New study about weight gain from lack of sufficient sleep

BrainBecause sleep loss is widespread in modern society, in the last few decades it has become better understood that it can have serious negative health consequences.  Just a half hour of missed sleep during weekdays was enough to cause problems, researchers at the Endocrine Society found. It is now crystal clear that nearly everyone needs at least 8 hours nightly in order to be able to regenerate and clear the toxins from the nervous system.

This new study by the Endocrine Society suggests that missing just 30 minutes of sleep during weeknights could increase your weight and disrupt your metabolism.  The endocrine system is the collection of glands that produce hormones that regulate metabolism, growth and development, tissue function, sexual function, reproduction, sleep, and mood, among other functions.

Neuroplasticity and confidence.

Brain

I was reading this morning some research on brain neuroplasticity related to confidence from Mount Sanai Hospital School of Medicine. They call confidence ‘life’s enabler’ or the quality that turns thoughts into action. Taking small steps in daily life adds up, they say in other words. Also, viewing failure as new information to be accepted as part of learning, versus sense of failing.

Good posture, too, plays a part in how confident we feel. This is innately known with practices like Tai Chi or yoga; feeling confident physically imports into feeling confident emotionally and mentally.

How Much Does Your Head Weigh?

A nice article  on what we are calling ‘text neck’, the position that everyone’s head is in reading their smartphones.  And I would say that I see folks in a degree of this in the car behind the wheel.

Our head and neck segment at only a 15 degree angle will weigh about 27 pounds (see the drawing in the article to see all the permutations).  One way to counter this is to remember that your spine should be long and relaxed, not short and compressed.  Bringing the smartphone or book wo your head is there way to shift this bad habit that could lead to some deterioration of the spinal structure.

Neurofeedback podcast interview with Upgraded Ape organization

If you want to hear what NeurOPTMAL neurofeedback does from the developer himself, this is a wonderful interview.  He gives his background and how he got into this field.  He also provides a simple explanation about how NeurOPTIMAL can improve resilience in life.  When your brain sees what is has been doing electrically, it improves itself because this is its design. This is the neuroplasticity.

After 8 years of using MeurOPTIMAL with clients as well as using it myself, I am still learning new things each time I hear Val Brown be interviewed.  He is a great teacher and able to synthesize very complex information into simple ways of grasping how NeurOPTIMAL can do what it does across so many symptoms and presentations.

Brain-Mind: Society of Neuroscience, Dali Lama’s 2005 attendance…

Learn to function from the ‘inside-out’!

 

 

http://youtu.be/flJnlB4Tgu0

(More Flexible) Brains:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Probing the Partnership Between Buddhism and the Brain Sciences

What is a non-linear, dynamical system?

From the Summer 2011 Newsletter
NeurOPTIMAL® Neurofeedback
A Non-Linear, Dynamical Approach to Brain Training…OK! So what is a non-linear, dynamical system? Simple nonlinear, dynamical systems can exhibit completely unpredictable behavior (notice someone who is upset, or a hurricane or an avalanche- all non-linear systems), which might seem to be random.  This seemingly unpredictable behavior has been called ‘chaos’.We now know that the human brain is a non-linear, dynamical system that lives on the edge of chaos and order which allows for it’s tremendously sophisticated processing capabilities on behalf of our personal survival.  In the linear forms of neurofeedback, the practitioner uses a diagnosis to determine how to proceed with the client.  They will push and/or inhibit certain brainwave frequencies in order to get intended changes; a problem is the side effects that can come about from pushing a persons brain.In NeurOPTIMAL, we are using the same EEG, or electro-encephlagraph technology, in a completely different manner.  NeurOPTIMAL is a Negative Feedback approach and the linear forms are doing Operant Conditioning; NeurOPTIMAL takes away something each time the brain acts up rather than pushing it to change.  We know that the brain is self-organizing (a characteristic of a non-linear system), as are all non-linear systems.  As well, our brain with its one hundred billion or more cells learns and evolves from personal, direct experience.  We communicate with your brain in its own language it, in essence, anytime it is using energy inefficiently and since it is an energy saving system, it re-organizes itself.  Your benefit is that you more relaxed, present, and able to drop negative states easier when they get triggered since it takes allot of energy to remain upset or anxious or depressed.

We NeurOPTIMAL trainers are diagnostically agnostic, which means we don”t work from a diagnosis, but more simply, target perturbation in the present moment.  Perturbation is what happens when your brain is about to move into a state or phase shift.  When this happens, the brains has been hi-jacked and is no longer in the present; it is responding automatically and mechanically based on unresolved stress in that persons system.