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Children can 'imagine away' pain

Monday, October 12th, 2009

This is from the BBC News website today, and makes interesting reading about what the human mind is possible of – especially for children.

Children can be taught to use their imagination to tackle frequent bouts of stomach pain, research shows.

A relaxation-type CD, asking children to imagine themselves in scenarios like floating on a cloud led to dramatic improvements in abdominal pain.

The US researchers said the technique worked particularly well in children as they have such fertile imaginations.

It has been estimated that frequent stomach pain with no identifiable cause affects up to one in five children.

The research, published in the journal Pediatrics, follows on from studies showing hypnosis is an effective treatment for a range of conditions known as functional abdominal pain, which includes things like irritable bowel syndrome.

In this study, the children had 20 minute sessions of “guided imagery” – a technique which prompts the subject to imagine things which will reduce their discomfort.

One example is letting a special shiny object melt into their hand and then placing their hand on their belly, spreading warmth and light from the hand inside the tummy to make a protective barrier inside that prevents anything from irritating the belly

The researchers, from the University of North Carolina and Duke University Medical Center, said a lack of therapists led them to the idea of using a CD to deliver the sessions.

In all 30 children aged between six and 15 years took part in the study – half of whom used the CDs daily for eight weeks and the rest of whom got normal treatment.

Among those who had used the CDs, 73.3% reported that their abdominal pain was reduced by half or more by the end of the treatment course compared with 26.7% in the standard care group.

In two-thirds of children the improvements were still apparent six months later.

Anxiety

It is not clear exactly how the technique works but studies have shown it is partly about reducing anxiety but there is also a direct effect on the pain response.

Some researchers think hypnosis-like techniques reduce “hypersensitivity” in conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome.

Study leader Dr Miranda van Tilburg said it was especially exciting that the children were able to use the technique on their own.

“Such self-administered treatment is, of course, very inexpensive and can be used in addition to other treatments, which potentially opens the door for easily enhancing treatment outcomes for a lot of children suffering from frequent stomach aches.

“Children are very good at using their imagination – when you use this in adults you have to overcome a barrier first.”

Professor David Candy, a consultant paediatric gastroenterologist at Western Sussex Hospitals, said his team had tried hypnosis in a small group of children with severe abdominal pain problems and had 100% success rate.

He added they are now keen to try the guided imagery technique to see if they can replicate the US findings.

“There is really a dearth of information on how to manage children with abdominal pain and it’s a very common problem which keeps children out of school.”

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Posted in anxiety, brain, health and wellbeing, hypnosis, hypnotherapy, mind, pain control, relaxation, sensation control | No Comments »

Adult brains can change within seconds

Saturday, July 18th, 2009

I unashamedly pinched this post from The Quest Institute website because it so nicely illustrates one of the fundamental thoughts from Cognitive Hypnotherapy, namely that changes in the mind can happen quickly – therefore years and years spent in therapy might be put to better use seeing a brief therapy practitioner such as a Cognitive Hypnotherapist like myself.

This from Trevor Silvester, the founder of Cognitive Hypnotherapy:

Jul 16th, 2009 by Trevor Silvester.
A new report about to be published in the Journal of Neuroscience by scientists working at the Institute for Brain Research at MIT has established that our brains can alter in a matter of seconds. “Our study shows the stunning ability of the brain to adapt to moment-to-moment changes in experience even in adulthood.” states one of the authors.

The changes are too quick for the brain to have grown new connections, and the current theory is that the change is the result of dormant short-term cortical connections being ‘booted up’ in response to some changing circumstance in the person’s environment.

I find this particularly interesting because Cognitive Hypnotherapy is a brief therapy model, and we work on the basis that change -even major change, doesn’t have to take a long time to be achieved. My argument has always been that, if a problem can begin as a result of a short experience, why can’t it be remedied within the same time frame?

This meets with resistance from a lot of psychotherapists and counsellors who are wedded to the idea that ‘change takes time’. As Woody Allen once said “I’ve been in psychoanalysis for fifteen years, and I’m starting to see signs of progress.”

I, and the people we’ve trained as Cognitive Hypnotherapists, regularly see rapid change in clients – most phobias disappear in a single session, and it’s heartening that neuroscience is supporting the notion that the architecture for such rapid change exists within the brain.

You can read about the research here.

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Posted in Cognitive hypnotherapy, NLP, brain, health and wellbeing, hypnotherapy, learning, mind, positive psychology | No Comments »

Weight off my mind: I was hypnotised into thinking I'd had a gastric band fitted… and was astonished by the results

Friday, July 3rd, 2009

This isn’t the first time that have posted an article about this treatment plan, but this one, in the Mail on Line goes into so much detail about the procedure that I thought it was worth posting.

The treatment that this married couple in Spain are providing is a great example of sensory distortion, and is something that Cognitive Hypnotherapy has been using for years with great results. So, you don’t have to travel to Spain to get a very similar treatment. Give me a call to find out what’s possible.

www.anitamitchell.co.uk

By Claudia Connell
Last updated at 8:15 AM on 03rd July 2009
Comments (32) Add to My Stories

Is this the weirdest weight-loss idea ever? You get hypnotised into thinking you’ve had gastric band surgery and will never need to eat so much again – and it works…

Lying on a hospital trolley, feeling pleasantly woozy from the recently administered pre-med, I am about to be wheeled down to theatre to have my gastric band fitted.

I can hear the noises of a busy hospital and am aware of that very distinct clinical smell. Despite what lies ahead, I don’t feel in the least bit anxious as the anaesthetist puts me under and the surgeon prepares his scalpel for that first incision.

Perhaps my calm state of mind is because I am relieved to finally be addressing the weight problems I have struggled with for two years – but, in reality, it’s far more likely to be due to the fact that I am not in a hospital at all but reclining on a comfy chair, under hypnosis and in a state of deep relaxation, in a therapy room on Spain’s Costa Del Sol.

You see I’m not actually having a gastric band fitted, I am being hypnotised into believing it as part of an innovative new weight loss treatment.

As Britain’s obesity rates soar, demand for gastric band surgery has never been higher. The success stories of celebrities such as Fern Britton and Sharon Osbourne have encouraged thousands to follow in their footsteps.

Some desperate dieters will happily pay the £8,000 themselves while, controversially, many NHS trusts now offer the treatment free in the belief it is more cost effective in the long-term than allowing people to remain overweight.

But there is no denying that the procedure is complicated and risky and often leads to many unpleasant and painful side effects such as vomiting, diarrhoea and acid reflux.

Now, two Spanish-based British therapists are convinced they have hit upon an ingenious way to help overweight people shed the pounds without undergoing any dangerous surgical procedures – by hypnotising patients into believing that they have had their stomachs reduced.

When the Mail ran the story of Marion Corns, who had undergone the procedure called the Gastric Mind Band, showing how she had shed three stone in four months, the clinic was inundated with calls from people all over the world wanting treatment.

But can an overeater like me really be tricked into believing that my stomach is the size of a golf ball and that I will no longer be able to eat the gluttonous portions I’d previously been gorging on?

Given that I am piling on the pounds and going up a dress size every six months, I’m more than willing to give it a try.

The Elite Clinic in Fuengirola is run by an expat married couple – Martin and Marion Shirran, both therapists with ten years’ experience of helping patients conquer addictions and disorders, from drug use to panic attacks.

When an overweight patient remarked that she was terrified of surgery and wished she could be hypnotised into believing she had a gastric band, Marion realised there was no reason why this could not be done.

She spent the next few months watching videos of the procedure and devising the gastric mind band programme. Her very first guinea pig was husband Martin, who lost five stone.

Other patients report a good response to the extent that they claim they have a success rate of 80 per cent – higher than actually having the surgical procedure which only works for 70 per cent of people.

I am piling on the pounds and going up a dress size every six months, I’m more than willing to give it a try Perhaps the E995 euro bill (that’s around £853) might be worth it after all.

But could it work for me, the world’s most cynical woman who thinks that any kind of alternative therapy is a load of nonsense and that if something works then it works, regardless of whether you have faith in it?

After all, I don’t ‘have faith’ when I take two paracetemol for a crashing headache, I know the drug will do its job.

I was relieved to arrive at the smart, marble-floored clinic and find that Martin and Marion were friendly and good humoured; not the hippy dippy, tie-dye-wearing types that I expected.

My therapy had been arranged over a course of four days with the virtual surgery coming at the very end.

At my first session, Marion wants to get a picture of my attitude to food and diet and to examine my history of yo-yo weight gain.

My blood pressure and resting heart rate are taken and are both very healthy.

I also know that I have the cholesterol level and liver function of a child – from blood tests I had taken.

The doctor was so impressed by my liver function he assumed I was teetotal.

Of course this clean bill of health doesn’t help with my attitude to weight loss. If I had high blood pressure or cholesterol, it might spur me on to shift the flab.

Marion asks leading questions such as: Do I always leave a clean plate? Do I eat until I feel uncomfortable? Do I reward myself with food treats? Needless to say I answer ‘yes’ to all of these.

Unlike many overweight people I was not a heavy child – in fact, I was always a skinny Minnie with arms and legs like matchsticks.
I was a size 8-10 in my teens and 20s and filled out to a fuller figured size 12 in my late 30s.

Now 43, I am a size 16, and 12 1/2st and with a BMI that is getting dangerously close to the ‘obese’ category – and I hate it. I don’t want to be fat any more.

Marion asks me to explain why I hate being fat, and want to be slim again. Not usually a person that is down on myself, to my surprise, when I look in the mirror I say that I see a dumpy, middle-aged woman, not the vibrant, youthful-looking person I was just a few years ago. I feel old and sluggish.

She also asks me if I have a dress in my wardrobe that I love, that doesn’t fit me but that I am holding on to as I really want to get into it again.

I do: it’s a beautiful pink beaded shift dress that cost a small fortune and that I wore to Ladies Day at Ascot five years ago.

It’s a very small size 10 – and when I bought it I had it taken in!

The three-hour session ends with hypnotherapy, something I’ve never had before. In fact, other than the cheesy entertainment kind, where a person is told to jump up and dance like a gorilla every time a whistle is blown, hypnosis is not something I know a great deal about.
I rather expect Marion to produce a large watch on a chain and tell me I am feeling very sleepy.

Instead my pulse is monitored and I’m told to lie back and relax while Marion talks to me in soothing tones about being at a crossroads in my life where I can take one of two roads.

The first is the old familiar road, lined with sweet wrappers and takeaway boxes and declines sharply downhill. The second is a tougher, uphill road that is a struggle to climb but it leads to happiness, peace and contentment.

I am told that every time I pick up a spoon an image of me in my pink dress will jump into my mind and I will see that nothing I eat will taste as good as the feeling of being size 10 again.

During the hypno session, my pulse rate had dropped from 70 beats per minute to 57 (the level is in the 40s when you are asleep) which showed that, despite my scepticism, I am in a state of deep relaxation and, therefore, my subconscious is susceptible to suggestion and instruction.

I come to feeling like a zombie and as though I have been under for several hours when it is only about 30 minutes.

Later that evening when I go out to eat, I am presented with a huge bowl pasta which, strangely, looks unappealing to me even though it’s my favourite dish. The plate is groaning under the weight of the food and for what must be the first time in years I only manage to eat a third of it. What’s happening to me?

At my next session with Marion, she measures my resting metabolic rate: this will tell me how efficiently my body burns calories and how many it needs on a daily basis.

I must look like a crazed Stepford wife as I sit in the hotel breakfast hall chewing slowlyThe result reveals that I burn 1,600 calories a day. A non-dieting woman will, averagely, consume 2,000 calories a day which means I have 400 extra calories that are not being burnt and are turning to fat.

If I cut my calorie intake to 1,300 a day, I can lose a pound a week – if I exercise as well I can double that.

We also discuss portion sizes, where Marion reveals that I eat three times as much as I should, and that the recommended portion size is roughly the same as your fist.

While under hypnotherapy I relax even more deeply and am told to leave food on my plate at every meal, to find pleasure in the flavour of food and not the quantity, to place my knife and fork down between mouthfuls and to chew every mouthful 15 times before swallowing, and to only eat when hungry and not to a scheduled timetable.

If it gets to lunchtime I am to place my hand on my stomach and ask: ‘Am I hungry?’ If I am not, then I don’t eat the meal. It all sounds so simple.

At breakfast the next morning, I find myself doing exactly what I am told and the meal that would have taken me five minutes to wolf down is now lasting four times as long. I must look like a crazed Stepford wife as I sit in the hotel breakfast hall chewing slowly

I seem to be doing this involuntarily. Surely this is not the hypnotism actually working?

After my second mouthful, just when I am starting to enjoy the muesli, what should pop into my head? You guessed it – me looking slim, tanned and happy in my pink dress. Damn.

My third session is with Martin, who practises cognitive behavioural therapy which concentrates purely on the present.

He teaches the patient to take responsibility for their actions and to identify, understand and, ultimately, stop their damaging behaviour.

Martin definitely seems to believe in the ‘tough love’ type of treatment, playing bad cop to Marion’s good cop.

He asks whether I want to wait until I have type 2 diabetes and my heart is at risk before I address my weight issue.

When I snort and reply that I’m a long way from that, he points out that I have gained nearly three stone in 18 months and that if I repeat the same pattern I will be classed as morbidly obese.

As stupid as it sounds, that had never even occurred to me.

Martin asks me if I always wear my seatbelt when I drive and why. I say: ‘because I don’t want to be hurt in an accident’.

‘So why don’t you protect yourself from heart disease in the same way?’ he asks. For the first time, I am stumped for an answer.

He tells me about a woman he is treating who is so heavy that she has to pay for two plane seats when she flies over for treatment and asks whether I want to end up like that.

He asks: ‘Is this going to work?’ and over the course of the two-hour session my answer changes from ‘I hope so’ to ‘yes it will’ without my realising.

I don’t know whether it’s the Spanish heat, the jet lag or the treatment, but in the three days I have been in Spain I have not really been thinking about food – unlike my life back home where I plan every meal in advance.

Day four of my treatment is the biggie, the virtual gastric band operation. The session is to last for three hours.

As Marion prepares to put me under hypnosis I am told to lie back in the chair and close my eyes as the lights are dimmed and the blinds are closed.

A pulse monitor is clipped to my finger to monitor how deeply I go into a trance like state.

Soothing music is played gently in the background as I am instructed to relax my body, starting with the toes and working my way up to my face.

The music changes to that of an outdoor setting as I’m told I am in a garden full of fragrant and exotic plants – the room is then filled with the scent of jasmine and grass as the scene is being described to me using a technique called ‘vortex aroma’ where a computerised programme will release smells into the room at a specified time in the treatment.

Soon I can hear the sounds of birds and the crashing of waves. I am told I am barefoot on a beautiful, deserted beach, staring out to sea – the salty smell of the ocean fills my nostrils. I feel peaceful.

After 15 minutes I am deeply relaxed but not asleep and able to hear and remember everything I am being told as the weight loss part of the hypnosis begins. I relax deeply and am suddenly aware of the noises and smells of a hospital and can hear distant chatter.

Marion is at what looks rather like a DJ’s mixing desk which has a computer with a programme that releases authentic smells at the right moment.

Marion tells me that the pre-med is about to be administered and I feel a scratch to my hand. She tells me that I am being wheeled into the theatre where (thanks to sound effects) I can hear the beep of medical machinery.

A smell of anaesthetic is released into the room when I am about to go under and it fills my nostrils, this is delivered by a device called a ‘vortex aroma’ linked to the computerised system and expelled at the right time in the hypnotherapy session.

Then, Marion talks me through the incision being made, my liver being moved aside, the camera being placed inside me and the gastric band closing off a section of my stomach.

The distinct whiff of TCP fills the room when I am told that the wounds are being stitched.

I am informed that the operation has been a success and a golf ball is placed into my right hand for me to squeeze.

The golf ball is the size of my new-look stomach, says Marion, I will eat five or six mouthfuls of food before I feel full. Again, I am told to only eat food for its flavour, not its quantity.

But when I get home something astonishing happens I just don’t feel hungry any more The hypnotherapy lasts for about an hour and I come round feeling as woozy as I would from an actual anaesthetic, I also find myself clutching a pink golf ball that I don’t recall being placed in my palm.

I leave the session feeling very weird and slightly confused, and head straight to the airport for my flight home.

On the plane I refuse all offers of food but, being the cynic that I am, I tell myself that it’s because I am flying with a budget airline and their sandwiches are the Devil’s poison.

But when I get home something astonishing happens I just don’t feel hungry any more.

It is now ten days since my virtual gastric band was inserted and in that time I have eaten a fraction of what I normally would.

Like most people, I am always hungry at breakfast time and prepare a small bowl of fruit and cereal.

Not once since returning from Spain have I finished it all. I want to, but it’s not happening. I eat so slowly and I can’t stop picturing me in my pink dress.

Five evenings out of ten I haven’t eaten an evening meal at all, because I just haven’t fancied it.

I have found that I am eating at around 8am, midday and 4pm and then that seems to be enough.

My social life has always revolved around late night meals and drinking when, in fact, it was the last thing my body wanted.

The bizarre thing is that I don’t think for a minute that I have a gastric band, I know that I don’t, but I feel strangely full in a way that I didn’t use to.

Just a fortnight ago, I could easily polish off a Marks & Spencer lasagne for two. Pasta now makes me feel so uncomfortably full that I can’t bear to eat it.

Will it all wear off? Will my huge appetite return with a vengeance in the coming days?

I feel rather overwhelmed and slightly confused by the whole experience. In eight weeks’ time, I am due to revisit the clinic to monitor my weight loss and see if I require an adjustment to my gastric band to either speed or slow down my weight loss – just as I would if I had actually had the surgery.

Once I hit my target weight of 91/2st I have to undergo more therapy where I may have my virtual gastric band removed, and will be given a maintenance programme that will allow me to eat without regaining the weight.

Will it work? All I know is that I have lost 7lbs in ten days, and that as I sit here typing this on a hot summer’s day the thought of a huge bowl of icecream is as about as unappealing as a slap in the face with a wet fish.

Who’d have thought it? Could it really be the result of my phantom gastric band? I’m starting to believe it might be.

For more information visit www.gmband.com

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Posted in Cognitive hypnotherapy, brain, eating disorders, health and wellbeing, hypnosis, hypnotherapy, lifestyle, mind, sensation control, weight control, weight loss | No Comments »

Daydreams may solve complex problems

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

This article published on the website Globe and Mail gives an interesting insight into daydreaming and how it may be useful to us.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/daydreams-may-solve-complex-problems/article1134033/

Letting your mind wander is not a waste of time, according to a new study 

Comments By Marina Jiménez Last updated on Thursday, May. 14, 2009 03:12AM EDT

People spend one third of their waking lives daydreaming. But letting your mind wander is not a waste of time, according to a new study. It’s a chance for the brain to stop focusing on immediate tasks, and subconsciously resolve important life problems.

The study, published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that brain areas associated with complex problem solving, previously thought to go dormant during daydreaming, are in fact highly active.

“A lot of people reject daydreaming as a wasteful activity,” says Kalina Christoff, the study’s lead author and a University of British Columbia psychology professor. “But our study suggests that if you daydream, you might be able to advance some of your current concerns.”

The study put 15 research subjects through a functional MRI for 90 minutes, to examine the metabolic processes of their brains. They completed a simple, routine task of pushing a button when numbers appeared on a screen.

Prof. Christoff tracked the research subjects’ attentiveness through brain scans, subjective reports and by monitoring their performance of the task. She found that two key regions of the brain were active during daydreaming: the “default network,” associated with easy, routine mental activity, and the brain’s “executive network,” associated with high-level, complex problem-solving.

Usually when one network is working, the other isn’t. It is rare to see them working in tandem, the paper concludes. As well, the brain activity was most active when the research subjects weren’t aware they were daydreaming.

“When your mind wanders, a different kind of thinking occurs,” said Prof. Christoff. “When you aren’t trying to solve problems deliberately, it provides more mental space, you make connections and let your mind go wherever it wants.”

She has long been interested in spontaneous thought – but it is difficult to study because it doesn’t occur on cue. But now studies are being designed that permit scientists to look at the quantity and quality of brain activity during “mind wandering.”

Prof. Christoff says that many of her best research ideas have come to her when she is in the car, daydreaming.

“Driving is the perfect activity for letting your mind wander because it is highly automatized and requires only a small part of our attention,” she said. “When you daydream, you may not achieve your immediate goal, say reading a book or paying attention in class. But your mind may be taking that time to address more important questions in your life.”

She compares it to mulling over a life decision and letting it circulate in your brain, as opposed to deliberately weighing the pros and cons. Prof. Christoff runs UBC’s Cognitive Neuroscience of Thought Laboratory, which studies neural and cognitive mechanisms of human thought, reasoning and problem solving. Her research team for the study included members who are now at Stanford University and the University of California at Santa Barbara.

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Posted in NLP, Training, brain, brain fitness, happiness, health and wellbeing, hypnosis, learning, lifestyle, mind, positive psychology, relaxation | No Comments »

Encouragement improves your game better than criticism, claim scientists

Saturday, May 2nd, 2009

rom The Telegraph website:

The ‘hairdryer’ treatment and criticism may get quick results, but sportsmen respond much better to kinds words of encouragement and support, scientists have found.

By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent

Last Updated: 2:35PM BST 01 May 2009

Sportsmen and women could get the edge on their opponents by accepting more emotional support in their personal and professional lives. A study by the University of Exeter, showed the extent to which a sympathetic ear or regular words of encouragement can improve sports performance.

Previous studies have linked ’social support’ to performance in golf and other sports and psychologists are regularly employed to improve performance. But doubts have still remained over its effectiveness – with many still believing that criticism is the best path to results. Now for the first time, researchers claim they have proved it works – at least for golfers – after showing proper emotional support can improve their handicap by nearly two in less than a month.

Dr Paul Freeman said that a player’s game is definitely affected by their frame of mind and negative feedback could have the opposite effect.

“There are times when the hairdryer treatment works but as a general rule positive support is going to have more long term benefits,” he said.

“Over a longer period I definitely think this support is more affective.”

The study, published in the Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, focused on three male golfers, two amateurs and one professional, who all competed at regional, national and international level. For half of the study the golfers were each given regular one-on-one support by Dr Freeman of the University of Exeter.

 Dr Freeman offered a range of support including listening to the golfers as they talked through their problems, offering encouragement and reassurance before competitions, and helping with practical issues, such as organising accommodation during competitions.

To provide comparative data, the researchers looked up the performance of the three golfers prior to the study.

Over 10 games, all three golfers performed better when they were receiving support from Dr Freeman. The players improved by an average of 1.78 shots per round, which could be significant at high-level golf. Dr Freeman said:

“It is significant that the support I offered, as a relative stranger, had such a marked influence on their results.

“The findings suggest that amateur and professional athletes would benefit from seeking social support, whether this is from a friend or family member or even from a professional.”

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Posted in brain, brain fitness, golf and the mind, golf training, performance, positive psychology | No Comments »

Sleep and Teenagers

Monday, April 6th, 2009

From Pyschology Today

By John Cline, Ph.D. on April 5, 2009 – 2:40pm in Sleepless in America

On a recent episode of the MTV series “True Life,” a high school student suffering from delayed sleep phase syndrome was followed. She finds it impossible to go to sleep at a regular time, instead staying up until the early hours of the morning and then finding it nearly impossible to get out of bed to go to school. When she does, she is constantly falling asleep and is unable to pay attention to class discussions. This was an accurate depiction of the problems some teens have related to sleep. Teens tend to have three major sleep concerns. One, they are naturally sleepier than younger children or adults. Two, they tend to get insufficient sleep during the week due to academic, social and recreational demands and try to make up for it on the weekend by sleeping late. Three, they have a delayed sleep phase, meaning they want go to bed later and sleep later than other age groups. Given late night activities such as text messaging and video gaming, this propensity can easily become a full fledged delayed sleep phase disorder in which bed time isn’t until 3 or 4 a.m., and the ideal wake up time is pushed to around 12 p.m. This shift in circadian rhythm is facilitated by late night exposure to light, as when looking into a bright computer screen at 2 a.m. Teens almost always sleep late on the weekends. Some teens, however, find it almost impossible to get out of bed on any given day due to their sleep difficulties. This can easily result in missing school and becoming truant. Indeed, studies have shown that teens are sleepier than younger children or older adults. Their sleep is shallower and less restorative than the sleep that younger children get. When allowed to sleep as much as they would like, teens average 9 to 10 hrs per night, but few are getting anywhere near this amount. Indeed, as the start of the school day is earlier for high school than middle school, it is often necessary for high school students to get up as early as 5:30 a.m. to get to school on time. In order to get even nine hours of sleep with such a schedule, it would be necessary to go to bed around 8:30 p.m., which is not likely. Once children become preschoolers, most no longer require naptime, and by nature choose to stay awake. Teens regain the ability to nap and are better able to stay up later than younger children. They are able to over sleep when necessary and regularly do so on weekends and during vacations. Teens also tend to have much more irregular sleep schedules, with greatly different bed and wake up times on weekdays as compared to weekends. This greater flexibility in sleep ability and sleep scheduling can lead to significant disruption of the sleep pattern. As a result of the miss-match between sleep-need and school schedules, insufficient sleep is common among teens. It is estimated that up to 40% of high school and college students are sleep deprived. This may be an underestimate. There are many reasons for this. At this age there is decreasing control exercised by parents. At the same time academic work increases. Many high school students are taking honors and advanced placement classes, often working at a college level. Young people engage in many more social activities such as sports and school clubs. In addition to doing their home work, they also may have to work long hours to earn money for college. Many college students have to essentially be full time students and full time workers due to the current economic challenges. The adolescent years are filled with challenges. Teens take on more adult roles while still having many of the needs of children. They experience the rapid physical and emotional changes of becoming young adults. Many have concerns about their future such as going to college, getting a job and having enough money. Sexual feelings are intense during this time and teenagers have to take on more adult decisions regarding sexuality, the use of alcohol and other drugs, and working out their own value systems which may be different from their parents. During this time distrust of parents or authority figures may develop. All of these worries and concerns can cause arousal that interferes with sleep. As with adults, sleep is often a lower priority for adolescents. This is especially true during the school week when school, homework, sports, after school activities, volunteer work, jobs and socializing seem much more important than sleep. As with adults, few teens can appreciate the benefits of sleep with regard to improved cognitive functioning and mood. If they did, the improved functioning young people would experience might more than off-set the extra time devoted to sleep. There are a number of concerns related to insufficient sleep that go beyond the cognitive, memory and emotional effects. Increased sleepiness results in increased risk for fatigue-related accidents, especially motor vehicle accidents. Laboratory studies have shown that significant sleep loss results in cognitive impairment equivalent to that caused by alcohol intoxication. Not a good thing for new drivers just learning the rules of the road! When young people are getting insufficient sleep, there is impairment of the motivation needed to do well in the class room or on the job. Unintended sleep episodes may occur in the form of falling asleep in class or on a job, or behind the wheel of a car. Indeed, students with a C average or below typically report getting less sleep and having a more irregular sleep schedule than students with better grades. While the above issues are the most common ones for sleep problems among young people, a number of other sleep disorders are also potentially problematic. For example, narcolepsy usually appears in adolescence or early adulthood and about 50% of people with narcolepsy will have some symptoms by age 16. Another significant concern is the impact of the increasing obesity in our society. Obesity can increase the risk for sleep apnea in young people just as it does in older individuals. The long term impact of sleep apnea can have severe implications for health and well being. In the next post, I will discuss some ways to help teens keep from being sleepless in America.

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Posted in brain, health and wellbeing, learning, lifestyle, sleep, weight control, weight loss | No Comments »

Experiences make us happier than things

Monday, March 30th, 2009

Here’s a new twist on the ‘money doesn’t make you happy’ senario from Startribune.com. It would certainly stand to reason that experiences have the possibility to make us happier, simply because memories last longer than material things generally – but do they need to be ‘good’ experiences? I suppose they do …

Experiences make us happier than things By SHARI ROAN, Los Angeles Times Last update: March 29, 2009 – 12:59 PM

Money is an emotional issue, especially during economic hard times. Social scientists have always warned that once a person’s basic needs are met, money doesn’t buy happiness. But if you’re wondering, or maybe even arguing over, what to do with any precious discretionary income these days, a new study suggests how to get the biggest emotional bang for your buck.

Ryan Howell, an assistant professor of psychology at San Francisco State University, found that buying experiences — such as vacations, going to the theater or renting a sailboat — gave people more happiness than buying material things.

The study, of 154 people ages 19 to 50, showed that experiences increase happiness because they are often social in nature. In addition, however, experiences tend to make people feel more alive.

“People report a sense of feeling invigorated or inspired,” Howell said.

Experiences might also yield more happiness because people are left with positive memories, a sort of return on their investment.

“It’s not that material things don’t bring any happiness. It’s just that they don’t bring as much,” Howell said. “You’re happy with a new television set. But you’re thrilled with a vacation.”

The study might yield some lessons for Americans in despair over the recession. “For whatever you can afford, you’ll maximize your happiness, and the happiness of others around you, if you spend it on a life experience,” he said.

It doesn’t matter how much money you spend, either.

“Whether you spent a little or a lot on the life experience, you still have the same level of happiness,” he said.

The study was presented recently at an annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and will be published this year in the Journal of Positive Psychology.

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Video Games Can Encourage Positive Behavior, Too

Saturday, March 28th, 2009

With so much bad press for video games and the people who partake in them, this article  from Miller-McCune makes a refreshing change

 By: Tom Jacobs  |  March 27, 2009  |  01:07 PM (PDT)  |  

 

If violent video games encourage violent behavior, as a series of studies suggests, do prosocial games — those that reward helpful behavior — inspire players to act in more constructive, cooperative ways? A newly published paper, featuring studies of three different age groups in three different countries, suggests the answer is yes.

“Video games are not inherently good or bad,” concludes the team of 12 researchers led by psychologist Douglas Gentile of Iowa State University. Their findings suggest this popular form of entertainment “can have both positive and negative effects.”

The paper, published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, begins with a survey of secondary school students in Singapore (adolescents in the equivalent of seventh or eighth grade). They listed their favorite games, the number of hours they spend playing them each week and how often the games involve a) helping others, or b) hurting or killing others.

They were then asked a series of questions to measure their emotional awareness and empathy for others. After controlling for several variables, “prosocial game exposure was positively related to prosocial behavior,” the researchers report.

The second survey was of fifth-, eighth- and eleventh-grade students in Japan. They were asked how often in the past month they had played games in which characters help troubled people, or games in which friendship or a positive parent-child relationship was featured.

Finally, the youngsters were asked how often in the previous month they had acted in one of four specific helpful ways (such as “I helped a person who was in trouble”). The researchers discovered a strong relationship between playing prosocial games and self-reported prosocial behavior.

For the third study, the researchers conducted an experiment using 161 American college students, who were randomly assigned to play specific parts of one of six video games. Two of the games were violent (Ty2 and Crash Trinsanity), two were neutral (Pure Pinball and Super Monkey Ball Deluxe), and two were deemed prosocial: Chibi Robo, in which the goal is to make your family happy by cleaning up and helping out with the chores; and Super Mario Sunshine, in which players gain points by cleaning up a polluted island.

After playing one of the games for 20 minutes, participants were asked to assign a partner 11 puzzles to complete. They were told that if their partners completed 10 of the puzzles within 10 minutes, the partner would win a $10 gift certificate. They could choose puzzles from one of three difficulty levels, depending upon whether they were disposed to help their partner win the prize, or to place difficulties in his or her path.

The researchers found that “participants who played a prosocial game helped their partners significantly more than did either those who had played a violent game, or those who had played a neutral game.” Furthermore, “the violent gamers hurt their partners significantly more than did either those who had played a prosocial game or those who had played a neutral game.”

Taken together, the three studies found that “prosocial game play was significantly positively related to all four measured prosocial behaviors and traits” — helping behavior, cooperation and sharing, empathy and emotional awareness. These findings complement a 2008 study from Britain that found listening to songs with prosocial lyrics encourages charitable behavior.

According to Gentile and his colleagues, these results “make it clear how critical it is to separate amount of play from the content of play.” In other words, video game playing per se isn’t the issue: Rather, the important factor is the underlying messages contained in specific games.

“Content matters,” they conclude, “and games are excellent teachers.”

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Posted in Cognitive hypnotherapy, Training, brain, brain fitness, learning, mind, performance, positive psychology | 1 Comment »

Visual learners convert words to pictures in the brain and vice versa

Friday, March 27th, 2009
This interesting article published in Science Centric on 26 March 2009 demonstrates why, as an NLP Learning Coach, I realise how important it is for us to learn in our prefered style. If a visual person only ever hears the voice of their teacher telling them the things they need to know, the visual person has to convert that teaching into visual images before they can fully understand it. This makes twice the work. Alternatively, the student may just loose interest in learning at all, because they haven’t learned the skill of converting the information yet. As an NLP Learning Coach, I help my clients know their prefered learning type, and then show how they can use that information to help them the most. See further details at www.anitamitchell.co.uk. Here’s the article.

A University of Pennsylvania psychology study, using functional magnetic resonance imaging technology to scan the brain, reveals that people who consider themselves visual learners, as opposed to verbal learners, have a tendency to convert linguistically presented information into a visual mental representation. The more strongly an individual identified with the visual cognitive style, the more that individual activated the visual cortex when reading words.

The opposite also appears to be true from the study’s results.

Those participants who considered themselves verbal learners were found under fMRI to have brain activity in a region associated with phonological cognition when faced with a picture, suggesting they have a tendency to convert pictorial information into linguistic representations.

The study was presented this week at the 16th Annual Cognitive Neuroscience Society Meeting.

Future research based on the findings from this study may be able to determine whether cognitive styles are something one is predisposed to or can learn. Depending on the flexibility with which one can adopt a style, educators could cater to one style over another to improve learning.

It has long been thought that propensities for visual or verbal learning styles influence how children acquire knowledge successfully and how adults reason in every-day life; however, there was no empirical link to this hypothesis from cognitive neuroscience.

‘Often, job applicants are required to offer opinion on whether they consider themselves visual or verbal learners,’ Sharon Thompson-Schill, professor in the Department of Psychology and a member of Penn’s Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, said. ‘Some school districts even require students to wear buttons identifying themselves as visual or verbal learners. Until this study, however, there was no direct evidence linking these cognitive styles to specific neural systems in the brain.’

In the Penn study, visual and verbal cognitive styles were measured in 18 subjects by a self-report exam called the Verbaliser – Visualiser Questionnaire. The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, a standard intelligence test used here to grade visual against verbal learning styles, then measured cognitive abilities. Participants subsequently participated in a functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment.

During the fMRI session, participants performed a novel psychological task, a more sophisticated version of the childhood board game Memory, involving both word-based and picture-based feature-matching conditions designed to permit the use of either a visual or a verbal processing style.

Results of the study demonstrated a pattern of activity in modality-specific areas of the brain that distinguished visual from verbal cognitive styles. The areas did correspond with prior knowledge of brain utilisation. During word-based tasks, activity in a functionally defined brain region that responded to viewing pictorial stimuli, the fusiform gyrus, correlated with self-reported visualiser ratings on the VVQ test.

In contrast, activity in a phonologically related brain region, the supramarginal gyrus, correlated with the verbaliser dimension of the VVQ during the picture-based condition. These findings suggest that modality-specific cortical activity underlies processing in visual and verbal cognitive styles.
Source: Penn: Office of University Communications

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Kids with ADHD May Learn Better by Fidgeting

Thursday, March 26th, 2009

This article published on March 25th 2009, in Time, Health & Science talks about a four year study which suggests that a better approach (than some of the medications currently prescibed)  for ADHD children (at least those who are not hyperactive to the point of breaking things) is to let them move around as much as they would like.

Cognitive Hypntherapy and NLP have long suggested that we need to work at our clients pace and allow them to do it their way, not our way. We, as therapists know that all behaviour has a purpose. It’s good to find our that studies back up our therories.

Here is the article. Hope you find it interesting.

www.anitamitchell.co.uk

 

By John Cloud

Like nose-picking and a preoccupation with feculence, the inability to sit still for long periods is a defining characteristic of childhood. But children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) often squirm constantly, even when other kids can remain still. Many parents and teachers respond by trying to get ADHD kids, at any cost, to stop fidgeting. The assumption is that if they could just stop wriggling, they would be able to focus and learn.

But a new study suggests that a better approach for ADHD kids (at least those who are not hyperactive to the point of breaking things) is to let them move all they want. That’s because many kids use their movements — like swiveling in a chair or folding a leg underneath themselves and bouncing in a desk seat or repeatedly lolling and righting their head — the way many adults use caffeine: to stay focused. In other words, it may be that excessive movement doesn’t prevent learning but actually facilitates it. (See the top 10 medical breakthroughs of 2008.)

Longtime ADHD researcher Mark Rapport supervised the study, which is set to be published in the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology. Rapport, a professor at the University of Central Florida (UCF) in Orlando, notes that our activity level — how much we move around in everyday situations — is one of the most fixed parts of our personalities. If you are a fidgety kid, you will be a fidgety adult, even if you learn to manage your movements with caffeine, stress-reduction, a personal trainer or other adult accoutrements.

The idea that stimulants like caffeine (or Ritalin or even something stronger like cocaine) can help you sit still and pay attention seems counterintuitive at first. But that surprising fact lies at the heart of Rapport’s work: stimulants augment your working, or short-term, memory, where information is stored temporarily and used to carry out deliberate tasks like, say, solving a challenging math problem. ADHD kids have a hard time with working memory because they lack adequate cortical arousal, and Rapport believes that their squirms and fidgets help stimulate that arousal.

His study was small — just 23 boys ages 8 to 12 participated — but uncompromisingly meticulous; it took four years to complete. Twelve of the boys had an ADHD diagnosis. The other 11 were developing normally. All underwent a battery of tests at Rapport’s lab over four consecutive Saturdays.

Since I’ve always been fidgety, I asked Rapport if he wouldn’t mind putting me through the same tests he gave the boys. And so last week I found myself at the UCF Psychology Department, where a grad student affixed a device called an actigraph to my left wrist. Actigraphs look like digital watches and generate a signal each time they are moved, even slightly. They allow researchers to measure, quite precisely, a subject’s kinetic activity. The boys in Rapport’s experiments wore actigraphs on their ankles as well as their wrists because kids are often just as twitchy below the waist as above. (See the most common hospital mishaps.)

Wearing the actigraph, I sat before a computer in a small windowless room and took working-memory tests. For one test, I had to recite aloud a series of numbers that appeared on the screen. I was asked not only to remember the numbers but also to restate them in proper numerical order. So if I saw 4, then 3, then 1, then 8, I had to say, “One, three, four, eight.” Each series of numbers also included a random letter, which I had to state at the end: “One, three, four, eight, D.”

At first the test sounded simple, not least because I knew an 8-year-old could ostensibly complete it. But I found it quite difficult. Working-memory tests require intense concentration, and I was distracted because I was nervous. Rapport, several of his grad students, a UCF public relations official and a friend of mine were all watching me through an open doorway while I performed the tests. I ended up scoring worse than some of Rapport’s kids.

My experience of being nervous was instructive because it mimicked, in a way, the cognitive strain under which an ADHD kid takes such tests. ADHD compromises the brain’s executive functioning — its ability to master unexpected exercises. The same way I got nervous, ADHD kids get momentarily lost, their attention fractured for a few seconds. Think about when you’re reading and get to the end of a paragraph and realize you haven’t been paying attention: that’s what it’s like for ADHD kids, all the time. My actigraph scores confirmed that I wasn’t operating normally for a 38-year-old adult. Instead, during the experiment, I displayed the involuntary body movements of a typical 12-year-old boy. (See pictures of a diverse group of American teens.)

Rapport also conducted a control experiment with the boys in which they watched the pod-racing scene from Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace. He showed me a video of a couple of the boys watching the scene, and I was shocked: even the ADHD kids who had spun around endlessly during their cognitive tests sat perfectly still while they watched the pod race. The film clip required almost no working memory, no concentrated effort. The scene simply washed over the passively watching boys, none of whom had to move around to stay alert.

Which suggests a classroom technique for ADHD kids: Don’t overly tax their working memory. Rapport, who used to be a school psychologist, says the average teacher doesn’t understand how ADHD kids process information. “If you go into a typical classroom,” he told me, “you might hear, ‘Take out the book. Turn to page 23. Do items 1 through 8, but don’t do 5.’ And you’ve just given them four or five directions. The child with working-memory problems has dropped three of them, and so he’s like, ‘Page 23 — what I am supposed to do?’ ” Similarly, a parent might tell a kid, “Take my keys, go to the car, get your sister’s toy, and before you go, take the trash with you.” The ADHD kid will get to the car without remembering what else to do. Their instructions must be broken down carefully because their working memory is weak.

When I asked Rapport whether there’s a cure other than breaking down instructions, his answer was a bit depressing: no. ADHD is incurable. Drugs like Ritalin are a common answer for controlling the condition, which affects about 3% to 5% of children, but Rapport notes that they have proven to be only a limited solution. In the short term, they can facilitate a child’s ability to read — undoubtedly a crucial benefit — but Rapport says longitudinal studies have failed to show that Ritalin or other psychostimulants have consistent long-term behavioral effects. (Even if they did, another question would arise: Would you want to be dependent on a stimulant for the rest of your life?) Rapport hopes that his work will lead to the development of early behavioral and cognitive interventions that could help the youngest ADHD kids recognize, predict and somehow avoid ADHD’s concentration gaps.

Such research is in its infancy, though, and if you have a child with ADHD, it’s important to understand that he processes the world in a different way. He might be (literally) running circles around you, but that may be his way of paying attention.

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