Summary: Newly discovered sensory neurons send information related to stress and metabolism from adipose fat tissue to the brain.
Source: Scripps Research Institute
What did the fat say to the brain? For years, it was assumed that hormones passively floating through the blood were the way that a person’s fat—called adipose tissue—could send information related to stress and metabolism to the brain.
Now, Scripps Research scientists report in Nature that newly identified sensory neurons carry a stream of messages from adipose tissue to the brain.
“The discovery of these neurons suggests for the first time that your brain is actively surveying your fat, rather than just passively receiving messages about it,” says co-senior author Li Ye, PhD, the Abide-Vividion Chair in Chemistry and Chemical Biology and an associate professor of neuroscience at Scripps Research. “The implications of this finding are profound.”
“This is yet another example of how important sensory neurons are to health and disease in the human body,” says co-senior author and professor Ardem Patapoutian, PhD, who is also a Nobel laureate and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.
In mammals, adipose tissue stores energy in the form of fat cells and, when the body needs energy, releases those stores. It also controls a host of hormones and signaling molecules related to hunger and metabolism. In diseases including diabetes, fatty liver disease, atherosclerosis and obesity, that energy storage and signaling often goes awry.
Researchers have long known that nerves extend into adipose tissue, but suspected they weren’t sensory neurons that carry data to the brain. Instead, most hypothesized that the nerves in fat belonged mostly to the sympathetic nervous system—the network responsible for our fight-or-flight response, which switches on fat-burning pathways during times of stress and physical activity.
Attempts to clarify the types and functions of these neurons have been difficult; methods used to study neurons closer to the surface of the body or in the brain don’t work well deep in adipose tissue, where nerves are hard to see or to stimulate.
Ye and colleagues developed two new methods that enable them to overcome these challenges. First, an imaging approach called HYBRiD turned mouse tissues transparent and allowed the team to better track the paths of neurons as they snaked into adipose tissue.
The researchers discovered that nearly half of these neurons didn’t connect to the sympathetic nervous system, but instead to dorsal root ganglia—an area of the brain where all sensory neurons originate.
To better probe the role of these neurons in adipose tissue, the group turned to a second new technique, which they named ROOT, for “retrograde vector optimized for organ tracing”. ROOT let them selectively destroy small subsets of sensory neurons in the adipose tissue using a targeted virus and then observe what happened.
“This research was really made possible by the way these new methods came together,” says Yu Wang, a graduate student in both the Ye and Patapoutian labs and first author of the new paper. “When we first started this project, there weren’t existing tools to answer these questions.”
Scripps Research scientists discovered new sensory neurons, like the one shown here in fluorescence, that begin near the spine and branch off into fat tissue.
The experiments revealed that when the brain doesn’t receive sensory messages from adipose tissue, programs triggered by the sympathetic nervous system—related to the conversion of white fat to brown fat—become overly active in fat cells, resulting in a larger than normal fat pad with especially high levels of brown fat, which breaks down other fat and sugar molecules to produce heat. Indeed, the animals with blocked sensory neurons—and high levels of sympathetic signaling—had increased body temperatures.
The findings suggest that the sensory neurons and sympathetic neurons might have two opposing functions, with sympathetic neurons needed to turn on fat burning and the production of brown fat, and sensory neurons required to turn these programs down.
“This tells us that there’s not just a one-size-fits-all instruction that brain sends adipose tissue,” says Li. “It’s more nuanced than that; these two types of neurons are acting like a gas pedal and a brake for burning fat.”
The team doesn’t yet know exactly what messages the sensory neurons convey to the brain from adipose tissue, only that the connections and communications are key for keeping fat healthy. They are planning future research into what the neurons are sensing and whether other similar cells exist in additional internal organs.
Abstract
The role of somatosensory innervation of adipose tissue
Adipose tissues communicate with the central nervous system to maintain whole-body energy homeostasis.
The mainstream view is that circulating hormones secreted by the fat convey the metabolic state to the brain, which integrates peripheral information and regulates adipocyte function through noradrenergic sympathetic output. Moreover, somatosensory neurons of the dorsal root ganglia innervate adipose tissue.
However, the lack of genetic tools to selectively target these neurons has limited understanding of their physiological importance.
Here we developed viral, genetic and imaging strategies to manipulate sensory nerves in an organ-specific manner in mice. This enabled us to visualize the entire axonal projection of dorsal root ganglia from the soma to subcutaneous adipocytes, establishing the anatomical underpinnings of adipose sensory innervation.
Functionally, selective sensory ablation in adipose tissue enhanced the lipogenic and thermogenetic transcriptional programs, resulting in an enlarged fat pad, enrichment of beige adipocytes and elevated body temperature under thermoneutral conditions.
The sensory-ablation-induced phenotypes required intact sympathetic function. We postulate that beige-fat-innervating sensory neurons modulate adipocyte function by acting as a brake on the sympathetic system.
These results reveal an important role of the innervation by dorsal root ganglia of adipose tissues, and could enable future studies to examine the role of sensory innervation of disparate interoceptive systems.
Studies consistently have shown patients with cancer have a higher risk for suicide than the general public.
A population-based study of more than 4.6 million patients with cancer showed an excess risk for suicide within 1 year after diagnosis of 2.51 per 10,000 person-years. In that study, published in 2019 in Cancer, Saad and colleagues observed the highest increases in suicide rates following diagnosis of pancreatic, lung or colorectal cancer.
Oncologists should not wait for patients to exhibit signs of suicide before taking action, according to Nosayaba Osazuwa-Peters, PhD, BDS, MPH, CHES. Instead, psychosocial services should be embedded into mainstream cancer care proactively, he said.
A separate meta-analysis of 28 studies by Heinrich and colleagues, published in March in Nature Medicine, showed an 85% higher suicide rate among patients with cancer compared with the general population, with strong correlations of risk with cancer prognosis and stage, time since diagnosis and geographic region.
Other research has shown significantly higher suicide rates among patients with head and neck and brain cancers, as well as patients who reside in rural areas.
Although data published in 2020 in Journal of the National Cancer Institute revealed an overall decline in cancer-associated suicide from 1999 to 2018 — with substantially decreased rates among specific high-risk groups — identification of patients at increased risk remains a critical challenge for oncology professionals.
“Suicide is a huge problem in America, and we will most likely see a significant increase since the COVID-19 pandemic began,” Nosayaba Osazuwa-Peters, PhD, BDS, MPH, CHES, member of Duke Cancer Institute and assistant professor in head and neck surgery and communication sciences and population health sciences at Duke University School of Medicine, told Healio | HemOnc Today. “Patients with cancer are two times more likely to die of suicide compared with people without cancer. This is such an important and critical issue, and we should be talking about suicide risk in patients with cancer more because no patient who survives cancer should die by suicide. We need to be able to support these patients better.”
Healio | HemOnc Today spoke with oncologists and other experts about which patients with cancer may be at highest risk for suicide and targeted interventions that oncology care teams can employ to address the problem.
Rural residents at higher risk
Because many residents of rural and low-income areas lack access to mental health resources, Suk and colleagues hypothesized they may be at higher risk for suicide after cancer diagnosis compared with those who reside in urban and high-income areas.
The researchers investigated differences in suicide mortality risks and patterns based on county-level median income and rural vs. urban status among 5,362,782 people (51.2% men; 72.2% white; 49.7% aged older than 65 years) diagnosed with cancer between 2000 and 2016.
Results of the study, published in JAMA Network Open, showed 6,357 people died by suicide. Among them, people living in the lowest-income counties had a significantly higher risk (standardized mortality ratio [SMR] = 1.94; 95% CI, 1.76-2.13) than those in the highest-income counties (SMR = 1.3; 95% CI, 1.26-1.34). Additionally, those living in rural counties had a significantly higher risk (SMR = 1.81; 95% CI, 1.7-1.92) than those living in urban counties (SMR = 1.35, 95% CI, 1.32-1.39).
Osazuwa-Peters and colleagues reported even larger differences in suicide risk based on area of residence among patients with head and neck cancer.
The cross-sectional study, published last year in JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery, included data from the SEER database on 134,510 patients (mean age, 57.7 years; 75.2% men) diagnosed with head and neck cancer between 2000 and 2016. Overall, 86.6% of the study population resided in metropolitan areas, 11.7% resided in urban areas and 1.7% resided in rural areas.
Researchers identified 405 suicides. They observed a significantly higher risk for suicide among patients who resided in rural (SMR = 5.47; 95% CI, 3.06-9.02), urban (SMR = 2.84; 95% CI, 2.13-3.71) and metropolitan areas (SMR = 2.78; 95% CI, 2.49-3.09) compared with the general population.
“We hypothesize that the cancer care provided in rural areas is not uniform across the board,” Osazuwa-Peters said. “Many comprehensive cancer centers are in urban and metropolitan areas, and not every [patient with cancer] who resides in a rural area is able to travel repeatedly to the city to receive care. In addition, patients residing in rural areas may not have access to psychosocial care and/or may have greater access to lethal means.”
For these reasons, it is important to integrate mainstream psychosocial services for patients with cancer, Osazuwa-Peters added.
“We should not wait for our patients to exhibit signs of suicide before we act. Instead, psychosocial services should be embedded into mainstream cancer care proactively,” he said. “This takes away the stigma and the lack of patients wanting to have a conversation about it in the first place.”
A separate study by Osazuwa-Peters and colleagues, published in April in Journal of Cancer Survivorship, reinforced the idea that increased health care access could reduce the risk for suicide among some patients with cancer. The study showed an Affordable Care Act-associated decrease in suicide incidence among some nonelderly patients with cancer, particularly young adults aged 18 to 39 years in Medicaid expansion vs. nonexpansion states (64.36 per 100,000; 95% CI, 125.96 to2.76).
Psychiatric risk factors
It is also important for clinicians to note the psychiatric risk factors associated with suicide risk among patients with cancer, including a history of depression or other psychiatric illness, according to Jeffrey Kendall, PsyD, LP, oncology psychologist at MHealth Fairview Oncology Service Line.
Jeffrey Kendall
“A giant red flag is a previous suicide attempt,” Kendall told Healio | HemOnc Today. “Other big psychiatric red flags are a sense of hopelessness or demoralization — pain from the cancer itself and/or treatment, lack of social support, feeling like a burden to others, regret, loss of meaning and purpose and loss of dignity.”
Chang and colleagues found depression to be the most common psychiatric disorder among 459,542 adults diagnosed in Britain with any of 26 different cancers. Results of their study, published in March in Nature Medicine, also showed the highest burden of psychiatric disorders among patients who received alkylating-agent chemotherapeutics, and the lowest burden among those who receive kinase inhibitors.
“All mental illnesses were associated with an increased risk of subsequent self-harm, where the highest risk was observed within 12 months of the mental illness diagnosis,” the researchers wrote.
Sociodemographic factors also play a role in suicide risk, according to Kendall.
“For example, older, white males are lethal, and if the elderly white male is unmarried and has a poor social network, that makes him even more lethal,” he added. “People who are of lower socioeconomic status, less educated and lack social support are some of the most lethal groups. Education level and support network are key variables.”
Patients with cancer and a poor prognosis should be directed to psychological support programs on the day of diagnosis, according to Ahmad Samir Alfaar, MBBCh, MSc, researcher at Leipzig University in Germany.
“These programs should involve their families and friends, as well,” Alfaar told Healio | HemOnc Today in a 2020 interview. “These plans should be supported by evidence and personalized to address the needs of each patient.”
Data that highlighted an association of brain tumors and mental health prompted Alfaar and colleagues to investigate suicide risk after brain cancer diagnosis compared with the overall U.S. population.
In a research letter published in JAMA Network Open, they reported that among 87,785 patients with brain cancer diagnosed between 2000 to 2016, 29 (0.03%) died by suicide within the first year of diagnosis, whereas 33,993 (38.7%) died of cancer and other causes. The investigators calculated an observed-to-expected event ratio — with the expected number of events equal to the number of people estimated to die of the same cause in a demographically similar general population during the same time frame — for suicide risk of 3.05 (95% CI, 2.04-4.37).
“Further studies should be conducted to discover the relationship of each treatment milestone and the relation to the timepoints of extreme psychiatric situations among patients with cancer,” Alfaar said.
Prevention strategies
Experts with whom Healio | HemOnc Today spoke said communication is key to address suicide risk among patients with cancer.
“One in two patients may have some form of depression and may not be willing to talk about it, so physicians need to ask about it more and, in turn, patients need to be more engaged with their providers to talk about their struggles,” Osazuwa-Peters said. “Oncologists may be the ones to see these issues and flag them before it is too late. Many of these patients may never seek mental health care before they die by suicide.
“Communication is key, it sounds so simple, but it is key,” he added. “Society may make the patient feel like they should be so grateful for being alive, but deep down inside they feel like checking out; they need to be able to talk with someone.”
Kendall agreed and said that every cancer center, big or small, should implement distress screening and follow up on the results.
“This is a short-term solution, and if there are stragglers out there that have still not implemented a distress screening program, they need to get that up and running,” Kendall said. “Centers need to hire adequate psycho-oncology staff or, if they are a small community practice and cannot fund that, there needs to be a robust community referral pattern and a feedback loop — medical staff must talk to each other.”
In the long term, the best way to mitigate suicide risk is through evaluation of patient-reported outcomes in a timely manner, Kendall added.
“The emotional and social impact of cancer can be as devastating as the physical illness itself, and to ignore those symptoms is to provide low-quality cancer care,” Kendall said. “The identification, evaluation and intervention of those symptoms should be the standard of cancer care.”
Osazuwa-Peters said it is also important to understand that depression is not the only risk factor for suicide.
“Pain is an independent risk factor for suicide with or without depression. Financial toxicity, irrespective of depression, can lead to suicide. There are multilevel factors that may exacerbate suicidal tendencies beyond depression,” Osazuwa-Peters said. “We need to talk about these factors, as well, independent of depression when it comes to suicidality.”
Another goal is to intervene at the level of ideation.
“There are tools that have not been used extensively in oncology, and I am advocating for these tools to be tested in the oncology setting, see how they work and then make them part of mainstream care. If we can do this during every clinical encounter, we may be able to prevent suicide,” Osazuwa-Peters said.
An important component of cancer care is communication with patients and caregivers about their disease.
But in a communication age where social media is king, cancer misinformation travels far and fast.
Connecting with patients to combat cancer misinformation may require a multifaceted approach on multiple platforms, according to Erqi Liu Pollom, MD, MS. “I think we can do better in reaching out to patients and filling that vacuum of information so they’re not out there searching on their own,” she said. Source: Stanford Cancer Center.
“What keeps me up at night is thinking about the root causes of the spread of misinformation — the disinformation endeavors and what they may do to public health and people’s emotions and relationships, fostering hate between groups and division in society,” Wen-Ying Sylvia Chou, PhD, MPH, program director in the health communication and informatics research branch of the behavioral research program at NCI, told Healio.
Chou referenced an editorial commentary she wrote a little over a year ago for American Journal of Public Health on the results of an analysis of the “#China-virus” hashtag on Twitter during the COVID-19 pandemic, including how it “emboldened xenophobia and racist sentiments.”
Wen-Ying Sylvia Chou
“Online and offline interactions are intertwined. Powerful people on social media can affect the real world and cause harms in vulnerable people; it’s not just words,” Chou said. “That makes me think that, in a way, a cancer diagnosis is one way for someone to become more vulnerable. Without policies in place to protect the vulnerable and change how social media platforms operate, I worry that things are not going to get better and, if anything, get worse.”
The spread of cancer misinformation online isn’t limited to any specific disease or social media platform. It’s everywhere, according to experts in the field who are working diligently to identify the best ways to combat it.
Healio spoke with oncologists and leading communication experts in science and medicine about the prevalence of cancer misinformation on social media, important research into the issue and possible strategies to improve communication platforms and disseminate trustworthy information more effectively.
A problem ‘across multiple health topics’
Skyler B. Johnson, MD, physician-scientist at Huntsman Cancer Institute and assistant professor of radiation oncology at The University of Utah, discovered the scale and scope of cancer misinformation when his wife was diagnosed with cancer.
Like any other person, he went online to do some quick research. But unlike many people without a medical background, Johnson could identify misinformation.
Skyler B. Johnson
“I came away from that experience with quite a bit of empathy for patients,” Johnson said during an interview last year with Healio. “I encounter a lot of patients through my oncology practice who believe misinformation they read online and through social media, and it has led to delays in their diagnosis and treatment. It has led to refusal of proven cancer treatments and, ultimately, their early deaths.”
In July, Johnson and colleagues published results of a study in Journal of the National Cancer Institute that showed one-third of the most popular cancer treatment articles on social media included inaccurate information. Perhaps even more troubling: Most of the misinformation they identified had the potential to harm patients with approaches that could have negative effects on treatment quality and survival.
In a separate, mixed-methods experimental study last year, published in Journal of Cancer Education, Chou and colleagues integrated eye-tracking, survey and interviews to examine how participants assessed cancer messages’ believability when viewing simulated Facebook posts. They wanted to see how people discern credible information from noncredible posts, what caught their attention, where they looked and how they made decisions.
“We found that participants spent a lot of time viewing (dwelling on) the nonevidence-based posts,” Chou said. “It may be because inaccurate messages were generally more vivid and shocking or even emotionally provocative. They have stories, such as, ‘This is how my daughter was vaccinated and she was never the same person.’ There’s a lot for people to look through. And that parallels a lot of the misinformation tactics. Narrative is a powerful tool, but it can also be a tool to instill negative emotions such as doubt and fear.”
In 2018, researchers from NYU Langone Health investigated prostate cancer information on YouTube, which they wrote was the most popular of all platforms, with use by 73% of U.S. adults.
They found that 77% of the top 150 videos on prostate cancer had misinformative or biased information. Additionally, many videos contained outdated information regarding screening guidelines and treatment recommendations.
Another finding echoed that of many social media cancer misinformation studies: misinformative videos had more social media engagement (numbers of comments, thumbs up/down interaction, etc.), including more than twice as many average views per day, than videos with factual information.
“I think it’s extremely concerning that a lot of biased and misinformative health content is reaching so many people,” Stacy Loeb, MD, MSc, PhD (Hon), urologist in the department of urology at NYU Langone Medical Center and one of the authors of the study, told Healio.
Stacy Loeb
Loeb and colleagues took on another YouTube study involving the quality of bladder cancer information. They found 67% of overall information was moderate to poor and 21% of the videos, which had more than 1.2 million views, contained a moderate to high amount of misinformation.
“We’re seeing this misinformation problem across multiple health topics,” Loeb said. “We recently published a study on the quality of prostate cancer information on TikTok. … Among the videos that had objective information, there was a significant amount of misinformation.
“The bottom line is this is a cross-cutting issue that goes across many topics and platforms,” Loeb added. “It’s not specific to prostate cancer or to YouTube, but rather a major problem in society, as there is an increasing amount of unfiltered, user-generated content that is posted online and broadly disseminated.”
Hopeful stories with convenient answers
Brian G. Southwell, PhD, has tried to identify the motivations behind cancer misinformation and the reasons for its existence. He published a 320-page book, “Misinformation and Mass Audiences,” in 2018 and has regularly contributed his communication expertise to the health care sphere.
“It’s a really important question that does not get asked enough: Why is (this misinformation) out there?” Southwell told Healio.
Brian G. Southwell
Southwell, senior director of science in the public sphere at Research Triangle Institute (RTI) International, used the example of a social media influencer-turned-scammer. Belle Gibson rose to fame as a blogger who suggested she overcame brain cancer because of a diet she adhered to, only to be later exposed as a fraud who didn’t even have cancer.
“You can judge her, of course. But how did she rise to fame?” Southwell asked. “Because she was telling a hopeful story. If some people hear you can prevent breast cancer with cannabis oil or whatever, that might sound great. I think there is this certain degree of storytelling, telling stories people want to hear.”
As Southwell said, emotion plays a vital role, as someone either with cancer or with a loved one with cancer is easily drawn to stories of hope, regardless of their veracity, on social media. Stories of misinformation are also more novel and intriguing, whereas factual studies generally take time and produce results incrementally rather than overnight.
“There is nothing magical about false information, it’s just that the people who are creating it have an advantage relative to carefully peer-reviewed journal articles framed in a mundane way,” Southwell said. “‘Halloween Candy is Going to Cure Cancer.’ If you could write the headline first and just fill in the details … you have the advantage of being as sensational as you want.”
Perhaps some of these points — the accessibility of hopeful stories with easy solutions and the clickbait headlines — may help explain why a healthy proportion of cancer misinformation involves the use of cannabis.
Researchers from Stanford University and Kaiser Permanente Interstate Radiation Oncology Center published a study in January of 2019 on the space cannabis holds within the realm of cancer misinformation on social media. The researchers found that:
online search volume for cannabis and cancer increased at 10 times the rate of standard therapies (more in states where recreational or medical cannabis was legal);
cannabis as a cancer cure represented the largest category of social media content (23%) on alternative cancer treatments;
of the 40 high-impact new stories on social media referencing “cannabis cancer,” 32 (80%) were false news that proposed cannabis as a cancer cure and only one (2.5%) was an accurate news story that debunked that claim; and
the top false news story claiming cannabis as a cancer cure generated 4.26 million engagements on social media; meanwhile, the top news story debunking this false news only received 0.036 million engagements.
Although she supports medical cannabis for symptom control, Erqi Liu Pollom, MD, MS, said some of the results surprised her.
“It seemed like the false articles, the articles with inaccurate information, were more popular,” Pollom, assistant professor of radiation oncology at Stanford University, told Healio. “Accounts that are propagating this misinformation were more popular than the legitimate sources like the cancer societies, cancer physicians, etc. [Stories with misinformation] had broader reach than some of the more legitimate accounts.”
Pollom and colleagues also analyzed Facebook and Twitter posts from 31 leading cancer organizations during the study period. They found a drastic difference in engagement of these organizations’ posts on cannabis vs. the top 10 false stories on cannabis as a cancer cure, including average Facebook likes, comments and shares (97.7 vs. 452,050.1).
In addition, National Comprehensive Cancer Network member organizations in states where medical or recreational cannabis had not been legalized had zero Facebook posts or tweets on cannabis during the study period.
“If organizations like NCCN and ASCO could dedicate resources to provide educational material on a specific topic for patients, that probably would be helpful,” Pollom said. “Maybe they’re just not aware that it’s a big issue. That was one of the reasons we did our study, to see how big of an issue this was.”
AI and an active Twitter account
Although monitoring social media is a challenge, it’s not one too vast for researchers and medical professionals to try to tackle.
In July, Chou contributed to a paper published in NAM Perspectives on identifying credible sources of health information that recommended a “within reach” plan involving a system of spot checks for quality and integrity “supported by machine learning technology” and aided by expert human evaluation.
“We need more social scientists, ethnographers, anthropologists … I have a background in linguistics,” Chou told Healio. “AI with important, meaningful human input, working together with a computer scientists and engineers, is needed — and right now. We’re not doing enough. We’re kind of saying, ‘Well, these are the algorithms’ (causing misinformation to spread) as if humans have nothing to do with it.”
Loeb has contributed to this area along with University of Michigan researchers, including Rada Mihalcea, PhD, professor of computer science and director of the Michigan AI Lab. Work they presented at ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction in 2019 involved utilizing linguistic, acoustic and user engagement features to develop classification models to identify misinformation in prostate cancer videos.
“We reported preliminary findings that an algorithm to identify misinformative videos about prostate cancer had 74% accuracy,” Loeb said. “And we’re continuing to work on potential automated solutions to assist in the identification of misinformative content that could be potentially flagged or manually reviewed or removed, or that could be used to help design a smarter search filter to help health consumers identify content that’s more likely to be accurate.”
“For health professionals and scientists, an important action item is to participate in the online discourse,” Loeb said. “There is a quote that circulates: ‘The solution to pollution is dilution.’ For those of us who are experts in health topics, it’s important to be a part of the solution by providing high-quality and accurate information or public dissemination.”
Deanna J. Attai
Loeb (@loebstacy) and other colleagues hold monthly discussion sessions on Twitter about prostate cancer and the latest research that anyone can join. Similarly, Deanna J. Attai, MD, associate clinical professor of surgery at David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California Los Angeles, serves as a co-moderator (@DrAttai) for #BCSM, a weekly, live community forum for breast cancer.
Meeting patients where they are online may require a multifaceted approach on multiple platforms. In a study published in May in Practical Radiation Oncology, Pollom and colleagues found patients more apt to use Instagram and physicians more active on Twitter.
“I think we can do better in reaching out to patients and filling that vacuum of information so they’re not out there searching on their own,” Pollom said.
Other means of communication
Getting every oncologist in the world to join Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and spend a specific amount of time each day or week on the social media platforms likely is not feasible.
“One of the barriers, I think — not as an academic physician or researcher — is that we’re promoted on academic papers … writing for our colleagues rather than peers,” Pollom said. “I don’t think there’s a viable infrastructure yet in terms of how we can advance our academic careers on social media. That’s a limitation of having physicians spending more time educating online.”
More long-term solutions may require much larger investments of time and money by a larger entity: health care systems. Southwell said the current information/misinformation climate could be an ideal time for “reimagining” how communication systems function within a health care system.
“We need a lot of investment in this translational space, which I don’t think we have,” he said. “You start out worried about all of these patients running into misinformation, and you have to continue to think about that since patients are a part of the equation, but part of the story and the solution are our health care institutions. What are they doing, necessarily, to provide information?”
Improved in-person communication between oncologists and patients also can play a role in limiting a patient’s possible engagement with misinformation on social media.
In an October 2020 editorial he co-wrote in American Journal of Public Health, Southwell suggested an open-ended question such as, “What have you already heard or learned about your treatment/condition?” as a useful starting point.
“You’re respecting that the patient is seeking out their own information on their condition and also getting a quick beat on where they are looking,” Southwell said. “You’re also starting from a place where you’re not assuming or dismissing (their view) right away.”
Lending an empathetic ear is important, Southwell said, as is understanding that the source of their information may be someone important to them and not just something they came across on their social media feed.
“Maybe this came from their Aunt Edna, and they listen to everything she says,” Southwell said. “Getting some sense of the personal referral (is important) because now you know what you’re up against and you can tread lightly. ‘Well, my mother told me this’ or ‘my wife told me this.’ That’s probably going to carry some weight.”
Unlike traditional media, such as newspapers or television, social media is a two-way communication channel. Similarly, within a clinic, physicians who are adept at communication value the shared decision-making process between physician and patient.
“This includes a discussion of risk, benefits, alternatives and the patient’s preferences related to a medical decision,” Loeb said. “We published a study [in Journal of Medical Internet Research] using data from HINTS, a national survey, showing that patients who perceived a worse quality of communication with their health care provider were more likely to watch health-related videos.
“Bottom line: it is very important that patients have an opportunity to have their questions answered and that they are well-informed by their health care provider,” Loeb said. “Otherwise, it is natural that people will look to other sources for information.”
Smart phones and tablets have become a cancerous growth in our lives – never leaving us, feeding off our essence, and sucking away our attention, life, and energy. Social media is like an aggressive form of brain cancer, attaching to our mind, addicting us to cheap dopamine rushes, replacing human interaction with a digital façade of living. Stealing away our time, technology has become a disease that infiltrates our mental and social health, leaving us depressed, anxious, worried, envious, arrogant, and socially isolated.
What we type and text to others causes over-thinking, rumination, and misunderstanding. The way we respond with type and text can be misinterpreted, leading to social strain in relationships. Digital communication lacks the natural flow of body language, eye contact, touch, voice inflection, tone, and real-life rapport. Accustomed to digital communication, people lose their ability to have adult conversations. This hurts everyone’s ability to work together, discuss ideas, solve problems, and overcome multi-faceted challenges.
Popular social media platforms prey on human weaknesses
On Facebook, the pursuit of likes and comments can become an addicting sensation. When the attention fails to come in, the Facebook user may feel unheard or undesirable. When the user sees their friends getting more likes, they may perceive other people having a better life than they do, leading to depressed feelings. (Related: Former Facebook exec: “Social media is ripping society apart.“)
On Twitter, communication is limited to short bursts. These bursts encourage people to engage in divisive language that is used in inflammatory ways and is easily misunderstood. Twitter is used to build a “following” which becomes a high-school-esque popularity contest that easily inflates egos and gives a platform to the most annoying ones in the bunch.
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Instagram and Snapchat have become more popular as well, making users anxious to show off their lives online 24-7. This infatuation with documenting every moment is an anxious, self-absorbed way to live and it does the person no good, because these technology gimmicks interrupt the actual moment and disturb the flow of real life. Do we really think that everyone cares about every picture, every meal, and everything that we do? As the digital world continues to bloat up with information, pictures, and voices, all of it loses its value and sacredness. Over time, no one genuinely cares. The louder a person gets on social media, the more annoying they are perceived.
Technology addiction destroys sleep, leads teenagers to other addictive substances
As parents pacify their children with screens, the children are exposed to constant light stimulation which excites brain chemicals. The colorful games and videos over-stimulate the child’s mind, making them addicted to the sensation. Consequentially the child becomes more restless and behavioral distress increases over the long term.
Technology has made our lives more selfish, isolated, and interrupted. Social media has preyed on our weaknesses, trapping us in its mesmerizing facade of happiness. According to SurvivoPedia, teenagers who spend more than five hours a day on their devices are at a 72 percent higher risk for suicide risk factors. In order to alleviate the mental health issues associated with social media, teenagers may turn to other addictive substances to take the edge off.
Additionally, these devices interfere with healthy sleep patterns — which are essential for proper brain development. The onslaught of blue light and electromagnetic frequency interferes with healthy melatonin levels in the brain. The things that we post online can keep us up at night as well. The addiction to check the phone for responses and likes can keep a person up, too. All this brain excitement and depression throws off the body’s circadian rhythm, leading to poor sleep and mental fatigue during the daytime.
The trouble with Paula was, she was always worrying. She worried what people thought of her; worried about what she was wearing. She worried about being too fat… being different… not knowing the right thing to say. These inner worries were etched all over her face. Now, even when she felt happy, she seemed to have a permanently worried expression.
‘I think the way I look is having an effect on how people react to me’, she said. ‘I don’t think I’m very approachable… I want to project a happier image’, Paula told me ‘but I’m not sure where to start’.
Paula was right to be concerned but there was certainly something she could do about it. At least she was aware that body language is an important part of communication.
Paula reminded me of a client I had met several years ago who also seemed tocarry the weight of the world on her shoulders. When I met her at the door, I had an impression she was scowling at me. First impressions count. That client had referred to herself as ‘a fierce maggot’ and I had set her some home work of simply smiling at people and seeing what changed. She had returned the following week with the news that people had been more friendly to her. A neighbour she hadn’t spoken to before had even invited her in for coffee.
Paula and my client had both become aware of the significance of how they present themselves to the world and the impact they were having on others.
It’s Impossible Not to Communicate
‘All people smile in the same language.’ – Proverb
Body language is a large part of communication. It’s impossible not to communicate even when you are not saying one word. How you stand, or dress together with the fleeting micro-expressions of your face will convey a large amount of information… and for very good reason.
Millions of years ago, before human beings evolved the power of speech, we would have relied on grunts, grimaces, smiles and a deeply instinctive understanding of what others were trying to communicate.
We are hard wired to have opinions and judge others within seconds of encountering them. Is this person friend or foe, of my tribe or another tribe? Am I in danger or not in danger?
Understanding body language is essential in order to improve nonverbal communication.
In conversation, being able to present and read nonverbal communication is really helpful.
The mnemonic SOLER is a reminder which contains five tips for making a really great start with positive communication and good listening.
Sit Square
It’s a really good idea to face the person you’re going to be talking with. If you sit side-by-side or find you are looking at the back of somebody’s head, it will be impossible to communicate fully as we read faces and all the micro expressions and nuances they convey.
Open Posture
Crossed arms or legs close the body down and give a nonverbal message of disinterest. When we close ourselves off in this way, we are saying ‘I am hiding something’ or ‘I do not really want to be here in this conversation with you.’ If you see this body language in others, it conveys a clear message which you will understand on a subconscious level.
Lean In
If you go to a restaurant and look around the tables, you can tell me couples who are tuned into each other as they are leaning in, mirroring body language.
If somebody is leaning back on the chair, the nonverbal message again, is one of disengagement or disinterest.
If the verbal messages are at odds with the non verbal messages, this is referred to as ‘in-congruence’ and will create tension in the communication, sometimes a problem with couples as, generally, women are better at picking up these non verbal clues than men.
Eye Contact
When people are speaking they tend to look around the room and occasionally glance back at the person they’re talking to. If that person is looking away, it would appear as though they are not interested in the words of the speaker.
Somebody who is listening and attending will be looking directly at the person talking. They will nod or give minimal cues such as ‘uhu’ or ‘yes’ to show active listening.
Relax
If you look relaxed, the person you’re talking with is likely to feel relaxed too. Empathic mirror neuron circuitry means we reflect the body language of others when we are tuned in.
Smile and The World Smiles Back
‘Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.‘― Thich Nhat Hanh
But the biggest and best difference you can make to your approachability and attractiveness to others is, by far, contained in the power of the smile….but it has to be genuine!
Most people pick up on a smile which is fake as it involves the muscles around the mouth but not the eyes. Gordan Brown was a classic example of someone who had been instructed to smile more. Consequently, he often looked like some one had pressed an invisible button operating the corners of his mouth. The smile was switched on and switched off in such an unnatural way, it convinced few and created just the kind of incongruence which leaves people feeling a bit confused and uncomfortable.
It was Guillaume Duchenne who, back in 1862, identified the muscle groups involved in a real heart-felt smile, subsequently known as the ‘Duchenne smile.’
Fake It ’Til You Make It
‘Remember even though the outside world might be raining, if you keep on smiling the sun will soon show its face and smile back at you.’ – Anna Lee
Yet, awkwardness apart, there are real benefits in practicing the simple art of smiling as, according to research, we smile when we are happy, but the act of smiling can also make us feel happier too.
It was in the 1970s that smile research really got off the ground. There were very consistent results from experiments which had people making happy or unhappy facial expressions and then measuring their mood afterwards. (3)
So, on balance, if you want to make a good impression, be attractive and approachable, head up the promotion ladder at work, or simply feel happier and more confident, pay attention to your non verbal communication skills, but, more importantly… smile!
The human DNA is a biological internet and superior in many aspects to the artificial one. Russian scientific research directly or indirectly explains phenomena such as clairvoyance, intuition, spontaneous and remote acts of healing, self healing, affirmation techniques, unusual light/auras around people (namely spiritual masters), mind’s influence on weather patterns and much more. In addition, there is evidence for a whole new type of medicine in which DNA can be influenced and reprogrammed by words and frequencies WITHOUT cutting out and replacing single genes. Only 10% of our DNA is being used for building proteins. It is this subset of DNA that is of interest to western researchers and is being examined and categorized. The other 90% are considered “junk DNA.” The Russian researchers, however, convinced that nature was not dumb, joined linguists and geneticists in a venture to explore those 90% of “junk DNA.” Their results, findings and conclusions are simply revolutionary! According to them, our DNA is not only responsible for the construction of our body but also serves as data storage and in communication. The Russian linguists found that the genetic code, especially in the apparently useless 90%, follows the same rules as all our human languages. To this end they compared the rules of syntax (the way in which words are put together to form phrases and sentences), semantics (the study of meaning in language forms) and the basic rules of grammar. They found that the alkalines of our DNA follow a regular grammar and do have set rules just like our languages. So human languages did not appear coincidentally but are a reflection of our inherent DNA. The Russian biophysicist and molecular biologist Pjotr Garjajev and his colleagues also explored the vibrational behavior of the DNA. [For the sake of brevity I will give only a summary here. For further exploration please refer to the appendix at the end of this article.] The bottom line was: “Living chromosomes function just like solitonic/holographic computers using the endogenous DNA laser radiation.” This means that they managed for example to modulate certain frequency patterns onto a laser ray and with it influenced the DNA frequency and thus the genetic information itself. Since the basic structure of DNA-alkaline pairs and of language (as explained earlier) are of the same structure, no DNA decoding is necessary. One can simply use words and sentences of the human language! This, too, was experimentally proven! Living DNA substance (in living tissue, not in vitro) will always react to language-modulated laser rays and even to radio waves, if the proper frequencies are being used. This finally and scientifically explains why affirmations, autogenous training, hypnosis and the like can have such strong effects on humans and their bodies. It is entirely normal and natural for our DNA to react to language. While western researchers cut single genes from the DNA strands and insert them elsewhere, the Russians enthusiastically worked on devices that can influence the cellular metabolism through suitable modulated radio and light frequencies and thus repair genetic defects. Garjajev’s research group succeeded in proving that with this method chromosomes damaged by x-rays for example can be repaired. They even captured information patterns of a particular DNA and transmitted it onto another, thus reprogramming cells to another genome. ?So they successfully transformed, for example, frog embryos to salamander embryos simply by transmitting the DNA information patterns! This way the entire information was transmitted without any of the side effects or disharmonies encountered when cutting out and re-introducing single genes from the DNA. This represents an unbelievable, world-transforming revolution and sensation! All this by simply applying vibration and language instead of the archaic cutting-out procedure! This experiment points to the immense power of wave genetics, which obviously has a greater influence on the formation of organisms than the biochemical processes of alkaline sequences. Esoteric and spiritual teachers have known for ages that our body is programmable by language, words and thought. This has now been scientifically proven and explained. Of course the frequency has to be correct. And this is why not everybody is equally successful or can do it with always the same strength. The individual person must work on the inner processes and maturity in order to establish a conscious communication with the DNA. The Russian researchers work on a method that is not dependent on these factors but will ALWAYS work, provided one uses the correct frequency. But the higher developed an individual’s consciousness is, the less need is there for any type of device! One can achieve these results by oneself, and science will finally stop to laugh at such ideas and will confirm and explain the results. And it doesn’t end there.?The Russian scientists also found out that our DNA can cause disturbing patterns in the vacuum, thus producing magnetized wormholes! Wormholes are the microscopic equivalents of the so-called Einstein-Rosen bridges in the vicinity of black holes (left by burned-out stars).? These are tunnel connections between entirely different areas in the universe through which information can be transmitted outside of space and time. The DNA attracts these bits of information and passes them on to our consciousness. This process of hyper communication is most effective in a state of relaxation. Stress, worries or a hyperactive intellect prevent successful hyper communication or the information will be totally distorted and useless. In nature, hyper communication has been successfully applied for millions of years. The organized flow of life in insect states proves this dramatically. Modern man knows it only on a much more subtle level as “intuition.” But we, too, can regain full use of it. An example from Nature: When a queen ant is spatially separated from her colony, building still continues fervently and according to plan. If the queen is killed, however, all work in the colony stops. No ant knows what to do. Apparently the queen sends the “building plans” also from far away via the group consciousness of her subjects. She can be as far away as she wants, as long as she is alive. In man hyper communication is most often encountered when one suddenly gains access to information that is outside one’s knowledge base. Such hyper communication is then experienced as inspiration or intuition. The Italian composer Giuseppe Tartini for instance dreamt one night that a devil sat at his bedside playing the violin. The next morning Tartini was able to note down the piece exactly from memory, he called it the Devil’s Trill Sonata. For years, a 42-year old male nurse dreamt of a situation in which he was hooked up to a kind of knowledge CD-ROM. Verifiable knowledge from all imaginable fields was then transmitted to him that he was able to recall in the morning. There was such a flood of information that it seemed a whole encyclopedia was transmitted at night. The majority of facts were outside his personal knowledge base and reached technical details about which he knew absolutely nothing. When hyper communication occurs, one can observe in the DNA as well as in the human being special phenomena. The Russian scientists irradiated DNA samples with laser light. On screen a typical wave pattern was formed. When they removed the DNA sample, the wave pattern did not disappear, it remained. Many control experiments showed that the pattern still came from the removed sample, whose energy field apparently remained by itself. This effect is now called phantom DNA effect. It is surmised that energy from outside of space and time still flows through the activated wormholes after the DNA was removed. The side effect encountered most often in hyper communication also in human beings are inexplicable electromagnetic fields in the vicinity of the persons concerned. Electronic devices like CD players and the like can be irritated and cease to function for hours. When the electromagnetic field slowly dissipates, the devices function normally again. Many healers and psychics know this effect from their work. The better the atmosphere and the energy, the more frustrating it is that the recording device stops functioning and recording exactly at that moment. And repeated switching on and off after the session does not restore function yet, but next morning all is back to normal. Perhaps this is reassuring to read for many, as it has nothing to do with them being technically inept, it means they are good at hyper communication. In their book “Vernetzte Intelligenz” (Networked Intelligence), Grazyna Gosar and Franz Bludorf explain these connections precisely and clearly. The authors also quote sources presuming that in earlier times humanity had been, just like the animals, very strongly connected to the group consciousness and acted as a group. To develop and experience individuality we humans however had to forget hyper communication almost completely. Now that we are fairly stable in our individual consciousness, we can create a new form of group consciousness, namely one, in which we attain access to all information via our DNA without being forced or remotely controlled about what to do with that information. We now know that just as on the internet our DNA can feed its proper data into the network, can call up data from the network and can establish contact with other participants in the network. Remote healing, telepathy or “remote sensing” about the state of relatives etc.. can thus be explained. Some animals know also from afar when their owners plan to return home. That can be freshly interpreted and explained via the concepts of group consciousness and hyper communication. Any collective consciousness cannot be sensibly used over any period of time without a distinctive individuality. Otherwise we would revert to a primitive herd instinct that is easily manipulated. Hyper communication in the new millennium means something quite different: Researchers think that if humans with full individuality would regain group consciousness, they would have a god-like power to create, alter and shape things on Earth! AND humanity is collectively moving toward such a group consciousness of the new kind. Fifty percent of today’s children will be problem children as soon as the go to school. The system lumps everyone together and demands adjustment. But the individuality of today’s children is so strong that that they refuse this adjustment and giving up their idiosyncrasies in the most diverse ways. At the same time more and more clairvoyant children are born [see the book “China’s Indigo Children” by Paul Dong or the chapter about Indigos in my book “Nutze die taeglichen Wunder”(Make Use of the Daily Wonders)]. Something in those children is striving more and more towards the group consciousness of the new kind, and it will no longer be suppressed. As a rule, weather for example is rather difficult to influence by a single individual. But it may be influenced by a group consciousness (nothing new to some tribes doing it in their rain dances). Weather is strongly influenced by Earth resonance frequencies, the so-called Schumann frequencies. But those same frequencies are also produced in our brains, and when many people synchronize their thinking or individuals (spiritual masters, for instance) focus their thoughts in a laser-like fashion, then it is scientifically speaking not at all surprising if they can thus influence weather. Researchers in group consciousness have formulated the theory of Type I civilizations. A humanity that developed a group consciousness of the new kind would have neither environmental problems nor scarcity of energy. For if it were to use its mental power as a unified civilization, it would have control of the energies of its home planet as a natural consequence. And that includes all natural catastrophes!!! A theoretical Type II civilization would even be able to control all energies of their home galaxy. In my book “Nutze die taeglichen Wunder,” I have described an example of this: Whenever a great many people focus their attention or consciousness on something similar like Christmas time, football world championship or the funeral of Lady Diana in England then certain random number generators in computers start to deliver ordered numbers instead of the random ones. An ordered group consciousness creates order in its whole surroundings! When a great number of people get together very closely, potentials of violence also dissolve. It looks as if here, too, a kind of humanitarian consciousness of all humanity is created.(The Global Consciousness Project) To come back to the DNA: It apparently is also an organic superconductor that can work at normal body temperature. Artificial superconductors require extremely low temperatures of between 200 and 140°C to function. As one recently learned, all superconductors are able to store light and thus information. This is a further explanation of how the DNA can store information. There is another phenomenon linked to DNA and wormholes. Normally, these supersmall wormholes are highly unstable and are maintained only for the tiniest fractions of a second. Under certain conditions stable wormholes can organize themselves which then form distinctive vacuum domains in which for example gravity can transform into electricity. Vacuum domains are self-radiant balls of ionized gas that contain considerable amounts of energy. There are regions in Russia where such radiant balls appear very often. Following the ensuing confusion the Russians started massive research programs leading finally to some of the discoveries mentions above. Many people know vacuum domains as shiny balls in the sky. The attentive look at them in wonder and ask themselves, what they could be. I thought once: “Hello up there. If you happen to be a UFO, fly in a triangle.” And suddenly, the light balls moved in a triangle. Or they shot across the sky like ice hockey pucks. They accelerated from zero to crazy speeds while sliding gently across the sky. One is left gawking and I have, as many others, too, thought them to be UFOs. Friendly ones, apparently, as they flew in triangles just to please me. Now the Russians found in the regions, where vacuum domains appear often that sometimes fly as balls of light from the ground upwards into the sky, that these balls can be guided by thought. One has found out since that vacuum domains emit waves of low frequency as they are also produced in our brains. And because of this similarity of waves they are able to react to our thoughts. To run excitedly into one that is on ground level might not be such a great idea, because those balls of light can contain immense energies and are able to mutate our genes. They can, they don’t necessarily have to, one has to say. For many spiritual teachers also produce such visible balls or columns of light in deep meditation or during energy work which trigger decidedly pleasant feelings and do not cause any harm. Apparently this is also dependent on some inner order and on the quality and provenance of the vacuum domain. There are some spiritual teachers (the young Englishman Ananda, for example) with whom nothing is seen at first, but when one tries to take a photograph while they sit and speak or meditate in hyper communication, one gets only a picture of a white cloud on a chair. In some Earth healing projects such light effects also appear on photographs. Simply put, these phenomena have to do with gravity and anti-gravity forces that are also exactly described in the book and with ever more stable wormholes and hyper communication and thus with energies from outside our time and space structure. Earlier generations that got in contact with such hyper communication experiences and visible vacuum domains were convinced that an angel had appeared before them. And we cannot be too sure to what forms of consciousness we can get access when using hyper communication. Not having scientific proof for their actual existence (people having had such experiences do NOT all suffer from hallucinations) does not mean that there is no metaphysical background to it. We have simply made another giant step towards understanding our reality. Official science also knows of gravity anomalies on Earth (that contribute to the formation of vacuum domains), but only of ones of below one percent. But recently gravity anomalies have been found of between three and four percent. One of these places is Rocca di Papa, south of Rome (exact location in the book “Vernetzte Intelligenz” plus several others). Round objects of all kinds, from balls to full buses, roll uphill. But the stretch in Rocca di Papa is rather short, and defying logic sceptics still flee to the theory of optical illusion (which it cannot be due to several features of the location).
Human arrogance has always assumed we are evolutionarily superior to plants, but it appears that modern science may be the antidote to this egocentric view.
Researchers in the UK have discovered an extensive underground network connecting plants by their roots, serving as a complex interplant communication system… a “plant Internet,” if you will.
One organism is responsible for this amazing biochemical highway: a type of fungus called mycorrhizae. Researchers from the University of Aberdeen devised a clever experiment to isolate the effects of these extensive underground networks. They grew sets of broad bean plants, allowing some to develop mycorrhizal nets, but preventing them in others.
They also eliminated the plants’ normal through-the-air communication by covering the plants with bags. Then they infested some of the plants with aphids. The results were remarkable.1
Most people have no idea how important mycorrhizal fungi are for plant growth. They really are one of the keys to successful growth of plants. In my own garden, I just purchased a 15 gallon vortex compost brewer in which I grow these fungi in large quantities for my ornamental and edible landscape.
The aphid-infested plants were able to signal the other plants, connected through mycorrhizae, of an imminent attack—giving them a “heads up” and affording them time to mount their own chemical defenses in order to prevent infestation.
In this case, the alerted bean plants deployed aphid-repelling chemicals and other chemicals that attract wasps, which are aphids’ natural predators. The bean plants that were not connected received no such warning and became easy prey for the pesky insects.
This study is not the first to discover plant communication along mycorrhizal networks. A 2012 article in the Journal of Chemical Ecology describes mycorrhizae-induced resistance as part of plants’ systemic “immune response,” protecting them from pathogens, herbivores, and parasitic plants.2
And in 2010, Song et al published a report about the interplant communication of tomato plants, in which they wrote:3
“CMNs [common mycorrhizal networks] may function as a plant-plant underground communication conduit whereby disease resistance and induced defense signals can be transferred between the healthy and pathogen-infected neighboring plants, suggesting that plants can ‘eavesdrop’ on defense signals from the pathogen-challenged neighbors through CMNs to activate defenses before being attacked themselves.”
The name mycorrhiza literally means fungus-root.4 These fungi form a symbiotic relationship with the plant, colonizing the roots and sending extremely fine filaments far out into the soil that act as root extensions. Not only do these networks sound the alarm about invaders, but the filaments are more effective in nutrient and water absorption than the plant roots themselves—mycorrhizae increase the nutrient absorption of the plant 100 to 1,000 times.5
In one thimbleful of healthy soil, you can find several MILES of fungal filaments, all releasing powerful enzymes that help dissolve tightly bound soil nutrients, such as organic nitrogen, phosphorus, and iron. The networks can be enormous—one was found weaving its way through an entire Canadian forest, with each tree connected to dozens of others over distances of 30 meters.
These fungi have been fundamental to plant growth for 460 million years. Even more interesting, mycorrhizae can even connect plants of different species, perhaps allowing interspecies communication.6
More than 90 percent of plant species have these naturally-occurring symbiotic relationships with mycorrhizae, but in order for these CMNs to exist, the soil must be undisturbed. Erosion, tillage, cultivation, compaction, and other human activities destroy these beneficial fungi, and they are slow to colonize once disrupted. Therefore, intensively farmed plants don’t develop mycorrhizae and are typically less healthy, as a result.
The discovery that fungi may be providing plants with an early warning system has profound implications for how we grow our food. We may be able to arrange for “sacrificial plants” specifically designed for pest infestation so that the network can warn, and thereby arm, the rest of the crop.7 In order to feed the world’s increasing population, farmers must return to working WITH nature, instead of against it.
Raising food is really about building soil, and modern agricultural practices are degrading million year-old topsoils, without any attention to rebuilding them. Spreading toxic chemicals, monoculture, using genetically engineered seed, generating toxic runoff and destroying biodiversity are all examples of working against nature. Mycorrhizae not only assist the plants in staying vital and healthy, but they enrich the soil and improve its productivity, add organic matter, protect crops from drought, and increase the overall balance and resilience of the ecosystem.
Many fungi are as beneficial to people as they are to plants. Mushrooms are powerhouses when it comes to nutrition, with high-quality protein, enzymes, antioxidants, and B vitamins.
About 100 species of mushrooms are being studied for their health-promoting benefits, and about a half dozen really stand out for their ability to deliver a tremendous boost to your immune system. Studies have shown that mushrooms can combat infectious disease (including smallpox), inflammation, cancer and even help regenerate nerves. A compound from the Coriolus versicolor mushroom was recently found to significantly slow hemangiosarcoma in dogs, a deadly cancer.
Mushrooms are also nature’s recycling system, according to mycologist Paul Stamets. Various mushrooms can break down the toxins in nerve gas and clean up petroleum waste.
Mushrooms and their parent mycelium break down rocks and organic matter, turning them into soil. The mycelia, just like the mycorrhizal network, occupy landscapes in a web-like mat that, in some cases, stretches across thousands of acres. Stamets describes this intricate, branching network as “the Earth’s Internet” because it functions as a complex communication highway. There is also evidence mycelia are “sentient” beings that demonstrate the ability to learn. Speaking of cool and calculating…
Now that the secret’s out, companies are beginning to offer mycorrhizae to home gardeners and commercial farmers alike. If you have an organic garden, adding a sprinkle of mycorrhizae, along with good organic fertilizer, is a great way to ensure your garden will be the envy of your neighborhood.
For tips on how to use this in your garden at home, I recommend watching the “smiling gardener” video above. It’s important to remember that mycorrhizae must be applied to the roots of your plants. If you just sprinkle the granules onto the soil and they don’t make contact with the roots within about 48 hours, they’ll die and your efforts will be wasted. So, you can make a “tea” out of it and apply it as a spray, or you can rub a small amount directly onto the roots of your transplant. But it has to come into direct contact with some part of the root.
The only vegetable garden occupants that will not benefit from mycorrhizae are your brassicas (members of the mustard family, such as cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, turnips, radishes, etc.), because they don’t allow this colonization.8 But all your other veggies will love you for it. The benefits will be even greater in a year or two, after the mycorrhizae really have a chance to grow and spread.
Also, remember to refrain from tilling and manipulating the soil. This isn’t necessary and is actually counterproductive, as it disrupts helpful organisms and crushes their tunnels.9 Just topdress your garden with a blend of good compost and topsoil each year, and leave the bed alone, which will allow those beneficial organisms to grow and flourish, undisturbed.
When you practice ecofriendly gardening, you greatly lessen your need for fertilizers and herbicides, reduce your need for watering, and reduce runoff and erosion, while giving your garden plants the best nutrition and resistance to disease. And best of all, a healthy veggie garden means more nutrients passed along to you!
We have two ears and one mouth, so we should listen more than we say. ~Zeno of Citium
We are living in a world where people feel disconnected from each other. A feeling of alienation is pervading our culture, and there is a deep reason why this is so.
The reason is that we have not yet learned to genuinely communicate.
This is most obvious when observing two people while they are having a conversation with each other. During a conversation, most people don’t truly listen to what the other is saying. Of course, they do hear words but that is very different from listening.
To listen means to understand the meaning that lies behind words. It means to be totally absorbed into what the other is trying to communicate. It means to be focused on the essence of what the other wants to convey through words.
By not being able to listen, we fail to communicate. Naturally, we end up feeling lonely and alienated. When we cannot understand others and others cannot understand us, we feel disconnected from the rest of humanity. When we have nobody with whom we can truly share our thoughts and emotions, we end up being depressed and develop various social phobias.
To feel connected with those around us, we need to start communicating on a deeper level. The basic and most important step to achieve this is by learning how to listen. Only in this way can we have a heartfelt communication where we can truly share with one another.
When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new.
Here is a little yet concise guide on how to master the art of listening:
1. Desire to learn
A conversation is always an opportunity to learn something new. Everyone has a great story to tell, and we can learn from anybody. Many times when someone is talking to us we are just pretending to listen—we hear words, we nod our heads, we show that we understand, but in reality we don’t. The reason why this happens is that we are not truly interested to know about another’s story. We are so filled with our inner chatter, our problems and concerns, that we don’t have the mental space that is necessary to allow another’s story enter our lives. To genuinely listen, we need to cultivate the desire to learn, to understand—we need to care for what the other has to say.
2. Keep an open mind
Sometimes our ideologies are blocking new ideas from entering our minds. In addition, our opinions, superstitions, and expectations usually color the meaning of what others are trying to communicate to us through the spoken word. When listening to someone talking to you, make sure to leave your belief systems aside for a while and just keep an open mind.
3. Be receptive
While engaged in a conversation, most of us are continuously interrupting people, not letting others say what they want to say. We are continuously on the lookout for an opportunity to speak about our own story. In this way, however, we do not allow others to express themselves and communicate their thoughts and emotions to us. As a result, we never get to understand them. When having a conversation, make sure not to hurriedly interrupt or respond, and stop trying to solve things out or reach to quick conclusions. Just listen.
4. Be patient
To understand another takes a great deal of patience. Usually we are in such a hurry that we don’t have the time anymore to get together and listen to each other. And even when we do, we do so in such a quick way that we don’t get anything out of it. We never get intimate with one another—we don’t allow ourselves to reach another’s mind, heart and soul. From now on, when you are having a conversation, don’t push it. Give it the time that is needed and just let it flow, allowing yourself to squeeze the juice out of it.
Why do people spend so much time talking about themselves?
Human beings are social animals. We spendlarge portions of our waking hours communicating with others, and the possibilities for conversation are seemingly endless—we can make plans and crack jokes; reminisce about the past and dream about the future; share ideas and spread information. This ability to communicate—with almost anyone, about almost anything—has played a central role in our species’ ability to not just survive, but flourish.
How do you choose to use this immensely powerful tool—communication? Do your conversations serve as doorways to new ideas and experiences? Do they serve as tools for solving the problems of disease and famine?
Or do you mostly just like to talk about yourself?
If you’re like most people, your own thoughts and experiences may be your favorite topic of conversation. On average, people spend 60 percent of conversationstalking about themselves—and this figure jumps to 80 percent when communicating via social media platforms such as Twitter or Facebook.
Why, in a world full of ideas to discover, develop, and discuss, do people spend the majority of their time talking about themselves? Recent research suggests a simple explanation: because itfeels good.
In order to investigate the possibility that self-disclosure is intrinsically rewarding, researchers from the Harvard University Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). This research tool highlights relative levels of activity in various neural regions by tracking changes in blood flow; by pairing fMRI output with behavioral data, researchers can gain insight into the relationships between behavior and neural activity. In this case, they were interested in whether talking about the self would correspond with increased neural activity in areas of the brain associated with motivation and reward.
In an initial fMRI experiment, the researchers asked 195 participants to discuss both their own opinions and personality traits and the opinions and traits of others, then looked for differences in neural activation between self-focused and other-focused answers. Because the same participants discussed the same topics in relation to both themselves and others, researchers were able to use the resulting data to directly compare neural activation during self-disclosure to activation during other-focused communication.
Three neural regions stood out. Unsurprisingly, and in line with previous research, self-disclosure resulted in relatively higher levels of activation in areas of the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) generally associated with self-related thought. The two remaining regions identified by this experiment, however, had never before been associated with thinking about the self: the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) and the ventral tegmental area (VTA), both parts of the mesolimbic dopamine system.
These newly implicated areas of the brain are generally associated with reward, and have been linked to the pleasurable feelings and motivational states associated with stimuli such as sex, cocaine, and good food. Activation of this system when discussing the self suggests that self-disclosure, like other more traditionally recognized stimuli, may be inherently pleasurable—and that people may be motivated to talk about themselves more than other topics (no matter how interesting or important these non-self topics may be).
This experiment left at least one question unanswered, however. Although participants were revealing information about themselves, it was unclear whether or not anyone was paying attention; they were essentially talking without knowing who (if anyone) was on the other end of the line. Thus, the reward- and motivation-related neural responses ostensibly produced by self-disclosure could be produced by the act of disclosure—of revealing information about the self to someone else—but they could also be a result of focusing on the self more generally—whether or not anyone was listening.
In order to distinguish between these two possibilities, the researchers conducted a follow-up experiment. In this experiment, participants were asked to bring a friend or relative of their choosing to the lab with them; these companions were asked to wait in an adjoining room while participants answered questions in a fMRI machine. As in the first study, participants responded to questions about either their own opinions and attitudes or the opinions and attitudes of someone else; unlike in the first study, these participants were explicitly told whether their responses would be “shared” or “private”; shared responses were relayed in real time to each participant’s companion and private responses were never seen by anyone, including the researchers.
In this study, answering questions about the self always resulted in greater activation of neural regions associated with motivation and reward (i.e., NAcc, VTA) than answering questions about others, and answering questions publicly always resulted in greater activation of these areas than answering questions privately. Importantly, these effects were additive; both talking about the self and talking to someone else were associated with reward, and doing both produced greater activation in reward-related neural regions than doing either separately.
These results suggest that self-disclosure—revealing personal information to others—produces the highest level of activation in neural regions associated with motivation and reward, but that introspection—thinking or talking about the self, in the absence of an audience—also produces a noticeable surge of neural activity in these regions. Talking about the self is intrinsically rewarding, even if no one is listening.
Talking about the self is not at odds with the adaptive functions of communication. Disclosing private information to others can increase interpersonal liking and aid in the formation of new social bonds—outcomes that influence everything from physical survival to subjective happiness. Talking about one’s own thoughts and self-perceptions can lead to personal growth via external feedback. And sharing information gained through personal experiences can lead to performance advantages by enabling teamwork and shared responsibility for memory. Self-disclosure can have positive effects on everything from the most basic of needs—physical survival—to personal growth through enhanced self-knowledge; self-disclosure, like other forms of communication, seems to be adaptive.
You may like to talk about yourself simply because it feels good—because self-disclosure produces a burst of activity in neural regions associated with pleasure, motivation, and reward. But, in this case, feeling good may be no more than a means to an end—it may be the immediate reward that jump-starts a cycle of self-sharing, ultimately leading to wide varieties of long-term benefits.
Healthy communication is the cornerstone of cultivating and sustaining healthy relationships. We connect and express ourselves through the spoken and written word, which ultimately allows us to develop our “voice” in the world.
How well you communicate directly correlates with how understood and heard you feel by the response you receive from the other end of the dialogue.
When it comes to communicating through text or email, the rules and guidelines for good communication don’t change. The integrity of your words should remain the same, and all the skills and etiquette you would apply in real life need to be applied.
Words are powerful with or without voice, and it’s even more important to be clear when tone is absent. Words are vulnerable to being twisted and misconstrued when they lack intonation, and human expression.
How many times have you sent an email or text to someone only to find that they have completely misinterpreted or misread what you were trying to say? Your correspondence with others reflects your ability to express yourself in real time, so if you struggle with getting your point across in general, you will most likely bump into obstacles when trying to do it through the written word.
Whether you are writing a work email, communicating with your Ex about something uncomfortable, or responding to a difficult situation, here are 5 skills to help you draft better correspondence.
These are skills that work both on and off the computer or smart phone, and should be applied in any conversation that requires a delicate touch.
In any correspondence you always want to make your intention clear. There is usually one point you want to get across, but if you just let your words flow without much reflection you are bound to step into a landmine. Before you even start drafting clarify your ultimate intention. Is it to get the person to do something? Are you looking for an answer or response? Do you want an apology? Knowing what you are hoping to get will increase your chances of actually achieving that goal. Asking, “what is my intention?” is a good practice before beginning any conversation.
2. Establish boundaries
Believe it or not, boundaries can be conveyed as much through written word as they can in person. A boundary is a clear line defining what you are willing to accept or tolerate, and what is too much. Boundaries are conveyed through language like “I can’t allow you to…” or “I cannot accept the fact that…”
Boundaries can also come from your strong belief in how you feel. This is different then needing to be right, it’s more about being very clear that your experience is valid and true for you. This works when you are being accused of something, or blamed for something you don’t feel you did. A response to this might look something like “I appreciate your perspective, but I am confident that this isn’t true for me…”
3. Empathy
Using language that conveys a sense of empathy in your correspondence is always a good practice. Everyone wants to feel acknowledged and understood on some level, so you will need to pause and understand where the other person is coming from. Even if you don’t agree, it’s always a good idea to say that you can understand why or how they see things the way they do, and to let them know that you understand their position on the issues at hand.
Empathy is diffuser in communication, and it can calm even the most upset person. Look at it like a virtual hug. Empathy is contagious, and it’s hard to respond to it in a negative way.
4. Accountability
In any two-way conversation there are always two opinions, two perspectives and two subjective experiences. It’s rarely always the other person. Being accountable to how you might have contributed to the breakdown of what is happening, or acknowledging that you didn’t communicate well is a great habit to develop. Stepping back and asking yourself how you could have done things differently will help you clarify your point as well. Simply writing something like “I recognize that I have some responsibility in this situation…” opens up space for the other person to do the same.
5. Always maintain integrity
The written word can be as much a trigger as speaking with someone in person. There are some situations where even the most skillfully drafted communication will still ignite a negative response from the other party. If you are dealing with verbal attacks, and you know you aren’t going to get anywhere step out of the power struggle and end it with integrity. This is a graceful exit without being pulled down to the other person’s level.
Stepping out requires letting go of needing to feel validated or heard, and accepting that this person simply cannot engage on a healthy and productive level. This is a great practice in both virtual and real life because it shows you that you are always in control of how you feel, and how you respond.
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