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Sunday, December 31, 2017
5 financial resolutions to help you save more and spend wisely in 2018
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New Year Insight
Below are 6 Tarot Cards. The backs are all the same, but by using your intuition choose one of the cards that calls most to you. This is what you’ll want to work on for 2018. Take a deep breath in and out. Don’t second guess yourself – just choose.
Which card calls out to you? You might hear a number, or one looks different to you. You might just have a knowing. However your intuition nudges you, know that the message is for you.
These are your cards.
If you chose #1 – N I N E o f C U P S – Pleasure of the senses, satisfaction and wish fulfillment, success, assured future, bounty, and health.
You will be going through a period of great happiness and contentment this year. You are in an emotionally strong place and it will show in your energy and your smile. Life is really looking good at present and everything is working out as hoped for. It is a time for being aware and appreciating all your blessings and the magic of life. The Nine of Cups can symbolically represent being rewarded after a period of hard work and effort. Whatever you have been working on has come to successful fruition and you can sit back now and take all the praise and applause you have rightfully earned. People now see you in a different light and many will be envious of not only your abilities and skills, but also because of the wonderful inner-light that glows in and around you. It positively oozes from your pores. Your happiness and warmth are infectious too and many will seek you out for the positive effect you have on them. Others will see you as inspirational; someone who has relentlessly pursued their dream regardless of set backs or the opinion of others. You must realize that you have achieved something that many, many others crave in their lives but do not have the courage or determination to go after. This is now your time to shine and you have every right to feel rather pleased with yourself.
There is a mom/grandma energy on the other side that is guiding you this new year. She knows you sacrificed yourself for far too long and wants you to know that it is now your time.
If you chose #2 – T H R E E o f W A N D S – Exploration, seeking out the uncharted, expanding horizons, taking a long view, leadership an travel.
There is a building momentum as things begin to happen at a fast and furious pace. You can’t help but be carried away on this frenzied wave of positive activity
This card brings success and good fortune when it turns up in a reading. You are bound to feel brimming over with self-confidence and self-belief. You feel assured of what you are doing. You may feel excited and full of enthusiasm for a project or venture you are working on as your creative juices flow unhindered. Life may have been a bit stagnant but you are about to feel energized and excited for the new year.
This year you may have several decisions to make, but they will feel like a relief. Instead of wondering and worrying about things, plans will be made and action taken with excitement. You feel positive about the future and enthusiastic about your new home and life. If you have been trying to break away from a troublesome situation or a painful past then this card indicates that you will indeed liberate yourself and move forward. It highlights a time when you are ready to move on with your life and turn your back on the past.
There is a male – father/grandfather – energy that is helping you into the new year. He would have been a practical/pragmatic male who saw life in a very black/white, engineering type of way. He is helping you stay in the now so that you don’t get caught up in the woul-ofs/should-ofs that life sometimes dishes out.
If you chose #3 – C H A R I O T – Achieving victory, focusing intent and will, establishing an identity, self-confidence, maintaining discipline, assuming the reins of power and authority.
Your journey may have changed in the last couple years with losses and upheavals, and you’ve lost your balance, if not even your confidence. 2018 brings you the opportunity to set your GPS and stop allowing yourself to be sidetracked away from your dreams and aspirations. Progression only happens if you make yourself move, taking the steps, even if just baby ones. Be careful of the self-doubt.
Opportunities are constant for you this year, in all areas of your life. Are you open to them? Business opportunities with financial gain will be offered, but it might be wise to seek out a financial consultant to help you invest rather than splurge. There is a creative endeavor as well that you are to explore. And travel is important, so make sure to get the car tuned up and ready.
The Chariot gives you the green light to charge ahead and take control over your life. Your success depends on your will and ability to be in control, and to be brave enough to move forward even in unknown territory. You steer your life in the direction you desire, but it requires will power and motivation to create our own destiny.
There’s also a male on the other side (who may have smoked) who is watching over you.
If you chose #4 – SIX OF SWORDS – Passage away from difficulties, recovery after tribulations, experiencing change, despondency.
You are making an attempt to distance yourself from a situation of stress and turmoil in order to heal and find balance. It is a positive indication that you are slowly moving from turbulent seas into calmer waters and healing your emotional past. It is a time for leaving a troubled past behind to move positively into the future. You can now see light at the end of the tunnel. The Six of Swords asks you to trust that life will support you and bring new rewarding experiences. You must find belief in yourself and a new sense of purpose. The Six of Swords marks a transition period in your life as you move from one state of mind to another.
You may be ending the year with little energy to complete any tasks and possibly feel deflated and defeated by life. You may find it hard to function on a day to day basis and feel that you are just going through the motions of living. You have gone through a very tough time, but don’t run away. Remember that even though some of the conflict and stress in your life may be caused by others, there is a very good chance that you are one of your own worst enemies. There is also an amazing trip that will likely be planned for 2018.
You are being watched by a younger spirit on the Other Side, wishing you more playfulness and joy.
If you chose #5 – S E V E N o f P E N T A C L E S – Reaping reward for effort and work, a calm moment of consideration of alternatives and different approaches.
The Seven of Pentacles is all about patience a, waiting, and sometimes walking away from something that isn’t working instead of forcing it to work. It’s about being suspended and wondering why something that you’ve tended to for so long is not ready to harvest yet.
Although sometimes this card is seen as a warning of disappointment and a long wait, I see this more as a time of meditation and contemplation time so that the decisions aren’t made out of fear. Sometimes we need to step back and look at things from a different perspective in order to see clearly, and this is what 2018 will offer you.
This is a time of healing and growing stronger. The Seven of Pentacles may therefore represent fear of failure, delays and frustration. However, the positive side to it is that you are more likely to be learning from these setbacks and evaluating how you can better invest your time to create the most value. In order to avoid feelings of frustration, ensure that you review your progress to date at regular intervals, particularly when engaged in long-term or enduring work, so that you can review what is working well and what is not and where you can make adjustments. Make sure that you are on course and that you are on track to achieve your goals.
There is a spirit who likely had been ill for a long time – fighting hard and when he/she finally let go, passed peacefully.
If you chose #6 – N I N E o f P E N T A C L E S – Material well-being and refinement, discipline in order to attain such, relying on oneself.
You are a super hard worker, but you are ready for a bit of a break. You are allowed to treat yourself to a day off, a massage, or whatever tickles your fancy. Life hasn’t exactly been easy, but that hasn’t scared you, In fact it’s made you pretty darn strong! You just need to remember that you can’t be a superhero all the time. And even superheroes take a day off to rest and relax. Yes, that project may be looming, and you aren’t being lazy by taking a breather.
Nine of Pentacles also means that there will be a prosperity increase coming within the next few months. The resources for this are all around you, just stay aware. Remember that you reap rewards of prosperity easily and effortlessly, if you so choose. Discipline and self control may be needed, along with asking for help. It could be a consolidation loan, life coaching, or just talking to a friend.
Burn out is real, and you tend to be a worrier. This stops the natural flow of prosperity (love, money, health, etc) to come to you. It might benefit you to do hypnotherapy, meditation, or creating a vision that you can continue to look at, reminding you of your self-worth.
There is a spirit on the other side who may have lived through the Depression, had some mental illness, or a difficult passing. It is he/she who guides you, reminding you to take your birthright and stop seeing yourself as being punished and only offered suffering. There’s joy there for you to drink in.
___
Wishing you a magical 2018!
Kristy Robinett is a professional psychic medium. In addition to giving readings and teaching workshops, she uses her psychic skills to assist with police investigations. Kristy lectures across the country and has appeared on Fox News, ABC News, and Coast to Coast. She is also the author of It’s a Wonderful Afterlife, Forevermore, Messenger Between Worlds: True Stories from a Psychic Medium, Higher Intuitions Oracle, Ghosts of Southeast Michigan and Michigan’s Haunted Legends and Lore. Visit her online at KristyRobinett.com.
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Least Popular Posts of 2017
2017 was a really bad year. The U.S. is more divided than ever, the truth is meaningless, well-researched journalism is called FAKE NEWS, the President lies once every minute or so, white supremacist rallies have been normalized, some tech companies1 continue to invade our privacy/extract personal data, exploit the middle and lower classes,2 and displace long-time residents from urban areas. And who knows what health care and Alaska will look like in 2018.
Yes, this is classic Neurocritic pessimism.3
While everyone else rings in the New Year by commemorating the best and brightest of 2017 in formulaic Top Whatever lists, The Neurocritic has decided to wallow in shame. To mark this Celebration of Failure I have compiled a Bottom Five list,4 the year's least popular posts as measured by Google Analytics. The last time I compiled a “Worst of” list was in 2012.
Methods: The number of pageviews per post was copied and pasted into an Excel file, sorted by date. Then the total pageviews for each post was prorated by the vintage of the post, to give an estimate of daily views.5
Results: The posts are listed in inverse order, starting with #5 and ending with #1 (least popular).
5 Most Unpopular Posts of 2017
5. Terrorism and the Implicit Association Test – I actually worked pretty hard on this one. It's about the stereotyping of Muslims, the importance of language (e.g., Theresa May: “the single, evil ideology of Islamist extremism that preaches hatred, sows division, and promotes sectarianism”), a demonstration that semantics derived automatically from language corpora contain human-like biases, the Arab-Muslim IAT (which found little to no bias against Muslims), and some general problems with the IAT.
4. Smell as a Weapon, and Odor as Entertainment – This was from my two-part olfactory series, which covered the interesting history of Olfactory Warfare (e.g, stink bombs, stealth camouflage) and the use of smell in cinematic and VR contexts. {or at least, it was interesting to me}.
3. The Big Bad Brain – This featured a fun and catchy music video (High) by Sir Sly, which was an earworm for me. But too esoteric and not much staying power.
2. What's Popular at #CNS2017? – This falls under the perennially unpopular category of “yearly conference announcements”, which is only relevant around the time of the meeting.
1. Olfactory Deterrence – This was about the prospect of nuclear war and how putrid smells might deter the use of nuclear weapons, along with eradicating cavalier attitudes about them.
Discussion: We can easily see some themes emerging: the IAT, olfaction, music videos, and the Cognitive Neuroscience Society meeting.
Conclusion: People are sick of the IAT, aren't thrilled about the sense of smell (especially in relation to nuclear war), and do not like music videos or CNS Meeting announcements. However, they do like meeting recaps, as shown by the popularity of What are the Big Ideas in Cognitive Neuroscience? and The Big Ideas in Cognitive Neuroscience, Explained.
Footnotes
1 Uber deserves special mention.
2 This one is from 2016, but it's a real eye-opener: The Not-So-Wholesome Reality Behind The Making of Your Meal Kit.
3 This has been the worst-ever year from me personally as well, so I see no reason to be optimistic.
4 Actually, #5 is Survival and Grief. I cannot bear to feature this one, so the closely ranked #6 is a stand-in.
5 The post with the absolute lowest number of views (Brief Guide to the CTE Brains in the News. Part 2: Fred McNeill) was written on 12/11/2017. For a true reading of yearly “staying power” we'd need to follow all posts for 365 days.
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Universities Face #metoo Movement Over Sexual Harassment
WASHINGTON (AP) — When Celeste Kidd was a graduate student of neuroscience at the University of Rochester she says a professor supervising her made her life unbearable by stalking her, making demeaning comments about her weight and talking about sex.
Ten years on and now a professor of neuroscience at the university, Kidd is taking legal action. She has filed a federal lawsuit against the school alleging that it mishandled its sexual harassment investigation into the professor's actions and then retaliated against her and her colleagues for reporting the misconduct.
"We are trying to bring transparency to a system that is corrupt," Kidd told The Associated Press.
Academia — like Hollywood, the media and Congress — is facing its own #MeToo movement over allegations of sexual misconduct. Brett Sokolow, who heads an association of sexual harassment investigators on campuses, estimates that the number of reported complaints has risen by about 10 percent since the accusations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein surfaced in early October, spurring more women to speak out against harassment in various fields. The increase is mostly from women complaining of harassment by faculty members who are their superiors.
But the Trump administration has viewed the issue of sexual harassment on campus in a different light. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has scrapped Obama-era regulations on investigating sexual assault, arguing that they were skewed in favor of the accuser. New instructions allow universities to require higher standards of evidence when handling such complaints.
A forthcoming study of nearly 300 such cases in the Utah Law Review found that one in 10 female graduate students at major research universities reports being sexually harassed by a faculty member. And in more than half of those cases, the alleged perpetrator is a repeat offender, according to the study.
"Often schools might turn a blind eye toward sexual harassment that they know about or have heard about because a professor is bringing in a big grant or is adding to the stature of the university," said Neena Chaudhry, senior counsel at the National Women's Law Center.
The Education Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Activists say young women pursuing graduate studies are especially vulnerable to sexual misconduct because they depend heavily on their academic adviser to complete their degrees, pursue research in their field of study and get recommendations for future jobs. Reporting misconduct could endanger an academic career. And besides damaging the women's mental health and well-being, sexual harassment can chase some of them out of academia altogether.
"Often professors who are advising graduate students are the students' gateway to their degree attainment and their career prospects," said Anne Hedgepeth with the American Association of University Women. "That's an immense amount of power that professors hold. It's also an immense amount of risk that students take when coming forward when future prospects are on the line."
That sums up what happened to Kidd, according to the lawsuit.
Kidd says Florian Jaeger, a distinguished linguistics professor at the New York university's cognitive sciences department who was one of her academic advisers in 2007, pressured her to rent a room in his apartment for a year. She says he then constantly intruded in her private life, demoralized her and talked to her about oral sex and other sexually explicit topics.
"I begged him to stop and to just advise me professionally and he said that was impossible, that wasn't his mentorship style," Kidd said in a phone interview. "There were many moments where I went to sleep in the lab and I wondered what I had done to deserve the hell I was living in every day."
When Kidd protested, Jaeger made it understood that he could derail her career.
"He had a lot of control over my work life, he had the ears of everybody in the field," she recalled. "He reminded me constantly that they know him, that he was a big shot and that I was no one."
In the end, Kidd moved out of Jaeger's apartment and abandoned language research so that she wouldn't have to be supervised by Jaeger. She now studies attention and general learning.
Last year, two professors at the department, in whom Kidd eventually confided, filed a sexual harassment complaint. The university investigated but found the allegations unsubstantiated. The professors say the university then began a retaliation campaign against them. In August, Kidd together with group of faculty members filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency in charge of workplace discrimination issues. In December, Kidd and her colleagues filed a federal lawsuit.
The university responded by placing Jaeger, now a tenured professor, on administrative leave and commissioning an independent investigation. Results are expected in early January.
University President Joel Seligman said in a statement that the school is committed to creating a safe and respectful environment, but vowed to "vigorously defend" himself and the university provost against some personal claims made against them in the suit.
Jaeger did not respond to an email seeking comment. But shortly after the case was made public this fall, he emailed his students to say that while some of the online comments about him were painful to read, "I am glad that there is now generally so much support for people who speak up against discrimination." Jaeger added that he has always tried to make his lab "an exciting, sa(f)e and supportive place to pursue science" and that he has received letters of support from former students.
As universities face pressure to rethink their sexual misconduct policies, activists suggest various possible remedies: spelling out what interaction is appropriate between faculty and students; more transparency in reporting and investigating complaints; more women in senior leadership positions in academia; and making a student's career less dependent on just one professor.
"There is really no excuse for not addressing this," Chaudhry at the National Women's Law Center said.
Related Video:
Watch news, TV and more on Yahoo View.
___
Follow Maria Danilova on Twitter at https://twitter.com/m_education_ap
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When Rehabs Look at Patients as Dollar Signs
“The whole system is designed to keep people in it, I think.”
“Statistically, you’re wasting your money sending your kid to rehab,” Scott Steindorff tells me without a second of hesitation. “I have three grown kids and I’ve come to the conclusion that if one of them had a [substance abuse] problem, I wouldn’t know where to send them.”
Steindorff, the Hollywood producer whose eclectic credits include the movie Chef and the TV series Las Vegas, has turned his sights on overhauling the $35 billion-a-year rehab industry that’s now coming under fire. “There’s not one facility in the world that’s getting the job done,” he argues. “If you find a rehab center that really gets it, call me—and I’m being serious.”
At the moment, many agree with Steindorff: there’s virtually no shortage of cautionary NPR pieces, disturbing news features, and almost-weekly stories of arrests and busts. In fact, one NPR exposé reported that a convicted rehab owner had “billed insurance companies for more than $58 million in bogus treatment and tests, and recruited addicts with gift cards, drugs and visits to strip clubs.” It’s clear that the rehab industry may be at a critical crossroads, as it needs as much saving as the millions of Americans seeking help themselves.
My good friend Mike Verlie, who just celebrated four years of sobriety after a decade-long heroin addiction, credits sober housing for helping him find his footing and, well, saving his life. But he’s also keenly aware that good sober homes are few and far between.
“The problem lies in that [sober homes] are mainly privately-owned and non-regulated at all,” he notes. “Some may claim to follow non-profit guidelines, but in reality, it’s mostly just a single guy or a couple of people who own houses and call them sober houses.”
Many of these “houses,” Verlie says, cram more people than are legally allowed by fire standards into places that are poorly funded (at best). In fact, many of them are simply way stations between rehab centers, sometimes getting kickbacks for each referral. “A good sober house is a rarity,” Verlie says.
Sadly, shady ethics aren’t limited to homeowners operating businesses that are little more than treadmills leading right back to treatment centers.
Sometimes, it’s a lot bigger than just one specific person or center…
How do we create rehabilitation options that don’t view patients as dollar signs? Learn more in the original article The Unethical Side of Addiction Treatment at The Fix.
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Projeto Mythus: 23 anos de um marco do Rock/Metal cearense
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Top 17 of 2017
This post has become somewhat of a tradition. I've done one each year since 2011. It's a nice way of looking back on the year, and focusing on the highlights--the things that I may have forgotten if not for writing this post. Some of the items on the list are obvious, but others are subtle things that had an impact on me in some way. Here are links to my past years' lists: My Top 11 of 2011 My Top 12 of 2012 My Top 13 of 2013 My Top 14 of 2014 My Top 15 of 2015 My Top 16 of 2016 And here we...
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Birmingham Six member said Irish governments abandoned them, reveal papers
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One New Year’s Resolution a Couple Can Make Together
Maybe you’ve already made a resolution or two for the New Year. Have you and your partner ever made one together? Choosing one that you’re both likely to keep can do wonders for your relationship. One is the key word, because keeping it simple makes it more likely that you’ll both follow through.
Any relationship, no matter how great it already is, has room to grow. So instead of thinking, “Were fine,” think “The sky’s the limit!”
Tips for Making a Resolution Together
Whether you make a resolution together or independently, make it as specific as possible, by stating the resolution in a way that includes:
- when you will start keeping the resolution;
- for how long you intend to carry it out;
- how often you will do it.
For example, rather than simply resolving to be nicer to each other, a couple might commit to giving each other at least one compliment every day for the next three weeks, starting today.
It takes 21 days to change a habit, or to establish a new one, so if you want the daily compliments or some other new behavior to become a lasting lifestyle, you might decide to commit to do it every day, starting now, and for at least three weeks.
You might like the idea explained below (Resolution #2) about giving each other at least one compliment a day. This might be your joint resolution, or it can be your own personal resolution if your spouse isn’t on board now for it. Even if you start out as the only one giving compliments daily, your relationship will probably get better. Your spouse will appreciate your sincere compliments, and you’ll find yourself noticing your partner’s virtues, so you’ll feel warmer toward him (or her) more often.
Maybe you both already excel at compliments. What would be a better resolution for the two of you to consider making together? You may have one in mind or you might want to select one of the other two ideas listed here:
Resolution 1: When we disagree, we will take turns listening to each other kindly and respectfully. When one of us states our viewpoint, the other will say what he or she heard, then asks if they got it right. Once the first speaker says yes, the other gets to state their own position and get listened to. It can be tempting to compose our rebuttal instead of totally listening. Listening doesn’t necessarily mean agreeing. The active listening technique is so worthwhile because it fosters emotional intimacy. When most spouses really want is not to win an argument, but to feel understood.
Resolution 2: We’ll tell each other daily what we appreciate about each other. This is a worthwhile resolution because busy spouses often forget to notice each other’s positive traits and actions. Sometimes their communication gets loaded with complaints or demands. Strive to implement Dr. John Gottman’s researched based advice to make at least five positive comments for each negative one.
Resolution 3: We’ll hold a weekly marriage meeting. This is a worthwhile resolution because couples who do this effectively, as explained in my book, Marriage Meetings for Lasting Love: 30 Minutes a Week to the Relationship You’ve Always Wanted, gain intimacy, romance, teamwork, and smoother resolution of issues.
CHOOSE JUST ONE
In case you’re feeling tempted to make more than one resolutions, remind yourself to choose just one. Changing just one long-established way of behaving is challenging enough, so keep it simple. You can always add a new resolution once you’ve firmly put your first one into practice.
Happy New Year!
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The Reason Some People Don’t Learn From Mistakes
The reason some people find it hard to weigh risk and reward.
Adults who have had stressful childhoods find it harder to sense risky situations approaching, new research finds.
As a result, looming health, financial or legal problems could be more difficult to spot for people who were maltreated early in life.
But when the bad luck hits, people who have had stressful childhoods get hit harder — perhaps because it is more of a surprise.
Professor Seth Pollak, who led the study, said:
“It’s not that people are overtly deciding to take these negative risks, or do things that might get them in trouble.
It may very well be that their brains are not really processing the information that should tell them they are headed to a bad place, that this is not the right step to take.”
For the study, young adults — some of whom were highly stressed as children — were given a series of tests of risk and reward.
The study showed that those who were maltreated at around 8-years-old found it harder to learn from their mistakes and to sense that loss was coming.
They made the same poor decisions when weighing risks against reward over and over again.
Professor Pollak said:
“It was our observation not that they couldn’t do math, but that they weren’t really attending to the right things.
We didn’t see people improving over time.
You might say, ‘Well, they don’t get how it works.’
But the people with high-stress childhoods, even after many trials, they weren’t using negative feedback to change their behavior and improve.”
Brain scans also revealed that there was relatively low activity in areas related to loss as people were considering their choice.
Professor Pollak continued:
“And then, when they would lose, we’d see more activity than expected—an overreaction—in the part of the brain that responds to reward, which makes sense.
If you didn’t catch the cue that you were likely to lose, you’re probably going to be pretty shocked when you don’t win.”
Professor Rasmus Birn, the study’s first author, said they want to expand this finding:
“Now that we have this finding, we can use it to guide us to look at specific networks in the brain that are active and functionally connected.
We may find that childhood stress reshapes the way communication happens across the brain.”
The study was published in the journal PNAS (Birn et al., 2017).
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Erika lost 213 pounds
Transformation of the Day: Erika lost 213 pounds. At 430 lbs, her weight was severely impacting her health and her mobility. She was also in an emotionally and mentally abusive marriage. One day, while visiting a place that held positive memories, she began walking and never turned back. Check out what she shared with us about […]
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3D Platform Video Games May Ward off Cognitive Impairment in Seniors
A new Canadian study published in the journal PLOS ONE shows that playing 3D platform games, such as Super Mario 64, can help stave off mild cognitive impairment in older adults and perhaps even prevent Alzheimer’s disease.
In an earlier study, the researchers at the Université de Montréal found that playing 3D video games of logic and puzzles like Super Mario 64 increased gray matter in younger participants in their twenties.
In the new study, they wanted to see if the results could be replicated among healthy seniors.
The hippocampus is a region of the brain associated with spatial and episodic memory, a key factor in long-term cognitive health. The gray matter it contains acts as a marker for neurological disorders that can occur over time, including mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s.
The researchers recruited 33 participants aged 55 to 75 and randomly assigned them to three different groups. Participants were instructed to either play Super Mario 64 for 30 minutes a day, five days a week, take piano lessons (for the first time in their life) with the same frequency and in the same sequence, or not perform any particular task.
The six-month experiment took place in the participants’ homes, where the consoles and pianos, provided by West’s team, were installed.
The researchers analyzed the participants’ cognitive skills at the beginning and the end of the exercise, six months later, using two different measurements: cognitive performance tests and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure variations in the volume of gray matter.
This method allowed the researchers to observe brain activity and any changes in three areas: the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex that controls planning, decision-making and inhibition; the cerebellum that plays a major role in motor control and balance; and the hippocampus, the center of spatial and episodic memory.
According to the MRI test results, only the participants in the video-game cohort saw increases in gray matter volume in the hippocampus and cerebellum. Their short-term memory also improved.
“These findings can also be used to drive future research on Alzheimer’s, since there is a link between the volume of the hippocampus and the risk of developing the disease,” said researcher Sylvie Belleville, a professor of psychology at the Université de Montréal.
The tests also showed gray matter increases in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and cerebellum of the participants who took piano lessons, whereas some degree of atrophy was noted in all three areas of the brain among those in the passive control group.
So what is the mechanism leading to increases in gray matter, particularly in the hippocampus, after playing video games?
“3-D video games engage the hippocampus into creating a cognitive map, or a mental representation, of the virtual environment that the brain is exploring,” said researcher Gregory West, a professor of psychology at the Université de Montréal. “Several studies suggest stimulation of the hippocampus increases both functional activity and gray matter within this region.”
Conversely, when the brain is not learning new things, gray matter atrophies as people get older.
“The good news is that we can reverse those effects and increase volume by learning something new, and games like Super Mario 64, which activate the hippocampus, seem to hold some potential in that respect,” said West.
“It remains to be seen,” concluded West, “whether it is specifically brain activity associated with spatial memory that affects plasticity, or whether it’s simply a matter of learning something new.”
Source: Université de Montréal
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The Impact of Brain Stimulation on Risky Decision Making
A new study has discovered that stimulating the frontal cortex can temporarily increase a person’s financial risk appetite.
According to researchers from the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Russia, economists, biologists, and psychologists use an interdisciplinary approach to explain the nature of and reasons behind certain decisions and inclinations. Called neuroeconomics, it focuses on the neurobiological foundation of decision-making.
“The majority of a person’s decisions take place under conditions of uncertainty or risk. This is why we were particularly interested in uncovering the neurobiological mechanisms of risky decision-making,” said one of the study’s authors, Dr. Zachary Yaple, who is also a research fellow at the university’s Centre for Cognition & Decision Making.
To do this, researchers conducted an experimental game.
Each of the 34 participants chose whether they wanted to participate in a lottery that could potentially bring a monetary profit or receive a guaranteed smaller amount. While the participants were making their decisions, the researchers delivered a transcranial alternating current stimulation on the left and right frontal area of the brain.
The stimulation was delivered online at 5 Hz (theta), 10 Hz (alpha), 20 Hz (beta), and 40 Hz (gamma), according to the researchers.
The results showed a robust effect of the 20 Hz stimulation over the left prefrontal area that significantly increased voluntary risky decision-making, the researchers discovered.
The researchers said they assume the 20 Hz stimulation led to a change in the internal rhythm of the brain and that this may suggest a possible link between risky decision-making and reward processing, underlined by beta oscillatory activity.
Beta waves come about during a state of wakefulness and impact many processes in the brain. They allow a person to concentrate, aid in rapid thinking, and help achieve a goal and work with maximum efficiency, the researchers explained.
Researchers recently discovered that beta waves are particularly enhanced in the frontal cortex when a person receives an unexpected reward. Previous studies suggest that beta oscillations could synchronize brain structures involved in reward processing. By affecting beta activity, the researchers could make outcomes of a risky decision seem more appealing, they explained.
The study was published in eNeuro, a journal published by the Society for Neuroscience.
Source: National Research University Higher School of Economics
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Local Economy Affects Opioid Prescribing to Disabled on Medicare
A new study shows that prescribing of opioid pain medications for non-elderly Americans on disability is “significantly” related to county-level economic factors, such as unemployment and income levels.
According to the study, published in Medical Care, about half of Medicare beneficiaries under age 65 received an opioid prescription in 2014.
Researcher Chao Zhou, Ph.D., and colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that opioid prescribing for disabled adults is higher outside of “large central metro” counties, even after accounting for local economic factors.
The researchers analyzed data on nearly 3.5 million adults younger than 65 who were medically disabled, without cancer, without end stage renal disease, not receiving hospice care, and receiving Medicare Part D (prescription drug) benefits for at least 12 months in 2014.
Most Medicare beneficiaries under age 65 are Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) recipients, the researchers noted.
The researchers analyzed measures of opioid prescribing by county, including demographic and geographic variations. They also looked at how local economic factors, such as household income, unemployment rate, and income inequality, affected opioid prescribing.
About half of the study population (49 percent) had at least one opioid prescription during 2014. More than one-fourth (28 percent) were long-term opioid users, with six or more prescriptions.
The proportions of opioid prescriptions were higher for women than men; for White and Native American beneficiaries compared to other racial/ethnic groups; and for patients between the ages of 55 and 64 compared to younger groups, the study found.
Analysis of county-level differences showed more than just an urban/rural divide, according to the researchers.
“Large central metro” counties (inner-city) had lower opioid prescribing than all other classifications, including “large fringe metro” (suburbs), “micropolitan” (small cities), and “noncore” (rural) areas, according to the study’s findings.
“Large central metro areas were different from the rest of categories,” the researchers wrote in the study. “Large fringe metro areas were similar to rural counties.”
Areas of more intensive opioid prescribing in the South, Southwest, and Midwest closely overlapped with “regions of economic hardship,” the study discovered.
Confirming those associations, opioid prescribing was higher in counties with lower median household income and higher unemployment, the researchers noted.
Income inequality was also a significant factor, although the relationship was the opposite of expected: Counties with higher income inequality had lower measures of opioid use.
“The metro/non-metro pattern of opioid prescribing was different from that of other health indicators, such as smoking, cerebrovascular disease (stroke), and mortality,” Zhou said.
The researchers say further studies are needed to identify the “distinctive mechanism” explaining the higher opioid prescribing outside of urban areas.
Research is also needed to clarify the negative association with income inequality, they add. The researchers suggest that low income inequality might be linked to other factors, such as economic conditions or differences in medical practice, that lead to higher opioid prescribing.
“The opioid epidemic is part of a larger challenge primarily faced by white rural working-class Americans,” Zhou said, adding the new findings add to previous evidence that disabled persons in the SSDI program are “a particularly vulnerable segment of this demographic.”
Zhou added that he believes investment in economically depressed areas might be a helpful part of comprehensive approaches to battling the opioid crisis.
Source: Wolters Kluwer Health
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Fake Social Media Can Be Hazardous to Your Health
Fake social media accounts already have a reputation for swaying political discourse, but a new study shows that these automated accounts could be even more dangerous — they could be bad for your health.
Social bots are automated accounts that use artificial intelligence to influence discussions and promote specific ideas or products.
For the new study, researchers at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California focused on how these bots promoted the notion that using electronic cigarettes helps people stop smoking, a conclusion not definitively supported by research.
Jon-Patrick Allem, lead author of the study, likened social bots to actress Jenny McCarthy and the “vaccinations cause autism” movement, an idea that has been debunked many times but still sticks, he says.
“We now have measles outbreaks in Southern California because people shared personal stories about how vaccinations reportedly caused their child to have autism,” said Allem, a research scientist in the preventive medicine department of the Keck School of Medicine.
“Social bots may not have the star power of Jenny McCarthy, but what they lack in fame, they make up for in quantity and determination. They are designed to promote a specific, slanted narrative — 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
For the study, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research Public Health and Surveillance, Allem and his colleagues analyzed about 2.2 million e-cigarette-related posts on Twitter from Dec. 24 to April 21.
Researchers found that social bots were two times more likely than humans to promote both new products and the idea that e-cigarettes empower people to quit smoking.
“Social bots can pass on health advice that hasn’t been scientifically proven,” Allem said. “The jury is still out on if e-cigarettes are useful smoking cessation tools, but studies have shown that the chemicals in vape juice are harmful. Scientists are still trying to understand if vaping damages the respiratory and cardiovascular system. Bottom line: Online falsehoods can influence offline behavior.”
Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable disease, disability, and death in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. E-cigarettes are the most commonly used tobacco product among children and teens.
Nearly 59 percent of adult e-cigarette users in 2015 were also traditional smokers, according to the CDC. Some 30 percent were former smokers, and 11 percent had never smoked.
To compile their data, researchers crawled Twitter to pull out tweets that used key terms such as e-cigarette, vaping, and ejuice. They identified human users from social bots by analyzing retweets or mentions, ratio of followers to followees, content and level of emotion. Then they used a “BotOrNot” algorithm as the final filter.
The researchers found social bots were more likely to post hashtags where people said they quit smoking as a result of e-cigarette use (#quitsmoking, #health). The bots also promoted new products, the researchers discovered.
Humans, on the other hand, were more likely to use hashtags referencing behavior (#vape), identity (#vapelife), and vaping community (#vapenation).
“Use of these hashtags may serve further internalization of, and social bonding around, vaping-related identities,” the researchers stated in the study. “These hashtags also suggest discussions of vaping may occur in an echo chamber on Twitter in which ideas and beliefs are amplified by those in the network, normalizing vaping.”
To counteract the unhealthy behavior social bots promote, Allem said public health officials and organizations need to bolster education campaigns. For e-cigarettes, that means campaigns highlighting the known hazards of e-cigarette use.
“There are many unhealthy choices social bots can promote, and our future research will focus on other areas such as tanning beds, supplements, fad diets, or sugary drinks,” Allem said. “People need to be aware of these fake social media accounts, and public health campaigns should be implemented to counteract the most dangerous unhealthy behaviors these bots are encouraging.”
Source: University of Southern California
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Healthy Ways to Navigate Your Grief
Even though my dad was hooked up to the most high-tech ventilator in the hospital and had five chest tubes connected to his body, I thought he’d come home with us. Sure, the recovery wouldn’t be easy, but we’d take it slow, and eventually, he’d return to his healthy, energetic self.
At his funeral, I really wanted to say something, to make everyone there understand just how kind-hearted, funny, playful, brave, and resilient my father was. This was a special person, and I yearned, a yearning that knotted my stomach, for others to feel that. Instead, I stayed silent as the rabbi read through paragraphs we’d provided, paragraphs that barely captured the beauty of my dad.
When they picked me up from the airport, my aunt and cousin tried to warn me. But nothing could prepare me for what I saw when I walked into my grandmother’s apartment. My 5-foot-8 grandma weighed around 90 pounds. Her once rosy, full cheeks were hollow. I’d never seen her move so slowly. I usually had to almost jog to keep up with her pace. The bone cancer was whittling away her body, and all I wanted to do was drop to my knees and cry for days. That night, she hugged me and told me that she really wanted my mom to have her gold necklace when she died.
At her funeral in February, New York City looked like a snow globe. The snowstorm started that morning, and we feared we’d have to cancel the service. As we stood by her grave and one by one dropped red roses onto her casket, the snowflakes started coming down faster and faster and bigger and heavier. And it felt like our tears would turn into icicles, staying on our faces forever.
These are some of the bits and pieces I remember from my biggest, deepest losses, from the darker days of my life. Of course, there are many happy, hilarious, vibrant memories. Memories that have nothing to do with hospitals and death. But some days, these are the moments I replay in my mind, a decade later, triggered by something random on TV or something someone says, or triggered by nothing at all.
They say that time heals our (grieving) wounds. But I don’t think it’s time. Instead, I think we just get used to the person not existing in our day to day. We create different routines and rhythms that replace the routines and rhythms they inhabited. Our lives change. We have kids. Our kids go to college. We move to new homes, to new jobs. We simply don’t expect to see our loved one in these places.
In the book On Grief and Grieving, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross writes, “The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not get over the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same, nor would you want to.”
Grief is a shape shifter. It takes many different forms, said Stacey Ojeda, a licensed marriage and family therapist who specializes in working with grief and loss. It can resemble depression with sadness, irritability, hopelessness and helplessness, she said. You might isolate yourself from others and stay in bed all day. You might be easily distracted and forgetful.
Grief can resemble denial, she said. You avoid your heartache and focus on the day to day. Laundry. Work. Dinnertime. Dishes. You stay “productive” and busy, hoping to skip over the pain, or bury it so deep it stops coming up to the surface.
Grief can turn into a spiritual crisis, according to Ojeda, sparking big questions like: “What is life about?” “Why am I living?” and “How could God do this to me?”
Ojeda shared the below suggestions for navigating grief in a healthy way.
- Realize that grief is not linear. There is no timeline you need to abide by. “There is no date that you need to be better by,” Ojeda said. In fact, the worst thing you can do is give yourself a timetable or time limit, as in: “”I should feel better already” “Why am I still feeling this way?” “So and so only felt sad for X amount of time when she lost her ____.”
- Be patient and kind with yourself. For instance, you haven’t completed your to-do list and all you want to do is lay in bed and cry. Instead of telling yourself, “What are you doing? Get out of bed. You have so much to do. This isn’t good,” you say: “It’s OK,” Ojeda said. You accept where you are, and give yourself whatever you need. “Judging yourself and getting upset at yourself for whatever pace you’re healing at will only make that process harder.”
- Talk to others. “Seek support from those who allow you to grieve in a healthy way [such as] friends, family, coworkers or a counselor,” Ojeda said.
- Set time aside to grieve. If your life is hectic, carve out time to express your feelings, Ojeda said. Cry in the car before work or before going home. Scream. Replay a specific memory. Give yourself the space to process your pain.
- Allow yourself joy, too. At the same time, give yourself the opportunity to savor sweet moments. Go out with your friends. Start a new painting project. Start your next short story. Take a trip. See a silly movie.
- Plan ahead for bad days. For the toughest days, have a list of go-to strategies and people you can turn to for support. For instance, Ojeda said, your coping strategies might include: journaling; reading an article or book that comforts you; keeping sneakers by the front door to take a calming walk. Mark on your calendar “anniversary dates” that could trigger a wave of grief. These might be your loved one’s birthday, the day they died, a day that was special to you both.
- Honor your own path. Grieving looks different for everyone. Ojeda underscored that there’s no right or wrong way to navigate grief (unless, of course, you’re doing something that puts you in danger). “Everyone has their own path and journey after loss and it needs to be honored.”
“Grief, I’ve learned, is really love,” writes Jamie Anderson in this beautiful piece. “It’s all the love you want to give but cannot give. The more you loved someone, the more you grieve. All of that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes and in that part of your chest that gets empty and hollow feeling. The happiness of love turns to sadness when unspent. Grief is just love with no place to go. It’s taken me seven years to realize that my grief is my way of telling the great vastness that the love I have still resides here with me. I will always grieve for my Mom because I will always love her. It won’t stop. That’s how love goes.”
And somehow, for me, knowing that our shattering grief is simply tied to our significant love brings some comfort. Maybe it does to you, too.
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New Medicaid rule will further open acupuncture services to 108000 Ohio patients with low back pain, migraines
CLEVELAND, Ohio--Starting January 1, more than 108,000 Ohioans on Medicaid who have diagnosed low back pain or migraines will be able to see an acupuncturist for pain management. The change in policy is part of an effort to reduce the number of unnecessary opioid prescriptions and overdose deaths in the state that arise from treating chronic pain with addictive drugs.
For the past year, Ohio has been one of six states in the country to cover acupuncture treatments for Medicaid patients, but only when offered by a doctor. Starting tomorrow, Medicaid reimbursement will be open to licensed non-physician acupuncturists who register as Medicaid providers.
The agency hopes that expanding access to the treatment, a centuries-old pain-relief technique that involves inserting hair-thin needles into the skin at specific points, will save money over time on addiction treatment and other costs related to opioid use.
Practitioners and their patients say it's about time more people had access to the proven and safe, but expensive, non-drug therapy, and that more insurers should follow suit.
Expanding access
Since October of 2017, Medicaid patients with low back pain or migraine diagnoses have been able to receive acupuncture from Medicaid physicians trained to provide the treatment. Less than one-half of 1 percent of eligible Ohio patients, about 485 so far, have taken advantage of the treatment option.
That could be because there are few doctors in the state trained in acupuncture, likely less than 200, based on available estimates. Of these, 23 doctors provided 2,981 treatments to Medicaid patients through November 29, according to Ohio Medicaid.
Starting January 1, patients also will be able to see licensed, non-physician acupuncturists who register as Medicaid providers. There are about 250 acupuncturists licensed to practice in Ohio, according to the State Medical Board. Ohio Medicaid expects about half will enroll as Medicaid providers, in addition to about 60 chiropractors who will sign up to obtain an acupuncture specialty.
With nearly 200,000 eligible patients likely to benefit from multiple treatments, there's a big market for new providers.
"This will really change the number of people who are practicing, and allow more institutions to offer acupuncture," said Jared West, president of the Ohio Association of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, and an acupuncturist who practices in Warrensville Heights. West is helping providers navigate the Medicaid registration process and has advised the state on reimbursement and other issues.
Dr. Maya Myslenski, a pediatrician who practices in the emergency department at MetroHealth Medical Center, has been offering acupuncture to her patients for a variety of ailments for more than two years. It helps patients with both acute and chronic pain, anxiety, and some stomach ailments, she said.
"A lot of our [Medicaid] patients can't afford to go to private offices for treatments," Myslenski said. "I'm beyond thrilled about treatments being covered for them."
Gaining acceptance, weighing the cost
As the opioid crisis has mounted in Ohio and across the country, the case for increasing access to acupuncture and other alternative treatments for chronic pain also has picked up steam.
In Ohio, the move to cover acupuncture for chronic pain conditions began in earnest in January of 2016, when Gov. John Kasich's Cabinet Opiate Action Team (GCOAT) released a guideline for the management of acute pain outside of emergency departments. The guideline said that non-drug therapies such as acupuncture (as well as physical and massage therapies, biofeedback and hypnotherapy) should be considered as first-line treatments for acute pain. The Governor's team also encouraged Medicaid to further research and review acupuncture.
Then in January of 2017, the Joint Commission, the not-for-profit organization that certifies hospitals have met certain safety standards, changed its pain management standards to require that accredited hospitals provide nonpharmacological pain treatments.
Around the same time, the American College of Physicians issued new guidelines for the treatment of low back pain, which recommended that doctors treat patients with non-drug therapies first, including acupuncture.
Dr. Mary Applegate, medical director of Ohio Medicaid, said the agency hopes that offering acupuncture as a pain management alternative will lead to cost savings over time, and that Medicaid's research found the greatest degree of effectiveness for acupuncture in controlling symptoms for low back pain and migraines.
The state's guidelines for managing pain provide more, safer treatment options, including acupuncture, which could help reduce opioid overdose deaths and addiction over time, she said.
Myslenki agreed: "I think that what we are going to see now is as more and more patients try acupuncture for pain and find it helpful, we'll see a further decrease in the number of prescriptions written for opioid medications. I think acupuncture has a big role here as a tool in this fight."
Paying for the treatment has always been a problem for patients. Medical insurance only rarely covers acupuncture, and it's expensive. Treatments cost between $70 and $100 per visit, and most people need several over the course of weeks.
Neither Medicare nor the Veterans Administration cover acupuncture.
West said the research on acupuncture has become much clearer in recent years, both on how well it works and how it can save money.
"There are some really big, recent studies that clearly show that acupuncture is not only comparable to Western medicine in how effective it is, but it's safer and it's cost-effective," West said. "In chronic low back pain, you can save money over the long-term, give people just as good care and they're not getting addicted to pain medication."
It costs the insurer between 70 cents and $1 per month, per policy, to add acupuncture coverage, West said. "It just doesn't make sense not to when we're spending $1 billion a year in Ohio on addiction treatment."
Strong demand
Ohio was the sixth state to cover acupuncture for Medicaid patients. The other five are California, Oregon, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Minnesota. Maine and Vermont are considering whether to cover the treatment for their Medicaid patients after completing pilot studies testing its effectiveness.
Robert Davis, a South Burlington acupuncturist who led Vermont's pilot testing acupuncture for back pain, said the study showed strong demand for the treatment among Medicaid patients.
"We had a waiting list in pretty short order," said Davis. Pain, sleep disturbance, fatigue, functioning, depression and anxiety all improved for patients in the pilot study, he said. While historically most people who use acupuncture as a treatment have had higher-than-average income and education levels, the Vermont study suggests this is only because they're the ones who could afford it, Davis said.
Vermont is still considering the results of the pilot, which were released in October, but Davis believes change is on the way there, too.
"It may take another year or so, but I do think it's going to lead to a change in policy," he said. "The opioid crisis has helped the establishment catch up a little to research on acupuncture. There's been a big change in attitude in terms of openness to this sort of thing."
West hopes that in Ohio other insurers will follow Medicaid's lead. And that more conditions will soon be covered.
There are eight conditions that can be treated with acupuncture with good evidence for effectiveness, according to a recent meta-analysis, including neck pain, osteoarthritis of the knee and postoperative pain.
"It's great to have Medicaid [offer it], but that's fewer than a million people, and there are millions out there who really should have more options for their care," West said.
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Saturday, December 30, 2017
Easy tips to start 2018 smokefree
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Have an open New Year's Eve? 3 things to do in the Tri-Cities
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How a financial dominatrix became a bitcoin millionaire
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Help! I need a flash course in optimism
After a lifetime of calamity and chronic anxiety, Liz Jones enrolled on a course that claims to use neuroscience to reprogramme the brain and heal the body
It’s Wednesday morning and I’m in an office in Central London with six other women and our teacher, Helen Harding. I’m here on a three-day Lightning Process (LP) course, a programme devised 18 years ago by British osteopath Phil Parker and named for the speed at which it is said to work. The training, a series of movements, meditation-like techniques and mental exercises, has been successfully used by sufferers of stress, depression and auto-immune conditions such as myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME, or chronic fatigue syndrome). Esther Rantzen, whose daughter suffered with chronic fatigue, has publicly praised it, as have several athletes – though, like any alternative therapy, it has its critics.
I’m here to tackle my almost lifelong crippling anxiety, which is appropriate, given that I am the most stressed I’ve been for months. Helen is asking what positive changes we’ve noticed so far (this is our third day). The other women – who variously suffer from ME, pain and low self-esteem – say they had a good night: they ate dinner and put away their phone, so were ‘in the moment’. They visited a friend or their mother; they slept well. Helen leaves me till last. ‘Liz, what happened? We can feel the stress radiating out of you.’
So I tell them. That in the car on the way to dinner last night I got an email from my boss, forwarding a message from a hotshot legal firm, which sent me into a spiral of stress. (It turned out someone had been using my name and old email address to get the dirt for a story.) Next, I got a text from a neighbour saying a pipe had burst at my home and the cellar was flooding. I tried to enjoy my meal, be present for it, notice tastes as I’d been taught, but was worried I wouldn’t be able to pay the bill.
And then this morning, to top it all, I was getting dressed in my hotel room when my worst nightmare happened. I had let my two dogs out on the lawn outside. They had behaved perfectly all week, but I heard barking and saw Gracie running at a smart man who was waving his bag at her. He was angry, pointing at his leg, so I called her in, shouting, ‘I’m sorry!’ I then got a phone call. ‘Please come to reception. A guest is saying your dog bit him.’ He had taken a photo of his Versace trousers, showing a big hole in the leg. I had to leave my name and address, having offered to buy him a new suit, which I can ill afford.
And so here I am. I tell the class I couldn’t think about the techniques I’d been taught over the past couple of days because of the stress. I tell them the world is a horrendous place. That everything is difficult. That I’m right to be scared: I’ve been made bankrupt; I’ve lost my home; my mum died; my husband cheated on me; I’ve been sacked, twice. I know I’m suffering from ‘stuckness’ (a word Parker uses to describe being fixed in a pattern of behaviour), but I have no idea how to break free. I wake every day and my brain scrabbles to find things to worry about. It’s my natural state. ‘It’s not my fault,’ I tell Helen and the class. ‘Awful things happen to me, all the time. I’m a victim!’
Helen tells me I’m a genius – at being anxious. I am gold-medal-winning at being fearful because, like an athlete, I have practised and practised. She tells me it’s not my fault I’m anxious, but that I am ‘dû-ing’ anxiety. This is another Parker word, a variation of ‘doing’: recognising that I have a subconscious involvement in what I experience. It’s not our fault that we are exhausted, in pain or fearful, but we need to take some responsibility for whatever ails us in order to fix it. ‘You need to change how you react to the world. Bad things happen, we can’t change that. But if you remain calm, you will be able to deal with them better.’
I tell the group I hate calm people. They are automatons. A boyfriend who never gets upset about anything drives me nuts. Calm people in a serene bubble never get anything done. I do an impression of my now ex-husband, whom I had forced to phone British Gas and complain: he’d said in a tiny voice, ‘That’s OK, don’t worry, thanks very much. Bye, bye.’ Everyone laughs.
I’d read a study just days before suggesting that each traumatic event, such as being fired or getting divorced, ages the brain by four years and leaves us more likely to suffer from Alzheimer’s in later life. I’ve experienced a staggering 11 of the 27 traumas listed, meaning my brain is now 100 years old, so it’s a surprise I’m even functioning. (I am dubious about all these warnings, though. My mum was the calmest, sweetest person, always active, never upset or stressed, and she had dementia for the last decade of her life.)
Laura Mvula, singer and musician, was suffering from anxiety and monophobia (a fear of being alone): ‘The Lightning Process encouraged me to access a part of my brain that had been flustered for a long time. I had got into the habit of focusing on only the negative in my life. I learned that anxiety was my body’s way of trying to protect me.’
Martine McCutcheon, actress and singer, says: ‘I kept getting sick; I had pain in my bones and muscles; I was in a wheelchair at one point. I became depressed, scared to take on work. I was finally diagnosed with ME. I did the Lightning Process; it is amazing. That, combined with eating well, means I can work again.’
I learn that my work ethic has been affected by my anxiety. I feel nothing is ever good enough. I never switch off my phone, I reread what I write a million times and when I finally file my copy, I’m terrified it’s not good enough, even after 30 years of doing this job. ‘You have to learn that perfection doesn’t exist,’ says Helen. She explains the 80/20 Pareto principle, that ‘80 per cent of the results come from 20 per cent of the effort’. The rule is based on the idea of diminishing returns: the more you keep working on something, the fewer results you get. ‘And if you give off anger,’ one of my classmates tells me, ‘that is what you get back.’ I ask what she would like to be able to do after the course. ‘Have a social life, climb stairs, get a job.’
It’s comforting to be in a room with women of all ages (65 per cent of LP graduates are female) who, like me, get home and worry they will fail, wonder if having a bath and doing the washing-up is really worth the bother, and stare at their phone while watching TV or eating. Even Helen has her issues: now 49, she has been made redundant from jobs in the past and suffered low self-esteem, which is why she became interested in LP in the first place. She also uses the Process to ease her osteoarthritis.
I discover I like group training more than the numerous one-to-one sessions I’ve tried in the past, from hypnotherapy to neurofeedback. It’s not all about me: I’m so bored of me. We each tell our stories and are given exercises. We are asked to look for red objects in the room, close our eyes and say how many we can remember. Then we are asked, without opening our eyes again, to list anything green. We can remember red objects, but nothing green, which illustrates how if we look for bad things in life we will find them, blotting out everything else.
Helen then unfurls a mat with the words ‘present’, ‘stop’, ‘choice’ and ‘coach’ printed on it. Ta-da! This is the start of putting LP into practice. Helen stands on the ‘present’ and feels, perhaps, pain, or fatigue. She steps on to ‘stop’, making a hand gesture and saying the word out loud: this arrests the adrenalin loop that floods our bodies with stress hormones. She steps on to ‘choice’. ‘Now,’ she says, ‘do I want to stay in the pit or do I want the life I love? I choose life!’ She steps on to the ‘coach’ square and asks herself, ‘How will I do that?’ She steps back on to ‘present’: ‘By closing my eyes and visualising the life I want.’
There. It’s that simple. She then asks each of us to take our turn. Of course, me being me, I become nervous about standing up in front of everyone. I am last to go. I stand on ‘present’ and ask myself out loud, ‘Do I want to live the rest of my life fearing everything from the postman to my inbox?’ No. So I say, ‘Stop’. I then become my own life coach. ‘I don’t like the words on the Powerpoint screen,’ I tell Helen. ‘I don’t want to say, “Well done, you are on track.”’ ‘OK, just say what you want.’ So I do. ‘You don’t deserve this, to feel this way. Don’t waste your life.’
Helen explains, too, how saying negative words out loud (‘I’m fat’ or ‘I’m tired’) affects our bodies at a cellular level – the principle is similar to neuro-linguistic programming. She says we have programmed our brains to think in a certain way and explains the theory behind neuroplasticity, the ability of the brain to form new pathways, eventually making a more positive way of thinking automatic to us. It takes practice, which means we might be doing the Process 50 times a day, but ‘that will get less over time’, says Helen.
I leave my new friends that evening and my boyfriend picks me up. We set off for Devon for a short break. The next day, I don’t look at my phone and I try to enjoy lunch, then a walk on the beach. The old me would never have wanted to leave the hotel room. I find myself saying things like, ‘I’m sure it will stop raining!’ and use the elastic band Helen gave me to snap myself on the wrist if ever I find myself in a thought bog. On our last night, my boyfriend wakes me up swearing when he comes to bed because my dogs are on his pillow and he can’t get in. He throws himself on to the sofa, huffing and puffing. ‘I’m supposed to be the uptight, volatile half of this relationship,’ I say, turning over and going straight to sleep. His temper flies over my head; the old me would have thrown him out.
A week later, Helen calls to follow up. ‘What changes have you noticed?’ And I tell her. I have listened to my voicemail for the first time in years. I have been making plans. Checking out of the hotel in Devon, handed a bill twice what I was expecting due to my boyfriend sharing the room, I didn’t fly into a rage or panic. I simply told them that he could settle the difference. I no longer rush, afraid I will be late. My state of panic stems from working to daily deadlines for 30 years, and I realise this has made my life untenable. I have created a morning routine – coffee, breakfast, dog walk, shower, a read of all the papers – that no one is allowed to disturb. I have told everyone close to me that I cannot have negativity around me; if they can’t hack it, they can b***** off. I realise my fear engendered a need to shower people in gifts as I felt unlovable, and also meant I never confronted things, so I allowed my downfall to happen; it wasn’t entirely done to me.
I hadn’t expected LP to help, but for me it was almost instantaneous; others will find it takes hard work and time. I might fall off the wagon, but I’ve laughed twice in the past week: a record. I’ve opened envelopes, virtual and real. I have become my own life coach, because I’m the only person who can change me. I’ve been in the pit for almost 55 years, since my first day at school, when I was too terrified to cross the playground, so Mum took me home again. And if Versace man gets in touch, I will deal with him. I’m not going into a downward spiral again. I will say, ‘stop’, do my LP dance, buy him a new pair of trousers and move on.
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'I should have died a long time ago': The terrifying drink and drug abuse. His 'disgusting' racism. And the appalling loss ...
Drunken violence, racist abuse, flagrant drug-taking and ‘disgusting’ behaviour. Eric Clapton: Life In 12 Bars is not your usual brand-bolstering music movie.
In one of many shocking confessions in the film, Clapton admits, ‘The only reason I didn’t commit suicide was the fact that I wouldn’t be able to drink any more if I was dead.’
Anyone expecting a whitewash should look away now.
Stripped of the customary talking heads and cosy in-studio reminiscing, the feature-length documentary simply tells the superstar’s shadow-strewn story, often in Clapton’s own gruff voice, and in doing so may have forged a new movie genre: rock-star noir.
Life In 12 Bars delves into Eric Clapton’s addiction, insecurity and jealousy, even his brief flirtation with racist buffoonery in the mid-Seventies
The unflinching film examines the dark and turbulent times of the legendary British guitarist, and it goes deep. Rarely has a national institution been so fearlessly explored, and all with the musician’s full co-operation.
Director Lili Fini Zanuck, Clapton’s friend of 25 years, has created such a frank account of her subject’s drinking, drug abuse, grief, deceit, fear and confusion that her film could almost be a blues song.
‘I think it was a deeply cathartic process for Eric,’ says Zanuck, who conducted hours of ‘extraordinary, exhilarating’ audio interviews with Clapton. ‘He is a very private person, but part of his nature is that he’s also extremely interested in the truth and has no problems in exposing his own foibles. ‘Eric had to put a lot of trust in me,’ adds the Oscar-winning producer of Driving Miss Daisy. ‘He knew I wasn’t going to sugar-coat anything.’
Fans will be enchanted by the quality of the footage unearthed but Life In 12 Bars also shines a light on the sadness at the heart of the music and into the soul of the man.
Clapton was born with the blues, the trouble starting with his mother. He grew up in ‘a house of secrets’, believing that his grandparents Rose and Jack Clapp, Clapton’s birth name, were his mum and dad and that his real mother, Pat, was his older sister.
This would ultimately affect all his future relationships, from wives to girlfriends – Clapton famously stole Beatle George Harrison’s wife Pattie Boyd – and his own family.
Life In 12 Bars delves into Clapton’s addiction, insecurity and jealousy, even his brief flirtation with racist buffoonery in the mid-Seventies, flaws that would have had most controlling rock stars frantically fumbling for the edit button.
Clapton playing with Cream. Fans will be enchanted by the quality of the footage unearthed but Life In 12 Bars also shines a light on the sadness at the heart of the music
Clapton with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. Clapton was born with the blues, the trouble starting with his mother
Clapton with The Yardbirds. The band and Clapton are members of the rock 'n' roll Hall of Fame
Not Clapton. For all his failings as a man – his achievements as a musician are inarguable: Jimi Hendrix called him ‘the fairest soul brother in England’ – you can’t question his courage in endorsing such a raw and revelatory project. But this clear-eyed study of the 72-year-old virtuoso begs one big question: how the hell is Clapton still alive? As Zanuck notes: ‘This man was doing everything he could to kill himself.’
I once asked the reclusive bluesman how he’d managed to avoid such a grim finale.
‘The mystery is, why haven’t I died?’ he chuckled, and in person Clapton is remarkably cheery company. ‘I’ve certainly walked through a lot of fire.’
Later he added, ‘By rights I should have kicked the bucket a long time ago. For some reason I was plucked from the jaws of hell and given another chance.’
Clapton’s soulful sound has spoken to successive generations since his discovery as a 17-year-old electric guitar prodigy in 1963.
He was a legend by the age of 20, having forged a reputation as a fearsome player and a surly blues purist to boot. ‘I was very scholarly about the music,’ he recalls of his early days. At 25 he made what is widely considered the best blues-rock album of all time as Derek And The Dominoes, Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs.
Clapton is the only three-time inductee to the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall Of Fame, as a solo artist and as a member of The Yardbirds and Cream, and is estimated to be worth in the region of £150 million.
Having overcome some serious health scares, firstly with peripheral neuropathy, a condition that causes shooting pain and numbness in the extremities, then a chronic skin condition that required him to wear cotton gloves (‘it’s all part of getting old, man’), Clapton has returned to live work and plans to play a homecoming show at Hyde Park this summer.
It is little wonder that the excitable slogan ‘Clapton Is God’, daubed on walls in London during the late Sixties, has begun to re-appear around town. When I met him in the mid-Nineties for a lengthy interview, he expressed a preference for the nickname Slowhand. The conversation veered between hilarious and harrowing.
He’d been sober six years (‘because one drink is too many and a thousand isn’t enough’) and off the cigarettes for three months, which he had quit using hypnotherapy.
Clapton and Boyd had divorced in 1988 after a short-lived marriage and since then he had so many glamorous girlfriends, including models Naomi Campbell, Carla Bruni and Marie Helvin, it was difficult to keep up.
‘The one thing that was always glaringly obvious to everyone else apart from me is that I don’t do very well in relationships,’ he said.
It was just three years after the death of his four-year-old son Conor, who had fallen from the window of a Manhattan skyscraper in 1991 and the subject was still too raw to dwell on. ‘When I lost my son, I didn’t run off and hide,’ Clapton said softly. ‘I wrote a song [Tears In Heaven] and gave it to the world, and I think people respected that.
‘It’s like a prayer. I wrote three or four lines of prose and I knew that other people would immediately recognise the feeling within those lines.’
The segment of Life In 12 Bars that covers the tragedy is devastating. ‘I felt as if I had stepped backwards out of myself,’ says Clapton in voiceover. ‘I could not grasp it.’ Had he lived, Conor Clapton would have been 32 this year.
In a curious twist of fate, Clapton’s 1992 Unplugged album, which featured Tears In Heaven, went on to sell 26 million copies and receive three Grammys, becoming his most commercially successful recording and the best-selling live album ever, making him a global superstar all over again.
‘But once you find out that money and fame and success doesn’t do it, where do you go then?’ Clapton pondered that afternoon.
Clapton with his son Conor who fell to his death from the window of a Manhattan skyscraper in 1991. Clapton wrote Tears In Heaven to process the grief
Life In 12 Bars moves briskly through the depressed drinking days. Clapton guesses that he was consuming up to three bottles of brandy a day, holed up in his Hurtwood Edge mansion in Surrey, but can’t remember much other than ‘being in that alcoholic tunnel’.
I once had the good fortune to travel on Concorde alongside a non-drinking Clapton as he returned from an awards show in New York in the late Eighties.
While jetting in supersonic splendour, the thrifty riff-meister made a surprise purchase of 400 duty-free cigarettes. ‘Kind of sums me up, doesn’t it?’ he hooted, when reminded of the money-saving move, years later. ‘I was probably in between my working-class bloke and international playboy phases.
‘All those years when I was being a drunk I wore second-hand clothes and ate fish and chips and baked beans. So right up until my 40s I was living out this phoney working-class ethic. It was part of that drunken prejudice, like a hardline bigot.’
This might partially explain Clapton’s notorious ‘Enoch Powell’ speech at a Birmingham concert on his 1976 UK tour. Using unacceptable language, the guitarist declared his support for the controversial former Conservative minister, and insulted immigrants, stating that Britain had become ‘a black colony’.
Clapton agonised over including printed excerpts from the racist rant in Life In 12 Bars, before deciding to take full ownership of his past behaviour.
Clapton pictured with model Carla Bruni in 1989
Clapton takes a break from recording his album "No Reason To Cry" at Shangri La recording studio in 1975
‘When I realised what I had said,’ Clapton confesses in the film, ‘I was just so disgusted with myself. It was shocking and unforgivable and I was so ashamed of who I was, a kind of semi-racist, which didn’t make sense.’
‘The racism thing was very hard for him,’ adds Zanuck. ‘Because he doesn’t even know who that person is. It was the only part he even mentioned to me, but he didn’t ask me to take it out.
‘He says in the movie, even listening back to some of his old music is tough, “because I can hear how drunk I am”.
‘But he has also said to me that when you’re an alcoholic or drug addict, that it is just suppressing something. That a**hole is in there somewhere.’
Clapton cleaned up his act, got sober and lived to tell the tale, invariably through his eloquent guitar playing. His influence can still be heard today. On Jools Holland’s Hootenanny this evening, long-time Clapton devotee Ed Sheeran will play a rendition of Layla. In turn, the older musician has taken an interest in Sheeran. The two sang together on Clapton’s I Will Be There last year.
Clapton pictured with with his 'soulmate' Melia McEnery, 41, his wife of 16 years
Life In 12 Bars ends on an upbeat note. We join Clapton, the contented husband and father, larking around with ‘my soulmate’ Melia McEnery, 41, his wife of 16 years, and their three daughters, Julie, Ella and Sophie.
‘I finally found the family I always wanted, and always needed, and now here they are and I’m one of them, my life is completely full,’ Clapton says, revealing that the man we called God was only human after all.
‘Life In 12 Bars’ will be broadcast live in cinemas on Jan 10 followed by a Q&A with Eric Clapton and Lili Fini Zanuck hosted by Jools Holland. The film is released nationwide on January 12
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