Providing Food as part of a weight loss program Has Little Benefit

23 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by in food, Health, Uncategorized

≈ Comments Off on Providing Food as part of a weight loss program Has Little Benefit

Tags

, ,

Providing weekly food delivery as part of a weight loss program has little impact on outcomes, based on the results of a one-year study conducted in Toronto, Canada.

Published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, this study tested four weight loss interventions in 919 overweight Canadian adults. Roughly half of participants were assigned to one of three dietary interventions, which included dietary advice, weekly food delivery, or food delivery plus dietary advice. The other half were part of the control group and received only a dietary brochure at the start of the study.

All of the interventions promoted current dietary guidelines and the DASH diet, which limits salt intake and helps lower blood pressure. While weight loss interventions lasted six months, participants were followed for one year to track outcomes like weight, waist circumference and blood pressure.

The goal of the study was to see whether dietary advice and/or weekly food delivery helps boost weight loss and reduce cardiovascular risk in overweight adults.

The good news is that all participants saw small reductions in weight, waist circumference and blood pressure at six months. A year after the interventions, participants also had lower ten-year risk for developing heart disease, as measured by the Framingham risk score. However, there were no significant differences in outcomes between groups, which means monthly phone calls and weekly food delivery had no impact on weight loss or changes in cardiovascular risk.

Authors did note, however, a difference in drop-out rates between groups. Participants receiving food delivery were much more likely to stay in the study, with only 9% of participants dropping out of the study by six months, compared to 33% of participants with no food delivery. Participants receiving weekly food baskets plus advice also had consistent increases in consumption of recommended foods like fruits, vegetables and whole grains.

Based on findings, authors conclude that providing food as part of a dietary intervention has little added benefit on weight loss or cardiovascular risk reduction. However, findings also confirm the overall benefits of the DASH diet and general dietary guidelines. As other studies have shown, maintaining a healthy diet promotes a healthy weight, reduces risk for heart disease and improves overall health. Authors hope that with future research, we can improve available resources to help adults achieve both a healthy weight and diet.

See study here at American College of Cardiology.

Different Cultures Enhances Creativity

21 Monday Oct 2019

Posted by in create, Creativity, emotions, grounding, Health, Therapy, Wellness

≈ Comments Off on Different Cultures Enhances Creativity

Tags

, , ,

Creativity can be enhanced by experiencing cultures different from one’s own, according to a study in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (published by SAGE).hands-106
Three studies looked at students who had lived abroad and those who hadn’t, testing them on different aspects of creativity. Relative to a control group, which hadn’t experienced a different culture, participants in the different culture group provided more evidence of creativity in various standard tests of the trait. Those results suggest that multicultural learning is a critical component of the adaptation process, acting as a creativity catalyst.

The researchers believe that the key to the enhanced creativity was related to the students’ open-minded approach in adapting to the new culture. In a global world, where more people are able to acquire multicultural experiences than ever before, this research indicates that living abroad can be even more beneficial than previously thought.

“Given the literature on structural changes in the brain that occur during intensive learning experiences, it would be worthwhile to explore whether neurological changes occur within the creative process during intensive foreign culture experiences,” write the authors, William W. Maddux, Hajo Adam, and Adam D. Galinsky. “That can help paint a more nuanced picture of how foreign culture experiences may not only enhance creativity but also, perhaps literally, as well as figuratively, broaden the mind.
The article “When in Rome… Learn Why the Romans Do What They Do: How Multicultural Learning Experiences Facilitate Creativity” in the June 2010 issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin is available free for a limited time here.
Source: SAGE Publications

Meditation can relieve pain

18 Friday Oct 2019

Posted by in Meditation, mindfulness, Self expression, Wellness

≈ Comments Off on Meditation can relieve pain

Meditation can relieve pain, and it does so by activating multiple brain areas, according to an April 2011 study in the Journal of Neuroscience. Fadel Zeidan of Wake Forest University and his colleagues scanned people’s brains as they received uncomfortably hot touches to the leg. When subjects practiced a mindful meditation technique that encourages detachment from experience while focusing on breathing, they reported less pain than when they simply paid attention to their breathing. Likewise, different patterns of brain activity emerged under the two conditions, with mindful meditating resulting in more activity not only in executive centers that evaluate experiences and regulate emotions but also in lower regions that control the signals coming from the body.
The volunteers learned the meditation technique in only four 20-minute sessions, which means this pill-free analgesia could be a feasible way to help real patients suffering from pain. “People can reap some of the benefits of meditation without extensive training,” Zeidan says.
When I work with patients using mindfulness I start by asking who has experience with any type of meditation, breathing techniques and/or relaxation exercises. We than have a  brief explanation and question and answer period and I focus on removing any doubt, fear, or skepticism. I usually than do a 10 to 12 minute body scan moving right into a mindful meditation that focuses on the breath.
With the co-occurring patients I work with this process seems to work the best. The chat in the beginning warms people up, the body scan relaxes which helps the meditators enter into a more meditative state.

 

Meditation can change your brain in 8 weeks

16 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by in Meditation, Research

≈ Comments Off on Meditation can change your brain in 8 weeks

Participants in the study spent close to a half-hour every day meditating or practicing some other mindfulness exercise (notable because most people associate meditation with sitting and thinking quietly, and that’s not the only type of exercise done in the study) for about eight weeks. They got MRIs of their brains before and after the eight week exercise, and when the study was over, many of the study’s 16 participants showed significant changes in the areas of the brain associated with behavior, memory, and stress. For more click the link below.

http://lifehacker.com/5989078/how-meditating-for-eight-weeks-can-boost-your-brain

nature-26

What’s in a song

14 Monday Oct 2019

Posted by in Creativity, Friends, Health, Music, singing, Wellness

≈ Comments Off on What’s in a song

Tags

, , , ,

From the NPR series, What’s in a song:

Group Sing-alongs help a friend

For the past several years, a group of friends has gathered every week in the living room of a suburban home in Logan, Utah, to sing long-forgotten songs. It’s a fun way to spend the evening, but it’s also therapy for a dear friend.

Until several years ago, Barre Toelken was a folklorist at Utah State University. He’d spent much of his life preserving sea shanties and other antique songs, but then he had a stroke and was forced to retire.

“I used to know 800 songs,” Toelken says. “I had this stroke, and I had none of these songs left in my head. None of them were left.”

But, Toelken says, he soon discovered that, with a little positive reinforcement, he could remember some of the forgotten music after all.

“A little bit at a time, I realized I still had the songs in my head,” he says. “So now I meet with this group of friends once a week a week, and we sing.

“This group doesn’t use any musical instruments, because I can’t play the guitar since the stroke hit me,” Toelken says. “And they did that as a sign of respect, I think. But they’ve all said how much they’ve learned about the songs since they quit using the guitar because instead of concentrating on their hand moving, they have to concentrate on the words.”
Hear the story.

Self-Affirmation Improves Problem-Solving

11 Friday Oct 2019

Posted by in emotions, grounding, Health, lifestyle, positive, self talk, Wellness

≈ Comments Off on Self-Affirmation Improves Problem-Solving

Tags

, , ,

It’s no secret that stress increases your susceptibility to health problems, and it also impacts your ability to solve problems and be creative. But methods to prevent associated risks and effects have been less clear – until now.feelings-34
Published in PLOS ONE, new research from Carnegie Mellon University provides the first evidence that self-affirmation can protect against the damaging effects of stress on problem-solving performance. Understanding that self-affirmation – the process of identifying and focusing on one’s most important values – boosts stressed individuals’ problem-solving abilities will help guide future research and the development of educational interventions.
“An emerging set of published studies suggest that a brief self-affirmation activity at the beginning of a school term can boost academic grade-point averages in underperforming kids at the end of the semester. This new work suggests a mechanism for these studies, showing self-affirmation effects on actual problem-solving performance under pressure,” said J. David Creswell, assistant professor of psychology in CMU’s Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Because previous research indicated that self-affirmation may be an effective stress management approach, Creswell and his research team had college students rank-order a set of values (e.g., art, business, family and friends) in terms of their personal importance, and indicate their levels of chronic stress. Participants randomly assigned to a self-affirmation condition were asked to write a couple of sentences about why their number one ranked value was important (a standard self-affirmation exercise). All participants then had to complete a challenging problem-solving task under time pressure, which required creativity in order to generate correct solutions.tumblr_m7dhgp7vPe1qa9c27o1_1280
The results showed that participants who were under high levels of chronic stress during the past month had impaired problem-solving performance. In fact, they solved about 50 percent fewer problems in the task. But notably, this effect was qualified by whether participants had an opportunity to first complete the self-affirmation activity. Specifically, a brief self-affirmation was effective in eliminating the deleterious effects of chronic stress on problem-solving performance, such that chronically stressed self-affirmed participants performed under pressure at the same level as participants with low chronic stress levels.
“People under high stress can foster better problem-solving simply by taking a moment beforehand to think about something that is important to them,” Creswell said. “It’s an easy-to-use and portable strategy you can roll out before you enter that high pressure performance situation.