Category: Found on the Web

Why it’s so important to hope

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

And to love… –

ost people hope for something.

The big things: An end to the pandemic. Their candidate to w‌in the presidential election. A better future for their children. They hope for tangible things: a bigger paycheck, a safe home, good health. And the more amorphous ones: love, respect, to feel seen.

Recent polls show that while most Americans remain at least somewhat hopeful about the future, hope is being tested. Suffering and division are ever-present, and there doesn’t seem a clear path forward. But psychologists say hope is not a luxury. For mental health, it’s a necessity.

“Most people think about it … like the sprinkles on an ice cream, like it’s great if it’s there, but I think it’s actually fundamental to our basic wellbeing,” said Nancy Colier, a psychotherapist and interfaith minister.

Saturday is World Mental Health Day, and decades of research show hope is a robust predictor of mental health. Not only does it make life more enjoyable, experts say, but hope also provides resilience against things like post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation. Hope offers chemical benefits too, in the form of endorphins and lowered stress levels, things, experts say, make people more productive.

Contrary to how some people talk about hope, researchers don’t view it as a passive emotional state. While colloquially people may say things like, “sit back and hope for the best,” researchers who study hope say it’s an active coping approach.

“Hope is how we can think about our goals for the future, the extent that we can identify pathways or strategies to achieve those goals and then maintaining the motivation or the agency to kind of keep working towards those goals, even in the face of obstacles or setbacks,” said Matthew Gallagher, an associate professor of clinical psychology at the University of Houston.

Most people hope for something.

The big things: An end to the pandemic. Their candidate to w‌in the presidential election. A better future for their children. They hope for tangible things: a bigger paycheck, a safe home, good health. And the more amorphous ones: love, respect, to feel seen.

Recent polls show that while most Americans remain at least somewhat hopeful about the future, hope is being tested. Suffering and division are ever-present, and there doesn’t seem a clear path forward. But psychologists say hope is not a luxury. For mental health, it’s a necessity.

“Most people think about it … like the sprinkles on an ice cream, like it’s great if it’s there, but I think it’s actually fundamental to our basic wellbeing,” said Nancy Colier, a psychotherapist and interfaith minister.

Saturday is World Mental Health Day, and decades of research show hope is a robust predictor of mental health. Not only does it make life more enjoyable, experts say, but hope also provides resilience against things like post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation. Hope offers chemical benefits too, in the form of endorphins and lowered stress levels, things, experts say, make people more productive.

Two women hold hands and carry face masks on Sept. 10, 2020.
Contrary to how some people talk about hope, researchers don’t view it as a passive emotional state. While colloquially people may say things like, “sit back and hope for the best,” researchers who study hope say it’s an active coping approach.

“Hope is how we can think about our goals for the future, the extent that we can identify pathways or strategies to achieve those goals and then maintaining the motivation or the agency to kind of keep working towards those goals, even in the face of obstacles or setbacks,” said Matthew Gallagher, an associate professor of clinical psychology at the University of Houston.

Hope is ‘a resource’
In a paper Gallagher published in 2013, he and other researchers looked at whether people expected their lives five years in the future to be good or better than their current ones. The study included more than 100,000 people from over 100 countries and found that worldwide, people tend to have positive expectations for the future – they often believe it can be as good or equal to the present.

Read the complete article at the USAToday here.

12 tips for kicking sugar addiction

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

It’s never too late… –

August 9, 2020 –

1. Quit the sugar completely. Throw everything with it out of the house, as it’s harming everyone in the family. This is a bit like a bad relationship. Often the person in the bad relationship knows it’s unhealthy but can’t leave because they are relying on their feelings to make the decision. It doesn’t feel right to leave because they are used to the abuse. Quitting sugar is the same. It won’t feel good for about 10 days, so it’s a decision we make with our mind, not our feelings. After that 10 days it becomes much easier if we employ the following techniques.

2. Supplement with quality zinc and magnesium supplements. Both are important for brain health and the regulation of insulin and blood sugar.

3. Supplement with a liquid B-complex. The B vitamins are essential for energy production and when we are low energy we will crave sweets for the instant energy they bring.

4. Add chromium and vanadium before bed. They work in tandem, but chromium is required for sugar metabolism in the body.

5. Get enough sleep as we often crave sweets when our energy is low as a quick pick-me-up.

6. Keep healthier substitutes in the house and throw the tempting foods out. If you like crunchy things then keep a homemade granola or salty nuts or crunchy crudites with a great dip, or, if you like creamy things make a homemade truvia-sweetened pudding or ice cream or peanut butter treat, or, if you like savory foods make a jerky or keep good salami on hand. Learn new recipes with the healthy sugar substitutes, which I go over in this article. Other ideas are cheeses, sour pickles, olives, fruit, homemade yogurt, stevia-sweetened sodas, and kale chips. Bacon also works, too.

more@NewMarketToday

 

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How a vomit-inducing psychedelic drug went from spiritual practice to Westernized ‘wellness’ treatment

Angela Murray tried ayahuasca as a last-ditch effort.

The Florida woman struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder for years after her husband killed her daughter and himself in 2008. She was planning on taking her own life until she came across ayahuasca, a psychedelic plant-based drink with supposed healing properties, through a veterans support group.

An episode of Netflix’s new docuseries “(Un)Well” follows Murray through her second ayahuasca experience during a retreat at Soul Quest Ayahuasca Church in Orlando, Florida. The show also travels to Peru, where indigenous tribes have used the hallucinogenic brew in spiritual medicine practices for thousands of years.

The ancient medicine has made its way into Western culture in recent years. Retreats like Soul Quest are popping up across the United States and Europe, and scores of tourists flock to ayahuasca hotspots like Iquitos, Peru, seeking spiritual enlightenment or therapeutic benefits.

As ayahuasca use makes its way around the globe, inexperienced users — especially tourists — risk taking it out of context, cultural anthropologist Evgenia Fotiou told Insider.

“It’s a holistic healing system that addresses body, mind, and spirit, and usually ayahuasca is just a part within the larger system,” Fotiou said. “So it’s not a panacea. It’s not the one thing that will fix everything.”

Stories of lethal doses and sexual abuse have also shown a dark side of the ayahuasca tourism boom. The episode details the murder of an influential shaman in Peru and the public lynching of her suspected killer, which exposed cracks in the complicated dynamic between foreign ayahuasca seekers and the locals who provide it.

Ayahuasca contains the chemical DMT, which causes vivid hallucinations and an altered sense of self

Consuming the ayahuasca vine alone won’t do much, but when it’s boiled along with leaves from the chacruna plant, the resulting

The leaves contain a chemical called DMT, which is structurally similar to the happy-making neurotransmitter serotonin. Normally, your gut enzymes would break down DMT before you could feel its effects, but the ayahuasca vine prevents that from happening (and wreaks havoc on your digestive system in the process).

Most people report “purging,” or vomiting, shortly after consuming ayahuasca. After the nausea subsides, vivid hallucinations similar to lucid dreams kick in.

The brainwave patterns associated with ayahuasca hallucinations resemble those observed when people open their eyes, said Christopher Timmermann, a researcher at the Center for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London.

“Only in this case people are not engaging, they’re not opening their eyes,” Timmermann told Insider. “So the visual component of the experience engages people to a similar degree as waking reality.”

Additionally, ayahuasca has been found to decrease activity in the default mode network, a set of brain regions associated with sense of self, which may relate to the feelings of transformation of identity reported by ayahuasca users.

People claim ayahuasca helped them overcome trauma and untreatable illnesses, but scientific evidence is limited

In (Un)Well, Murray said she felt an overwhelming sense of love during her second ayahuasca ceremony. She reported hearing a voice saying “You’ve lost enough,” which led to a breakthrough in processing her trauma.

While some people try ayahuasca recreationally, many, like Murray, see it as a possibility to treat the untreatable. Other users featured on the show tried ayahuasca for PTSD, treatment-resistant depression, addiction, and chronic physical illnesses.

Scientific evidence on whether ayahuasca can help treat these illnesses is limited. One small placebo-controlled study concluded that ayahuasca, dosed within an appropriate setting, shows promise as a treatment for depression.

But approaching ayahuasca like a Westernized form of therapy may be at odds with the roots of the practice, Fotiou said.

“I think that the hardest thing to translate for Westerners is the spiritual aspect,” Fotiou told Insider. “What I see most with Westerners engaging with this is a psychological approach, so they think that this is a therapeutic modality.”

In Fotiou’s research and experience with ayahuasca, she’s found that ayahuasca’s benefits can’t be boiled down to the substance itself. She urged users to take into account the rituals surrounding the brew, as well as the greater system of plant-based medicine it exists in, for a more holistic view of healing.

Originally Appeared on Insider.com