Brain Chemistry – Bullying Leads To Anxiety
Bullying alters brain chemistry
“We found that chronic social stress affects neuroendocrine systems that are paramount for adaptive mammalian social behaviors such as courtship, pair-bonding and parental behaviors,” says Yoav Litvin, M. S. Stoffel Postdoctoral Fellow in Mind, Brain and Behavior. “Changes in components of these systems have been implicated in human disorders, such as social phobias, depression, schizophrenia and autism.”
Litvin and colleagues in Donald Pfaff’s Laboratory of Neurobiology and Behavior set up a rough-and-tumble school yard scenario in which a young mouse is placed in a cage with a series of larger older mice — a different one in each of 10 days. The mice, being territorial, fight it out in a contest that the new arrival invariably loses. Following the 10-minute battle, the mice were separated in the same cage by a partition that keeps them physically apart but allows them to see, smell and hear one another, a stressful experience for the loser.
Given a day to rest, the test mice are then put in the company of nonthreatening mice of comparable size and age. The biggest change in behavior was that the traumatized mice were more reluctant to socialize with their fellow mice, preferring to keep their distance compared to their unbullied counterparts. The mice that had lost their battles were also more likely to “freeze” in place for longer periods of time and to frequently display “risk assessment” behaviors toward their new cage-mates, behaviors that have been shown to be valid indices of fear and anxiety in humans. The researchers also gave a group of mice a drug that blocked vasopressin receptors, which partly curbed some of the anxious behavior in the bullied mice.
Being low mouse on the totem pole is tough on murine self-esteem. It turns out it has measurable effects on brain chemistry, too, according to recent experiments at Rockefeller University. Researchers found that mice that were bullied persistently by dominant males grew unusually nervous around new company, and that the change in behavior was accompanied by heightened sensitivity to vasopressin, a hormone involved in a variety of social behaviors. The findings suggest how bullying could contribute to long-term social anxiety at the molecular level.
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Seven Ways To Recharge Your Brain
Have you ever been in the situation where you can’t ‘think’ or you feel so drain and tired to do anything,
You keep on saying yes to things you don’t want
Find yourself in places and situations that you shouldn’t have been?
Less motivated to do anything and your mind can’t seem to work
All of this happens because you have used all of your resources and it is time to recharge your brain, just as you would feel hungry after eating for a while, this is the same case when it comes to your mind, it needs to constantly be renewed, cleansed and re-energized.
The problem with the current society is we don’t take time for ourselves , we don’t take time to know who we really are, you may find an engineer is perfect on their field, but knows way to little about themselves.
First we will look on the factors that contribute in ‘energy drain’
- The environment, this includes the people around you, objects and the activities around you, as you know the energy within your body is not always the same with the external energy, for example if the weather outside is too cold and you don’t have warm clothes to ‘retain’ your body energy you will get sick, that is one simple example, moving it further, the ideas, thoughts and the individual mentality requires an external factor to complement the internal thought process, what this means is that the environment have to complement the internal system, and if the movement of energy is not in alignment and balance, you become drained so fast and might get sick, that’s why people become stressfully, unhappy, angry, anxiety and many other bad things. if you stay with the no so like minded people you are in danger of killing the inner man, or you might kill the others, in chemistry if you mix very high concentrated acid and water it will explode, mix one chemical element with another you create a poison. just to give you the idea, another thing to put into consideration is the activities just as you would have some certain types element that can’t be stable in certain conditions, say like water, its freezing point is zero degrees and in order to retain its solid state we would want to keep it in this type of temperature, your mind is like an element which has it’s attributes, characteristics etc., it process information in patterns, people are easily distracted because of the surroundings, their mental elements are not maintained in a certain condition, when exposed in certain type of surrounding it may be extremely active or extremely dull, when this is properly applied you will become aware of energies in different places and sense different with different people.
- Another factor could be the internal contents, this is not a ‘natural’ it’s artificial implanted in your brain, Most kids have original creativity from the age of 1- 7 but when they go to school it becomes clogged and contaminated with the educational system. The environment can be 100% of support but because of the contents in your mind, it doesn’t synchronize in harmony with the external environment
Those are two major factors that could be affecting your energy levels: so here are 7 simple ways you could do everyday to keep your energy level in balance
1. Staying in the environment that will be in harmony with what you are, the only way to test if the place supports you is to see the activities.
2. Sensory input, the brain is active when your senses are stimulated and are active, if you stay in a constant temperature room, your sense of feeling stays stagnant because there is no any alertness. keep entertaining your senses by not staying in one place for a long time, go for a walk, go in the park,go swimming etc., just to keep your mind alert and stimulated, this is the same when it comes to food, and smell.
3. Musical vibrations, we all know that music gives a big impact on mental stimulation, you must bear in mind that your brain takes external input in full, say you are listening to certain music, consciously you may be listening to the words, but subconsciously your brain takes all the input, not only the words but also the musical instruments and the music tone, if the music has bad rhythm your thought process will be bad as well and this can disrupt your thinking process.
4. The food you eat, science has totally ignore the taste and only focused on nutrients, the tongue is there for a very good reason, it stimulates the brain creativity, this is some type of energy that your brain requires to function.
5. Being in tune with the present moment, we always focus on the past and future and forget what is happening in the present, this creates a habit and a habit becomes an addiction, but when you are in tune with the present moment it becomes and habit as well. it keeps the energy flow in and out easily.
6. Motivation and inspirations, keep a constant seek of new experiences, read new books, learn something exciting something that will keep you going , inspired and motivated.
7.Maintaining a constant connection with the source, there is indeed an inner source that has all energy, maintaining a constant connection helps you to stay in a state of happiness, you can do this by meditation, prayer, contemplation etc.
What is A Pendulum
At its most basic, a typical pendulum consists of a weight attached to a string or chain. As we will see later, a pendulum can be as simple as a washer tied to a piece of string and as elaborate as the imagination will allow
To the casual observer, using a pendulum is quite simple: you pick up one end of the string or chain, ask a question, and wait for the weighted end of the pendulum to swing. As we shall see, there is a bit more to it than this, but nothing so complicated to prevent the serious student from experiencing results from the very beginning.
Pendulums are commonly used in the practice of dowsing. Dowsing, as you may know, is a method of divination that enables someone to locate a hidden object by using some type of dowsing tool (for example, a pendulum) and observing its responses to a question or series of questions posed by the dowser.
Traditional dowsing targets include water, precious metals and gem stones, and according to the British Society of Dowsers, dowsing can also be used to locate other underground features such as archaeological remains, cavities and tunnels, oil, veins of mineral ore, underground building services, missing items and occasionally missing persons.
The usefulness of dowsing extends far beyond just material objects, however, and many experienced dowsers use it to divine answers to questions.
The question of how dowsing works can be broken down into several sub-questions, starting with “How does the pendulum actually move?”
At one time it was believed that supernatural forces (such as angels, demons, and deities) were responsible for the movement of the pendulum. Today; however, we know that the motion of the pendulum is caused by something called “ideo-motor response.” This is just another way of saying that the pendulum is moved by very small movements of your hand, which receives its instructions mentally from your brain.
Even when we know that the pendulum moves because your hand is responding to instructions from your brain, we still don’t fully understand where the brain receives the information that lets it know which way to move the pendulum
In the case of information that we already know, the answer to that question is obvious, and it’s not at all amazing that we can get the pendulum to move in response to a question such as “Is the sky blue on a sunny day?”
When the answer is not known, however, the explanations offered do begin to get interesting. One popular explanation is that the information is supplied by your subconscious mind. Naturally; this explanation raises yet another question – where does your subconscious mind get the information?
In the case of water or mineral dowsing, some people believe that the human body’s natural sensitivity to electromagnetic fields is processed somehow by the subconscious mind, which in turn informs the brain which way to move the dowsing device.
Others believe that the subconscious mind acts as a gateway to what psychologist Carl Jung called the “collective unconscious“, and what other people have referred to as the Akashic Records. In either case, the subconscious is thought to have access to a universal repository of information in which is kept knowledge of all things past, present and future.
As is often the case with theories, there are no definitive answers at this point in time, and each of us must evaluate the effectiveness and usefulness of dowsing and divination in our own personal experience.
People often wonder if dowsers are especially gifted, in the same way that psychic mediums are said to possess a special ability. The simple answer to this is that anyone can develop the ability to dowse, provided they are willing to spend the time that is required to learn and practice. Like playing the piano, anyone can do it.
Granted, there are people who seem to be naturally good at it — like child prodigies who compose and perform piano concertos at the age of 5 — but one should not be discouraged if they are not one of these prodigies.
How To Make A Pendulum
We Use 10% of Our Brains, What About The Rest?
This can be one of the biggest question people have been asking themselves. There are two questions to be addressed when it comes to this matter;
- Is it that our brain operates automatically 100% effectively and we are just not utilizing it or?,
- Is it that there is this potent within our brain that lies dormant waits to be discovered.?
Though an alluring idea, the “10 percent myth” is so wrong it is almost laughable, says neurologist Barry Gordon at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore. Although there’s no definitive culprit to pin the blame on for starting this legend, the notion has been linked to the American psychologist and author William James, who argued in The Energies of Men that “We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources.” It’s also been associated with to Albert Einstein, who supposedly used it to explain his cosmic towering intellect.
Let’s not go into the scientific terms that leads you nowhere at the end of the day, even though science has accelerate and disciplined the growth of human consciousness most of the time it tends to deals with things that are physical in nature which is exactly that 0.0001% of reality and forgot about the real reality, let’s try something a little out of the box. We all have our brains and use it everyday, I am trying to face this concept in a lively manner, in such a way that everyone who owns a brain can experience it her/himself. We are well aware of two parts of the brain the conscious mind and the subconscious mind
The Conscious Part
The conscious mind is the one we use everyday for conscious activities, like going to work, reading a novel, cooking etc., deals with will power, logics and tends to be very narrow and limited in perception, depends on what type of person you are it varies on how much you are dependant on this part of your brain, for example there are people who makes choices instantly they don’t consider anything outside of what ‘they know’ or their realm of knowledge, most of them are leaders, military, they act quickly and have the ability to move fast.
The Subconscious Part
The subconscious mind deals with subconscious activities such as moving the muscles, heart beats, growth, healing, breathing(can be conscious and subconscious) and many other things that we are not aware of. We tend to think that we are in control but most of our actions are based on what has been programmed into this part of brain, it is more in control than you could ever imagine, think about this: when you touch a coal of fire your reflex action pulls out your hand immediately without being conscious of it, it gives you an alert when you are sick, hungry, or need a rest, another example is the fact that most of the choices we make are based on the personal belief that we have been taught when we were little kids for the first six years (to understand this i suggest you grab a copy of The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter, & Miracles
), see it this way; just as the diagram shows the conscious mind is like a ball which can move within the constrained greater reality, more like the species living within the earth bounded by the gravity of the planet, they are there to be protected, nurtured until they grow to maturity, this is the role of your subconscious mind, it makes sure you survive and it is only natural for you to automatically copy and believe what you were exposed to for the first six early years. It controls your motor system, the ‘way you think’, respond and sometimes what you like gives you what is known as self concept. A huge percentage activities run in this part of the brain more than the conscious part, Muscle test is one of the test you can do to know how much your subconscious mind is in control.
Through extensive training, practice and repetition some of our reflex action can be reprogrammed, an advanced trained person have different reflex actions than an ordinary person, his senses have been heightened or in another words his/her senses has been brought into his/her awareness into higher level than the rest, this is to say they can easily escape and avoid danger even before it happens. A traditional Hawaii sailor has the ability to detect where the close land is in the middle of the sea without any campus of electronic device just by going into trance and detect the wave patterns.
The Super-conscious Part
There is another part of us (not sure if it can be located in the brain or it’s purely mental. Think about this for a moment, you need your subconscious mind as much as your need your conscious mind, if your eye muscles suddenly stop working properly, you won’t be able to go to work, drive, read etc. just a simple function failing the entire system is jeopardised and no i am not only talking about the body system but also your surroundings the people around you, the place you work, etc. to take it further your physical body is totally dependant on it’s surroundings in order for you to survive, you need oxygen, the right temperature for your body to exist, gravity, energy from the sun, food and many many other things that we usually take for granted. this is but part of the super-conscious mind, if the earth was rotating in a perfect circle around the sun there wouldn’t be any seasons of the year, no plants would grow, this shows clearly that there is the mind behind and it is part of us just as your arm, a heart, legs etc . some research have clearly shown that there is an intelligence outside our physical body read this article ‘The Intelligence Field’.
The super-conscious mind deals with phenomenon like serendipity, ‘coincidences’, psychic phenomenon such as telepathy, remote viewing, astral projection, telekinesis and many other that cannot be explained into the world of science, the super conscious has the ability to take you into different stages (trial and tribulations) to make you reach and accomplish your goals. Saying that we use the law of attraction by simply thinking about what we want to manifest in our lives would be rather shallow without understanding and include the mechanism behind it that makes it come into reality, to some people it takes less time to manifest what they think about because of how well they are aligned in harmony with their surroundings, and the communication between the subconscious mind and the conscious mind. lets say you want to manifest 100 dollars within six hours, the third hour one of your old friends calls you and says he/she wants to pay you back your 150 dollars that he/she owed you, but the only problem is she/he has moved 20 hours away from you, because of your thinking process you just give up and not try to think of the possibilities that you could have use other means to get that money. but it is because we have not brought our awareness to it that we ‘use 10% of our brains’.
Beyond comprehension.
This is simply yet to be discovered, the things that are there but because we are not that advanced yet to understand and comprehend that it is still part of us.
How do we utilize our brain power?
The question is not how to do, since this is and inborn quality of who you and me are we simply have to learn how to be aware of these higher parts of ourselves, there are simple steps to follow so that you can begin to apply and realise these parts of yourself.
- Be an open minded person, it is a fact that nobody has all the knowledge and knows everything, the more you give a chance for new knowledge to come to you the more aware of new things you will be, the tendency to stay in the state of “What i know is the ultimate TRUTH” is like digging your own grave from growth, and don’t be just a follower makes sure you ask questions apply it in your daily activities and the only way to find out is the results if you apply and it doesn’t bring the result you want then you know it is not true.
- Being aware of what is happening at every moment and time, there is a constant communication between our conscious, subconscious and super conscious mind, being alert and aware of what is happening every moment means listening to these signs and messages.
- Exploring beyond the norms, in our civilization it is Right Brained dominance means our choices are mostly made based on logics, even the way we put our records it is mostly logical, a piece of art would convey a message to you in a holistic way more than a written statement, just think about your favourite song, it sinks deeper and it motivates you, it gives you emotions, imaginations etc. but a simple statement may mislead you into totally different meaning. if you start taking things in with their ‘complete spectrum’ visual, auditory and Kinaesthetic means all your senses are involved in the process more than you would take something in once sense.
- Meditation and relaxation, most of people who meditate have a good brain synchronization the neural network function in a harmonious way more than those who don’t. you can decide to spend from 15 to 30 minutes everyday just sit down without doing anything, don’t sleep just sit, the first time it might be hard but eventually you will start to notice some of the solutions you were looking for comes natural and easily, this is because your mind settles and everything starts to naturally fall into it’s place.
I Get Distracted So Easily-What Should I Do
When your mind is easily distracted you can’t really accomplish much in life, you will start one sentence and end up with something which is irrelevant to what you started, it is like the feather in the wind, when it comes to long term projects you will accomplish none simply because you can’t focus on your projects. But you must differentiate between multi-tasking and being distracted.
Causes.
Our minds are indeed very complex but once you begin to understand how it works, then you will appreciate its true potential. There are couple of things that maybe the causes of a distractive mind;
- Means of operation; In the car race it is the driver who wins the race and not the vehicle, the way you operate your mind can be a cause of distraction, for example there are people who just do and react to whatever comes in their way, if they are browsing the internet they would respond to anything that displays on the computer, they would chat with anyone who wants to chat, click on any ads that is on the page. This is a mind programming which takes its form and result into a distractive mind.
- Environmental; we all know that in a noisy environment it is almost impossible to concentrate, that is just the tip of the iceberg, as our brain receive a lot of information that we are not even aware of, for example now as you are reading you don’t really pay attention to the temperature of your room, there can be a music playing in the background but you don’t even pay much attention to it, nevertheless your brain receives these information without you knowing.
- Psychological; There are people who have been trying to stay focus all their lives and it was a successful failure to stay concentrated, this is due to their early childhood stages where they grew up in a not so organized environment, which takes form as a distracted pattern deep within their subconscious mind.
- Lack of self-confidence: Some people are just easily distracted than others because of their personality, as for “means of operation” if you don’t have self-confidence it is easy to be distracted because your mind follows the pattern of your personality and whatever you try to do and get interrupted you will just stop what you are doing and do what others think or want you to do, which will take form and manifest as a distracted mind. And embed deep in your subconscious mind.
- Health, health counts on everything, some other types of food keeps makes you lazy and inactive, and it doesn’t add much nutrients to your body, as you east healthy your brain can repair itself easily and makes new pathways as you program it.
- Genetic; It is true that we inherit some of our parents behaviour, and being distracted easily can be a caused by our own genes, however this can be changed
Solution
A proper diagnose is half the cure if you can clearly determine the cause of your distracted mind then it will be easy to do something about it, and there are couple of things you can do to increase your focus and concentration such as
Meditation, if you can take about 5 minutes every day do a relaxation exercise and try to focus on your breath, when any though comes in your mind just let it go an keep focusing on your breath. This is a good mental discipline and you will begin to see the result. as for someone who is easily distracted, guided meditation can be handy.
Affirmations: You can set write down a positive affirmation that will help you improve your self-confidence and keep you focused.
Physical activities, when you are not active your mind takes the same pattern it just flows with the norm and whenever you try to do something different it try to keep you back in the same lazy pattern, but when you do physical activities like martial arts, sports, doing your chores etc. It will increase your focus and concentration.
Hypnosis: the key is not to give up if you try something couple of times and it doesn’t work always be open to try what works for you, hypnosis can be used to pin point the cause, and can also be used as a tool to reprogram your subconscious mind.
In general you can change your lifestyle, as everything has two poles you can do put yourself in a lifestyle keeps you focused, set plans and goals, make challenges always have something to do work on your ideas, set up projects and your mind will take that form, Everything is hard when you begin but once you develop the habit then it becomes part of you.
Brain Waves
The brain produces microscopic electrical frequencies as thoughts travels in the labyrinth of the brain. The physical conduits of these thoughts are the millions of nerve cells or neurons in the brain. Just as radio signals, in order to make a comprehensible message, are beamed out on radio waves, a band of signals within a defined frequency, so the brain’s activity also occurs in waves. Brain waves can be measured on an electro-encephalograph machine (which is normally abbreviated to E.E.G. Machine). By attaching sensitive electrodes to the scalp, it is possible to measure accurately the type of brain wave that a subject is producing. These waves are usually expressed in the number of cycles per second (or C.P.S.)
The brain produces 4 main frequencies:
- Beta level brain waves – range 13-25 C.P.S. (cycles per second)
- Alpha level brain waves – range 8-12 C.P.S.
- Theta level brain waves – range 4-7 C.P.S.
- Delta level brain waves – range 0.5-3 C.P.S.
The following chart relates each type of brain waves to its principal function. We must remember however, that when we speak of someone being ‘in alpha’ we mean that this is their characteristic and predominant brain wave. Other brain waves will also be present, but in smaller quantities than usual
The linking of left and right brain activities is important in producing a shift from learning to accelerated learning. Yet our society is very ‘beta orientated’. We are busy thinking about the problem in hand, but don’t leave ourselves sufficiently open to other influences, which would help us memorize faster and make the sort of less expected connections that we call creative thinking.
In beta you don’t see the wood for concentrating on the trees. But learn to relax, increase the proportion of the alpha and ideally theta brain waves, and you have created the conditions where you may begin to see the whole picture. ‘Alpha’ is a natural and receptive state of mind, that we can all attain through the techniques of relaxation. They principally involve simple and pleasant relaxation exercises and listening to certain types of music.
The theta brain wave pattern is especially interesting. It occurs spontaneously to most of us in the twilight state between being fully awake and falling asleep. Arthur Koestler called it `reverie’. This drowsy stage is associated with fleeting semi-hallucinatory images. Thousands of artistic and literary inspirations and scientific inventions have been credited to this state, a sort of freeform thinking that puts you in touch with your subconscious.
Many psychologists would agree it is a reasonable hypothesis that, when left/right brain symbiosis takes place, conscious and subconscious are also united. The proportion of theta brain waves becomes much higher than normal. This is the moment when logical left brain activity declines. The left brain, which normally acts as a filter or censor to the subconscious, drops its guard, and allows the more intuitive, emotional and creative depths of the right brain to become increasingly influential.
If the hypothesis is true, then do women, popularly characterised as more intuitive, reach a walking theta state more often than men; and can this be associated with the fact that their left/right brain link, the corpus callosum, is larger and richer in connective capabilities than men’s? We do not yet know, but it is a fascinating area for future research.
At the University of Colorado Medical Centre and at the Biofeedback Centre in Denver, Dr. Thomas Budzyski has found that, when people were trained to achieve and maintain theta brain waves using biofeedback techniques, they did indeed learn much faster. Moreover, many emotional and attitudinal problems were solved at the same time.
For example, in a theta state, suggestions that racial prejudice is wrong were well accepted. Suggestions to overweight people to follow a sensible eating pattern were accepted and subsequently complied with, and insomnia and drinking problems were successfuly tackled.
Some time ago a New York advertising agency was asked to produce a T.V. Commercial to combat racial prejudice. They produced two. The first used a carefully built up rational argument. The second was a highly emotional film featuring attractive young black children and using many subconscious but positive appeals for fairness.
The logical T.V. Commercial actually intensified the degree of racial prejudice. The subjects felt themselves threatened as they realized they could not give an equally dispassionate and rational counter argument. Consequently the only possible response was an aggressive defence involving an increased emotional commitment to their original attitude.
The second commercial however, worked. Emotion laden appeals went beyond the conscious, the intellectual objections, and created a new positive image at the subconscious level that changed the subject’s entire personal response, so no conflict or threat was aroused. Can intelligence be increased?
Whilst it is certainly an oversimplification to relate intelligence to brain capacity it is, however, interesting to relate three statements: The average I.Q. is 100 The genius-level is 160 The average human probably uses 4% of his potential brain power
If that average human could learn to use not 4% of his brain but a still minimal 7% of his brain, could he attain genius level? This article is about techniques that probably improve the human memory, that increase creativity and that provide access to unused brain power. The indications are that the same techniques can measurably improve intelligence.
