05/12/2008 by Tina.

I listened to a very interesting feature on BBC Radio Four’s “All in the Mind” programme (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/allinthemind.shtml) last week about what scientists and psychologists believe really makes us happy.

And although many people may assume it’s money or material wealth, researchers have discovered we need a portion each day of each of the following:

Connecting with someone - loneliness has a devastating effect on emotional health.

Being active.

Taking notice and being aware - living in the moment.

Learning something new and challenging ourselves.

Giving something back.

I personally would add to that, spending time with positive and supporting people - we all know how draining a miserable person can be on our own happiness. Thankfully just like yawning, smiling is infectious

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24/11/2008 by Tina.

I think perhaps the messiest relationships we have are with our own family - under what other circumstances would you both love and hate the same person and stay in contact with them even when they drive you to complete distraction?

They say blood is thicker than water, but is it healthy to stay in a relationship with someone who causes you pain just because you share DNA? Would it not be better to surround yourself with people who support and love you for who you are, even if they are not family? I would argue that yes it is.

In the news over the past couple of weeks there have been 2 particularly horrific stories of mothers, one of whom had a relative hide her daughter whilst she told the nation of her despair over her loss. And why? So they could cash in on and share the reward offered for the child’s return. The other abused her son and allowed others to do the same, until the 18 month old boy was dead.

Both of these poor mights would have been better off with a stranger than the family who were supposed to protect them and didn’t.

In Prochaska, Norcross and Diclemente’s six stage programme for change (Changing For Good - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Changing-Good-James-O-Prochaska/dp/038072572X?&camp=2486&linkCode=wsw&tag=edesfieunl-21&creative=8922) they talk about the importance of environmental control, where you “restructure your environment so that the probability of a problem-causing event is reduced”. If you were trying to lose weight you’d probably make sure there were no biscuits and cakes in the house, and if wanting to quit smoking you’d stop buying cigarettes and hang out in smoke free zones. It makes sense to not put yourself in situations that will cause you problems.

So doesn’t it also make sense to remove yourself from a harmful environment even if it is within the family? I’m not saying it’s an easy thing to do, or even that it has to be permanent, but:

“… if you have a splinter in your finger and it becomes infected, you can take antibiotics and apply antiseptic cream to deal with the infection, but if you don’t remove the splinter, it will undoubtedly become infected again.” (Free Healing Lessons, http://www.edensfields.co.uk/lessons.html)

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03/11/2008 by Tina.

(This is more of a musing than a posting as of yet.)

Trust - what is it and what do you do to get it back when it’s gone?

 My trusty Collins dictionary defines trust as:

“Reliance on and confidence in the truth, worth and reliability of a person, thing or faith.”

And we often talk about trust needing to be earned. But just how do you earn it and when do you know when someone has done enough earning? Can it be earned in the same fraction of time it takes to destroy it or can it only come with time?

I found some really complicated equations on google to do with weighted expectations and the clarity and delivery of said expectations, but nothing that will show me how to learn to trust someone who has repeatedly let me down.

 Hmmmm - more musing needed here.

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31/10/2008 by Tina.

I’ve decided my new favourite season is autumn.

Having taken a walk across the sports fields near to where I work on a bright, crisp day surrounded by the most vibrant reds and golds and yellows, I was instantly lifted.

Whilst it’s lovely to see the greens of summer, the striking bareness of winter and the emerging buds of spring, surely you can’t beat the beauty of the fall.

Perhaps it has something to do with the colours themselves, after all, red reportedly:

“… boosts our circulation, raises blood pressure & gets our heart pumping faster. It raises our libido, increases determination & gives us the will to move forward. It pushes us to break free from the past & demands that we live in the here & now.”

And orange/gold is supposed to enliven and cheer.

Certainly did the trick for me!

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10/10/2008 by Tina.

I was talking to a colleague today about perception, and just how wrong people can be when they view things with their own “personal perception” tinted glasses on.

Wikipedia describes perception as:

“…the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory information”.

This suggests a simple process of seeing/feeling/smelling/touching/hearing which leads to understanding.

But then it also states:

“The processes of perception routinely alter what humans see. When people view something with a preconceived idea about it, they tend to take those preconceived ideas and see them whether or not they are there. This problem stems from the fact that humans are unable to understand new information, without the inherent bias of their previous knowledge. The extent of a person’s knowledge creates their reality as much as the truth, because the human mind can only contemplate that which it has been exposed to.”

So no wonder people perceive things the wrong way sometimes, and I guess that’s why people with limited views are called small minded - they literally have little in there to create a reality with.

 Moral of the tale - have lots of experiences and gain lots of knowledge so you can be a big minded person when it comes to understanding your sensory information!

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29/09/2008 by Tina.

I’m not wholly sure I know what this means on a conscious level, but something inside me went, “WOW!”, so I thought I’d share it:

emotional-virus.jpg

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26/09/2008 by Tina.

We’re moving - again! This will be the 13th time in 22 years, so you’d think I’d be quite good at it.

Well I am actually - everything has a label and I’ve planned where all the furniture will go. But undoubtedly the best bit, and the most therapeutic, is the throwing away of redundant and no longer wanted things. In fact this time I think more will be recycled or taken to the tip than will go to the new house!

There is no doubt that decluttering your surroundings helps clear you mind, and it’s clearly big business if the many decluttering systems to be found by google is anything to go by. Mind you, no one seems to have twigged that if you buy a book on decluttering it’s just another bit of clutter for you to deal with

Anyway, having these “things” around you all the time acts as constant reminders, whether you’re consciously aware of them or not. And when it comes to the wiring of the brain, the more times the neurons fire (each time it catches your eye, you touch it or you think about it), the more “hardwired” they become, forming what Leonard A Wisneski (The Scientific Basis of Integrative Medicine) calls engrams, or engrained thought patterns. He says:

“The amygdala receives the incoming sensory information and checks in with the hippocampus to see if there is an engram associated with a memory to which the hippocampus can respond. The amygdala is scouting around to see if there is a match. It is somewhat like doing the FBI computer search for a fingerprint. If the sensory data is close, you get a hit.”

And from there the body responds with a cascade of hormones that affect your feelings. Now of course some things will have a pleasant engram/association and will spark off the feel good hormones, but others may not and you’ll find yourself feeling bad even though nothing has happened in the present. Basically your body goes, “Well the last time I saw/held/heard that I felt angry, so if I’m seeing/holding/hearing this again I should be angry now”. And it produces the chemicals to make that happen. Clearly bad news if you’re surrounded by things that evoke negative memories!

The good news is that when the neurons stop firing, the engrams can break down, so no future matches.

So order up that skip, toss out that rubbish, declutter your life and move on to better things. Less work for your poor old amygdala and more room for feeling good

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11/09/2008 by Tina.

(Excerpt from a small brochure found lying around in a tray at work)

“In many ways the body is like a car, requiring precisely the correct quantity and mixture of fuel to maximise and maintain its efficiency. And, just like a car, our bodies need optimum fuel in order to function efficiently without premature deterioration. As an example, the difference between petrol and diesel is only a few carbon atoms, but try to run your petrol driven car on diesel and you will soon see the difference a few atoms can make. Of course, our diet is extremely varied but, without the correct core ingredients, our “engine” would fail as assuredly as that of the car.

The body is capable of a continual rebuilding and maintenance cycle, but to perform these tasks it requires a diet containing all the essential raw materials. Every day the human body manufactures and replaces 50 million new skin cells, and in a normal week the whole intestinal mucous system will have been replaced. These processes are taking place every minute of every day throughout our lives. Red blood cells have to be renewed once every four months. This is a mammoth task when you consider that just one teaspoon of blood contains about 15 million red blood cells and the human body contains approximately 5 litres of blood. If a diet does not contain the necessary raw materials, or if their value has been diminished due to interaction with free radicals, each of these new blood cells will be damaged and less able to fulfil its role as the body’s transport system.

Under normal circumstances, all mammals have two cycles of cell replacement. The first is the anabolic stage during which the body grows and develops almost automatically. The human cycle for this is approximately 25 years. The second stage is the catabolic stage, during which th body starts to break down those functions it no longer requires. If  not exercised muscle is replaced with fat, physical inactivity results in our bones losing both calcium and their strength, and mental activity slows down if mental facilities are not maintained.”

So the message clearly is: feed it well, and use it or lose it! As amazing as our bodies are, they still need to be looked after.

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12/08/2008 by Tina.

The weather in England is wet and miserable, so it must be summer time! It rained so hard this morning that the drains turned to fountains and the roads to rivers.

Am I bothered though - NO! I’m off to France at the end of the week where days and days of sunshine are forecast. As are many glasses of wine

We need sunshine to make vitamin D, which is of vital importance because:

“…cancers grow most rapidly in people who have insufficient vitamin D. In April this year, Professor Giovannucci and colleagues reported the results of a major study of more than 4,000 cancers occurring in 47,800 men, known as the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study. He found that the men with the highest vitamin D index had a 17 per cent reduction in cancer, compared with the men who had the lowest vitamin D index - and they had an even greater reduction in deaths from cancer (29 per cent), showing that high vitamin D is associated with longer survival after diagnosis of the disease.

Doctors knowledgeable about vitamin D believe that it may be effective in treating cancer because laboratory work backs up the survey findings. Vitamin D is active in more than 30 different tissues of the body, where it induces cells to complete their development and enables cells that have developed wrongly to die off instead of forming a tumour.” (As reported in the Independent, August 2006)

In order for there to be sufficient vitamin D making rays, the sun’s UV index needs to be 3 or higher, which unfortunately for much of the year it isn’t. In temperate climates such as that of the UK it only reaches these levels in the spring and summer, and if today’s weather is anything to go by, sometimes not even then!

The body can store vitamin D for short periods of time (30-60 days) but as most of its production comes from UV light, it means we need to “make hay while the sun shines”, get out of our stuffy offices and houses and out into the rays. Fifteen minutes of unprotected sunbathing at least twice a week is sufficient, so there’s no need to bake yourself. And of course if you plan on staying out longer, Slip, Slop, Slap is the order of the day.

So, no prizes for guessing what I’ll be doing in France - I can hear my sunbed calling to me already. Oh, but all in the name of good health of course

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06/08/2008 by Tina.

I have just read one of the most harrowing books. Thankfully it was a work of fiction rather than fact - “The Face of Death” by Cody Mc Fadyen (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Face-Death-Cody-Mcfadyen/dp/0340840102?&camp=2486&linkCode=wsw&tag=edesfieunl-21&creative=8922). Well worth a read if you’re into crime thrillers!

Not the sort of topic I usually write about, preferring to intend my energy toward more positive things, but there was one sentence that struck me as being appropriate:

“…scars are more than reminders of past wounds. They are evidence of healing.”

Scar tissue is a sign that it got better, that it mended - that the wound has closed. It’s a reminder of the incredible healing power of the human body and how much better that we see scars that way than to dwell on the pain that caused them. Especially as our thoughts create our reality!

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