Yoga boosts stress-busting hormone, reduces pain, study finds

The study is the first to look at the effects of yoga on cortisol levels in women with fibromyalgia. The condition, which predominantly affects women, is characterized by chronic pain and fatigue; common symptoms include muscle stiffness, sleep disturbances, gastrointestinal discomfort, anxiety and depression.

Previous research has found that women with fibromyalgia have lower-than-average cortisol levels, which contribute to pain, fatigue and stress sensitivity. According to the study, participants' saliva revealed elevated levels of total cortisol following a program of 75 minutes of hatha yoga twice weekly over the course of eight weeks.

via sciencedaily.com

"Yoga promotes this concept -- that we are not our bodies, our experiences, or our pain. This is extremely useful in the management of pain," she says. "Moreover, our findings strongly suggest that psychological changes in turn affect our experience of physical pain."

This alone should be a good enough reason to practise yoga twice weekly.

Looking to the Dietary Gods: Eating Well According to the Ancients

By eating well, we can be proud and transparent, rather than secretly uncomfortable. For starters, by eating more naturally (protein-dense, appropriate portions), we reduce our footprint—the amount we ask of the world to give us. By caring about the quality of what we ingest, we opt out of brutal factory farming and toxic industrial agriculture—keeping excessive blood off our hands. And by eating locally, we support small businesses and entrepreneurs instead of corporate behemoths who have few qualms about poisoning and fattening us (by doing the same to their “product”) if it means greater profits.

via fourhourworkweek.com

Makes perfect sense. The full article is definitely worth a read.

Anneli Rufus - Why Prescription Ecstasy or LSD Could Happen Much Sooner Than You Think

Research to the rescue. High-tech brain scans reveal that psilocybin inhibits blood flow in parts of the brain that regulate sensory input. Less blood flow means less regulation. Flooded with perceptions, a psilocybinized brain can help PTSD patients reprogram their fears, Doblin says. New tools also provide new insight into LSD's ego-dissolving "catharsis effect." And the ecstasy chemistry: MDMA reduces blood flow in the fear-processing amygdala while increasing blood flow in the prefrontal cortex, which facilitates our ability to put things into context.

"With MDMA, the fear circuitry is reduced," Doblin explains. This helps PTSD patients remember and re-examine long-buried aspects of their traumas. Aided by MDMA, "these memories don't immediately go straight to fear." Say you were traumatized by a bat-wielding, red-hatted assailant. Under MDMA, "the neural pathways connecting bats, red hats and fear are not so strong." Recontextualized in an MDMA-activated prefrontal cortex, triggers lose their power -- sometimes forever, he says.

"Under the influence of MDMA, people can make emotional changes that persist after the MDMA is out of their systems." On MDMA, "you operate on this much smoother level, and then you lose it -- but not all of it. You get so much material from that experience, which you can learn to integrate."

This doesn't mean you can recover by hitting a few raves. A key theme of the medical-psychedelics movement is that it's medical. These drugs are so strong and long-lasting that, for clinical use, Doblin says they must be administered in "a safe, supportive, controlled setting" overseen by professionals.

via integral-options.blogspot.com

This is really good news, I just hope it comes to fruition. Enough mind altering drugs are used anyway so why not use some clinically that may actually have some long lasting positive effects.

Mindfulness meditation training changes brain structure in eight weeks

Participating in an 8-week mindfulness meditation program appears to make measurable changes in brain regions associated with memory, sense of self, empathy and stress. In a study that will appear in the January 30 issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, a team led by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers report the results of their study, the first to document meditation-produced changes over time in the brain's grey matter.

"Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long claimed that meditation also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day," says Sara Lazar, PhD, of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program, the study's senior author. "This study demonstrates that changes in brain structure may underlie some of these reported improvements and that people are not just feeling better because they are spending time relaxing."

via sciencedaily.com

An excellent article with supporting research for those who need even more convincing that meditation is a worthwhile practice.