After a while, I felt crazy, as in, ‘I can’t possibly cope with my life and I’ll likely end up in the hospital or homeless and on the street’. The mind crap was spiraling. I needed emergency self-surgery. I got out of bed and started to sit meditation.
By Paddy Kamen, publisher, BetterBrainBetterLife.com At 3:36 a.m. I was awakened by voices from the boarding house across the street. Mind started in with worries about health, money, and numerous perceived problems like the fact that I don’t have an adequate filing system and the garage is a mess of stuff that needs to be gone through so that if I die suddenly my children won’t have to deal with it. Mind would not stop. Some of this was gripping stuff, and I’m not being facetious (e.g. my health*). Some of it was less urgent (the dahlias are being eaten by bugs and I’m not doing anything about it). But when in a crisis like this, the important matters and the less so merge into a battering ram of misery.
After a while, I felt crazy, as in, ‘I can’t possibly cope with my life and I’ll likely end up in the hospital or homeless and on the street’. The mind crap was spiraling. I needed emergency self-surgery. I got out of bed and started to sit meditation.
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By Paddy Kamen, publisher, BetterBrainBetterLife.com
My gut is in an uproar. It happens almost everytime I eat. A years-long project of trying to stop burping, farting and bloating escalated last December when my digestive system underwent a state of siege. For two weeks, everything I ate caused terrible pain throughout my abdomen, to the point where bending down to pick up the laundry basket caused me to moan.
Is this simply a physical problem? I doubt it. When I say, ‘my stomach is in a knot’, it usually means I am dealing with strong, difficult emotions, experienced as tension in the abdomen. After 15 years of consistent meditation practice and many silent retreats, I can now detect even subtle emotions as body sensation: fear has been a companion, and anxiety, its offspring (which I define as amorphous fear), has been hitching a ride every day and night since the beginning of February. It is now mid-June.
The anxiety began last January when my father, at 89 and in terrible health, began to seriously decline, and then died on March 3. This is tough stuff, but of course, expected. To complicate things, dad’s wife (I'll call her Sue) has made our family life challenging for some time now. She has a recent diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, on top of an undiagnosed mood disorder and paranoia, so handling her finances as her POA after my father died was an ordeal I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Sue calls me up regularly to accuse me of stealing from her (her latest accusation was that I had stolen vacuum cleaner parts), and throwing her medication in the garbage. Every time she calls it triggers that terrible anxiety in my gut. It can take hours for the sensation to settle down.
Infrared Light Helps Dementia Patients We're pleased to welcome Marvin Berman as a guest writer. His work with depression, anxiety, addictions and learning disabilities is now augmented by his research into near-infrared light stimulation (NIRS) to the brain. As you will read, he is seeking dementia patients for a two-year study into NIRS combined with neurofeedback. In this, the International Year of Light, Dr. Berman's research is both timely and very promising for humankind. By Marvin H. Berman, Ph.D. A diagnosis of dementia can be terrifying to patients and their loved ones. Some psychologists are suggesting that we should not even use the word ‘dementia’ when describing test results, saying it is preferable to talk about the ‘memory challenges’ and ‘executive functioning deficits’. The wife of a patient of mine who is struggling with short-term memory loss and expressive aphasia (can’t find the right word), recently told me she feared that if her husband was told that he probably had Alzheimer’s, he might commit suicide. She therefore spent countless hours and huge sums of money trying different methods to improve his condition but wouldn’t tell him what she knew and forbade the doctors from informing him directly of his diagnosis. But avoidance and denial create tremendous stress on the family, coloring all interactions to the point where everyone puts their energies into ensuring they don’t say something they shouldn’t. Instead of denial, families need to spend time talking about what’s really important, namely the time they spend together, including their feelings about the unknowns they are all facing as the disease progresses. Finding ways to support one another takes time and thought and support from doctors and other experts, as well as the growing dementia-support community. What patients and families need most is a sense of hope that something can be done to stop the progression of memory loss. Several hundred drug trials worldwide have so far been unsuccessful and interest is now focusing on new alternative approaches. As a neuroscientist, clinician and researcher (I founded the Quietmind Foundation and Quietmind Associates Brain Enhancement and Treatment Center in Plymouth Meeting, PA, 15 years ago), I’ve been working with brainwave biofeedback or neurofeedback (NFB), and near-infrared light stimulation (NIRS) to the brain for the past seven years. I’m very encouraged with the results we’re seeing with these technologies and I believe they hold great promise for those affected by neurodegenerative diseases including dementia and Parkinson’s disease. E-Readers are Great, but Your Brain Needs Sleep! By Paddy Kamen, Publisher, BetterBrainBetterLife Did you receive an e-reader as a gift this year? If so, lucky you: they are excellent travel companions and can make the reading experience better (I like the Kindle notes and highlights features and use an iPad also). However, reading from a light-emitting (LE) e-reading device before bed can seriously disrupt your sleep, according to research from Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) in Boston, MA. By Paddy Kamen, Publisher, BetterBrainBetterLife Sometimes the brain remembers too much, as with autism, and other times too little, as with Alzheimer's disease. Researchers from McGill University have discovered a protein trigger that controls how this happens in the brain. Led by Dr. Keith Murai, associate professor in the department of neurology and neurosurgery, the researchers found they could either block or enhance the brain's ability to create the new molecules necessary for new memory formation. In this photo, UW students Darby Losey, left, and Jose Ceballos are positioned in two different buildings on campus as they would be during a brain-to-brain interface demonstration. The sender, left, thinks about firing a cannon at various points throughout a computer game. That signal is sent over the Web directly to the brain of the receiver, right, whose hand hits a touchpad to fire the cannon.
Learn more about this research here. By Paddy Kamen, Publisher, BetterBrainBetterLife.com A brain that is in trouble can’t allow you to think and move at the same time. So says Lauren Sergio, Ph.D., professor in the School of Kinesiology & Health Science at Toronto’s York University. Sergio and her colleague, Ph.D. candidate Kara Hawkins, used this fact to develop a simple test that predicts with over 80 percent accuracy who is at risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Her test should frighten everyone who has a parent with this diagnosis. The mouse equivalent of a diet of cheeseburgers and fries causes inflammation in the male mouse brain. But would it do the same for females? No one had bothered studying that until Deborah Clegg, Ph.D. came along. What Clegg discovered may have profound implications for the human brain — and for how we eat. “We knew that a junk food diet causes inflammation in the male mouse brain. We wanted to find out if the same was true for females. In humans, women are less affected in their overall health by weight gain than are men and we were hoping to discover something about this difference,” says Clegg, research scientist and assistant professor, the Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. But female rodents are more challenging to work with in the lab, because they go through hormonal cycles every three-to-four days. “Females are rarely used in research because of their fluctuating hormones,” said Clegg, in an interview with BetterBrainBetterLife.com. “But we controlled for this and gave them exactly the same diet as the males. Both sexes gained exactly the same amount of weight.” The Edge Effect, by Eric Braverman gives us vital information on the brain and personality. Melissa Fougere, a naturopathic doctor with a master's degree in neuroscience, finds Braverman's method helps many of her patients, and in a myriad of ways. You too can use this fascinating technique to begin to better understand yourself or those you care about. Read on! By Dr. Melissa Fougere When was the last time you felt like the best version of yourself? Do you feel balanced? Are you acting in accord with your true nature? Or have you lost your edge? Disease and symptoms of poor health are messages from the body, a sign that things are not functioning well. It‘s tempting to cover them up with medications, to drink coffee for energy, smoke cigarettes for concentration, to take sleeping pill for insomnia, or use antidepressants to improve your mood. Our physical and emotional symptoms, however, are signs that something needs to be investigated. Once we understand that chronic fatigue, irritability, anxiety, an inability to lose weight, and cravings for sugar, carbohydrates or dairy products are indications that our neural chemistry is in disharmony, we can work towards achieving the amazing health and vitality we were born for. |
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