Gratitude

The 7 Habits of Highly Stress-Resilient Minds

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Are you suf­fer­ing from chron­ic stress? Many of us are—whether we’re stressed out by our jobs, com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ships, care­giv­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties, or the gen­er­al state of the world.

That’s where Elis­sa Epel’s new book, The Stress Pre­scrip­tion, comes in. A health psy­chol­o­gist and direc­tor of the Aging, Metab­o­lism, and Emo­tions Cen­ter at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San Fran­cis­co, Epel explains how stress affects our bod­ies and minds—including our health, hap­pi­ness, and longevity—and how to man­age it in the best way possible.

Too many of us are in a con­stant state of alert­ness, she argues, which makes us ill-pre­pared to nav­i­gate the every­day stres­sors and big­ger upsets that occur when liv­ing a full life. We may think we’re relaxed, but we’re actu­al­ly main­tain­ing a low-lev­el vig­i­lance that’s hard on our bod­ies. Con­stant phys­i­o­log­i­cal strain can short­en our telom­eres (the caps at the ends of our DNA that pro­tect it from aging)—a process she wrote about in her best­selling book, The Telom­ere Effect.

Epel empha­sizes that not all stress is inher­ent­ly bad—and that we shouldn’t aim for a stress-free life. We need our phys­i­o­log­i­cal stress response to sur­vive, as it can come in handy when we’re gear­ing up to per­form or fac­ing an actu­al life-or-death threat. [Read more…] about The 7 Habits of High­ly Stress-Resilient Minds

On cognitive-physical training, brain biomarkers, dementia, ketamine, brain teasers, riddles and more

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Wel­come to the last 2022 edi­tion of Sharp­Brains e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing a few select­ed brain health news and fun teasers to chal­lenge your brain and help us all think out­side the box.

#1. “Every­one agrees that Google Glass failed when it came to mar­ket, but to me, it’s a sym­bol of hope … It inspired peo­ple to think beyond tra­di­tion­al ways of mov­ing about our envi­ron­ment. Instead of look­ing down at a device, we could look out at the world and have an over­lay of dig­i­tal infor­ma­tion. It was one of the first steps in physical–digital con­ver­gence that we are see­ing today through­out many indus­tries. And as some­one who has cre­at­ed many inven­tions that nev­er left the lab or were too ear­ly for the mar­ket, I love the fact that Glass came out at all!” — wise words by neu­rotech entre­pre­neur Dr. Cori Lath­an in her new (and excel­lent) book. See Tech­nol­o­gy as a bridge in time: Shap­ing the future of brain health via today’s innovations–including those that “fail”

#2. “Some peo­ple want to do cog­ni­tive train­ing while mov­ing rather than sit­ting down, and that real­ly spoke to me as a pos­si­bil­i­ty for real ben­e­fits giv­en anec­do­tal sto­ries about games like ‘Dance Dance Rev­o­lu­tion.’” — Joaquin A. Anguera, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at UCSF and direc­tor of Neuroscape‘s Clin­i­cal Divi­sion. See Study: A com­bined cog­ni­tive-phys­i­cal train­ing approach may enhance both mind and body as we age

#3. “Giv­en that ketamine’s rapid action and unex­pect­ed dis­so­cia­tive effects make it a poten­tial­ly worth­while option for treat­ing men­tal health prob­lems, we are on a mis­sion to unpack this mys­tery, at the cross­roads between phar­ma­col­o­gy and neu­ro­science.” See Study iden­ti­fies cog­ni­tive ben­e­fits of ket­a­mine in patients with treat­ment-resis­tant depression

#4. “The grat­i­tude writ­ing group main­tained grat­i­tude lev­els and decreased stress and neg­a­tive affect at one-month post-inter­ven­tion” — that main­te­nance aspect is espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing. See Thanks­giv­ing works: Grat­i­tude jour­nal­ing seen to low­er stress and neg­a­tive cog­ni­tive processes

#5. Impres­sive new funding–especially giv­en mar­ket conditions–with a goal to iden­ti­fy “brain bio­mark­ers by ana­lyz­ing EEG activ­i­ty, behav­ioral task per­for­mance, wear­able data, genet­ics, and oth­er fac­tors to match each patient with the right Alto drug.” See Pre­ci­sion psy­chi­a­try pio­neer Alto Neu­ro­science rais­es $35M to advance dig­i­tal bio­mark­er-to-treat­ment platform

#6. Some bad news. See The FDA ends pre­cer­ti­fi­ca­tion (Pre-Cert) pilot pro­gram, say­ing new author­i­ty required to reg­u­late soft­ware as a med­ical device (SaMD)

#7. And some great news: “(Péter Hudomi­et, study’s lead author) said it’s also pos­si­ble that, giv­en numer­ous stud­ies being released on steps to take to avoid demen­tia, some of the decline may be attrib­uted to peo­ple heed­ing such advice.” See Study finds sharp decrease (near­ly one-third) in the preva­lence of demen­tia among those 65+ in the Unit­ed States

#8. Final­ly, here are a few brain teasers to stim­u­late those neu­rons in your tem­po­ral lobes and to help us all think out­side the box.

 

Have a healthy and won­der­ful 2023!

 

Thanksgiving works: Gratitude journaling seen to lower stress and negative cognitive processes

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Dur­ing the ear­ly days of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, many peo­ple suf­fered extreme stress. Peo­ple couldn’t work and faced finan­cial anx­i­ety, they felt lone­ly and iso­lat­ed, they wor­ried about catch­ing a dead­ly dis­ease or giv­ing it to some­one they loved, and their men­tal health suffered.

For researcher Erin Fekete, of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Indi­anapo­lis, the unfold­ing pan­dem­ic was an oppor­tu­ni­ty to answer a long­stand­ing ques­tion about the best way to cope in moments of suf­fer­ing. Do we get more relief by reflect­ing on our thoughts and feel­ings about what we’re going through, or from turn­ing our minds to the pos­i­tive things in our lives? [Read more…] about Thanks­giv­ing works: Grat­i­tude jour­nal­ing seen to low­er stress and neg­a­tive cog­ni­tive processes

On cognitive training, muscle mass, neurostimulation, brain teasers, apps, and more

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing time­ly brain & inno­va­tion news and a few fun teasers to test your work­ing memory.

#1. Study: Build­ing mus­cle mass helps delay cog­ni­tive decline beyond the val­ue of exer­cise itself

“Teas­ing out exact­ly how mus­cle helps the brain remains a chal­lenge. There are plen­ty of indi­rect links … But Dr. Chevalier’s results sug­gest there may be more direct mech­a­nisms too. One pos­si­bil­i­ty is the role of myokines, a set of hor­mone-like mol­e­cules pro­duced by mus­cle cells that can trav­el to the brain and influ­ence mood, learn­ing and oth­er cog­ni­tive func­tions. Greater mus­cle mass may also help keep blood glu­cose lev­els in check, pro­tect­ing the brain from damage.”

#2. Clin­i­cians and aca­d­e­mics should engage users when review­ing apps, study finds

“More than half of the app rat­ings showed dis­agree­ment between par­tic­i­pants and pro­fes­sion­als … Par­tic­i­pants par­tic­u­lar­ly val­ued cer­tain aspects of men­tal health apps, which appear to be over­looked by pro­fes­sion­al review­ers. These includ­ed func­tions such as the abil­i­ty to track and mea­sure men­tal health and pro­vid­ing gen­er­al men­tal health edu­ca­tion. The cost of apps was among the most impor­tant fac­tors for participants.”

#3. Com­bined tDCS neu­rostim­u­la­tion and cog­ni­tive train­ing found to improve work­ing mem­o­ry among old­er adults–especially those with low­er start­ing capacity

“… indi­vid­ual char­ac­ter­is­tics influ­enced the out­come of com­bined cog­ni­tive train­ing and tDCS reg­i­mens, with the inter­ven­tion selec­tive­ly ben­e­fit­ing old-old adults with low­er work­ing mem­o­ry capac­i­ty. Future work should con­sid­er devel­op­ing indi­vid­u­al­ized treat­ments by con­sid­er­ing indi­vid­ual dif­fer­ences in cog­ni­tive profiles.”

#4. Head­space Health’s Leslie Witt on the future of men­tal health

“I fun­da­men­tal­ly believe in the pow­er of mind­ful­ness and med­i­ta­tion tools, but they can’t serve all men­tal health needs. And par­tic­u­lar­ly when someone’s in a state of acute anx­i­ety, acute depres­sion, they need access to pro­fes­sion­al, human services…We are build­ing out what I often call the mid­dle piece, the bridge that exists between the self-serve con­tent in the Head­space app and the text-based coach­ing, telether­a­py and telepsy­chi­a­try of the Gin­ger service.”

#5. Study: Prac­tic­ing grat­i­tude helps low­er phys­i­o­log­i­cal stress lev­els of the “express­er” AND the “receiv­er”

“The impli­ca­tion here is that you should let your grat­i­tude out when you feel it … That’s not to say that you should go around and make up grat­i­tude expres­sions for no rea­son. But, when you gen­uine­ly feel grat­i­tude, you should express it.” — Christo­pher Oveis, Direc­tor of the Empa­thy & Emo­tion Lab at UCSD

#6. Tak­ing your brain vitals: Sto­ries from a tech­no-opti­mist invent­ing the future of human performance

“My vision for DANA has always been that every time you go to the doc­tor, in addi­tion to tak­ing your height, weight, blood pres­sure, and tem­per­a­ture, they will take your DANA brain vital. When mea­sur­ing your brain health becomes sec­ond nature—as com­mon as check­ing your blood pressure—it will empow­er every­one, no mat­ter their age, to spot changes soon­er and take action.” — Cori Lath­an, CEO of Anthro­Tron­ix, in her great new book.

#7. UK agen­cies to review and update reg­u­la­tion of dig­i­tal men­tal health tools

Time­ly and impor­tant work to be done by the Med­i­cines and Health­care prod­ucts Reg­u­la­to­ry Agency (MHRA) and the Nation­al Insti­tute for Health and Care Excel­lence (NICE).

#8. Last but not least, let us share a few quick brain teasers to exer­cise your work­ing mem­o­ry … enjoy!

 

Wish­ing you and yours a healthy and warm month of November

Study: Practicing gratitude helps lower physiological stress levels of the “expresser” AND the “receiver”

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Express­ing grat­i­tude nur­tures our rela­tion­ships, help­ing us to feel clos­er to our friends and roman­tic part­ners. Some research sug­gests that grate­ful peo­ple seem to cope bet­ter with stress and enjoy supe­ri­or phys­i­cal health, per­haps because of those stronger social relationships.

What about expe­ri­enc­ing grat­i­tude with peo­ple we don’t know so well—like those we work with? Could show­ing appre­ci­a­tion towards them affect our stress lev­els on the job? [Read more…] about Study: Prac­tic­ing grat­i­tude helps low­er phys­i­o­log­i­cal stress lev­els of the “express­er” AND the “receiv­er”

On uncertainty, stress, emotion regulation, and carpe diem

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Ros­ale­da at Par­que del Oeste in Madrid, Spain

Ever since it began, the pan­dem­ic has been a crash course in uncer­tain­ty. Safe behav­iors, school open­ings, vac­ci­na­tion time­lines, the job mar­ket, new variants—these have all seemed to change on a week­ly basis, threat­en­ing our sense of secu­ri­ty and stability.

Uncer­tain­ty is stress­ful and per­haps even harm­ful to our health, research sug­gests, and it can dri­ve us to cling to our social groups to the exclu­sion of oth­ers. But a new study has uncov­ered a sur­pris­ing upside to feel­ing uncer­tain: It might dri­ve us to appre­ci­ate the lit­tle things in life.

In one exper­i­ment, researchers sta­tioned on a side­walk hand­ed out fly­ers that said one of two things: “Life is unpre­dictable: Stop and smell the ros­es” or “Life is con­stant: Stop and smell the ros­es.” A short dis­tance away was a table with a dozen red ros­es on it and a sign match­ing the fly­er they’d just received. [Read more…] about On uncer­tain­ty, stress, emo­tion reg­u­la­tion, and carpe diem