Duh
This study of studies shows why Americans used to call cannabis “dope.” Besides lowering IQ, cannabis is also being proven to cause anxiety, depression, sleeplessness, eating disorders and psychosis in users. Thank goodness, it’s becoming legal so science can do research. Now we can have a real conversation about this misery-making drug.—MR
Evidence on the acute and residual neurocognitive effects of cannabis use in adolescents and adults
By Laura Dellazizzo, Stephane Potvin, et al, Online Library, January 19, 2022
Cannabis is among the most consumed psychoactive substances world-wide. Considering changing policy trends regarding the substance, it is crucial to understand more clearly its potential acute and residual adverse effects from a public health viewpoint. Cognitive function is one of the targeted areas with conflicting findings. This meta-review measured the magnitude of acute and residual effects of cannabis on cognition in adolescents and adults provided by meta-analyses and evaluated quality of evidence.
Never too early to stop
The easiest way to quit drinking is to never start. But that’s not easy with an economic structure that encourages drinking as normal. Corporate propaganda or not, that may be changing. Almost a quarter of people under 25 don’t drink at all and won’t have to suffer the depression and anxiety it causes or the social, financial and relational dysfunction it can induce in their lives. They take a look at what drinking did to their parents and grandparents and just say “no.”—MR
UK pupils taught about alcohol with ‘misleading’ industry-funded resources
By Denis Campbell, Guardian US, January 20, 2022
Researchers say teaching materials play down harms and shift responsibility onto young people.
Wondering?
If you are hooked on antidepressants, you may be able to get off if you stop drinking. Alcohol is a chemical depressant. Does it make sense to use a depressant to wash down an antidepressant? You won’t know unless you try. Science shows it takes up to two years to recover from alcohol-induced brain damage, so it takes a commitment to find out. If you find you can’t quit, you may wish to talk to a counselor.–MR
Seattle is courting a growing sober-curious crowd with nonalcoholic wines and booze
Jessica Selander is used to changing people’s minds about nonalcoholic wine. It took years of careful research and development to launch her nonalcoholic wine company…
A new world
One day in December 2019, we awoke in a world which had not previously existed—one with a rapidly-evolving virus set on reducing human populations. COVID19 does this in many ways and suicide is one way it succeeds in its dire purpose. From having lived through this disease, I know first hand the neurological and psycho-emotional harm it can wreak. If you or anyone you care for is having difficulty after “recovering,” get to a counselor to pinpoint the issue, expose the culprit and actually recover. Having mental health support while truly recovering over the long haul may be critical.–MR
My wife had long Covid and killed herself. We must help others who are suffering
by Nick Güthe, The Guardian US, January 12, 2022
My wife, Heidi, took her own life after a 13-month battle with long Covid that started as a mostly asymptomatic coronavirus infection. Long Covid took her from one of the healthiest, most vibrant people I’ve ever known to a person so debilitated that she could not bear another day on this planet.
Expect happiness
Here’s a review of a new science book that documents the rather wonderful or frightening fact that expectations often create our reality. Chock full of cases where optimists get what they expect and pessimists do too. Expect things to turn out well and it’s more likely that they will. It’s a fact.—MR
The Expectation Effect by David Robson review – mind-changing science
by Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian US, January 6, 2022
From exercise to old age, the latest research shows that what we believe can have some very concrete consequences.
Less is more
It is impossible to have a good relationship with someone, especially yourself, if you can’t pay loving involved attention to the living reality in front of your face. Having a happy successful life in all areas is inversely related to the amount of splintered time a mind spends online without its body. It can only do what it is trained to do.—MR
Your attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen
Social media and many other facets of modern life are destroying our ability to concentrate. We need to reclaim our minds while we still can.
by Johann Hari, The Guardian US, January 2, 2022
Walk your blues away
As a licensed mental health counselor, I am not authorized by law to prescribe pharmaceuticals. That’s fine. After a few months of treatment at Bodymind Counseling if I find a patient still needs a prescription, I suggest she go to her doctor. However, I rarely meet someone who does. After she has used my prescriptions to reduce or eliminate substances that cause depression and anxiety and introduced healthy behaviors such as walking to her life, psychopharms simply become unnecessary. That’s not to say a patient doesn’t have real problems that we talk through to find solutions, but when she feels better physically, she can deal with issues better emotionally. There’s just no separating body from mind.—MR
Write Your Patients a Prescription for ‘A Walk in the Park’
By Stephanie Stephens, EHealthCareers, December 13, 2021
You probably didn’t hear this in medical school, but the next time you write a prescription, maybe you can make it for “nature.” Pediatrician Robert Zarr, MD, MPH, founded Park Rx America and is its medical director.
Another way out
Suicidal ideation, i.e. thinking about ending one’s life, does not necessarily mean you want to kill yourself. Planning a “way out” of a dilemma is perfectly normal human behavior. When we have a serious life problem, the brilliant (sic) human prefrontal cortex comes up with scenarios for escape. It’s what it does. If a person can’t think of any way out, she becomes very agitated and experiences extreme physical and emotional discomfort, because to her logical brain’s way of thinking, she simply MUST have a thought plan. So voila! “I know, I’ll kill myself!” Don’t believe your brain. It’s a silly thought machine that wants to feel the comfort of a plan, any plan, no matter how irrational. Tell it you don’t always need a plan, except one: find caring counselor and have a comforting chat. Maybe she has another way out? Take a deep breath, sit down in the darkness and wait for the sun to rise.—MR
When all looks bleak, hope-building strategies offer a lifeline
Every one of us experiences painful thoughts and emotions in response to hardships over the course of our lives. A sense of hope that the pain will subside as circumstances improve helps to keep us afloat. But many people experience pain at such intense levels that it becomes what the clinical psychologist Edwin Shneidman referred to as psychache: ‘the hurt, anguish, soreness, aching, psychological pain in the psyche, the mind’. Shneidman proposed that suicide is driven by a desire to escape psychache when it feels unbearable. The sense of hope is often missing.
Buyer beware!
There is an epidemic killing Americans that makes all others pale in comparison. Pain killers, legal and illegal, are killing more than pain. Just because a pill looks like one thing, doesn’t mean it is. Personally, I stick with ibuprofen.—MR
‘It’s devastating’: how fentanyl is unfolding as one of America’s greatest tragedies
By Melody Schrieber, The Guardian US, November 22, 2021
More than 100,000 people died from overdoses in a single year – driven primarily by one drug. It was August 2020, and Luca Manuel, 13, was starting eighth grade the following day in Redding, California. He was excited to see his friends; his mother had bought him a stash of masks and school supplies for his first in-person school day in six months.
Systems thinking
The below article illustrates a fact of biological life that many practitioners and patients overlook. A human bodymind is a complex system. To discover why a patient is depressed, for example, exploring various triggers in the body, brain and psyche may reveal a single source or find multiple inputs resulting in disorder that can be reversed through changes in lifestyle, behavior or beliefs. Be Hansel and Gretl and follow the crumbs of observation to self knowledge resulting in a happier life. Finding a practitioner who can guide you on your path, one who doesn’t shut you into believing there only one wicked witch causing your ill health, is key to getting out of the dark forest of your predicament.—MR
Some Good News for Curious Afib Patients Looking to Find Their Own Triggers
Atrial fibrillation (Afib) patients testing their perceived triggers in n-of-1 experiments were unable to improve their quality of life, but did have fewer episodes in the I-STOP-AFib trial.
She’s fooling you
Bud, dab, oil, flower, the mean green witch, whatever you want to call this drug, cannabis is proving to have more bad effects for most people than good ones for a very few. Yes, it can help in falling asleep, but only folks addicted to the abnormally high endorphin levels it induces. When in cannabis withdrawal, a person can’t sleep, so of course, the addictive agent helps. Yes, it decreases pain, particularly the part of pain it enhances. Potheads are addicted to the abnormally high endogenous opioid levels in their brains, so normal endorphin levels no longer work. Yes, someone may feel less anxious, but only because it wrapped them in mummy cloth inhibiting connection with others and soothed the agitation of withdrawal symptoms. Cannabis psychosis is the fastest growing mental health disorder in America. Thank goodness, it’s becoming legal, so we can study its various ill effects instead of blindly accepting hippy folk mythology perpetuated by business interests.—MR
Michigan EDs See Jump in Cannabis-Related Neuropsychiatric Toxicity
by Ryan Basen, MedPage Today, October 30, 2021
Neuropsychiatric toxicity (NPS) was common among patients presenting with cannabis toxicity to Michigan emergency departments (EDs), and they were more likely to also have used other substances, a researcher reported.
Start with the body to heal the mind
The article below points to the reason at Bodymind Counseling patients and I talk about physical reasons they may be having psycho-emotional problems. Your emotional issues are not just in your mind, they’re in your “bodymind.” What you eat, what substances you may use, your hormonal cycles, what diseases and medications you may have, how much water you drink, how much exercise you get, the quality of your breathing and your sleep, your stress levels, what media you use, all these things and more effect how well you are able to emotionally regulate reactions to past events, everyday insults and relationships at home and at work. People who drink a glass or two of alcohol or an energy drink daily are simply going to have more difficult times managing their internal life. As a patient progresses to a healthier, more stable, physical system, we are able work with those pesky mental issues much more effectively.—MR
Could Menstrual Cycle Be Used to Tailor PTSD Treatments?
by Kara Grant, MedPage Today, October 28, 2021
Not fun and games
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of psychological theories. In my experience, CBT works. Psychodynamic works, too. Depending on your needs in the moment, a psychotherapist who has a dozen theories in her tool kit works for you, but it is a two-way street. You have to be willing to share, willing to listen and show up consistently for as long as it takes. No therapist has a magic wand in her top desk drawer. I wish we did…—MR
Psychodynamic therapy helped me overcome trauma when CBT couldn’t
by Lucia Osborne-Crowley, Psyche newsletter, October 27, 2021
The first time I saw my therapist, she was standing in front of a room full of people, talking about William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies (1954). It was part of a series of book events on the theme of psychoanalysis and literature, and my therapist was dissecting the emotional and psychodynamic contours of the book, in particular the ending.
The art of therapeutic conversation
Conversation, confession and storytelling are the means through which psychotherapy heals the mind. By bringing into the room the story of ones exquisitely human life and the characters who people it to be witnessed and reframed by a therapeutic friend, ones story, in ones own voice, will be seen as a narrative of bravery, endurance, love and challenges overcome. Fundamentally, we are storytelling creatures. In revisiting and seeing ones life through the eyes of a skillful healer, with her unconditional positive regard, a seemingly mystical transformation can occur within the country of the human heart. The below is a example of simple conversation at its most beautiful.—MR
Springsteen and Obama on friendship and fathers: ‘You have to turn your ghosts into ancestors’
By Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama, The US Guardian, October 23, 2021
President Barack Obama: Good conversations don’t follow a script. Like a good song, they’re full of surprises, improvisations, detours. They may be grounded in a specific time and place, reflecting your state of mind and the current state of the world. But the best conversations also have a timeless quality, taking you back into the realm of memory, propelling you forward toward your hopes and dreams. Sharing stories reminds you that you’re not alone – and maybe helps you understand yourself a little bit better.
A dose of amazement therapy
Taking even one moment to glimpse or revel in one’s place in the universe can lift us from our doldrums. Whether it’s a slow walk in nature, a look through a giant telescope, paging through a photo book on hummingbirds or watching the Discovery Channel, getting out of oneself can be immensely therapeutic.—MR
A vast, thrilling world of nature unfolds outside of human time
by Nicholas P. Money, Psyche newsletter, October 20, 2021
In the seconds that it takes to leave home in the morning, my garden in Ohio is exploding with invisible movements: a fusillade of spores bursts into the air from microscopic fungi that have sprouted on rabbit pellets since sunrise; leafhoppers jump from the car roof using gear wheels that engage faster than the pistons in the car; and tiny relatives of jellyfish called pond hydras fire barbs into their prey using pressurized harpoons. Does any of this matter to us? On one hand, we do not need to know that this Lilliputian circus is in full swing to drive to the office; on the other, life on this pale blue dot would cease without the workings of biology fast and biology small.
You are how you eat
Finally! The premier newsletter of allopathic docs is saying that it’s not how much they eat that makes people fat, it’s what they eat and it isn’t fat that’s the problem. It’s carbs. They make a person fat. Over 70% of adult Americans are overweight and therefore more susceptible to becoming gravely ill with CV19. Reduce carbs, reduce the likelihood of early death. Example: potatoes, jam and toast out. Eggs and bacon in.—MR
Let’s Focus More on What We Eat, Not How Much: The carbohydrate-insulin model of obesity offers a new way to conceptualize energy balance
The First Law of Thermodynamics, formulated in the 1800s, says that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. For the human body, this principle of physics means that if you consume more calories than you burn (or excrete), the excess is stored in the body (mainly as fat).
Practice makes better
When I first opened my psychotherapy practice in 2005 during my masters program, I was simply better at doing psychotherapy than others in my class who opened theirs at the same time. This was due to the many long years I had practiced the art of sohbet, as 12th century Persian poet Rumi called it. Sohbet translates as the art of mystical conversation—the type of in-depth face-to-face relating that heals the soul. Further, during the week between sessions, I practiced new behaviors I was learning from my various counselors on the ground of my personal life. While everything may not be perfect today, life is a great deal better, more happy and healthy than it was 30 years ago. Even the act of living takes work and conscious practice to be successful. It also takes a teacher…-–MR
Does practice make perfect?
by Steven Poole, The Guardian US, October 4, 2021
At the end of every edition of his children’s TV show Record Breakers, Roy Castle used to sing: “If you want to be the best, if you want to beat the rest, dedication’s what you need.” But is it all you need? Tennis star Emma Raducanu seemingly came from nowhere at 18 to triumph at this year’s US Open, prompting much speculation as to what in her early life could have seeded such prodigious success. Or perhaps it could all be summed up in the old joke: “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” “Practice!”
Think bodymind
While the study below is highly technical and ostensibly about THE virus, my takeaway is that certain supplements help reduce senescence (decay of cells) and can help protect the bodymind from inflammation. In this case, quercitin, which I have consumed daily for thirty years and is available at most grocery stores. At Bodymind Counseling, we start our therapy together by uncovering the things a patient is doing that may be having physically negative effects on the brain such as drinking or smoking and discuss how those effects are experienced in the mind. Nutritional supplementation is encouraged to support growth of healthy cells to replace damaged ones. It’s just plain hard to have a happy mind in an unhealthy or chemically-depleted body.—MR
Virus-induced senescence is driver and therapeutic target in COVID-19
by Soyoung Lee, Yong Yu and Clemens Schmitt, Nature, September 9, 2021
Derailed cytokine and immune cell networks account for organ damage and clinical severity of COVID 191-4. Here we show that SARS-CoV-2, like other viruses, evokes cellular senescence as a primary stress response in infected cells.
Are we having fun yet?
Here’s an excellent exercise in self regulation! Our minds’ are not a pack of wild monkeys leaping from tree to tree uncontrollable. Teaching your mind to sit, stay and be calm is a lot like training a puppy. With practice and kindness, the result is an animal who is s lot more happy, relationally appropriate and safe in this difficult world. Are you still peeing in the living room?—MR
Being alone with your thoughts is a skill you can practice
by Rémy Furrer, Psyche newsletter, September 29, 2021
Imagine you’re sitting in a bus, waiting in line or simply sitting on your sofa at home, and you find yourself with a few minutes of idle time on your hands – how might you occupy yourself? As most do nowadays, you’re likely to start scrolling through your phone; but what if, instead, you chose to retreat into your own mind and entertain yourself with pleasurable thoughts? How hard could it be?
Step back, Jack
Well, maybe your name is not Jack, but addressing yourself by name as if you were talking to another person is an effective way to gain some distance from an upsetting situation. Ask yourself, “Why are you so upset, [insert your name here]?” Asking another person (who happens to be yourself) this question allows an adult, more logical part of your brain to get in the driver’s seat, so you calm down and think yourself out of a difficult spot.—MR
Lost perspective? Try this linguistic trick to reset your view
By Professor Ariana Orvellis, Psyche newsletter, September 15, 2021
In the 2nd century CE, in the sunset of his life, the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius began recording meditations on how he had lived. The questions he asked himself are the same ones many of us find ourselves asking today: how does a person live a meaningful life? How does one find resilience in the face of suffering? What does it mean to be happy?
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