Binaural beats are a fascinating and exciting technology.

Posted October 11, 2018 | Reviewed by Gary Drevitch

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sleep-newzzz/201810/how-can-binaural-beats-help-you-sleep-better

Have you heard of binaural beats? It’s a technique that’s been around for a while, but recently is getting a lot of attention for its ability to lower stress and improve sleep, as well as to improve cognitive performance.

I’ve written before about how sound can make a difference to sleep. Patients often tell me that they fall asleep to relaxing music. They seem to find it really helps them let go of active thoughts and quiet their mind—which, like yours probably does, tends to race from one thing to the next all day long (“I can’t turn off my brain” syndrome).

Binaural beats are a fascinating and exciting technology that harnesses the brain’s responsiveness to sound to move you into a state of deep relaxation, relieve anxiety, and help you sleep better.

What are binaural beats?

Sounds like a new music genre, right? Not exactly. Binaural beats are a technique of combining two slightly different sound frequencies to create the perception of a single new frequency tone.

The theory is that when exposed to two different frequencies at the same time, one in each ear, the brain actually perceives a single tone that is the difference between the two separate frequencies. Your brain, in a sense, “tunes” to this new frequency.

You listen to binaural beats using headphones. In each ear, you receive sound at a slightly different frequency (often accompanied by some relaxing background sounds). If your left ear receives a 300-hertz tone and your right ear receives a 280-hertz tone, your brain will process and absorb a 10-hertz tone. That’s a very low-frequency soundwave—one you can’t actually hear. But you don’t need to hear the sound for your brain to be affected by it.

Why is exposure to these soundwaves helpful to sleep and relaxation? Science shows that exposure to binaural beats can create changes in the brain’s degree of arousal. Listening to these sounds that create a low-frequency tone, research indicates, triggers a slow-down to brainwave activity—and that may help you relax, lower your anxiety, and make it easier for you to fall asleep and sleep more soundly.

How brain waves work

To understand how binaural beats may help relaxation, mood, mental performance, and sleep, you need to know a little bit about brain waves and what they indicate about our state of consciousness, emotion, and mental activity. Brainwaves are created from the pulses of electrical activity our neurons exhibit as they communicate with each other. Our thoughts, feelings, and actions are all expressed through this constant neural communication—so our brainwaves are associated with how we feel and what we can do at any given moment.

For the purpose of this discussion, we’ll talk about four major types of brainwaves:

Beta. These brainwaves are associated with high levels of alertness and arousal. When beta brainwave patterns dominate, we’re primed to focus and concentrate, to make decisions and think analytically. When you’re analyzing an issue at work, you’re probably in a beta-dominant state. Beta waves are fast, with a higher frequency (between 15-40 hertz). At the higher levels of this range, beta waves are associated with anxiety.

Alpha. Alpha brainwave patterns are associated with a state of wakeful relaxation. Slower and lower in frequency (between 9-14 hertz), alpha waves are dominant when we’re calm and relaxed, but still alert. Alpha waves are associated with states of meditation—your yoga class probably puts you in an alpha state—and also with our ability to be creative.

Theta. This brainwave pattern is associated with deep relaxation and with some stages of sleep, including the lighter stages of non-REM (NREM) sleep. REM sleep itself is mostly composed of beta wave and other activity that’s similar to an alert, waking brain. Deep meditation produces theta waves, which are slower and of lower frequency (between 5-8 hertz) than Alpha waves. That murky barrier between sleep and wakefulness, when you’re drifting in and out of sleep, and your thoughts feel dreamlike and difficult to remember? That’s a theta-dominant state of consciousness.

Delta. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ve heard me talk about slow-wave, delta sleep. Delta waves are slow, low-frequency brainwaves (between 1.5-4 hertz) that are the dominant brainwave pattern of deep (stage 3 and 4), NREM sleep.

As you can see, the faster (and higher frequency) the brainwave pattern, the greater your state of arousal. The slower and lower frequency brainwaves are, the deeper your state of relaxation—or sleep.

Scientists have observed for decades that exposure to sound waves can affect brainwave patterns. In a process called entrainment (aka “tuning the brain”), when exposed to sound waves at certain frequencies, brainwave patterns adjust to align with those frequencies.

This is one way scientists think binaural beats work. By exposing the brain to beats that create low-frequency tones in the brain, these sound waves create shifts in brainwaves themselves, generating slower frequency brainwaves that promote deeper states of relaxation.

How binaural beats might improve sleep

Brainwave activity during sleep is largely distinct from brain activity when you’re awake. (REM sleep is an exception: During REM, your brain is active in ways very much like when you’re awake.) During non-REM sleep, the slower, lower frequency theta and delta waves dominate, compared to the alpha and beta waves that are prominent when you’re alert and active.

A therapy that slows brainwave activity, helping to produce low-frequency waves, is likely to aid relaxation and sleep. But it’s not only lowering brainwave frequency that binaural beats may offer to sleep and relaxation. A small study (19 people) has found that exposure to binaural beats is associated with changes to three hormones important to sleep and well-being:

• DHEA. DHEA functions as a kind of master hormone, helping to produce other hormones in the body on an as-needed basis. DHEA is critical to immune function and disease protection. Particularly significant for sleep is that DHEA works to suppress cortisol, a hormone that stimulates alertness and provokes stress at elevated levels. The study found that 68 percent of participants had increases to DHEA after using binaural beats.
• Cortisol.Cortisol is an arousal hormone, stimulating alertness and attention. Cortisol levels rise and fall in connection to circadian rhythms—cortisol levels rise to their peak levels first thing in the morning, just in time for you to be active for the day. Too-high cortisol levels are associated with insomnia, as well as more time spent in light sleep, rather than deep sleep. The study found that 70 percent of participants experienced a reduction in cortisol after exposure to binaural beats.
• Melatonin. Melatonin promotes and regulates sleep. Melatonin levels rise dramatically in the evening, and the hormone works to relax your body and mind, preparing you to fall asleep. The study found 73 percent of participants had higher levels of melatonin after using binaural beats. The average increase was more than 97 percent.

In addition to potentially boosting sleep-promoting hormones, binaural beats may also reduce our perceptions of pain. A 2017 study found that binaural beats used in combination with visual stimulation led to reductions in patients’ perception of acute pain. Other recent research showed binaural beats helped improve pain perception in patients with chronic pain.

This is good news on its own—and also promising news for sleep. Pain often interferes with sleep (and poor sleep can make pain worse), so reducing pain is one effective way to improve sleep.

Binaural beats for anxiety reduction

A growing body of research suggests that binaural beats can reduce different forms of anxiety, from mild to chronic. One especially interesting study looked at the effects of binaural beats on anxiety among patients preparing to undergo surgery—a life circumstance that is pretty anxiety provoking for most anyone. Over a period of six months, patients spent 30 minutes on the day of their surgery listening to binaural beats. Compared to patients who listened to a soundtrack that did not include binaural beats—and patients who received no “beats” therapy at all—the binaural beat listeners experienced significantly greater reductions in anxiety levels.

Another study looked at whether binaural beats helped anxiety in patients preparing for cataract surgery, and found that binaural beats led to reduced anxiety levels and lower blood pressure levels before surgery.

Binaural beats to enhance cognition and creativity

• Scientists are also looking at how binaural beats affect cognitive abilities, and whether this is a therapy that can be used to enhance cognitive functions such as learning, memory, focus, and creativity. Here’s some of what we know:
• Research suggests that binaural beats can help working memory and long-term memory, and also strengthen connections among networks within the brain.
• Attention may also be improved by using binaural beats. Studies have shown that binaural beats may affect levels of dopamine, a hormone that plays a broad role in cognition and a particular role in creative thinking. This has scientists examining the possibility that binaural beats can be used to stimulate creativity. (If you’re looking to be more creative and innovative in your thinking, keep in mind that sleep itself is a powerful tool.)

A few important notes

Some studies have found that binaural beats can affect cognitive function positively or negatively, depending on the specific frequency generated. For example, a study of long-term memory found that beta-frequency binaural beats improved memory, while theta-frequency binaural beats interfered with memory. This is something for scientists to continue to examine closely. For people who use binaural beats, it’s important to understand that different frequencies will produce different effects.

When studying the impact of binaural beats on cognition, researchers often find that individual differences matter in whether the therapy delivers a benefit. Right now, it looks as though at least some of the benefits of binaural beats may work for some people, and not for others.

Research into binaural beats is expanding, but it’s still early. We’ve got a lot more to learn about how this technique affects brain function and the ways we might use it most effectively. That goes for cognitive enhancement, as well as for sleep, relaxation, and mood.

There is a lot to like about this technology as a potential treatment for sleep problems. It’s low impact and non-invasive, it doesn’t rely on chemical drugs, it’s inexpensive, and, for most people, likely easy to adopt and maintain. In this way, it’s similar to other behavioral therapies for sleep that I like, including meditation and relaxation techniques, and other mind-body therapies.

Sweet Dreams,

Michael J. Breus, Ph.D., DABSM

GERD Therapy
Alginate-based Raft Therapy
Dr. Michael Murray | Feb 12, 2019

https://doctormurray.com/another-serious-side-effect-of-heartburn-drugs-discovered-learn-how-to-get-off-these-drugs-now/

The best and most well-researched raft therapy uses alginate, also called alginic acid. This compound is found within the cell walls of brown algae. Alginate has a unique ability to hold upwards of 200-300 times its own weight in water, making it a naturally gelling substance. When taken with natural buffering agents like calcium carbonate, the alginate it produces a very effective raft to block reflux of gastric contents into the esophagus.

When alginate reaches the acidic environment of the stomach, it forms a pliable gel. At the same time, the calcium carbonate mixes with gastric acid to produce carbon dioxide bubbles that gets trapped in the gel causing it to float to the top of the stomach contents. It literally is like a foam raft sitting on top of the stomach contents. The raft-forming process takes less than a minute the raft can survive in the stomach for as long as four hours. As it makes its way through the intestinal tract it partially digested and behaves as other dietary fibers until it is finally passed out of the body.

Head-to-head studies with alginate against other drugs, including PPIs, other acid-blocking drugs, and antacids have shown this natural approach is superior to others in terms of safety and efficacy. The effects are immediate and long-lasting. It words sometime within a few seconds of taking an alginate-based product. And, since the barrier can be retained in the stomach for up to 4 hours or more, the alginate-raft also provides long lasting relief. Another big advantage for alginate is its excellent safety profile. No side effects, drug interactions, or toxicity. In contrast, acid-blocking drugs are now known to carry significant health risks.

Plus, one of the limitations of PPIs is that most often GERD is not caused by excessive stomach acid. GERD often occurs when the sphincter valve between the stomach and esophagus fails to close completely leading to the stomach contents of undigested food and drink, bile, digestive enzymes, and acids to flow upward (reflux) into the esophagus to cause irritation and pain. An alginate raft literally blocks this reflux from happening.
A Closer Look at the Clinical Results with Alginate
Alginate is a well-proven treatment for GERD. This statement is supported not only by 14 individual clinical studies, but also via a detailed meta-analysis and expert reviews. A meta-analysis is a systematic review process used by researchers that combines the results of multiple clinical studies in order to better understand how effective a treatment might be. The latest meta-analysis on alginate for GERD was conducted by a team of experts led by David A. Leiman, MD, of Duke University’s School of Medicine.

Results showed that alginate-based products were clearly more effective than a placebo or antacids. A very high degree of statistical significance was shown by pooling the data from these studies. Subjects taking alginate were 4.42 times more likely to have complete resolution of their symptoms compared to those taking placebo or antacids. The comparison to stronger acid-blocking medications like PPIs and H2-receptor antagonists like Pepcid and Tagamet was less clear and did not reach statistical significance largely because most studies were using alginate in conjunction with a PPI.

As far as comparing alginate to a PPI, there are two basic forms of GERD, one characterized by erosion of the esophagus (ERD) and another where there is no esophageal erosion (NERD). In most people in the world, the NERD form is the most common. Patients suffering from this non-erosive form are perfect candidates for alginate therapy as PPIs use do not warrant the risks. However, even in the erosive form alginate appears as effective PPIs based upon existing data.  The advantage with alginate in either ERD or NERD is that it is considerably safer as long as the alginate-based product does not contain any harmful ingredients. Some alginate-based products sold over-the-counter in drug stores contain aluminum-based antacid. Those should be avoided as the aluminum is not necessary for the effectiveness of alginate based rafts.

Dosage Information
In order for the alginate to do its job, it has to be taken after a meal in either a chewable tablet or liquid preparation. If it is taken in a capsule form or during a meal, it simply mixes in with the stomach contents and will not form a raft.

The typical dosage is 400 to 1,000 mg after each meal and 30 minutes before bedtime. There are no side effects known with alginate nor is it known to have any drug interactions. It is safe for use during pregnancy. For nighttime use, take 30 minutes before bedtime and avoid laying down for 30 minutes.

Again, it is important to avoid alginate products that contain aluminum. For example, Heartburn Soothe from Enzymedica or Refluxin from Cardiovascular Research, which has similar effects using  different raft materials.  Both are available from Full Script.   https://us.fullscript.com/welcome/nsoloway?preview=true

Guidelines for Discontinuing a PPI
It is well established that many people taking PPIs long-term that should not be. They were initially prescribed the drugs for a short-term indication or took them on their own because of occasional heartburn, but many times people have gotten hooked on them for many years or over a decade. One of the problems with PPIs is that when people try to get off them cold turkey they experience a rebound of increased acid secretion and that can cause severe pain or discomfort.
 Rather than quitting cold turkey, there are accepted guidelines for getting off PPIs that involve either dose reduction; change to using only when symptoms occur; or switching to drugs like Zantac 360 or Pepcid. These guidelines are only slightly modified when choosing to use a natural approach.

• If symptoms are completely gone or use was only occasional, simply using an alginate-based product as described in the article on an as needed basis may be all that is required.
• If GERD symptoms are still present or PPI use was continuous for more than 4 weeks, the dosage of PPI should be reduced by half for two weeks and then take reduced dosage every 2 days. At the same time, utilize an alginate-based product after each meal and 30 minutes before going to bed.
• If the PPI is being prescribed for long-term use for Barrett’s esophagitis, I recommend using the alginate-based product in place of the PPI indefinitely.
• If the PPI is being prescribed for peptic ulcer disease, consider natural approaches such as deglycyrrhizinated licorice (DGL), zinc carnosine, or mastic gum products along with the alginate-based product.

Tutorial #13–The Personal Peace Procedure

Gary Craig

Thought for the day…..

If you are ultimately going to do something important that will make a real difference…do it now

Howard Wight

****************************

Hi Everyone,

The Personal Peace Procedure that I’m about to unfold for you is not just a way to _feel a little more peaceful. Properly understood, this technique should be the healing centerpiece for every person on earth. Every physician, therapist, spiritual counselor and personal performance coach in the world should be using it as a leading tool for helping others (and themselves).

In essence, the Personal Peace Procedure involves making a list of every bothersome SPECIFIC EVENT in one’s life and systematically EFT’ing their impacts out of existence. By diligently doing this we can pull out every negative tree from our emotional forests and thus eliminate major causes of our emotional and physical ailments. This, of course, propels each individual toward personal peace which, in turn, contributes mightily toward world peace.

Here are some uses….

    1. As homework between sessions with a physician or therapist. This is certain to accelerate and deepen the healing process.

    2. As a daily procedure to clear out a lifetime of accumulated emotional debris. This will enhance self-image, reduce self-doubt and provide a profound sense of freedom.

    3. As a means to eliminate a major contributor (if not the sole cause) of a serious disease. Somewhere within one’s specific events are those angers, fears and traumas that are manifesting as disease. By addressing them all, you will likely cover those responsible for the disease.

    4. As a useful substitute for finding core issues. If you neutralize all the specific issues you will have automatically included core issues.

    5. As a means for consistent relaxation.

    6. To become an example to others as to what is possible.

This simple concept should shift the entire healing field. I can state it in a sentence…

    MOST OF OUR EMOTIONAL AND PHYSICAL PROBLEMS ARE CAUSED (OR CONTRIBUTED TO) BY OUR UNRESOLVED SPECIFIC EVENTS, THE VAST MAJORITY OF WHICH CAN BE EASILY HANDLED BY EFT.

Not bad for a mere engineer, eh? That sentence, if adopted by every healing practitioner and patient, would likely (1) dramatically increase our healing rates while (2) precipitously dropping our costs. Please note that this idea completely ignores chemical causes such as those propounded by the medical model. That’s because I have repeatedly seen improvements in clients where drugs and other chemical solutions have failed miserably. This is not to say, however, that drugs, proper nutrition and the like don’t have their place. Indeed they do. They can often be vital. In my experience, however, our unresolved specific events are nearer the foundational cause for illness than anything else. Thus they deserve our primary attention..

How obvious Experienced EFT’ers are well aware of EFT’s ability to cleanly wipe the negative specific events off of our mental walls. This is the area wherein our highest success ratios appear. To date, however, we have focused our efforts on those negative specific events that underlie a given ailment such as a phobia, headache or traumatic incident. This is good…very good…and we should continue doing so. On the other hand, why not use EFT on ALL the other specific events that are behind our more generalized (but VERY important) issues such as (to name a few)….

    * Self-image

    * Anxiety

    * Depression

    * Persistent insomnia

    * Addictions

    * Compulsions

    * Feelings of abandonment

As you eliminate the emotional baggage from your specific events you will, of course, have less and less internal conflict for your system to deal with. Less internal conflict translates into a higher level of personal peace and less emotional and physical suffering. For many, this procedure will likely result in the complete cessation of lifelong issues that other methods have not touched. How’s that for peace in a paragraph?

The same applies to physical ailments as well. I’m talking here about everything from headaches, breathing difficulties and digestive disorders to AIDS, MS and Cancer. It is becoming more widely accepted that our physical maladies are caused (or contributed to) by unresolved angers, traumas, guilt, grief and the like. I have had many discussions with physicians in recent years and more and more of them echo emotional strife as a major cause of serious diseases. Until now, however, there hasn’t been an effective way to eliminate these health bandits. We can mask them with drugs, of course, but true cures have been hard to find. Fortunately, EFT and its many cousins now provide easy and elegant tools that will aid the serious health practitioner in killing the root causes of disease…instead of the patient.

What I share here is NOT a substitute for quality EFT training NOR is it a substitute for quality help from a masterful EFT practitioner. Rather, it is a tool that, properly applied, is capable of wide ranging relief (quality training or quality assistance will add to its effectiveness). Its simplicity and far reaching effectiveness give it candidacy as a mandatory method for anyone seeking help for even the most difficult of problems. . I know that’s a bold statement but I’ve been at this for over a decade now and have seen so many impressive results over such a wide variety of issues that this statement is easy, if not essential, to make.

The method here is simple (I’m assuming you already know how to apply EFT)…..

    1. Make a list of every bothersome specific event you can remember. If you don’t find at least 50 you are either going at this half-heartedly or you have been living on some other planet. Many people will find hundreds.

    2. While making your list you may find that some events don’t seem to cause you any current discomfort. That’s OK. List them anyway. The mere fact that you remember them suggests a need for resolution.

    3. Give each specific event a title….as though it was a mini-movie. Examples: Dad hit me in the kitchen–I stole Suzie’s sandwich–I almost slipped and fell into the Grand Canyon–My third grade class ridiculed me when I gave that speech–Mom locked me in a closet for 2 days–Mrs. Adams told me I was stupid.

    4. When the list is complete, pick out the biggest redwoods in your negative forest and apply EFT to each of them until you either laugh about it or _can’t think about it any more._ Be sure to notice any aspects that may come up and consider them separate trees in your negative forest. Apply EFT to them accordingly. Be sure to keep after each event until it is resolved.

    If you cannot get a 0-10 intensity level on a particular movie then assume you are repressing it and apply 10 full rounds of EFT on it from every angle you can think of. This gives you a high possibility for resolving it.

    After the big redwoods have been removed, go to the next biggest trees.

    5. Do at least one movie (specific event) per day…preferably three…for 3 months. It only takes minutes per day. At this rate you will have resolved 90 to 270 specific events in 3 months. Then notice how your body feels better. Note, too, how your _threshold for getting upset_ is much lower. Note how your relationships are better and how many of your therapy type issues just don’t seem to be there any more. Revisit some of those specific events and notice how those previously intense incidences have faded into nothingness. Note any improvements in your blood pressure, pulse and breathing ability.

    I ask you to consciously notice these things because, unless you do, the quality healing you will have undergone will seem so subtle that you may not notice it. You may even dismiss it saying, _Oh well, it was never much of a problem anyway._ This happens repeatedly with EFT and thus I bring it to your awareness.

    6. If you are taking medications, you may feel the need to discontinue them. Please do so ONLY under a qualified physicians advice.

It is my hope that the Personal Peace Procedure becomes a worldwide routine. A few minutes per day will make a monumental difference in school performance, relationships, health and our quality of life. But these are meaningless words unless others (you) put the idea into practice. I prefaced this article with a quote from my good friend, Howard Wight. I repeat it again below for emphasis…

_If you are ultimately going to do something important that will make a real difference…do it now_

 Personal Peace to all, Gary

Why Some People Can’t Tell Left From Right

It can seem like an almost childish mistake, but a surprising number of adults confuse left from right. Scientists are only just starting to understand why.

BBC Future

• Kelly Oakes

BBC

When British brain surgeon Henry Marsh sat down beside his patient’s bed following surgery, the bad news he was about to deliver stemmed from his own mistake. The man had a trapped nerve in his arm that required an operation – but after making a midline incision in his neck, Marsh had drilled out the nerve on the wrong side of his spinal column.

Preventable medical mistakes frequently involve wrong-sided surgery: an injection to the wrong eye, for example, or a biopsy from the wrong breast. These “never events” – serious and largely preventable patient safety accidents – highlight that, while most of us learn as children how to tell left from right, not everyone gets it right.

While for some people, telling left from right is as easy as telling up from down, a significant minority – around one in six people, according to a 2020 study – struggle with the distinction. Even for those who believe they have no issues, distractions such as ambient noise, or having to answer unrelated questions, can get in the way of making the right choice.

“Nobody has difficulty in saying [something is] front and back, or top and bottom,” says Ineke van der Ham, professor of neuropsychology at Leiden University in the Netherlands. But telling left from right is different, she says. “It’s because of the symmetry, and because when you turn around, it’s the other way around, and that makes it so confusing.” 

Left-right discrimination is actually quite a complex process, calling upon memory, language, visual and spatial processing, and mental rotation. In fact, researchers are only just beginning to get to the bottom of exactly what’s going on in our brains when we do it – and why it’s much easier for some people than others.

Former US President Donald Trump was briefly flummoxed when leaders were asked to cross hands at a summit in the Philippines in 2017 (Credit: AFP/Getty Images)

“Some individuals can tell right from left innately, just can do it without thinking,” says Gerard Gormley, a GP and clinical professor at Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland. “But others have to go through a process.” In an effort to understand what happens in wrong-sided medical errors, Gormley and his colleagues have conducted research on medical students’ experience of making left-right decisions and examined the process.

“First of all, you have to orient right from left in yourself,” he says. When the answer doesn’t come instantly, participants described various techniques, from making an L shape with their thumb and index finger, to thinking about which hand they use to write, or strum a guitar. “For some people it’s a tattoo on their body or a piercing,” Gormley says.

Then, when figuring out which side is someone else’s left or right, the next step is mentally rotating yourself so you’re facing in the same direction as the other person. “If I’m facing you, my left hand will be opposite your right hand,” says Gormley. “That idea of mentally rotating an object adds an extra degree of complexity.” Other research shows that people tend to find it easier to judge if an image shows a left or right hand by imagining their own hand or body rotating.

Research published by Van der Ham and her colleagues in 2020 found that around 15% of people rate themselves as insufficient when it comes to identifying left and right. Almost half of the four hundred participants in the study said they used a hand-related strategy to identify which is which.

The researchers used something called the Bergen right-left discrimination test to dig deeper into how these strategies work. Participants looked at pictures of stick people either facing toward or away from them, with their arms in various positions, and had to identify their highlighted hand as their left or right. “It seems simple, but it’s kind of frustrating if you have to do a hundred of these as quickly as you can,” says Van der Ham.

The more asymmetrical someone’s body is – in terms of writing hand preference, for example – the easier they find it to tell left and right apart.

In the first experiment, the participants sat with their hands on a table in front of them. “There was a very clear effect from how this little stick figure was positioned,” says Van der Ham. “If you were looking at the back of the head, so it was aligned with you, people were a lot faster and more accurate.” Similarly, when the stick person was facing the participant but had their hands crossed, so their left hand was on the same side as the participant’s left hand, people tended to do better.

“That tells us that the body really is involved in this,” says Van der Ham. The next question was whether participants were using cues from their body at the time of the test to identify left and right, or referring to a stored idea of their body instead.

To answer that, the researchers repeated their experiment, but this time tested four different scenarios: participants sat with their hands either crossed or uncrossed on the table in front of them, and had their hands either visible during the test, or covered with a black cloth.

But the researchers found that none of those changes influenced test performance. In other words, participants didn’t need to actually see their hands in order to use their own body to distinguish right from left.

“We haven’t completely solved the issue,” says Van der Ham. “But we were able to identify our bodies as being a key element in identifying left from right, and that we consult our body representation as we have it in a more static way.”

Mistakes made during medical procedures due to left-right errors have led some surgeons to take extra steps to ensure they operate in the right place (Credit: Tommy London/Alamy)

In Van der Ham’s experiments, the boost in performance that came from being in line with the stick person was more pronounced in people who said they use a hand-related strategy to tell left from right in their daily lives, as well as in women generally. The researchers also found that men tended to be faster in responding than women, but the data did not back up previous research showing that men perform better overall in left-right discrimination tests.

Exactly why people differ in their ability to tell left from right isn’t clear, though research suggests that the more asymmetrical someone’s body is (in terms of writing hand preference, for example) the easier they find it to tell left and right apart. “If one side of your brain is slightly larger than the other, you tend to have a better right-left discrimination,” says Gormely.

But it could also be something that we learn in childhood, like other aspects of spatial cognition, says Van der Ham. “If kids are in charge of finding the way around, if you just let them walk in front of you for a couple of metres and make the decisions, those are the kids that ended up being better navigators,” she says.

Research by Alice Gomez and colleagues at the Lyon Neuroscience Research Center in France hints that left-right discrimination is something that children can pick up quickly. Gomez designed a two-week intervention programme, delivered by teachers, designed to increase five-to-seven-year-olds’ body representation and motor skills.

When they were tested on their ability to locate the correct body part on themselves or a partner – their right knee, for example – after the programme, the number of left-right discrimination errors were almost halved. “It was very easy for us to increase the abilities of children to be able to locate the [body part] on the basis of the name,” says Gomez.

One reason for this might be that the children were taught a strategy – to think about their writing hand – for when they couldn’t remember right and left. The programme’s focus on children’s own bodies is another possible explanation, especially as other research shows that an egocentric reference frame is key when we make left-right decisions.

In a typical classroom, children might label body parts on a diagram rather than their own bodies, because the latter is more time-consuming and difficult to assess for a teacher, says Gomez. “It’s very rare that they will have the time to be egocentric,” she says.

Most of us can distinguish up and down intuitively, but working out left from right can take more mental gymnastics (Credit: Alamy)

While there are plenty of everyday scenarios where knowing left from right is important, there are some situations where it’s absolutely critical. Brain surgeon Marsh was able to put right his wrong-sided trapped nerve surgery – but a surgeon removing the wrong kidney or amputating the wrong limb, for example, would have devastating consequences.

Medicine is not the only field where left-right errors can make the difference between life and death: it’s possible that a steersman turning the ship right instead of left was a contributing factor in the sinking of the Titanic.

But while some people have to put in more effort to judge left and right, everybody has the ability to get left-right decisions wrong, says Gormley. He hopes that more awareness of how easy it is to make such a mistake will lead to less stigma for those who need to double check their decision.

“As health care professionals, we spend a lot of time labelling spatial orientations: proximal, distal, superior, inferior, but really pay no attention to right or left,” he says. “But actually, of all the spatial orientations, that is the most challenging.”

 
SMILE!
New Study Shows Forming A Simple Smile Tricks Your Mind Into A Positive Workday Mood
ByBryan Robinson, Ph.D.,
 
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrobinson/2020/08/13/new-study-shows-forming-a-simple-smile-tricks-your-mind-into-a-positive-workday-mood/
 
“Smile and the world smiles with you, cry and you cry alone,” goes the song. For decades, singers have crooned about the power of smiling to make you feel better.
With the pandemic and increases of anxiety and depression, smiling and optimism don’t come easily these days. But a new study to be published in the journal, Experimental Psychology, reports the sheer activity of moving your facial muscles to form a smile—even if you fake it—generates positive emotions and raises your mood. Could smiling be a simple antidote to help us get through these extraordinary times?

Clinicians and Twelve Step programs have batted around the age-old strategy of “acting as if”—a simple, yet powerful tool that says you can lift your workday mood by acting as if you already feel better than you actually do.
Here’s how it works. You give yourself to a certain performance as if it’s how you already feel. When you act “as if,” the mood you pretend becomes a reality. Suppose you’re angry toward someone on your team who offended you but you want to be forgiving. You can start to feel forgiving by acting as if you are forgiving. Perhaps you feel envious of a coworker’s promotion but want to be happy for her. You can be happy by acting as if you are happy.

Science-Backed Evidence For “Acting As If”
It might sound too simple to be true, but science backs it up. A previous study at the University of Rochester found that when faced with a difficult task, people who sat up straight and crossed their arms persevered for almost twice as long as the others.

Changing body posture, breathing patterns, muscle tension, facial expressions, gestures, movements, words and vocal tonality release a surge of chemicals that can change our internal state.

Standing tall with shoulders back makes us look confident, plus it makes us feel more confident. Training the body to position itself the way you want to think and feel about yourself adjusts your thoughts and feelings to the way you want them to be. Making body adjustments—pulling your shoulders back, standing or sitting up straight, walking in a more expansive way—can pull you out of self-doubt, disappointment or dread and any other self-defeating emotion.

The reason it works is because of the mind-body connection. When you “act as if,” the rest of you follows suit. The cells of your body constantly eavesdrop on your thoughts from the wings of your mind. When you’re doubtful or disappointed about something, your body goes with the downturn of your feelings and dumps a cocktail of neuropeptides into your bloodstream, making you feel worse in a matter of seconds. As you focus on the negative feeling, you might not even realize that you hunch your head or slump when you walk. This body posture not only reflects how you feel but also contributes to how you feel, which makes you feel even worse and come across in a negative way.

The same is true with smiling. An earlier study by Michael Lewis and his research team at the University of Cardiff in Wales found that when people whose ability to frown is compromised by cosmetic Botox injections, they are happier than people who can frown. The researchers administered an anxiety and depression questionnaire to 25 females, half of whom had received frown-inhibiting Botox injections. The Botox recipients reported feeling happier and less anxious in general; more important, they did not report feeling any more attractive, which suggests that the emotional effects were not driven by a psychological boost that could come from the treatment’s cosmetic nature.

A Groundbreaking New Study
Groundbreaking research from the University of South Australia confirms that the act of smiling can trick your mind into happiness, simply by how you move your facial muscles. We feel bad not just because facial expressions reflect how we feel, but they contribute to how we feel.

The new study evaluated the impact of a covert smile on two situations: perceptions of face and body expressions. In both situations, a smile was induced by participants holding a pen between their teeth, forcing their facial muscles to replicate the movement of a smile. Participants in one group held a pen between their teeth, forcing their facial muscles into a smile while a comparison group held no pen between their teeth. Both groups were shown a range of facial expressions (from frowns to smiles) and a series of body movements (from “sad walking” videos to “happy walking” videos).

Under the “pen-in-the-teeth” condition, the forced “smiling” facial position caused the participants to interpret the facial muscles and body movements of others as more positive, compared to the “no-pen” group.

When participants forced a smile, it stimulated the amygdala—the emotional brain center, which in turn released neurotransmitters to encourage an emotionally positive state. According to the Chief investigator, Dr. Fernando Marmolejo-Ramos, “When your muscles say you’re happy, you’re more likely to see the world around you in a positive way.” He concludes that if the brain can be tricked into perceiving stimuli as happy, this mechanism could be used to boost mental health conditions such as reducing anxiety or depression.

Smile Whether You Mean It Or Not
This study contributes to the scientific backing of the old adage, “fake it, ‘til you make it.” Of course, you don’t want to walk around your workplace with a pen between your teeth. But because our perceptual and motor systems are intertwined, your facial muscular activity alters how you perceive the facial and body expressions of others.

Simply activating a smile contributes to a positive neurological reaction. In other words, when your facial muscles say you’re happy, you’re more likely to experience your job and coworkers in a more positive light.

So next time you’re down-in-the dumps or have a sour attitude, jump start a feel-good workday by putting on a happy face and smiling. Remind yourself that frowning and dreading make you feel worse. Even if you have to fake it to start, convince yourself that facing the workday is a piece of cake, act as if it’s true, then notice how much better you feel and productive you are.

I have posted before about the benefits of smiling

https://integrative-energetics.com/smiling-is-good-for-you/

The Fiber Phenomenon: 30 Easy Ways To Get Your Fill of This Life-Changing Nutrient It reduces the risk of heart disease, stroke, and colon cancer – while boosting the health of our gut and brain. Here is the no-fuss guide to getting your 30g a day.

From    https://www.theguardian.com

What is the leading risk factor for diet-related ill health? Ultra-processed food? Too much salt, sugar or fat? According to a systematic analysis published in 2022, it is our low intake of wholegrains. Wholegrains contain B vitamins, folic acid, omega-3 fats, protein, antioxidants and micronutrients. And, crucially, they are packed with fibre.

“Fibre feels like the forgotten nutrient,” says Dr Samantha Gill, a specialist gastroenterology dietitian for the British Dietetic Association. “It has a reputation for being bland, boring and tasting like cardboard. On top of that, fibre is often related to bloating and flatulence.”

With an image like that, it is no wonder we don’t eat enough of it. Most countries have a recommended daily fibre intake of 30g for adults; the UK increased its target from 24g to 30g a decade ago. All countries are falling short. Just 3% of people in Canada, 5% of those in the US and 9% of those in the UK meet the guidelines. Even in Germany, where people eat the most fibre in Europe, intake tops out at about 25g. “There is a big fibre gap,” says Gill. “In the UK, we’re only eating about 19g fibre daily.”

Fibre is a type of carbohydrate found in plants. As well as wholegrains, it is in vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, herbs, spices and legumes. “Fibre isn’t easily broken down in the gut, unlike other carbohydrates,” says Gill. “Instead, it travels down your gut, passing through your small and large intestine.” Its best-known health effect is preventing constipation. “Some types of fibre bulk out stools and improve consistency, which makes them soft and easy to pass,” she says.
Every 7g daily increase in fibre (half a tin of baked beans) can lower your risk of noncommunicable diseases by up to 9%.

But there is far more to fibre than keeping you regular. A landmark study published in 2019 showed that a fibre-rich diet reduces the risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and colon cancer by 16-24%. In 2015, the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition in the UK found that every 7g daily increase in fibre (half a tin of baked beans) can lower your risk of noncommunicable diseases by up to 9%. More recent studies have found that fibre also contributes to a healthy gut microbiome and brain.

“The reason fibre can affect so many areas of health is because it is not a single entity,” says Gill. “Fibre is an umbrella term and there are many different types that behave in different ways when they reach the gut.”

Yet despite these manifold benefits, UK fibre consumption has remained static, says Bridget Benelam, a communication manager for the British Nutrition Foundation (BNF). “Since the guidelines changed in 2015, there has been no increase in fibre intake. We’re not shifting the dial at all. If we did, there would be so many health benefits, and it would likely be a more sustainable diet.”
James Collier, the co-founder of Huel and author of Well Fed, believes we are facing a fibre crisis. “Fibre’s not very sexy, is it? I come from the gym scene, where everyone talks about protein. No one says: ‘Oh, have you had your fibre today?’ But why not, because it is fundamental to living well.” What’s more, he adds, “it’s not actually that hard to get 30g a day. If you’re having a plant-rich diet, it’s super-easy.”

Is it? A study looking at whether 30g a day was achievable found barriers including “a lack of awareness regarding the health benefits of fibre beyond bowel health”, and “negative perceptions of starchy foods”, which are often perceived as fattening.

“Sadly, the modern-day diet is a low-fibre diet,” says Gill. “Typically, in the UK, diets are high in salt, sugar, and fat.” Only 27% of UK adults eat their 5-a-day, according to the BDA. Looking on the bright side, that leaves a lot of room for improvement. “Things we need to reduce in our diet are often front of mind,” says Benelam, “but eating fibre is a more positive message”.
In Denmark, the Danish Whole Grain Partnership, a public-private enterprise to increase wholegrain consumption, has been a massive success. Between 2008 and 2019, the average daily intake of wholegrains rose by 128%, and the share of the population eating the recommended amount of wholegrains daily increased from 6% to 54%.

In the absence of any similar programme in the UK( and US), how can you up your fibre intake? Experts advise doing it gradually to avoid side-effects such as discomfort, bloating and wind, and drinking lots of water (fibre draws water into the bowel, so you can become dehydrated if you don’t drink enough). Those with conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome may find their tolerance varies, but for everyone else, says Gill, “the more fibre the better”.

Thirty ways to get your 30g a day
1 Base all three meals on starchy foods – mainly wholegrains and skin-on potatoes.
2 Aim for eight portions of vegetables and fruit a day (five is not enough!).
3 Eat a couple of high-fibre snacks a day: unsalted nuts and seeds, slices of fruit dipped in nut butter (chunky has more fibre than smooth), slices of veg dipped in hummus, wholegrain crackers, toasted seaweed …
4 Move more. Studies from Ireland found that those who meet the fibre recommendation eat more food overall, so you need to work up an appetite.
5 If you eat breakfast cereal, choose porridge/overnight oats, no-added-sugar muesli, Weetabix, Shredded Wheat, Bran Flakes or similar. Go half-and-half with your regular cereal if that makes it easier. Top with fruit, nuts and seeds.
6 Eat the whole fruit. This is far better than drinking juice, which has no fibre. Smoothies have a small amount – more if you make your own and add oats, nut butters and seeds. A maximum daily portion of smoothie or juice is 150ml, probably smaller than you think.
7 Look at the label. A food is “high in fibre” if it contains at least 6g per 100g, or a “source of fibre” if it contains at least 3g/100g. Fibre is usually listed on the back of the pack.
8 Don’t peel your potatoes. Baked potatoes, boiled new potatoes and sweet potato wedges are all good. If you fancy mash, scoop out the flesh of baked potatoes and eat the skins another time. Keep the skins on other fruit and vegetables whenever you can, too, including root veg, kiwis, cucumber, apples and aubergine.
9 Go for wholemeal, rye or granary bread. To wean yourself off white, try a 50/50 loaf. If all else fails, choose added-fibre white bread. Stuff sandwiches with lettuce and vegetables.
10 White rice is low in fibre – switch to brown, or even better, black or red. Ditto pasta: ditch white for wholewheat. If you don’t like wholewheat, try a legume-based pasta made from red lentils or green peas.
11 Eat plenty of vegetables: in sauces, stews and curries; as side dishes; in salads. Eat the rainbow – particularly high-fibre vegetables include parsnips, broccoli, peas, green beans, sweetcorn, carrots, brussels sprouts and cauliflower.
12 In fact, go vegan! OK, that might be a bit extreme for most people, but vegan and vegetarian diets tend to be high in fibre. Perhaps consider some plant-based days each week.
13 With fruit, vegetables and pulses, fresh, frozen, dried and tinned (in natural juices/water) all count. Make life easier with a freezer full of frozen peas, spinach and berries, and a cupboard stocked with tinned sweetcorn and beans.
14 Try new fruits or vegetables regularly to cover all fibre bases. For example, chicory and jerusalem artichokes are a source of oligosaccharides, a kind of prebiotic. Don’t forget fungi – mushrooms are an often overlooked but rich source of fibre.
15 Vary your wholegrains: try bulgur wheat, barley, rye, buckwheat, quinoa and couscous.
16 Have fresh or dried fruit, or tinned fruit in natural juice, for dessert. Dried fruit is typically higher in fibre than fresh, but it can increase the risk of tooth decay, so it’s better eaten as part of a meal, rather than a snack. High-fibre fruits include figs, berries, pears, apples, bananas, melons, avocado, dried apricots, raisins and prunes.
17 Use lots of herbs (fresh and dried) and spices.
18 Simple swaps can make a big difference, says the BNF. For breakfast, swap two slices of white toast with jam and a glass of orange juice (1.6g total fibre) for two slices of wholemeal toast with peanut butter and an orange (8.3g). If you can’t give up the jam, mix in some chia seeds.
19 As a mid-morning snack, instead of plain yoghurt (no fibre), add some strawberries and almonds (5.5g).
20 At lunchtime, instead of white spaghetti with a tomato-based sauce (3.9g), have wholewheat spaghetti with a lentil and tomato-based sauce (10.9g).
21 During an afternoon slump, instead of crackers with cheddar cheese (0.9g), have rye crackers with hummus (8.5g).
22 For dinner, instead of chicken breast, mashed potato and carrots (4.7g), have chicken breast, baked potato, carrots and green beans (11.2g). In total, these swaps take your daily fibre intake from 11.2g to 44.4g. For more ideas, check out the BNF’s seven-day 30g fibre meal plan.
23 Add pulses. If you’re making a ground beef-based dish such as spaghetti bolognese, lasagne, chilli con carne or shepherd’s pie, replace half the meat with pulses such as chickpeas or lentils. (For meatballs, use 50% oats.) Add beans to soups and stews, and sprinkle seeds on top.
24 In a rush? Two slices of wholemeal toast with baked beans provides more than a third of your daily fibre intake.
25 Use nutritional yeast in place of parmesan on pasta, in pesto or anywhere you want a cheesy hit.
26 Fancy a pizza? Add vegetable toppings and have it with a side salad.
27 Use tahini in homemade hummus, sauces and desserts – sesame seeds are particularly high in fibre.
28 If baking bread, cakes or biscuits, use wholewheat or oat flour, or mix 50:50 with white flour. Look for recipes that use fruit and veg: banana bread, beetroot or avocado brownies, carrot or parsnip cakes …
29 High-fibre treats include granola bars, dark chocolate and popcorn. Even crisps contain a bit of fibre – look for root vegetable and skin-on varieties.
30 Don’t spend money on fibre supplements (unless advised to by a doctor). Potatoes, oats, lentils and beans are some of the cheapest, most filling foods around – and the best way to get your fibre fix.

Nick’s comments:
A great source of fiber are these breads https://www.mestemacher-gmbh.com/products/
available at many natural food stores and Amazon.  Many of these breads have 7-9 grams of fiber per slice. Eating a half a slice with each meal can provide a significant increase in your daily fiber intake.  Several people that I encouraged to eat these breads have much better bowel health as a result.

Don’t think that you are getting a lot of fiber in salads!  Most bags of salad have about 2 grams of fiber for the whole bag!

In the US:      The mean dietary fiber intake of all individuals 2 years and older, excluding breastfed children, was 16 grams per day. Intakes of males and females were 18 and 15 grams per day, respectively.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK589559/   (For the full reference)

How much fiber do you need?
The National Academy of Medicine gives the following daily fiber recommendations for adults:

• 21 grams for women older than age 50.
• 25 grams for women age 50 or younger.
• 30 grams for men older than age 50.
• 38 grams for men age 50 or younger.

Reading This Will Make You Want to Floss  (and more)
From: https://time.com/7006165/flossing-teeth-benefits/   for most clickable links

My comments are at the bottom

Each time you brush and floss, you’re doing more than freshening your breath and preserving your smile. Research suggests you may also be improving your overall health—and maybe even extending your lifespan.
People often see dentistry largely as a cosmetic specialty, says Anita Aminoshariae, a professor of endodontics at the Case Western Reserve University School of Dental Medicine. But “the mouth is not disconnected from the rest of the body,” she says. Quite the opposite: studies suggest that oral health is associated with everything from heart health to lifespan, even if many people don’t realize it.

Oral health goes beyond the mouth
Researchers call this phenomenon the “oral-systemic link,” and it’s been showing up in studies for years. Some of the earliest findings on this topic were about links between oral health and diabetes, and it’s now well-established that diabetic patients’ blood sugar levels may improve when they’re treated for gum disease—and that their gum disease may worsen if their diabetes does.
Oral health also seems related to other measures of cardiometabolic health, including patients’ likelihood of developing or dying from heart disease. In a recent research review, Aminoshariae and her co-authors found that people with very poor oral health—those with 10 or fewer natural teeth left in their mouths—were about 66% more likely to die from cardiovascular disease than people with more robust smiles. And another recent study, co-authored by Yau-Hua Yu, an associate professor of periodontology at the Tufts University School of Dental Medicine, found that people who describe their oral health as fair or poor are at increased risk of dying and may also be more likely to have cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, and diabetes.

Like most research on the oral-systemic link, these studies can’t prove cause and effect. It’s possible the relationship actually works the other way around: that people in poor health are more likely to have bad dental wellness, Yu says. Other factors, like socioeconomic status and access to nutritious food, may also play a role, she says.

But Aminoshariae believes oral health does directly influence overall wellness. She thinks of the teeth like sand dunes. Just as dunes protect inland areas from the sea, Aminoshariae believes the teeth shield the body from foreign substances that could cause disease. “Once they’re gone,” she says, “it’s like a free for all.”

The microbiome, the name for the legions of bacteria, viruses, and other microbes coursing through the human body, is another possible explanation, Yu says. When you don’t clean your teeth properly, allowing food and other debris to sit on and in between the teeth, the bacterial communities in your mouth can change, potentially contributing to gingivitis and gum disease over time, she explains.
When gum health suffers, the consequences can be wide-ranging. The blood vessels in the gums are “leaky,” explains Yvonne Kapila, a professor and associate dean of research at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Dentistry. When someone’s gums are inflamed or diseased, “this leakiness allows bacteria, viruses, and all these other things that are in the outside world to enter your body” and potentially spread throughout it via the bloodstream, she explains.
In some cases, pieces of bacteria or other microbes may travel from the gums into the bloodstream and cause disease or inflammation in other organs, Kapila says. Bacterial matter from the mouth has been found in cancerous tumors, diseased heart valves and livers, and brain tissue of people who died from Alzheimer’s disease, to name a few notable examples. And, Kapila says, animal studies conducted by her team and others suggest that tweaking the mouth’s microbiome, such as by treating gum disease, may help reverse some of those issues, signaling a true cause-and-effect relationship between oral and overall health.

How to take care of your oral health
The good news is, most people already know what they should be doing to keep their mouth healthy: eat a nutritious diet, brush each morning and night, and floss regularly. Yu’s research suggests inadequate flossing is associated with a higher risk of death, while other studies show that good flossing practices lower the chances of developing gum disease. Brushing for at least two minutes, twice a day, also reduces the chances of developing cardiovascular diseases, according to other research.

“Like you shower every day, you have to brush your teeth every day and clean the gaps [in between] every day,” Yu says. “That is basic stuff.”

Finally, keep up with your twice-yearly dental appointments so a professional can assess your tooth and gum health and intervene, if necessary, before a situation grows serious. “Prevention, prevention, prevention is so critical,” Kapila says.

Nick’s comments:   A good place to start an in-depth exploration of your oral health is to find out what is making up your oral microbiome.  This test is a way to determine it.
https://www.oraldna.com/test/alert2/

Here is a sample test result. https://www.oraldna.com/pdf/tests/Alert2Report.pdf
I wish I had known what my microbiome was…. it would have probably saved me from surgeries of both gum and jaw and from losing several teeth.

Find a dentist that does the test near you…
https://www.oraldna.com/doctor-finder/
In Helena check out:  https://tulip.dental/

Other help:  There are two toothpastes Periobrite and Denticidin and their related products that may be useful.

Periobrite product line  https://www.amazon.com/s?k=periobrite&crid=2TICFF5V1GZKV&sprefix=periobrite%2Caps%2C345&ref=nb_sb_ss_pltr-data-refreshed_3_10…
These formulated products have a very long list of herbs to help gums heal, plus Folic acid and Coenzyme Q10 to stimulate tissue regeneration.

Biocidin products…Create an account at Fullscript to purchase  https://us.fullscript.com/welcome/nsoloway?preview=true  and search for Biocidin which help break down bacterial biofilms.    Biofilms are like the gel around tomato seeds. They serve as a barrier to the immune system from attacking the infection and getting rid of it.

Broad-Spectrum Toothpaste with Biocidin®
Microorganisms and bacterial biofilms in dental plaque cause a number of oral health concerns that can lead to systemic health challenges. Dental microorganisms are implicated in the propagation of endotoxins such as LPS, and this “leaky mouth” effect can have the same implications as “leaky gut” in terms of systemic issues. Use of the broad-spectrum botanicals in Dentalcidin™ can assist in removing biofilms and plaque and are an excellent way to promote and maintain healthy teeth and gums.

Also, at Fullscript   there are oral probiotics. Just like probiotics for your digestive system there are probiotics for oral health.  Search for: FLORASSIST® Oral Hygiene, PRO-Dental Probiotic, E.N.T. Biotic BLIS K12 probiotic

The H2Oral Irrigator available from Amazon attaches to your shower and allows you to get a “water-pick” experience for a much longer time and with out the clean up

The Surprisingly Simple Exercise That Can Lower Your Blood Pressure
This isometric exercise is found to lower blood pressure even better than some cardio workouts.
The Washington Post  https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2024/01/30/wall-sit-isometric-lower-blood-pressure/

• Kelyn Soong

The wall sit, a simple bodyweight exercise that can be done virtually anywhere, isn’t just for building strength. It can help your cardiovascular health, too.
A recent study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine suggests that isometric exercises, like wall sits (also known as wall squats), can help reduce blood pressure even more effectively than other forms of exercise, including aerobic activity, weight training or high-intensity interval workouts.
The research is good news for people who struggle to meet physical activity guidelines that recommend at least 150 minutes of weekly moderate-intensity exercise, like brisk walking or bicycling. The new analysis found that about eight minutes of isometric exercise, three times a week, can lead to a meaningful reduction in blood pressure.
This means holding a wall sit for two minutes and resting for two minutes. Repeat for a total of four wall sits with breaks in between. A single session, including rest, will take only 14 minutes.
On average, a regular isometric routine of wall sits lowered systolic blood pressure (the top number) by 10 mmHg and diastolic pressure by 5 mmHg, according to the research.
The study’s authors say the findings support development of new exercise guidelines that go beyond recommending aerobic exercise for the prevention and treatment of hypertension.
“Our main message is that actually engaging in exercise is fantastic and any exercise might reduce your blood pressure,” said Jamie O’Driscoll, the senior author of the study. “But if you’re an individual who is currently exercising to the guidelines and you’re still having a bit of difficulty reducing that blood pressure and you want to avoid going on medication, perhaps isometrics is an additional mode to complement the exercise you’re already doing.”
Benefits of isometric exercises
An isometric exercise refers to a static contraction in which the length of the muscle does not change, said Jamie Edwards, the first author of the study and a PhD researcher at Canterbury Christ Church University.
“Any kind of an exercise that is holding tension in any position which doesn’t involve dynamic movement is generally isometric exercise,” he said.
The research reviewed 270 randomized controlled trials that collectively studied 15,827 participants. The researchers looked at the blood pressure effects of three isometric exercises: squeezing a handgrip dynamometer, extending your legs against a fixed resistance and squatting with your back flat against the wall. (While planks are a popular example of isometric exercises, they were not included in the study.)
The researchers found that, overall, isometric exercise training was the most effective exercise for lowering systolic and diastolic blood pressures.
“From a clinician standpoint, these are very promising findings,” said Laura Richardson, a registered clinical exercise physiologist at the University of Michigan who was not involved in the study. “Being able to use isometric exercise as a therapeutic tool for those with hypertension is wonderful. I really think it’s a great way to get more individuals involved in being active.”
Isometric exercises effectively lower blood pressure because contracting a muscle and holding the position temporarily reduces blood flow to that muscle, O’Driscoll said. When you release that contraction, blood flow through the muscle tissue increases. This produces important signals that prompt blood vessels to relax more and creates less resistance to blood flow, which ultimately reduces blood pressure, O’Driscoll said.
How to do a wall sit
To do a wall sit, find a wall that you can lean against. Take a couple of steps forward. Keep your feet hip width apart and slide your back down the wall until your knees are at about a 90-degree angle, as if you’re sitting in a chair, Richardson said.
The lower you squat, the more intense the workout. Be careful of how much you bend your knees in the beginning. Work your way down to 90 degrees. If you can’t get there, Richardson recommends sliding down based on your knee flexibility and holding steady until you feel lower-body muscle fatigue.
Isometric exercises like wall sits engage a lot of muscles, help build strength and are helpful for improving balance and range of motion, Richardson said.
“Primarily, you’re going to be using a lot of your leg muscles: your quadriceps, your glutes, your calves,” said Richardson, who is also a clinical associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Kinesiology. “If your back is flat against the wall, it’s going to help engage the abdominal muscles.”

How much extra time on screen have you had in the past 18 months? It may be causing nearsightedness – but there’s hope for reversing it

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/nov/14/eyeballs-screens-vision-nearsightedness-myopia

Adam Popescu

How close is the smartphone or laptop you’re reading this on from your eyes? Probably just a few inches. How long have you spent looking at a screen today? If you’re close to the average it’s likely to be over nine hours.

New research from ophthalmologists shows that our constant screen time is radically changing our eyes. Just like the rest of our bodies, the human eye is supposed to stop growing after our teens. Now it keeps growing.

When our eyes spend more time focusing on near objects, like phones, screens or even paperbacks, it makes our eyeballs elongate, which prevents the eye from bending light the way it should. This elongation increases nearsightedness, called myopia, which causes distant objects to appear blurred. Myopia affects half of young adults in the US, twice as many as 50 years ago and over 40% of the population.

When many of us began working from home, researchers predicted this dramatic online increase would cause never-before-seen eye dysfunction. They were right

For adults this might cause eye strains or speed up existing vision issues. But for kids, whose eyes are still developing, the situation is so dire that the American Academy of Optometry and American Academy of Ophthalmology both consider myopia an epidemic.

Working for prolonged periods, whether texting, reading or jotting emails is what optometrists call “near work”. The trouble with holding a screen close to your face isn’t about light shining into your eyes, it’s about the strain of the eye. For one, your eyes blink far less when they’re focused so closely. As you’re holding your phone in your hand, performing near work, your muscles stretch and your lenses shift since our eyes over-accommodate to constant close-distance tasks. That’s why they’re growing.

When you put on a pair of glasses, your eye muscles relax because they’re no longer straining. Ditto if you put down your phone – sans glasses – blink a couple times and stare off into the distance for 20 seconds.

Does this affect you? Probably. How much extra time on screen have you had in the past 18 months? How much work have you been doing from home? Pre-pandemic, our phones were already constant companions. When many of us began working from home and e-learning last year, researchers predicted this dramatic online increase would cause never-before-seen eye dysfunction. They were right.

Last spring, Chinese researchers tested over 120,000 Covid-quarantined students aged six to eight and found myopia and other vision issues linked to home confinement increased up to three times compared with the previous five years – that’s with as little as 2.5 more hours of e-learning (not counting video games, social media, etc). Results for US students could be much higher since many American kids spend most of their days online. “Virtual learning has definitely increased myopia,” says Dr Luxme Hariharan, of the Nicklaus children’s hospital in Miami, Florida, who points anecdotally to a huge shift in cases in the last year. “Prolonged near work [like looking at screens up close] makes our eyes overcompensate.”

“We can clinically measure the millimeter lengthening of the eyeball,” explains Dr Eric Chow, a Miami, Florida optometrist. “Studies have shown that the longer the axial length, the higher the risk of eye diseases like glaucoma, retinal detachment and cataracts.”

Straining vision introduces a host of eye-related health problems. And it’s more than just kids needing prescriptions. “People say ‘oh, it’s just glasses,’” says Dr Aaron Miller, a pediatric ophthalmologist at Houston Eye Associates. “The nearsighted have much higher chances of retina tears and glaucoma, bigger issues secondary to nearsightedness. It’s the long game we worry about.”

He adds: “The shape of the eye is round like a basketball,” he explains. “When an eye becomes nearsighted, myopic, the eye is longer, like a grape or olive. The retina – the coating – can get stretched and thinned. As we age, sometimes there can be breaks in the retina. Like cracks in wallpaper. When that occurs, these cracks cause fluid to enter in behind the wallpaper, that’s what we call retinal detachment which causes a lot of people to go blind.”

This isn’t just a western problem. There is a genetic component here, but it’s clear that behavior accelerates the change. Poor eyes can lead to decreased work efficiency and huge loss of productivity – think money–for multinationals. That’s why nations like China are so worried about this that they have already changed their education system, limiting how long students study – even extra tutoring – to curb the near-work that heightens myopia. The US should do the same, says Miller.

Labeling myopia a second public health crisis is no hyperbole. 10-year-old Aleena Joyce’s screen time tripled in the last 18 months, with many school days – and two-thirds of Aleena’s waking hours – held almost entirely on her iPad. The Illinois fourth-grader had already been diagnosed with myopia – nearsightedness – in kindergarten, and her eyes had worsened each year. “Sometimes we would have to go in prior to her annual eye exam because she noticed more difficulty with reading the board at school,” says Yusra Cheema, Aleena’s mother.

Aleena was one of a handful of students who said that their vision had markedly worsened in connection with increased screen time. The parents of Alan Kim, the child actor and nine-year-old Minari star, said their son’s prescription doubled in the last year in part due to the near work of on-set studies held on his iPad.

Each child now uses new FDA-approved contact lenses that effectively reshape the eye to slow down myopia. But most parents and their kids have no idea this issue even exists.

These problems affect adults too. Constant connection can heighten high or degenerative myopia, severe nearsightedness that progressively worsens and can lead to cataracts, glaucoma and retinal detachment – since the eyeball stretches and the retina thins – but thankfully, it’s rare. Risk grows with age, and can speed up gradual loss of the eye’s ability to focus, called presbyopia.

Detection can help. Home approaches like GoCheckKids, an FDA-registered vision screening app allows any parent to take a photo of their child’s eyes to analyze how light refracts and measure their risks for near or farsightedness and other eye diseases.

Every 20 minutes, look at a distance 20 feet away, for 20 seconds

Dr Luxme Hariharan

Specialized contact lenses are another major tool, says Dr Michele Andrews, a vice-president of CooperVision, the company behind the FDA-approved MiSight contacts. “It’s a contact geared for children aged eight to 12 whose eyes are growing,” she explains, “Which slow down the progression of myopia and change the shape of the eyeball.”

Last week at the American Academy of Optometry meeting in Boston, an annual eye research conference, Andrews presented the results of a seven-year study that showed abnormal axial length growth slowed by an average of 50% among eight-to-17-year-olds who wore her company’s corrective contacts. Perhaps most striking is for those who suffered from myopia, wore the lenses, then stopped wearing them, “we learned there is no rebound effect,” she says. “Myopia did not come back” after kids stopped wearing her company’s contacts. That’s because these lenses “change the way the light bends inside the eye and pulls the image in front of the retina”, she says, which slows axial growth because the clear image is now in front of the retina. If there’s no reason to grow then the problem resolves itself early.

As myopia is typically most pronounced – and dangerous – as the eyes grow, this solution is geared for kids. But adults have hope too. “Spend more time outdoors,” recommends Chow, at least two hours daily. “Studies have shown that increased sunlight decreases myopia progression.”

Most important is taking breaks which help eyes rest, blink and lubricate. Then there’s the 20-20-20 model. “Every 20 minutes, look at a distance 20 feet away, for 20 seconds,” Hariharan advises. “Being on the computer for hours on end isn’t good for your health. Don’t break to play video games or pick up another screen. Go outside!”

https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/can-screen-time-cause-health-issues

Robin Berzin, M.D.

In light of the “digital revolution,” we are spending more and more time looking at digital devices than ever before. We now have immediate and unlimited access to information and to one another. The American Optometric Association (AOA) reports that an average American worker spends at least seven hours a day on the computer either in the office or working from home. Other recent reports indicate that it could be as much as 11 hours each day that the average American adult spends looking at a screen of some kind—including mobile devices like phones.

At the same time, healthy young patients of mine in their 20s, 30s, and 40s are reporting chronic insomnia, brain fog, and short-term memory loss, as well as vision strain and headaches in droves.

While there isn’t an abundance of research, a few studies are beginning to emerge. Here’s what can happen if you stare at a screen all day.

1.

It can rewire your brain (and even change its structure).

The effects on your brain are both behavioral and structural.

First, smartphone addiction is real. A study of students in 10 countries showed the majority feel acute distress if they have to go without their phones for 24 hours. Meanwhile, most people are checking their phones at least 150 times a day and sending upward of 100-plus texts.

This problematic use of cellphones has been associated with anxiety, stress, and even depression1 . These habits are causing what top neuroscientists have called “digital dementia,” harming important right-brain functions including short-term memory, attention, and concentration in ways that may or may not be reversible.  On the structural side, individuals who are perceived as having an online game addiction show significant gray matter atrophy in various areas of the brain (right orbitofrontal cortex, bilateral insula, and right supplementary motor area) once examined on brain MRI studies. These affected areas where volume loss is seen are responsible for critical cognitive functions such as planning, prioritizing, organizing, impulse control, and reward pathways. These areas are also specifically involved in our development of empathy and compassion as well as translation of physical signals into emotion.

Additionally, kids are at risk, too. Findings from an ongoing NIH study on 9- and 10-year-olds show that those who use smartphones, tablets, and video games more than seven hours a day are more likely to have premature thinning of the cortex—the outermost layer of the brain where most information processing occurs. At this point, researchers aren’t sure if that’s a bad thing and won’t know exactly what it means until they follow these children over time. However, the study also found that kids who had more than two hours of screen time per day scored lower on thinking and language tests.

2.

It can cause long-term vision problems and other eye issues.

The American Optometric Association defines CVS—computer vision syndrome—also known as digital eye strain, as a complex of eye and vision problems related to the activities that stress the near vision and that are experienced in relation, or during, the use of the computer, tablet, e-reader, and cellphone. These symptoms can include eye strain and ache, dryness, irritation, redness, double or blurred vision and burning, and even neck and shoulder pain.

3.

It can seriously mess with your sleep.

In 2014 a Harvard Medical School group investigated the biological effects of reading an e-book on a light-emitting device with reading a printed book in the hours before bedtime. They reported that individuals who read on the e-book took longer to fall asleep, had reduced evening sleepiness, reduced melatonin secretion, later timing of their circadian clock, and reduced next-morning alertness than when reading a printed book. Much of this likely has to do with the fact that e-books and other digital screens emit blue light, which has been shown to interfere with the production of the “sleep hormone” melatonin which helps regulate other hormones as well as our circadian rhythms.

4.

It can make you more anxious, stressed, or depressed.

While the research to date linking mood and digital device addiction is still emerging, some recent studies2 are starting to link prolific social media use with increased risk for anxiety and depression. I’ve seen this first-hand, with countless numbers of my patients reporting anxiety, stress, and depression caused by spending too much time scrolling Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter feeds. Some even report that “social media detoxes,” where they delete these apps from their phones for a few days or weeks, drastically improve their sense of well-being.

How can you avoid or combat these symptoms?

If you find yourself experiencing symptoms like insomnia, short-term memory loss, anxiety, worsening vision, headaches, or brain fog, see your personal doctor for an evaluation first, but then try limiting screen time to six hours per day, avoiding all screens at least one hour before bed and taking the weekends “off” from social media. If you immediately feel better, you have a clear indication of how screens are affecting you.

For kids, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends3 avoiding digital media altogether for toddlers younger than 18-24 months (other than things like periodic video chatting with relatives), and limiting screen use for children ages 2-5 to one hour a day of high-quality programming, preferably with an adult. (Also consider trying out some of these amazing expert tips on how to raise a wild child in the age of tech.)

Some other precautions you can take: Load up on nutrients that have been shown to combat some of the symptoms of computer vision syndrome—specifically, the carotenoid antioxidants zeaxanthin4,  lutein4, and astaxanthin5, found in green veggies and a variety of colorful plant foods like these. And, if you can’t avoid using a computer or other digital device before bed, consider wearing a pair of blue light-blocking glasses in the evenings, which have been shown to6 help restore melatonin production.

From there, we should all be asking the bigger question, which is whether our technology serves us, or we are a servant to it, and how tech will affect our health and well-being in the future.

Robin Berzin, M.D.

Robin Berzin, M.D., is a functional medicine physician and the founder of Parsley Health. She currently lives in New York, NY and her mission is to make functional medicine affordable and modern, so more people can access a holistic, root-cause approach to health.

A Summa Cum Laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Berzin went to medical school at Columbia University and later trained in internal medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital. She is also a certified yoga instructor and a meditation teacher, and has formally studied Ayurveda. Dr. Berzin writes for a number of leading wellness sites, and speaks regularly for organizations including the Clinton Foundation, Health 2.0, Summit and the Functional Forum, on how we can reinvent health care.

She’s also a mindbodygreen courses instructor, teaching her Stress Solution program designed to help you tune down the stress in your life and tune up your energy and happiness.

Read More About Robin Berzin, M.D.