HerbEly

Why Do We Put So Much Faith Into the Latest Diet?

From this morning's health news:

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Diets that distinguish between "good carbs" and "bad carbs," are not an effective way of controlling blood sugar levels, a new study suggests.Although made popular by the South Beach Diet and others, the glycemic index has never been fully embraced by most dietitians and remains a point of debate among scientists.

I must admit to a certain amount of glee on reading this. I've had more than one person tell me, in great detail why the Atkins and South Beach diets are superior to Weight Watchers.

    Why do people become so passionately attached to a diet for which there is little solid evidence, even in the face of my post citing Consumer reports? Maybe it is because we are always looking for a magic formula that will give us power and control over our lives without real effort.

    There is no magic formula. Sometimes power and control are good things - if we can use them properly. The question is how?

    Thomas Keating's approach to centering prayer includes a teaching on our three basic needs:

• Power and Control
• Esteem and Affection
• Safety and Security

Generally when our attachments to something, be it a political belief, food, or other goods, it is because on of these needs is driving us. If we can recognize this, we can recognize that we need "turn over our lives and wills to the care of God."

   

Welcoming prayer is a good way to do this.

News Flash: Stress Makes You Sick

A team of Australian Scientists has

scientifically proven a long-suspected link between emotional stress and illnesses ranging from the common cold to cancer. The group from Sydney's Garvan Institute found that a hormone released into the body during times of stress, neuropeptide Y (NPY), undermined the body's immune system and literally made you sick.

One wonders what this adds Hans Selye’s ground breaking boook, the Stress of Life published in 1978 - or to Herbert Benson's The Relaxation Response reissued in 1976. The Austrailian group

stressed that it would take years to develop drugs to counter the affects of NPY and that the best short-term solution for people was to combat their stress.
"The best thing to do is to remove stress from our lives just by reorganising the way we live, changing our lifestyle and using things like yoga and relaxation to the best of our ability,"

Again, the writers are re-discovering an old truth. The connection between spirituality and health is well known. Good spiritual practices keep us away from self-destructive activities and encourage us to correct our past errors. Meditation is already known to reduce stress and change brain structure.

Watch for another news flash. Some one is likely to re-discover that attending church is good for children.

News Flash Numbers 3 & 4

Occasionally the academic world and the news media rediscover some truths that were obvious to middle America all along. For example, See my previous posts:
• News Flash: Good for Children, and
• New Flash: Eating Dinner with Your Teens Helps

Here are two more:

• Family meals, stories boost child confidence. “Research by two Emory University psychology professors(Robyn Fivush and Marshall Duke) shows that families who regularly share meals together have children who know more about their family history and tend to have higher self-esteem, interact better with their peers and show higher resilience in the face of adversity. In addition, families who openly discuss emotions associated with negative events, such as the death of a relative or a pet, have children with higher self-esteem and sense of control.”
• MIT economist Jonathan Gruber asks Is Religion Good for You? "Doubling the rate of religious attendance raises household income by 9.1 percent, decreases welfare participation by 16 percent from baseline rates, decreases the odds of being divorced by 4 percent , and increases the odds of being married by 4.4 percent."

Maybe somebody will do some research demonstrating that there is a high correlation between health, happiness and income for families that go to church regularly, pray at dinner, and talk with each other about the day’s activities. Maybe the mainstream media will report it as a new discovery by modern psychology. Maybe some popular psych guru will write a best seller titled The Family that Prays Together Stays Together

Watch this space. You might read it here first.

Technology & Mental Illness

A recent government sponsored study reported that half of the American population experiences mental illness at some point in their lives. People are framing their comments to this in several different ways. I wondered how many opinion writers and bloggers would be shocked at a report that said half of us had do see a doctor for physical illness.

Washington, D.C. Clinical psychiatrist Patricia Dalton had this to say about technolgy's impact on us and what we might do about it:

I'm well aware of the argument that these rates must be exaggerated, but as a clinical psychologist, there is no doubt in my mind that there has been a real increase in the number of mood and anxiety disorders during the 20-plus years I have been in practice.
...
Ever since the first electric bulb shed artificial light, we have been detaching ourselves from our natural rhythms. Business travelers cross time zones and go right back to work; adults extend their hours by bringing work home with them; teenagers contact their friends anywhere at any time of the day or night. Until, that is, they end up in therapists' offices having been stopped in their tracks by physical or psychological dysfunction. Many blame themselves when things go wrong. They minimize the impact of our super-charged environment on their psychological well-being.

It's hard to believe that not long ago, most people actually went to bed when the sun went down and got up when the sun came up. They were born, lived and died within short distances of their childhood homes. They communicated face to face most of the time, or else by letter or telegram. They gathered frequently at home, in places of worship and in civic organizations.

So, put away your Blackberry, turn off your computer and read a novel, watch a film, go to church, or join a civic organization. If you are interested in Kiwanis, let me know.

We See every thing upside down and our nerve paths are crossed left to right

Our Tae Kwon Do teacher says that this is the reason why it is so hard to learn sequences on one side of the body than the other. We can learn a sequence of moves starting with the right hand - or foot. When we turn around and start with the left, we find it difficult. According to David Brown in the Washington Post the fact that the right side of our brains controls the left side of the body provides a natural advantage.

News Flash: Sunlight is Good for You

First eggs are bad. Now eggs are ok. First, sunlight causes skin cancer. Now sunlight lowers risk of prostate cancer..

The moral of these stories. Take all health news with a grain of salt. Except that salt is bad for you - or is it?

There's No Such a Thing as a "Suger High"

And you don't have to drink eight glasses of water every day.

If nutrition science can't get suger and water right, why should we believe anything else that they say?

The next thing we will discover is that coffee is good for us.

Woody Allen will have plenty of material if he decides to remake Sleeper.