Cellphone use during pregnancy linked to ADHD

Another caution has been added to the list of concerns around cellphone radiation, following a recent study that shows it may be linked to hyperactivity in children.
Yale School of Medicine researchers last week released a study that extrapolates the use of cellphones during pregnancy affects the brain development of offspring, which in turn may lead to behavioural disorders resembling attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
The results of Yale's empirical procedure, involving the use of pregnant mice exposed to radiation, were published in the 15 March edition of Scientific Reports, a nature publication. The report describes how the team of researchers exposed pregnant mice to radiation from a cellphone, muted and silenced, positioned above their cage. The phone was placed on an active phone call for the duration of the trial. Another cage of mice, a “control group” was kept under the same conditions, but with a deactivated cellphone.
The team then measured electrical brain activity of adult mice that had been exposed to radiation as foetuses and conducted behavioural and psychological tests. They found the group of mice that had had prenatal exposure to radiation were more hyperactive and had reduced memory capacity.
The report attributes this to an effect during pregnancy on the development of neurons in the prefrontal cortex region of the brain. “The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is responsible for executive functions by screening distractions and maintaining attention in goal-oriented behaviours. Impairment of the PFC leads to dysregulated behaviour/emotion such as ADHD.”
Mice and men
While their research established a link between prenatal cellphone radiation and ADHD-like symptoms in laboratory mice, the authors say further experiments need to be conducted to determine a parallel human result.
“We present the first experimental evidence of neuropathology due to in-utero cellulartelephone radiation. Further experiments are needed in humans or non-human primates to determine the risk of exposure during pregnancy.”
The report, however, reiterates that, while “the direct effects of radio frequency radiation exposure on neurodevelopment remain unknown” and results are difficult to translate precisely into human vulnerability, it is worth heeding the findings.
“The significant trend between the groups treated for 0, 9, 15, and 24 hours/day demonstrates that the effects are directly proportional to usage time, and suggests that safety limits, particularly for pregnant women, can be established.”
Authors of the report, including Dr Hugh S Taylor, Tamir Aldad, Geliang Gan and Xiao-Bing Gao, remark in their opening statement that the association is significant, “given the increasing number of cellular phone users worldwide, reaching approximately four billion as of December 2008.”
Article courtesy of It Web, by Bonnie Tubbs. www.itweb.co.za

9 year old Autistic Social Entrepreneur

--by Huffington Post, Original Story, Mar 15, 2012

Kent Melville's father was skeptical when his son first said that he wanted to use the profits from his successful summer lemonade stand to start his own soda company. Aaron Melville, who teaches business classes at a local college, did not believe his 9-year-old autistic son was ready to run his own business.

Kent was determined to do something to help others with autism, however, which inspired his father to reconsider. Aaron described on a Facebook page for the organization, why he decided to help his son start Kent's Soda after initially encouraging him to wait until he was older.

Kent pondered that for a minute. He then looked at me and said "Dad, I have everything I need right now, but there are lots of other kids with autism that can't do the things they want or need. I want to be able to help them get some of the things they want with the money we earn. Can't we start now? I don't want to wait." I had never been prouder. With a tear of gratitude in my eye, I agreed.

Though he has enlisted the help of his parents, students at a local community college, and members of the faculty, The Caledonian Record describes how the young entrepreneur is taking charge of his business.

Kent has chosen the flavors himself, and they currently include root beer, orange, lemonade, raspberry limeade, grape, strawberry and cream soda. Kent plans to add an additional flavor each year. The first one will be root beer mixed with orange.

He has come up with a marketing plans that will include a giant root beer volcano, and rejects others ideas when he doesn't agree with them.

One proposal suggested targeting a market of soda pop buyers in an age group from 13 to 24. Kent's response was, "What? Are you stupid? That would mean I couldn't drink my own soda."

Gimundo reports that Kent's sodas were featured at the 2011 Johnsbury World Maple Festival earlier this year. They are also sold at a local farm, a nearby restaurant, and the old-fashioned way -- from a stand set up near Kent's house.

Kent's Soda may outgrow the stand quickly, however. According to The Caledonian Record Kent and his family have high hopes for the small company.

A bottler was signed up and the first 24 cases of Kent's soda was turned out by the Walpole, N.H., company, which says he can keep up with 25,000 bottles at a time, but may have to rework things if sales really take off.

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Welcome Back Message!

Hello Everyone! Its good to be back this year I hope that you have awesome plans and goals for 2012. I promise you interesting and very helpful stories and information throughout the year. Remember, since life is short,forgive quickly,love truly, laugh madly and never regret anything that made you smile. P.S: There is no health without mental health so look after your mental health and that of your loved ones.

Upside of Depression

It's everywhere. As inescapable as the common cold. Every year, 7 percent of us will be diagnosed with the grey clouds of depression. But how well do we really understand it? Charles Darwin claimed that depression was a clarifying force, focusing the mind on its most essential problems. And the grey clouds hit him hard, leaving him "not able to do anything one day out of three." More recently, researchers say that depression has a secret purpose, and it's best to ride out, rather than conceal, the pain. Like a fever that helps the immune system fight off infection, depression might be an unpleasant yet adaptive response to affliction. Maybe Darwin was right. We suffer- we suffer terribly- but we don't suffer in vain. The Victorians had many names for depression, and Charles Darwin used them all. There were his “fits” brought on by “excitements,” “flurries” leading to an “uncomfortable palpitation of the heart” and “air fatigues” that triggered his “head symptoms.” In one particularly pitiful letter, written to a specialist in “psychological medicine,” he confessed to “extreme spasmodic daily and nightly flatulence” and “hysterical crying” whenever Emma, his devoted wife, left him alone.

While there has been endless speculation about Darwin’s mysterious ailment — his symptoms have been attributed to everything from lactose intolerance to Chagas disease — Darwin himself was most troubled by his recurring mental problems. His depression left him “not able to do anything one day out of three,” choking on his “bitter mortification.” He despaired of the weakness of mind that ran in his family. “The ‘race is for the strong,’ ” Darwin wrote. “I shall probably do little more but be content to admire the strides others made in Science.”

Darwin, of course, was wrong; his recurring fits didn’t prevent him from succeeding in science. Instead, the pain may actually have accelerated the pace of his research, allowing him to withdraw from the world and concentrate entirely on his work. His letters are filled with references to the salvation of study, which allowed him to temporarily escape his gloomy moods. “Work is the only thing which makes life endurable to me,” Darwin wrote and later remarked that it was his “sole enjoyment in life.”
For Darwin, depression was a clarifying force, focusing the mind on its most essential problems. In his autobiography, he speculated on the purpose of such misery; his evolutionary theory was shadowed by his own life story. “Pain or suffering of any kind,” he wrote, “if long continued, causes depression and lessens the power of action, yet it is well adapted to make a creature guard itself against any great or sudden evil.” And so sorrow was explained away, because pleasure was not enough. Sometimes, Darwin wrote, it is the sadness that informs as it “leads an animal to pursue that course of action which is most beneficial.” The darkness was a kind of light.
The mystery of depression is not that it exists — the mind, like the flesh, is prone to malfunction. Instead, the paradox of depression has long been its prevalence. While most mental illnesses are extremely rare — schizophrenia, for example, is seen in less than 1 percent of the population — depression is everywhere, as inescapable as the common cold. Every year, approximately 7 percent of us will be afflicted to some degree by the awful mental state that William Styron described as a “gray drizzle of horror . . . a storm of murk.” Obsessed with our pain, we will retreat from everything. We will stop eating, unless we start eating too much. Sex will lose its appeal; sleep will become a frustrating pursuit. We will always be tired, even though we will do less and less. We will think a lot about death.
The persistence of this affliction — and the fact that it seemed to be heritable — posed a serious challenge to Darwin’s new evolutionary theory. If depression was a disorder, then evolution had made a tragic mistake, allowing an illness that impedes reproduction — it leads people to stop having sex and consider suicide — to spread throughout the population. For some unknown reason, the modern human mind is tilted toward sadness and, as we’ve now come to think, needs drugs to rescue itself.
The alternative, of course, is that depression has a secret purpose and our medical interventions are making a bad situation even worse. Like a fever that helps the immune system fight off infection — increased body temperature sends white blood cells into overdrive — depression might be an unpleasant yet adaptive response to affliction. Maybe Darwin was right. We suffer — we suffer terribly — but we don’t suffer in vain.

http://www.dailygood.org/view.php?qid=4057

Too Much TV, Very Little Exercise Tied to Depression

 

Older women who got more exercise and less television time were the least likely to be diagnosed with depression, according to a U.S. study of thousands of women – with physical activity having the biggest impact.

According to findings published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, researchers found that women who reported exercising the most in recent years were about 20 percent less likely to get depression than those who rarely exercised.

On the other hand, the more hours they spent watching TV each week, the more their risk of depression crept up.

"Higher levels of physical activity were associated with lower depression risk," wrote study author Michel Lucas, from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.

More time spent being active might boost self-esteem and women's sense of control, as well as the endorphins in their blood, although the study could not prove directly that watching too much television and avoiding exercise caused depression, she added.

The report included close to 50,000 women who filled out surveys every couple of years as part of the U.S. Nurses' Health Study, and covered the years 1992 to 2006.

Participants recorded the amount of time they spent watching TV each week in 1992, and also answered questions about how often they walked, biked, ran and swam between 1992 and 2000.

On the same questionnaires, women reported any new diagnosis of clinical depression or medication taken to treat depression.

The analysis only included women who did not have depression in 1996. Over the next decade, there were 6,500 new cases of depression.

After the researchers accounted for aspects of health and lifestyle linked to depression, including weight, smoking and a range of diseases, exercising the most, 90 minutes or more each day, meant women were 20 percent less likely to be diagnosed with depression than those who exercised 10 minutes or less a day.

Women who watched three hours or more of television a day were 13 percent more likely to be diagnosed with depression than those who hardly ever tuned in, but Lucas said at least part of that link might be due to women replacing time they could be exercising with TV watching.

One alternative explanation the researchers brought up is that women might have been experiencing some symptoms of depression before they were diagnosed, leading them to exercise less. A formal diagnosis could have come later.

"Previous studies have suggested that physical activity is associated with a lower risk of depressive symptoms," said Gillian Mead, who studies geriatric medicine at Edinburgh's Royal Infirmary but was not involved in the study.

"(The finding) adds to the growing body of evidence that physical activity is important to maintain brain health," she added in an email to Reuters Health.

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/11/14/too-much-tv-very-little-exercise-tied-to-depression/

Just qouting!

"The only normal people are the one's you don't know very well."
~ Alfred Adler (1870-1937), Austrian psychologist.

Claim Back the Power Within

It is a wonderful feeling to know that I have grown so much. I hold self-empowerment and self-love so dearly in my heart, and for that no one can control me or force me into something I am not willing to do. Because I know and love myself I can tell what relationships are good for me and which are not. My advice to everyone is that you should empower and love yourself, and you will know when you are being victimised and when something is not good for you. If it means changing your life in order to take back your power, then do so. People tend to fear change. But as much as change is painful, it is also good, profitable and possible. Be that person who is not afraid of change and can catch up fast with change.

Existential Therapy

I've been conducting research on existential therapy. I assure you its life changing. the argument it holds is that we are all authors of our own lives and we do not need validation from anyone about the choices we make. Please read the following extract to get an idea of what existential therapy is all about

Existential therapy was introduced by Victor Frankl and Rollo May. Existentialism is an area of philosophy concerned with the meaning of human existence. It looks at issues such as love, death and the meaning of life - and how one deals with the sense of value and meanings in their own life. In an existentialist approach to therapy, there are basic dimensions of the human condition. These are the capacity for self-awareness, the tension between freedom and responsibility, the creation of an identity and the establishment of meaningful relationships, the search for meaning, the acceptance of anxiety as a condition of living and the awareness of death and non-being.
Existentialists believe that our human capacity for self-awareness gives us possibilities for freedom - as we will realize that we are finite and time is limited, we have the potential and the choice to act or not to act, meaning is not automatic and we must seek it, and we are subject to loneliness, meaninglessness, guilt and isolation. Therefore, people are free to choose among alternatives available to them in living and have a large role in shaping their own personal destinies. The manner in which we live and what we become are results of our choices and people must take responsibility for directing their own lives.

The aim of existential therapy is to encourage clients to reflect on life, recognize their range of alternatives and decide among them. The goal is to make people realize the ways they passively accepted circumstances and surrender control in order for them to start consciously shaping their own lives by exploring options for creating a meaningful existence. The therapies central tasks are to invite the client to recognize how they have allowed others to decide for them, and to encourage clients to take steps towards autonomy (independence)http://www.psychologycampus.com/psychology-counseling/existential-therapy.html

Dear reader, you can now find me on my facebook page. Simply search Psyched With Cindy. Thank you for visiting my blog, feel free to share your stories.

The Therapeutic Process of Forgiveness

All of us come across conflicts of some sort with people in our lives, both family and friends. Some people find it easy to forgive but for others, forgiveness is a mission. Forgiveness is a great step towards emancipating yourself from grudges you hold against other people. I believe that forgiveness is a process, and if you are one of those people who don’t find it easy to forgive you just have to master the process. The first thing you can do is understanding that you cannot change other people’s feelings; you can only change yours so even if someone hasn’t forgiven you, you need to forgive them, do it for your own well-being. Writing a letter or letters to the person who wronged you is helpful, you don’t have to send them, remember you are doing this for yourself, you can simply burn them. Trust me; it’s very therapeutic I’ve tried it more than once. I believe that letting go is just too simple, you have to make sense of it all. If you can learn from mistakes, I believe you can also learn from conflict. When someone close to me betrayed me recently, I changed my perspective about them, instead of feeling annoyed and irritated whenever I thought about them I thought about all the good things about them. But most importantly I said within my heart and soul: “I am setting you free because I’m setting myself free”. You must choose to be alive and happy no matter how hurt you’ve been. Whatever trauma you’ve been through, you just have to make sense out of it and then let go. Ever heard of learned behaviour? If you don’t make peace with your past, you are likely to replicate it.    

Some useful resources

I was listening to A word on psychology on Talk Radio 702 on thursday night and I just have to share. Are you feeling burnt-out? Do you sometimes feel that doors are being slammed right in front of you? There are some free resources to help you cope. Laughter releases some endorphins in your brain that help calm you down; companionship; your pet,looking after a pet is therapeutic; the outdoors, go out and appreciate the beauty of nature and see if you will not feel much better. Low resources can result in depression.

"I'm sorry it had to end that way, its not you its me"- when a friendship ends.

The majority of the population globally cannot afford a visit to a therapist. If you are one of those people, you may want to confide in a friend when you are feeling down or just need someone to talk to. but its a sad reality that when we go to university or college we meet new people, make new friends and maybe fall in love. when this happens we might lose touch with our friends from high school for various reasons. and then time comes when we complete our studies. Then again, we might decide to relocate which means that some of our friends from varsity might be left out of our current lives. It may be because they become less compatible with our new lives, or less convenient. it gets me thinking, how many people fall victim of losing friendships they valued, how do you deal with it? And just when you are down and need someone to talk to only to find that you've lost contact with almost all your best of friends because you've been caught up in your own life, what do you do? Well, you need to understand that not all relationships last forever, if a friendship ended you need to accept it, there's a reason why it ended. And if you need someone to talk to it doesn't have to be a friend,everyone has someone who cares about them. You may not recognize it but there's that one person ( mother, sister, brother, colleague, cousin, etc) who calls just to check up on you, takes you out for lunch, whatever it may be. Maybe that's the person you should confide in. Just don't keep your feelings bottled up, you'll lose it! whoever you talk to,make sure its someone you trust.

Some Inspiration

So this week was hectic for me. I was a bit down since i failed to get something I was looking forward to. But the secret is to keep going no matter how depressed you are. Anyone can give up,its the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone else would understand if you fell apart, that's true strength.

Getting mentally Fit

Wondering how to take charge of your mental health? A range of options is available to help you improve your mental fitness, including self-help books,support groups,relaxation therapy, meditation and talk therapy. I personally find self-help books, relaxation therapy and talk therapy very helpful but people are different. Find out what works for you and you could be transforming your mental fitness for the better. Also use this site to share what works for you,you could be helping someone