Mindfulness is the practice of becoming more fully aware of the present moment rather than dwelling in the past or worrying about the future. One way to really improve our ability to achieve mindfulness comes through the process of meditation.

When we are better able to achieve a state of mindfulness, not only do we feel more relaxed, but research has shown (HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE) that achieving mindfulness can result in some amazingly positive health benefits.

In fact, the very latest research from the University of California, Davis has found that increased mindfulness leads to lower blood levels of cortisol, the “stress hormone”. 

Cortisol is a hormone produced in our body by the adrenal glands. Cortisol release is associated with physical and emotional stress. Prolonged release of cortisol results in a wide range of negative health effects.

“This is the first study to show a direct relation between resting cortisol and scores on any type of mindfulness scale,” said postdoctoral researcher, Tonya Jacobs. The study was led by Dr. Clifford Saron, associate research scientist at the UC Davis.

The Healing Power of Now

In this study, Jacobs, Saron and their colleagues used a questionnaire to measure aspects of mindfulness among a group of volunteers before and after an intensive, three-month meditation retreat. They also measured cortisol levels in the volunteers’ saliva.

At an individual level, there was a correlation between a high score for mindfulness and a low score in cortisol both before and after the retreat. Individuals whose mindfulness score increased after the retreat showed a decrease in cortisol.

“The more a person reported directing their cognitive resources to immediate sensory experience and the task at hand, the lower their resting cortisol,” Jacobs said. The research did not show a direct cause and effect, Jacobs emphasized. Indeed, she noted that the effect could run either way — reduced levels of cortisol could lead to improved mindfulness, rather than the other way around. 

According to Dr. Jacobs, training the mind to focus on immediate experience may reduce our tendency to ruminate about the past or worry about the future, thought processes that have been linked to cortisol release.

“The idea that we can train our minds in a way that fosters healthy mental habits and that these habits may be reflected in mind-body relations is not new; it’s been around for thousands of years across various cultures and ideologies,” Jacobs said. “However, this idea is just beginning to be integrated into Western medicine as objective evidence accumulates. Hopefully, studies like this one will contribute to that effort.”

Related Story: Stress Illness: New Findings Reveal How Stress Impacts The Brain

March 30,  2013
The Healthy Mind Network
 
 

Story Source: The above story contains original content and/or information reprinted and editorially adapted by The Healthy Mind. Material is provided by UC Davis and Eurekalerts. 

Image Credit: RelaxingMusic – Flickr (Creative Commons)

NOTE: Any medical information published on this website is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a health care professional. For more information, please read our TERMS AND CONDITIONS.   

According to a 2007 nationwide poll by the American Psychological Association, 75% of Americans list work as a significant source of stress, with over 50% of those surveyed indicating that their work productivity suffered due to stress.

But workplace stress spans the globe. In fact, the United Nations Labor Organization has gone so far as to declare work stress a “global epidemic”. While productivity can certainly suffer, workplace stress can take a severe toll on our physical and emotional health. 

The following infographic nicely illustrates the nature of workplace stress, its prevalence, warning signs and symptoms to be aware of and ways to take control of stress at work. 

(click anywhere on the image to increase its size)

We wish to thank our friends at complianceandsafety.com for allowing us to publish this infographic on The Healthy Mind!

Related Post: Feeling Stressed? Forget About It!

September 24, 2012
The Healthy Mind Network
  

NOTE: Any medical information published on this website is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a health care professional. For more information, please read our TERMS AND CONDITIONS. 

Meditation is a wonderful way to reduce stress. Done regularly, meditation produces an inner sense of calm, peace and balance that benefits both emotional and physical well-being. But with so many different meditation techniques available, how do you choose the right one? 

According to a new study published in EXPLORE: The Journal of Science and Healing, individuals new to meditation should choose a method with which they feel most comfortable – not necessarily the most popular one. 

According to Dr. Adam Burke, by choosing the most comfortable method, people are likely to stick with it.  If not, there is a higher chance they may abandon meditation altogether, losing out on its myriad personal and medical benefits. Dr. Burke is a professor of Health Education at San Francisco State University. 

“Because of the increase in both general and clinical use of meditation, you want to make sure you’re finding the right method for each person,” he said. Although meditation has become significantly more popular, there have been very few studies comparing multiple methods head to head to examine individual preference or specific clinical benefits.

To better understand user preference, Burke compared four popular meditation methods — Mantra, Mindfulness, Zen and Qigong Visualization — to see if novice meditation practitioners favored one over the others. The two simpler methods, Mindfulness and Mantra, were preferred by 31% of study participants. Zen and Qigong had smaller but still sizable contingents of adherents.

It’s A Matter of Personal Taste

The results show the value of simpler, more accessible method of meditation. But the researchers emphasized that no one technique is best for everyone, and even less common methods are preferred by certain people. 

“It was interesting that Mantra and Mindfulness were found to be equally compelling by participants despite the fact that they are fundamentally different techniques,” Burke said. Mindfulness meditation is the most recent technique to gain widespread popularity, he added, and is often the only one with which a novice practitioner or health professional is familiar. Not surprisingly, Mindfulness was the method most preferred by the youngest participants.

“If someone is exposed to a particular technique through the media or a healthcare provider, they might assume because it’s popular it’s the best for everyone,” Burke said. “In truth, different people like different things. One size does not fit all.”

Burke hopes to see more comparative meditation studies, especially to determine if particular methods are better at addressing specific health issues, such as addiction. If that’s the case, he said, healthcare professionals would be able to guide patients toward techniques that will be most effective for them. Additional studies are also needed to determine if there is a way to predict which method will be best suited for any particular individual, he said.

July 6, 2012
The Healthy Mind Network
 

 Story Source: The above story contains original content and/or information reprinted and editorially adapted by The Healthy Mind. Material is provided by San Francisco State University and EurekAlerts. 

 NOTE: Any medical information published on this website is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a health care professional. For more information, please read our TERMS AND CONDITIONS. 

Effective and convincing speeches are critical to campaigning for elected office, but do our voices affect how we select our leaders? The latest research from both the University of Miami and Duke may surprise you, but it gives us a clue to the extremely subtle – yet very powerful- ways we are influenced when making a decision. 

A new study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences shows that men and women vote for male and female candidates with lower-pitched voices. Men and women with lower voices were also found to be perceived as more competent, stronger, and more trustworthy. Each of these attributes is known to influence voters.

“Our study asks how voice pitch influences electability, and to my knowledge is the first to examine the voices of both male and female candidates,” says Casey Klofstad, associate professor of Political Science at the University of Miami. “For example, we found that men and women perceive lower pitched female voices to be more competent and stronger. In contrast, only men perceive lower pitched male voices to be more competent and stronger.”

These findings suggest that men and women with lower voices may be more successful in obtaining positions of leadership. The results also raise the possibility that the electability of female candidates could be influenced by the fact that women tend to have higher-pitched voices than men. This study also shows that while people are free to choose their leaders, these choices cannot be understood in isolation from biological influences. Subtle cues may have profound influence in our decision-making ability.

Knowledge is truly power, though. The more we learn of the ways we can be influenced – both consciously and unconsciously – the better chance we have to increase the likelihood of making the most authentic decisions possible.

March 15, 2011
The Healthy Mind Network

Story Source:
The above story contains original content and/or information reprinted and editorially adapted by The Healthy Mind. Material is provided by the University of Miami and EurekAlerts. 

NOTE: Any medical information published on this website is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a health care professional. For more information, please read our TERMS AND CONDITIONS.

After weeks of humming holiday songs, decorating the house with cheer and planning for a joyous celebration, the holiday season inevitably will come to an end. The tunes will change, the decorations will come down and the leftovers will get stale. Even the most cheerful person can find it hard to sustain holiday happiness after the big event has come and gone.

Wake Forest University Assistant Professor of Psychology Christian Waugh studies human emotions and why some people are more resilient in maintaining positive emotions than others. “A large part of happiness is anticipation,” Waugh explains. “Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukah, New Year’s Eve and other holidays offer punctuated moments of joy we look forward to for weeks. While the celebration itself may be short-lived, the anticipation of the fun and excitement to come extends the feelings of positivity.”

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In times of stress, we are often encouraged to pause for a moment and simply be “in the now”. But what does this really mean? What does it really mean to be “in the now” or to be “fully present”? To illustrate this principle, let’s do a simple exercise. Take a moment to recall a really great time in your life. It might be a vacation, a special holiday or anniversary. It might be a job promotion or recognition you received. Whatever it may be, think about the positive feelings associated with that special time. 
 

OK…now, exactly WHY was that time so positive and enjoyable?
 

Well, mindfulness has a lot to do with it. Part of the reason our special moments are filled with such positive emotion is that during those times we allow ourselves to be completely immersed in the moment. We are fully present in that situation, without cares about the future or the burdens of the past. This is the essence and the positive power of mindfulness – of being present in the moment.
 

Mindfulness meditation is based on that moment-to-moment awareness. This form of meditation, which is part of Buddhist and Indian Yoga traditions, has entered the mainstream as people try to find ways to combat stress and improve their quality of life. In a mindfulness approach, you meditate to be fully present in the moment and allow thoughts – both positive and negative – to enter into your awareness without the need to judge them or figure them out. And research suggests that mindfulness meditation can have benefits for health and performance, including improved immune function, reduced blood pressure, pain reduction and enhanced cognitive function. 
 

How Does Mindfulness Work?

How is it that a single practice can have such wide-ranging effects on well-being? Well, a new article published in the latest issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, draws on the existing scientific literature to build a framework that can explain these positive effects.
 

According to author Britta Hölzel, of Harvard Medical School, her goal was to “unveil the…complexity of mindfulness, providing the ‘big picture’ by arranging many findings like the pieces of a mosaic.” By using a framework approach to understand, Hölzel and her co-authors point out that what we think of as mindfulness is not actually a single skill. Rather, it is a multi-faceted mental practice that encompasses several mechanisms. 
 

The authors specifically identified four key components of mindfulness that may account for its effects, they include:

1. Attention Regulation
2. Body Awareness
3. Emotional Regulation
4. Sense of Self

Utilizing these components helps us to attend to and deal with the mental and physiological effects of stress in a very non-judgmental way.
 

Although these components seem distinct, they are closely interwoven. “Understanding the relationships between these components, and the brain mechanisms that underlie them, will allow clinicians to better tailor mindfulness interventions for their patients”, says Hölzel.
 

On the most fundamental level, this framework underscores the point that mindfulness is not a vague cure-all. Effective mindfulness meditation has a measurable effect on our subjective experiences, our behavior, our brain function and even our physical well-being.
 

According to the researchers, further study of mindfulness meditation will “enable a much broader spectrum of individuals to utilize mindfulness meditation as a versatile tool to facilitate change – both in psychotherapy and in everyday life.”

This is the healing power of mindfulness and of truly being in the “Now”.

Story Source:
The above story contains original content and information editorially adapted by The Healthy Mind staff from materials provided by the Association for Psychological Science and EurekAlerts!

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NOTE: Any medical information published on this website is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a health care professional. For more information, please read our TERMS AND CONDITIONS

But we’re wrong and wasting our time, suggests a new experimental study from the University of California, San Diego. People who flip to the last page of a book before starting it have the better intuition. Spoilers don’t spoil stories. Contrary to popular wisdom, they actually seem to enhance enjoyment.

Even ironic-twist and mystery stories – which you’d be forgiven for assuming absolutely depend on suspense or surprise for success – aren’t spoiled by spoilers, according to a study by Nicholas Christenfeld and Jonathan Leavitt of UC San Diego’s psychology department, to be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science.

Christenfeld and Leavitt ran three experiments with a total of 12 short stories. Three types of stories were studied: ironic-twist, mystery and literary. Each story – classics by the likes of John Updike, Roald Dahl, Anton Chekhov, Agatha Christie and Raymond Carver – was presented as-is (without a spoiler), with a prefatory spoiler paragraph or with that same paragraph incorporated into the story as though it were a part of it. Each version of each story was read by at least 30 subjects. Data from subjects who had read the stories previously were excluded.

Subjects significantly preferred the spoiled versions of ironic-twist stories, where, for example, it was revealed before reading that a condemned man’s daring escape is all a fantasy before the noose snaps tight around his neck.

The same held true for mysteries. Knowing ahead of time that Poirot will discover that the apparent target of attempted murder is, in fact, the perpetrator not only didn’t hurt enjoyment of the story but actually improved it.

Subjects liked the literary, evocative stories least overall, but still preferred the spoiled versions over the unspoiled ones.

Why? The answers go beyond the scope of the study, but one possibility is perhaps the simplest one: that plot is overrated.

“Plots are just excuses for great writing. What the plot is is (almost) irrelevant. The pleasure is in the writing,” said Christenfeld, a UC San Diego professor of social psychology.

“Monet’s paintings aren’t really about water lilies,” he said.

It’s also possible that it’s “easier” to read a spoiled story. Other psychological studies have shown that people have an aesthetic preference for objects that are perceptually easy to process.

“So it could be,” said Leavitt, a psychology doctoral student at UC San Diego, “that once you know how it turns out, it’s cognitively easier – you’re more comfortable processing the information – and can focus on a deeper understanding of the story.”

But the researchers are careful to note that they do not have a new recipe for writers to follow. After all, spoilers helped only when presented in advance, outside of the piece. When the researchers inserted a spoiler directly into a story, it didn’t go over quite as well.

The overall findings are consistent with the experience most of us have had: A favorite tale can be re-read multiple times with undiminished pleasure. A beloved movie can be watched again and again.

“Stories are a universal element of human culture, the backbone of the billion-dollar entertainment industry, and the medium through which religion and societal values are transmitted,” the researchers write. In other words, narratives are incredibly important. But their success doesn’t seem to hinge on simple suspense.

Christenfeld and Leavitt conclude the paper by saying that perhaps some of our “other intuitions about suspense may be similarly wrong.”

“Perhaps,” they write, “birthday presents are better when wrapped in cellophane, and engagement rings are better when not concealed in chocolate mousse.”

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by The Healthy Mind staff) from materials provided by University of California – San Diego and EurekAlerts!

Image Credit: Kevin Lawver (Creative Commons)

Since competitive Scrabble players are experts at studying language, University of Calgary researchers sought to determine if – and how – players’ techniques and training changed the process of reading words.

They tested competitive Scrabble players to understand the extent to which the players relied on the meaning and physical orientation of words in order to understand them as a part of the English language system. Their study shows, for the first time, that it is possible to develop visual word recognition ability in adulthood, beyond what researchers previously thought was achievable.

“The average literate adult relies on three components to process and read a word: sound, spelling and meaning.” says Dr. Penny Pexman, professor of Psychology. “When we studied the Scrabble players, we found that there is significant flexibility in the tools they use to read words and that it can include the orientation of the word as well.”

The Scrabble players in the study were able to recognize English words, compared to nonsense words 20 percent faster than non-Scrabble players. Researchers say competitive players, who dedicate large amounts of time to studying the 180,000 words listed in The Official Tournament and Club Word List, processed words more quickly and were better able to recognize words oriented vertically.

“Scrabble players have honed their ability to recognize words such that they have actually changed the process of reading words,” says Ian Hargreaves, the lead researcher on the study. “They have done this in two ways. First the scrabble players showed less difference in the time it took to recognize a word as real when it was positioned vertically than they did for a horizontal word, whereas non-Scrabble players are much slower in reading vertically.”

The second way is in recognizing words mainly in terms of their visual appearance, and less in terms of the words’ meaning. Competitive Scrabble players’ efficient recognition of letter sequences demonstrates why even non-English speakers are able to master the game.

Researchers were surprised to find that for scrabble players the meaning of the word had less impact on their ability to recognize and process a word.

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by The Healthy Mind staff) from materials provided by University Of Calgary and EurekAlerts!

Journal Source: “How a hobby can shape cognition: visual word recognition in competitive Scrabble players.”; Hargreaves, et.al; Memory And Cognition; August 2011 (online)

Watching a funny movie or sitcom that produces laughter has a positive effect on vascular function and is opposite to that observed after watching a movie that causes mental stress according to research conducted at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

“The idea to study positive emotions, such as laughter came about after studies had shown that mental stress caused blood vessels to constrict”, says Dr. Michael Miller, Professor of Medicine and lead investigator.

In their initial study more than 10 years ago, 300 men and women with or without heart disease completed a questionnaire related to situational-humor. The volunteers with heart disease were 40% less likely to find these situations funny.

In this study, volunteers watched segments of a funny movie, such as “There’s something about Mary” on one day and on another day watched the opening segment of the stressful movie “Saving Private Ryan”. Each volunteer served as his or her own control.

When study participants watched the stressful movie, their blood vessel lining developed a potentially unhealthy response called vasoconstriction, reducing blood flow. This finding confirms previous studies, which suggested there was a link between mental stress and the narrowing of blood vessels. However, after watching the funny movie, the blood vessel lining expanded.

Overall, there was a 30-50% difference in blood vessel size between the laughter (blood vessel expansion) and mental stress (blood vessel constriction) phases. “The magnitude of change we saw…was consistent and similar to the benefit we might see with aerobic exercise or statin use,” says Dr. Miller.

The endothelium has a powerful effect on blood vessel tone and regulates blood flow and produces chemicals in response to injury and inflammation. It also plays an important role in the development of cardiovascular disease.

“The endothelium is the first line in the development of atherosclerosis or hardening of the arteries, so it is very possible that laughing on a regular basis may be useful to incorporate as part of an overall healthy lifestyle to prevent heart disease. In other words, eat your veggies, exercise and get a good belly laugh every day” says Dr. Miller.

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by The Healthy Mind staff) from materials provided by the European Society of Cardiology and EurekAlerts!