coffee? Researchers say that's not good for your blood pressure, and negatively impacts the flow of blood between the lungs and the heart. Coffee has been found to be a probable preventive (not curative) measure in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. For offspring of families where these two medical conditions run in the genealogical tree, coffee could be _the_ elixir of life, and they might consider incorporating coffee-drinking - low doses, daily, along with small intake of wine and regular physical exercise - in their daily ritual right from childhood. On the other hand, one conjecture is that heavy coffee drinking increases seizure frequency in people with epileptic conditions. Stop drinking coffee, and see the seizure-frequency drop.

Science also cautions post-menopausal women against heavy consumption of coffee; in fact the recommendation is to cut down even the usual daily intake at onset of menopause. The reason is that heavy caffeine intake has been associated with increased risk of hip fracture, which has been in turn linked to the calcium in the bones getting dissolved and expelled through urine.

Coffee has a paradoxical impact on diabetes 2 cases. Those of us who are not yet diabetic, can postpone / avoid-altogether its occurrence in their life by making it a point to drink coffee every day. On the other hand, once it is established that you have this condition, you are advised to reduce or totally eliminate its intake. This paradox is because coffee triggers an enhanced insulin response when the insulin is already there in the blood. But, when insulin is not there or is in low quantity, caffeine goes and expends all its belligerence on gastrointestinal hormones, which then sulk and pout and refuse to ooze from their glandular homes as abundantly as they should, resulting in slower glucose absorption.

Symptomatic gallstone disease, a condition that affects more than 20 million Americans every year, can be prevented or altogether banished from occurring in one's life by making coffee-drinking a lifelong affair.

As you can see, it's indeed a complex relationship - between man or woman and coffee. You have to assess where you stand healthwise, and then decide how much you would like to indulge in your favorite cuppa. A lot can happen over coffee, as you know.

[All research information gleaned from a 2007 paper published in the Journal: Nutrition & Food Science.]

Here Is One Technique To Motivate Kids For Better Performance

2009-02-28T07:25:00.000-08:00

Positive Visual Cues, Delivered Subtly, Does The Trick

Do you think that your kid's academic report-card does not reflect his or her true capabilities? A recent research has provided empirical evidence that positive visual cues delivered subtly can improve academic performance of certain category of students. Here are some details.

The research was conducted on a group of first year undergraduate students attending a regular psychology class (both genders, average age around 19). The class comprised a lecturer explaining the nuances of some topic by stepping through a slideshow. For one group of students, the slideshow was interspersed with "special" slides that contained negative-sounding words such as "obligation", "constraint", "forced" and "ought". For another group of students, the slideshow had slides that contained positive words such as "interested", "desire", "willing" and "free". Each such slide had one single such word, positioned at random locations on the slide. While normal slides were displayed for the appropriate duration by the lecturer to explain the topic, the special slides were each displayed for 32 milliseconds followed by a 16-millisecond-mask. In other words, using the self-development industry lingo, a visual subliminal technique was used.

The students were subjected to a quiz immediately after the class was over, on the topic that was just discussed. It was found that in the group that was subjected to the negative subliminals, certain students performed less better than they would have otherwise. Similarly, in the group that was subjected to positive subliminals, certain students performed much better than they would have otherwise. For the other students, the subliminals appeared to make no difference in their performance. The inference? These certain students are more amenable to being motivated / de-motivated to subtle visual cues delivered subliminally.

So what was special about these "certain" students? A common attitude these students across the two groups shared was that their actions are driven by impulse and / or they blindly follow routines mechanically, automatically. Put differently, these kids would normally not pause and deliberate about their own thought processes and actions in day-to-day activities. These kids are normally easily affected by subconscious cues available in the environment, because they do not possess a "mindful" disposition.

"Mindful" kids, on the other hand, keep in perspective their actions in the present context and are fully aware of why they are doing what they are doing. These kids have a questioning mind that wants justification all the time about what they are being asked to do. Thus, there is a defensive wall erected between the environmental cues and their subconscious. (While in one sense this could be good, the other side of the coin is that they are fobbing off even the cues that are positive and affirmative and useful for their growth.)

Does this distinction between "mindful" behavior and "non-mindful" behavior confuse? Never mind, irrespective of which category you think your kid fits in, this could be one technique - providing positive visual cues, delivered subtly - worth using.

The research has been reported in the Journal of Research in Personality (article still in press), available online here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2009.02.011. While on the subject of subliminality, here is a book that may be referred to for further information: "The new consciousness". There is a stack of articles on the subject on the blog here: http://success-nirvana.blogspot.com (click on the 'subliminality' label in the side-panel.)

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* 'The new consciousness', Amazon.com.

Curing OCD Through Electrode Implanted Neurostimulators

2009-02-22T02:59:00.000-08:00

Attempting To Grasp That Which Is Not Graspable

People suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) may not even realize it themselves; but those around them can see the suffering. A person who keeps going to the washbasin to clean their hands every fifteen minutes makes life difficult for family members who find it difficult to explain this behavior to strangers meeting them for the first time. Somebody who wants to take bath every half-an-hour during their waking hours is never ever able to leave the house. Somebody who returns back to the vehicle after locking the door the first time, to check, re-check and re-re-check whether it has been securely locked becomes an embarrassment for the people accompanying them. The disorder goes beyond one's control at some stage, and affects the quality of life of not only the person affected, but also the lives of those around.

This psychological condition is talked about in the same breath as are asthma and diabetes due to its prevalence. In the foreground of this fact is the buzz created by the press release issued by the FDA (available here) about the agency approving the use of an implantable device that delivers intermittent electrical therapy - called deep brain stimulation (DBS) -deep within the brain to suppress the symptoms associated with OCD. The approval comes under the category of "Humanitarian Device Exemption" (HDE), which means that, though the efficacy of treatment has yet not been established, the probable health benefits of the therapy have been found to outweigh the risks. So people suffering from OCD can get to avail themselves of this therapy right away before waiting for the efficacy to be fully established on humanitarian grounds. The therapy has been developed by Medtronic, Inc and is called "Reclaim DBS". It is expected to become available in the US by mid-2009, and will be administered at specific centers across the country. (There is a "Notify Me" online form on the company's webpage for those who wish to be notified by email when the treatment does become available.)

The therapy comes with a small battery-operated device that is implanted near the abdomen or the collar bone. This is in turn connected to four electrodes implanted in the brain at specific points with the help of insulated electric wires. The device generates pulses of the appropriate strength set by a clinician trained for this purpose.

The OCD treatment targets the anterior limb of the internal capsule (AIC) in the brain, and within it the ventral capsule / ventral striatum (VC/VS). This is the point in the complex web of neural circuits where mood and anxiety get to be regulated.

There are criteria for selecting candidates to undergo this therapy, such as they must have failed at least three selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), they should not be scheduled to undergo electroconvulsive shock therapy or magnetic resonance imaging or deep tissue heat treatment (diathermy), females should not be pregnant, etc.

The HDE tag implies that up to a max 4,000 such candidates can avail themselves of this therapy per year.

How it works exactly, is not known. Of the subjects on whom clinical trials were carried out, 40% have been reported to have reduced their OCD symptoms. (The results of the trials have been published in the Feb 2009 issue of Biological Psychiatry, here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2008.08.029.)

The probes in the brain position themselves to the point where the thought-tokens that control mood and anxiety and apparently generate all the drives of obsession and compulsion. Thought-tokens that are beyond grasp. Can these physical, tangible pieces of fine wire grasp that which is not graspable? It is like a shot in the dark, relying on empirical observations. While wishing the new therapy all the best, here is another, non-invasive, technique that may alternatively be tried: Obsession Disorders - Cure Possible Through Meditation.

Respite For Those With Rare Diseases

2009-02-14T04:12:00.000-08:00

Those Diseases Too Hurt, That Affect A Small Minority
How does it feel to be neglected, overlooked and ignored? Not the most ideal of circumstance to find oneself in, is it? This is precisely what people who are afflicted with diseases that the majority is fortunate enough to not be afflicted with, find themselves in.

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* Female with Alopecia Areata Totalis - wiki. This condition affects 0.1% to 0.2% of humans, occurring in both males and females.
A disease is a disease is a disease. Makes no difference whether a medical condition is experienced by just one in this world or very many. But the problem with rare diseases is that because the number of people who are afflicted are in a minority, not enough is done to investigate them and to find out the underlying causes and to work out their intervention techniques. Meanwhile, those who carry the creatures of such diseases suffer silently, get misdiagnosed hopelessly, often bear psychological / psychosocial ostracism, and have no practical support whatsoever from the society. There indeed is comfort in numbers. It indeed feels good to be part of the majority.

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* Bloom Syndrome - bio.davidson.edu. A rare chromosomal disorder for which science has no cure yet.
It is sad to feel all alone, an island of isolation in the ocean of humanity, people everywhere around you, people who complain of their own little problems which get taken care of, but not have a single soul around who understands what you are going through. And worse, people can only sympathize but cannot help, because either the medical community is too busy or there aren't enough grants going round to be invested into investigation.

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* Child afflicted with Townes-Brocks syndrome - reanna.miller.home. Fewer than 200 people have this disease.
It is in this background that a "Rare Disease Day" is being organized on February 28, 2009 by the National Organization of Rare Disorders (NORD) in the US, and by the European Rare Disease Organization (EURORDIS) in Europe - with plans to observe this day globally on the last day of February each year.

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* Rare Disease Day Logo
There are more than 1,150 medical conditions that have been identified to be afflicting human beings, but for which there is either no money being set aside nor any resources being allocated nor research personnel being drafted to conduct research and investigations. The list includes both biological as well as psychological conditions. For instance, Antisocial personality disorder (ASP) is a mental illness which usually manifests itself during adolescence, before the kid turns fifteen. A kid with ASP will exhibit very little concern for others' rights, very little or no respect of the standards of morality of their region or community. The actions and manners of such kids are manipulative and exploitative and without remorse. Sadly, it is quite possible that the people around them might not even look at this behavior as a "personality disorder", so there is no attempt to try and seek advice.

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* Hairy tongue - wiki.
Or let's see another medical condition in this list. It's called the "LEOPARD Syndrome". This exotic-sounding disease is called by quite a few other names, and is a result of a different "missense mutation of the same gene". A single molecule somewhere in the DNA decides to swim contrary to the mainstream, with the result that you become a different personality altogether. Even researchers concede that it is not clinically possible for them to identify accurately whether the patient in their custody is afflicted with LEOPARD syndrome or with a similar condition called Noonan Syndrome (for which apparently there is some hope for cure). Now where does the individual with LEOPARD go to for solace? A LEOPARD syndrome patient spends money and time in getting treated for a different condition altogether and still remained uncured.

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* Thirty-seven year old, second generation patient, exhibiting hypertelorism, broad nasal root, slight ptosis - wiki A LEOPARD syndrome case.
Every entry in this list of over 1,150 rare diseases has a story to tell - a story of pain that nobody can understand, a story of neglect by a society that pays attention only when the disease has inflicted a minimum critical mass of the human populace. Here is the list: http://www.rarediseases.org/search/rdblist.html. Here is the NORD website: http://www.rarediseases.org/, and here is the EURORDIS site: http://www.rarediseaseday.org/.

[While waiting for research on healing biological conditions of the body to come out with results, we can take action to perform healing on our own mind. And wait for the mind's influence on the body to perhaps heal the body too. This is one article that talks about this: "Heal Thyself - You Are Your Own Healer".]

Poverty Is A State Of Mind

2009-02-07T00:31:00.000-08:00

Here's The Secret To Become Rich
Can you fake richness? Can you project an image of being ultra-wealthy when inwardly you quaver at the thought of the bank impounding your property because the debt remains unpaid? Can you put on a mask of all-is-well in your world when your mind is preoccupied by the worry of how to pay this vendor or settle that bill? The answer is - to an extent, you cannot. Fake the poverty in your mind, that is.

Report of a study conducted by researchers on the body language exhibited by children of people coming from different socio-economic strata has appeared on the internet recently (a brief summary of the survey's results is available here). The study revealed that it is possible to guess the socio-economic status of even strangers from the subtle non-verbal cues they let out. Children from high economic background homes exhibit a greater sense of confidence in their interaction with others, do not baulk at making eye-contact, and have an easy smile and an easy laughter; while kids with not-so-high-economic background are nervous about making eye-contact, fidget with the button of their shirt while introducing themselves, and are generally unsure about how uninhibited they can be when laughing.

Reflecting on the survey, it occurs that if you clothe a person in the most expensive threads, that person will still reveal the state of their bank balance through their body language and non-verbal cues. Poverty is a state of mind, not the state of your bank balance. Poverty is also not the texture of the thread you are wearing. If you think you are poor, a failure, a reject, a nobody --- then your body language will show it all. But if you think you are rich, prosperous, a success, a somebody who has accepted life as it is, at ease with yourself, a human being of worth, then even if there aren't very many numerals before the decimal point in your bank balance figure --- your body language will still show it all. Your body does not know how much cash you have or what material wealth you possess; but it very well understands the quality of the thoughts you are holding in your mind; and it truthfully reflects them as is.

The way we have evolved over the ages, we define "rich" and "poor" in terms of tangible assets and physical entities. This man owns a residence of size X, so he must be rich. This woman owns a residence of size Y and also commutes in her own jet, so she must be richer than the man who owns just the X-sized residence. What we tend to overlook, because we can never see them, is the quality of our thoughts. Like the material entities, even our thoughts have two different qualities - one may be defined as "rich", and the other may be defined as "poor". Very interestingly, while it takes effort to earn richness in the material-world, it does not take any effort whatsoever to achieve richness in the thought-world. All that we have to do is to remain alert about the quality of thoughts that we allow to pass through our mindscape.

What are these "rich thoughts"? These are thoughts of being at ease with oneself; being ease with the world; these are thoughts of acceptance of life as it is; these are thoughts of love directed towards oneself and holding oneself in high esteem; these are thoughts that one is worthy of all the love and respect that there is in this world; these are thoughts that are not dependent on the opinion of the others, and definitely not dependent on how many numerals there are before the decimal point; and these are the thoughts that drive one to aspire, work for and achieve greater things in the most positive manner. So what are the "poor thoughts"? Any thought that self-defeats, self-deprecates, self-discounts, self-loathes, self-pities, and self-put-me-down, is not a "rich thought" but its exact opposite.

Now tell me, how much money do you have to spend in acquiring these rich thoughts for yourself? What effort do you have to expend in acquiring them? What skills do you need, which school or college do you have to attend, which exam do you have to pass and which qualification do you need to acquire in order to own these rich thoughts for yourself? You see, thoughts are all there in ether, and available to you free of cost, and as abundantly like the air and the sunshine. Now it is up to you to pick and choose the exact quality of thoughts you want to acquire.

Tell you what? You wanna become rich? You want money and wealth and prosperity badly? Okay so here is the secret. Acquire richness in thoughts first. Richness in the material world will automatically follow. Take my word on this.

The Fine Art Of Deception

2009-01-31T04:02:00.000-08:00

You Don't Need To Master It - It Comes Naturally

You pass the room where the kid is busy on the computer. The door is ajar. In a heartbeat, you intuit that you must go in. The hunch is too impulsive, too overpowering. There is Something about the kid and their busy-ness... And you walk in, with as much stealth as you can muster. The kid looks so engrossed watching the screen, the back of the monitor facing you. Suddenly the kid looks up and sees you coming in. You notice the involuntary jerk of the hand moving forward, definitely to grab the mouse. And, by the time you make your way to the front of the monitor, you notice one tab on the browser getting closed. Very coolly. And the tab that comes up is the school's site with the homework page. The kid turns towards you, looking you squarely in the eye. There is not a shade of color on that angelic face. God, when did they learn to keep their face so shadeless? "What is it, mom?" or "What is it, dad?" "Nothing, kid. Just passing by." Poor you. You don't have the heart to dip into the browser's history right then and there, which you know will be the first thing that will be deleted no sooner you step out of the room. You don't want to upset the kid. You don't want to upset the applecart! So you happily, with your own hands, pull the wool of deception on your own eyes and pretend to be blind; the child pretends to be the same angel they always were, and hey, it's another day getting over already, time for supper and time to go to bed!

Deception. Somewhere on the way of growing up, we all learn this fine art, don't we? We quickly learn that this art is essential for our success and happiness, and simply ignore, will ya, that person who stands in the pulpit every Sunday. Because, once the sermon is over and the crowd gets back to the humdrum, we have all these grown-ups who are our role-models and we simply follow in their footsteps and live to learn and learn to live.

We realize very early on in this Game Called Life that there has to be a gap, a dichotomy if you will, between the thought we hold in our mind and the thought we articulate through speech or through the written word. Certainly not a game that the simpleton can play! Requires a lot of gray cells, which have to be continuously exercised all the time, if you wanna remain on top of the game. How interesting that they don't have any course to teach deception. Comes naturally to you, like breathing.

The realization that it is the brain that is doing the processing, working on top speed to decide, in a given situation, whether to lie or be truthful, whether to deceive or remain honest, brings us to wonder whether it is possible to scientifically detect whether somebody is deceiving or not. Turns out, yes, it is possible. Researchers from Universities in China and US conducted an ERP study on a bunch of young adults to determine exactly what happens in the brain when people decide they are to be not truthful and not honest (the study has been published in the January 2009 issue of "Brain Research", available online here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2008.09.090). The researchers have pinpointed specific areas in the brain which handle the conflict between the thoughts of what is truth and what is false. Electric potentials in the brain change in these specific areas when you take, and implement, the decision to deceive; which change does not take place when you are being honest and truthful. As if these particular areas in the brain are the seat where you perch yourself in those crucial moments and the two angels appear on your either side - one from God and one from Devil, like how they show in those Disney movies. And then, when you decide that you want to go with the Devil, something very subtle happens. Your brain emits waves of a different quality altogether, that the researchers' contraption detected and marked "special".

The subjects the researchers studied came from both the genders by the way; just thought you would like to know. With this breakthrough, all that you have to do, is to bring the kid, or whosoever you suspect of deceiving you, and strap this heavy contraption around their head and record their EEG and their EOG and what-have-you. And look out for the telltale waves on the ticker-tape the contraption spews out. Sounds rather impractical, eh? You might as well tell them upfront that you don't believe them. So I am waiting for version 2.0 of this contraption, which will be much lighter, will not have to be installed on the suspect's head (ugh! the word "suspect" brings so much bitterness to the mouth!), but will be hidden in my palm. I simply point the tiny antenna of the device towards the person before me, and the device will vibrate if it detects deception-waves coming from the person's head. Cool, eh!

And then, I will wait for version 3.0 of this device. Which will be able to detect and tell me those areas that lie between 100% truth and 100% lie. You know, the gray shades? The world is full of them, this life is full of them, in case you didn't notice.

Uh, and shall I also tell you about version 4.0? This is the coolest. This device tells you when it is you who is deceiving yourself! The art of self-deception is the most devious, and the most complicated to practice. But very interestingly, this art comes to most of us most naturally! As this article here tells you, it is one dark, dark world - this world of self-deception that we hold deep within us, and that we dwell in, most of the time (and sometimes, all the time): Stop Deceiving Yourself - And Start Living Reality.

Enjoy the journey into the dark! And wait for version 4.0.

Why Hugging The Child Everyday Is Important

2009-01-22T23:09:00.000-08:00

So That, As Adults, They Stay Mentally Healthy
You see Johnny there, in the third cubicle - no not the one who's just joined, but the one to his right? You can't help sympathizing with him as you pass him by - he with his nails perpetually being bitten off between the teeth, the fingers always drumming the table when he is not biting them nails. The muscles of the face look screwed up with worry and anxiety all the time, you think he was born with that look on the face. The man seems to be breaking his back to meet his deadlines and assignments, but fumbles when the boss asks him for an update. Or talk to young Jane here. The woman who cannot hide irritation from her voice when she speaks - or is it frustration with herself, one wonders. The woman who is always pessimistic, and is unable to hide her disappointment when things actually turn out to be positive and happy and cheerful --- different from what she had forecast and predicted.

None of your or my business, but if you probe a little deeper, you will also stumble into a family life that is none-too-happy. Perhaps a separation / divorce has already happened, or is on the way?

These are people who have so gotten used to the emotion called worry that they have fallen in love with it. And they feel a huge void when there is no worry to worry about, no anxiety to be anxious about. So they go in search of the right worry and the perfect anxiety with which to fill the void. And can you guess why they have come to such a state? Because the parent or guardian or caregiver did not hug them every night, that's why. Because the senior did not pat them on the back and told them how much they were loved and cared for, that's why. Because the caregiver did not convey with words and actions that they would be there whenever the child needed them, that's why.

Uh, the link between anxiety disorder and being-hugged-every-night-as-a-child looks incredulous? Well, this is not some mushy sentimentalist grandma mumbo-jumbo; this is the outcome of investigation conducted on the quality of relationship-with-primary-caregivers-during-early-childhood, and traits-and-worry-and-anxiety in adulthood. The study involved 138 participants - with 69 control subjects -, and was conducted by researchers from the University of Maryland (published in the journal "Behavior Therapy", article still in press, available online here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.beth.2007.12.004.) The correct technical term for this condition is Generalized Anxiety Disorder, GAD for short.

As a child, when you know that there are a pair of arms you can rush into whenever you are afraid or scared or traumatized; when you know that there is a secure base that you can turn to in times of need - a safe haven that will protect you from all evil in the world --- then you will grow into a self-confident individual who will always feel the warmth of the hug and the strength of the love you received in those crucial days. The reassurance that there will always be somebody you can turn to, lingers and carries on, even when the senior is no longer part of your life. But whenever you feel stressed and need comfort, instead of a reassuring pat on the back - you get rejection, disparagement and derogation and mocking and indifference --- you begin to view the world as a most dangerous place to live in, with no safe haven to take recourse to.

But live you have to, cope you have to. So you begin by building your own cognitive support structure with your own internal resources; by first denying to your conscious self the welling up of all the anxiety and the worry and the perception of falling into some huge hole in the earth that has no bottom, a consciousness that is always on the lookout of the hole. You have no one to turn to, you see, and so you better be on your guard all the time, or else. That is where the constant worry and the GAD come in.

The support structure is therefore skewed, and built upon the scaffolding of the most easily available material - which is a negative emotion called worry. No wonder then, that you live a life which is bridled with a sense of physical and / or psychological danger at all times. Who knows what doom waits in the next step or at the next corner?

A self-assessment. Are you a constant worrier yourself? A quick dip into the past could help you guess how you have come to acquire this trait. The article in wiki puts it quite well - "common sense action may be taken to reduce the level of anxiety." The internet is full of self-help material that you can read up on, and which you can use to rebuild the cognitive support structure that you have been living by.

And if you have kids under your care, you know what to do. Hug them before putting them to bed. Assure them you are there whenever they need you.

Who said bringing up children was easy? Here's another article for you to ponder, while on this same issue: Children Are Like Sponge. And how do you think kids with little affection to fall back on, fare in their online relationships as adults? This article here should give you a clue: "Don't Cry, Shopgirl".

Health Benefits Of The Humble Turmeric

2009-01-16T02:04:00.000-08:00

Reduce Your Medical Bills - Include This Herb In Your Diet

The name "Sangli" is not known to many people outside India. A herb that this district headquarters - tucked away in the south of Maharashtra state in India - trades in, is however now becoming the center of attention for researchers the world over. Sangli happens to the world's largest trading hub for Turmeric, also spelt "tumeric".

This yellow-colored spice with a warm and peppery-mellow and somewhat-bitter flavor, goes by the name of "Curcuma Longa L" in botany books, and is categorized under rhizome. Besides its culinary usage as spice, the rhizome has traditionally been used as an anti-inflammatory agent, and quite a few Asian countries grow it. Attention of science turned towards its health benefits due to an ingredient known as "Curcumin" that the rustic, cheerful-looking rhizome holds within it. This attention is borne out by a recent spate in medical literature of research papers that present the outcomes of their experiments with this chemical. And if the essence of all these outcomes were to be summarized in one line, it is this: "Include Turmeric In Your Daily Diet". In the background of the dilemma of increasing antibiotic resistance, adverse side-effects, and high cost of medicines, these latest findings hold great promise and therefore worth putting on record.

Take for instance, the impact of curcumin on cancer cells, discussed in this paper (published in the Feb 2009 issue of the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry). Curcumin has been found to inhibit the invasion of cancer cells (HT1080 human fibro-sarcoma) and renders them impotent. A modified version of curcumin molecules has been identified that appears to be especially promising. Look forward to pills made from the modified version being prescribed by doctors in the near future. Till that time comes, you could consider including the herb in your diet if cancer is a condition that bothers you.

Another interesting research has been reported in the January 2009 issue of the Journal of Ethno-pharmacology. The experiment discussed here concluded that curcumin cures atrophic gastritis and duodenal ulcer or gastric ulcer, both of which can potentially lead to gastric cancer (the team found that another herb, botanically known as Mallotus philippinensis (Lam) Muell and "kampillaka" in local lingo, has been found to be even more effective). The subjects chosen by the research team who underwent the experiment must have gone home very happy!

And here is some good news for those with hypothyroidism. Are you resigned to a daily intake of thyroxine for the rest of your life? You can ameliorate your condition by a combination of vitamin E and circumin, is what scientists from an Indian university have concluded (yet-to-be-published in the Journal of Life Sciences, available online here). The same paper also highlights the therapeutic effects of the two ingredients on liver-based conditions.

One more paper worth mentioning here on the impact of the humble turmeric on health is published in the Jan-Feb 2009 issue of the Journal of Diabetes. The researchers report that a combination of bitter gourd and spent turmeric dramatically improves glycoconjugate metabolism (technicalese for diabetes-control). This time, the turmeric version used is the one from which curcumin has been removed (that is why they call it "spent" turmeric), so only the dietary fibers remain.

I could go on and on; there are over 2,300 papers on this subject right now in ScienceDirect. The key message to take back is: to include turmeric in your diet. Doesn't have any side-effects, but will help you reduce your medical bills! And full disclosure, for the jadedly cynical: this blogger does not have any vested interest in any company promoting turmeric-based products!

Do You Get Distracted Easily? Does Your Mind Wander Too Often?

2009-01-08T04:46:00.000-08:00

Here's One Technique That Can Help You Concentrate Better
Does your mind wander so much that you are unable to concentrate on the task at the hand? Does it take you more time than is necessary to complete a given assignment? Does your mind wander to events and happenings and who-said-what-to-whom, while it should be focusing on the words on the screen or in the textbook? Does the noise of the mason or the carpenter working in the background distract you so much that either you get up and go away, or you decide to postpone your own particular work till silence returns?

Increasing the mind's focus, like a lens, is a desirable trait, and one that yields rich dividends in just about any human activity. When the rays converge to a sharp point, they develop the power to burn whatever it is they are converging on. However, we all know that we fall short in "converging the rays" to a point, and that something happens to the "lens" and it grows defocused with time and age. And no one amongst us is growing any younger, are we?

There are very good techniques to keep the lens sharpened, and also increase its focusing power. There are some links in the right panels on this page, where this article is being posted, which offer products that help you in the sharpening. The impact of one particular technique on the lens-sharpening process that I would like to highlight was measured by a team of researchers from the Medical School of the University of California and the Scripps Research Institute, California, as part of an experiment on a group of 16 people of ages ranging from 24 to 56. The criterion for being selected to be part of this study was that the individual had to have imbibed this technique in their daily regimen for a certain period of time. (The research paper has been published in the International Journal of Psychophysiology, the volume is still in press as of writing this article, and here is the link to the online piece: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2008.03.013.)

What the researchers found out was that the EEG graph of these people consistently showed a greater resistance of the brain to not be distracted by any ambient noise around them. So trained the brains of these people have become that, no matter what, the lens stays focused, the rays continue to converge on one sharp point, and whatever-it-is-that-they-are-converging-on continues to burn with the same intensity.

So what was the particular technique followed by these men and women? These people are meditators; they have been meditating for an average of 20 years, and the criterion for selecting them for the experiment was that they have been doing so for at least one-half hour or more each day.

Meditation involves maintaining a state of mental awareness about all that is happening in the body and the mind, but without reacting to any of the sensations taking place and thoughts passing through.

Meditators with years of practice can fob off feelings of drowsiness in conditions when there are no external sensory stimulations; so if it is a job involving keeping watch over prisoners, or peering closely at monotonous signals coming from some distant spaceship - you wouldn't find yourself dozing off, or wishing you had a better job or were doing something else. The brain develops such strength that when there are distracting noises in the background, a person who has meditation practice can actually shut them out to a great extent, if not absolutely completely.

Just like bench press and the dumb bells are exercise for the body, meditation is an exercise for the brain. Getting it to focus on the task on hand is not the only benefit that accrues from this technique. Continuous meditation practice arrests the aging of the brain, and there are encouraging reports of meditation halting the spread of HIV virus in the body. With daily practice, you can bring into control disorders of psychosomatic nature. Meditation has also been found to be effective in keeping in check the irritating tinnitus. (In fact, if you are interested, you can surf to the blog here: http://success-nirvana.blogspot.com, for a host of articles and useful information on the subject.) Strange, isn't it, that here we are, spending money on costly medicines and expensive treatments that are not only painful but also have negative side-effects, and here is such a simple, cost-free technique of simply sitting idle for about half-an-hour every day (at least half-an-hour every day) that achieves the same if not better results.

So if you are a student and very keen to score well in exams, you know now what to incorporate in your daily regimen. Once you get the brain to shield itself against any noises, your concentration on your studies will see you cover more chapters than what other non-meditator students can manage to cover; your grip over your brain will see you tackle problems - be they academic, managerial, or any other problem in life for that matter - more sharply than was possible otherwise.

How You Connect With Others - Defines Your Success

2009-01-01T06:04:00.000-08:00

Networking With Fellow Human Beings Has Its Benefits
Great friendships have been forged at the water cooler; enduring romances have blossomed at the coffee machine. Whatever the attitude of bosses towards people who hang out at these two great social intersection points in the workplace, they have a great impact on one's sense of wellbeing. Which in turn has a direct impact on work-performance. Bosses do need to think twice before the muscles of their face begin to perk up for the frown at the sight of Joe here or Alice there chit-chatting.

The age-old adage - "It is not what you know, it is who you know that matters" is indeed true. People with half-baked or no-knowledge have deployed this adage to take the elevator to the top floor of success; while those who are short of this basic insight find themselves huffing and puffing and panting up the staircase. And this has got nothing to do with knowing the person who operates the elevator or holds the elevator keys! Though, interestingly symbolically, it does.

The importance of connecting with others in an organizational or social setting cannot but be emphasized. Besides the obvious warmth of bonding with like-minded fellow human beings, we all know that connecting with others opens doors and opportunities for us for advancements in all spheres of life. There is indeed a positive correlation between the social networks you create and your job performance, your career success, and your overall outlook on life.

Does this mean that you have to be an extrovert to build your connections? Surprisingly, statistics says no. A survey conducted by researchers from the Institute of Work Psychology, University of Sheffield (here is the paper: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2008.04.003) showed that dense and good-quality social networks are created also by people who do not have any dramatic extraversion traits. Although, to the credit of extroverts, possessing an outgoing personality does make a difference. There is a greater energy and enthusiasm in their interactions, they generate excitement about whatever they are doing, and therefore do generally manage to pull networks towards them.

More than extraversion, you require some rugged emotional maturity to build and sustain connections. If you can take in your stride the possibility of your initiative to strike a conversation being rejected by the other party, plus if you are malleable enough to make social adjustments as the circumstances dictate, then at the end of the day you will have some very sound connections with people around you.

Ambition plays a big role, of course. If you are proactive, your inner drives will propel you to develop social networks that increase your influence. Gradually, you maneuver yourself in a position such that authority begins to flow 'through' you, and your words and actions begin to have an impact on the rest of the hoi-polloi. It becomes okay, then, if your performance is occasionally below the average - your networking savvy covers it up for you, if only for some time.

Are you a maven? Are you considered an expert in your particular area of knowledge? Are you somebody whose advice has value in the eyes of the others? Then blessed you are, for you get to build a social network with very little additional effort - your brain does that for you automatically. Of course, you have to be affable, approachable, and be of warm disposition that radiates outward when people approach you. Without these additional traits, you will be looked upon as grouchy and touchy and people will generally tiptoe past you for fear of the fuse blowing off.

It is natural that an organization with large number of personnel placed in a multi-layered hierarchical structure will have several groups and networks that are often closed - so you will have groups of secretaries and of junior managers, teams of programmers and data entry operators within departments, and these groups in turn form loose networks at the same hierarchy spanning the entire organization. Star networkers, known as "connectors" in social science - are those that have connections across all or most of these networks, and are the true movers and shakers. Because of the time they spend networking (read gossiping); it is sometimes a surprise that they are productive at all in the organization, although I have known people who juggle expectations-of-work from them with their social-connectivity without a crease on the forehead.

An interesting outcome of the survey was that people in management or team leadership roles do not have a propensity to make "friendships" the way it is commonly defined. Yet, they have a great social network which is built on acquaintances, so they are on "hi, hello" and nodding-the-head-as-you-pass-by-in-the-corridor terms with most of the crowd. They make it a point that, at the least, you know them and they know you - there is the element of familiarity. Which is usually enough for them to get their work done.

And managers use social networks to their maximum advantage. If there is any bit of news to be let loose in the organization but without making it formal and official, just whisper it in the ears of certain individuals, and lo and behold! Faster than the speed of light, the entire organization gets to know about it. Depending on its importance, even the canteen contractor and the transporter and all the sundry suppliers and clients will get wind. Are you in line for promotion? Keep your ears to the ground. Somebody, somehow will tell you before the supervisor formally does. That is the importance of having the right connections. Up until now, therefore, if you have always looked down upon the water cooler connections or the coffee machine encounters as waste of time - yes, believe it or not, such people exist! -, it may be time to change your attitudes toward them!

[Talking of our attitude towards relationships, how good are our online relationships? How secure and comfortable do we feel about opening up to unknown strangers? Here is one article that dwells on this thought: "Don't Cry, Shopgirl".]