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What can twins teach us about genetics?
The Globe and Mail: Look into the eyes of a twin one day. You may not know it, but you will have found an intriguing window into humankind, a kind of flesh-and-blood Rosetta stone that holds the promise of curing disease and easing mental illness. That’s no exaggeration – and it’s much more than the seemingly supernatural twin discoveries that occasionally flash into the public conscious. Stories about separated identical twins who have lived startlingly similar lives, capture the imagination, as do ruminations about near-mystical forms of unspoken communication between twins. Read more: The Globe and Mail
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Attitude Adjustment: Optimism Can Stave Off Stroke in Older Patients
ABC News: Looking on the brighter side of life just may save your life, according to new research from the University of Michigan. In a study of 6,000 adults over 50 with no history of stroke, optimism was associated with significantly reduced risk of stroke, even when controlling for stroke risk factors such as high blood pressure, heart disease, hypertensionand body mass index. "Past research has linked optimism with a range of health benefits, including cardiovascular outcome," says lead author Eric Kim, a doctoral student in clinical psychology at the University of Michigan. The study was published Thursday in the journal Stroke. Read more: ABC News
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You Don’t Like What You Ignore
Huffington Post: The world is a busy place. Driving down the highway, there are cars on the road you need to track. There are also other less essential things calling for your attention like bumper stickers, billboards and signs from roadside stores. The web is also dense with information. Reading the news on your browser creates a competition between the story you are reading and other advertising on the site. When people advertise, they must be making one of two assumptions about why that advertisement will work. One assumption is that when you put something in the world, eventually people will look at it. When they look at it, then that provides the advertiser a channel for persuasion.
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Can Feeling Too Good Be Bad? Positive Emotion in Bipolar Disorder
Positive emotions like joy and compassion are good for your mental and physical health, and help foster creativity and friendship. But people with bipolar disorder seem to have too much of a good thing. In a new article to be published in the August issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychologist June Gruber of Yale University considers how positive emotion may become negative in bipolar disorder. One of the characteristics of bipolar disorder is the extreme periods of positive mood, or mania. People in the grip of mania also have increased energy, sleep less, and experience extreme self-confidence.
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Try These 9 Tricks! End Your Energy Shortage!
MSN Health & Fitness: You've always suspected that there's more to the energy equation than getting 40 winks and eating three squares a day—and you're absolutely right. How optimistic, motivated, or engaged you feel—not to mention how many things you're trying to focus on at any given time—can bog you down or boost you up, according to experts. So we've gathered nine science-backed fixes that will send your strength and stamina soaring all day. Read more: MSN Health & Fitness
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Can we change our moods with meditation?
Examiner: Can we change our moods through meditation? Yes, according to a recent study. In the late 1990s, Jane Anderson was working as a landscape architect. That meant she didn't work much in the winter, and she struggled with seasonal affective disorder in the dreary Minnesota winter months. She decided to try meditation and noticed a change within a month. "My experience was a sense of calmness, of better ability to regulate my emotions," she says.
