PSi Research Material Submitted December 1, 2005
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Life Created by Virgin Conception
Scientists have discovered a method by which they can create new human embryos without either cloning or fertilization by sperm. British researchers at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland (where Dolly the sheep was cloned) described their method as a form of parthenogenesis, when an egg divides without being fertilized into a ball of cells that develops into an early embryo called a blastocyst. The scientists found a way to prevent the egg cell from divesting half its chromosomes when dividing, so that the resulting blastocyst contains all the chromosomes necessary for a human being. The blastocysts are not viable life forms on their own, however. They would not grow into human beings, nor are they intended for implantation in women’s wombs.
The purpose of their research is to find an acceptable method for generating new stem cells, which are so promising in the cure of many diseases. So far, however, the researchers have not been able to harvest stem cells from these embryos, but their efforts continue.
Source:
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Embryos Created by 'Virgin Conception' STEVE CONNOR, Science Editor - The Independent (U.K.)
Scientists have created the first human embryos in Britain by a technique of "virgin conception" that does not involve either fertilisation with sperm or cloning. The six embryos lived for between three and five days and were created as a potential source of human stem cells, which can develop into the body's specialised tissues such as brain nerves or bone. Each embryo came about as a result of parthenogenesis, when an egg divides without being fertilised into a ball of cells that develops in effect into an early embryo called a blastocyst. Paul de Souza, the study's principal investigator at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, said that although the aim was to harvest stem cells from the embryos, efforts to do this had so far not been successful. "We've made half a dozen blastocysts. We have not at present got embryonic stem cells, that continues to be our ambition," Dr de Souza told the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Dublin. Parthenogenesis - which literally means virgin birth - is a common form of asexual reproduction in many animals but not in mammals, the group to which humans belong. Dr de Souza said there was no intention of implanting the embryos into the womb of a woman and that his government licence from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority was strictly for research. "If we don't put these artificial conceptuses into a uterus, they will go nowhere. They will not result in a foetus, they will not result in a life," he said. The announcement of the first human embryos created by parthenogenesis is likely to be criticised by "pro-life" groups who oppose all research that involves creating human embryos for research purposes, he said. The scientists at the Roslin Institute, where Dolly the sheep was cloned, used about 300 eggs taken from the ovaries of women undergoing an operation to make them sterile who had given their consent. About half the eggs matured successfully in the laboratory and about 5 per cent of these divided several times to produce a blastocyst, he said. "We need a blastocyst to recover embryo stem cells and our success rate in recovering embryo stem cells is about one in ten," Dr de Souza said. "I think it's more of a technical challenge [to get stem cells] as distinct from a biological challenge." Normally eggs and sperm have only half the genetic material and chromosomes of other cells in the body but the scientists have developed a technique whereby the eggs are stimulated to retain all their chromosomes before developing into a pathenogenic embryo. "We can manipulate that process where normally genetic information is expelled, so that we can create eggs and embryos whose genetic constitution is identical to the mother," Dr de Souza said. "The tissue we can derive from such an embryo would presumably be compatible for transplantation. "There are in existence parthenogenic stem cell lines from non-human primates but to date no one has cracked that in humans. I think it's just a matter of the supply of tissue with which to be able to engage in experimentation," he added. At present only women could benefit from parthenogenic embryos as men cannot produce eggs but scientists are also working on the possibility of using genetic material from sperm to create a parthenogenic embryo. "Based on experiments in mice we could create what are called androgenotes where we would replace the egg's genetic information with the genetic information from a sperm," Dr de Souza said. "We could put in two sperms if we wanted to to create a full genetic complement. Androgenotes would be a little more problematic in terms of how exactly matched that tissue would be to the donor because those sperm could have been created through a process where there would have been an expulsion of genetic material," Dr de Souza said. Parthenogenic embryos offer an alternative way of creating stem cells than cloned embryos, which are created by transfering the nucleus of a skin cell into an egg with its own nucleus removed. Dr de Souza said: "It is possible that the cloned stem cell lines that are produced will not be suitable for therapeutic purposes or not suitable for use as models of genetic diseases. "We don't know whether any one of them is going to lead to where to want to go and therapy is not the only objective. We also want these cell lines for research," he added. Scientists have created the first human embryos in Britain by a technique of "virgin conception" that does not involve either fertilisation with sperm or cloning. The six embryos lived for between three and five days and were created as a potential source of human stem cells, which can develop into the body's specialised tissues such as brain nerves or bone. Each embryo came about as a result of parthenogenesis, when an egg divides without being fertilised into a ball of cells that develops in effect into an early embryo called a blastocyst. Paul de Souza, the study's principal investigator at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, said that although the aim was to harvest stem cells from the embryos, efforts to do this had so far not been successful. "We've made half a dozen blastocysts. We have not at present got embryonic stem cells, that continues to be our ambition," Dr de Souza told the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Dublin. Parthenogenesis - which literally means virgin birth - is a common form of asexual reproduction in many animals but not in mammals, the group to which humans belong. Dr de Souza said there was no intention of implanting the embryos into the womb of a woman and that his government licence from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority was strictly for research. "If we don't put these artificial conceptuses into a uterus, they will go nowhere. They will not result in a foetus, they will not result in a life," he said. The announcement of the first human embryos created by parthenogenesis is likely to be criticised by "pro-life" groups who oppose all research that involves creating human embryos for research purposes, he said. The scientists at the Roslin Institute, where Dolly the sheep was cloned, used about 300 eggs taken from the ovaries of women undergoing an operation to make them sterile who had given their consent. About half the eggs matured successfully in the laboratory and about 5 per cent of these divided several times to produce a blastocyst, he said. "We need a blastocyst to recover embryo stem cells and our success rate in recovering embryo stem cells is about one in ten," Dr de Souza said. "I think it's more of a technical challenge [to get stem cells] as distinct from a biological challenge." Normally eggs and sperm have only half the genetic material and chromosomes of other cells in the body but the scientists have developed a technique whereby the eggs are stimulated to retain all their chromosomes before developing into a pathenogenic embryo. "We can manipulate that process where normally genetic information is expelled, so that we can create eggs and embryos whose genetic constitution is identical to the mother," Dr de Souza said. "The tissue we can derive from such an embryo would presumably be compatible for transplantation. "There are in existence parthenogenic stem cell lines from non-human primates but to date no one has cracked that in humans. I think it's just a matter of the supply of tissue with which to be able to engage in experimentation," he added. At present only women could benefit from parthenogenic embryos as men cannot produce eggs but scientists are also working on the possibility of using genetic material from sperm to create a parthenogenic embryo. "Based on experiments in mice we could create what are called androgenotes where we would replace the egg's genetic information with the genetic information from a sperm," Dr de Souza said. "We could put in two sperms if we wanted to to create a full genetic complement. Androgenotes would be a little more problematic in terms of how exactly matched that tissue would be to the donor because those sperm could have been created through a process where there would have been an expulsion of genetic material," Dr de Souza said. Parthenogenic embryos offer an alternative way of creating stem cells than cloned embryos, which are created by transfering the nucleus of a skin cell into an egg with its own nucleus removed. Dr de Souza said: "It is possible that the cloned stem cell lines that are produced will not be suitable for therapeutic purposes or not suitable for use as models of genetic diseases. "We don't know whether any one of them is going to lead to where to want to go and therapy is not the only objective. We also want these cell lines for research," he added
WEblink: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article311555.ece
Or google title of article
Meditation Has Physical Effects on Brain
Regular meditators add to their grey matter. When researchers at Harvard Medical School used magnetic resonance imaging of the brains of regular meditators to see the effect upon the neural tissues associated with attention and memory, they found that this area of the brain had gained in thickness, or neural cells. Normally these areas become smaller as people age, which plays a role in age related memory deficits. The Harvard study suggests that the physicality of the brain is malleable, and can be influenced by mental events such as meditation.
Although many scientists criticized this area of research as “mixing science and religion,” the Harvard researchers pointed out that the meditators were not believers in the religion of Buddhism, but practiced meditation because of its effects.
Source:
Say 'om': Meditation may aid in brain function
By Kathleen Fackelmann, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — The ancient practice of meditation may change the brain in a way that helps boost attention, according to studies out Sunday at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.
Buddhist monks have been saying for years that meditation helps increase attention and concentration. The new findings now offer some support for the notion.
Sara Lazar of Harvard Medical School studied Westerners who meditated for about 20 minutes every day but didn't necessarily believe in the tenets of Buddhism. Lazar and colleagues used MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) to look at brain parts involved in memory and attention. She found that meditators had increased thickness in those regions.
Those areas shrink as people get older, but this study found that older meditators were able to ward off some of that shrinkage. That finding is preliminary but suggests that a regular meditation practice might help people maintain their ability to remember and focus on details, Lazar says.
Meditation involved sitting quietly and focusing on breathing or an image.
Another study suggests meditation boosts performance on tests that measure attention. Bruce O'Hara at the University of Kentucky and colleagues wanted to see how meditation might affect the ability to attend to a boring task during the mid-afternoon, a time when attention often flags.
He found that 10 people taught to meditate for 40 minutes did better on a test of attention compared with their own performance after reading for 40 minutes.
Too little sleep can impair performance on such tests, so the group repeated the experiment after subjects had lost a night's sleep. Meditation improved their performance even then, a finding that suggests that meditation might give the sleepy brain an edge.
"Vigilance is much more difficult when you are sleepy," O'Hara says.
In a study of mostly Buddhist monks, Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin found meditation produced a jump in brain waves associated with vigilance. His study also found meditation activated brain regions involved in attention.
On Saturday, the exiled leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama, spoke to neuroscientists, urging them to continue their crucial work on meditation. Such studies may help identify practices that will help people rein in negative emotions, he says. More than 500 scientists signed a petition against the Dalai Lama's talk: Many said they didn't want to mix religion with science.
Weblink: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2005-11-13-meditation-study_x.htm
Meditation alters brain patterns in ways that are likely permanent, scientists have known. But a new study shows key parts of the brain actually get thicker through the practice.
Brain imaging of regular working folks who meditate regularly revealed increased thickness in cortical regions related to sensory, auditory and visual perception, as well as internal perception — the automatic monitoring of heart rate or breathing, for example.
The study also indicates that regular meditation may slow age-related thinning of the frontal cortex.
"What is most fascinating to me is the suggestion that meditation practice can change anyone's gray matter," said study team member Jeremy Gray, an assistant professor of psychology at Yale. "The study participants were people with jobs and families. They just meditated on average 40 minutes each day, you don't have to be a monk."
The research team was led by Sara Lazar, assistant in psychology at Massachusetts General Hospital. It is detailed in the November issue of the journal NeuroReport.
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The study involved a small number of people, just 20. All had extensive training in Buddhist Insight meditation. But the researchers say the results are significant.
Most of the brain regions identified to be changed through meditation were found in the right hemisphere, which is essential for sustaining attention. And attention is the focus of the meditation.
Other forms of yoga and meditation likely have a similar impact on brain structure, the researchers speculate, but each tradition probably has a slightly different pattern of cortical thickening based on the specific mental exercises involved.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10031664/
Almonds Decrease Alzheimer’s Symptoms
Researchers at the University of Illinois in Chicago treated mice who had developed an Alzheimer’s like disease by giving them a diet rich in almonds. According to a report given at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, the mice showed a significant increase in their ability to remember how to run their puzzle mazes. Analysis of the mice brains also showed that there was a significant reduction in the amount of Alzheimer deposits in the brain tissue. The researchers speculated that the effect is due to substances within almonds that act like cholinesterase inhibitors, drugs used to treat Alzheimer's. They doubted that almonds alone could cure full fledged Alzheimer’s in humans, but that regular intake of almonds could help prevent the development of the disease.
Source:
Almonds, daily exercise keep brain healthy
By Kathleen Fackelmann, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — A daily run, a diet rich in almonds and other healthful foods and a stimulating environment — all may keep aging brain cells in shape, according to research out Monday.
The animal studies presented here at the 35th annual Society for Neuroscience Meeting suggest that lifestyle measures such as exercise and diet might ward off age-related forgetfulness — and maybe even provide a shield for Alzheimer's. (Related item: Say 'om': Meditation may aid in brain function)
"We're now finding that diet and lifestyle measures can have profound effects on the brain," says Carl Cotman, a brain expert at the University of California-Irvine.
Most people experience mild memory problems as they get older, says Karyn Frick, a researcher at Yale. She wanted to see whether a daily workout could offer a mental edge, so her team took laboratory mice and gave them either a running wheel, challenging toys, or both a wheel and toys. After four weeks, the team gave the mice a memory test.
Middle-aged mice that ran daily, either with or without the toys, did much better on this test than mice that sat around all day. These mice showed the typical age-related problems with memory, she says.
Older mice got a performance boost by running, playing, or by doing both. Other studies suggest that a daily workout and mental stimulation might provide the aging brain with a cognitive reserve, new brain cells that kick in to help with memory. If this study's findings translate to humans, and that's a big if, a daily workout, a crossword puzzle or both might help keep the aging human brain in top form, Frick says.
Previous studies have also suggested that a low-fat diet or one rich in certain foods like fish might help keep the brain healthy. A report at this meeting suggests that almonds might be another potent brain food.
Neelima Chauhan at the University of Illinois-Chicago gave mice with an Alzheimer's-like disease an almond-rich diet. The animals had already developed some of the abnormal brain deposits thought to underlie the disease. After four months, the team gave the mice a memory test.
Animals eating the almond-rich diet did much better than those fed the usual chow. Chauhan says almonds contain substances that act like cholinesterase inhibitors, drugs used to treat Alzheimer's.
The diet also reduced the number of Alzheimer deposits in the rodent brains.
Mice got that benefit by eating a relatively small amount of almonds — the equivalent of about a handful daily. Almonds may not be able to help people suffering from advanced disease, Chauhan warns. Still there's no harm in adding almonds to a healthy diet. In fact, such a diet may protect against memory loss, she says.
Weblink: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-11-14-brain-almonds-health_x.htm
Organization Created to Locate Missing Persons
The Missing Persons Project (missingpersonproject.org) has been created to harness the abilities of psychics and mediums to use their gifts to locate those family members, friends, and/or loved ones who have gone missing cannot be located by the police or other mundane means. The project welcomes requests for assistance in locating lost loved ones, as well as offers by psychics to volunteer their time.
Weblink: www.missingpersonproject.org
Scientists Discover Placebo Activity in Brain
Traditional theory has it that the “placebo effect,” where a sugar pill has as much healing effectiveness as the real thing, is purely a matter of the power of suggestion. Today, however, scientists with access to brain imaging techniques are discovering that the placebo effect is active within the brain. Expectations influence the behavior of the brain.
In one study, reported in a Washington Post article summarizing such research, PET scans of the brains of patients who were told they were receiving pain-killing injections showed the brain excreting more endorphins into the body than when patients were told they were receiving a neutral injection. In another study, involving patients with Parkinson’s disease, researchers found the neural firing responsible for tremors decreased following the administration of a placebo. If the placebo was administered covertly, without the patient’s knowledge, there was no difference in nerve firing.
An interesting flip side to this research: Alzheimer’s patients seem to have a significantly reduced placebo effect. Researchers speculate that it is because of the damage to that part of the brain that can comprehend and anticipate relief. Without the anticipation of expected benefit, no placebo effect can be initiated.
Original article:
Research: Expectations Can Help Healing
By LAURAN NEERGAARD
AP Medical Writer
6:39 AM PST, November 29, 2005
WASHINGTON — Your medicine really could work better if your doctor talks it up before handing over the prescription. Research is showing the power of expectations, that they have physical -- not just psychological -- effects on your health.
Scientists can measure the resulting changes in the brain, from the release of natural painkilling chemicals to alterations in how neurons fire.
Among the most provocative findings: New research suggests that once Alzheimer's disease robs someone of the ability to expect that a proven painkiller will help them, it doesn't work nearly as well.
It's a new spin on the so-called placebo effect -- and it begs the question of how to harness this power and thus enhance treatment benefits for patients.
"Your expectations can have profound impacts on your brain and your health," says Columbia University neuroscientist Tor Wager.
"There is not a single placebo effect, but many placebo effects," that differ by illness, adds Dr. Fabrizio Benedetti of Italy's University of Torino Medical School, who is studying those effects in patients with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease and pain.
The placebo effect is infamous from studies of new medications: Scientists often given either an experimental drug or a dummy pill to patients and see how they fare. Frequently, those taking the fake feel better, too, for a while, making it more difficult to tease out the medication's true effects.
Doctors have long thought the placebo effect was psychological.
Now scientists are amassing the first direct evidence that the placebo effect actually is physical, and that expecting benefit can trigger the same neurological pathways of healing as real medication does. Among them:
* University of Michigan scientists injected the jaws of healthy young men with salt water to cause painful pressure, while PET scans measured the impact in their brains. During one scan, the men were told they were getting a pain reliever, actually a placebo.
Their brains immediately released more endorphins -- chemicals that act as natural painkillers by blocking the transmission of pain signals between nerve cells -- and the men felt better. To return to pre-placebo pain levels, scientists had to increase the salt-water pressure.
"Our brain really is on drugs when we get a placebo," says co-researcher Christian Stohler, now at the University of Maryland. More remarkable, some especially strong placebo responders suggest "many brains can actually stimulate that (pain-relief) system more."
* Italy's Benedetti gave Parkinson's patients a placebo and measured the electrical activity of individual nerve cells in a movement-controlling part of the brain. Those neurons quieted down, a decrease in firing of about 40 percent that correlated with a reduction in patients' muscle rigidity -- they moved more easily.
* To further prove the power of belief, Benedetti hooked pain patients to a computerized morphine injection system. Sometimes the computer administered a dose without them knowing it; sometimes a nurse pretended to give it. The morphine was up to 50 percent more effective when patients knew it was coming.
Likewise, Parkinson's patients moved much better when they were told that doctors had turned on a pacemaker-like implant in their brains, which blocks tremors, than when it was turned on covertly.
But in a similar experiment with Alzheimer's patients suffering pain, Benedetti found no difference between covert or expected dosing. The results are preliminary, he cautioned a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience last month. But it appears that because Alzheimer's robs patients of the cognitive ability to expect a benefit, they need higher doses of painkillers to get as much relief as non-demented patients.
Placebos aren't a substitute for real medicine. But the research suggests maybe doctors should try to manipulate patients' treatment expectations, for at least some hard-to-treat conditions.
"The bigger question is how do we capitalize on the placebo effect," said Dr. Helen Mayberg of Emory University, whose studies suggest some antidepressants have a "placebo-plus" activity in the brain. "There may be a phenomenon we all have access to."
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EDITOR'S NOTE -- Lauran Neergaard covers health and medical issues for The Associated Press in Washington.
Weblink: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/28/AR2005112801572.html
Foundation Established to Renew America’s Heart
The Foundation for the Evolution of America is a new non-profit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. dedicated to “action research” on the goal of bringing the “heart” back into the fabric of America. The foundation acknowledges the evolutionary changes that are underway in the world and desires to bring heart values into this flow, especially as it relates to the eight major centers of influence in the nation: business, the political system, the media, science and medicine, education, the environment, religious and spiritual belief systems and the arts and entertainment sector.
On their extensive website (evolutionofamerica.org) they list what they consider to be the principles of heart wisdom. Note their similarity to values espoused in the Cayce material:
* Choosing harmony
* Developing and sustaining trust
* Integrity
* Love and respect for self as well as others
* Compassion
* Sustainability
* Upliftment
* Communication
* Cooperation and collaboration
People Feel a Change Coming
By Kelly L. Parker
March, 29 2005
People feel a change coming…………..
Many don’t know what it is, but they can almost feel it in the wind and can sense it in the air. Some can actually see it in the structures of the nation itself as the changes begin to physically manifest. As the changes are set in motion, some feel a sense of dread, or foreboding, as if a cataclysm is coming. Others feel a sense of optimism as if an unspoken gloom that has held the world in its grip for eons is lifting.
Conscious Americans all over the nation intuitively sense that an era is coming to an end and what was will be no more.
Indeed, massive change borne by evolutionary tides is coming. The old paradigms and collective worldviews that humanity has held as unshakable truths for centuries are rapidly being transformed by a quickening in spiritual consciousness accompanied by advances in science, medicine and technology that are dramatically and unalterable shifting the destiny of humanity.
We all have chosen, as a collective and as individuals, to live at a time of extraordinary changes in human history, at an extremely crucial moment in the evolution of humanity. Because of this, this generation, the decisions that we make, the actions that we take and the structures and the foundations that we leave behind, will determine the fate of human kind.
As President Franklin Roosevelt said during the Great Depression, :
“There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected . This generation has a rendezvous with destiny. “
That was true then and it is even more true at this stage in human history.
President Roosevelt had intuitively sensed the evolutionary cycles and the generational responsibilities that come with it. As we will see in this paper, not only are the evolutionary changes in science, medicine and technology radically altering our lives but a heretofore unrevealed and unseen pattern in US history is about to bring a sea chance in our own nation’s destiny and will dramatically impact how we live the rest of our lives.
The next two sections of this paper will separately discuss the purpose of the evolutionary tides we are currently experiencing and the details of the cycles of U.S. history and where we currently are in that historical pattern.
The last section will discuss the convergence of these two powerful streams at this moment in time and how it will impact humankind. It will also address the Foundation for the Evolution of America’s role in assisting humanity to achieve a higher, more heartfelt destiny.
Evolutionary Tides
The tides of evolution are much like the tides of the ocean in that they are powerful, inevitable and can move, or go around, obstacles and can sweep away impediments that seek to divert or block their inevitable rhythm.
The course of human development throughout time is guided by evolution. Not evolution in the strict Darwinian sense of the word (or how Darwin is currently interpreted), but the inevitable progression of human achievements manifested through a precarious and ever changing blend of spiritual awareness and scientific knowledge.
A review of history reveals that, periodically, powerful trends, or evolutionary factors, converge at a single point in time and significantly change the course of humanity’s destiny. These moments occur only rarely during passage of time but the people that live through them and the events that transpire during those times profoundly impact the evolutionary path of humanity.
We live during such times. When the planet come to the end of an evolutionary era and gets ready to rebirth or take an evolutionary shift, it can look frothy and chaotic
Evolutionary trends destined to become the new foundations of humanity are juxtaposed with the existing structures and paradigms struggling to maintain their stability, relevance and their place in the old order of things. To people living during these times, it can feel like the crashing waves, high winds and chaos experienced during a hurricane!
Stunning, and previously unimaginable, advances in science, medicine and technology have occurred at such a rapid pace that society is struggling to integrate them into our existing legal, ethical, spiritual and societal structures. An inevitably greater awareness of universal spiritual values conflicts with a well-established structure of religious beliefs rooted in systems of faith that are hundreds, or even thousands, of years old. In the developed nations, a hybrid structure of industrialization and technology, along with well established political and legal systems that support capitalism and democracy, have produced a system of wealth creation that has brought unparalled material abundance and consumption but is seriously depleting and shattering the delicate ecosystems of the planet.
It feels as if the planet and the very structure of our civilization, from an economical, political cultural, environmental spiritual and emotional standpoint, is being enveloped by an overwhelming crisis. It is as if the very sustainability of human life on this planet is at stake.
And it is.
However, things are not always as they seem. Humanity is actually undergoing a powerful rebirth.
The signs of crises are actually the signs of a quantum transformation. It is at this moment that the future of humanity can unfold into the promise fulfilled of all the major religions.
As Barbara Marx Hubbard, President of the Foundation for Conscious Evolution, teaches us in her book, Conscious Evolution (1998):
1> Quantum transformations are nature’s tradition. Quantum, in this context, means a jump from one state to the next that cannot be achieved through incremental change alone.
2> Crises precede transformation. When nature reached a limitation, it does not necessarily adapt and stabilize, it innovates and transforms. Problems are often evolutionary drivers vital to our transformation.
3> Evolution raises consciousness and freedom. As a system becomes more complex – from non-life to life, from single cell to animal, from animal to human – it jumps in consciousness and freedom. Each is a jump through greater complexity.
Barbara notes that humanity is being given the tools to become co-creators of our reality through innovations in biotechnology, nanotechnology, genetic research, and the “growing body of knowledge in almost every arena – science, psychology, cosmology, art, literature, philosophy and business.”
What we are experiencing on this planet at this moment is a natural stage and the next step on the evolutionary spiral for humanity.
As we consciously co-create our next step on the evolutionary spiral, it is essential to realize that new structures and evolution, for evolution’s sake are no longer adequate for humanity’s sake. The next turn in evolution must be heart-based evolution.
Much as this section has discussed the context of evolution and where humanity currently stands in the evolutionary spiral, the next section describes the cycles of U.S. history, where we are in that and how that impacts what is to come.
Historical Cycles
The Fourth Turning, a book by William Strauss and Neil Howe, documents the historical cycles of the United States. In this book, the authors show that American history is cyclical, comprised of four “turnings” of 20-25 years each that repeat in the same sequential patterns. The four turnings together comprise a saeculum – approximately 100 years, or the length of a long human life. The turnings are a High, an Awakening, an Unraveling and a Crisis and are always repeated in that sequence. America has experienced four full saeculums (and, consequently, sixteen turnings) since the 1500’s when the first European settlers arrived on the continent.
The three Crises in American history have been the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and the period of the Great Depression and World War II.
In the first turning, a High, the nation has just emerged from a Crisis (the Fourth Turning, or final period of the last saeculum). The last American High began in the late 1940’s after the nation had completed World War II, but flowered in the in the 1950’s and early 1960’s. A High marks a time of healthy economic growth, euphoria and a national unity born from the crucible of the last Crisis. Government has the national consensus and ability to propose - and accomplish - sweeping solutions to difficult issues confronting the country. It is a time when the views of the majority are in the forefront, but the views of the minority are rarely heard.
In the second turning, an Awakening, a new generation reaches young adulthood and begins to question and ultimately tear down and displace the value structure of the previous generation. It is a time of social ferment, agitation and unrest. Institutions and institutional values are attacked. The last American Awakening began in the 1960’s and reached its apex in the 1970’s.
In the third turning, an Unraveling, the social alienation and disdain for institutions that began brewing in the Awakening come into full flower. The United States is currently in an Unraveling era and the last Unraveling before this time was in the 1920’s. During these periods, the national unity of the High has dissolved into its opposite - a nation rife with culture wars that rage as the nation descends into political gridlock. The political leaders are partisans, who help facilitate the fragmentation of the nation into opposing ideological camps. As the opposite of the High, national consensus breaks down and the government seems powerless to address pressing national issues. On the other hand, individual freedom of expression peaks during this time, artistically and culturally. Unraveling eras always include accelerated economic activity that ends precipitously (stock market booms of the 1920’s and the 1990’s) and rapid technological advances (the appearance of automobiles, radios and telephones in the 1920’s and the Internet, biotechnology and personal computers of the 1980 and 1990’s). The social fabric that binds us all together as a nation and the covenants that have previously united us, and which, in the past, have created national consensus and a sense of community, starts to unravel.
This leads to the fourth turning, which is a Crisis. In this period, the rage and frustration of the culture wars that have steadily built since the second turning erupt into conflict, violence and upheaval. During this time, it seems as if the world has suddenly turned upside down. The foundations on which the country has previously been built and which have held stability and order for decades, feel threatened by forces unleashed that are so powerful and pervasive that it may seem as if the nation itself will not survive the turmoil of the Crisis. As noted before, the three previous Crises of the American nation were the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and the combination of the Great Depression and World War II.
The energy of the Crisis will build for decades (the current crisis has been building since the 1960’s) but will be unexpectedly ignited by a catalyst, seemingly out of nowhere. The Boston Tea Party (Revolutionary War), Lincoln’s election (Civil War) and the day the stock market crashed (Great Depression) ushered America quickly and unexpectedly into bone jarring crises
The crucible of the Crisis always holds tremendous transformational energy for the country and leads to changes in societal attitudes. Governmental institutions become stronger and more respected as the nation coalesces to meet the demands of the harsh new reality of the crisis. Teamwork, unity and social discipline become keys to the new national dynamic. Consensual, collective action is recognized as the most effective blueprint for effecting social change. Authority is respected and regarded as an essential component of addressing the overwhelming challenges facing the nation.
Emerging from a crisis, the nation eventually evolves from a country riven by bitter and intractable national divisions and consumed by a warren of competing and conflicting cultural values and political ideologies, to a people more united for a common purpose.
In the end, after the crescendo of the Crisis recedes, a new sense of national purpose and unity emerges that propels the country to a greater and higher manifest destiny.
After the Revolutionary War, a new nation was born. After the Civil War, a nation with a stronger foundation and a much clearer alignment with its highest ideas was born. After World War II, a new nation, whose destiny was to lead the world into its next great age, was born.
According to the authors, we should be, by now, in the last stages of the Unraveling and the beginning of the Crisis. There is ample evidence to support this given the chain of events since 2000 - the extreme political gridlock as revealed by the election of 2000, the beginning of shocks of the catalysts of the crisis (September 11 and the subsequent war on terror) and the unofficial referendum on “culture values” in the 2004 election that has driven the nation further apart.
By all accounts, things look grim. However, just as in evolution - crisis precedes transformation.
The crisis will enable the nation to make sweeping and very necessary changes in its political, economic, cultural and spiritual systems. These changes, if done correctly will enable this nation to emerge from this Crisis with a much higher destiny. America’s finest hour awaits us.
The convergence of the two powerful streams – evolutionary tides and the cycles of U.S history, is, and will, result in a dramatic and historical remaking of this country with profound impact on its destiny. The next section will discuss the rebirth of the nation and the role of the Foundation of the Evolution of America in assisting the United Sates to achieve its highest destiny
The Rebirth of the Nation
“America has faced pivotal points in history where the destiny of the country hung in the balance. Always, during these times, leaders arose, men and women who were called to challenges that were greater than themselves that changed the course of history forever.” – Kelly Parker
As is discussed in the previous sections, the United States is at a very crucial time in its history and is experiencing, and undergoing, very powerful evolutionary changes. Everywhere you look, powerful convergences in change are driving extraordinary developments in science, medicine and technology. These advances are compelling society to remake its ethical, spiritual and philosophical foundations.
This convergence of forces, when combined with advances in communications that sweep information across the globe at the push of a button, have created evolutionary tides, that once set in motion, are more powerful than we can currently envision.
Much as change of this nature creates transformation of scientific systems and spiritual/philosophical beliefs, so it also transforms the destiny and historical paths of nations.
The United States has been profoundly affected, and unalterably changed, by these rapid and dramatic surges in progress. The nation is, simultaneously, at the cusps of the end of an age and the beginning stages of a striking and remarkable rebirth.
Each nation has its own destiny to fulfill in the course of its existence and its own gifts and wisdom to give to the community of nations. Each age of the world has seen a certain set of nations whose ideas and principles uplifted humanity into a new, more enlightened age. The United States has reached this point in its destiny.
We feel that the creation of this nation was divinely ordained in order to change the history of the world. The powerful forces guiding this established a nation that would enshrine, in its very core values as God given rights, freedom, democracy, and the right of all people to create and determine their own destinies. Historically, the United States has been a powerful light for upliftment and a powerful deterrent to oppression.
As America begins to experience the pains of rebirthing itself, it is clear that the systems and structures in business, government, the media, science and medicine, education and the environment that have carried this country to its present state of development have outlived their usefulness. They are no longer adequate to carry us into the foundation that we are creating for the new future. New blueprints are to be designed and implemented for the nation to create a sustainable foundation for the future. In this new creation, we will value and use heart wisdom as the central core of the new blueprint.
In her book, The Heart’s Unraveling - The Birth of a New Evolutionary Directive, Maria Lucia Picaza, writes that:
“A country that does not love itself makes choices that are not sustainable and continues to stubbornly perpetuate its old and worn out ways with little change of sustainability for itself and its children.”
In order to evolve to the next stage of its destiny, the country will have to undergo a fundamental shift from the way it currently designs and approaches its sociological structures as a nation. This shift is crucial for its sustainability and the sustainability of the planet.
There are many people and organizations currently developing these new foundational structures for America, but we feel a coordinated effort is imperative in order for the country to make this transition to its new destiny.
The Foundation for the Evolution of America (FEA) will act as a nexus for these innovators to gather, exchange information, design new heart-based systems, structures and implementation plans for the new foundation of America.
The purpose of the Foundation is to assist the rebirth of the country by bringing the heart into the evolutionary change and into the forefront of eight major centers of influence in the nation - business, the political system, the media, science and medicine, education, the environment, religious and spiritual belief systems and the arts and entertainment sector.
FEA will act as a neural network to connect and help coordinate the work of social innovators that are working on the creative forefront of society to bring in the new structures for the eight sections.
Evolution is demanding that we move forward. As noted earlier, it is clear that the systems and structures in business, government, the media, science and medicine, education and the environment that have carried this country to its present state of development have outlived their usefulness. Shifts in the environment tell us that our current methods of creation are no longer sustainable and we have been given the tools to create the next great shift on the evolutionary spiral for humanity. The profound transformation in humanity is already taking place and, if consciously created, using our innate connection to our heart wisdom and the Spirit inside each of us, we will truly be living Humanity’s Greatest Moment.
Source: http://evolutionofamerica.org/index.cfm?pageid=108
Acupuncture Helps Tension Headaches
Researchers in Munich, Germany conducting a double-blind controlled study of the use of acupuncture for tension headaches found the treatment to significantly reduce the incidence of headaches following treatment. Reporting in the British Medical Journal, they noted that “minimal” acupuncture treatment, meaning the use of superficial needle implanting at non-acupuncture sites, was almost as effective as standard acupuncture treatment. This result suggests that there may be a placebo element in the use of the needles in addition to whatever healing effect may be present in the acupuncture procedure.
Source: http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/reprint/331/7513/376
Olive Oil has Anti-Inflammatory Properties
In a finding confirmatory of the Cayce materials, British scientists have discovered that freshly pressed extra-virgin olive oil has anti-inflammatory qualities similar to the non-steroidal compound in the commercial pain-killer ibuprofen. Publishing in the journal Nature, the researchers named this anti-inflammatory ingredient oleocanthal. They speculated that the health benefits of regular olive oil consumption, as found in the Mediterranean diet, could be attributed to the oleocanthal it contains.
Olive oil chemical may help fight inflammation
Compound in extra-virgin has similar effects as ibuprofen, scientists say
LONDON - Scientists have just found out what gourmets have always known — that there is something special about fresh extra-virgin olive oil.
A tasting experience at a molecular gastronomy meeting in Sicily led University of Pennsylvania biologist Gary Beauchamp to analyze freshly pressed extra-virgin olive oil, in which he found a chemical that acted like ibuprofen.
He and his team named their discovery oleocanthal and found that, although it has a different chemistry, it has an effect similar to that of the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory compound in the commercial pain-killer, they wrote in the science journal Nature.
The importance of the find lies in the fact that scientists believe to an increasing extent that inflammation plays an important part in a variety of chronic diseases like stroke, heart disease, and breast and lung cancer.
“Our findings raise the possibility that long-term consumption of oleocanthal may help to protect against some diseases,” they wrote.
It may also go some way to explaining the health benefits long attributed to the olive-oil rich Mediterranean diet.
Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/ID/9143240
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God Leads the Poll
A Fox News poll of nine hundred American adults concerning their beliefs in various spiritual, occult and religious entities found that God tops the list of what people believe in. Their poll results show that ninety one percent profess a belief in God, while eighty seven per cent believe in Heaven. Miracles are affirmed by eighty four percent, angels by seventy nine per cent, hell by seventy four per cent, and the devil by sixty seven per cent. Much lower down on the belief scale is astrology, affirmed by only thirty seven per cent, ghosts by thirty four per cent, reincarnation by twenty seven per cent, witches by twenty four per cent, and vampires by only four per cent.
Weblink:
http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/poll_102805.pdf
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Natural Disasters Increasing Apocalyptic Angst
In the wake of the large number of disastrous hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, the apocalyptic imagination is having a hey day. Are these events the signal of End Times? The Rapture Index (see www.raptureready.com/rap2html), which offers a statistical marker of how close the time has come for Jesus to remove the faithful from Earth, is currently at 161. According to that website, anything over 145 means “fasten your seatbelts.”
A survey by the Barna Research Group has found that forty per cent of American adults believe the physical world will end as a result of supernatural intervention.
Writing for Newsday magazine, Carol Eisenberg interviewed various religions leaders, who confirmed that their flocks were more concerned and were asking more questions about the Apocalypse. She quoted one Jewish rabbi who cautioned against allowing these ideas to get in the way of our normal ethical duties: “If one is planting a tree, and hears the messiah is coming, one should continue planting. It's our life-affirming actions that produce the reality of a messianic future."
Source:
Apocalyptic anxiety runs high in disasters' wake
BY CAROL EISENBERG
STAFF WRITER
October 13, 2005
Every morning, the Rev. Micheal Mitchell prays that if today is the beginning of the end of the world as we know it, he will be ready.
"Ever since the terrorist attacks four years ago, I try to live every day as if it will be the last day," said Mitchell, 46, senior pastor of New Life Tabernacle United Pentecostal Church in East Flatbush.
Mitchell's belief that he is watching biblical prophecy unfold in the form of modern day famines, floods and earthquakes has grown increasingly urgent. What with a cataclysmic earthquake swallowing whole villages in South Asia, coming on the heels of a killer tsunami and hurricanes that flooded the Gulf Coast and brought lethal mud slides to Guatemala, apocalyptic anxiety is running extraordinarily high -- among believers and nonbelievers alike.
Set against a backdrop of terror threats and worries that avian flu may morph into a pandemic, it's no wonder that talk of a biblical-scale reckoning is cropping up in all sorts of conversations.
"A lot of people are watching the Rapture Index very carefully right now," said Stephen O'Leary, an expert on apocalypticism at the University of Southern California, referring to a Web site that purports to offer a statistical gauge of the approach of the moment that Christians believe Jesus will remove the faithful from Earth.
The Web site -- www.raptureready.com/rap2.html -- currently registers 161. Anything higher than 145 means "fasten your seatbelts," according to the legend.
Apocalyptic beliefs have long been an American staple. A June 2001 survey by the Barna Research Group, for instance, found that 40 percent of adults in the United States believe the physical world will end as a result of supernatural intervention. Fifty percent disagreed, and 10 percent didn't know.
Mitchell, like many Pentecostals and Charismatics, believes the seven years of calamities leading to Armageddon -- the battle in which Jesus will defeat the Anti-Christ -- may already have begun. Now, he said, he gets almost daily questions from congregants about how current events may reflect those prophecies.
"Someone in our men's group asked whether I thought the earthquake in Asia was a sign of the coming of the Lord," he said. "I told him that I believe that that is exactly what's taking place."
Social scientists say that such preoccupations reflect an increasingly apocalyptic mood in America, expressed not just in Christian fundamentalism, but also in secular doom-and-gloom scenarios that forecast widespread flooding as a result of global warming, or worldwide depression caused by oil shortages.
Nonbelievers tend to express their anxieties in terms of manmade ecological disasters or, more simply, an indifferent and often, hostile nature. If the recent storms and quakes portend anything, it's climactic change, not biblical reckoning, said Oliver Haker, 28, an East Village lawyer.
Others search for a deeper, redemptive meaning behind so much suffering and despair.
"When I heard about the quake in Pakistan, I thought, 'Wow, this could be it -- we could be entering the final seven years,'" said Irwin Baxter, president and founder of Endtime Ministries in Richmond, Ind., who does a radio show about biblical prophecy (broadcast locally at 11 p.m. on WMCA/970 AM) and who lectured at Queens College last month.
Naysayers note that such predictions are a constant in human history -- and have always been proven wrong.
"We have an acute need to find an explanation for suffering, pain and death," O'Leary said.
Certainly, it is a sign of the times that book sellers report an uptick in sales for books not just about biblical prophecy, but also that explain disasters in scientific terms.
Besides the steady popularity of apocalyptic titles, like the bestselling Left Behind series, "what we have seen recently is marked interest in books that help readers understand the issues of the day," said Bill Tipper, bestsellers editor for Barnes&Noble.com.
Rabbi Irwin Kula, president of the Manhattan-based National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, said that for Jews, as well as Christians, millenial thinking offers purpose to life. But he warns that it can also be used to "escape from real world ethical obligations."
He stresses a Jewish teaching that if one is planting a tree, and hears the messiah is coming, one should continue planting. "It's our life-affirming actions that produce the reality of a messianic future," Kula said.
Staff writer Robert Kahn contributed to this story.
Copyright © 2005, Newsday, Inc.
Weblink: http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/brooklyn/nyc-end1013,0,3124167,print.story
Large Prayer Study Yields Mixed Results
MANTRA II, one of the most comprehensive studies of prayer, conducted by Duke University in collaboration with several university medical institutions, found no direct clinical effects on patients undergoing various heart procedures, yet found several indirect therapeutic effects, according to a report published recently in the medical journal Lancet.
MANTRA stands for Monitoring and Actualization of Noetic Trainings, which included, besides distant prayer, music, imagery and touch. Among the various prayer methods incorporated into the study was Silent Unity®, the prayer ministry of Unity Church, as well as Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, and several Christian-based prayer ministries. There were almost eight hundred patients in the study.
The related therapeutic effects that were found to be enhanced by prayer included the emotional distress experienced by patients, rehospitalization, and death rates.
Commentators on the research suggest that the results of this study will motivate investigators to develop more focused and specific methods for testing prayer. Standardization of prayer methodology is one improvement that is most necessary to improve this research.
Source:
Results of MANTRA II Made Public
The Lancet, a leading medical journal, recently published the results of one of the most comprehensive distant intercessory prayer studies.
The study is known as MANTRA II, which stands for Monitoring and Actualization of Noetic Trainings. The Duke Clinical Research Institute, the Duke University Medical Center, the Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC), and seven other leading academic medical institutions across the United States conducted the study—the first multicenter study on intercessory prayer and healing touch.
About MANTRA II
The study was conducted using 748 patients and multiple prayer groups throughout the world, including Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, and multiple Christianity-based denominations and prayer ministries. Silent Unity®, the prayer ministry of Unity, was one of the centers used for collection of study data.
The authors of the study acknowledge that examining the effects of prayer on health outcomes has been controversial. Their results do not lessen any of that controversy.
The study reports “distant prayer and the bedside use of music, imagery, and touch (MIT therapy) did not have a significant effect on the primary clinical outcome observed in patients undergoing certain heart procedures.” However, “therapeutic effects were noted among secondary measures such as emotional distress of patients, rehospitalization and death rates.”
Office of Prayer Research Response
Bob Barth, director of the Office of Prayer Research, said: “As with most recent scientific studies on prayer, more questions are raised than definitive answers are provided. That’s not at all unusual for pioneering scientific research of any kind.”
More details of the Office of Prayer Research reaction to the MANTRA II study results can be read in our MANTRA II press release.
Responses From Prayer Experts
A leading editorial titled “Does Prayer Research Have a Prayer?” in Science & Theology magazine, September 7, 2005, noted that scientists and skeptics are arguing whether distant prayer will continue to be the subject of scientific research. The article notes that MANTRA II “is raising questions over whether more time and money will be spent on similar research.” Dr. Harold Koenig, a leading prayer researcher, says, “After this study, I think the funding isn’t going to be there.”
Marilyn Schlitz, research director of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, which helped underwrite MANTRA II, hopes that studies into the effects of prayer continue. “Open-minded skepticism is essential, but we can’t let this topic die based on one study. So, does it not work, or have we not figured out the right questions?”
More Questions for Prayer Research
Bob Barth said some of the questions that still need to be answered in prayer research include the following: How do you determine a dose of something as intrinsic as prayer? For example, is one five-minute prayer by a Buddhist different from ten Catholic nuns in prayer for an hour or more? Is prayer more effective once or twenty times a day? How can you be certain that the control group is not receiving prayer from the family or friends of the patient?
An editorial in The Lancet poses similar questions. “Could a more restricted denominational approach have influenced the outcome? Does the number of those praying matter? Or the timing and duration of prayer?” The editorial concludes that these questions provide a basis for further studies. “Do the results of the MANTRA II study rule out the use of noetic therapies in modern scientific medicine? Such a conclusion would be premature. The contribution that hope and belief make to a personal understanding of illness cannot be dismissed so lightly. They are proper subjects for science, even while transcending its known bounds.”
Opposition to Prayer Research Methods
Science & Theology pointed out that during the past two decades, “a spate of intercessory prayer studies have shown only a small or statistically insignificant effect. The finds have been highly controversial, with skeptics charging that the methodology is flawed.”
One of those skeptics is Andrew Skolnick, executive director of the Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health. Skolnick notes that MANTRA II is not a definitive study. “It seems that for some, the medical benefits of remote prayer may be a non-falsifiable hypothesis that can always be rescued with new hypotheses to explain away the lack of confirmatory results. As such, it’s a subject more appropriate for pseudoscience than science.”
In an essay about the effectiveness of distant healing prayer on the Religious Tolerance Web site, author B. A. Robinson notes the wide variety of views about such research. He quotes Gary Posner, M.D., a skeptic, as saying: “I suspect that 50 years from now people looking back at this genre of prayer research will kind of shake their heads and call it junk science.”
What Prayer Studies Can Teach Us
On the other hand, Dr. Deepak Chopra is quoted as saying prayer experiments are supporting what he’s been saying all along—that there are healing forces in nature that science is only beginning to understand—“At the moment, I would agree that some of these studies are tentative, that we should be cautious in the way we interpret the results. But the studies are encouraging enough that we should pursue them, because if we don’t, we may have missed one of the most amazing phenomena in nature.”
Bob Barth said an important part of the role of the Office of Prayer Research is to make sure premature conclusions aren’t drawn from the kind of frontier research being conducted into prayer: “We have analyzed hundreds of prayer studies and can affirm there is no definitive study on prayer; there are only formative research enterprises. Each time a study like this is released, we learn as much about how to conduct prayer research as we do from analyzing the results. We can’t find the answers if we don’t keep asking the questions.”
Weblink:
http://www.officeofprayerresearch.org/opr/mantra_questions.htm
Brain Activity Exposes Liars
Our perceived separation from one another permits people to lie and fool deceive others. Science has searched for ways to overcome this obstacle to truth. Studies have found that untrained observers cannot detect deceit better than at chance levels of accuracy. Training observers helps some, but still with much room for error. The war on terrorism has increased the value of being able to detect deception. Recent research with magnetic image resonance (MRI) technology has revealed that certain areas of the brain are more active during lying. In this research, published in Biological Psychiatry, male participants were to receive a reward if they could successfully lie about recent past behaviors they indulged in as part of the experiment. The MRIs indicated that while speaking deceitfully, these men’s brains showed increased activity in stress areas, in areas governing impulse control, and in the brain area active during multitasking, suggesting two lines of thought occurring simultaneously. Their words may lie, but their brains tell the truth.
Source:
Scientist: MRIs Can Serve As Lie Detectors
A scientist at the Medical University of South Carolina has found that magnetic resonance imaging machines also can serve as lie detectors.
The study found MRI machines, which are used to take images of the brain, are more than 90 percent accurate at detecting deception, said Dr. Mark George, a distinguished professor of psychiatry, radiology and neurosciences.
That compares with polygraphs that range from 80 percent to 'no better than chance' at finding the truth, George said.
His results are to be published this week in the journal Biological Psychiatry.
Software expected to be on the market next year could make it easier to tell if someone is a liar, which has implications for law enforcement.
Researchers at MUSC conducted the study using 60 healthy men. They offered some extra money if they could manage to trick the machine but none could.
'We had some of our study group try to dupe us, and they were unable,' George said.
The MRI images show that more blood flows to parts of the brain associated with anxiety and impulse control when people lie. More blood also flows to the part of the brain handling multitasking because it is hard for people to keep track of lies they have told.
In the study, researchers had participants commit a mock theft. Then questions about the theft were projected onto a screen while they were inside the MRI machine. Participants pressed a button to respond to the yes or no questions.
The test won't work if people don't remain still in the MRI machine so a clear imagine of the brain can be recorded. And some people's brains don't seem to show the same changes while lying.
It's also not clear whether certain psychiatric conditions might change the test results.
Weblink:
http://interestalert.com/story/siteia.shtml?Story=st/sn/09270000aaa02167.ap&Sys=siteia&Fid=HELTHSCI&Type=News&Filter=Health/Sciencehttp://interestalert.com/story/siteia.shtml?Story=st/sn/09270000aaa02167.ap&Sys=siteia&Fid=HELTHSCI&Type=News&Filter=Health/Sciencehttp://interestalert.com/story/siteia.shtml?Story=st/sn/09270000aaa02167.ap&Sys=siteia&Fid=HELTHSCI&Type=News&Filter=Health/Science
Information from: The Post and Courier, http://www.charleston.net
Heart Patients Need more Laughter
Previous research has pinpointed some of the ways in which laughter reduces the body’s stress level. New research shows that those who need laughter the most may have it the least. Researchers at the University of Maryland Medical Center studied the laughter habits of heart disease patients and compared their findings with people with healthy hearts. They found that those with diseased hearts had a much poorer laughter profile than did the healthy people. The heart patients laughed less often and less intently than their healthy counterparts. Instead, they showed greater hostility and anger.
Source:
Laughter is the "Best Medicine" for Your Heart
By Michelle Weinstein
University of Maryland Medical System Web Site Writer
Can a laugh every day keep the heart attack away? Maybe so.
Laughter, along with an active sense of humor, may help protect you against a heart attack, according to a recent study by cardiologists at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore. The study, which is the first to indicate that laughter may help prevent heart disease, found that people with heart disease were 40 percent less likely to laugh in a variety of situations compared to people of the same age without heart disease.
"The old saying that 'laughter is the best medicine,' definitely appears to be true when it comes to protecting your heart," says Michael Miller, M.D., director of the Center for Preventive Cardiology at the University of Maryland Medical Center and associate professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. "We don't know yet why laughing protects the heart, but we know that mental stress is associated with impairment of the endothelium, the protective barrier lining our blood vessels. This can cause a series of inflammatory reactions that lead to fat and cholesterol build-up in the coronary arteries and ultimately to a heart attack."
In the study, researchers compared the humor responses of 300 people. Half of the participants had either suffered a heart attack or undergone coronary artery bypass surgery. The other 150 did not have heart disease. One questionnaire had a series of multiple-choice answers to find out how much or how little people laughed in certain situations, and the second one used true or false answers to measure anger and hostility.
Miller said that the most significant study finding was that "people with heart disease responded less humorously to everyday life situations." They generally laughed less, even in positive situations, and they displayed more anger and hostility.
"The ability to laugh -- either naturally or as learned behavior -- may have important implications in societies such as the U.S. where heart disease remains the number one killer," says Miller. "We know that exercising, not smoking and eating foods low in saturated fat will reduce the risk of heart disease. Perhaps regular, hearty laughter should be added to the list."
Miller says it may be possible to incorporate laughter into our daily activities, just as we do with other heart-healthy activities, such as taking the stairs instead of the elevator. "We could perhaps read something humorous or watch a funny video and try to find ways to take ourselves less seriously," Miller says. "The recommendation for a healthy heart may one day be exercise, eat right and laugh a few times a day."
In addition to helping your heart, laughter offers other important health benefits. "People become healthier from laughter," observes Judy Goldblum-Carlton, a humor therapist at the University of Maryland Hospital for Children's Division of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology. "It improves circulation. When you laugh heartily, every organ is being massaged including your heart, lungs and digestive system. Headaches can just go away. When you laugh the endorphins released make you feel this elation. It makes those big decisions seem so much less important."
Humor Yourself
So how can you make yourself laugh, even when you're angry or tense? And how can you find ways to improve your sense of humor and add more laughter into your life? Goldblum-Carlton offers the following creative ways to incorporate humor into your everyday routine:
* Figure out what tickles your funny bone. "You have to figure out what makes you laugh," says Goldblum-Carlton. Some people like slapstick while others prefer a more intellectual type of humor. "Once you isolate what makes you laugh and what turns your knobs, then you can go out and look for these things."
* Rent a funny movie. Goldblum-Carlton suggests videos, like "America's Funniest Home Videos" and others that appeal to a mass audience -- Bill Cosby, Jeff Foxworthy, etc. "Watch videos that have something for everyone."
* Add comedy to your commute. Listen to a funny audiotape when driving to relieve road stress and if possible, turn the cell phone off when you're in the car. "The car is a great place to listen to funny stuff because that's where a lot of your tension is," says Goldblum-Carlton.
* Start a humor library. Clip funny cartoons, collect calendars, mugs, pictures, funny greeting cards, books, or anything else that makes you laugh. Collect some humorous audio and videotapes. Post those cartoons and calendars on your wall, so you can look at them often for a good laugh.
* Laugh with others. People laugh much more often when in groups, says Goldblum-Carlton. So watch a funny movie with some friends and share the laughter. "People laugh more with other people. It gives you permission to laugh."
* Find humor in seemingly ordinary, everyday things. Anything from funny road signs to a walking crow to a feeding squirrel can inspire a laugh. "Watching a crow walk is hysterical, and squirrels are natural comedians," observes Goldblum-Carlton. "There is so much funny stuff around you really just have to open your eyes."
* Learn the basics of humor. Improve your sense of humor by taking a class. Often, community colleges and elder hostels offer classes on how to tell jokes and improve your sense of humor.
* Remember a funny moment. "Start thinking about something funny that happened when you're feeling tense," suggests Goldblum-Carlton. This will ease the tension and help you forget your troubles, at least temporarily.
* Laugh at yourself. Tell a funny or embarrassing story about yourself. After all, as Goldblum-Carlton says, "even the most embarrassing situation years from now will be a funny story."
* Make fun of your fears. "When you make fun of what frightens you, you get a mastery over it and gain control," notes Goldblum-Carlton.
* Act silly. "Let yourself act silly and share it. Get a pair of silly head glasses and put them on," suggests Goldblum-Carlton. "Laughter is contagious. When you're happy and you're laughing it rubs off on people. Everyone can have a sense of humor."
* Learn to play. Play with your kids or your pets. Teach Fido or Fluffy some stupid pet tricks. Games are also funny -- Scattegories, Charades, Password -- all of which can bring a laugh.
* Visit the zoo and watch the animals, especially the monkeys. "The number one thing that makes people laugh are monkeys. Monkeys are a riot, [and] zoos are great," Goldblum-Carlton says.
* Lighten up! You take your life's work seriously, but take yourself a little more lightly. As Goldblum-Carlton puts it: "When you throw your head back and laugh, you're not thinking of anything else. Laughter is the best thing you can do for your health."
Finally, just appreciate the importance of laughter. "The most powerful thing we're given is our ability to laugh," Goldblum-Carlton says. "It's our greatest gift, especially if we can laugh at ourselves and not take ourselves so seriously."
http://www.umm.edu/features/laughter.htm
Ancient Ice Confirms Global Warming
Researchers drilling Antarctic ice from 600,000 years ago, found evidence in the air bubbles trapped from that period that today’s air has a much higher concentrations of carbon dioxide and other chemicals associated with a warmer climate. According to the report of this research, reported in the journal Science, the record shows that there has been a consistent correlation between climate temperature and the concentration of certain chemicals, such as carbon dioxide, in the air. The concentration of CO2 in today’s air is much greater than at any time in the past, while the expected increase in climate temperature, based upon past correlations, is lagging behind. An increase in the speed of global warming might be anticipated by these results.
Source:
Rise in Gases Unmatched by a History in Ancient Ice
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Shafts of ancient ice pulled from Antarctica's frozen depths show that for at least 650,000 years three important heat-trapping greenhouse gases never reached recent atmospheric levels caused by human activities, scientists are reporting today.
The measured gases were carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. Concentrations have risen over the last several centuries at a pace far beyond that seen before humans began intensively clearing forests and burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels.
The sampling and analysis were done by the European Program for Ice Coring in Antarctica, and the results are being published today in the journal Science.
The evidence was found in air bubbles trapped in successively older ice samples extracted from a nearly two-mile-deep hole drilled in a remote spot in East Antarctica called Dome C.
Experts familiar with the findings who were not involved with the research said the samples provided a vital long-term view of variations in the atmosphere and Antarctic climate. They say the data will help test and improve computer models used to forecast how accumulating greenhouse emissions will affect the climate.
Some climate experts not involved in the research said the findings also confirmed that the buildup of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe emissions was taking the atmosphere into uncharted territory.
The longest previous record of carbon dioxide fluctuations, compiled from ice cores collected at the Russian research station at Vostok, in East Antarctica, goes back slightly more than 400,000 years.
"They've now pushed back two-thirds of a million years and found that nature did not get as far as humans have," said Richard B. Alley, a geosciences professor at Pennsylvania State University who is an expert on ice cores. "We're changing the world really hugely - way past where it's been for a long time."
James White, a geology professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, not involved with the study, said that although the ice-age evidence showed that levels of carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases rose and fell in response to warming and cooling, the gases could clearly take the lead as well.
"CO2 and climate are like two people handcuffed to each other," he said. "Where one goes, the other must follow. Leadership may change, or they may march in step, but they are never far from each other. Our current CO2 levels appear to be far out of balance with climate when viewed through these results, reinforcing the idea that we have significant modern warming to go."
The new data from the ice cores also provides the first detailed portrait of conditions during ice-age cycles that occurred more than 400,000 years ago - a point in Earth's two-million-year history of cold periods and warm intervals after which some unknown influence lengthened ice ages and shortened and amplified the warm periods.
Both before and after that transition, the ice record shows, there was always a tight relationship between amounts of the greenhouse gases and air temperature.
While the overall climate pattern has been set by rhythmic variations in Earth's orientation to the Sun, the records show that carbon dioxide and methane consistently made the interglacial climate warmer than it would otherwise have been, said Thomas Stocker, one of the researchers and a physicist at the University of Bern in Switzerland.
Last year, the same cores provided new evidence that the current warm period, the Holocene, which began about 12,000 years ago, is similar to the longer warm periods that were typical before 400,000 years ago, and could last at least another 16,000 years.
The European team is analyzing deeper, older sections of the Dome C ice cores, and the researchers said they might be able to take the climate record back 800,000 years, possibly providing information about yet another early warm interval similar to the Holocene.
The new long-term record is essentially creating a subset of climate science, letting scientists compare different warm periods. They can then sort out influences, including greenhouse gases, said Gavin A. Schmidt, a climate modeler at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/25/science/earth/25core.html
Meditation Aids Psoriasis Treatment
People who meditate while being treated for psoriasis make better healing progress. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center studied patients who were being treated for psioriasis by either phototherapy or photochemotherapy. They provided half the group with a cassette playing meditation instructions during the treatment, while the control group received no meditation instructions.. As reported in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, the patients who meditated during their psoriasis treatment showed significantly greater improvement in lesions than did the non-meditating patients.
Source:
Influence of a mindfulness meditation-based stress reduction intervention on rates of skin clearing in patients with moderate to severe psoriasis undergoing phototherapy (UVB) and photochemotherapy (PUVA)
J Kabat-Zinn, E Wheeler, T Light, A Skillings, MJ Scharf, TG Cropley, D Hosmer and JD Bernhard
Stress Reduction Clinic, Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society, Department of Medicine, University of Massachusetts Medical Center, Worcester 01655-0267, USA. jon.kabat-zinn@banyan.ummed.edu
OBJECTIVE: This study tests the hypothesis that stress reduction methods based on mindfulness meditation can positively influence the rate at which psoriasis clears in patients undergoing phototherapy or photochemotherapy treatment. METHODS: Thirty-seven patients with psoriasis about to undergo ultraviolet phototherapy (UVB) or photochemotherapy (PUVA) were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: a mindfulness meditation-based stress reduction intervention guided by audiotaped instructions during light treatments, or a control condition consisting of the light treatments alone with no taped instructions. Psoriasis status was assessed in three ways: direct inspection by unblinded clinic nurses; direct inspection by physicians blinded to the patient's study condition (tape or no-tape); and blinded physician evaluation of photographs of psoriasis lesions. Four sequential indicators of skin status were monitored during the study: a First Response Point, a Turning Point, a Halfway Point, and a Clearing Point. RESULTS: Cox-proportional hazards regression analysis showed that subjects in the tape groups reached the Halfway Point (p = .013) and the Clearing Point (p = .033) significantly more rapidly than those in the no-tape condition, for both UVB and PUVA treatments. CONCLUSIONS: A brief mindfulness meditation-based stress reduction intervention delivered by audiotape during ultraviolet light therapy can increase the rate of resolution of psoriatic lesions in patients with psoriasis.
Psychosomatic Medicine, Vol 60, Issue 5 625-632, Copyright © 1998 by American Psychosomatic Society
http://www.psychosomaticmedicine.org/cgi/content/abstract/60/5/625
Ten Foods Feed the Brain
An investigation of the effects of various foods on brain function have resulted in a “Top Ten Brain Foods” list, published by Psychology Today. The top ten (with accompanying factoid) are:
1) Blueberries: affect blood supply in brain
2) Dark leafy vegetables: contains folate (B12, B6) breaks down chemicals hazardous to arterial walls
3) Salmon, Sardines, and Herring: Omega 3 retards development of Alzheimer’s
4) Spinach: slows down age related cognitive defects
5) Red Wine, or, better yet, Grape Juice: Concord grape has highest anti-oxidant level of any juice
6) Whole Grains and Brown Rice: Brown rice is filled with magnesium which seems to be important to cognitive health.
7) Hot Cocoa: has twice the anti-oxidant contents than red wine or green tea
8) Nuts, Notably Almonds and Walnuts: nuts reduce cholesterol and are associated with lower rates of heart disease
9) Olive Oil: contains the potent antioxidants called polyphenols, associated with lower blood pressure and lower cholesterol
10) Garlic: contains anti-oxidants, antivirals and anti-bacterial properties.
Source:
Top Ten Smart Foods
By: Carlin Flora
Summary: Certain foods are especially good at protecting the brain. Here's how to stay sharp.
Crossword puzzles alone won’t save your brain and protect it from aging, though they will help. So will the right foods. Some edibles are especially good at protecting the brain’s delicate nerve cells and blood vessels from the damage that accompanies aging. Most of them squelch free radicals, the renegade oxygen molecules spun off as the brain goes about the business of the mind. Most of the foods that are smartest for the brain are also good for the heart because both rely on a steady oxygen supply. The risks for cardiovascular disease correlate with risks for cognitive decline.
1. Blueberries: Sweet wild blueberries are bursting with antioxidants, which mop up nasty free radicals. Studies of rats show that a blueberry-rich diet improves memory and motor skills and reverses age-related declines in balance and coordination. Chemicals in blueberries affect the contractile machinery of arteries, and therefore have a good affect on blood pressure. Elevated blood pressure can damage delicate blood vessels in the brain and can lead to strokes.
2. Dark Leafy Greens: Chemicals called homocysteines are a normal part of protein metabolism, but high levels are linked with cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease (as well as heart disease), which accounts for most cases of dementia in the U.S. According to Katherine Tucker, director of the dietary assessment research program at the Human Nutrition Research Center of Aging, “homocysteine has a toxic effect on arterial walls, and oxidation corrodes the arterial walls too, which makes them a bad combination.” In order to break themselves down, homocysteines require folate and B12 or B6, vitamins found in vegetables like collard greens and swiss chard.
3. Salmon, Sardines, and Herring: Fatty fish are full of neuroprotective omega-3 fatty acids. Higher levels of omega-3 in the blood go hand-in-hand with higher levels of serotonin, a mood-enhancing brain chemical. A study from the Rush Institute for Healthy Aging in Chicago found that people who eat at least one fish meal a week are significantly less likely to end up with Alzheimer’s disease than those who regularly eschew fish. Because a fish diet aids communication between nerve cells, studies have shown its positive effect on learning acquisition and memory performance.
4. Spinach: Spinach research has finally caught up with mom’s advice: Spinach turns out to be full of antioxidant power. James Joseph, chief of the Neurosciences Laboratory of the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, finds spinach beneficial in slowing down age-related problems in the central nervous system and cognitive deficits. A salad with spinach has more than three times the amount of folate than one with iceberg lettuce.
5. Red Wine, or, better yet, Grape Juice: Drinking red wine in moderation increases longevity. But since alcohol slows down the brain’s ability to function properly, grape juice may be a smarter beverage choice. New research from James Joseph shows that concord grape juice significantly improves short-term memory and motor skills. It’s not just the heavy dose of antioxidants. Joseph believes that grape juice increases production of the neurotransmitter dopamine. Concord grape juice has the highest total antioxidant level of any fruit, vegetable or juice tested.
6. Whole Grains and Brown Rice: One of the best things you can do to improve intake of nutrients is to switch to brown rice. It’s filled with vitamins and magnesium, which seems to be important to cognitive health. Whole grains contain vitamin B6, which aids in reducing homocysteine levels. Americans often don’t get enough vitamin B6, because they mostly eat processed foods.
7. Hot Cocoa: Warm up with hot cocoa to help your brain as well as your frostbitten fingers. Chang Young Lee, professor of food chemistry at Cornell University, found that the antioxidant content of two tablespoons of pure cocoa powder is “almost two times stronger than red wine, two to three times stronger than green tea and four to five times stronger than that of black tea.” The antioxidants in hot cocoa protect brain cells from oxidative stress that can lead to Alzheimer’s and other disorders.
8. Nuts, Notably Almonds and Walnuts: Adding to their party-mix appeal, nuts are rich in antioxidants and have been found to lower blood cholesterol levels. A Harvard study showed that women who ate more than five ounces of nuts per week had a significantly lower risk of coronary heart disease than those who ate an ounce or less. And, they don’t contribute to weight gain as much as other kinds of fatty foods. Walnuts are rich in omega-3s.
9. Olive Oil: A staple of the highly touted “Mediterranean Diet,” olive oil contains the potent antioxidants called polyphenols, Olive oil has been shown to reduce blood pressure and cholesterol levels. The extra-virgin variety is best.
10. Garlic: This pungent herb fends off aging via its antioxidant properties. It also contains strong antibacterial and antiviral compounds that help shake off stress-induced colds and infections. Raw, crushed garlic is best; cooked garlic is less powerful but still benefits the cardiovascular system.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20040206-000010.html
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