Psi Research Material submitted on June 1, 2008
One Night’s Sleep Loss Confuses Brain
“Being deprived of sleep even for one night makes the brain unstable and prone to sudden shutdowns akin to a power failure - brief lapses that hover between sleep and wakefulness,” says David Dinges of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, commenting upon his study which recently appeared in the Journal of Neuroscience. "It's as though it is both asleep and awake and they are switching between each other very rapidly,” he said.
Participants in his study submitted to brain scans while they attempted to perform simple puzzle tasks. The experimental participants stayed awake one full night before their testing, and were compared with folks who got a full night’s sleep. The results clearly showed the brain’s confusion among the sleep deprived participants. Momentary lapses in function were frequent in many areas of the brain. Driving while the brain is confused in this manner is clearly very dangerous.
Web source:
Last updated at 08:14am on 21.05.08
Being deprived of sleep even for one night makes the brain unstable and prone to sudden shutdowns akin to a power failure - brief lapses that hover between sleep and wakefulness, according to researchers.
"It's as though it is both asleep and awake and they are switching between each other very rapidly," said David Dinges of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, whose study appears in the Journal of Neuroscience.
"Imagine you are sitting in a room watching a movie with the lights on. In a stable brain, the lights stay on all the time. In a sleepy brain, the lights suddenly go off," Dinges said.
The findings suggest that people who are sleep-deprived alternate between periods of near-normal brain function and dramatic lapses in attention and visual processing.
"This involves more structures changing than we've ever seen before, but changing just during these lapses," Dinges said.
He and colleagues did brain imaging studies on 24 adults who performed simple tasks involving visual attention when they were well rested and when they had missed a night's sleep.
The researchers used a type of brain imaging known as functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, which measures blood flow in the brain.
They found significant, momentary lapses in several areas of the brain, which seemed to frequently falter when the people were deprived of sleep, but not when these same people were well rested.
"These people are not lying in bed. They are sitting up doing a task they learned and they are working very hard at doing their best," Dinges said.
He said the lapses seem to suggest that loss of sleep renders the brain incapable of fully fending off the involuntary drive to sleep.
He said the study makes it clear how dangerous sleep deprivation can be while driving on the highway, when even a four-second lapse could lead to a major accident.
"These are not just academic interests," he said.
Web link: http://tinyurl.com/4u5h3t
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Vatican Approves of UFOs
It is OK to believe in UFOs and alien beings, according to a statement released by the Vatican in Rome. “There could be alien life forms and believing they exist isn't contradictory to having faith in God,” said the Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the top astronomer and director of the Vatican observatory. In an article entitled, “The Extraterrestrial Is My Brother," the scientist-priest speculated that it is possible that life exists elsewhere in the universe, and to believe so doesn’t contradict any church teachings. “We cannot put limits on the creative freedom of God," he said, and that since any lifeforms existing in the universe were created by God, then these creatures are our siblings.
web source:
VATICAN CITY — There could be alien life forms and believing they exist isn't contradictory to having faith in God, the top astronomer at the Vatican said in an interview published Tuesday.
In the Vatican newspaper piece, titled "The Extraterrestrial Is My Brother," the Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes said the expansiveness of the universe means there could be life on planets other than Earth.
"In my opinion this possibility exists," Funes, the director of the Vatican Observatory, told L'Osservatore Romano. "Astronomers believe the universe is made up of 100 billion galaxies, each of which consists of 100 billion stars. ... Life forms could exist in theory even without oxygen or hydrogen."
Funes said that there might even be other intelligent life out there, but believing in its existence doesn't pose a problem for those of the Catholic faith.
"It is possible. So far we have no proof. But certainly in a universe so big we can not exclude this hypothesis," he told the paper.
"As there is a multiplicity of creatures on earth, so there may be other beings, intelligent, created by God. This does not conflict with our faith, because we cannot put limits on the creative freedom of God."
He said human beings could even consider another life form an "extraterrestrial brother" because it, too, would be one of God's creatures.
"How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere?" Funes said. "Just as we consider earthly creatures as 'a brother,' and 'sister,' why should we not talk about an 'extraterrestrial brother'? It would still be part of creation."
The interview covered a variety of topics, including the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and science, and the theological implications of the existence of alien life.
Funes said science, especially astronomy, does not contradict religion, touching on a theme of Pope Benedict XVI, who has made exploring the relationship between faith and reason a key aspect of his papacy.
The Bible "is not a science book," Funes said, adding that he believes the Big Bang theory is the most "reasonable" explanation for the creation of the universe. The theory says the universe began billions of years ago in the explosion of a single, super-dense point that contained all matter.
But he said he continues to believe that "God is the creator of the universe and that we are not the result of chance."
Funes urged the church and the scientific community to leave behind divisions caused by Galileo's persecution 400 years ago, saying the incident has "caused wounds."
In 1633 the astronomer was tried as a heretic and forced to recant his theory that the Earth revolved around the sun. Church teaching at the time placed Earth at the center of the universe.
"The church has somehow recognized its mistakes," he said. "Maybe it could have done it better, but now it's time to heal those wounds and this can be done through calm dialogue and collaboration."
Pope John Paul declared in 1992 that the ruling against Galileo was an error resulting from "tragic mutual incomprehension."
The Vatican Observatory has been at the forefront of efforts to bridge the gap between religion and science. Its scientist-clerics have generated top-notch research and its meteorite collection is considered one of the world's best.
The observatory, founded by Pope Leo XIII in 1891, is based in Castel Gandolfo, a lakeside town in the hills outside Rome where the pope has a summer residence. It also conducts research at an observatory at the University of Arizona, in Tucson.
Web link:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,355400,00.html
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Mother’s Intuition Gaining Medical Respect
If an expectant mother senses she knows the sex of her unborn child, then she is correct seventy per cent of the time, according to a study conducted at the University of Arizona. Although discounted in the past, such maternal intuition is gaining renewed respect among the medical community. Partially responsible for this trend is the increase in female pediatricians with children of their own, according to Mary Applegate, associate dean for academic affairs at University at Albany's school of public health, in an interview with the Times Union.
In the news recently was the story of the twins born to actor Dennis Quaid and his wife Kimberly. They mistakenly received a massive overdose of a certain medicine while in the hospital. At the very moment this occurred, Mrs. Quaid had the feeling that something was wrong with her children and called the hospital to inquire. Although she was told everything was OK, she made a written note of her concern, which proved accurate.
web source:
Moms don't need scientific proof of intuition; they just know it's real
By
JENNIFER GISH, Staf writer
First published: Monday, May 5, 2008
When actor Dennis Quaid's newborn twins were given a life-threatening overdose of a blood thinner last fall, it thrust the danger of medical mistakes into the news.
But a second story that went beyond hard facts and science was that Quaid's wife, Kimberly, had a feeling her twins were in jeopardy before she learned about the overdose.
Kimberly, whose twins are biologically hers but were carried by a surrogate, said on "60 Minutes" that the night before the overdose was discovered, she felt an overwhelming sense of dread and called the hospital to check on the babies. After she was told her twins were doing well, she still jotted down a note reading: "9 p.m. something happened to babies!"
The story gives weight to a reality known to mothers that has yet to be backed with a scientific explanation: mother's intuition.
"Much of the research on intuitive processes that has been carried out by psychologists treats intuition as a form of unconscious thinking," says Victor Shamas, a lecturer in psychology at the University of Arizona who studied intuition in expectant moms. "Most people outside of academic psychology understand that intuition is more than just unconscious thinking. Those who are open to the existence of intuition would say that it is something that goes beyond simple reasoning or perception. That is what makes mother's intuition such a fascinating topic."
But in today's information-packed world, tools like mother's intuition and even basic maternal instinct get lost. A generation of mothers has forgotten to trust themselves. The "What to Expect When You're Expecting" books have become a series, telling readers not only how to be pregnant, but how to get through the first year and the toddler years in separate volumes. Web sites allow parents to pose questions to an international community, a mix of experts and fellow parents willing to weigh in on various problems, such as slow potty training and coping with colic.
"As science has advanced, we've tended to devalue maternal intuition, maternal wisdom and grand-maternal wisdom in our effort to bring the latest in scientific discoveries to bear in everything we do, including raising kids," says Mary Applegate, associate dean for academic affairs at University at Albany's school of public health.
Listening to parents
Today, driven by an increase in the number of female pediatricians who have children of their own, doctors are encouraged to give more credence to the concerns of parents, particularly mothers, who know their children best. Applegate says she likes to quote a former professor who used to say the best scientific studies on child rearing will only confirm what your grandmother already told you.
"There's a growing recognition that listening to what parents say is really important," she says.
A study of 100 expectant mothers conducted by Shamas at the University of Arizona in the late 1990s showed the connectedness between mother and child begins as early as in the womb. The women were asked whether they thought they were going to give birth to a girl or a boy. Women who claimed to have a sense about the sex of their child were proven correct more than 70 percent of the time.
"A mother who has an intuition about the sex of her unborn baby is not getting this information simply through her five senses or her intellect," Shamas says. "There is something else at play here. What that is remains a bit of a mystery."
Intuition devalued
He says other studies by University of Arizona researcher Joanne Cacciatore document cases where parents, like the Quaids, were able to sense the impending troubles of their children.
That's intuition, which Shamas distinguishes from mother's instinct, considered "an ability or tendency that is innate and hard-wired ... known to have at least some link to the circuitry of (a mother's) brain and to the effects of hormones in her body," he says.
But Applegate says both intuition and instinct have traditionally been devalued by medicine.
For example, she says, bottle feeding became widespread after World War II and reached its peak in the 1970s, advanced by doctors who saw infant formula as perfect, scientifically blended nutrition and felt infants should be fed on a strict schedule.
Even nursing mothers at the time, who were opting for a process that seemed natural, were told to rigidly control their infants' intake, decreasing demand and thus slowing their breast milk supply. Many ended up abandoning breast-feeding, Applegate says, feeling as though they'd failed as mothers.
Today, she says, in line with a switch toward fostering maternal wisdom by the medical community, breast-feeding rates are rising with nearly 75 percent of U.S. mothers nursing at the hospital.
The same goes for all the parents who were once told to let their infants "cry it out" during the night rather than running to them at every wimper.
"Parents' general tendency is to pick a baby up and cuddle with them and make them feel better, but for years, mothers were told, 'No, no. That will spoil the baby,' Applegate says. "(Since then) studies have shown that, actually, a baby whose needs are responded to quickly and thoroughly tends to be a less difficult child growing up because they're more secure."
Any mother who's ever glanced at her teenager and known immediately something was wrong, realizes maternal intuition is a lifelong sense. Because they've been responsible for tending to their children all their lives, mothers pick up all of their quirks and cues, Applegate says.
Fathers, too
And fathers aren't without parental intuition as well, experts say.
"The most likely reason that father's intuition may be overlooked has to do with gender roles and stereotypes," Shamas says. "Intuition is considered a touchy-feely ability that men are not necessarily proud of having or developing."
Meanwhile, mothers revel in the idea, pleased to think they know you almost better than you know yourself, and often being right.
Weblink: http://timesunion.com/ASPStories/Story.asp?StoryID=685817&LinkFrom=RSS&TextPage=1
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Stress is More Stressful Today
Stress has always been with us. It comes in the form of change, both good (getting married, buying a house) and bad (illness, divorce). The Life Changes Stress Test, developed in the 1960s to assess the relative severity of stress generated by various life changes, has recently been re-calibrated to reflect changes in the world in the past forty years. The result of this re-calibration has revealed that certain life events have become significantly more stressful for us. A survey of over thirteen hundred adult Americans, conducted by the Southeastern Institute of Research based in Richmond, Virginia, determined that, compared to the 1960s, the death of a friend, getting laid off, having a baby, getting a ticket, and travel are all more significantly stressful today. Getting a divorce was one type of change that has become less stressful.
Web source:
Point values add up to far more stress these days
By Sharon Jayson, USA TODAY
If it seems tougher than in the past to deal with what life throws your way, you're not the only one who thinks so.
The death of a friend, getting laid off or having a baby takes more adjustment than in the past, according to a study that compares perceptions of life changes today vs. 40 years ago.
"Life just gets more demanding. Today's life is more stressful," says Richard Rahe of Salem, Ore., a psychiatrist who in 1967 co-created the Life Changes Stress Test (also known as the Social Readjustment Rating Scale), which is now widely used in stress management.
The online survey of 1,306 adults reproduced a section of Rahe's scale, which assigns point values to life events and gauges the amount of adjustment they require. Marriage was the standard by which other events were measured.
The original scale looked at 42 life events; the new study selected 10 of them for a direct comparison that were thought to require greater adjustment today.
"The common wisdom is that even good things can be stressful," says Carol Dweck, a psychology professor at Stanford University. "You can view change as an exciting opportunity for growth or a threatening possibility."
Rahe wasn't involved in the new study, but he says it's in line with his findings. He has twice refined the scale, most recently in 1997, when he found that the difficulty of adjusting to major life events was 45% higher than in 1967.
Rahe calculates the increase in difficulty at about 1.5% a year.
"If you look at travel today and compare it to the stress of traveling 30 years ago, can't you see it's increased? The ones that really went up were the low life-change values. What used to be low — like a traffic ticket — are now moderate. Now, when you get a ticket, it can cost $500," Rahe says.
The perceived adjustment necessary to the death of a spouse or divorce declined. Rebecca Adams, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, says reasons for that could be many, including differences in survey methodology.
Social norms also have changed in 40 years. Divorce rates have increased, and more people are staying single than in the past.
The study was commissioned by a New York company called First 30 Days, which offers products and services to help people through life changes. The survey was done in August by Southeastern Institute of Research based in Richmond, Va.. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.
Weblink:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-05-05-life-changes_N.htm?csp=34
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Jewish School Psychologist Teaches Jesus' Solutions to Bullying
As schools are
trying desperately to combat bullying, only to discover that their anti-bully
programs and policies usually have mediocre results or even make the problem
worse, a Jewish school psychologist and psychotherapist, child of Holocaust
survivors, has been teaching kids-and adults-how to stop being bullied with
near-miraculous results. He claims his techniques are completely consistent with
Jesus' teachings. The reason bullying is skyrocketing in our country, says
Kalman, is that anti-bullying policies violate the teachings of Jesus.
Izzy Kalman, who for over five years has been teaching mental health
professionals and educators throughout the country his unique techniques for
dealing with bullying and relationship problems, says that Jesus was a great
psychologist who knew the solution to bullying better than today's anti-bullying
experts. Rather than preaching against bullies, Jesus taught people to stop
thinking like victims. Unfortunately, the idea of an anti-bullying crusade is so
seductive that even Christians fail to see that the anti-bullying policies they
are embracing would make Jesus sick.
Jesus taught the practice of the Golden Rule, the universal principle of wisdom
and morality. Zero-tolerance for bullying, teaching kids to identify others as
bullies, and instructing them to tell school authorities when kids bully them
violate the Golden Rule as explicated by Jesus, who instructed us to love our
enemies, turn the other cheek, don't judge others, communicate directly with
those who wrong us, and be nice to people when they are mean to us.
"Had you told me ten years ago that I would soon be traveling around the country
teaching Christians [and others] to understand Jesus, I would have said you were
crazy," Kalman is fond of saying. He began developing his methods for teaching
people how to stop being victims about two decades ago. "When I took the time to
read the New Testament a few years ago, I discovered that Jesus had been
teaching the solution to bullying two thousands years before me. It's so nice to
discover that the most famous Jew in the world was doing what I've been
doing-teaching people how to turn their bullies into buddies. Unfortunately, the
world hasn't understood the message very well, and it needs to be taught now
more than ever."
Kalman claims a personal success rate of at least 90% in counseling individual
victims of bullying, with dramatic improvement usually occurring within one
week. The professionals who learn to use his techniques are also finding
themselves able to help kids quicker than ever. The whole-school bullying
reduction program Kalman has developed is currently undergoing a multi-year
research study by
Cleveland
State
University in conjunction with PSI Solutions, Inc.-Partners for Success and
Innovation-providing school psychological and other related services to schools
throughout the USA, and results are promising. "We at
PSI
were so impressed with the simplicity and common sense of the Bullies to Buddies
program that we had to make it our own. We have partnered with Izzy Kalman and
Cleveland
State
University to bring this program to the thousands of students that
PSI
serves," says psychologist Steve Rosenberg, PhD, president of
PSI
Solutions. Jeannie Brewer, a school counselor in
Las Vegas, asserts, "In my
15 years as a school counselor, I have never seen a more effective social skills
program. This one is pure genius."
His company, Bullies to Buddies, Inc, has recently produced a DVD package called
Victim-Proof Your School, which
he claims will quickly and dramatically reduce bullying in schools, and is
backed by a money-back guarantee. Free manuals for dealing with bullying have
been available for years on his website,
www.Bullies2Buddies.com.
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Am I Dreaming Now?
In a lucid dream, the dreamer is aware of dreaming. During lucid dreams, dreamers can achieve breakthroughs in emotional conflicts and thus this type of dream has therapeutic potential. Researchers have therefore explored methods to increase the occurrence of lucid dreams. One method, called the “reflection-intention” technique, has recently been demonstrated to increase the probability of lucid dreaming.
In this study, conducted with university students in Sweden, and reported in the journal, Dreaming, participants were trained for two weeks to reflect at every opportunity, “Am I dreaming now or am I awake?” They were also instructed in giving themselves frequent autosuggestions concerning their intention to have and recall lucid dreams. The results indicated that both the frequency of dream recall and the frequency of lucid dreams increased significantly during the two week training period.
Source: The Effects of a Two-Week Reflection–Intention
Training Program on Lucid Dream Recall
Timo Paulsson and Adrian Parker
University of Go¨teborg
Dreaming, 2006, Vol. 16, No. 1, 22–35
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Police Receive Guidance in Using Psychics
The question police officers have about consulting psychics in their investigations is not so much, “Is the psychic real?” The operative question is “Can psychic information actually help?” There now exists a substantive guidebook for police officers who wish to cultivate the use of psychic investigation.
Psychic Criminology: A Guide for Using Psychics in Investigations (Charles C. Thomas, Publisher), by Whitney S. Hibbard and associates. The authors are criminologists and forensic psychologists who have worked many cases themselves with psychics and who have collected many case histories pertaining to the use of psychics in police work. The book discusses both the up and downside of working with psychics and gives guidelines for maximizing the effectiveness of this approach to criminal investigations.
To order this book from Amazon.com, click here!
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Telepathic Computer Recognizes Your Thoughts
Brain imaging methodology has made significant inroads in connecting brain events to their equivalent mental events. Earlier research discovered how to match brain activity to specific pictures the person was viewing. Recent research has advanced beyond that point to be able to determine which words a person is thinking.
In this research, conducted at the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and published in the journal Science, participants were given a list of words to think about, one at a time, while the investigators noted brain activity. The researchers then combined the results across participants and used a computer to obtain the average activity pattern associated with each word. Once the calibration was set, the researchers then offered to the participant two new words, and asked the person to secretly choose one of those two words to think about. The test was to see if the computer could correctly determine which of the two words the person was contemplating. The computer proved significantly telepathic! The researchers noted that their next phase was to see if they could teach the computer to recognizes phrases.
Web source:
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor Thu May 29, 4:32 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A computer has been trained to "read" people's minds by looking at scans of their brains as they thought about specific words, researchers said on Thursday.
They hope their study, published in the journal Science, might lead to better understanding of how and where the brain stores information.
This might lead to better treatments for language disorders and learning disabilities, said Tom Mitchell of the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, who helped lead the study.
"The question we are trying to get at is one people have been thinking about for centuries, which is: How does the brain organize knowledge?" Mitchell said in a telephone interview.
"It is only in the last 10 or 15 years that we have this way that we can study this question."
Mitchell's team used functional magnetic resonance imaging, a type of brain scan that can see real-time brain activity.
They calibrated the computer by having nine student volunteers think of 58 different words, while imaging their brain activity.
"We gave instructions to people where we would tell them, 'We are going to show you words and we would like you, when you see this word, to think about its properties,"' Mitchell said.
They imaged each of the nine people thinking about the 58 different words, to create a kind of "average" image of a word.
"If I show you the brain images for two words, the main thing you notice is that they look pretty much alike. If you look at them for a while you might see subtle differences," Mitchell said.
"We have the program calculate the mean brain activity over all of the words that somebody has looked at. That gives us the average when somebody thinks about a word, and then we subtract that average out from all those images," Mitchell added.
Then the test came.
"After we train on the other 58 words, we can say 'Here are two new words you have not seen, celery and airplane."' The computer was asked to choose which brain image corresponded with which word.
The computer passed the test, predicting when a brain image was taken when a person thought about the word "celery" and when the assigned word was "airplane."
The next step is to study brain activity for phrases.
"If I say 'rabbit' or 'fast rabbit' or 'cuddly rabbit', those are very different ideas," Mitchell said.
"I want to basically use that as a kind of scaffolding for studying language processing in the brain."
Mitchell was surprised at how similar brain activity was among the nine volunteers, although the work was painstaking. For an MRI to work well, the patient must sit or lie very still for several minutes.
"It can be hard to focus," Mitchell said. "Somewhere in the middle of that their stomach growls. And all of sudden they think, 'I'm hungry -- oops.' It's not a controllable experiment."
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Breathe Slowly to Bach to Lower Blood Pressure
Both breathing exercises and listening to music have been found to have significant effects on bodily functions. Recently the two modalities have been combined to create a healing effect upon blood pressure.
In this study, conducted in Italy and presented at the recent convention of the American Society of Hypertension, adults with hypertension were trained in slow, rhythmic breathing, with one long count for inhalation and two long counts for exhalation. The participants then practiced this slow breathing method while listening to music. They were able to select the music from classical, Celtic and Indian genres that all had regular rhythm. The participants practiced this approach for thirty minutes a day for three months. Afterwards, their ambulatory blood pressure was evaluated and compared to a matched control group. The results indicated that the systolic pressure for the treated group was significantly lower than when they started and significantly lower than the control group. These differences were observable after only one month of practice.
Web source:
|
By Peggy
Peck, Executive Editor, MedPage Today |
NEW ORLEANS, May 23 -- Spending just 30 minutes a day listening to rhythmically homogeneous music -- anything from classical to Celtic to Indian -- has a beneficial effect on blood pressure, researchers found.
The key was to combine listening with breathing exercises, said Gianfranco Parati, M.D., of the University of Milan-Bicocca in Milan, Italy.
The music, he said, helps patients concentrate on slow, abdominal breathing with an inspiration/expiration ratio of 1:2.
Dr. Parati presented results of a small, randomized trial at the American Society of Hypertension meeting. Dr. Parati was not, however, an investigator with the study, which was done by Pietro A. Modesti, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Florence, and colleagues. Dr. Modesti was unable to attend the meeting.
The study recruited 48 volunteers, ages 45 to 70, with mild hypertension. All patients were receiving pharmacological treatment.
The researchers randomized 20 patients (mean age 65) to the control group and 28 (mean age 60) to 30 minutes a day of music combined with the breathing exercise. Patients selected their own music from offered choices that included classical, Celtic, and Indian.
The primary endpoint of the study was mean change in ambulatory 24-hour systolic and diastolic blood pressure and heart rate from baseline. The secondary endpoint was change in drug treatment.
After three months, daily music-breathing therapy was associated with a significant reduction in systolic blood pressure compared with the control group (>2 mm Hg) and a reduction of more than 4 mm Hg versus baseline measurements (P <0.05).
Moreover, the benefit was apparent at one month.
There were no significant differences between the music and control groups for diastolic pressure or heart rate.
Sandra J. Taler, M.D., of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., an ASH board member who served as a discussant at the press conference where Dr. Parati presented the data, said the investigators should be commended for using ambulatory blood pressure monitoring as the endpoint because it provides more valuable data than in-office measures.
She agreed that it was most likely the breathing exercises that brought the blood pressure down, but said music could be a good tool to teach people rhythmic breathing.
That said, she pointed out that the study was very small and the subjects had only mild hypertension, which made it difficult to extrapolate the data.
Primary source:
American Society of
Hypertension
Source reference:
Modesti PA, et al "Daily sessions of music can reduce 24-hour ambulatory blood
pressure in mild hypertension" ASH Meeting 2008; Abstract 230.
Web link:
http://www.medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/ASH/tb/9597
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Psychics in Europe Face New Regulations
As the European Union develops new regulatory systems, psychics are being affected. The newly endorsed Consumer Protection Regulations mentions psychics, mediums and spiritual healers. According to these new rules, any claim a practitioner might make about their services are now a basis for the client to sue for damages if the claims are not fulfilled.
In England, for example, where it is estimated that millions of pounds are spent each year for psychic or spiritual services, the old law was the Fraudulent Medium Act. That law required that the client prove deliberate fraud in order to collect damages. Under the new law, if a client sues, the burden is upon the practitioner to prove that their claims were fulfilled.
Most all psychic and spiritual services, according to a report in the Guardian, are offered on a fee or donation basis, and are thus subject to the new rules. Spiritual services will have to begin with a disclaimer that no specific results are guaranteed. Many practitioners have complained that the new rules make them operate more like a business than a spiritual service. It seems that the new rules have caught up with the realities of the spiritual economy.
Web source:
Mediums are fighting new EU rules designed to protect the public from dodgy traders, fearing that honest spiritualists could be targeted
The evocative question 'Is there anybody there?' conjures up images of mediums summoning spirits in a darkened room. But now psychics must add a few riders before they invoke the voices of the dead, thanks to new consumer laws due to come into force. Breathless audiences are now likely to be asked: 'Is there anybody here... who is vulnerable, of nervous disposition, or likely to sue?'
Indeed, a whole list of disclaimers must be added to the spiritualists' spiel if they are to avoid an avalanche of writs following the repeal next month of the Fraudulent Mediums Act, to be replaced by the new Consumer Protection Regulations. Promises to raise the dead, secure good fortune or heal through the laying on of hands are all at risk of legal action from disgruntled customers. Spiritualists say they will be forced to issue disclaimers, such as 'this is a scientific experiment, the results of which cannot be guaranteed'. They claim the new regulations will leave them open to malicious civil action by sceptics.
The problem is that very little in the multi-million-pound psychic industry in Britain is for free, and anyone charging or accepting 'gifts' in exchange for a service is bound by the new regulations. There are charges for seances, Tarot, psychic readings and clairvoyance. Spiritualist church service-goers - and there are more than 300 spiritualist churches in Britain - are charged or asked for donations. Psychic mailings - letters promising spiritualist services in exchange for a cheque - are estimated to have cost Britons £40m in 2006-07, according to Office of Fair Trading research. Psychic services via telephone, online and satellite TV keep the tills ringing further.
For the past half-century, 'genuine' mediums have been protected by the 1951 Fraudulent Mediums Act, under which prosecutors had to prove fraud and dishonest intent to secure a criminal conviction, which was difficult. There have been fewer than 10 convictions in the past 20 years. With that protection gone, there will now be nothing between the medium and the trading standards officer - and no need to prove fraud. Instead it will be up to the trader, in this case the medium, to prove they did not mislead, coerce or take advantage of any 'vulnerable' consumers.
Carole McEntee-Taylor, a spiritualist healer in Essex, said having to stand up and describe the invoking of spirits as an 'experiment' was forcing spiritualists to 'lie and deny our beliefs'. She added: 'No other religion has to do that. And how can you tell if someone is vulnerable? You would have to ask them if they felt vulnerable, or had mental health issues, or were of a nervous disposition.'
With her husband, David, a spiritualist minister, she has set up the Spiritualist Workers' Association, to help regulate the industry and offer guidance on the law. They will be presenting a petition to 10 Downing Street on 18 April. Their website warns: 'The changes in the legislation are a minefield... given Britain's litigation culture. We have to fight it. If not, we will go back to the Dark Ages, where we will be persecuted and prosecuted.'
The Fraudulent Mediums Act replaced the 1735 Witchcraft Act. The government is set to repeal it and many other laws alongside the introduction of the Consumer Protection Regulations. If they are approved by Parliament, as is likely - there are debates in the Lords on 23 April and in the Commons on 6 May - the regulations will come into force on 26 May. They will ban 31 types of unfair sales practice outright, including bogus closing-down sales, prize-draw scams and aggressive doorstep selling, and will for the first time establish a catch-all duty not to trade unfairly, closing loopholes that rogue traders have been able to exploit. But spiritualists say the measures fail to take account of their religion.
'It is taking a religion, a way of life, and making it a commercial transaction,' said David McEntee-Taylor. 'If we hold a service in a village hall, we have to charge or ask for a donation to cover the cost of hiring the hall. There are bad mediums out there, and we would like to regulate them. But this is unfair on genuine spiritualists. Some people are very nervous of entrapment.'
Emma-Louise Rhodes, a researcher for BadPsychics, which seeks to expose malpractice, said: 'Hopefully, the new regulations will bring to justice those who have cruelly sought to exploit the bereaved for personal financial gain.'
A legal specialist said: 'Now there is no difference between a psychic and a double-glazing salesman in law.'
Web link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/apr/06/eu
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Are Eight Glasses of Water Daily Really Healthy?
One of the most commonly repeated health tips from the Cayce readings is to drink eight glasses of water daily. The recommendation also comes from other sources. Recent research has questioned the validity of this recommendation.
Reporting in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, scientists from the University of Pennsylvania reviewed all published scientific evidence on the health effects of water consumption. They concluded that all four major “myths” concerning the value of drinking water were without any scientific support. In other words, they found no evidence that
1) Drinking more water facilitates the flushing of more toxins. More urine is passed, but with no increase in toxins flushed.
2) Drinking more water improves the skin’s complexion.
3) Drinking water suppresses appetite.
4) Drinking water reduces the frequency of headaches.
Of course, the lack of evidence is not the same as evidence to the contrary, which is also lacking. The scientists admit that there’s probably no harm in drinking eight glasses of water daily. Someday someone may show that drinking water that has been prayed over may have benefits that ordinary water does not.
Web source:
By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The notion that guzzling glasses of water to flood yourself with good health is all wet, researchers said on Wednesday.
Dr. Stanley Goldfarb and Dr. Dan Negoianu of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia reviewed the scientific literature on the health effects of drinking lots of water.
People in hot, dry climates and athletes have an increased need for water, and people with certain diseases do better with increased fluid intake, they found. But for average healthy people, more water does not seem to mean better health, they said.
Their scientific review, published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, is the latest to undercut the recommendations advanced by some experts to drink eight glasses of 8 ounces (225 ml) of water a day.
Dr. Heinz Valtin of Dartmouth Medical School in 2002 also put those recommendations to the test, finding them to be more urban myth than medical dogma and lacking in scientific basis.
Goldfarb and Negoianu examined what Goldfarb called "four major myths" regarding claims of a benefit for extra water drinking: that it leads to more toxin excretion, improves skin tone, makes one less hungry and reduces headache frequency.
"Our bottom line was that there was no real good science -- or much science at all -- behind these claims, that they represent probably folklore," Goldfarb said.
As far as facilitating toxin excretion, Goldfarb said that was not verified by any sort of scientific study.
"The kidneys clear toxins. This is what the kidneys do. They do it very effectively. And they do it independently of how much water you take in. When you take in a lot of water, all you do is put out more urine but not more toxins in the urine," Goldfarb said.
No studies showed any benefit to skin tone as a result of increased water intake, they found. They also found evidence lacking that drinking water wards off headaches.
As far as lots of water serving to limit appetite, he said there was no consistent evidence, adding it was "a little unclear exactly whether that was true."
"What no one looked at is whether anyone really loses weight over the long haul if they go under this regimen of drinking lots of water," Goldfarb said. "We just expressed uncertainty in that area."
While it may not help a person to drink lots of water, it may not harm them much either, Goldfarb said.
"If someone enjoys it, I say that's wonderful, keep doing it. They're not doing anything that's going to hurt them."
"A little mild dehydration for the most part is OK, and a little mild water excess for the most part is OK. It's the extremes that one needs to avoid," he said.
Web link:
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSN0236679720080402?sp=true