Day: 04/12/2014

‘Breast Cancer-Causing Bras’: A Myth Or An Epidemic?

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Bras can be uncomfortable sometimes. There’s no doubt in denying that; but to what extent are they actually harmful to women’s health?

For example, some people believe that bras constrict blood flow as well as lymphatic fluid flow in breasts, which can lead to a number of health problems, including breast cancer. There are a number of articles online that claim bras cause breast cancer, but the accuracy of these so-called “studies” and medical anthropologists who decry the use of brassieres is rather unclear.

Most high-ranking medical institutions, like the American Cancer Society (ACS) and theSusan G. Komen Foundation, have dismissed the bra-cancer connection as a myth with little to no scientific backing whatsoever. Despite their dismissals, however, no one has stepped up to undertake a more in-depth empirical study investigating this claim — perhaps because they feel as though there’s no point in entertaining this notion at all. But that’s not stopping certain proponents from spreading their beliefs online.

Now, medical anthropologists Sydney Ross Singer and Soma Grismaijer are boycotting Komen and the ACS, declaring that covering up information about the ill effects of brassieres is causing thousands of deaths from breast cancer each year. The couple, who penned the book, Dressed To Kill: The Link Between Breast Cancer and Bras, believes that women who wear bras all the time are 125 times more likely to develop breast cancer than females who never wear bras, or rarely wear them. Women who wear bras only during the day, meanwhile, have a lesser chance of developing breast cancer, but not as small as those who go bra-less, these authors claim.

Grismaijer and Singer have completed research on the subject, published in theAmerican Naturopathic Medical Association (ANMA) journal. Naturopathy is a form of alternative medicine teetering on the edge of pseudoscience, often rejecting the use of modern surgery and drugs, so their claims should be taken with a grain of salt.

  

The Komen Foundation, meanwhile, has mentioned the bra connection on their page, “Factors That Do Not Increase Risk” of breast cancer. “Scientific evidence does not support a link between wearing an underwire bra (or any type of bra) and an increased risk of breast cancer,” Komen writes. “There is no biological reason the two would be linked, and any observed relationship is likely due to other factors.” Komen also lists abortion, miscarriage, exposure to pesticides and chemicals, breast implants, cell phones, deoderants, and other examples as things that don’t cause breast cancer despite claims that they do.

Brassieres

Indeed, the “biological reason” Grismaijer and Singer point out is lymph damage. But Dr. Ted Gansler, director of medical content for the American Cancer Society, told The New York Times that wearing a bra — which would only minimally affect lymph flow if at all — was not likely to be connected to breast cancer from lymph damage.

The study tossed around that either began or added fire to this question was a 1991 case-control study that discovered that premenopausal women who didn’t wear bras were less likely to develop breast cancer than those who did wear bras. However, the other factors that are often involved in determining breast cancer cause — such as weight — were not taken into account in this study. Likewise, the authors concluded that the fact that non-bra wearers were more likely to be lean could have played a role in their decreased risk. Some studies have shown that large breast size could be a risk factor in breast cancer. However, other studies have shown no association between breast size and increased risks.

Currently, the only thing that scientists can say with certainty is that certain gene mutations can significantly increase the risk for breast cancer. Environmental factors have been linked to breast cancer prevalence, as well as hormone levels, but they are still being researched preliminarily. If you want to take your bra off when you go to sleep, more power to you. But don’t expect that it will significantly decrease your risk for breast cancer — at least not until further evidence appears.

Oxytocin, Released In The Body During Hugging And Breastfeeding, Increases Dishonesty

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Oxytocin is thought to be released in the body during hugging, breastfeeding, sex, and even social bonding. Recent research investigating this hormone (that doubles as a neurotransmitter in the brain) highlights some surprising results. Two scientists have discovered that intranasal oxytocin given to healthy males increased their lying to benefit the financial interests of their group. Yet, strangely enough, the researchers discovered no increase in lying for purely selfish motives. “These findings highlight the role of bonding and cooperation in shaping dishonesty, providing insight into when and why collaboration turns into corruption,” wrote the authors in their new study published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Oxytocin, a hormone produced mainly in the hypothalamus, is released into the blood via the pituitary gland. Yet at other times it works as a neurotransmitter in parts of the brain, where it influences physiology and also behavior. The earliest research on oxytocincelebrated its effects on maternal behavior, lactation, and sexual pleasure. “We had a series of studies published in PNAS and Science showing that oxytocin makes people more caring about their own group,” Dr. Shaul Shavi of Ben-Gurion University and Dr. Carsten K. W. De Dreu of University of Amsterdam, told Medical Daily in an email. Yet more recent investigations have cast shadows on this hormone, showing how levels may increase during stressful conditions, including unhappy relationships and social isolation. Shavi and De Dreu decided to pursue other possible connections between oxytocin and behavior.

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“Shaul’s dissertation research revealed that people are more likely to cheat when justifications can be generated,” De Dreu told Medical Daily. “Lying for one’s group is a good justification and we thus hypothesized that oxytocin should increase group-serving dishonesty.” To investigate this theory, the authors designed an experiment where participants could lie privately and anonymously during a simple coin-toss prediction task. The researchers gave half of the 60 participants, all healthy males, intranasal oxytocin while the other half received a placebo. (During the test itself, neither researchers nor participants knew which participants had received the oxytocin.) By dishonestly reporting their individual performance on the coin-toss prediction task, participants understood they could benefit their group’s total outcome.

What did the researchers discover? They found that the participants who received oxytocin lied more to benefit their group, and did so faster, than did the participants who received only a placebo. Apparently, those lying did not do so because they expected reciprocal dishonesty from their fellow group members. “One core message from our work is that lying and dishonesty may often be motivated by concerns for others, fellow group members included,” the authors told Medical Daily. Interestingly, the oxytocin effects only emerged when lying had financial consequences and money could be gained. When losses alone were at stake, the participants, whether they had received a placebo or oxytocin, lied to similar degrees. Finally, the researchers discovered that when dishonesty benefited just the participants themselves and did not benefit their fellow group members, oxytocin had no influence on lying.

“This has implications for several economic theories on human decision making,” the authors said. Yet one question remained: If Oxytocin is stimulated during sex, does that mean love makes us bigger liars, especially when money is involved? “That would be an unwarranted stretch,” the authors told Medical Daily. “[We’re] unaware of studies showing that highly sexed people have higher levels of brain oxytocin. To be sure, oxytocin is much more than an ‘orgasm hormone.’”

Supplements, OTCs May Hurt Your Kidneys.

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How well are your kidneys working?

Unless you’ve had problems in the past, you probably take for granted that your kidneys are working as they should. But more than one in 10 adults in the United States has kidney disease, and most people who have it don’t know it.

Even more alarmingly, over-the-counter medicines, common prescriptions, and nutritional supplements can have serious effects on kidney function, especially if your kidneys aren’t completely healthy to begin with, says Robert Heyka, MD, Interim Chair of Cleveland Clinic’s Department of Nephrology & Hypertension.

Only your doctor can determine whether your kidneys are healthy. However, there are certain other health problems that make a person more likely to have kidney disease.

Man taking aspirin may be hurting his kidneys

Health conditions that require kidney screenings

If you have one of these health conditions, or if you or your family has a history of kidney problems, it’s important to have your kidneys checked once a year:

  • Diabetes
  • High blood pressure
  • Heart disease
  • Obesity
  • High cholesterol

But even if you don’t have any risk factors, a yearly check-up with lab and urine tests is the only way to get a clear picture of your kidney function, says Dr. Heyka.

The drugs and supplements that should cause concern

The following are drugs and supplements that can put added pressure on kidney function:

1. NSAIDS (Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs)

Taking NSAIDS can affect blood flow through the kidneys, and can cause damage, especially if you’re also taking diuretics (“water pills”) or ACE inhibitors.

NSAIDS include over-the-counter painkillers like aspirin (Ascriptin®, Bayer® and Ecotrin®), ibuprofen (Advil®, and Motrin®), and naproxen (Aleve®).

They also include prescription drugs like:

  • Naproxen sodium (Anaprox®)
  • Celecoxib (Celebrex®)
  • Sulindac (Clinoril®)
  • Oxaprozin (Daypro®)
  • Salsalate (Disalcid®)
  • Diflunisal (Dolobid®)
  • Piroxicam (Feldene®)
  • Indomethacin (Indocin®)
  • Etodolac (Lodine®)
  • Meloxicam (Mobic®)
  • Naproxen (Naprosyn®)
  • Nabumetone (Relafen®)
  • Ketorolac tromethamine (Toradol®)
  • Naproxen/esomeprazole (Vimovo®)
  • Diclofenac (Voltaren®)

 Use of these medications with caffeine can also further harm your kidneys.  Also, when taking these medications, be sure to check with your doctor if you have impaired kidney function.

 2. Antibiotics

Certain antibiotics are removed from the body through the kidneys, so taking them can put extra strain on your renal system. Penicillin, cephalosporins and sulfonamides in particular can be harmful to your kidneys.

Over time, long-term antibiotic use can injure your kidneys, even if you’re otherwise healthy. And for people whose kidneys aren’t functioning at 100 percent to begin with, antibiotics can build up in the body and cause damage.

Despite this, it’s important to keep in mind that antibiotics can be safely used if needed as long as the dose is adjusted for your body’s level of kidney function.

3. Dietary supplements

Certain herbs or nutritional supplements have been associated with kidney injury, even among healthy people. With such a wide variety of supplements available, the best way to get advice about a particular supplement is to ask your doctor to review all the ingredients to be sure it’s safe to use.

Dietary supplements aren’t regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. Their manufacturers don’t have to prove that they are safe to use, and ingredients can vary from one brand to the next.

A review published by researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in April, 2012, cites 17 dietary supplements that have been associated with direct kidney injury, though in a very limited numbers of cases.

Of note, researchers found that patients often do not tell their doctors about the dietary supplements they are taking, and this could put them at risk for injury and drug interactions.

If you already have diminished kidney function or are at risk for kidney disease, there’s a risk of serious injury if you take dietary supplements – including vitamin doses above the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA).

Are you at risk for kidney disease

Most people with kidney disease don’t have any symptoms until they’re very sick. So unless your doctor has tested your kidney function, you can’t know whether you’re safe using ibuprofen for sore muscles, for example.

A few simple tests will tell your doctor how well your kidneys are working. He or she will:

  • Check your blood pressure
  • Take a blood sample and test the levels of blood urea nitrogen (BUN) and creatinine, which are good indicators of how well your kidneys are filtering your blood
  • Take a urine sample to check for blood or protein in your urine

Even slightly higher than normal blood pressure or cholesterol increases your risk for kidney disease, stresses Dr. Heyka. So keep your blood pressure, cholesterol, and weight in check, along with your blood sugar if you are diabetic. And, as always, make sure you tell your doctor about every vitamin, herbal remedy, and nutritional supplement you take.

When a species can’t stand the heat .

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Earth’s warming threatens to tilt populations of an unusual reptile so dramatically that the species’ long-term survival could be put in peril. The change could leave the species, a survivor from the age of the dinosaurs, without enough females to avoid extinction.

The tuatara (TOO ah TAAR ah) is about the size of a squirrel. A crest of floppy white spikes runs down its back. Although it resembles a lizard, the grey-green species (Sphenodon punctatus) actually belongs to a separate and distinct reptile order. (An order is that place on the tree of life directly above species, genus and family).

There are four orders of reptiles. Three have many distinct species. Not so the Rhynchocephalia (RIN ko suh FAY lee uh). This order holds on with just a single member: the tuatara.

 

Tuatara are extremely long-lived. This female lives in captivity at the Victoria University of Wellington. She is thought to be roughly 125 years old — so old that her teeth have worn down and she has to eat soft foods only, like grubs.

CRISTY GELLING

 

That wasn’t always true. More than 200 million years ago, different rhynchocephalians could be found across much of the globe. Alas, most of these ancient reptiles died out around 60 million years ago, along with the last of the dinosaurs. Today, their descendants inhabit several dozen islands and fenced nature reserves, all in New Zealand.

And these animals are unique. For instance, unlike other reptiles, which have one row of teeth in its upper jaw, the tuatara have two parallel rows. As the animal chews, its bottom single row of teeth slots neatly in between the top two rows. The tuatara also have extra, rib-like bones, called gastralia (or “belly-ribs”).

Humans introduced rats and other mammals to New Zealand, in the South Pacific. For centuries, these animals have threatened the survival of the island nation’s unusual reptiles (see Explainer). Although tuatara have survived that catastrophe, they now face a new threat: too few females. One reason: With global warming, their island homes are becoming way too hot!

Temperature sensitive

For all of its oddities, in one important way the tuatara resemble many of their reptile cousins: Whether an individual hatches from its egg as a male or a female depends on the temperature at which that egg had incubated.

Mom doesn’t sit on her eggs. She just digs a nest in the ground and then leaves her eggs to develop. Cooler temperatures produce more girls; warmer temperatures, more boys. But with global warming, average temperatures across New Zealand have been increasing. And more male tuatara will hatch.

Adding to the problem, females don’t seem to do well when males greatly outnumber them. Already on at least one island, the local population of tuatara risks dying out. There, guys outnumber gals by more than 2-to-1, according to a study published April 8 in the scientific journal PLOS ONE.

For a long time, scientists didn’t realize the impact that temperatures can have on these reptiles. Then, in 1992, Alison Cree discovered something odd. Cree is a zoologist at New Zealand’s University of Otago. She and her students needed to know the sex of some tuatara that had been born in captivity. And that required surgery.

Outwardly, young tuatara males look just like females. To tell them apart, scientists must cut a tiny slit through the animal’s skin. Only then can experts peer inside to see whether the reptile has ovaries or testes. A female’s ovaries make eggs. A male’s testes produce the sperm needed to fertilize those eggs.

 

All of the eggs deposited by a mom into one nest are a clutch. And Cree noticed that one clutch of seven tuatara from a New Zealand zoo were all boys. That made her suspicious.

She knew scientists had incubated the eggs in a cupboard that sometimes got warm. Could the all-male clutch reflect the influence of temperature? That certainly happens in some other reptiles, including crocodiles, alligators and most turtles. Yet extra warmth wouldn’t necessarily mean more males. In many of those species, eggs incubated at the highest temperatures produce mostly females.

 

A tuatara egg being incubated in a laboratory. The temperature at which the reptile’s eggs incubate determines a tuatara’s sex. Cooler temperatures produce more females; warmer temperatures, more males. The reptile’s sensitivity to small shifts in temperature leaves it especially vulnerable to global warming.

ALISON CREE, UNIVERSITY OF OTAGO

So Cree’s team incubated tuatara eggs at different temperatures. And these experts confirmed that eggs kept at warmer temperatures hatched more males.

This is completely different from the way sex is decided in mammals, including people. In them, chromosomes determine a baby’s sex. A human embryo always inherits an X-chromosome from its mother. Its dad — as all men — have an X- and a Y-chromosome. If the baby inherits an X-chromosome from dad, she will be a girl. If the baby instead gets one of dad’s Y-chromosomes, he will be a boy.

But tuatara don’t have X- or Y-chromosomes. When a tuatara mother first lays a fertilized egg, the embryo inside is neither male nor female. In this species, temperature tends to determine how many hatchlings emerge as guys or gals. And just a small difference in nest temperature can make a difference. For example, 95 percent of eggs kept at a constant temperature of 21.2°Celsius (70.2°Fahrenheit) will develop into females. The ratio flips for eggs incubated a little more than one degree warmer — at 22.3 °C (72.1 °F). Now, 95 percent emerge as males.

That sensitivity to such minor swings in temperature has set off alarms among scientists working to ensure the tuatara’s survival. They know that climate scientists have calculated that temperatures in New Zealand could rise by as much as 4 °C (7.2 °F) by 2080. According to the new PLOS ONE study, on at least one island where the reptiles now live — North Brother Island — such a large temperature increase would mean no more female tuatara. And, eventually, that would result in no more tuatara. Period.

Around 70 percent of the tuatara living on New Zealand’s tiny, uninhabited North Brother Island are males. Part of this imbalance might be caused by climate change. However, female tuatara also fare poorly when outnumbered by males.

ANDREW MCMILLAN/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Bad times on North Brother

This wind-battered island is a mere 4 hectares (roughly 10 acres) in size. It’s home to an old lighthouse and several hundred tuatara. And here, roughly seven out of every 10 of the reptiles are males.

Nicola Mitchell is a biologist at the University of Western Australia and co-author of the new study. She and her colleagues now estimate that at today’s temperatures, 56 percent of tuatara eggs on North Brother Island should become males. That’s far fewer than the real number. So Mitchell suspects the tiny island’s shortage of females must be due to more than just climate change. Something else must be helping tilt the ratio in favor of males.

And it may be the males’ behavior.

Her team has noticed that tuatara on North Brother have been getting skinnier over the past few decades. But females have slimming faster than males. One reason could be that males chase and harass females they try to get to mate with them. (With few females, each gal may find herself getting far more attention than she wants.) The males also are generally larger and more aggressive than the females. So the guys may be better than females at staking a claim to prime territory and food.

The end result is that the North Brother females have become slow to reproduce. Healthy females normally lay eggs every two to five years. But North Brother’s gals only lay eggs once every nine years or so. Observes Mitchell, “We’ve got higher mortality in females and lower reproductive rates.” Project this trend out into the future and within 150 years “there would only be males,” she says.

Indeed, all signs suggest the North Brother population is slowly collapsing. “You can see this spiraling pattern and it’s all heading in the wrong direction,” says Nicola Nelson. Another member of the tuatara research team, she works at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

 

Tuatara only live on certain islands off the coast of New Zealand (green). Some have also been moved to fenced nature reserves on the mainland (purple), including Orokonui Ecosanctuary. There, the climate is cooler than on North Brother Island, home to a natural population of the reptiles.

C. GELLING

Nelson says that it’s possible the island is just too small and barren for tuatara to survive there forever. Maybe its colony is destined to die out. But many other tuatara populations also live on tiny islands. By monitoring the struggling group on North Brother, researchers are now learning what can happen when males start to greatly outnumber females.

Seeking shade

One question that scientists still haven’t answered is whether tuatara mothers could change their behavior to match a new climate. After all, they’ve survived other swings in temperature over the species’ long history. It is certainly possible the reptiles could shift where they lay their eggs or when. That would help them to avoid soil that is too warm.

This seems to be true for at least some other reptiles that have their sex set by egg temperature. Among them is the painted turtle, notes Jeanine Refsnider. She is an ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley.

Painted turtles are a common sight in rivers and lakes across the United States. Among these colorful creatures, more females hatch when temperatures are higher. However, they sometimes adjust to change, Refsnider notes.

“Normally they nest out in sunny, open habitats,” she says. “I found that if you expose turtles to warmer temperatures than they are used to, they choose shadier spots to nest.”

But shade is not always available. One group she studied lived in the desert. For those turtles, there just weren’t any shade in which to nest.

Such a limit could endanger other reptiles living in small areas where there is little choice about where to lay eggs, Refsnider says. After all, she notes, “Reptiles don’t migrate like birds.”

 

Painted turtles also have their sex set by egg incubation temperature. Unlike with tuatara, in this species it is females that develop when it gets warm.

JEANINE REFSNIDER, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

Other reptiles indeed could end up with either too many males or too many females in a warming world, points out Fredric Janzen. He is an ecologist at Iowa State University in Ames. While unfortunate, he notes, such changes could warn of potential threats facing other species.

The reptiles “may serve as the ‘canaries in the coal mine’ for all species with key parts of their biology affected by temperature,” says Janzen. Coal miners used to take caged canaries into the mines. When levels of toxic gases began to rise, the birds would have trouble breathing — or die. This would signal to the miners that they must flee to safety or risk a similar fate. Today, scientists liken many environmental warning signs to those old mine canaries.

Moving south

The tuatara could migrate to cooler climes — but only with help from people.

Part of New Zealand’s long-term plan for looking after tuatara is to return them to places they lived before humans arrived. Old tuatara bones have been found up and down the two larger islands that make up New Zealand’s mainland, from the warm tip of the North Island right down to the cool far end of the South Island.

Right now, tuatara live mostly on small islands off of the North Island. Cree says that moving some tuatara back into different types of habitat, including cooler areas, should ensure the species can survive.

With that in mind, scientists released 87 tuatara into the South Island’s Orokonui Ecosanctuary in early 2012. More than 8 kilometers (5 miles) of steel fence surrounds the sanctuary. The high fence keeps out any mammals that might view the reptiles as lunch. Temperatures too are milder there — around 3 °C (5.4 °F) cooler on average than on the islands where tuatara now live.

 

A male tuatara being released at New Zealand’s Orokonui Ecosanctuary. There, the climate is cooler than on North Brother Island, home to a natural tuatara population. The cooler temperatures should lead to the hatching of more females.

SCOTT JARVIE, UNIVERSITY OF OTAGO

In fact, many potential nesting sites at Orokonui appear too cool to produce boys. Still, climate scientists predict that before the end of the century, even Orokonui will be as warm as Stephens Island, where tuatara now flourish. “That’s within the lifespan of a tuatara,” Cree says. These reptiles can live for at least 80 years and likely more than 100 years.

So moving tuatara into lots of new habitats is like an insurance policy. “We were down to 32 populations,” says Nelson. “now we’re up to 45 populations of tuatara in lots of different locations. We’ve certainly got our eggs in more baskets.”

That’s a good thing, since the tuatara face other future challenges as well. Drought likely will increase in some areas of its range. That can destroy eggs and kill hatchlings. And sea level rise will shrink the island territory available for this reptile to inhabit. “It’s climate that’s changing, not just temperature,” explains Cree.

For now, wherever tuatara live under protection, the reptiles are thriving. Scientists already have found two tuatara nests at Orokonui. Their eggs should hatch this year. Those babies will be relatively safe in their sanctuary, but likely see many changes over the course of their very long lives.

Power Words

behavior  The way a person or animal acts towards others, or conducts itself.

chromosome  A single threadlike piece of coiled DNA found in a cell’s nucleus. A chromosome is generally X-shaped in animals and plants. Some segments of DNA in a chromosome are genes. Other segments of DNA in a chromosome are landing pads for proteins. The function of other segments of DNA in chromosomes is still not fully understood by scientists.

clutch    (in biology) The eggs in a nest or the hatchlings from that collective group of eggs.

ecology  A branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings. A scientist who works in this field is called an ecologist.

embryo  A vertebrate, or animal with a backbone, in its early stages of development.

gastralia Bones nicknamed “belly ribs” that are only found in tuatara, crocodiles and alligators. They support the abdomen but are not attached to the spine.

hatchling    A young animal that recently emerged from its egg.

mammal  A warm-blooded animal distinguished by the possession of hair or fur, the secretion of milk by females for feeding the young, and (typically) the bearing of live young.

New Zealand    An island nation in the southwest Pacific Ocean, roughly 1,500 kilometers (some 900 miles) east of Australia. Its “mainland” — consisting of a North and South Island — is quite volcanically active. In addition, the country includes many far smaller offshore islands.

order    (in biology) It is that place on the tree of life directly above species, genus and family.

reptile  Cold-blooded vertebrate animals, whose skin is covered with scales or horny plates. Snakes, turtles, lizards and alligators are all reptiles.

sperm  In animals, the male reproductive cell that can fuse with an egg of its species to create a new organism.

testis   (plural: testes) The organ in the males of many species that makes sperm, the reproductive cells that fertilize eggs. This organ also is the primary site that makes testosterone, the primary male sex hormone.

tuatara    A reptile native to New Zealand. The tuatara are the sole remaining species of one of the four orders of reptiles.

Word Find (click here to enlarge for printing)

Further Reading

B. Nelson. “Lessons from a lonely tortoise.” Science News for Students. Aug. 27, 2007.

J. Raloff. “Climate threatens living fossil.” Science News blog. July 3, 2008.

E. Sohn. “Chicken of the sea.” Science News for Students. June 8, 2007.

K. Ramsayer. “Polly shouldn’t get a cracker.” Science News for Students.  Jan. 20, 2006.

Learn more about the tuatara on this website from New Zealand’s Department of Conservation.

See tuatara up close in this video from the National Aquarium of New Zealand.

How does temperature determine sex in some species? Experts from England’s University of Cambridge have answers.

Teachers’ questions: When a species can’t the stand the heat

Isaac Asimov on the Thrill of Lifelong Learning, Science vs. Religion, and the Role of Science Fiction in Advancing Society | Brain Pickings

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“It’s insulting to imply that only a system of rewards and punishments can keep you a decent human being.”

Isaac Asimov was an extraordinary mind and spirit — the author of more than 400 science and science fiction books and a tirelessadvocate of space exploration, he also took great joy in the humanities (and onceannotated Lord Byron’s epic poem “Don Juan”), championed humanism over religion, and celebrated the human spirit itself (he evenwrote young Carl Sagan fan mail). Like many of the best science fiction writers, he was asexceptional at predicting the future as he was at illuminating some of the most timeless predicaments of the human condition. In a 1988 interview with Bill Moyers, found in Bill Moyers: A World of Ideas (public library) — the same remarkable tome that gave us philosopher Martha Nussbaum on how to live with our human fragility — Asimov explores several subjects that still stir enormous cultural concern and friction. With his characteristic eloquence and sensitivity to the various dimensions of these issues, he presages computer-powered lifelong learning and online education decades before it existed, weighs the question of how authors will make a living in a world of free information, bemoans the extant attempts of religious fundamentalism to drown out science and rational thought, and considers the role of science fiction as a beacon of the future.

The conversation begins with a discussion of Asimov’s passionate belief that when given the right tools, we can accomplish far more than what we can with the typical offerings of formal education:

MOYERS: Do you think we can educate ourselves, that any one of us, at any time, can be educated in any subject that strikes our fancy?

ASIMOV: The key words here are “that strikes our fancy.” There are some things that simply don’t strike my fancy, and I doubt that I can force myself to be educated in them. On the other hand, when there’s a subject I’m ferociously interested in, then it is easy for me to learn about it. I take it in gladly and cheerfully…

[What’s exciting is] the actual process of broadening yourself, of knowing there’s now a little extra facet of the universe you know about and can think about and can understand. It seems to me that when it’s time to die, there would be a certain pleasure in thinking that you had utilized your life well, learned as much as you could, gathered in as much as possible of the universe, and enjoyed it. There’s only this one universe and only this one lifetime to try to grasp it. And while it is inconceivable that anyone can grasp more than a tiny portion of it, at least you can do that much. What a tragedy just to pass through and get nothing out of it.

MOYERS: When I learn something new — and it happens every day — I feel a little more at home in this universe, a little more comfortable in the nest. I’m afraid that by the time I begin to feel really at home, it’ll all be over.

ASIMOV: I used to worry about that. I said, “I’m gradually managing to cram more and more things into my mind. I’ve got this beautiful mind, and it’s going to die, and it’ll all be gone.” And then I thought, “No, not in my case. Every idea I’ve ever had I’ve written down, and it’s all there on paper. I won’t be gone. It’ll be there.

Page from ‘Charley Harper: An Illustrated Life’

Asimov then considers how computers would usher in this profound change in learning and paints the outline of a concept that Clay Shirky would detail and term “cognitive surplus” two decades later:

MOYERS: Is it possible that this passion for learning can be spread to ordinary folks out there? Can we have a revolution in learning?

ASIMOV: Yes, I think not only that we can but that we must. As computers take over more and more of the work that human beings shouldn’t be doing in the first place — because it doesn’t utilize their brains, it stifles and bores them to death — there’s going to be nothing left for human beings to do but the more creative types of endeavor. The only way we can indulge in the more creative types of endeavor is to have brains that aim at that from the start.

You can’t take a human being and put him to work at a job that underuses the brain and keep him working at it for decades and decades, and then say, “Well, that job isn’t there, go do something more creative.” You have beaten the creativity out of him. But if from the start children are educated into appreciating their own creativity, then probably almost all of us can be creative. In the olden days, very few people could read and write. Literacy was a very novel sort of thing, and it was felt that most people just didn’t have it in them. But with mass education, it turned out that most people could be taught to read and write. In the same way, once we have computer outlets in every home, each of them hooked up to enormous libraries, where you can ask any question and be given answers, you can look up something you’re interested in knowing, however silly it might seem to someone else.

Asimov goes on to point out the flawed industrial model of education — something Sir Ken Robinson would lament articulately two decades later — and tells Moyers:

Today, what people call learning is forced on you. Everyone is forced to learn the same thing on the same day at the same speed in class. But everyone is different. For some, class goes too fast, for some too slow, for some in the wring direction. But give everyone a chance, in addition to school, to follow up their own bent from the start, to find out about whatever they’re interested in by looking it up in their own homes, at their own speed, in their own time, and everyone will enjoy learning.

Later, in agreeing with Moyers that this revolution in learning isn’t merely for the young, Asimov adds:

That’s another trouble with education as we now have it. People think of education as something that they can finish. And what’s more, when they finish, it’s a rite of passage. You’re finished with school. You’re no more a child, and therefore anything that reminds you of school — reading books, having ideas, asking questions — that’s kid’s stuff. Now your’e an adult, you don’t do that sort of thing anymore…

Every kid knows the only reason he’s in school is because he’s a kid and little and weak, and if he manages to get out early, if he drops out, why he’s just a premature man.

Embroidered map of the infant Internet in 1983 by Debbie Millman

Speaking at a time when the Internet as we know it today was still an infant, and two decades before the golden age of online education, Asimov offers a remarkably prescient vision for how computer-powered public access to information would spark the very movement of lifelong learning that we’ve witnessed in the past decade:

You have everybody looking forward to no longer learning, and you make them ashamed afterward of going back to learning. If you have a system of education using computers, then anyone, any age, can learn by himself, can continue to be interested. If you enjoy learning, there’s no reason why you should stop at a given age. People don’t stop things they enjoy doing just because they reach a certain age. They don’t stop playing tennis just because they’ve turned forty. They don’t stop with sex just because they’ve turned forty. They keep it up as long as they can if they enjoy it, and learning will be the same thing. The trouble with learning is that most people don’t enjoy it because of the circumstances. Make it possible for them to enjoy learning, and they’ll keep it up.

When Moyers asks him to describe what such a teaching machine would look like — again, in 1988, when personal computers had only just begun to appear in homes — Asimov envisions a kind of Siri-like artificial intelligence, combined with the functionality of a discovery engine:

I suppose that one essential thing would be a screen on which you could display things… And you’ll have to have a keyboard on which you ask your questions, although ideally I could like to see one that could be activated by voice. You could actually talk to it, and perhaps it could talk to you too, and say, “I have something here that may interest you. Would you like to have me print it out for you?” And you’d say, “Well, what is it exactly?” And it would tell you, and you might say, “Oh all right, I’ll take a look at it.”

But one of his most prescient remarks actually has to do not with the mechanics of freely available information but with the ethics and economics of it. Long before our present conundrum of how to make online publishing both in the public interest and financially sustainable for publishers, Asimov shares with Moyers the all too familiar question he has been asking himself — “How do you arrange to pay the author for the use of the material?” — and addresses it with equal parts realism and idealism:

After all, if a person writes something, and this then becomes available to everybody, you deprive him of the economic reason for writing. A person like myself, if he was assured of a livelihood, might write anyway, just because he enjoyed it, but most people would want to do it in return for something. I imagine how they must have felt when free libraries were first instituted. “What? My book in a free library? Anyone can come in and read it for free?” Then you realize that there are some books that wouldn’t be sold at all if you didn’t have libraries.

(A century earlier, Schopenhauer had issued a much sterner admonition against the cultural malady of writing solely for material rewards.)

Painting of hell by William Blake from John Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ (click image for more)

Asimov then moves on to the subject of science vs. religion — something he would come to address with marvelous eloquence in his memoir — and shares his concern about how mysticism and fundamentalism undercut society:

I’d like to think that people who are given a chance to learn facts and broaden their knowledge of the universe wouldn’t seek so avidly after mysticism.

[…]

It isn’t right to sell a person phony stock, and take money for it, and this is what mystics are doing. They’re selling people phony knowledge and taking money for it. Even if people feel good about it, I can well imagine that a person who really believes in astrology is going to have a feeling of security because he knows that this is a bad day, so he’ll stay at home, just as a guy who’s got phony stock may look at it and feel rich. But he still has phony stock, and the person who buys mysticism still has phony knowledge.

He offers a counterpoint and considers what real knowledge is, adding tohistory’s best definitions of science:

Science doesn’t purvey absolute truth. Science is a mechanism, a way of trying to improve your knowledge of nature. It’s a system for testing your thoughts against the universe and seeing whether they match. This works not just for the ordinary aspects of science, but for all of life.

Asimov goes on to bemoan the cultural complacency that has led to the decline of science in mainstream culture — a decline we feel even today more sharply than ever when, say, a creationist politician tries to stop a little girl’s campaign for a state fossil because such an effort would “endorse” evolution. Noting that “we are living in a business society” where fewer and fewer students take math and science, Asimov laments how we’ve lost sight of the fact that science is driven by not-knowing rather than certitude:

MOYERS: You wrote a few years ago that the decline in America’s world power is in part brought about by our diminishing status as a world science leader. Why have we neglected science?

ASIMOV: Partly because of success. The most damaging statement that the United States has ever been subjected to is the phrase “Yankee know-how.” You get the feeling somehow that Americans — just by the fact that they’re American — are somehow smarter and more ingenious than other people, which really is not so. Actually, the phrase was first used in connection with the atomic bomb, which was invented and brought to fruition by a bunch of European refugees. That’s “Yankee know-how.”

MOYERS: There’s long been a bias in this country against science. When Benjamin Franklin was experimenting with the lightning rod, a lot of good folk said, “You don’t need a lightning rod. If you want to prevent lightning from striking, you just have to pray about it.”

ASIMOV: The bias against science is part of being a pioneer society. You somehow feel the city life is decadent. American history is full of fables of the noble virtuous farmer and the vicious city slicker. The city slicker is an automatic villain. Unfortunately, such stereotypes can do damage. A noble ignoramus is not necessarily what the country needs.

(What might Asimov, who in 1980 voiced fears that the fundamentalists coming into power with President Reagan would turn the country even more against science by demanding that biblical creationism be given an equal footing with evolution in the classroom, if he knew that a contemporary television station can edit out Neil deGrasse Tyson’s mention of evolution?)

‘The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden’ by William Blake from John Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ (click image for more)

But when Moyers asks the writer whether he considers himself an enemy of religion, Asimov answers in the negative and offers this beautifully thoughtful elaboration on the difference between the blind faith of religion and the critical thinking at the heart of science:

My objection to fundamentalism is not that they are fundamentalists but that essentially they want me to be a fundamentalist, too. Now, they may say that I believe evolution is true and I want everyone to believe that evolution is true. But I don’t want everyone to believe that evolution is true, I want them to study what we say about evolution and to decide for themselves. Fundamentalists say they want to treat creationism on an equal basis. But they can’t. It’s not a science. You can teach creationism in churches and in courses on religion. They would be horrified if I were to suggest that in churches they should teach secular humanism as nan alternate way of looking at the universe or evolution as an alternate way of considering how life may have started. In the church they teach only what they believe, and rightly so, I suppose. But on the other hand, in schools, in science courses, we’ve got to teach what scientists think is the way the universe works.

He extols the “thoroughly conscious ignorance” at the heart of science as a much safer foundation of reality than dogma:

That is really the glory of science — that science is tentative, that it is not certain, that it is subject to change. What is really disgraceful is to have a set of beliefs that you think is absolute and has been so from the start and can’t change, where you simply won’t listen to evidence. You say, “If the evidence agrees with me, it’s not necessary, and if it doesn’t agree with me, it’s false.” This is the legendary remark of Omar when they captured Alexandria and asked him what to do with the library. He said, “If the books agree with the Koran, they are not necessary and may be burned. If they disagree with the Koran, they are pernicious and must be burned.” Well, there are still these Omar-like thinkers who think all of knowledge will fit into one book called the Bible, and who refuse to allow it is possible ever to conceive of an error there. To my way of thinking, that is much more dangerous than a system of knowledge that is tentative and uncertain.

Riffing off the famous and rather ominous Dostoevsky line that “if God is dead, everything is permitted,” Asimov revisits the notion of intrinsic vs. extrinsic rewards — similarly to his earlier remark that good writing is motivated by intrinsic motives rather than external incentives, he argues that good-personhood can’t be steered by dogma but by one’s own conscience:

It’s insulting to imply that only a system of rewards and punishments can keep you a decent human being. Isn’t it conceivable a person wants to be a decent human being because that way he feels better?

I don’t believe that I’m ever going to heaven or hell. I think that when I die, there will be nothingness. That’s what I firmly believe. That’s not to mean that I have the impulse to go out and rob and steal and rape and everything else because I don’t fear punishment. For one thing, I fear worldly punishment. And for a second thing, I fear the punishment of my own conscience. I have a conscience. It doesn’t depend on religion. And I think that’s so with other people, too.

‘The Rout of the Rebel Angels’ by William Blake from John Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ (click image for more)

He goes on to extend this conscience-driven behavior to the domain of science, which he argues is strongly motivated by morality and a generosity of spirit uncommon in most other disciplines, where ego consumes goodwill. (Mark Twain memorably argued that no domain was more susceptible to human egotism than religion.) Asimov offers a heartening example:

I think it’s amazing how many saints there have been among scientists. I’ll give you an example. In 1900, De Vries studied mutations. He found a patch of evening primrose of different types, and he studied how they inherited their characteristics. He worked out the laws of genetics. Two other guys worked out the laws of genetics at the same time, a guy called Karl Correns, who was a German, and Erich Tschermak von Seysenegg, who was an Austrian. All three worked out the laws of genetics in 1900, and having done so, all three looked through the literature, just to see what has been done before. All three discovered that in the 1860s Gregor Mendel had worked out the laws of genetics, and people hadn’t paid any attention then. All three reported their findings as confirmation of what Mendel had found. Not one of the three attempted to say that it was original with him. And you know what it meant. It meant that two of them, Correns and Tschermak von Seyenegg, lived in obscurity. De Vries is known only because he was also the first to work out the theory of mutations. But as far as discovering genetics is concerned, Mendel gets all the credit. They knew at the time that this would happen. That’s the sort of thing you just don’t find outside of science.

Moyers, in his typical perceptive fashion, then asks Asimov why, given how much the truth of science excites him, he is best-known for writing science fiction, and Asimov responds with equal insight and outlines the difference, both cultural and creative, between fiction in general and science fiction:

In serious fiction, fiction where the writer feels he’s accomplishing something besides simply amusing people — although there’s nothing wrong with simply amusing people — the writer is holding up a mirror to the human species, making it possible for you to understand people better because you’ve read the novel or story, and maybe making it possible for you to understand yourself better. That’s an important thing.

Now science fiction uses a different method. It works up an artificial society, one which doesn’t exist, or one that may possibly exist in the future, but not necessarily. And it portrays events against the background of this society in the hope that you will be able to see yourself in relation to the present society… That’s why I write science fiction — because it’s a way of writing fiction in a style that enables me to make points I can’t make otherwise.

Painting by Rowena Morrill

But perhaps the greatest benefit of science fiction, Moyers intimates and Asimov agrees, is its capacity to warm people up to changes that are inevitable but that seem inconceivable at the present time — after all, science fiction writers do have a remarkable record of getting the future right. Asimov continues:

Society is always changing, but the rate of change has been accelerating all through history for a variety of reasons. One, the change is cumulative. The very changes you make now make it easier to make further changes. Until the Industrial Revolution came along, people weren’t aware of change or a future. They assumed the future would be exactly like it had always been, just with different people… It was only with the coming of the Industrial Revolution that the rate of change became fast enough to be visible in a single lifetime. People were suddenly aware that not only were things changing, but that they would continue to change after they died. That was when science fiction came into being as opposed to fantasy and adventure tales. Because people knew that they would die before they could see the changes that would happen in the next century, they thought it would be nice to imagine what they might be.

As time goes on and the rate of change still continues to accelerate, it becomes more and more important to adjust what you do today to the fact of change in the future. It’s ridiculous to make your plans now on the assumption that things will continue as they are now. You have to assume that if something you’re doing is going to reach fruition in ten years, that in those ten years changes will take place, and perhaps what you’re doing will have no meaning then… Science fiction is important because it fights the natural notion that there’s something permanent about things the way they are right now.

Painting by William Blake from Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’ (click image for more)

Given that accepting impermanence doesn’t come easily to us, that stubborn resistance to progress and the inevitability of change is perhaps also what Asimov sees in the religious fundamentalism he condemns — dogma, after all, is based on the premise that truth is absolute and permanent, never mind that the cultural context is always changing. Though he doesn’t draw the link directly, in another part of the interview he revisits the problem with fundamentalism with words that illuminate the stark contrast between the cultural role of religion and that of science fiction:

Fundamentalists take a statement that made sense at the time it was made, and because they refuse to consider that the statement may not be an absolute, eternal truth, they continue following it under conditions where to do so is deadly.

Indeed, Asimov ends the conversation on a related note as he considers what it would take to transcend the intolerance that such fundamentalism breeds:

MOYERS: You’ve lived through much of this century. Have you ever known human beings to think with the perspective you’re calling on them to think with now?

ASIMOV: It’s perhaps not important that every human being think so. But how about the leaders and opinion-makers thinking so? Ordinary people might follow them. It would help if we didn’t have leaders who were thinking in exactly the opposite way, if we didn’t have people who were shouting hatred and suspicion of foreigners, if we didn’t have people who were shouting that it’s more important to be unfriendly than to be friendly, if we didn’t have people shouting that the people inside the country who don’t look exactly the way the rest of us look have something wrong with them. It’s almost not necessary for us to do good; it’s only necessary for us to stop doing evil, for goodness’ sake.

How the navy will turn seawater into fuel.

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The radio-controlled model of a P-51 Mustang red-tail is just a couple feet long and draws its power from a simple two-stroke engine. Yet this small replica of a legendary World War II fighter could prove something big — that it’s possible to power enormous modern naval vessels using the seawater that’s all around them, a potential breakthrough for the U.S. Navy.

World War II P-51 Mustang red-tail aircraft .jpg

Burning petroleum is a big problem for the Pentagon. It’s expensive: Destroyers use a thousand gallons an hour. And because ships burn through so much, they must make frequent pit stops for fuel, either at port or in a rendezvous with a tanker. That’s why the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) has spent years researching the possibility of extracting liquid hydrocarbon from seawater to power its ships.
In addition to H20 and salt, ocean water is rich in carbon dioxide. (Make that very rich: Navy scientists say the CO2 concentration is 140 times that of air.) So the Navy built a large system including a catalytic converter that extracts hydrogen and carbon dioxide from the water with 92 percent efficiency and then — via a reaction with a metal catalyst — transforms those gases into a liquid hydrocarbon fuel that the ship’s existing engines can burn. In a proof-of-concept test held last week, naval researchers made enough of the stuff to fly the model plane with its small off-the-shelf engine.
With the test flight a success, the Navy now must prove it can produce sea-based fuels in mass quantity. Researchers will start by setting up test production facilities on land. Eventually, the goal is to turn the catalytic converter into something no larger than a car that can live aboard a ship and supply its fuel by processing seawater.
Within a decade, the Navy says, it will be able to make hydrocarbon fuel from the ocean at a cost of $3 to $6 per gallon, and that’s about the range they need to be in. The Navy currently spends $3.50 to $4 per gallon.
“NRL has developed a game-changing technology for extracting, simultaneously, CO2 and H2 from seawater,” NRL’s Heather Willauer says. “This is the first time technology of this nature has been demonstrated with the potential for transition, from the laboratory, to full-scale commercial implementation.”

Scientists Use Solar Power To Make More Solar Panels.

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Solar power could soon be used directly in the manufacturing of new solar cells, making production of a key chemical require zero energy.

“This approach should work and is very environmentally conscious,” Chih-Hung Chang, Oregon State University chemical engineering professor and lead author on the study, told The Daily Fusion. The study, published in the journal Royal Society of Chemistry Advances, found that the sun could be used to create copper indium diselenide ink, a promising solar material. Its efficiency at converting solar energy is high, around 20 percent, and should be capable of improving even more. This ink can already be produced especially inexpensively and quickly, and because it is extremely thin, could potentially be used to coat structures or even windows without getting in the way.

solar cell

This new process would go the extra step and make its production entirely energy-neutral, faster, and cheaper. “Our system can synthesize solar energy materials in minutes compared to other processes that might take 30 minutes to two hours,” Chang told The Daily Fusion. “This gain in operation speed can lower cost.”

The experiments used artificial sunlight to allow for precise temperature control and uniformity, but the process should work with real sunlight as well. The process should also be possible using molten salt batteries to store daytime sunlight and keep going even when the sun goes down, as in Arizona’s Solana solar plant.

Benefits Of Spirulina: What It Is And Why You Should Incorporate It Into Your Diet

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Spirulina: It’s categorized as a “superfood” because of its immense health qualities. It is a blue-green algae that is rich in protein, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants and is said to help protect against cell damage. While much of the evidence supporting these claims are anecdotal, animal and test tube studies do suggest that spirulina can increase the production of antibodies, increase immunity, help to ward off infections and possible cancer. However, none of these tests were ever conducted on human studies, and the evidence is purely subjective to many individual experiences and a long history of use.

While there is insufficient evidence to rate the effectiveness, early research by theNational Institutes of Health, does show that taking 1 gram of spirulina daily by mouth for 12 months reduces precancerous mouth sores in people who chew tobacco. The type of algae that spirulina is (blue-green) contains protein, iron, and other mineral content. It is also being researched for effects on the immune system.

Nevertheless, many health experts have named spirulina as a food with the most complete source of nutrients. Due to its concentrated nutrition, it is recommended by both National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) as one of the primary foods during long-term space missions.

Mexico and many countries in Africa grow spirulina wildly, but it is also commercially cultivated in France, China, India, Thailand, and the United States. Spirulina grows in alkaline salt water, and since it absorbs nutrients so well, if the water it grows in is contaminated, the spirulina will be contaminated as well.

The University of Maryland and New York University have both recognized the anecdotal evidence of the “superfood”, but being as expensive as it is, it’s important to get spirulina from a reputable store. This way, you’re sure to avoid a processed and dried substance.

shutterstock_139172630

How Does It Help The Body?

1.       Protein Supplement: According to the University of Maryland, amino acids make up 62 percent of spirulina. Amino acids are used by the body to make proteins, helping to break down food, grow, and repair body tissue.

2.       Lipid Lowering: The hypolipidemic effects were first noticed in albino rats. The study found that HDL cholesterol was increased, while high hepatic lipids caused by a high fat diet was reduced by the consumption of spirulina.

3.       Immune Boost: Having such a high concentration of beta carotene, which the human body can make into vitamin A, helps kick start your immune system.

How Should You Eat It?

It’s a versatile product and can be added to various dishes. Here are a few ideas:

1.       Green Smoothie: A spoonful of this powder can boost the nutrients in your daily green drink or smoothie.

2.       Spirulina Pudding: Mix this into your favorite fruit pudding and enjoy.

3.       Salad Dressing: Mix this into some olive oil, lemon, a little bit of pepper, and dress your salad.

As always, please be sure to check with your physician before starting any supplement like spirulina, as it may interact with certain medications.

The Effects Of Negative Emotions On Our Health.

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Humans experience an array of emotions, anything from happiness, to sadness to extreme joy and depression. Each one of these emotions creates a different feeling within the body. After all, our body releases different chemicals when we experience various things that make us happy and each chemical works to create a different environment within the body. For example if your brain releases serotonin, dopamine or oxytocin, you will feel good and happy. Convexly, if your body releases cortisol while you are stressed, you will have an entirely different feeling associated more with the body kicking into survival mode.

What about when we are thinking negative thoughts all the time? Or how about when we are thinking positive thoughts? What about when we are not emotionally charged to neither positive nor negative? Let’s explore how these affect our body and life.

Positive vs. Negative

Is there duality in our world? Sure, you could say there is to a degree, but mostly we spend a lot of time defining and judging what is to be considered as positive and what we consider to be as negative. The brain is a very powerful tool and as we define what something is or should be, we begin to have that result play out in our world. Have you ever noticed, for example that someone driving can get cut off and lose their lid, get angry and suddenly they are feeling negative, down and in  bad mood? Whereas someone else can get cut off while driving and simply apply the break slightly and move on with their day as if nothing happened. In this case, the same experience yet one sees it as negative while the other doesn’t. So are things innately positive and negative? Or do we define things as positive and negative?

Cut The Perceptions As Much As Possible

After thinking about it for a moment you might realize that there are in fact no positive or negative experiences other than what we define as such. Therefore our very perception of an experience or situation has the ultimate power as to how we will feel when it’s happening and how our bodies will be affected. While we can always work to move beyond our definitions of each experience and move into a state of mind/awareness/consciousness where we simply accept each experience for what it is and use it as a learning grounds for us, we may not be there yet and so it’s important to understand how certain emotions can affect our health.

“If someone wishes for good health, one must first ask oneself if he is ready to do away with the reasons for his illness. Only then is it possible to help him.” ~ Hippocrates

Mind Body Connection

The connection between your mind and body is very powerful and although it cannot be visually seen, the effects your mind can have on your physical body are profound. We can have an overall positive mental attitude and deal directly with our internal challenges and in turn create a healthy lifestyle or we can be in negative, have self destructive thoughts and not deal with our internal issues, possibly even cloak those issues with affirmations and positivity without finding the route and in turn we can create an unhealthy lifestyle. Why is this?

Our emotions and experiences are essentially energy and they can be stored in the cellular memory of our bodies. Have you ever experienced something in your life that left an emotional mark or pain in a certain area of your body? Almost as if you can still feel something that may have happened to you? It is likely because in that area of your body you still hold energy released from that experience that is remaining in that area. I came across an interesting chart that explores some possible areas that various emotions might affect the body.

emotional_pain_chart

When you have a pain, tightness or injuries in certain areas, it’s often related to something emotionally you are feeling within yourself. At first glance it may not seem this way because we are usually very out of touch with ourselves and our emotions in this fast paced world, but it’s often the truth. When I’ve had chronic pains in my back, knees, neck or shoulders, it wasn’t exercise, physio or anything in a physical sense that healed it, it was when I dealt with the emotions behind it. I know this because I spent the time and money going to physio and even though I wanted and believed I would get better, something wasn’t being addressed still. The more I addressed the unconscious thought pattern and emotions throughout my body, the more thins loosened up and pain went away.

When you get sick or are feeling a lot of tightness and pain, often times our body is asking us to observe yourself and find peace once again within yourself and your environment. It’s all a learning and growing process we don’t have to judge nor fear.

You Have The Power

Davis Suzuki wrote in ‘The Sacred Life’, ‘condensed molecules from breath exhaled from verbal expressions of anger, hatred, and jealousy, contain toxins. Accumulated over 1 hr, these toxins are enough to kill 80 guinea pigs!’ Can you now imagine the harm you are doing to your body when you stay within negative emotions or unprocessed emotional experience throughout the body?

Remember, you have all the power in you to get through anything life throws at you. Instead of labeling with perception the concepts of negative and positive as it relates to each experience you have in your life, try to see things from a  big picture standpoint. Ask yourself, how can this help me to see or learn something? Can I use this to shift my perception? Clear some emotion within myself? Realize something within another and accept it? Whatever it may be, instead of simply reacting, slow things down and observe. You will find you have the tools to process emotions and illness quickly when you see them for what they are and explore why they came up. If you believe you will get sick all the time, and believe you have pain because it’s all out of your control, you will continue to have it all in an uncontrollable manner until you realize the control you have over much of what we attract within the body.

 

Thanks, Pharma. You created the “anti-vaccine movement”. | Gianelloni Family

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http://gianelloni.wordpress.com/2014/03/14/thanks-pharma-you-created-the-anti-vaccine-movement/

From the desk of Zedie.