Better Living Through Psychology

I haven’t written anything for some time, but this quote just really set me off:

According to University of Massachusetts mathematicians Tanya Leise and Hava Siegelmann, jet lag happens because different systems in the body have different circadian rhythms. For example, cells in your digestive system prepare for digestion at particular times of the day. Secretion of the sleep hormone melatonin is higher at night and lower during the day. Fortunately we are equipped with a ‘master clock’ – a brain structure called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) – which effectively keeps things synchronized.

Leise and Siegelmann suggest that when the ‘local clocks’ are disrupted, say by travelling to a different timezone, the SCN can take some time to adjust. How long this adjustment takes depends on a variety of factors, such as the strength of the connection between the SCN and the ‘local clocks’, and of course the rhythm of those clocks.

To find out how this hierarchical system works, Leise and Siegelmann developed a model that incorporates data on circadian rhythms, on the factors that cause them to change and adapt and on how they respond to ‘commands’ from the SCN. Simulations the researchers ran showed the system gets most disrupted when the ‘master clock’ is shifted forward by 5 to 8 hours. The reason this disruption happens is that as the master clock adjusts by shifting in one ‘direction’, for example jumping forward to six or seven hours ahead, other ‘local clocks’ have tried to adjust by going backwards or delaying, by say 18 or 17 hours.

HOW CAN I USE IT?

• Make time zone adjustments gradual whenever you can. Ideally, travel across four hours of time zones, have a one or two day layover and then continue.
• Of course on longer flights that suggestion won’t be possible, so try this:

Take a look at this article from MSNBC:
Placebo’s power goes beyond the mind

For years, scientists have looked at the placebo effect as a nuisance – just a figment of overactive patient imaginations. People who got a dummy medication as part of a clinical trial believed they were better, but really weren’t. But new research shows that belief in a dummy treatment leads to changes in brain chemistry.

and another excerpt says:

Recent reports show that anticipation of relief from a placebo can lead to an actual easing of aches, when the brain makes more of its own pain-dousing opiates. Brain scans of Parkinson’s patients show increases in a chemical messenger called dopamine, which leads to an improvement in symptoms when patients think “mistakenly” that they are receiving real therapy.And studies in depressed patients … have found that almost as many are helped by placebo treatments as by actual medications. In fact, as it turns out, a person’s response to placebo treatment may offer clues as to whether œreal treatments with antidepressants are likely to work.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
Firstly, it’s more backing for the notion that the patient’s motivation and belief in the treatment method has at least some curative effect. In the psychotherapy outcome research it’s well established that the client’s motivation to get well along with their belief in the counsellor have more influence over a successful outcome than the treatment approach or techniques of the therapist.

HOW CAN I USE IT?

• It’s tempting when you’re in pain to focus on how bad the pain makes you feel, when it will pass and what you can do to stop it. Understandable, but such thinking really reinforces the notion that “the pain is here now and I don’t like it!” What about assuming that some time soon, the pain will stop or at least reduce?
  What enjoyable experiences are you missing out on while you are focused on your pain? Seek out people, places and activities that you enjoy. Not as a form of distraction though, but because those things are worthwhile in and of themselves. Rather than try to distract yourself from the pain, I’m suggesting you acknowledge the pain even as it accompanies you in doing the things you enjoy.

A woman’s sex drive begins to plummet once she is in a secure relationship, according to research. Researchers from Germany found that four years into a relationship, less than half of 30-year-old women wanted regular sex. Conversely, the team found a man’s libido remained the same regardless of how long he had been in a relationship.

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Yes Virginia, women really do have different sexual arousal characteristics to men.
I found this article which explains what the differences are. Chivers and Bailey found that when women viewed films of animals having sex they reported no subjective feelings of sexual arousal. Nothing surprising there you say.

But the researchers had them hooked up to recording equipment that measures standard physiological components of sexual arousal. And the women, but not the men in the study who saw the same films, became sexually aroused. …or at least, their bodies did.

What does it mean?
No definitive answer to that yet. It’s easy to draw from this study some dangerous assumptions either way. Like, “Women really want it, even when they say no.” or “Gee, men really are single-minded when it comes to sex”.

Chivers and Bailey speculate that this may have evolved as a protective mechanism – preventing injury in case of sexual intercourse that women didn’t want (i.e. weren’t subjectively feeling aroused for).

My interpretation is that women’s slower sexual arousal might have required a broader set of arousal stimuli. That would provide more frequent opportunities for intercourse, even when they weren’t completely, you know, in the mood. That gives her the opportunity to get pregnant to somebody who maybe isn’t her ideal, but with whom it’s a good idea at the time. On the other hand, with the narrower set of stimuli to which men respond, they are – you guessed it – simpler.

How can I use it?
Let me first speak over your heads, dear readers, to all the rapists and wannabebuthaventgotthecharmstylemoneyorbrains sexual bullies out there. “She was physically aroused” definitely won’t cut it as an excuse for ‘misunderstandings’ if it ever did. Women apparently get physiologically ‘ready’ for sex sometimes when it’s the last thing on their minds. Like in this study when they were watching monkeys have sex.

The good news for the rest of you guys is that you can stop worrying about the early phase of physical arousal – women’s bodies do that quite okay thank you – and concentrate on the two phases that women have been asking for more attention on anyway: romance (foreplay by other means) and mind-blowing orgasms!