patience Archives - Amazing Health Advances

How to Make Healthy Choices When It Comes to Eating, Drinking, and Staying Positive During the Holidays

AHA Publisher — Fri, 17 Dec 2021 08:00:23 +0000

California State University, Dominguez Hills via Newswise – As the holiday season approaches and 2021 draws to a close, three psychology professors from California State University, Dominguez Hills share research-based ways to form healthy mental habits and support overall well-being during this busy time. Available for interviews. Positive Thinking and Gratitude – Giacomo Bono Associate Professor of Psychology Giacomo Bono studies how qualities of social relationships contribute to mental health, the benefits of gratitude, and the development of resilience. He is the author of Making Grateful Kids: The Science of Building Character Given the stress of this years, how can people take care of their mental health during the holiday season? Humans are wired to focus on the negative, but don’t just cherry-pick the bad stuff. Accepting a balanced view of your life will help your perspective. Have self-compassion and patience for yourself and others. Acknowledge your own improvements and focus on your sources of strength. Celebrate your cherished relationships, appreciate how much you’ve been through and grown, and appreciate if things could have been worse. You can be a blessing to others with simple gestures and phrases of kindness, and it will help you, too. What are some tips for mental health during the holidays? Like mindfulness, gratitude is a reliable way to support mental health and personal well-being. The trick is practicing it in a way that you enjoy, and remembering to do it. There are so many different strategies for practicing gratitude. There’s journaling, thank-you texts, or taking a moment to call someone you’ve been meaning to appreciate. High-five or hug them, and tell them why they matter to you. Remember, it’s in practicing that gratitude benefits your well-being. Alcohol Use – Kevin Montes Assistant Professor Kevin Montes researches addiction and alcohol use, including protective behavioral strategies that minimize the negative consequences of alcohol consumption. What can someone do to avoid drinking alcohol during the holidays? You can let friends know that you don’t want to drink. If going to a public place, don’t bring money or a credit card—this will limit your ability to purchase your own drinks. You can also try to always have a non-alcoholic drink in your hand. What should someone do if they feel pressure to drink? Friends and family may pressure you to drink because it normalizes their own drinking behavior. It also may be that you are perceived as being more fun when you are intoxicated. Regardless of why friends or family pressure you to drink, you are the only one who is in full control of how much (or how little) you drink. Here are some strategies for responding to others, including if someone asks why you’re not drinking: “No thanks” “I am taking it easy tonight” Food Choices – Kaylie Carbine Assistant Professor of Psychology Kaylie Carbine researches how our brain and cognition play a role in our eating habits and decisions. What are some strategies for making healthier eating choices? One of the best things to do is to normalize your favorite holiday treats by allowing yourself to have a few of them every now and then instead of restricting them to one specific gathering. With eating and dieting, restricting foods never goes very well. Your body will start having cravings, and then you tend to overeat those “forbidden foods or treats” when you get access to them. To avoid overeating, one strategy is to eat normally before attending a gathering. That way, you’re not restricting and then overcompensating. It’s the same idea as not going grocery shopping while you’re hungry. If you can be comfortably full before a holiday meal or party, it will help you listen to what your body needs. Eating slowly is also helpful, because it gives your brain time to recognize feelings of fullness. It also helps you to enjoy the whole process of eating, gathering, and socializing, because you can be more focused on what’s going on around you. Are there any ways to “train my brain” to make better eating choices? There’s been a lot of research around improving cognition—how we’re thinking and making decisions. The research I’ve done in my lab shows that exercise is extremely beneficial in improving your brain. It allows the organ to get the resources and nutrients it needs to perform at its highest level, so you can have improved cognition when making decisions about food. In a study we did, people had lower levels of attention to high calorie foods and unhealthy foods after they exercised. The exercise allowed them to better control that attention and have better cognition. The great thing is that you don’t have to go out and run a marathon. Even a 20-minute walk can benefit you. How can I overcome feelings of guilt and anxiety around food, and be kinder to myself? One of my favorite sayings from the Eating Disorder Center is “you can’t hate yourself into healing.” Feelings of guilt and being upset are not going to lead you into better choices or having a healthier diet. Overeating happens, especially around the holidays. Instead of focusing on the food choices you made, focus on the fun times that you had and the joy you got by sharing the food you made or ate. While there’s always room to improve, you don’t want those feelings to overshadow the positive emotions you had about gathering with friends and family. To read the original article click here.

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Study Pinpoints Specific Areas of the Brain Where Serotonin Promotes Patience

AHA Publisher — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 08:00:01 +0000

Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) Graduate University via News-Medical Net – We’ve all been there. Whether we’re stuck in traffic at the end of a long day, or eagerly anticipating the release of a new book, film or album, there are times when we need to be patient. Learning to suppress the impulse for instant gratification is often vital for future success, but how patience is regulated in the brain remains poorly understood. Now, in a study on mice conducted by the Neural Computation Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST), the authors, Dr. Katsuhiko Miyazaki and Dr. Kayoko Miyazaki, pinpoint specific areas of the brain that individually promote patience through the action of serotonin. Their findings were published 27thNovember in Science Advances. Serotonin is one of the most famous neuromodulators of behavior, helping to regulate mood, sleep-wake cycles and appetite. Our research shows that release of this chemical messenger also plays a crucial role in promoting patience, increasing the time that mice are willing to wait for a food reward.” Dr. Katsuhiko Miyazaki, Author Their most recent work draws heavily on previous research, where the unit used a powerful technique called optogenetics – using light to stimulate specific neurons in the brain – to establish a causal link between serotonin and patience. The scientists bred genetically engineered mice which had serotonin-releasing neurons that expressed a light-sensitive protein. This meant that the researchers could stimulate these neurons to release serotonin at precise times by shining light, using an optical fiber implanted in the brain. The researchers found that stimulating these neurons while the mice were waiting for food increased their waiting time, with the maximum effect seen when the probability of receiving a reward was high but when the timing of the reward was uncertain. “In other words, for the serotonin to promote patience, the mice had to be confident that a reward would come but uncertain about when it would arrive,” said Dr. Miyazaki. In the previous study, the scientists focused on an area of the brain called the dorsal raphe nucleus – the central hub of serotonin-releasing neurons. Neurons from the dorsal raphe nucleus reach out into other areas of the forebrain and in their most recent study, the scientists explored specifically which of these other brain areas contributed to regulating patience. The team focused on three brain areas that had been shown to increase impulsive behaviors when they were damaged – a deep brain structure called the nucleus accumbens, and two parts of the frontal lobe called the orbitofrontal cortex and the medial prefrontal cortex. “Impulse behaviors are intrinsically linked to patience – the more impulsive an individual is, the less patient – so these brain areas were prime candidates,” explained Dr. Miyazaki. Good things come to those who wait (or not…) In the study, the scientists implanted optical fibers into the dorsal raphe nucleus and also one of either the nucleus accumbens, the orbitofrontal cortex, or the medial prefrontal cortex. The researchers trained mice to perform a waiting task where the mice held with their nose inside a hole, called a “nose poke”, until a food pellet was delivered. The scientists rewarded the mice in 75% of trials. In some test conditions, the timing of the reward was fixed at six or ten seconds after the mice started the nose poke and in other test conditions, the timing of the reward varied. In the remaining 25% of trials, called the omission trials, the scientists did not provide a food reward to the mice. They measured how long the mice continued performing the nose poke during omission trials – in other words, how patient they were – when serotonin-releasing neurons were and were not stimulated. When the researchers stimulated serotonin-releasing neural fibers that reached into the nucleus accumbens, they found no increase in waiting time, suggesting that serotonin in this area of the brain has no role in regulating patience. But when the scientists stimulated serotonin release in the orbitofrontal cortex and the medial prefrontal cortex while the mice were holding the nose poke, they found the mice waited longer, with a few crucial differences. In the orbitofrontal cortex, release of serotonin promoted patience as effectively as serotonin activation in the dorsal raphe nucleus; both when reward timing was fixed and when reward timing was uncertain, with stronger effects in the latter. But in the medial prefrontal cortex, the scientists only saw an increase in patience when the timing of the reward was varied, with no effect observed when the timing was fixed. “The differences seen in how each area of the brain responded to serotonin suggests that each brain area contributes to the overall waiting behavior of the mice in separate ways,” said Dr. Miyazaki. Modeling patience To investigate this further, the scientists constructed a computational model to explain the waiting behavior of the mice. The model assumes that the mice have an internal model of the timing of reward delivery and keep estimating the probability that a reward will be delivered. They can therefore judge over time whether they are in a reward or non-reward trial and decide whether or not to keep waiting. The model also assumes that the orbitofrontal cortex and the medial prefrontal cortex use different internal models of reward timing, with the latter being more sensitive to variations in timing, to calculate reward probabilities individually. The researchers found that the model best fitted the experimental data of waiting time by increasing the expected reward probability from 75% to 94% under serotonin stimulation. Put more simply, serotonin increased the mice’s belief that they were in a reward trial, and so they waited longer. Importantly, the model showed that stimulation of the dorsal raphe nucleus increased the probability from 75% to 94% in both the orbital frontal cortex and the medial prefrontal cortex, whereas stimulation of the brain areas separately only increased the probability in that particular area. “This confirmed the idea that these two brain areas are calculating the probability of a reward independently from each other, and that these independent calculations are then combined to ultimately determine how long the mice will wait,” explained Dr. Miyazaki. “This sort of complementary system allows animals to behave more flexibly to changing environments.” Ultimately, increasing our knowledge of how different areas of the brain are more or less affected by serotonin could have vital implications in future development of drugs. For example, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are drugs that boost levels of serotonin in the brain and are used to treat depression. “This is an area we are keen to explore in the future, by using depression models of mice,” said Dr. Miyazaki. “We may find under certain genetic or environmental conditions that some of these identified brain areas have altered functions. By pinning down these regions, this could open avenues to provide more targeted treatments that act on specific areas of the brain, rather than the whole brain.” To read the original article click here.

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