Published on February 20, 2012 by David Finch in The Journal of Best Practices

Despite the immediate sense of relief that seems to accompany such newfound self-awareness, it did not take me very long to start thinking about ways that I could learn to manage my so-called disorder. For, it seemed the most glaring evidence of my condition lay in all the negative stuff—the socially unacceptable behaviors, the difficulty relating to people, the complete inability to (Heaven help me) operate on someone else’s timeframe—rather than in the myriad positive aspects of my uniqueness. I sometimes regarded Asperger’s as something that needed to be combatted and conquered.  When I realized, for instance, that my marriage was in trouble largely because of my behaviors and detachment from my wife, Kristen, I immediately blamed Asperger’s. (I don’t pay attention to her needs? Asperger’s! I don’t help with the housework? Also Asperger’s! It takes me three hours to make my breakfast yet I can’t find time to help the kids get ready for school? Yep, that would be the Asperger’s, too…I’m sure of it.) I thought the only way to save our marriage would be to somehow conquer my disorder. After all, erasing my neurological condition would automatically make me a better husband. Wouldn’t it?  I thought I was really onto something, but when I told Kristen that I was on a mission to defeat my own brain, she did what she always does when I lose sight of the big picture: She smiled, knowingly, and then showed me a different way.  ”We don’t need to fix you, Dave. We need to fix our relationship, and that’s something we can do together. Let’s focus on that.”  I hadn’t thought of it that way, but she sure made a lot of sense. Asperger syndrome, in and of itself, isn’t something to combat. Rather, it’s something that makes us who we are, and like any other personal attribute, having Asperger’s—being Aspergian, as my friend John Elder Robison would say—means that, like anyone, we were born with certain assets and certain liabilities. How we manage those assets and liabilities is completely up to us, as individuals.  Notably, the nature of Asperger’s is such that many of us who fit within the parameters of the condition can learn to manage certain behaviors that, in some ways, might hold us at a disadvantage—be it in the workplace, in school, or in our relationships with people we love. Living successfully on the spectrum is not about saying no to the disorder. It’s about saying yes to your best possible life. If we are so inclined, of course—and inclined I was.

With this profound insight from Kristen, I set out not to defeat my syndrome, but rather to be the husband I wanted to be—a far more worthwhile proposition. When Kristen and I were having trouble communicating, for example, I took notes on how I might express myself more openly, or listen more empathically. When I realized we no longer had common ground on which to rebuild, I learned to love the television shows she typically watches, my usual television habits be damned, just so we’d have something fun to talk about. When it became clear that Kristen needed a husband who would, every now and then, load a dishwasher or fold a basket of laundry without being asked, I committed (though admittedly reluctantly) to start taking initiative with the housework. I did these things as a means to a worthy end: being a better husband.

Of course, the responsibility of marital reconstruction wasn’t entirely on my shoulders. Kristen maintained her end of the bargain as well. She worked every day towards the marriage she wanted to have, a relationship that suited both of us. Mindful of my neurological composition, she learned new ways to engage with me, which enabled better communication and brought us closer together.

Had I focused on combatting myself and my neurological makeup, Kristen and I would have gotten nowhere, and our marriage would have suffered further as a result. But I listened to her guidance, had faith in her vision, and cast my focus strictly on building a better relationship, using knowledge of my condition as a roadmap. And along the way, I couldn’t help but learn how self-acceptance balanced with a desire to adapt can radically change the course of one’s life.

So, if you don’t mind my prying, I have to wonder: have you ever felt as though you were at odds with your autistic mind? Or have you always accepted yourself for who you are?

Couples seek therapy to achieve better communication, increase trust, and enhance intimacy, among other reasons. Surprisingly, almost half of couples who enter relationship therapy do so with the goal of determining if the relationship is viable enough to continue. Although there is much research examining how therapy goals influence outcome, little attention has been given to the relationship between viability goals and outcome in couple’s therapy. To this end, Jesse Owen of the Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology at the University of Louisville led a study that looked specifically at how treatment goals expressed at the beginning of therapy affected eventual outcome with regards to maintaining the relationship.

Using data collected from 249 couples treated by various therapists, Owen looked at goals of improving the relationship compared to goals of clarifying the relationship’s viability. Owen examined intake paperwork to determine goals and discovered that the partners who had a goal of improvement had better outcomes than those who sought clarification. Specifically, couples who entered therapy to find ways to improve their existing relationship were nearly 80% more likely to be together 6 months after treatment than the couples who entered therapy wanting to know if they should separate or not. More than half of the couples who wanted clarification at the beginning of therapy had split up 6 months later.

Owen believes that these results underscore the impact of goal assessment, both for the couple and individual, at the beginning of treatment. Additionally, Owen emphasizes that the clinician has a significant influence on outcome, noting that even when a couple’s primary goal is clarification, they may consider other options as a result of the clinician’s hope and encouragement. The re-evaluation of goals throughout treatment is essential to achieve a positive outcome, even if that outcome is dissolution of the relationship. “The complex intersection of varied hopes, goals, and expectations, occurring often within an emotionally charged atmosphere, requires that clinicians ‘dance’ simultaneously with different partners.” Owen added, “Determining and tracking goals from the outset appears likely to help ensure that the therapist does not step on too many feet too often.”

Reference: Owen, J., Duncan, B., Anker, M., Sparks, J. (2012, February 13). Initial Relationship Goal and Couple Therapy Outcomes at Post and Six-Month Follow-Up. Journal of Family Psychology. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0026998

By Douglas Eby

“What would be truly surprising would be to find that sound could not suggest colour, that colours could not evoke the idea of a melody, and that sound and colour were unsuitable for the translation of ideas, seeing that things have always found their expression through a system of reciprocal analogy.” Charles Baudelaire

A simple definition of synesthesia is that it is a “crosstalking” or overlapping of sensory experiences that for most people remain separate. Researchers find a higher proportion of creative people are synesthetes.

The image is from the book “The Hidden Sense: Synesthesia in Art and Science.”

The publisher explains that synesthesia occurs “when two or more senses cooperate in perception. Once dismissed as imagination or delusion, metaphor or drug-induced hallucination, the experience of synesthesia has now been documented by scans of synesthetes’ brains…”  The author “reports that some studies define synesthesia as a brain impairment, a short circuit between two different areas. But synesthetes cannot imagine perceiving in any other way; many claim that synesthesia helps them in daily life.”

From MIT Press page for the book “The Hidden Sense: Synesthesia in Art and Science” by Cretien van Campen.  The quote by French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) comes from the article “Art and Synesthesia: in search of the synesthetic experience” by Dr. Hugo Heyrman, a lecture presented at the First International Conference on Art and Synesthesia in 2005, Universidad de Almería, Spain.

Dr. Heyrman writes, “My starting point is the hypothesis that ‘synesthesia-phenomena’ are at the roots of all artistic practice.”  He also quotes neuroscientist Dr. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran (from ‘Hearing Colors, Tasting Shapes’, Scientific American, May 2003): “Synesthesia is seven times more common among artists, novelists and poets, and creative people in general. Artists often have the ability to link unconnected domains, have the power of metaphor and the capability of blending realities.”

A summary of the book “Wednesday Is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia” by Richard E. Cytowic notes, “Synesthetes rarely talk about their peculiar sensory gift – believing either that everyone else senses the world exactly as they do, or that no one else does. Yet synesthesia occurs in one in twenty people, and is even more common among artists. One famous synesthete was novelist Vladimir Nabokov, who insisted as a toddler that the colors on his wooden alphabet blocks were ‘all wrong.’ His mother understood exactly what he meant because she, too, had synesthesia.”

Magenta Tuesdays

In her Psych Central article “3 Fascinating Facts About Our Brilliant Brains,” Margarita Tartakovsky, M.S. quotes neuroscientist David Eagleman from his book Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain: “For some people, there are magenta Tuesdays, tastes that have shapes and wavy green symphonies.”

Eagleman gives more examples in his book: “…the feel of sandpaper might evoke an F-sharp, the taste of chicken might be accompanied by a feeling of pinpoints on the fingertips, or a symphony might be experienced in blues and golds.”

People with “spatial sequence synesthesia” have locations for time and other numbers. For instance, “They can point to the spot where the number 32 is, where December floats or where the year 1966 lies.”

More common with artists

In her article “Are You a Synesthete?,” Darya L. Zabelina, M. S., says “Four percent of the population, when seeing number 5, also see color red. Or hear a C-sharp when seeing blue. Or even associate orange with Tuesdays. And among artists, the number goes to 20-25%!”

She explains, “The primary perspective of the cause of synesthesia is a mutation that causes defective pruning between areas of the brain that are ordinarily connected only sparsely. Therefore areas that are disconnected within a human brain retain certain connections in synesthetes, which causes unusual associations.”

More associations

In “First person: One singular sensation,” Lily Dayton (Special to the Los Angeles Times February 20, 2012) writes about her experience “when someone’s telling you a story and you get that amazing tingly feeling in your scalp, like their words are massaging your brain.”

She also writes about having a conversation with her father, who shares these kinds of experiences, about “the thrilling roar of the vacuum and the way the song ‘Ave Maria’ could feel like wing beats grazing our foreheads.”  In her longer article “The blended senses of synesthesia” she writes about even more connections: “If you ask Emma Anders about the number five, she’ll tell you that it’s red. She’ll also tell you that five is a mischievous, self-centered brat — like a kid throwing a temper tantrum at a party.

“Two is yellow, three is purple, four is an intense sky blue,” says the 21-year old student at UC San Diego. “An eight is very noble and kind of held together, almost like a parent figure to five. Nine is a brown-haired guy, and he’s pretty calm — but he’s really into seven.”  She says Anders also “ascribes colors to flavors and smells. (Vaseline, for instance, smells burgundy, and a green apple tastes yellowish-orange.)”

A cognitive advantage

Dayton notes that David Brang, a UC San Diego neuroscientist says “nature provides a strong hint that the brains of synesthetes may have some kind of cognitive advantage.  “The genes for synesthesia appear to be dominant, and family trees depict the trait marching through the bloodline. This high degree of heritability suggests the genetic mutation that causes synesthesia provides some significant evolutionary benefit.”  She adds, “Brang’s hypothesis is that the benefit is related to creativity, enhanced perception and overall smarts.  “So far, studies have found that so-called colored sequence synesthetes (who experience color when they see numbers or letters) have a heightened ability to discriminate between similar colors, while mirror-touch synesthetes (who experience touch sensations when watching another person touch themselves) are more sensitive to touch in general.”

What about you? Do you experience any kind of synesthesia?

By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor

Dehydration Influences Our Mood While most understand that dehydration can have medical complications, a new study shows that even mild dehydration can influence mood, energy levels and the ability to think clearly.

Regrettably, we often use thirst as an indicator for when we need to drink — a response that experts say is too late to avoid many of the detrimental effects of dehydration.

In two recent studies, researchers at the University of Connecticut’s Human Performance Laboratory discovered the mental, mood and cognitive downside of even mild dehydration. Investigators determined that it didn’t matter if a person had just walked for 40 minutes on a treadmill or was sitting at rest – the adverse effects from mild dehydration were the same.

Mild dehydration is defined as an approximately 1.5 percent loss in normal water volume in the body. The take home message is that individuals need to stay hydrated at all times, not just during exercise, extreme heat or exertion.

“Our thirst sensation doesn’t really appear until we are 1 [percent] or 2 percent dehydrated. By then dehydration is already setting in and starting to impact how our mind and body perform,” says Lawrence E. Armstrong, one of the studies’ lead scientists and an international expert on hydration. The importance for everyone to stay hydrated is a message that needs to be promoted.

“Dehydration affects all people, and staying properly hydrated is just as important for those who work all day at a computer as it is for marathon runners, who can lose up to 8 percent of their body weight as water when they compete.”

In the study, separate groups of young women and men were tested. Twenty-five women with an average age of 23 took part in one study. The men’s group consisted of 26 men with an average age of 20. All of the participants were healthy, active individuals, who were neither high-performance athletes nor sedentary — typically exercising for 30 to 60 minutes per day. Each participant took part in three evaluations that were separated by 28 days. All of the participants walked on a treadmill to induce dehydration, and all of the subjects were hydrated the evening before the evaluations commenced. As part of the evaluation, the subjects were put through a battery of cognitive tests that measured vigilance, concentration, reaction time, learning, memory, and reasoning. The results were compared against a separate series of tests when the individuals were not dehydrated.

The young women experienced mild dehydration which caused headaches, fatigue, and difficulty concentrating. They also perceived tasks as more difficult when slightly dehydrated, although there was no substantive reduction in their cognitive abilities. The research findings are published in The Journal of Nutrition. In the tests involving the young men, mild dehydration caused some difficulty with mental tasks, particularly in the areas of vigilance and working memory, according to the results of the second UConn study. While the young men also experienced fatigue, tension, and anxiety when mildly dehydrated, adverse changes in mood and symptoms were “substantially greater in females than in males, both at rest and during exercise,” according to the study. The men’s study was published in the British Journal of Nutrition.

“Even mild dehydration that can occur during the course of our ordinary daily activities can degrade how we are feeling – especially for women, who appear to be more susceptible to the adverse effects of low levels of dehydration than men,” says Harris Lieberman, one of the studies’ co-authors. “In both sexes these adverse mood changes may limit the motivation required to engage in even moderate aerobic exercise. Mild dehydration may also interfere with other daily activities, even when there is no physical demand component present.” Investigators are uncertain why women and men are so adversely affected by mild dehydration. One possibility is that neurons in the brain detect dehydration. These neurons may then signal parts of the brain regulating mood. This process could be part of an ancient warning system protecting humans from more dire consequences, and alerting them to the need for water to survive.

In order to stay properly hydrated, experts like Armstrong recommend that individuals drink eight, 8-ounce glasses of water a day, which is approximately equivalent to about 2 liters of water. People can check their hydration status by monitoring the color of their urine. Urine should be a very pale yellow in individuals who are properly hydrated. Urine that is dark yellow or tan in color indicates greater dehydration. Proper hydration is particularly important for high-risk groups, such as the elderly, people with diabetes, and children.

Source: University of Connecticut

By Traci Pedersen Associate News Editor

Treating Depression with the Love HormoneWhen a person hugs or affectionately touches another, the brain chemical oxytocin is released, helping to strengthen social bonds, among other actions. This “hormone of love” might provide hope for those suffering with depression, according to researchers who are currently conducting a clinical trial.

“In humans, oxytocin is released when they hug or experience other pleasant physical touch, and it plays a part in the human sexual response cycle,” said Dr. Kai MacDonald, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine. Oxytocin seems to change the brain signals responsible for social recognition through facial expressions, says MacDonald, perhaps by changing the firing of the amygdala, the area of the brain that plays a major role in the processing of important emotional stimuli. Therefore, oxytocin in the brain may be a very strong mediator of human social behavior. “That’s why oxytocin is sometimes called ‘the love hormone,’” said MacDonald. “It’s said that the eyes are the window to the soul… they certainly are the window to the emotional brain. We know that the eye-to-eye communication, which is affected by oxytocin, is critical to intimate emotional communication for all kind of emotions — love, fear, trust, anxiety.”

Previously, UC San Diego researchers discovered that oxytocin could help those with schizophrenia, and MacDonald and colleague David Feifel, M.D., Ph.D., professor of psychiatry, are now enrolling participants to study its role in clinical depression. “Studies of blood levels and genetic factors in depressed patients point to the possibility that this natural hormone might play a part in helping clinical depression,” said MacDonald. “Previously, studies of healthy individuals have shown that intranasal doses of oxytocin reduce activation of brain circuits involved in fear, increase levels of eye contact, and increase both trust and generosity,” MacDonald said. “Interestingly, people given oxytocin don’t report feeling any different, but they act differently.”

Early clinical data also indicates oxytocin may help women with anxiety disorders. “A hug or a touch that causes a release of this hormone might somehow change brain signals,” MacDonald said. “We want to see if we can harness this response to help patients who suffer from depression.”

Source: University of California

I am The Human WakeUp Call. My story reminds people that life is a gift and every day counts. It’s time to wake up to the fact that none of us have endless tomorrows, even though we might be living as if we do. Contrary to the frequent fear-driven messages we hear, this is a lesson of finding the possibility for change, then pursuing it. It’s the small, consistent changes we make that lead to big differences.

I wasn’t always on this WakeUp call mission however. Like so many others, during my career I never played a very active role in where I headed. The promotions and job changes were spaced out well enough to give me the illusion of progress, but in reality I simply ‘floated down the river’ letting life take me from one place to another. None of it truly felt like it was my ‘right’ work. I was not really happy, but moderately comfortable.

Then, one day when I was in my thirties, the ‘river’ I was floating in took me to another Fortune 500 company and I found myself in yet another meaningless job. I had just moved to Connecticut from New York City and the new office was all the way in downtown Manhattan, increasing my commute from 25 minutes to more than two hours each way! Each morning my wife would drive me to the station with our one-year-old daughter sleeping in back, tucked sweetly into her car seat. I would come home each night and my little girl would be exactly as I left her, asleep in the backseat as my wife waited in the parking lot for my train to arrive. Days would go by where I wouldn’t see her awake at all. Children look peaceful while sleeping, but seeing her mostly in that state started to remind me that this was not the kind of parent I wanted to be, absent from her waking world.

I soon found myself wishing away my weekdays, hoping for each one to finish sooner than the clock would allow, in favor of the weekend and time – awake! – with my family. I realized that my work felt unimportant to me yet AGAIN, I felt out of place AGAIN, and I didn’t know what to do about it. My wife was taking care of our daughter and upkeep on our new home so I was the sole financial provider. However, I didn’t know what would fulfill me and had no direction. So I did what many people in that situation do – nothing. After all, life was just fine… wasn’t it?

Then, one Monday afternoon, I was sitting outside my office having lunch. It was a beautiful late summer day in New York where the sky was a stunning cerulean blue with not a cloud in sight. As I sat there enjoying the warmth of the sun on my face, I felt more grounded than I had in a long while. I looked up at my office building and was overcome by the sense that somehow it controlled my life. I realized at that moment that I HAD to make a change… even if it was a small change. A new intention was born.

This time had to be different! I had to take action. So I decided that the next morning, instead of rushing to catch the early train in keeping with my new morning ritual, I would take a later train so I could have a nice relaxing breakfast with my wife and (awake) daughter. I remember smiling at the thought thinking this was a good first step. Not a big step, but at least a new beginning. One of the most important lessons I realized from that small decision was that nothing would change until I changed it. It was clear that I would never FIND the time. I had to CREATE it!

The next morning my wife, surprised to see that I was already dressed and ready to go, asked quizzically, “I thought you were taking the later train today?” She asked me whether we were still having breakfast together or if she should drive me to the station so I could make my normal train. Little did I know, at that moment, I was standing at the crossroads of my life and my answer to that innocent question would determine my fate.

The chatter in my head started: “Do I just take the early train and have breakfast together another day? Will my daughter even be aware that we’re having breakfast? Do I risk going in late? Will I get in trouble at work? I’ve only been there a few months, can I even do this?” But then I had a moment of truth and my true values came forth to guide me, stirring something inside me and stopping my hesitation. “No,” I said to her. “The whole point of the morning was to have breakfast together, so let’s have breakfast together. I’ll catch the next train.” It was a simple declaration; as innocent a decision as if made on any other day of my life.

So we spent some wonderful time together having breakfast in our small dining room. It was another beautiful morning and I looked at my family and just smiled. I had known my wife since we met on a Junior High School trip to Quebec in 9th grade and I knew the moment I saw her that she was the “one”. Here we were 18 years later and I was living the reality of my dreams. Life was good!

She dropped me off and I took the train into New York City, smiling the whole way. I’m sure I looked out of place among the cranky faces of so many other commuters who were beaten down by the many hours they had spent getting in and out of the city at such a cost. But nothing could bother me that day – I felt I had some control of my life! It felt great!

I got on the subway, and instead of being in my office, I was underground at 8:45am when the first plane slammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, into my floor, hitting my desk. Most of the members of my group were up there when it happened, including my boss and team. The morning I had breakfast with my family just happened to be September 11, 2001.

So now you see why I feel compelled to share my story with you and why I recreated my career to serve as a WakeUp Call for others – so you don’t have to experience a tragedy or a near miss to wake up to the possibility of your life. So you stop drifting downstream looking back at your life asking ‘why?’ and instead turn around to look forward and say, ‘What now? Where do I want to go?’ So you and the many thousands of people I now work with can stop ‘losing’ precious days.

In many ways my life began anew the day before that memorable day in September, but not for the reason that you may think. Most people believe that it was my close brush with death that changed my outlook on life. Yet my feeling of being alive and having control over my life spread a smile over my face long before I arrived to see my office engulfed in flames. It wasn’t the fact that I didn’t die on September 11, but instead the reality that I had already begun living on September 10.

In the simple act of choosing a small step toward my larger goal, I had turned myself around to face downstream and take responsibility for the direction in my life. Sometimes we give in to the illusion that we have no control over our lives. Yet small decisions can make big differences in your life. Do you realize that life is a gift and every single day counts? You don’t have endless tomorrows and the ‘some day’ you are waiting for may never come.

I gave up my comfortable corporate life and chose what for me is a harder road. Today I am a business and personal leadership coach, sharing my message and empowering others through individual and team coaching, mentoring, workshops, seminars and keynote speaking. I have been blessed to have touched people across the US, in Canada, Europe and even as far away as Nigeria in Africa. I love my family and my life as much as ever (including my son who has since been born.) Now, I even love my work! How can you live any other way?

If you feel that you have no control over your life, it’s time to find one small thing you can do to move your life in a better direction. You may have continued down uninspired paths because you were simply stuck or afraid or uncertain of how to break this powerful spell. But if you can find one thing to change, one thing that makes you feel more alive, then you must do it.

September 10th was a day that looked just like any other day. Is today your September 10th? What are you waiting for?

Mike Jaffe, President and Founder, MBA, CC, CLPC (413) 854-2401.
from: www.humanwakeupcall.com

If you have ADHD, are you more likely to be overweight?
Published on February 17, 2012 by Emily Deans, M.D. in Evolutionary Psychiatry

If you were to guess, would you think that people with ADHD are more likely to be obese or skinny?
I would have thought skinny, just on first hunch.  Calories in = calories out, right?  And a lot of folks with ADHD are very fidgety!  Never sit still. In fact I seem to remember some press a few years back about how fit people tend to fidget and burn more calories than sedentary people, and how it might be the key to staying lean. One of the most telling sights on an adolescent inpatient psychiatric unit where there are girls struggling with anorexia is the amount of fidgeting during groups. These young ladies do not sit still, not for a moment, as they try every possible method to burn calories.

Well, when it comes to ADHD, the fidgeting does not seem to be enough to fight the fat.  In fact there are actually a number of studies linking ADHD to childhood and adulthood obesity.  One of the largest studies came out in late 2010 in the International Journal of Obesity.  About 12,000 people were followed over a decade or so from adolescence into adulthood, and records were kept of ADHD hyperactive and inattentive symptoms, along with waist circumference, BMI, blood pressure, physical activity, smoking, and alcohol use.  One weakness of the study is that no one tracked any measure of diet, but the results were telling nevertheless.

Folks with ADHD symptoms in childhood were 41 percent likely to be obese as adults, whereas kids without ADHD symptoms were only 34 percent likely to be obese (still an appalling number—these are young adults, after all, with a mean age at the last wave of the study of 28.9 years), and the more ADHD symptoms you had, the more likely you were to be obese—those with three or more inattentive or hyperactive symptoms were 50 percent more likely to be obese as adults.

The discussion of the paper is interesting.  Quite a while back in my personal blog, I had a post on antidepressants and weight gain or loss. The take-home point is that medicines that seem to increase the dopamine response make you skinnier over time. Well, one of the theorized problems in a brain with ADHD is that dopamine isn’t handled well or efficiently. As we know, dopamine is a neurotransmitter that helps us focus, plan ahead, and stay motivated. Here’s a pertinent quote from the study:

“Genetic association studies have found that ADHD and obesity are both associated with genes regulating dopamine availability. Furthermore, in two separate studies using Positron emission tomography with [11C]…have shown that individuals with ADHD and those who are obese both show lower than normal dopamine (D2) receptor availability. This lower dopamine receptor availability could reflect the common dispositions in both ADHD and obesity.”

The lack of self-restraint and impulsivity characteristic of ADHD could theoretically make it harder to restrain one’s eating habits and leave one vulnerable to obesity.

There is a rather large Australian study showing a link between a processed foods “Western Diet” and the risk of ADHD in young people.  Twinkies aside, it’s pretty clear that highly processed food diets are associated with more obesity in the long term.  (In the short term, most of us can severely cut calories any which way and lose weight. High carb, low carb, Twinkies, Slim-Fast TM, South Beach TM—they all work in the short term but typically have a 95 percent failure rate in the longer term. The key is what works to keep weight off for more than five years, which is the holy grail of obesity research at the moment.)

And then, of course, there is the fact that having ADHD is stressful, and one might end up with depression or anxiety, and then be more vulnerable to obesity via the inflammation pathway. Yikes! So many ways to get in trouble. How do we stay healthy and happy?

The answer is always the same. Practice stress reduction, sensible exercise, restorative sleep, and eat wholesome, nutrient-rich food because the causes all boil down to the same thing.  Eat what you are designed to eat, exercise, and chill out when you get the chance.  Enjoy family and friends. When things are already deranged it may not be a cure, but in most cases it will help. And unlike so many other Western medicine interventions that seem like good ideas at the time, real food and good sleep are unlikely to cause harm.

By KATE THIEDA

If your partner has been taking medication and going to therapy, yet is still struggling with severe depression, there is hope. Sometimes, therapy and medication for depression is not enough. Treatment-resistant depression does not have to be the life sentence it sounds like, however: there are other options that are safe and effective.

Recently, The Dr. Oz Show did an episode on electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) for depression. My department chair at Duke, Dr. Sarah Lisanby, was one of the panel experts. Besides being an expert on ECT, she is also a leading researcher on another alternative treatment for depression, called transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS. A third option is vagus nerve stimulator therapy, or VNS. If your partner is not getting relief, one of these three other options might be worth considering.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)

Many of us have visions of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or A Beautiful Mind when we think of electroconvulsive therapy treatment. Today’s treatment reality has come a long way from the depictions of those treatments in those movies, though. Someone undergoing ECT usually has six to twelve treatments given three times a week. The patient is given general anesthesia and a muscle relaxant, so they are asleep while the treatment is occurring. The patient’s brain is then stimulated by brief, controlled series of pulses given through electrodes placed at precise locations on their head. The result is that the patient has a seizure, which lasts about a minute, but since the patient is asleep and has been given muscle relaxants, they feel no pain and there is no muscle spasm. The patient wakes up approximately 10 minutes after the procedure is complete.

The pros of this procedure are that, according to the American Psychiatric Association, ECT produces a substantial improvement in at least 80 percent of patients. It also helps patients who suffer with most forms of mania, some forms of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, Parkinson’s disease and other disorders. The biggest drawback to ECT is memory loss that often accompanies the treatment. For some, the memory loss is short-term; for others, it is long-term and can be permanent.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)

TMS is a newer treatment for depression that is non-invasive. Like ECT, it does use electrical pulses to stimulate precise areas of the brain, but these pulses come from a wand that is held over the patient’s head by a technician. The pulses are thought to stimulate neurons that release serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine, which are all mood-boosting chemicals. Patients remain awake during the procedure, and do not require any type of anesthesia, as there is no pain. A typical treatment course for TMS is about 30 minutes, five to six times a week, for six to eight weeks.

The pros of TMS are that results generally occur quickly, if a patient is going to respond to treatment. Unlike medication, which may take six to eight weeks to start working, improvement from TMS is usually evident within a few treatments. The cons of TMS are that it can be expensive, and possibly not available nearby, depending on where you live. Also, the time commitment for treatment can be challenging. Side effects including minor face twitching, a headache, or tingling in the scalp, all of which resolve quickly.

Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS)

This treatment came into being after patients with epilepsy who were treated with vagus nerve stimulation reported improvements in mood as well. Subsequent clinical trials proved this to be true. VNS  has been controversial as a treatment, however, and is only recommended after four medication and/or ECT trials have failed to relieve the patient’s depression. A pulse generator–similar to a pacemaker–is implanted into the patient’s vagus nerve, where it sends out precisely timed mild electrical pulses to the left vagus nerve, which then go to the brain.

The cons of VNS include that it is not meant to be an exclusive treatment for depression, as it should also be accompanied by medication and possibly ECT treatment. It can also take several months for the patient to notice any mood changes, and some studies have shown its effectiveness to be low. The U.S. FDA reports that patients receiving VNS therapy may experience various side effects including hoarse voice, cough, shortness or breath, difficulty swallowing, and neck pain, some of which may persist as long as the device is active.

The findings suggest that there is a potential to disrupt autism during a child’s first year before the disorder becomes entrenched.
By Karen Rowan and MyHealthNewsDaily  | February 18, 2012 | 14

The early signs of autism are visible in the brains of 6-month-old infants, a new study finds, suggesting that future treatments could be given at this time, to lessen the impact of the disorder on children.

Researchers looked at how the brain develops in early life, and found that tracts of white matter that connect different regions of the brain didn’t form as quickly in children who later developed autism, compared with kids who didn’t develop the disorder. “The way the wiring was changing was dampened” in the children with autism, said study researcher Jason Wolff, who studies developmental disabilities at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. “It was a more blunted change over time, in how the brain was being wired,”

In contrast, in the brains of infants who did not later develop autism, white matter tracts were swiftly forming, Wolff said. “Their brains were organizing themselves in a pretty rapid fashion.” The findings suggest that during a child’s first year, “there is a potential to intervene, to disrupt autism before it becomes entrenched,” Wolff said. “There are a lot of possibilities to improve outcomes for these children.”

The study is published today (Feb. 17) in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

A crucial time

The first year of life is an important time in brain development, and is also when the first symptoms of autism start to appear, Wolff said.

In the study, the researchers looked at the brains of 92 infants, when they were 6 months, 1 year and 2 years old. All of the children had a sibling with autism; research shows such children have a higher risk of developing the disorder themselves.  The researchers used a brain scan called diffusion tensor imaging, a type of MRI scan which allowed them to see changes in the brain’s organization over time.

When the kids were 2 years old, 28 had developed autism, while 64 had not. The researchers looked back at the early brain scans, to see if there were differences between the groups.  “We looked at pathways that connect brain regions to each other, and 12 out of 15 were different in kids with autism,” Wolff said.

Previous studies had found differences in brain volume in infants of this age, and other researchers had looked at white matter tracts in older children with autism, and adults, but the structures had not been examined before in infants so young, Wolff said.  The fact that so many of the tracts were affected shows that autism is a “whole-brain phenomenon,” Wolff said. “There are widespread differences” in the brains of people with the disorder, he said.

What’s causing the brain differences?

As to what might be causing these brain differences, it’s too early to say, Wolff said. But the findings are consistent with what researchers suspect about what triggers autism’s development, he said, “there’s a complex interaction between genes, and a child’s experiences with the world.”  And while the brain scans of the two groups of children certainly revealed their differences, those scans are not at the point where they could be used to diagnose the disorder in a 6-month-old, Wolff emphasized.

By Christy Matta, MA

Have you ever been so angry and stuck in spiteful or resentful thoughts that it seemed to take over your life?

Painful feelings such as anger, are often associated with worries about negative consequences — perhaps that an important goal will be blocked or that you will fail, be criticized, hurt or abandoned.  The intensity of your feelings and worries can leave you stuck in a cycle of angry feelings, with resentment and rage fueled by worry, spiteful thoughts and memories of hurtful experiences.

Emotions, even those that are painful, serve an important purpose in our lives. Anger can motivate us to fight for an important cause or overcome obstacles.

But sometimes we can get stuck.  We become annoyed and remember every past irritation.  Or we feel resentful and begin to think only of how we’ve been wronged.  When angry, we’re more likely to lash out, have a short fuse or act in other ways that perpetuate hostile and tense interactions.  Once the cycle begins, anger can stick around, damage our relationships and keep us from positive life experiences.

Sometimes the only way to change painful emotions is by changing how you act.  The key word here is sometimes.  In the case of anger, it is not important whether you have a legitimate reason to feel angry.  Anger often is justified, but not helpful.  When angry, ask yourself “is the anger doing me any good?”  If it is helping you, say by motivating you to stand up for yourself or causing you to right a wrong, than acting differently will not decrease your anger.  But if anger is damaging relationships or making problems worse, changing your actions can have an impact on how you feel.

Changing how you act will only change how you feel if you change both your actions and your thoughts.  Acting kindly towards someone with whom you are angry, instead of lashing out, will not reduce your angry feelings if you are thinking “what a hypocrite” or “I can’t stand this person” during the encounter.  You have to change your thinking, as well as your behavior.  This could mean “I can understand why this person acts as they do, even if I don’t agree with it.”

Steps to Change Angry Feelings

• Figure out your emotion. Emotions can be complicated and confusing.  Figuring out what you are feeling, for example anger, annoyance or frustration, is an important first step.  Are underlying feelings of guilt or fear influencing your anger?
• Ask yourself what action goes with that emotion. Aggression usually goes with anger.  Aggression can be physical, verbal or indirect and passive.
• Ask yourself ‘do I want to reduce my anger?’  It only makes sense to try to change those feelings you want to change.
• Figure out what the opposite action is.  The opposite of aggression is kindness or at the very least, decency.  Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and imaging their perspective is an effective way to change angry and aggressive thoughts into something kind or at least understanding.
• Do the opposite action all the way.  Throw yourself in to acting differently in both your actions and your thoughts.  Acting differently, without thinking differently won’t work.  You have to do both.

The ability to solve life’s problems and live the life you want to live sometimes means acting in opposition to your feelings.  You may need to gently leave a situation that makes you angry or be fair-minded in thoughts about someone who has hurt you.  Doing so can release you from anger that has become destructive in your life.