Mind-Body-Spirit News: People who deal effectively with stress may enjoy not only greater peace of mind and spirit but also better physical health. In the Normative Aging Study, older Caucasian men with more effective skills for coping with stress had higher levels of HDL (“good”) cholesterol than their more hostile or socially isolated peers. [Click... [Continue Reading]
Mind-Body-Spirit Focus in Cancer Care
January 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Mind-Body-Spirit News: A leading oncologist recommends a mind-body-spirit approach to coping with cancer. “Cancer, like other life-threatening diseases, strikes all levels, and it’s important for patients to learn how to heal physically, psychologically and emotionally,” Dr. Robert Rutledge, a radiation oncologist at the Nova Scotia Cancer Centre in British Columbia, told Medical News Today. [Click... [Continue Reading]
Music Therapy Improves Brain Function
January 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Mind-Body-Spirit News: Listening to music stimulates the brain and the body-mind connection and can reactivate speech centers of the brain, prompt memory and improve gait and coordination. Owing to the strength of the research evidence, clinical training is now being offered to teach specialists how to use music therapy, according to Robin L. Brey, MD,… [Continue Reading]
High Blood Pressure and Memory Loss
January 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Fitness professionals should let clients know that managing high blood pressure is good, not just for the heart, but also for the brain. Middle-aged and older adults with high blood pressure scored worse on a number of mental-performance tests than people of the same age with normal blood pressure. Researchers also found that those with… [Continue Reading]
Motor Imagery: Using the Mind to Heal the Body
January 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Athletes have long known the benefits of visualizing specific physical actions to improve sports performance. Now, scientists have been asking whether motor imagery training can be used to improve movement abilities and to stimulate brain development when active movement training is not an option—as is often the case after a stroke. [Click here for full... [Continue Reading]
Mind-Body Therapies and Gastrointestinal Disorders
January 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Studies suggest that a variety of mind-body therapies are helpful in reducing symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and chronic pancreatitis. The therapies include cognitive therapy, hypnotherapy, and a sequence of Iyengar yoga poses to manage pain and anxiety. Mechanisms for why these therapies are successful are unclear. Until more studies determine the causal factors,… [Continue Reading]
Sales Increase for Brain Fitness Games
January 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Mind-Body-Spirit News: As public interest in slowing cognitive decline grows, wellness professionals who work with older adults may want to incorporate mental games into physical training sessions. Some research evidence shows that training the brain improves mental fitness, but definitive data does not yet exist to confirm that playing “brain” games translates into better quality… [Continue Reading]
Technological Advances Aid Study of Mind-Body Connection
January 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Mind-Body-Spirit News: Ten reports presented in the International Journal of Psychophysiology (2008; doi:10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2008.09.002) highlight how technological improvements are enabling more detailed measurement of mind-body interactions. For example, researchers noted that a response such as sweating, which occurs on the outside of the body through the peripheral nervous system, is regulated by the brain, and that… [Continue Reading]
Positive Thinking for Cold Prevention
January 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Does looking at the world through rose-colored glasses improve your health? A growing body of evidence supports a correlation between outlook and the strength of the immune system. For example, studies suggest that people with a more positive attitude tend to have greater resistance to colds than those with a negative attitude. Studies also show… [Continue Reading]
Brain Fitness for Total Well-Being
January 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment
“Basically, whatever’s good for your heart is good for your head,” Lawrence Whalley, MD, told HealthDay News (2006; April 30). Whalley, author of The Aging Brain (Columbia University Press 2003), is a psychiatrist and professor of mental health with the School of Medicine at Scotland’s University of Aberdeen. “[The] factors that everyone knows predispose to… [Continue Reading]
