Brain can be trained in compassion, study shows

Until now, little was scientifically known about the human potential to cultivate compassion — the emotional state of caring for people who are suffering in a way that motivates altruistic behavior.

A new study by researchers at the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows that adults can be trained to be more compassionate. The report, published Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, investigates whether training adults in compassion can result in greater altruistic behavior and related changes in neural systems underlying compassion.

“Our fundamental question was, ‘Can compassion be trained and learned in adults? Can we become more caring if we practice that mindset?’” says Helen Weng, lead author of the study and a graduate student in clinical psychology. “Our evidence points to yes.”

In the study, the investigators trained young adults to engage in compassion meditation, an ancient Buddhist technique to increase caring feelings for people who are suffering. In the meditation, participants envisioned a time when someone has suffered and then practiced wishing that his or her suffering was relieved. They repeated phrases to help them focus on compassion such as, “May you be free from suffering. May you have joy and ease.”

Participants practiced with different categories of people, first starting with a loved one, someone whom they easily felt compassion for like a friend or family member. Then, they practiced compassion for themselves and, then, a stranger. Finally, they practiced compassion for someone they actively had conflict with called the “difficult person,” such as a troublesome coworker or roommate.

“It’s kind of like weight training,” Weng says. “Using this systematic approach, we found that people can actually build up their compassion ‘muscle’ and respond to others’ suffering with care and a desire to help.”

Compassion training was compared to a control group that learned cognitive reappraisal, a technique where people learn to reframe their thoughts to feel less negative. Both groups listened to guided audio instructions over the Internet for 30 minutes per day for two weeks. “We wanted to investigate whether people could begin to change their emotional habits in a relatively short period of time,” says Weng.

The real test of whether compassion could be trained was to see if people would be willing to be more altruistic — even helping people they had never met. The research tested this by asking the participants to play a game in which they were given the opportunity to spend their own money to respond to someone in need (called the “Redistribution Game”). They played the game over the Internet with two anonymous players, the “Dictator” and the “Victim.” They watched as the Dictator shared an unfair amount of money (only $1 out of $10) with the Victim. They then decided how much of their own money to spend (out of $5) in order to equalize the unfair split and redistribute funds from the Dictator to the Victim.

“We found that people trained in compassion were more likely to spend their own money altruistically to help someone who was treated unfairly than those who were trained in cognitive reappraisal,” Weng says.

“We wanted to see what changed inside the brains of people who gave more to someone in need. How are they responding to suffering differently now?” asks Weng. The study measured changes in brain responses using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) before and after training. In the MRI scanner, participants viewed images depicting human suffering, such as a crying child or a burn victim, and generated feelings of compassion towards the people using their practiced skills. The control group was exposed to the same images, and asked to recast them in a more positive light as in reappraisal.

The researchers measured how much brain activity had changed from the beginning to the end of the training, and found that the people who were the most altruistic after compassion training were the ones who showed the most brain changes when viewing human suffering. They found that activity was increased in the inferior parietal cortex, a region involved in empathy and understanding others.

Compassion training also increased activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the extent to which it communicated with the nucleus accumbens, brain regions involved in emotion regulation and positive emotions.

“People seem to become more sensitive to other people’s suffering, but this is challenging emotionally. They learn to regulate their emotions so that they approach people’s suffering with caring and wanting to help rather than turning away,” explains Weng.

Compassion, like physical and academic skills, appears to be something that is not fixed, but rather can be enhanced with training and practice. “The fact that alterations in brain function were observed after just a total of seven hours of training is remarkable,” explains UW-Madison psychology and psychiatry professor Richard J. Davidson, founder and chair of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds and senior author of the article.

“There are many possible applications of this type of training,” Davidson says. “Compassion and kindness training in schools can help children learn to be attuned to their own emotions as well as those of others, which may decrease bullying. Compassion training also may benefit people who have social challenges such as social anxiety or antisocial behavior.”

Weng is also excited about how compassion training can help the general population. “We studied the effects of this training with healthy participants, which demonstrated that this can help the average person. I would love for more people to access the training and try it for a week or two — what changes do they see in their own lives?”

Both compassion and reappraisal trainings are available on the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds’ website. “I think we are only scratching the surface of how compassion can transform people’s lives,” says Weng.

via Brain can be trained in compassion, study shows.

There is hope!

Federal Government Funds $400G Smoke-Detecting Underwear Project

Smoke-detecting underwear is the latest federally-funded project commissioned to monitor peoples’ smoking habits for them.

The project, which was overseen by the National Institute of Health and commissioned by scientists at the University of Alabama, uses a bracelet and a sensor located on the midsection to keep track of hand-to-mouth motions and inhalation, according to the scientists. The development of the project began in 2010 as the Personal Automatic Cigarette Tracker, which would record the frequency of the motions with real-time information.

“We are trying to eliminate the need for self-report from people about how much they smoke, when they smoke, how many puffs they take from the cigarette,” said Dr. Edward Sazonov, an associate professor at the University of Alabama, in a news release. “The combination of these two sensors, hopefully, will allow us to monitor cigarette smoking without asking people when and how much they smoke.”

After three years in development, the device is essentially a vest with multiple straps that’s worn below the belt. Right now, the project might be considered too bulky to wear over everyday garments.

The project is believed to have cost the federal government $400,000.

http://atlanta.cbslocal.com/2013/05/20/federal-government-funds-400g-smoke-detecting-underwear-project/

Does an addiction to smoking cause brain damage which keeps people from being able to correctly report how much they really smoke? Seems possible.

Environmental Toxins Linked to Childhood Obesity

Are toys, pacifiers and even shampoo driving the epidemic of childhood obesity?

Researchers from the Children’s Environmental Health Center at The Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York have found an association between a class of chemical substances known as “phthalates” and obesity in young children.

Phthalates are man-made chemicals that disrupt your endocrine system because they mimic the body’s natural hormones. They are commonly used in building materials like plastic flooring and wall coverings, food processing materials and medical devices. They are also found in many personal-care products such as shampoos, nail polish, deodorants, fragrances, hair gels, mousses, hairsprays, and hand and body lotions. Children’s toys and some pacifiers are known to contain phthalates which help soften the plastics used in the manufacturing.

Phthalates have already been cited as a concern for menopausal women because of their endocrine disrupting properties.

Previous studies have found that use of phthalates among pregnant women can lead to a feminization of boy babies and infertility in men. Animal studies suggest they can lead to breast cancer.

This study was the first to examine the relationship between phthalate exposure and obesity in children. Published in the journal Environmental Research, the study was funded by the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, the National Cancer Institute, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Mount Sinai researchers measured phthalate concentrations in the urine of 387 black and Hispanic children in New York City, and recorded body measurements including BMI, height, and waist circumference one year later. The urine tests revealed that greater than 97 percent of study participants had been exposed to phthalates typically found in personal care products such as perfume, lotions, and cosmetics; varnishes; and medication or nutritional supplement coatings.

The team found an association between concentrations of these phthalates with BMI and waist circumference among overweight children. BMI in overweight girls with the highest exposure to phthalates was 10 percent higher than those with the lowest exposure.

Prior research had already shown that exposure to these everyday chemicals may impair childhood neurodevelopment.

A subsequent study found that children with the highest levels of a particular chemical, di-ethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP), in their blood had nearly five times the odds of being obese compared with children with the lowest levels.

The percentage of obese children aged six to 11 in the United States has grown from seven percent in 1980 to more than 40 percent in 2008, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 15 percent of American children between the ages six and 19 are now characterized as obese.

Phthalates are everywhere and it’s impossible to avoid them completely.

Here are a few things you can do to reduce your family’s exposure

1. Look for toys and pacifiers that are advertised as phthalate-free.
2. Read the labels of all personal care products and avoid anything with “phthalate” or any hyphenated version of it on the label. Also avoid anything with abbreviations of chemical names such as DBP, DEP, BzBP or DMP (in insect repellents).
3. Avoid personal care products that list “fragrance” as an ingredient since that often denotes a combination of ingredients that may include phthalates.
4. Only use or buy plastics with a recycling code of 1, 2 or 5. Other codes (3 or 7) are more likely to contain phthalates.

http://banoosh.com/blog/2013/05/16/environmental-toxins-linked-to-childhood-obesity/

“Buycott” App Lets You Boycott Monsanto And More By Scanning Items in Your Shopping Cart

In her keynote speech at last year’s annual Netroots Nation gathering, Darcy Burner pitched a seemingly simple idea to the thousands of bloggers and web developers in the audience. The former Microsoft MSFT +0.94% programmer and congressional candidate proposed a smartphone app allowing shoppers to swipe barcodes to check whether conservative billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch were behind a product on the shelves.

Burner figured the average supermarket shopper had no idea that buying Brawny paper towels, Angel Soft toilet paper or Dixie cups meant contributing cash to Koch Industries through its subsidiary Georgia-Pacific. Similarly, purchasing a pair of yoga pants containing Lycra or a Stainmaster carpet meant indirectly handing the Kochs your money (Koch Industries bought Invista, one of the world’s largest fiber and textiles companies, in 2004 from DuPont).

At the time, Burner created a mock interface for her app, but that’s as far as she got. She was waiting to find the right team to build out the back end, which could be complicated given often murky corporate ownership structures.

She wasn’t aware that as she delivered her Netroots speech, a group of developers was hard at work on Buycott, an even more sophisticated version of the app she proposed.

“I remember reading Forbes’ story on the proposed app to help boycott Koch Industries and wishing that we were ready to launch our product,” said Buycott’s marketing director Maceo Martinez.

The app itself is the work of one Los Angeles-based 26-year-old freelance programmer, Ivan Pardo, who has devoted the last 16 months to Buycott. “It’s been completely bootstrapped up to this point,” he said. Martinez and another friend have pitched in to promote the app.Pardo’s handiwork is available for download on iPhone or Android, making its debut in iTunes and Google GOOG +3.26% Play in early May. You can scan the barcode on any product and the free app will trace its ownership all the way to its top corporate parent company, including conglomerates like Koch Industries.

Once you’ve scanned an item, Buycott will show you its corporate family tree on your phone screen. Scan a box of Splenda sweetener, for instance, and you’ll see its parent, McNeil Nutritionals, is a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson JNJ +0.77%.

Even more impressively, you can join user-created campaigns to boycott business practices that violate your principles rather than single companies. One of these campaigns, Demand GMO Labeling, will scan your box of cereal and tell you if it was made by one of the 36 corporations that donated more than $150,000 to oppose the mandatory labeling of genetically modified food.

Deciding to add that campaign to your Buycott app might make buying your breakfast nearly impossible, as that list includes not just headline grabbers like agricultural giant Monsanto but just about every big consumer company with a presence in the supermarket aisle: Coca-Cola, Nestle, Kraft, Heinz, Kellogg’s, Unilever and more.

Buycott is still working on adding new data to its back end and fine-tuning its information on corporate ownership structures. Most companies in the current database actually own more brands than Buycott has on record. The developers are asking shoppers to help improve their technology by inputting names of products they scan that the app doesn’t already recognize. …

via New App Lets You Boycott Koch Brothers, Monsanto And More By Scanning Your Shopping Cart – Forbes.

Cool, I got the app and looked at the campaigns. With a click I’m now one of the 20,641 people who demand GMO labeling.

It has only 2 stars in the Apple App Store, seemingly due to it not working for barcode scans seemingly due to server problems. Could it be bad planning for the amount of interest, or are they under a denial of service attack from one of those super rich companies they want to financially impact?

Back Pain, Best Natural Muscle Relaxer

I’ve had nearly a full week of back pain so bad that when I move the wrong way, or sneeze or cough, I fall down.

Last Sunday I re-injured my lower back at a point that was in pain a year ago when I was rear-ended by a large truck when I stopped for a pedestrian at a crosswalk.

Today, while enjoying my continuing headache and back pain after sipping some Valerian root tea and while sitting in a hot Epsom salts bath, I found the following article which claims that carbon dioxide is the best natural muscle relaxer.

It seems we get the most oxygen and have the least CO2 in our cells right before we wake up in the morning. My back certainly was at its worse this morning, but I thought this was just due to a lack of movement.

Another point that seems to support this theory is that valerian root reduces the respiration rate. If that is the main way it relaxes muscles meditation to slow breathing may work just as well.

… Dozens of studies pointed out adverse effects of low CO2 levels on muscle cells. In his research review paper, “Physiological effects of hyperventilation” Dr. Brown analyzed almost 300 clinical studies. He wrote, “Studies designed to determine the effects produced by hyperventilation on nerve and muscle have been consistent in their finding on increased irritability” (Brown, 1953).

Normal carbon dioxide concentrations restores the harmonious work of different muscular groups, such as all smooth muscles of arteries and arterioles and bronchi with bronchioles, the heart, muscles of the digestive tract, and so forth. This helps to get rid of spasms (e.g., heart attacks, asthma attacks, constipation, etc.) and other problems with muscles.

How to relax muscles with the best natural muscle relaxant

In order to relieve muscular tension permanently and have normal levels of this natural muscle relaxant, it is necessary to normalize one’s breathing pattern 24/7. One does not need over the counter muscle relaxers. Slowing down one breathing back to the medical norm is possible by addressing lifestyle factors and those breathing techniques that make breathing lighter and slower so that we have larger carbon dioxide and oxygen concentrations in body cells. Hence, the treatment should include breathing retraining exercises (e.g., Amazing DIY device, Buteyko breathing therapy, and/or Frolov respiratory device) and correction of lifestyle risk factors. …

http://www.normalbreathing.com/CO2-natural-muscle-relaxers.php

Results: After 20 minutes in a hot Epsom salts bath after taking 40 drops of Valerian root extract and purposefully slightly under breathing I was able to put on my socks without a painful muscle spasm in my lower back. It still hurt, but it did not seize up.

Now I’m wondering if getting slightly less oxygen would reduce the body’s overall oxidative stress and inflammation. I need a pulse O2 meter to see if blood oxygen is changeable with breathing habit changes. Anyone know?

Diabetes: dirty air ‘may raise’ insulin resistance risk + fighting oxidative stress

Children’s exposure to air traffic pollution could increase their risk of insulin resistance, which can lead to diabetes in adults, suggests a study in Diabetologia.

German research on 397 10-year-olds found that living close to a major road increased resistance by 7% per 500m.

Air pollutants are known to be oxidisers that can impact on lipids and proteins in the blood.

But some experts say the results should be treated with caution.

The children in the study were invited for blood sampling at the age of 10, and glucose and insulin measurements were taken.

Their level of exposure to traffic pollution was estimated using air pollution figures from 2008-09 for their birth address neighbourhood.

The results were adjusted to take into account birth weight, body mass index (BMI) and exposure to second-hand smoke at home.

The study concluded that levels of insulin resistance were greater in children with higher exposure to air pollution, such as nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate matter.

It also found a larger effect in children with higher BMIs.

Oxidisers

Elisabeth Thiering and Joachim Heinrich, who led the research at the German Research Centre for Environmental Health in Neuherberg, said the link between traffic pollution and insulin resistance could be explained.

“Although toxicity differs between air pollutants, they are all considered potent oxidisers that act either directly on lipids and proteins, or indirectly through the activation of intracellular oxidant pathways,” said Dr Heinrich.”Oxidative stress caused by exposure to air pollutants may therefore play a role in the development of insulin resistance.” …

via BBC News – Diabetes: dirty air ‘may raise’ insulin resistance risk.

A quick review of oxidative stress from wikipedia:

Oxidative stress reflects an imbalance between the systemic manifestation of reactive oxygen species and a biological system’s ability to readily detoxify the reactive intermediates or to repair the resulting damage. Disturbances in the normal redox state of cells can cause toxic effects through the production of peroxides and free radicals that damage all components of the cell, including proteins, lipids, and DNA. Further, some reactive oxidative species act as cellular messengers in redox signaling. Thus, oxidative stress can cause disruptions in normal mechanisms of cellular signaling.

In humans, oxidative stress is thought to be involved in the development of cancer,^[1] Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease,^[2] atherosclerosis, heart failure,^[3] myocardial infarction,^[4][5] fragile X syndrome,^[6] Sickle Cell Disease,^[7] lichen planus,^[8] vitiligo,^[9] autism,^[10] and chronic fatigue syndrome.^[11] However, reactive oxygen species can be beneficial, as they are used by the immune system as a way to attack and kill pathogens.^[12] Short-term oxidative stress may also be important in prevention of aging by induction of a process named mitohormesis.^[13]

 

 

What are the best ways to reduce oxidative stress? Here’s an interesting paper on the subject:

The reduction of oxidative stress could be achieved in three levels: by lowering exposure to environmental pollutants with oxidizing properties, by increasing levels of endogenous and exogenous antioxidants, or by lowering the generation of oxidative stress by stabilizing mitochondrial energy production and efficiency. Endogenous oxidative stress could be influenced in two ways: by prevention of ROS formation or by quenching of ROS with antioxidants. However, the results of epidemiological studies where people were treated with synthetic antioxidants are inconclusive and contradictory. Recent evidence suggests that antioxidant supplements (although highly recommended by the pharmaceutical industry and taken by many individuals) do not offer sufficient protection against oxidative stress, oxidative damage or increase the lifespan. The key to the future success of decreasing oxidative-stress-induced damage should thus be the suppression of oxidative damage without disrupting the wellintegrated antioxidant defense network. Approach to neutralize free radicals with antioxidants should be changed into prevention of free radical formation. Thus, this paper addresses oxidative stress and strategies to reduce it with the focus on nutritional and psychosocial interventions of oxidative stress prevention, that is, methods to stabilize mitochondria structure and energy efficiency, or approaches which would increase endogenous antioxidative protection and repair systems.

http://www.hindawi.com/journals/oximed/2011/194586/

Yoga and Meditation, some say, are great weapons against oxidative stress:

Most people have heard of antioxidants. Not many have heard of oxidative stress. This type of stress in caused when the cellular functioning of the body breaks down due to poor diet, lack of exercise, drinking alcohol, being exposed to smoke, and other environmental toxins, as well as internal toxicity created by the metabolic process. Oxidative stress can cause a number of diseases, including heart problems, arthritis, sagging skin and other degenerative diseases. While we all need oxygen to survive, oxidative stress, we could do without! …

Yoga and meditation have been shown to reduce free radical count, which leads to arthritis and heart disease, as well as other diseases in numerous studies. Many postures in yoga aim at reducing toxic build up in the body, and this includes free radicals consumed in our diets and that we are exposed to through the environment, but also those created by our own, natural metabolic process. Slow, mindful postures can also burn oxygen more slowly, and not burn up glucose, which is what normal exercise does. Furthermore, when meditation is added, the mental and metabolic processes are slowed so that less free radicals are produced and more are eliminated from the body through a regular, deep and relaxed breathe. This happens primarily through reducing the natural inflammatory reaction of the body.

http://yogameditationhome.com/how-to-reduce-oxidative-stress/

I’m currently using a special sheet with wire fibers that is connected to a grounded electrical outlet. The idea behind this is that sleeping grounded reduces oxidative stress by allowing electrical current to flow back to the earth.

http://www.earthing.com/

The sheet feels very smooth, you can’t tell there are metal fibers in it. There may be nothing to it, but after reading the book and considering how it might work, I decided to try it for a while.

San Francisco surrenders in fight over cell phone warnings

San Francisco city leaders, after losing a key round in court against the cell phone industry, have agreed to revoke an ordinance that would have been the first in the United States to require retailers to warn consumers about potentially dangerous radiation levels.

In a move watched by other U.S. states and cities considering similar measures, the city Board of Supervisors voted on Tuesday to settle a lawsuit with the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association by accepting a permanent injunction against the right-to-know cell phone ordinance.

The group had alleged the law violated its free-speech rights, and the settlement marked a victory for the industry as the Federal Communications Commission considers a reassessment of safe radiation exposure limits adopted in 1996.

“This is just a terrible blow to public health,” Ellen Marks, an advocate for the measure, said outside the supervisors’ chambers. She said her husband suffers from a brain tumor on the same side of his head to which he most often held his mobile phone.

The industry association has asserted the San Francisco ordinance, if put into effect, would mislead consumers about the relative risks posed by cell phones, contrary to the FCC’s determination that all wireless phones legally sold in the Unites States are safe.

The group’s members include some of the nation’s largest cell phone carriers and manufacturers, including Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Samsung and Apple.

Deputy City Attorney Vince Chhabria said a federal appeals court decision last year upholding a preliminary injunction against the measure signaled that trying to win the case at trial would be a long shot. If the city lost, a judge could have awarded the industry group as much as $500,000 in attorneys’ fees, he said.

The 2011 ordinance mandated warnings that cellular phones, including smartphone devices, emit potentially cancer-causing radiation. The statute, which a judge blocked before it took effect, also would have required retailers of the devices to post notices stating that World Health Organization cancer experts have deemed mobile phones “possibly carcinogenic.”

Supervisor David Campos reluctantly supported the settlement. “I think the legal reality is that if we don’t approve the settlement, we’re talking about having to pay $500,000 in legal fees,” he said.

Chhabria said the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling had left San Francisco in the position of having to prove that scientists concurred about the hazards of cell phones and that the FCC no longer believes they are safe.

Despite mounting evidence the phones may cause brain tumors, scientists disagree and are hesitant to draw conclusions.

Dr. Gabriel Zada, a neurosurgery professor at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, found in a 2012 study that the age-adjusted incidence of malignant tumors in the parts of the brain closest to where people hold their phones rose significantly from 1992 and 2006 in California. But Zada told Reuters he could not draw any conclusions about the dangers of cell phones from his findings.

The Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit research organization, had pushed for San Francisco’s right-to-know law.

“If the nation’s experience with tobacco taught us anything, it is that it is dangerous to wait until there is scientific consensus about a potential health threat before providing consumers with information on how they can protect themselves,” said Renee Sharp, the group’s research director.

Mobile phones are tested to ensure their emissions fall within FCC limits considered safe. The limits, however, fail to reflect the latest research or actual conditions under which mobile phones are used, liked being held in a pocket directly against the body while talking through an earpiece, according to a Government Accountability Office report. …

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/08/usa-sanfrancisco-cellphones-idUSL2N0DP02320130508?feedType=RSS&feedName=cyclicalConsumerGoodsSector

Nano-scientists develop new kind of portable water purification system

Researchers at India’s Institute of Technology Madras have developed a new kind of portable water purification system based on nanoparticle filtration. In their paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team explains how their new device does its job—it employs nanoparticles to remove not just biological hazards, but toxic heavy metals as well.

The researchers note that access to clean drinking water is still a major worldwide problem—making it available to everyone, they say, would save approximately 2 million lives a year (approximately 42.6 percent of deaths are due to diarrhea alone and impact mostly children). To help reach the UN millennium development goal of doubling the number of people with sustainable access to safe drinking water by 2015, the team has been applying nanoparticle technology to the problem.

The system they have developed is a two-stage filtration process that provides 10 liters of clean water in just an hour’s time. The biggest challenge, the team says, was figuring out how to deliver silver ions into the water to be processed, without using any electricity. The process also had to use a minimal amount of silver ions to meet international safety standards. The answer, they say, was to use a new material that employs silver nanoparticles that are trapped in tiny cage-like structures made of other clay materials.

Other nanoparticles are used to create other materials that serve as filters, killing microbes and sucking heavy metals out of the water, making it safe to drink or use for cooking. The first stage of the process kills viruses, bacteria and other dangerous micro-biota. The second stage absorbs heavy metals such as lead and arsenic.

The result is an extremely inexpensive portable water purification device—the system cost is comparable to other portable filtration systems, but the processing itself comes to less than $3 per year. The filters are good for approximately one year (3,600 liters) and filtration can be run more than once per day if needed. The researchers believe their device is capable of providing all the drinking water a family of four would need.

via Nano-scientists develop new kind of portable water purification system.

Why having “sex” is a healthy habit

If you thought the only benefit of sex was, well, pleasure, here’s some news for you.
Making love is good for adults. And making love regularly is even better! Not only does it help you sleep well, relieve stress and burn calories, there are several other reasons why you need to have sex more often.

Improves cardiovascular health
A recent study says that men who have sex more than twice a week, had a lesser risk of getting a heart attack than men who had sex less than once a month.
Relieves pain
If you’re using your headache as an excuse not to make love, stop doing it. Just when you’re about to orgasm, the level of oxytocin, a hormone increases by five times. The release of endorphins reduces aches and pains.

Increases immunity
Regular love making increases the body’s level of the immune-boosting antibody immunoglobulin A (IgA), which will make your body stronger against illnesses like the common cold and fever.
Reduces stress
Stressed out with work or family problems? Don’t let it affect your performance in the bedroom. Not only will having sex improve your mood, but a study has proved that folks who indulge in regular bedroom activities can handle stress better and are happier people generally.
Promotes longevity
When one has an orgasm, a hormone called Dehydroepiandrosterone is released, which improves your immunity and repairs tissue and keeps the skin healthy. Men who have at least two orgasms a week have live longer than men who have sex just once every few weeks.
Increases blood circulation
Because your heart rate increases when you’re having sex, fresh blood is supplied to your organs and cells. While used blood is removed, you also discard things from your body that cause you to feel tired.
You sleep better
Notice that just after you make love, the sleep you get thereafter is much more relaxed. Getting a good night’s sleep will make you feel alert and healthy overall.
Improves overall fitness
If you find going to the gym mundane or working out at home a task, here’s another way to help you lose the flab and keep in shape. Regular sex will do wonders for your waistline. Half an hour of love making burns more than 80 calories.
Increases your levels of estrogen and testosterone
In men, testosterone is what makes you more passionate in the sack. Not only will it make you feel way better in bed, but it is also known to improve your muscles and bones, keeps your heart healthy and a check on your cholesterol. Estrogen in women protects them against heart disease and also determines a woman’s body scent….

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/relationships/man-woman/Why-having-sex-is-a-healthy-habit/articleshow/5310912.cms

Listening to Music Prompts Numerous Brain Changes

… When you listen to music, much more is happening in your body than simple auditory processing. Music triggers activity in the nucleus accumbens, a part of your brain that releases the feel-good chemical dopamine and is involved in forming expectations.

At the same time, the amygdala, which is involved in processing emotion, and the prefrontal cortex, which makes possible abstract decision-making, are also activated, according to new research published in the journal Science.1

Based on the brain activity in certain regions, especially the nucleus accumbens, captured by an fMRI imager while participants listened to music, the researchers could predict how much money the listeners were willing to spend on previously unheard music. As you might suspect, songs that triggered activity in the emotional and intellectual areas of the brain demanded a higher price.

Interestingly, the study’s lead author noted that your brain learns how to predict how different pieces of music will unfold using pattern recognition and prediction, skills that may have been key to our evolutionary progress. Timereported:2

“These predictions are culture-dependent and based on experience: someone raised on rock or Western classical music won’t be able to predict the course of an Indian raga, for example, and vice versa.

But if a piece develops in a way that’s both slightly novel and still in line with our brain’s prediction, we tend to like it a lot. And that, says [lead researcher] Salimpoor, ‘is because we’ve made a kind of intellectual conquest.’

Music may, in other words, tap into a brain mechanism that was key to our evolutionary progress. The ability to recognize patterns and generalize from experience, to predict what’s likely to happen in the future — in short, the ability to imagine — is something humans do far better than any other animals. It’s what allowed us (aided by the far less glamorous opposable thumb) to take over the world.”

Why Music Makes Us Feel United

… music also has an, almost uncanny, ability to connect us to one another.

Separate research published this month showed one reason for why this might be. When listening to four pieces of classical music they had never heard before, study participants’ brains reacted in much the same way. Areas of the brain involved in movement planning, memory and attention all had similar activation patterns when the participants listened to the same music, which suggests we may each experience music in similar ways.

The study’s lead author noted:3

“We spend a lot of time listening to music — often in groups, and often in conjunction with synchronized movement and dance … Here, we’ve shown for the first time that despite our individual differences in musical experiences and preferences, classical music elicits a highly consistent pattern of activity across individuals in several brain structures including those involved in movement planning, memory and attention.”

Co-author Daniel Levitin, PhD, expanded:4

“It’s not our natural tendency to thrust ourselves into a crowd of 20,000 people, but for a Muse concert or a Radiohead concert we’ll do it … There’s this unifying force that comes from the music, and we don’t get that from other things.”

Music Relieves Anxiety Better Than Drugs and Benefits Premature Babies

If you want a more concrete example of music’s powers, a meta-analysis by Levitin and colleagues found some striking benefits of music after reviewing 400 studies.5 Among the data was one study that revealed listening to music resulted in less anxiety and lower cortisol levels among patients about to undergo surgery than taking anti-anxiety drugs. Other evidence showed music has an impact on antibodies linked to immunity and may lead to higher levels of bacteria-fighting immune cells.

Still more research revealed that playing music in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) improved the health of premature babies with respiratory distress or sepsis.6 When parents sang to their babies, or sounds mimicking those in the womb were played, numerous benefits occurred, including changes in heart rates, sucking behavior and parents’ stress levels. The researchers noted:

“Entrained with a premature infant’s observed vital signs, sound and lullaby may improve feeding behaviors and sucking patterns and may increase prolonged periods of quiet–alert states. Parent-preferred lullabies, sung live, can enhance bonding, thus decreasing the stress parents associate with premature infant care.”

Taken together, the latest research makes a strong case for using music as a therapeutic tool for babies and adults alike.

Why Music Should be a Part of Your Workouts, Too

Many people instinctively don a headset linked to their favorite music when hitting the gym, which makes sense since certain types of music can motivate you to run faster, or keep going even though you’re fatigued, giving you a better workout. Additionally, research has shown that listening to music while exercising boosted cognitive levels and verbal fluency skills in people diagnosed with coronary artery disease (coronary artery disease has been linked to a decline in cognitive abilities). Signs of improvement in verbal fluency areas more than doubled after listening to music compared to that of the non-music session.7

Listening to music while exercising can also improve your performance, increasing your endurance by 15 percent,8 and your movement will likely follow the tempo of the song. For instance, in one study when the music’s tempo slowed, the subjects’ exertion level reduced as well.9 And when the tempo was increased, their performance followed suit.

Your body may be simply responding to the beat on a more or less subconscious level, but the type and tempo of the music you choose while working out may also influence your conscious motivation.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/04/27/brain-craves-music.aspx?e_cid=20130505_SNL_MS_1

One thing that can help you as a songwriter is to try to workout to your music. You may find that you need a stronger beat, different tempo, etc.