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 THINGS THAT ARE INTERESTING IN THE FIELD OF PSYCHOSOMATIC MEDICINE AND THERAPY
21st August 2010 A thought about the moon and spin. Astronomers are telling us that the moon is shrinking. O.K., not by much, but the general imaginative feeling about the moon is of a cold object. Well, perhaps it may not be so, because all life is in a spin and even thing we consider dead are still spinning, in their atoms, which never die. So in order to stay in its orbit, continuous, predictable and fantastic, there has to be spin. The spin and heat gained by the moon, when it shot from a cooling earth all those billions of years ago, is still at work. Surely it has to be. Deep in its core, those spinning gases are undoubtedly at work. All this has to be pure conjecture - hypothesis - since we have no way as yet of getting inside the moon and seeing, any more than we can know for certain what is going on right under our feet, 3,000kms down. If these things have a chance to be correct, then relativity is not the important aspect of the universe, anymore than light is. It is time which is the basic structure of everything. Time decides and underwrites all things. and in terms of spin, t= [m x i] n where t = time; m = mass; i = initial spin velocity; and n = the uncertainty of everything. One other thought - it took billions of years of time for the moon to be given a name. __________________________________________________________________________ 6th August 2010 There are large numbers of people who believe that the future can be foretold by, for instance, psychics. All over the world, are people who offer to explain what the future holds. The most famous example, of course, Nostradamus. However, what's really important in all this, never mind the truth or otherwise of the telling; if it is true that the future can be "read", then one important feature emerges. The future must be organised down to the last detail. Unalterable. Fixed. This bit of philosophy is of great importance to a user of the Seehealth [tm] system!
28th July 2010 Announced today is the finding that mothers should breast feed their babies longer to avoid immune problems in later life. Babies breast fed for longer seem to be better at coping with life. BUT...... and it is a big but..... mothers who have the time, inclination and ability to breast-feed their babies are by the very nature of things, able to, because they themselves are free of the results of distress. Breast feeeding is intended by nature to be a slow, methodical, time-consuming pursuit. A mother unable to devote the time, energy or ability to breast-feeding is far more vulnerable to a feeling of guilt or failure as a result. So where do those feelings go?? Straight to the baby of course! Was this aspect of human life included as a part of that study? NOPE! So that is where Babycoaching™ comes in. It is why Babycoaching™ is so effective ! Just think about it. ____________________________________________________________
THE SPIN ON SPIN I am proposing an hypothesis concerning the interior structure of the earth, and its effects on gravity, electron function and atomic theory generally. I propose that the earth was formed, as was the sun, by spinning gases –hydrogen perhaps – being flung into space spinning. The metamorphosis of this mass of chemical into whatever consists in the earth today has to be conjecture. It is generally accepted that this event occurred 4.5 billion years ago. Suppose that the spinning goes on right now. Suppose that 4 billion years of spinning –gradually slowing – goes on under our feet all the way in to 4,000 miles of the earth’s structure. The spinning is immense. Hot layers of gas and/or metals, spinning at enormous speeds perhaps up to 300,000 kms per second at the centre and gradually slower in layers as the materials get cooler towards the surface. A vestigial speed still moving as from that first spin into space from the sun. The wave motion of these layers may vary in cycles. Cycles measured in nanoseconds or perhaps millions of years. The Gravity of this earth gets weaker the further one moves from the surface of the planet, until it becomes very weak at distance. The moon is a much smaller body, perhaps formed by the initial spin of those hot gases as the earth was formed and shot into space just as was the earth from the sun. Being smaller, and an offshoot of a much smaller ball of gas, it cooled more rapidly, and the slowness of its movement indicates its slower spin at its core. Yet we think that the moon exerts gravitational influence over the seas of the earth’s surface! How can this possibly be? It seems illogical if the gravitational effect of a planet diminishes the further away from its surface ones moves. But suppose that the movement of the seas is a function of the regular wave motion of the earth’s inner spin. In other words, we must look the other way for answers to gravity and electron spin – from inside. The assumptions we make about the structure of the earth’s innards, may have swayed thought and research in a completely erroneous direction. Certainly the spin will come to an halt at some time. My simple maths tell me that if my gyroscope, weighing a few grams, spinning at 3,000 rpm, affected by gravity itself, dies in 130 seconds, then the earth at 300,000 rpm and a much greater mass, may have a billion years to go before slowing to a stop and falling from orbit. Spin is in everything. Time and planetary motion. Another consideration. I have thought for years just how suspect is astrology. The proposal that the position of the planets at a birth, can affect the personality of a human, or growth of plants or movement of animals on the surface of the earth, seems ludicrous. Yet the grain of truth in the hypothesis of astrology is the curious repetition in personality types of people born at certain times, and under certain signs of the zodiac. Difficult to ignore. Equally difficult to overlook are the variations in plant and animal outcomes, "affected" by the planets or moon. Yet suppose that the position of the planets, spinning precisely in their orbits coincides with various wave-motion spin within the earth. Once again, perhaps there needs to be an inwards rather than outwards view. If the constituent chemicals forming the inner parts of our planet are heated to unimaginable and unrepeatable limits, and spin as from creation of the planet, continuing the planet’s trails around the sun, the influences must be equally enormous. It may well be the interfaces between these spinning "layers" of hot, heavy and fluidly spinning materials create the engine on which our planet relies for its very life. It may be that the pure energy created by that spin results in the force we call gravity since the obvious centrifugal force we see at the surface, countering gravity, may be reversed down there by the enormity of the energy itself. These forces emerging as gravity are repeated, are they not, in the electron movement of that original gas, hydrogen. These thoughts may not be new, viable or pointless; I cannot tell, since I am neither physicist nor chemist, astronomer, vulcanologist or geologist. But they have been unsettling my thoughts for many many years. Do what you will with them. I am just pleased to express them at last, so that I can get on with the important things in life. Brian Magrath
A Message from Dr Michael Yapko
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The term "stress" was first used by the endocrinologist Hans Selye in the 1930s to identify physiological responses in laboratory animals. He later broadened and popularized the concept to include the perceptions and responses of humans trying to adapt to the challenges of everyday life. In Selye's terminology, "stress" refers to the reaction of the organism, and "stressor" to the perceived threat.
Stress in certain circumstances may be experienced positively. Eustress, for example, can be an adaptive response prompting the activation of internal resources to meet challenges and achieve goals.
The term is commonly used by laypersons in a metaphorical rather than literal or biological sense, as a catch-all for any perceived difficulties in life. It also became a euphemism, a way of referring to problems and eliciting sympathy without being explicitly confessional, just "stressed out".
It covers a huge range of phenomena from mild irritation to the kind of severe problems that might result in a real breakdown of health. In popular usage almost any event or situation between these extremes could be described as stressful.
Signs of stress may be cognitive, emotional, physical or behavioral and include (but are not limited to) symptoms such as: poor judgment, a general negative outlook, excessive worrying, moodiness, irritability, agitation, inability to relax, feeling overwhelmed, feeling lonely or isolated, depressed, aches and pains, diarrhea or constipation, nausea, dizziness, chest pain, rapid heartbeat, eating too much or not enough, sleeping too much or not enough, withdrawing from others, procrastinating or neglecting responsibilities, using alcohol, cigarettes, or drugs to relax, and nervous habits (e.g. nail biting, pacing).
Hans Selye researched the effects of stress[3] on rats and other animals by exposing them to unpleasant or harmful stimuli. He found that all animals presented a very similar series of reactions, broken into three stages. In 1936, he described this universal response to the stressors as the general adaptation syndrome, or GAS.[4][5]
Alarm is the first stage. When the threat or stressor is identified or realized, the body's stress response is a state of alarm. During this stage adrenaline will be produced in order to bring about the fight-or-flight response. There is also some activation of the HPA axis, producing cortisol.
Resistance is the second stage. If the stressor persists, it becomes necessary to attempt some means of coping with the stress. Although the body begins to try to adapt to the strains or demands of the environment, the body cannot keep this up indefinitely, so its resources are gradually depleted.
Exhaustion is the third and final stage in the GAS model. At this point, all of the body's resources are eventually depleted and the body is unable to maintain normal function. At this point the initial autonomic nervous system symptoms may reappear (sweating, raised heart rate etc.). If stage three is extended, long term damage may result as the capacity of glands, especially the adrenal gland, and the immune system is exhausted and function is impaired resulting in decompensation.
The result can manifest itself in obvious illnesses such as ulcers, depression, diabetes, trouble with the digestive system or even cardiovascular problems, along with other mental illnesses.
Hans Selye published in 1975 a model dividing stress into eustress and distress.[6] Where stress enhances function (physical or mental, such as through strength training or challenging work) it may be considered eustress. Persistent stress that is not resolved through coping or adaptation, deemed distress, may lead to anxiety or withdrawal (depression) behavior.
The difference between experiences which result in eustress or distress is determined by the disparity between an experience (real or imagined), personal expectations, and resources to cope with the stress. Alarming experiences, either real or imagined, can trigger a stress response.[7]
Lazarus [8]argued that in order for a psychosocial situation to be stressful, it must be appraised as such. He argued that cognitive processes of appraisal are central in determining whether a situation is potentially threatening, constitutes a harm/loss, a challenge, or is benign.
This primary appraisal is influenced by both person and environmental factors, and triggers the selection of coping processes. Problem-focused coping is directed at managing the problem, while emotion-focused coping processes are directed at managing the negative emotions. Secondary appraisal refers to the evaluation of the resources available to cope with the problem, and may alter the primary appraisal.
In other words, primary appraisal also includes the perception of how stressful the problem is; realizing that one has more than or less than adequate resources to deal with the problem affects the appraisal of stressfulness. Further, coping is flexible in that the individual generally examines the effectiveness of the coping on the situation; if it is not having the desired effect, s/he will generally try different strategies. [9]
The neurochemistry of the stress response is now believed to be well understood, although much remains to be discovered about how the components of this system interact with one another, in the brain and throughout in the body. In response to a stressor, corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) and arginine-vasopressin (AVP) are secreted into the hypophyseal portal system and activate neurons of the paraventricular nuclei (PVN) of the hypothalamus.
The locus ceruleus and other noradrenergic cell groups of the adrenal medulla and pons, collectively known as the LC/NE system, also become active and use brain epinephrine to execute autonomic and neuroendocrine responses, serving as a global alarm system.[10]
The autonomic nervous system provides the rapid response to stress commonly known as the fight-or-flight response, engaging the sympathetic nervous system and withdrawing the parasympathetic nervous system, thereby enacting cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal, renal, and endocrine changes.[10] The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA), a major part of the neuroendocrine system involving the interactions of the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland, and the adrenal glands, is also activated by release of CRH and AVP.
This results in release of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) from the pituitary into the general bloodstream, which results in secretion of cortisol and other glucocorticoids from the adrenal cortex. These corticoids involve the whole body in the organism's response to stress and ultimately contribute to the termination of the response via inhibitory feedback.[10]
Stress can significantly affect many of the body's immune systems, as can an individual's perceptions of, and reactions to, stress. The term psychoneuroimmunology is used to describe the interactions between the mental state, nervous and immune systems, as well as research on the interconnections of these systems.
Chronic stress has also been shown to impair developmental growth in children by lowering the pituitary gland's production of growth hormone, as in children associated with a home environment involving serious marital discord, alcoholism, or child abuse.[11]
Both negative and positive stressors can lead to stress. Some common categories and examples of stressors include: sensory input such as pain, bright light, or environmental issues such as a lack of control over environmental circumstances, such as food, housing, health, freedom, or mobility.
Social issues can also cause stress, such as struggles with conspecific or difficult individuals and social defeat, or relationship conflict, deception, or break ups, and major events such as birth and deaths, marriage, and divorce.
Life experiences such as poverty, unemployment, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, heavy drinking [12], or insufficient sleep can also cause stress. Students and workers may face stress from exams, project deadlines, and group projects.
Adverse experiences during development (e.g. prenatal exposure to maternal stress,[13][14] poor attachment histories,[15] sexual abuse)[16] are thought to contribute to deficits in the maturity of an individual's stress response systems. One evaluation of the different stresses in people's lives is the Holmes and Rahe stress scale.
Responses to stress include adaptation, psychological coping such as stress management, anxiety, and depression. Over the long term, distress can lead to diminished health or illness; to avoid this, stress must be managed.
Stress management encompasses techniques intended to equip a person with effective coping mechanisms for dealing with psychological stress, with stress defined as a person's physiological response to an internal or external stimulus that triggers the fight-or-flight response. Stress management is effective when a person utilizes strategies to cope with or alter stressful situations.
There are several ways of coping with stress, such as controlling the source of stress or learning to set limits and to say "No" to some demands that bosses or family members may make.
| Look up stress in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
The term "stress" had none of its current general senses before the 1950s. As a semi-psychological term referring to hardship or coercion, it dated from the 14th century. It is a form of the Middle English destresse, derived via Old French from the Latin stringere – to draw tight.[17]
It had long been in use in physics to refer to the internal distribution of a force exerted on a material body, resulting in strain. In the 1920s and 1930s, the term was occasionally being used in psychological circles to refer to a mental strain or unwelcome happening, and by advocates of holistic medicine to refer to a harmful environmental agent that could cause illness. Walter Cannon used it in 1934 to refer to external factors that disrupted what he called "homeostasis".
A new scientific usage developed out of Hans Seyle's reports of his laboratory experiments in the 1930s. Selye started to use the term to refer not just to the agent but to the state of the organism as it responded and adapted to the environment. His theories of a universal non-specific stress response attracted great interest and contention in academic physiology and he undertook extensive research programmes and publication efforts.[18]
However, while the work attracted continued support from advocates of psychosomatic medicine, many in experimental physiology concluded that his concepts were too vague and unmeasurable. During the 1950s Selye turned away from the laboratory to promote his concept through popular books and lectures tours.
The US military became a key center of stress research, attempting to understand and reduce combat neurosis and psychiatric casualties. Seyle wrote for both non-academic physicians and, in an international bestseller titled "Stress of Life", for the general public.
A broad biopsychosocial concept of stress and adaptation offered the promise of helping everyone achieve health and happiness by successfully responding to changing global challenges and the problems of modern civilization. He coined the term "eustress" for positive stress, by contrast to distress.
He argued that all people have a natural urge and need to work for their own benefit, a message that found favor with industrialists and governments.[18] He also coined the term "stressor" to refer to the causative event or stimulus, as opposed to the resulting state of stress.
From the late 1960s, Selye's concept started to be taken up by academic psychologists, who sought to quantify "life stress" by scoring "significant life events", and a large amount of research was undertaken to examine links between stress and disease of all kinds. By the late 1970s stress had become the medical area of greatest concern to the general population, and more basic research was called for to better address the issue.
There was renewed laboratory research into the neuroendocrine, molecular and immunological bases of stress, conceived as a useful heuristic not necessarily tied to Selye's original hypotheses. By the 1990s, "stress" had become an integral part of modern scientific understanding in all areas of physiology and human functioning, and one of the great metaphors of Western life.[18] Focus grew on stress in certain settings, such as workplace stress. Stress management techniques were developed.
Its psychological uses are frequently metaphorical rather than literal, used as a catch-all for perceived difficulties in life. It also became a euphemism, a way of referring to problems and eliciting sympathy without being explicitly confessional, just "stressed out".
It covers a huge range of phenomena from mild irritation to the kind of severe problems that might result in a real breakdown of health. In popular usage almost any event or situation between these extremes could be described as stressful.[17]
The most extreme events and reactions may elicit the diagnosis of Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to one or more terrifying events that threatened or caused grave physical harm. PTSD is a severe and ongoing emotional reaction to an extreme psychological trauma; as such, it is often associated with soldiers, police officers, and other emergency personnel.
This stressor may involve viewing someone's actual death, a threat to the patient's or someone else's life, serious physical injury, or threat to physical or psychological integrity, overwhelming usual psychological defenses coping. In some cases it can also be from profound psychological and emotional trauma, apart from any actual physical harm. Often, however, the two are combined.
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The entry in Wikipedia about depression is interesting:
In the fields of psychology and psychiatry, the terms depression or depressed refer to sadness and other related emotions and behaviors. It can be thought of as either a disease or a syndrome.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) states that a depressed mood is often reported as feeling sad, helpless, and hopeless. In traditional colloquy, "depressed" is often synonymous with "sad," but both clinical depression and non-clinical depression can also refer to a conglomeration of more than one feeling.
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Biological influences of depression are varied, but may relate to malnutrition, heredity, hormones, seasons, stress, illness, drug or alcohol use, neurotransmitter malfunction, long-term exposure to dampness and mold[1], back injury, and to aerosol exposure.[2][3] There are also correlations between long term sleep difficulties and depression. Up to 90% of patients with depression are found to have sleep difficulties.[4]
While a depressed mood is usually referred to (and perceived) as negative, it can sometimes be subtly beneficial in helping a person adapt to circumstances. For example, physical illness, such as influenza, can lead to feelings of psychological malaise and depression that seem, at first, only to compound an already unpleasant situation.
However, the experience of depression, or feeling "down," often results in physical inertia, which leads to the compulsion to rest. The fleeting helplessness and immobility of the physically ill may also serve to elicit care from others."[5]
From an evolutionary standpoint, some argue that depression could be at least partially related to atavistic fears that were originally based on real dangers. Paul Keedwell, in his book, How Sadness Survived: The Evolutionary Basis of Depression, suggests that, because "social support and interdependence were important features of the [human] ancestral environment," "the [peer] group could have offered extra help to the depressed person until the condition resolved."
Further, "...a depressed person may change the attitudes of other people around him, making them more sympathetic to his needs and therefore giving him a long term [social or reproductive] advantage."[6]
Milder depression has been associated with what has been called depressive realism, or the "sadder-but-wiser" effect, a view of the world that is relatively undistorted by positive biases.[7]
Episodes of depressed mood are a core feature of the following psychological disorders, as specified by the DSM-IV:
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the iipm / the / iipm/ iipm/ iipm / iipm / iipmthe iipm the iipm the iipm the iipm the iipm the iipm iipm
Greetings. I couldn’t wait to let you know of this week’s (February 8) remarkable cover story of Newsweek magazine. The cover story is called, “Antidepressants Don’t Work.” The enclosed feature article is titled, “The Depressing News About Antidepressants,” and is written by Newsweek’s science editor, Sharon Begley. (It is not the cover story in international editions of the magazine, but is a feature article.)