Can Magnetic Therapy Relieve Pain?

The use of magnets to relieve pain dates back several centuries, as there is an almost archetypal belief that the health of the body depends upon the flow of energy, a flow that magnetism should affect. But do magnets actually relieve pain? Evidence is scanty, but we need to remain open to the possibility, writes neurologist Richard C. Senelick, MD, for the Huffington Post. He notes that reviews of the scientific literature is not encouraging. Furthermore, the usual rationales for how magnetism might work, such as moving the blood or nerve conductivity, seem unrealistic. The amount of magnetic power actually needed to have such an effect would be several degrees greater than the power of the magnets usually applied. Nevertheless, many folks will testify to the effectiveness of their magnets.

Dr. Senelick recomments that we consult our physician to determine the reason for pain before considering magnets. Do not use them in the case of pregnancy, if you are wearing any kind of electrical implant, and don’t wear them all the time.

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Can Magnetic Therapy Relieve Pain

Richard C. Senelick, M.D.

Richard C. Senelick MD is a neurologist, author, blogger and international speaker.

Posted: December 30, 2010 07:57 AM

Almost every sporting goods store, pro-shop or web page has an advertisement for therapeutic magnets with claims of pain relief and a better golf game. There are magnetic bracelets, necklaces, shoes inserts, mattress covers, head bands and, yes, dog collars. It certainly isn't new. But, is there any scientific evidence to support all of these claims?

We can go back to 16th century Switzerland and find Greta who is beyond worried about her teenage son. She works the fields every day, keeping a watchful eye on her son as he digs at the stubborn ground just two rows to her right. Will he have another one of his "fits" today: falling to the ground, muscles tightened and mouth clenched shut? She had heard a rumor that the alchemist, Paracelsus, was taking the "magical" lodestone, a type of ore that could attract iron, and grinding it into a powder, placing it into a salve and applying it to the bodies of sick people with miraculous results. Would the lodestone pull out the poisons that possess her son? She was willing to try anything.

Paracelsus' salves worked on a wide variety of maladies. It didn't matter to Greta that William Gilbert, physician to Queen Elizabeth I, had pointed out that grinding the lodestone destroyed its magnetic properties and therefore the "magical" properties.

Fast forward to 1799 and Hans, a well-to-do German lawyer, is seeking help for his blinding headaches. The powders and potions serve only to make him vomit, sometimes giving relief, but still there are those times when he cannot work. He seeks the help of Dr. Franz Mesmer, an Austrian physician who is well-known for his use of hypnotism and psychoanalysis, from which the term "mesmerize" was coined. Mesmer opened a fashionable Magnetic Healing Salon in Paris where patients sit around in a circle and clutch magnetic rods protruding from a vat. Mesmer realizes that he can merely wave a magnetic rod over the afflicted person's head with the same result, and calls the effect "animal magnetism." After two treatments, Hans is free of headaches and sends his wealthy, influential friends and clients to Paris on a regular basis.

King Louis XVI forms a commission to explore the validity of animal magnetism, reaching across the ocean to appoint Benjamin Franklin, the world's leading authority on electricity. Utilizing a double-blinded study, one in which some patients were exposed to the magnetic rod and others to just a plain metal rod, the commission proves that animal magnetism is no more than a placebo. But, it never mattered to Hans and his friends, for their headaches and assorted maladies were long gone.

Magnets remained in the background until they appeared in an 1890s Sears catalog proclaiming foot inserts that cured sore feet. Are things starting to sound familiar? At the same time, Dr. Daniel Palmer opened his School of Magnetic Cure, but soon found that his patients improved without magnets by just utilizing a "laying on of the hands." He created the Palmer School of Chiropractic Therapy. Dr. Albert Adams claimed that each organ was tuned to a particular electromagnetic wavelength, but this was one step too far and at the turn of the 20th century, the American Medical Association named him the "Dean of the 20th Century Charlatans!" That quieted things down for almost another 100 years. We are now back in a resurgence of using magnets and titanium accessories and devices to treat painful conditions.

Who is right? Are all the new magnetic devices just a resurgence of the presumed quackery of the past or have we overlooked a valuable medical device that might give millions of people pain relief? Either way, it is a billion-dollar-a-year business and no one is waiting for science before they issue their claims, or before desperate people strap onto their bodies what might be glorified refrigerator magnets.

Magnetic Therapy
If magnets work, they must have some physiological effect on the human body. They must, in some way, influence the tissue, cells, fluid or blood over which they are applied. Advocates for magnetic therapy have proposed a number of ways in which the magnets work on our bodies.

·                     Blood Flow: Many ads and brochures claim that blood contains iron and that magnets increase blood flow under the area where they are applied and promote healing. Although blood does contain electrically charged ions, it is diamagnetic and strong magnets actually repel blood. Another problem is that the effect of surface magnets is too small to affect blood flow and overcome the pressure-driven turbulent flow of normal blood. As a simple experiment, place one of these therapeutic magnets in the palm of your hand. If blood flow actually increased, you would expect the skin around the magnet to pink up and become warm. It doesn't.

Fluid and Swelling: Others claim that the magnets line up the water molecules in our bodies and, in this way, decrease swelling and promote healing. However, even large magnets like those used in an MRI scanner do not line up water molecules. A typical surface magnet is 800 Gauss; a Gauss unit representing one unit of magnetic field density. An MRI scan magnet generates 30,000-40,000 Gauss and yet has not been shown to have any biological effect on humans. If they did, they would have serious restrictions on their use.

·                     Nerve Conduction: Some manufacturers claim alterations in the way that our nerves and nerve cells conduct electricity. But, it takes a large 24 tesla magnet to decrease nerve conduction velocities by only 10 percent. The typical MRI scanner uses a 1-1.5 tesla magnet, where one tesla equals 10,000 Gauss.

Why All The Excitement?
Is it all about money and a placebo effect or is the cynical, skeptical scientific community missing something? I have spoken to numerous patients and people I have met who stand by the benefits of magnetic therapy.

The problem is that we have many clinical and anecdotal claims of a therapeutic benefit with little science to back them up. To date, everyone points to a few studies demonstrating a positive effect. One study was in the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in November 1997 by Dr. Carlos Vallbona of the Baylor University School of Medicine. Dr. Vallbona was skeptical of the effectiveness of magnets until he strapped one on his own painful knee with dramatic relief.

Vallbona studied 50 post-polio patients with painful arthritic joints. He randomly gave active or inactive magnets to the patients to strap onto their painful trigger points for 45 minutes. After 45 minutes, 76 percent of the "active" magnet patients reported pain relief while only 19 percent of the "inactive" group reported less pain. He has no explanation for this phenomenon, but appropriately encourages further double-blinded research.

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health published an excellent current review on "Magnets for Pain." After reviewing all of the scientific literature, including double-blinded studies, they conclude that the "majority of rigorous trials, however, have found no effect on pain." They do point out that there are many variables still to be studied such as the strength of the magnet, frequency of use, type of magnet and length of time it is used.

So What Should We Do?
It is so easy to be cynical when people are making millions of dollars with an unproven device. On the other hand, it is hard to ignore all the examples in history where sanctimonious experts were wrong. Who would have really believed that aspirin would be one of the mainline therapies to prevent heart disease and stroke? The poor physician from New Zealand was laughed out of many-a-meeting before it was commonly accepted that bacteria play an important role in peptic ulcer disease. Many-a-scientist has literally lost his head for being ahead of his time.

We are faced with an entrepreneurial army loaded with vague and unsupported claims, pseudoscience and a mischaracterization of what we really do know as fact. On the other hand, there is always the chance that they may be right for all the wrong reasons. This is certainly nothing new for the field of medicine.

For now, proceed with a healthy dose of skepticism and a few common sense points:

·                     First see a physician and find out why you have pain. You wouldn't want to treat a serious illness with a magnet.

·                     Don't use them if you are pregnant. We just don't know what they do.

·                     Don't use them if you are wearing a pacemaker or electrical implant like an insulin pump or brain stimulator.

·                     Don't wear them all the time. Everything in moderation.

I must admit that is tempting to run out and buy one of the new titanium (non-magnetic) necklaces that all the baseball players are wearing. They seem to be the latest fad. My back and golf game could both use a little magic, but I think I will wait for a little science on the subject before I buy what may be little more than modern day snake oil.

References
1. Carter R, Aspy CB, Mold J. The effectiveness of magnet therapy for treatment of wrist pain attributed to carpal tunnel syndrome. Journal of Family Practice. 2002;51(1):38-40.
2. Collacott EA, Zimmerman JT, White DW, et al. Bipolar permanent magnets for the treatment of chronic low back pain: a pilot study. Journal of the American Medical Association. 2000;283(10):1322-1325.
3. Magnets For Pain:. Accessed at http://nccam.nih.gov/health/magnet/magnetsforpain
4. Harlow T, Greaves C, White A, et al. Randomized controlled trial of magnetic bracelets for relieving pain in osteoarthritis of the hip and knee. British Medical Journal. 2004;329(7480):1450-1454.
5. Vallbona C, Hazelwood CF, Jurida G. Response of pain to static magnetic fields in post polio patients: a double-blind pilot study. Arch Phys Med Rehabil. 1998; 79:469-70.
6. Wolsko PM, Eisenberg DM, Simon LS, et al. Double-blind placebo-controlled trial of static magnets for the treatment of osteoarthritis of the knee: results of a pilot study. Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine. 2004;10(2):36-43.

Web Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-c-senelick-md/magnetic-therapy-are-magnets-for-pain_b_801664.html

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To Eat Less, Imagine Every Bite

You can cut down on how much you eat by spending some time before a meal imagining eating mouthfuls of food. In a study conducted at Carnegie Mellon University and published in the journal Science, researchers gave one group of students the assignment to imagine eating thirty M&Ms, one at a time, and putting three quarters in a washing machine. They gave another group of students the task of imagining eating three M&Ms, one at a time, and putting thirty quarters into a washing machine. Afterwards, the researchers offered the students a bowl of M&Ms to snack on while getting ready for the next phase of the experiment. When researchers measured how many M&Ms the two groups ate, the results indicated that those who imagined eating thirty M&Ms ate signficantly fewer actual M&Ms afterwards.

The researchers speculated that we naturally become bored with any particular food after eating so much of it. Imagined acts can create similar physical responses as actual acts, so that imagining eating a lot of a particular food would create a boredom with it. A feeling of a full stomach comes too late to stop us from overeating, but previewing dinner by imagining chewing, tasting, and swallowing what will be served could well cut down on actual consumption.

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To Eat Less, Imagine Every Bite

Published December 10, 2010

| LiveScience

Craving a candy bar? Dive right into your fantasy of eating every chocolaty bite. New research suggests such detailed imagery could actually help you eat less.

People who imagined every chew and swallow of a food ate less of that food when given the chance to than people who imagined other mundane tasks or visualized other foods, according to a study published today (Dec. 9) in the journal Science. The findings may help people learn to manage their food intake outside the lab, researchers say. 

Force of habituation

People get more excited about the first bite of a burger than the tenth because of a process called habituation. Habituation is a bit like boredom: Your brain has been there, done that, and it's just not going to get excited about that particular stimulus anymore.

In fact, habituation is one of the major cues people use to stop eating. Feelings of fullness kick in too late to slow people down during a meal, so people rely on psychological processes and outside cues to know when to put down the fork, said study researcher Carey Morewedge, a Carnegie Mellon University psychologist.

In the new study, Morewedge and his colleagues were interested in how imagined cues could affect consumption. Imagination can elicit the same physical responses as real-life experience, Morewedge said. But all of the research on craving suggested that instead of making people want to eat less, imagining food makes them want to eat more: Picture a warm loaf of bread coming out of the oven, for example.

"People seem to habituate to all these different kinds of stimuli," Morewedge told LiveScience. "We were wondering, 'Why do cravings seem to be a unique exception?'"

Hunger games

Morewedge and his colleagues suspected that the kind of imagery people build around food might be the reason. Imagining completing a task activates the same neural circuits as really doing the task, so the researchers suspected that people might habituate to foods just by imagining eating them.

So Morewedge and his colleagues asked volunteers to mentally picture eating 30 M&Ms and putting three quarters into a washing machine. A second group imagined putting 30 quarters into a washing machine and eating three M&Ms.

Next, the researchers asked both groups to eat some M&Ms out of a bowl in preparation for a "taste test." Then they surreptitiously weighed the bowl.

Volunteers who imagined eating 30 M&Ms ate about half as many real M&Ms as those who imagined eating three candies, the researchers found. Three imagined M&Ms didn't induce habituation, they reported, but imagining eating ten times more habituated people as if they'd really let all those M&Ms melt in their mouths.

The absolute differences between actual M&M consumption were small, with the first group eating 2 grams to the second group's 4 grams, but the pattern held in four other experiments: People who imagined the process of eating a food ate about half as much as people who imagined moving a food around, eating another food (in this case, cheddar cheese), or doing another task.

"Merely thinking of a food does increase our appetite for the food, but if we perform the mental imagery that would accompany its actual consumption, this kind of thought actually decreases our desire for the food," Morewedge said.

The imagination diet

Imagining a food didn't decrease people's ratings of how much they enjoyed that food, Morewedge said, so it wasn't a growing dislike of the imagined food driving the effect. Hunger couldn't explain the difference either, he said: Participants who rated themselves as more hungry during the experiments showed the same habituation effect.

"Thinking about food has many of the same effects on eating as actually eating the food," Leonard Epstein, a professor of pediatrics and social and preventive medicine at the University of Buffalo, told LiveScience. "That's new."

Epstein, who was not involved in the study, called the research "very, very creative."

"I'd like to extend this to other types of food, to see whether this effect lasts or whether it's a one-time thing," Epstein said.

The researchers are now investigating the phenomenon in more detail, including asking people to come to the lab hungry so they can control the amount of food they eat before trying the imagination task. Ongoing studies will look into how long the imagination effect lasts and how strong it is in real-world settings, Morewedge said.

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"Female scientists acknowledge that 'fight or flight' is part of human nature, but so is caring for people,." says University of California, Berkeley psychology professor Dacher Keltner. In an interview with USA Today, she noted that the notion of survival of the fittest may be an artifact of male dominance in science. In a study providing evidence contrary to that old notion, researchers found that those who are caregivers live longer than those who are not.

In her new book, Passages for Caregivers, noted author Gail Sheehy, described the new trend toward “compassion centers.” These new institutions teach and train this new approach to health and well being among the chronically ill and their caregivers. She advocates that caregives form a “Circle of Care” to involve other relatives and friends to participate in what can be a life sustaining activity for all.

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The secret to longer life may surprise you

New Passages By Gail Sheehy

Journalist and lecturer Gail Sheehy is the author of 16 books about adult life stages, including Passages in Caregiving.

W

hat if it isn't a dog-eat-dog world? What if caring for a dog or for a mom with Alzheimer's makes you stronger and allows you to live longer?

Researchers at the University of California-Berkeley are challenging our long-held belief that humans are hard-wired to be selfish.

Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection was misinterpreted by his male popularizers, the researchers say. Rather than "every man for himself," Darwin believed that humans are successful as a species precisely because of our nurturing, altruistic and compassionate traits.

Why has it taken so long for Darwin's central revelation to be properly interpreted?

"We've had too many men in social science," Berkeley psychology professor Dacher Keltner told me in an interview. "Female scientists acknowledge that 'fight or flight' is part of human nature, but so is caring for people."

This is no touchy-feely feminist theory. Hard science is showing how the human capacity to care is wired into our brains and nervous systems.

In my book Passages in Caregiving, I urge women who assume the whole responsibility for taking care of an elderly parent or chronically ill spouse to build a Circle of Care. Reach out to your brothers and sisters, friends, neighbors and community volunteers to help you care, because no one can perform this overwhelming role alone. You will be as stunned as I to learn how the most selfless caregivers are rewarded with greater longevity.

Stephanie Brown, associate professor of preventive medicine at SUNY-Stony Brook, followed a group of older adults caring for family members with dementia and other illnesses.

If they offered care more than 14 hours a week, they were less likely to die in a seven-year period than their peers.

"Survival of the Kindest" is not just a theory. It is becoming a revolutionary cultural movement. There are many signs that caring is gaining currency.

Keltner, who has been studying the science of this instinct for 15 years, says we are coming to the end of our Gordon Gekko-Ivan Boesky-Bernie Madoff 25-year cycle of greed. Berkeley and Stanford universities now have compassion centers devoted to the study and teaching of this theory.

It will run up against hostility among the Hobbseians. Ayn Rand wrote, "If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject." As Americans, we have a cultural bias against caring.

Oh, sure, we lavish our families with gifts during the holiday season, but in a capitalist system based on unbridled competition, we worry that if we care, we lose. Compassion is a woman's word. In men, it's cast as wimpy, when in fact it makes us stronger under stress and more highly respected by our peers.

For so long we have repeated the careless aphorism "Nice guys finish last." But the 40 richest Americans who took the Giving Pledge to commit half their fortunes to doing good are no spring chickens. Here is my reinterpretation: Nice guys die last.

Web Link: http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/life/20101130/passages30_st.art.htm?loc=interstitialskip

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Behind the Facade, Post-Traumatic Stress

By KAREN BARROW

Published: November 22, 2010

A soldier returns from war unable to get the images of battle out of his head. An earthquake survivor rides out long, anxiety-filled nights. A young woman in a pretty floral dress walks her dog along the streets of Manhattan.

All three may be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

The woman walking her dog is Robin Hutchins, 25. She looks confident and self-assured, and few would guess that a year ago she discovered that she had the stress disorder.

“When I tell people I have P.T.S.D., it’s like I have to convince them it’s a real issue,” she said.

The disorder — in which a traumatic experience leaves the patient suffering from severe anxiety for months or years after the event — is often associated with battlefield combat and natural disasters. But as Dr. Frank Ochberg, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Michigan State University, noted in an interview, the typical trigger is more mundane — most commonly, a traffic accident.

In Ms. Hutchins’s case, it was sexual violence. During her first year in college, on a weekend home to tend to a broken leg, she was raped by a young man she knew. She returned to college without telling her parents about it. “I just really wanted to be a freshman in college,” she said.

Ms. Hutchins spoke to a counselor there and resumed her routine — attending class, hanging out with friends and trying to put the trauma behind her. “Nobody ever said, ‘You need to stop your life and deal with this — you can’t just walk through it,’ ” she said.

The following year she was briefly pinned to a wall by a drunken male student. Seemingly a minor incident, but it sent Ms. Hutchins into a tailspin. Anxiety and panic began to strike her without warning. The prospect of leaving her dorm terrified her. She stopped going to class.

Her reaction was not to get help, but to leave college. She traveled to Mongolia in hopes of clearing her head, but a car accident during her trip only made things worse.

Friends didn’t understand why she never wanted to go out. They would play down her anxiety and say, “Oh, you’re just going to laugh at this in a couple days.” It took years of sleepless nights and paralyzing anxiety over tasks as simple as grocery shopping before she began to look for help.

She sought out psychologists, but some dismissed her. “They’d say, ‘What does a pretty girl like you have to worry about?’ ” she said. Others were simply too expensive. Finally, during an initial consultation, a psychologist heard her full story and said the simple phrase that changed everything: “You have P.T.S.D.”

Dr. Ochberg, the Michigan State professor, who has never met Ms. Hutchins, estimated that as many as 80 percent of rapes may lead to symptoms of post-traumatic stress. But the stigma of rape, along with a general misunderstanding of the disorder and how it can affect anyone who has suffered trauma, often gets in the way of a proper diagnosis.

For Ms. Hutchins, the diagnosis came as good news. “When you can’t control your emotions at work, at home, with friends, you stop trusting yourself,” she said. “Knowing that my panic attacks came from P.T.S.D. was such a relief.” Understanding the cause of her emotional outbursts gave her tools to change them.

Dr. Ochberg explained that the disorder causes violent memories to surface despite a person’s best efforts to tame them.

Worse, the memory often feels more recent than it should. “There’s no sense of place in time,” Dr. Ochberg said.

Studies suggest that the disorder may be associated with structural changes in the brain — in particular, a shrinking of the hippocampus, a region associated with memory.

For most young professionals, a night out at a bar is routine; for Ms. Hutchins, the strange faces and crowds put her on high alert. Crossing the street calls up a swarm of terrifying possibilities: Will the bus hit me? Is that guy following me? Should I run? Should I fight back? If I do, will I put others at risk?

Weekly therapy sessions helped her work through some of those irrational fears, and anxiety medications helped prevent some of the panic attacks. Still, she remained unnaturally vigilant.

Then she met Dexter.

After reading that “emotional support” dogs can be trained to comfort people with post-traumatic symptoms — staying by their side in overwhelming situations, for example — Ms. Hutchins adopted a small Lhasa apso from a shelter. Now, she and Dexter are training each other.

Dexter keeps Ms. Hutchins calm on airplanes and forces her to go outside for long walks. People who see Dexter in his little blue service jacket smile at him — and at her, calming her further.

She is still working on gaining control of her emotions, and she knows that the post-traumatic symptoms may linger. But there is less anxiety, fewer panic attacks. About Dexter she said, “He’s given me a partner in all of this.”

Web link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/23/health/23voices.html?_r=1&ref=science

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Bringing Dogs to Heal: Care for Veterans with PTSD

By MARK THOMPSON Sunday, Dec. 05, 2010

Staff Sergeant Brad Fasnacht was clearing mines on an Afghan road a year ago when an IED blast broke his spine and both ankles and put him in a two-week stupor that ended only when he woke up, 7,000 miles away, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. The explosion had knocked his helmeted head so violently, he suffered a traumatic brain injury, which exacerbates his posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Although Army doctors and nurses have been able to get the 26-year-old walking again, he has had to call in a specialist — Sapper, an Australian cattle dog mix — to help tackle his PTSD.

See a video of dogs helping veterans cope with PTSD.)

"He has changed my life," Fasnacht says of the 1-year-old mutt, whose name is shorthand for "combat engineer," Fasnacht's Army job. Sapper goes with him whenever he leaves his Silver Spring, Md., apartment, something he was terrified of doing until he got his canine companion in April. Three combat tours and two Purple Hearts had left him in a state of hypervigilance, constantly scanning suburban streets and trees for snipers. War had made him wary of crowds — and even of individuals who got a little too close. "I'd just freak out, getting really uneasy," he says. "But not anymore." The speckled dog calms Fasnacht's anxieties and keeps them from mushrooming into panic attacks. Part bodyguard, part therapist, Sapper also serves as an extra set of eyes and ears. "I've lost some of my hearing, but Sapper alerts me if someone is coming up behind me," he says. When Fasnacht is sleeping, the dog will wake him from a nightmare by licking his face.

As researchers test high-tech PTSD treatments (such as hyperbaric oxygen chambers and virtual-reality exposure therapy), a low-tech alternative is emerging in the form of man's best friend. Although the government has been providing service dogs to troops who have lost their sight or suffered other physical injuries, it is only beginning to look into whether these animals can improve the lives of those who are psychically injured. The need for good treatment options is enormous: some 40,000 troops have been physically wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq, but 10 times as many exhibit symptoms of PTSD.

Amid all this hard-to-heal pain, veterans and dog-training organizations, some with playful names like Patriot Paws and Hounds4Heroes, are rushing to pair wounded vets with trained canines. One of the leaders of this movement, Dave Sharpe, 31, was so traumatized during deployments to Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan that his anxiety and recurring nightmares kept him largely confined to his Yorktown, Va., home. "I was always looking for a fight," he says. "I was beating on the walls." But he says all that changed when a friend encouraged him in 2002 to visit an animal-rescue shelter, where he spied 2-month-old Cheyenne. Not long after he adopted the brown and white pit bull mix, Sharpe had another dream about the Taliban sympathizer who pulled a gun on him. When Sharpe woke up in a cold sweat, the dog was watching him. "What are you looking at?" he recalls yelling. Cheyenne barked in response, and after he told her to shut up, she barked again, prompting him to wrap her in his arms, collapse on his bed and tell her everything that was weighing on his mind. "I just lost it," he says. "I have no idea why, but I felt completely at ease."

Sharpe credits the dog for such a dramatic improvement in his PTSD that he went on to found the nonprofit P2V — short for Pets2Vets — last year. Since then, he has been sharing his story with soldiers, cops, firefighters, first responders — people who could use their own Cheyenne — and has given dogs to Fasnacht and some 20 other vets. His promise to servicemen and -women in need: "We'll get you your pet within a month, maximum."

Not everyone is convinced such quick pairings are a good idea. For starters, it's still an open question whether dogs actually help alleviate PTSD. Both the VA and the Army are launching studies designed to confirm widespread anecdotal evidence that the benefits are real. And if they are, the next big question is whether shelter dogs like Sapper, who took two weeks and $350 to train, provide as much relief as specially trained dogs, which take two years — and up to $35,000 — before they are ready to be paired with a wounded vet. "I really believe the dogs can provide tremendous benefits," says Minnesota Senator Al Franken, who authored a law ordering the VA to study dogs' effects on PTSD sufferers. "The whole point of this is to measure in a scientifically valid way what the benefits are of service dogs to vets with psychological injuries and make a better life for these guys and women who have put everything on the line for us."

Better than Music and Art
Mental-health experts have been looking into canine-centric therapies for years. Sandra Barker, a psychiatry professor at Virginia Commonwealth University (and yes, she is used to all the jokes about her last name), published a study in 1998 that found psychiatric patients' anxiety dropped twice as much after spending 30 minutes with dogs as it did following standard therapeutic recreation involving music and art. A 2003 Barker study reported a "significant reduction" in fear among patients awaiting electroconvulsive therapy after spending only 15 minutes with dogs. And in March she published a study detailing the "buffering effect" dogs have on the stress experienced by their human partners, as measured through cortisol levels, heart rate and blood pressure.

Given her findings, it's not surprising that Walter Reed and other military medical centers have started stationing dogs on hospital floors to help calm patients. "The potential for animals to be another form of alternative medicine is enormous," says Elspeth Ritchie, a former Army colonel who just retired as one of the service's top psychiatrists.

With a push from Franken, the VA is planning to place dogs — for which it will pay $10,000 apiece — with up to 200 vets suffering from mental and physical ailments. The Army is considering a similar program. But both plan to use only service dogs trained by groups belonging to Assistance Dogs International (ADI), which represents 73 U.S. dog-training organizations. That's because such a designation gives dogs access to airports, hotels and other public spaces that don't allow common pets. "In a restaurant, you don't want a dog groveling around for a dropped french fry or urinating on the carpet," says Corey Hudson, president of ADI's North American branch and head of Canine Companions for Independence in Santa Rosa, Calif. "That requires two years of training."

Sebastian "Sam" Cila was lucky enough to be given one of the 2,000 or so service dogs that are trained annually in the U.S. The retired Army National Guard sergeant from Riverhead, N.Y., had been through hell since July 4, 2005, when an IED in Iraq shredded much of his left arm. Three years and more than 40 surgeries later, he had to have his left hand amputated. "The loss of my hand put me into a tailspin, and I fell into a deep depression," says Cila, 37. When Gillian, a black Labrador arrived in February, she knew how to do things like open doors and turn off lights. But like some other service dogs trained to detect the onset of seizures, Gillian can alert him to the little things that can trigger panic attacks or angry outbursts that can be tough to control — and help him avoid them. "Now when I feel stressed, irritable or anxious, she definitely relieves all those symptoms," Cila says of his PTSD. "I definitely still have it, but I've learned, with the help of Gillian, how to deal with it better."

But certified service dogs like Gillian don't come equipped with more PTSD-specific commands than cheaper mutts do. "Your average service dog coming out of these agencies can do 82 different tasks. But if you've got a veteran whose main problem is PTSD, what does turning on a light switch do for him?" asks Jim Stanek, 30, who ended three tours in Iraq with PTSD and now runs Paws and Stripes in Albuquerque, N.M., pairing dogs with mentally ailing vets.

PTSD-Specific Tasks
Stanek trains his dogs to perform 10 or so PTSD-specific tasks. Some of them are designed to ease concerns about blind spots, not unlike the way a military unit designates someone to watch troops' backs or to scout ahead. Stanek's 2-year-old Catahoula mix, Sarge, for example, has been trained to check around the corner to see what's in the next aisle at a store.

Efforts by Stanek — whose group is willing to train a family pet if it meets age, size and temperament requirements — and others advocating cheaply trained dogs just got a boost from the Justice Department. In September it tweaked regulations clarifying parts of 1990's Americans with Disabilities Act. The amendments limit the definition of service animals to dogs. (Sorry, pigs and parrots — although the agency left the door open to miniature horses, in part because they live a lot longer than dogs.) To qualify as a service animal, dogs must be trained to do work or perform tasks like "providing safety checks and room searches for persons with PTSD," the agency noted. But the dogs do not have to be formally trained by an ADI-approved school. Such a requirement "might limit access to service animals for individuals with limited financial resources," the department said.

The new regulations take effect March 15. And perhaps the sight of seemingly healthy men and women with seemingly run-of-the-mill mutts on planes or college campuses or in restaurants or places of worship will lead to more conversations about PTSD. "People ask about the dog, and it's kind of forced me to talk to them, which is something I didn't want to do," says Stanek. "A comfort comes from having a second set of eyes that doesn't judge."

Web Link: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2030897,00.html

Web Source:

Animals Can Assist in Psychotherapy

By Sharon L. Peters Special for USA TODAY

DENVER — No matter what problem has compelled a person to visit this homey psychotherapy practice just steps from a busy urban avenue here — post-traumatic stress, anxiety, family problems, abuse — an animal will participate in the session.

It could be Sasha the mutt; semi-retired tiger-striped Norman the cat; Conner, Charm and Summer the Belgian Tervurens; or Harmony the bay Thoroughbred (granddaughter of Secretariat). All are part of the treatment protocols developed by the four therapists at Animal Assisted Therapy Programs of Colorado.

"We have found we can reach therapeutic goals much faster" by incorporating the animals into the sessions, says Linda Chassman, a therapist for more than two decades who first began using kitty kindness with clients 10 years ago and went on to seek certification in a specialty known as animals and human health.

Unlike at most practices, where a counselor may occasionally have a pet sit in on a session, at AATPC the therapy animals — many of which have endured difficult histories before finding homes with these therapists and, ultimately, their calling — are at the core of helping patients sort through their problems. And AATPC is one of a handful in the nation where animals play such a fundamental role.

"Rapport-building is much faster" when animals are part of the process, Chassman says. Not only is their presence soothing, but when they're around, "people are much more willing to get to the issues, especially kids, who, rather than directly confronting something, can speak to or about the animal."

Says therapist Ellen Kinney, "Incorporating the animals into our work here makes this a fun, welcoming place ... and helps make therapy feel much less threatening."

This isn't just another way of capitalizing on the nation's obsession with animals, Chassman says.

"When I see a client, I use all of the skills I've developed in 25 years of being a therapist. We simply add the benefit — confirmed as a benefit by research — of an animal."

Moreover, it's impossible to go on professional cruise control. Employing the animals "forces us to be inventive in therapies, allows us to be creative," Kinney says.

So convinced are they of animals' helpfulness in working through human trauma, they've launched their "filial pet therapy program" where, after some in-office sessions, they'll teach parents to use therapeutic play with the family pet to help kids with behavioral issues. (Sometimes the pet requires outside training first.)

And this month they've begun conducting workshops for human services professionals to help them with the specifics of what's needed to incorporate animals into their work.

The animals-and-shrinks combo isn't for everyone, they acknowledge. But, Chassman says, "a specific group of clients benefit," and the program "shortens the length of therapy for a lot of people."

Web link: http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/pets/2011-01-18-shrinks18_ST_N.htm

Web source: Dogs in Court Ease 'Ruff' Experience for Kids
Posted Wednesday, January 26, 2011 ; 08:18 PM | View Comments | Post Comment

Web Link: http://statejournal.com/story.cfm?func=viewstory&storyid=93311

Email from John Yoder:

Yoder Court Report

By John Yoder, Circuit Judge, 23rd Judicial District

Published in January 5, 2011 issue Spirit of Jefferson Advocate

Roxie, my Border-Collie/German Shepherd mix, played a new role last week--comforting a little girl who was afraid of talking to me about her abuse and neglect case. Although I have been wanting to try this for some time, this first experiment was not something I had planned in advance.



On December 16, my home in Harpers Ferry was partially destroyed by fire, so I had to move out. I am currently living in a motel in Harpers Ferry that does not allow dogs. So, while I am living there, my dog Roxie is staying with a friend. I seldom see her except when I go to walk her in the mornings and evenings.



Last Friday, I had court in Berkeley Springs. Since I have not spent much time with Roxie lately, I decided to take her with me. That way she would be with me on the hour drive to and from the Morgan County Courthouse, and she could stay in my office while I was in the courtroom during the day.



One of the cases I had Friday morning was an abuse and neglect case. The attorney serving as guardian ad litem for the two children involved in the case indicated that the children wanted to speak to me alone about their placement. Normally, in a case like this, I go back to my office and speak to the children, but in this instance, I had my dog Roxie in my office. So, I told the two children that I had my dog in my office and that we could go there with the dog, or if they preferred, we could go to the jury room instead. The youngest child said: "I want to go where the dog is."



I then went back into my office with the two children, their guardian ad litem, and my law clerk. Roxie, who is very shy and afraid of strangers, ran into a corner to be by herself. I speculate that Roxie, a stray dog abandoned in the Bolivar Heights Battlefield near my house, was abused herself, since she is so afraid of strangers–particularly men.



The oldest sister, about age 13, then spoke to me and told me her concerns and desires, articulating them very well. But, when it was time for the younger sister, age 9, to share her thoughts, she said, "I’m scared," became emotional, and quit speaking. In order to break the awkwardness, I went and got Roxie out of her corner and took her over to the girl, who started petting her. Roxie then layed down by the chair next to the girl. The girl started talking, looking at Roxie and petting her at the same time she was speaking. She said what she wanted me to hear, with the assistance of Roxie comforting her, without any problems.



Although I did not plan this experiment, I have been considering trying to use a dog to help children testify in abuse and neglect cases for some time. The idea first came about when I attended a training seminar for new judges at the National Judicial College, and a judge gave me a newspaper article on using dogs to comfort children while testifying in abuse and neglect cases. I had actually planned to try it in another case–perhaps with another dog--later this month where two children may have to testify against their parents.



I am not aware of dogs being used in this role in the courts in West Virginia, but the idea of using them to ease the tension of being in a courtroom is gaining popularity in other areas across the country. The organization courthousedogs.com began in Seattle when a prosecuting attorney took her son's dog to work and discovered that the it had a calming effect on young witnesses. The prosecutor's office then started using dogs in 2003 for pretrial interviews and in courtrooms. The practice is now spreading across the country to courts in other states, including Texas, California, Florida, Missouri, and Michigan.



As a judge, I frequently find myself in the role where I have to interview young children, in cases where there are allegations that the child has been abused. Can you imagine how threatening it is for someone like me, a total stranger, to interview a child about his or her parent’s abuse? It is very awkward, and a child must find it to be unbelievably intimidating. A dog helps break the ice. Instead of asking numerous questions to build rapport, I can establish rapport by talking to the child about my dog. And as the experience with Roxie indicates, a child is much more comfortable with a dog present and perhaps even talking to the dog rather than me. Due to this experience, I expect Roxie to start accompanying me to work more frequently.

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Meditation Research from the Shamatha Project Brings Good News

The Shambhala Mountain Center, in the Rockies of Colorado, has initiated the Shamatha Project, with the cooperation of the Univeresity of California at Davis, to research meditation from a variety of perspectives, according to a report in the Huffington Post. The project enlisted sixty experienced meditators, aged twenty-one to seventy and had them meditate intensively for three months. Some were wait-listed to serve as controls. Several peer reviewed publications have resulted so far.

Visual perception, according to results published in Psychological Science, was enhanced. Participants tried their hand at a perceptual task showing on a computer monitor. It required them to note when a series of lines contained one line shorter than the other. The task was easy, but boring. Those who had the intense meditation sessions proved to be more reliable over time at detecting the short lines than the control participants, who began to miss noticing the shorter lines.

There was evidence of an anti-aging effect at the cellular level, according to the results published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology. Meditators' white blood cells evidenced a thirty percent increase in “telomerase,” a chemical essential to the long-term viability of the body's chromosomes and cells.

Intense meditation led to a decrease in impulsivity, according to the results published in the journal Emotion. Impulsivity has been tied to a number of negative health effects. The scientists participating in the Shamatha project believe that many of the health effects of meditation arise not from a direct effect upon the body but by their general “positivity” effect on the attitude of the meditator.

Web Source:

New Meditation Research: Putting the 'Om' in 'Chromosome'

Wray Herbert

Posted: November 18, 2010 08:22 AM

The Shambhala Mountain Center sits nestled among the remote lakes and pastures of Colorado's Rocky Mountains, where for four decades it has offered instruction and retreat to serious students of meditation and yoga. Starting in February 2007, it became a scientific laboratory as well. The center began hosting the Shamatha Project, one of the most rigorous scientific examinations of meditation's effects ever undertaken. The Project is now beginning to yield its insights, and from early reports it appears that this ancient practice delivers benefits that go all the way down to the chromosomal level.

Many claims have been made over many years about the effects of meditation on health and well-being, but rarely have these claims been put to the test. Under the direction of Clifford Saron, a neuroscientist at the University of California at Davis, the Shamatha Project enrolled 60 experienced meditators in a three-month study. Half were randomly selected to receive intensive training and practice in meditation over the spring months of 2007, including two group training sessions and five or more hours of individual practice every day. Those who were wait-listed for the actual retreat served as controls -- an essential part of the rigorous experimental design that distinguishes the Project from previous meditation studies.

At three points in the three-month study -- before, halfway through, and at the end -- Saron and his many colleagues took a battery of behavioral and physiological measurements of both the meditators and the controls, who ranged from 21 to 70 years old. They have been crunching the data and analyzing the results, which are now emerging in peer-reviewed journals.

For example: Those who intensely practiced meditation got better at visual perception, and as a result their attention improved. UC Davis psychological scientist Katherine Maclean (now at Johns Hopkins) had all the volunteers perform a difficult visual discrimination task on a computer screen -- watching a parade of identical lines go by and spotting the slightly shorter lines that appeared occasionally. This 30-minute task is not only visually demanding; it's incredibly boring as well. But as reported recently in the journal Psychological Science, the meditators' increased visual acuity also freed up their limited cognitive firepower for vigilance; and their sharpened attention led to improved performance on the task. This improvement lasted for five months after the retreat was over.

That may not be all that surprising, since focus and attention are what meditation is all about. Less expected is the recent finding that intense meditation may also have anti-aging effects. Tonya Jacobs, a scientist at UC Davis's Center for Mind and Brain, has just reported (on-line in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology) that meditators show improved psychological well-being, and that these improvements lead to biochemical changes associated with resistance to aging at the cellular level. Specifically, an analysis of meditators' white blood cells showed a 30 percent increase in an enzyme called telomerase, a chemical essential to the long-term health of the body's chromosomes and cells.

The scientists emphasize that meditation does not lead directly to cellular health and longevity. Instead, the practice appears to give people an increased sense of meaning and purpose in life, which in turn leads to an increased sense of control over their lives and to less negative emotion. This cascade of emotional and psychological changes is what regulates the levels of telomerase, the anti-aging enzyme.

Positivity appears to be the link between meditative practice and a variety of health benefits. In a study scheduled for publication in the journal Emotion, UC Davis psychological scientist Baljinder Sahdra is reporting that meditation leads to a decrease in impulsive reactions -- another health improvement linked to psychological positivity. Impulsivity has been tied to an array of health problems, including addictions and other risky behavior.

It's well known that stress -- and distress -- lead to poor health, including a decline of telomerase and its healing properties. What hasn't been known -- and what these studies are beginning to document -- is the exact order of psychological and physiological events in this chain and, what's more, that this chain of events can be reversed.

Web Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wray-herbert/meditation-research_b_780525.html

=====================

Sleep Loss in Children Correlated with Obesity

Children who sleep less hours than the average for that age level are at risk for obesity, according to the results of a recent study conducted at the University of Chicago and published in the journal Pediatrics. According to the report, researchers compared the sleep patterns of more than three hundred children, aged four to ten, to their weight and various blood factors. The results indicated that those children who slept less hours than their peers, or who used weekends to catch up on sleep, were significantly more likely to be obese and to have high glucose, cholesterol and other blood factors associated with cardiovascular risk. The researchers indicate that it is not clear if the sleep loss or obesity is the initial causative factor; they emphasized, however, the importance of healthy sleep patterns.

In another University of Chicago study, and , published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers worked with healthy but overweight adults and kept them on a special diet for four weeks. During two weeks the volunteers slept up to eight and one-half hours a night. During the other two weeks, the researchers restricted the volunteers to only five hours of sleep a night. During the study, scientists measured weight loss and determined what per cent of that loss was from fat and from muscle. The results indicated that during both sleep conditions, the total amount of weight loss was identical. During the full sleep period, however, the amount of fat lost was half of the total weight loss, but under the restricted sleep condition, fat loss was only one-fifth of the total loss, the bulk of the loss being muscle weight. Losing sleep while dieting restricts the loss of fat.

Web source:

Behavior: Another Good Reason to Sing a Lullaby

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR

Published: January 28, 2011

Children who sleep less than their peers may be at greater risk for abnormal blood glucose levels and other metabolic problems.

Researchers studied the sleep patterns of 308 children ages 4 to 10, half of them overweight or obese. They used wrist monitors to measure their sleep time over seven days, and did blood tests for cardiovascular risk indicators like glucose, lipids, insulin and C-reactive protein.

The study, published in the February issue of Pediatrics, found that obesity and abnormal blood tests were four times as common in children who slept the least, and three times as common in those who used the weekend to catch up on sleep lost during school days.

“We can’t rule out that obese children first became obese and then started sleeping less,” said Dr. David Gozal, the senior author. “But it’s unlikely.”

Among all children, obese or not, shorter sleep and greater variability in sleep patterns were more likely to be associated with abnormal blood tests. The researchers conclude that irregular sleep by itself may be a risk factor for metabolic problems.

“We sacrifice sleep to whatever else we do,” said Dr. Gozal, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Chicago. “But as parents we should be very attentive to preserving the treasure that is sleep — it means health for children’s brains and their bodies, their happiness and their well-being.”

Web Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/health/research/01behavior.html?hpw

Web source/Link (compliments SchwartzReport.net)

=======================

Posture Affects Confidence

What is your “power pose”? If you wished to ramp up your feelings of confidence and impress others with your presence, what postural pose would you adopt? If you stand or sit in a manner that takes up more space, your body will secrete hormones that make you feel more confident to take risks, according to the results of a study conducted at Harvard Business School and published in the journal Psychological Science. On the other hand, sitting in a huddled, crouched over position felt less confident. Researchers assessed the volunteers’ level of confidence by giving them two dollars and the opportunity to double it or lose it in a coin toss. Volunteers sitting in a power posture were significantly more likely to take the bet than those sitting in a cramped position. Researchers also measured hormone levels before and after the volunteers assumed their poses. Those who held the high-power poses saw their testosterone increase, while their levels of a stress hormone, cortisol, decreased.

This research is an example of the new field of “embodiment,” that studies how the body directs the mind. For example, we know now that making the mouth to form a smile elevates one’s mood. The current study is the first to demonstrate that hormone activity may underlie the effect.

Web Source and Link (compliments of SchwartzReport.net)

Practicing Certain Poses Creates a Sense of Power

Publication Date:  01 October 2010 01:20 pm ET
Author:  WYNNE PARRY
Source:  LiveScience
Link:  http://www.livescience.com/health/posture-increases-sense-power-100924.html


When suiting up with that 'power tie,” you may also want to strike a pose – a power pose, that is.

New research indicates that holding a pose that opens up a person's body and takes up space will alter hormone levels and make the person feel more powerful and more willing to take risks.

"These poses actually make you more powerful," said study researcher Amy C.J. Cuddy, a social psychologist at the Harvard Business School.

The opposite also proved true: Constrictive postures lowered a person’s sense of power and willingness to take risks.

Cuddy teaches the results of the study to her students.

"I literally watch M.B.A. students adjust their posture as I’m telling them about the findings," Cuddy told LiveScience. Many later reported positive results from job interviews, meetings and other situations. "It's some of the most satisfying research I have done," she said.

The power of posture

In the study, researchers randomly assigned 42 participants, 26 of them women, to assume and hold a pair of either low- or high-power poses. The high-power posers spent one minute sitting in a chair in front of a desk, with feet resting on it and hands clasped behind the head, and, in the other pose, they stood, leaning forward over a table, with arms out and hands resting on the table. In both poses, the participants took up space, an expression of power not unique to the human world. For example, peacocks fan their tails to attract a mate and chimpanzees bulge their chests to assert their hierarchical rank, the researchers noted.

"These power poses are deeply intertwined with the evolutionary selection of what is ‘alpha,’" wrote the researchers in the September issue of the journal Psychological Science.

The low-power group sat for one minute with their hands clasped on their thighs, legs together, and also stood for one minute with arms folded and legs crossed.

After the subjects had finished their poses, they were given $2 with the option of keeping it or gambling it on the roll of a die. Depending on the outcome, the subjects could double their money or lose it.

Subjects also were asked to rate how "powerful" and "in charge" they felt. The researchers measured hormone levels before and after the poses.

Those who held the high-power poses saw their testosterone increase, while their levels of a stress hormone, cortisol, decreased. Testosterone is associated with dominance and tends to rise before a competition and after a win, but not after a defeat, according to prior research. People in power tend to have lower levels of cortisol. Although cortisol levels can fluctuate in response to challenges, chronically elevated cortisol levels seen among people with low status have been associated with health problems.

The high-power posers were more likely to risk their $2 for the chance to double it: Eighty-six percent took the gamble, compared with 60 percent of the low-power posers. They also reported feeling more powerful and in charge than did the low-power posers.

How universal is it?

This study is part of a field of psychological research called embodiment. The basic idea is that the mind/body relationship is not a one-way street, with the mind giving orders for the body to carry out. Rather, the body also influences the mind. Other studies have indicated, for example, that holding an expression, like a smile, can alter one's mood, as can a hunched posture.

The new research seems to be the first to link body postures with mental state and hormone levels, said Thomas Schubert, a social psychologist at the Lisbon University Institute in Portugal, was not involved in the study.

Schubert has studied the bodily feedback produced by fist-clenching. After making and holding a fist, men reported feeling more powerful. Female subjects, by contrast, had less hope for control after making a fist. The researchers attributed the results to the idea that men associate their own physical force with power, while women associate it with powerlessness, according to the study, which was published in 2004 in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Posing in private

No such gender difference showed up in the newer study, suggesting these poses have a resonance that transcends gender, according to Schubert.

In other words, while the high-power poses may seem to typify body language associated with Western men, they appeared to make women feel powerful as well.

The fact that the subjects assumed their poses while isolated, without even a mirror for feedback, was key to the results, Cuddy said.

"This isn't about how other people are perceiving you in these poses," she said.

The presence of observers could have produced different results. Although the power of space-occupying poses is universal, the configuration of what is considered socially acceptable may vary between men and women and among cultures, according to Cuddy.

But holding a pose with no one around can potentially affect the person's later interactions. "I am really interested in how that has the potential to change the world for women," she said.

Like Cuddy, her fellow study researcher, Dana Carney, a social psychologist at Columbia University's Graduate School of Business, tells her students about the power of the postures. However, she says, she adds a caveat: "Don't walk into a job interview and begin taking power poses."

Rather, she said, use power poses to prepare your system to endure a successful interview, business meeting or some other stressful event.

The trick

Embodiment research entails a particular challenge: If participants suspect the true nature of the experiment, they may alter their behavior and skew the results.

In a study published in 1988 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, three researchers studying the effects of smiling came up with a clever way to deceive their subjects. They told the participants that the study was of how people performed tasks with parts of their body not normally used for those tasks. They then had the participants hold a pen in their teeth.

This approach opened the door for more research into the body's influence over the mind, according to Schubert.

A 2006 study published in the journal Psychological Science used the same technique and found that a "surreptiously induced" smile, held while viewing pictures of faces, reduced racial bias toward blacks.

In the power-pose study, researchers convinced the participants that the study focused on how the placement of electrodes above and below the heart could influence the collection of physiological data.

==============================

Russia Bans Fortune Telling Ads

In a new modification of their existing law on advertising, Russian authorities have added a prohibition against any ads that claim that the provider is using occult powers or other supernatural powers to assist the customer. The new law also covers healers, prohibiting them from claiming any special psychic powers, and allowing only those healers to advertise who have government licenses to practice.

Web source:

Russia moves to ban witchcraft and fortune-telling ads

Published 05 October, 2010, 16:59

Russian witches, magicians, psychics, fortune tellers and faith healers will now have to think of a new way to attract customers: a law is planned to ban advertisements of their services in the media.

The State Duma has approved the first reading of the correction to the Law on Advertising, which forbids users of supernatural powers of all kinds to promote their services in the mass media. At present, such advertisements, ranging from promises to bring back an unfaithful husband or break a hex, to suggestions of curing all illnesses, telling the future, and bringing luck in business are abundant in the printed press and on TV.

Besides banning the “mystical” advertisements, the draft bill has barred the promotion of healers who claim to use any unconventional or occult methods in their work, with exception made only for those healers who have obtained a valid state license for their activities.

Russian witches, magicians, psychics, fortune tellers and faith healers will now have to think of a new way to attract customers: a law is planned to ban advertisements of their services in the media.

The State Duma has approved the first reading of the correction to the Law on Advertising, which forbids users of supernatural powers of all kinds to promote their services in the mass media. At present, such advertisements, ranging from promises to bring back an unfaithful husband or break a hex, to suggestions of curing all illnesses, telling the future, and bringing luck in business are abundant in the printed press and on TV.

Besides banning the “mystical” advertisements, the draft bill has barred the promotion of healers who claim to use any unconventional or occult methods in their work, with exception made only for those healers who have obtained a valid state license for their activities.

The members of parliament are concerned about the safety of gullible Russian citizens, who in their childish belief in the supernatural easily fall prey to conmen.

“Our citizens, who trust the promises of magicians and wizards, frequently become the victims of ordinary conmen,” Evgeny Fedorov, head of the State Duma Committee on the Economic Policy and Entrepreneurship, told RIA Novosti news agency. “That is why I think it necessary to limit the flow of information about them.”

The Russian Orthodox Church has upheld the draft bill with both hands.

“No civilized country can allow such a rampancy of self-advertising ‘magicians’ and ‘miracle-workers’”, the Moscow Patriarchate said in a public statement.

The Church did not completely rule out the possession of certain healing powers by certain people, but said that their qualification and methods of work needed to be confirmed by science.

Web Link:

http://rt.com/Top_News/2010-10-05/law-bans-witches-advertisements.html

=======================

Yoga and Christianity Intermingle

There are many Christians who practice yoga who, if they understood the religious traditions behind the practice, would have to repudiate Yoga as heresy. In spite of the contradiction between the two religious cultures, Yoga has thrived in modern America, according to journalist and Yoga practioner Stefanie Syman. In her book, The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux), she tells the tale of how Yoga rode into America on the coattails of the Spiritualism and New Thought movements at the turn of the twentieth century, and how, by the turn of the twenty first century, it has become mainstream. Yet, according to Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a reviewer of this book, "When Christians practice yoga, they must either deny the reality of what yoga represents or fail to see the contradictions between their Christian commitments and their embrace of yoga. The contradictions are not few, nor are they peripheral."

Web source and Link (compliments of SchwartzReport.net):

The Subtle Body - Should Christians Practice Yoga?

Publication Date:  Monday, September 20, 2010
Author:  
Source:  AlbertMohler.com
Link:  http://www.albertmohler.com/2010/09/20/the-subtle-body-should-christians-practice-yoga/

Albert Mohler is the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, one of the leading conservative Biblical literalist Christian training centers in the U.S. My take away from this essay was not about yoga, about which there are literally hundreds of scientific papers attesting to its benefits -- so as a health argument his position is nonsense. Instead what I saw in Mohler's writing was the same kind of religious fundamentalism and rigidity one see in pronouncements from Taliban clerics about how music corrupts good Muslims. Both illustrate that fundamentalism, whatever its creed, is essentially the same: rigid, restrictive, body-loathing, and judgmental. As Mohler says: "When Christians practice yoga, they must either deny the reality of what yoga represents or fail to see the contradictions between their Christian commitments and their embrace of yoga. The contradictions are not few, nor are they peripheral."

The book discussed in this essay is: Stefanie Syman, The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2010).
When Christians practice yoga, they must either deny the reality of what yoga represents or fail to see the contradictions between their Christian commitments and their embrace of yoga. The contradictions are not few, nor are they peripheral.

Some questions we ask today would simply baffle our ancestors. When Christians ask whether believers should practice yoga, they are asking a question that betrays the strangeness of our current cultural moment - a time in which yoga seems almost mainstream in America.

It was not always so. No one tells the story of yoga in America better than Stefanie Syman, whose recent book, The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America, is a masterpiece of cultural history. Syman, an engaging author who is also a fifteen-year devotee of yoga, tells this story well.

Her book actually opens with a scene from this year’s annual White House Easter Egg Roll. President Barack Obama made a few comments and then introduced First Lady Michelle Obama, who said: 'Our goal today is just to have fun. We want to focus on activity, healthy eating. We’ve got yoga, we’ve got dancing, we’ve got storytelling, we’ve got Easter-egg decorating.”

Syman describes the yoga on the White House lawn as 'sanitized, sanctioned, and family-friendly,” and she noted the rather amazing fact that a practice once seen as so exotic and even dangerous was now included as an activity sufficiently safe and mainstream for children.

In her words:

There certainly was no better proof that Americans had assimilated this spiritual discipline. We had turned a technique for God realization that had, at various points in time, enjoined its adherents to reduce their diet to rice, milk, and a few vegetables, fix their minds on a set of, to us, incomprehensible syllables, and self-administer daily enemas (without the benefit of equipment), to name just a few of its prerequisites, into an activity suitable for children. Though yoga has no coherent tradition in India, being preserved instead by thousands of gurus and hundreds of lineages, each of which makes a unique claim to authenticity, we had managed to turn it into a singular thing: a way to stay healthy and relaxed.

In her book, Syman tells the fascinating story of how yoga was transformed in the American mind from a foreign and 'even heathen” practice into a cultural reality that is widely admired and practiced.

In telling this story, Syman documents the ties between yoga and groups or movements such as the Transcendentalists and New Thought - movements that sought to provide a spirituality that would be a clear alternative to biblical Christianity. She traces the influence of leading figures such as Swami Vivekananda and Swami Prabhavananda, along with Pierre Bernard and the now lesser-known Margaret Woodrow Wilson. Each of these figures played a role in the growing acceptance of yoga in America, but most were controversial at the time - some extremely so.

Syman describes yoga as a varied practice, but she makes clear that yoga cannot be fully extricated from its spiritual roots in Hinduism and Buddhism. She is also straightforward in explaining the role of sexual energy in virtually all forms of yoga and of ritualized sex in some yoga traditions. She also explains that yoga 'is one of the first and most successful products of globalization, and it has augured a truly post-Christian, spiritually polyglot country.”

Reading The Subtle Body is an eye-opening and truly interesting experience. To a remarkable degree, the growing acceptance of yoga points to the retreat of biblical Christianity in the culture. Yoga begins and ends with an understanding of the body that is, to say the very least, at odds with the Christian understanding. Christians are not called to empty the mind or to see the human body as a means of connecting to and coming to know the divine. Believers are called to meditate upon the Word of God - an external Word that comes to us by divine revelation - not to meditate by means of incomprehensible syllables.

Nevertheless, a significant number of American Christians either experiment with yoga or become adherents of some yoga discipline. Most seem unaware that yoga cannot be neatly separated into physical and spiritual dimensions. The physical is the spiritual in yoga, and the exercises and disciplines of yoga are meant to connect with the divine.

Douglas R. Groothuis, Professor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary and a respected specialist on the New Age Movement, warns Christians that yoga is not merely about physical exercise or health. 'All forms of yoga involve occult assumptions,” he warns, 'even hatha yoga, which is often presented as a merely physical discipline.” While most adherents of yoga avoid the more exotic forms of ritualized sex that are associated with tantric yoga, virtually all forms of yoga involve an emphasis on channeling sexual energy throughout the body as a means of spiritual enlightenment.

Stefanie Syman documents how yoga was transformed in American culture from an exotic and heathen practice into a central component of our national cult of health. Of course, her story would end differently if Americans still had cultural access to the notion of 'heathen.”

The nation of India is almost manically syncretistic, blending worldviews over and over again. But, in more recent times, America has developed its own obsession with syncretism, mixing elements of worldviews with little or no attention to what each mix means. Americans have turned yoga into an exercise ritual, a means of focusing attention, and an avenue to longer life and greater health. Many Americans attempt to deny or minimize the spiritual aspects of yoga - to the great consternation of many in India.

When Christians practice yoga, they must either deny the reality of what yoga represents or fail to see the contradictions between their Christian commitments and their embrace of yoga. The contradictions are not few, nor are they peripheral. The bare fact is that yoga is a spiritual discipline by which the adherent is trained to use the body as a vehicle for achieving consciousness of the divine. Christians are called to look to Christ for all that we need and to obey Christ through obeying his Word. We are not called to escape the consciousness of this world by achieving an elevated state of consciousness, but to follow Christ in the way of faithfulness.

There is nothing wrong with physical exercise, and yoga positions in themselves are not the main issue. But these positions are teaching postures with a spiritual purpose. Consider this - if you have to meditate intensely in order to achieve or to maintain a physical posture, it is no longer merely a physical posture.

The embrace of yoga is a symptom of our postmodern spiritual confusion, and, to our shame, this confusion reaches into the church. Stefanie Syman is telling us something important when she writes that yoga 'has augured a truly post-Christian, spiritually polyglot country.” Christians who practice yoga are embracing, or at minimum flirting with, a spiritual practice that threatens to transform their own spiritual lives into a 'post-Christian, spiritually polyglot” reality. Should any Christian willingly risk that?

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Aura Viewers Have More Psychic Experiences

People who claim to see auras also report a higher incidence of psychic experiences than folks who do not see auras. This relationship was found in five independent surveys, conducted with different English-speaking and Spanish-speaking students and general adult populations.

The study, conducted by Nancy Zingrone and Carlos Alvarado, then of the University of Virginia and now associated with Atlantic University, asked respondents about various types of psychic experiences, as well as assessing them on scales of dissociation., depersonalization, and absorption—all three being personality traits associated with psychic experiences. The results of these investigations, reported the Australian Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, were consistent in finding the hypothesized relationship between seeing auras, having psychic experiences, and evidencing these related psychological traits.

Source:

Australian Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis

Vol. 37, No. 2, 2009, 131–168

PSYCHOLOGICAL CORRELATES OF AURA VISION:

PSYCHIC EXPERIENCES, DISSOCIATION, ABSORPTION,

AND SYNAESTHESIA-LIKE EXPERIENCES

Nancy L. Zingrone, Carlos S. Alvarado, and Natasha Agee

Click here to retrieve article:

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Calling Mom is Greatest Stress Reliever

Brain research and hormonal studies have demonstrated that meditating, petting a dog, or going for a walk can quickly reduce stress and its hormonal action. New research demonstrates that a talk with mom can be just as effective.

In this study, conducted at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, researchers asked girls, aged seven to twelve, to give a speech in front of an audience of strangers. The researchers confirmed that these instructions stressed this young girls, elevating their heart rate and the level of the stress hormone cortisol. To test various remedies for this stress, researchers had one group of girls receive hugs from their moms, one group watched a neutral video, and one group listened to their mom on the other end of a telephone. Afterwards, retesting showed that the girls who interacted with mom, either in person or by phone, showed significant increase in the hormone oxytocin and a corresponding decrease in stress indicators. The relief lasted for some time. Those girls who watched the video remained stressed.

Web source:

For comfort, mom’s voice works as well as a hug

May 11, 2010

by Chris Barncard
University Communications

"Reach out and touch someone" — good advertising slogan, or evolutionary imperative?

How about both?

What Madison Avenue knew decades ago has been observed in brain chemistry. A simple phone call from mom can calm frayed nerves by sparking the release of a powerful stress-quelling hormone, according to researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Biological anthropologist Leslie Seltzer tested a group of seven- to 12-year-old girls with an impromptu speech and series of math problems in front of a panel of strangers, sending their hearts racing and levels of cortisol — a hormone associated with stress — soaring.

"Facing a challenge like that, being evaluated, raises stress levels for a lot of people," says Seth Pollak, psychology professor and director of UW-Madison's Child Emotion Lab.

Once stressed, one-third of the girls were comforted in person by their mothers — specifically with hugs, an arm around the shoulders and the like. One-third were left watch an emotion-neutral 75-minute video. The rest were handed a telephone. It was mom on the line, and the effect was dramatic.

"The children who got to interact with their mothers had virtually the same hormonal response, whether they interacted in person or over the phone," Seltzer says.

The girls' levels of oxytocin, often called the "love hormone" and strongly associated with emotional bonding, rose significantly and the stress-marking cortisol washed away.

"It was understood that oxytocin release in the context of social bonding usually required physical contact," Seltzer says. "But it's clear from these results that a mother's voice can have the same effect as a hug, even if they're not standing there."

And the reprieve from stress or anxiety is a lasting one.

"It stays well beyond that stressful task," Pollak says. "By the time the children go home, they're still enjoying the benefits of this relief and their cortisol levels are still low."

The findings — which were published Wednesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B — square with a "tend and befriend" theory explaining how stress regulation may differ between males and females. Confronted with a threat, males may be more likely to choose between fight and flight. A female with offspring in tow or slowed by pregnancy, however, may have to make different choices.

"You might not be able to run with a child or defend yourself without endangering both of you," Seltzer said.

Instead, Seltzer explained, it might make more sense for a female to create or use a social bond to deal with a stressor — either through touch or soothing vocal communication.

"Apparently this hormone, oxytocin, reduces stress in females after both types of contact, and in doing so may strengthen bonds between individuals," she said.

From a modern perspective, the new understanding of oxytocin release helps explain the popularity of tearjerker long distance telephone commercials and shifts Pollak's reaction to his own students.

"For years I've seen students leaving exams and the first thing they do is pull out their cell phone and make a call," Pollak says. "I used to think, 'How could those over-attentive, helicopter parents encourage that?' But now? Maybe it's a quick and dirty way to feel better. It's not pop psychology or psychobabble."

"It's hard to get cortisol up. It's hard to get oxytocin up," he says. "That a simple telephone call could have this physiological effect on oxytocin is really exciting."

UW-Madison endocrinologist and study co-author Toni Ziegler developed with Seltzer a non-invasive test to measure oxytocin levels without inducing more stress in study subjects.

Seltzer has moved on to testing the oxytocin wake of other communication methods — like text messaging — and hopes to see the research spread out from human subjects

"It's not just us, of course. Lots of very social species vocalize," she says. "On the one hand, we're curious to see if this effect is unique to humans. On the other we're hoping researchers who study vocal communication will consider looking at oxytocin release in other animals and applying it to broader questions of social behavior and evolutionary biology."

Web link:

http://www.waisman.wisc.edu/NEWS/lseltzer01.html