Optimism and Laughter

Positive Attitude Month :

Optimism and laughter, while enjoyable in their own right, bring benefits like health, longevity, and a decrease in stress. You may also know that a positive attitude can be cultivated, meaning even if you're not naturally prone to bright-side looking, you can actively change that.

October is Positive Attitude Month, which reminds you to make the effort to cultivate the attitude that can bring you greater health, happier relationships, and more luck in life. 

It's true that we are all born with a certain "set point" for some traits, such as openness, agreeableness, extroversion, conscientiousness, an neuroticism (known as "The Big Five" in the world of psychology), and these inborn personality tendencies influence our levels of optimism, positivity, and happiness. 

Positive Psychology research has found, we can alter our habitual thought patterns by actively changing the way we choose to see things. 

If we challenge negative thinking patterns, for example, and replace them with more positive patterns, the new, more positive patterns become our habit, and we can actually create a new set-point for happiness.

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle."
- Plato

We are all fighting a great battle in our lives as we seek more happiness and avoid pain therefore, we need to adopt attitudes that buoy us in turbulent moments.  Having a positive outlook is a tool you can use to motivate yourself to find solutions.  Learned helplessness is an attitude to avoid because you are going face daily difficulties.  Deal with the problems as they arise and do not waste energy worrying about the future or regretting the past.  Life unfolds in moments and our power to act is in the now.    

I cannot think of a better way to counteract the pain and uncertainty of living with M.S. than to manage your attitude.  We can choose how we feel about our situation.  Feeling better about ourselves will give us the motivation to take better care of ourselves.  M.S. is a disease with no cause, no cure and no effective treatment which forces us to take some responsibility for our well-being.  Addressing areas of your lifestyle such as, diet can exert many benefits in dealing with chronic illness.  We are fighting a great battle and need a Warrior's attitude towards our enemy within.

Positive Attitude Resources From Elizabeth Scott: 

http://stress.about.com/b/2011/10/02/happy-positive-attitude-month.htm

How To Find Greater Resilience

http://stress.about.com/b/2011/09/29/finding-the-bright-side-can-equal-greater-resilience.htm

Finding The Bright Side Can Equal Greater Resilience:


When dealing with challenges in life, we tend to find situations more stressful if we have less control over our circumstances. Often, we may feel that we have virtually no control in some of the situations we face, but we always have some control over our responses to these situations. the one thing we can control is our thoughts. We can control our thoughts, and on what we focus on in any situation, which can help control how we react.

Because the body's stress response is triggered by perceived threats as opposed to objectively verifiable ones, we know that shifting our focus away from seeing every stressor as a threat, and toward seeing stressors as challenges or even potential opportunities, can make a significant difference in how stressed we feel. However, it can be difficult to find a way to alter our thoughts and patterns of thinking about things, especially when stressed. It helps to know what to do.

That's where positive psychology research can help. One study in particular shed some light on a few areas of how to change your perspective and feel less stress and depression. The study, built upon previous research that showed that finding the hidden benefits in a difficult situation can be an effective way to reduce depressive symptoms and associated stress, examined a couple of unique ways to achieve this state of mind. Specifically, the researchers looked at two routes to gaining a 'benefit-finding' frame of mind: optimism, and maintaining a good mood (also known as 'positive affect') in patients who had been diagnosed with MS. In this randomized clinical trial, 127 MS patients were given telephone counseling, and assessed at the beginning of the study, at 8 weeks, and 16 weeks into counseling sessions, using four separate assessments. After adjusting for time since MS diagnosis and type of treatment, assessments affirmed that decreased depression was associated with increased benefit-finding over time, and that benefit-finding was affected by both increased positive affect and increased optimism. This study not only affirms that finding the positive in a negative situation can indeed bring real benefits for mood, but sheds some light on effective ways of altering your perspective long-term.

Mindfulness Continental Style

“The life of our city is rich in poetic and marvelous subjects.
We are enveloped and steeped as though in an atmosphere of the marvelous;

but we do not notice it.”
(Charles Baudelaire - French poet, 1821-1867)

Imagery for Getting Well

Creating the image of meaning in despair, finding joy in crisis, and imaging hope in tragedy.  In other words, it is about seeing the pony in the mire of a life-threatening or chronic condition.

- Deirdre Davis Brigham, author "Imagery for Getting Well -Clinical Applications of Behavioral Medicine

Beginner's Mind

Sit down before facts like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion.  Follow humbly whatever and to whatever abyss nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.
- T.H. Huxley

Pay attention to what you are still able to do rather than what you have lost.

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive. 

And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who are alive.


Success is living in such a way that you are using what God
has given you - -your intellect, abilities, and energy
--to reach the purpose He intends for your life.

IMAGERY FOR GETTING WELL

CLINICAL APPLICATIONS OF BEHAVIORAL MEDICINE

MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS (MS)

DESCRIPTION

MS is a disease of the central nervous system involving the breaking down and scarring of the myelin sheath by the immune system which no longer recognizes the myelin as "self." When this fatty insulation of the nerve fibers is disturbed, the messages that control bodily movements/functions are distorted or blocked or communicate to the wrong muscular destination. The condition tends to have an uneven course of exacerbations and remission; however, stress frequently precedes exacerbations. In general, medical treatment is focused on symptom relief.

IMMUNE DYSFUNCTION

Present theories concerning MS involve: (1) a viral etiology, (2) an autoimmune dysfunction, and (3) a combination of the two (the immune system attacking a virus sleeping deep within the cells of the myelin sheath).

DESIRED IMMUNE RESPONSE

    * Immune system recognition of myelin sheath as "self"

  * Harmonious interaction of immune system with the body, especially the myelin-recognizing and loving "self" cells.

    * Increased suppressor cells

SEEDS FOR IMAGERY

A honey-like substance coats the nerves- melting tough scars into viable powerful myelin material- filling any gaps in or degeneration of the myelin sheath, perfectly protecting and insulating the nerve fiber, allowing it to carry the nerve impulse precisely from the brain to the muscle where it is needed.

See a substance pouring over the tangled nerves in nerve trunks, like a soothing oil poured over spaghetti, coating the nerve strands so that they untangle and magically fall into relaxed, straight strands.

See the damaged nerves arcing like frayed electrical wires. See maintenance workers reweave the tattered insulation so the nerves cease short-circuiting each other.

Hand and Foot Warming Exercises

See white clouds in the head (MS scarring as seen in an MRI) being blown away by a powerful wind.

See the nervous system n an indigo blue color. Where there is damage, the scales and scars are greyish-white. See a swarm of mud-daubers flying to a palette heaped with translucent myelin. Some of the mud-daubers use their stingers to cut away the damaged myelin and scales from the nerves. Others pick up the myelin compound and spread it into the area perfectly. When the repairs dry, they turn dark indigo blue, blending so perfectly that no trace of the repair work remains.

See a big eraser rubbing out the lesions in the brain.

Imagine a worker with scrub brushes, pumice, and rouge cloths scouring away the scars and then painting fresh myelin into the area, which turns indigo blue to match the rest of the system.

See calamine lotion being patted onto areas by the immune system. See the immune system change from being irritable and angry to protective, loving, and friendly. See the whole body experience regeneration.

Demand inwardly that your body (and any medication that you are taking) produce all its healing substances. Sense and feel the substances being released...sense the suppressor T cells...teaching the other white blood cells to distinguish friend (the myelin sheath) from foe (bacteria). Sense and see this happening all along the spinal column, from the bottom to the top and up into the brain, as a ladder of flashing lights sending sparks of electrical energy throughout the body" (Epstein, 1989, pp. 149-150).

AUTHORS: Deirdre Davis Brigham with Adelaide Davis and Derry Cameron-Sampey.

My Diverse Blog Topics Demonstrate My Struggle To Focus On One Topic By Attempting To Categorize Many Interesting Tings Into Themes

Work In Progress:

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Living Well

Guiding principles:

• Change is a constant
• adapt to survive and thrive
• flexibility is the master skill
• habits are the key to lifestyle and accomplishment
• we can change current habits and form new habits
• a simple life is a satisfying life.
• Cherish every moment

MS Treatment Avenue may expand with brain steroids

MS treatment avenue may expand with brain steroids - Health - CBC News

MS Treatment Avenue may expand with brain steroids
CBC News
Posted: Sep 21, 2011


Multiple sclerosis might be connected to a lack of steroids in the brain, Alberta researchers have found.

MS attacks the brain and spinal cord, causing inflammation and damage that can lead to paralysis and sometimes blindness.

In the September issue of the journal Brain, neurologist Dr. Chris Power of the University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton and his colleagues describe a new potential avenue for treating MS.There are some drugs related to neurosteroids that are actively in clinical trials, Dr. Chris Power said. CBC

The discovery centres on neurosteroids, which help brain cells to talk, grow and repair themselves.

The findings open up a brain process "that we might be able to direct so that we can prevent damage and maybe even repair the damaged brain," Power said Wednesday.

Brains of people who died with multiple sclerosis showed lower levels of neurosteroids, the researchers found.

The team believes that by replacing neurosteroids, it might be possible to alleviate symptoms or even prompt recovery, based on the results of their test tube and mouse modeling studies.

"We've actually jumped the queue a little bit because there are some drugs related to neurosteroids that are actively in clinical trials," Power said. "This certainly provides fertile ground."

The researchers aren't yet at the point to start a clinical trial to test whether giving neurosteroids actually help people with MS.

The research was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada, and Alberta Innovates — Health  Solutions.

Multiple Sclerosis sufferers need to take some advice from the Ancients.

It is not possible to fight beyond your strength even if you strive.


Homer