Body & Mind – Page 11 – Things Are Good

The Ultimate Happiness Guide

work and smile

Happiness isn’t the goal of life, but it sure is important. If you’re not feeling happy it isn’t because you don’t have enough stuff or not watching enough TV. According to experts you should join a club (doesn’t matter what it is just that you’re with others), walk outside in nature, sleep more, and spend time with friends and family.

This happiness advice comes from a survey of the world’s top happiness scholars. It’s a fun article which also has suggestions for policy makers to increase everyone’s happiness.

Connect

Experts advise in the first place to focus social bonds, such as by (a) investing in friends and family, (b) joining a club, (c) acting nicely (d) marrying and (e) socialize with colleagues. They see more gain in social contact when (f) the focus is on the happiness of others and that advice fits the strategy recommended below.

Seek meaning

Experts think that living a meaningful life will make that life more satisfying. They recommend the following ways to seek meaning: (a) live up to your values, and if you are religious, practice your religion, (b) be generous and (c) volunteer, and (d) do not focus on your own happiness in the first place and (e) seek a purpose in life, which (f) you may clarify by writing a personal missionstatement.

Woman’s Nose Evolved Into Skin Swab Test for Parkinson’s

When Joy Milne‘s husband started to smell bad, she thought something was wrong. Her concern was met with a diagnosis of Parkinson’s, which is a neurological condition impacting hundreds of thousands around the world. The causes of Parkinson’s are still being investigated and diagnosing it is also a challenge; this is where Milne’s nose coms in. A team of researchers worked with Milne to develop a new at to test for Parkinson’s.

Now a team in the University of Manchester, working with Joy, has developed a simple skin-swab test which they claim is 95% accurate under laboratory conditions when it comes to telling whether people have Parkinson’s.

The researchers analysed sebum – the oily substance on skin – which was collected by using a cotton swab on patients’ backs, an area where it is less often washed away.

Using mass spectrometry, they compared 79 people with Parkinson’s with a healthy control group of 71 people.

The research found more than 4,000 unique compounds in the samples, of which 500 were different between people with Parkinson’s and the control group.

Move Up Stream To Lose Weight

Only one theory can account for all of the available evidence: the obesity epidemic is caused by one or more environmental contaminants, compounds in our water, food, air, at our jobs and in our homes, that change how our bodies regulate weight.https://t.co/o7lhK2QkOL

— SLIME MOLD TIME MOLD (@mold_time) July 13, 2021

It’s been established that our modern diets make it harder to lose weight, and keep that weight off. Yet, people who eat all natural foods tend to have the same problem as those with modern processed food diets, why? Thanks to a growing field of research we’re uncovering multiple theories, and perhaps the most promising is that chemicals in the water are the cause behind our dieting struggles.

People who live at higher altitudes have lower rates of obesity. This is the case in the US, and also seems to be the case in other countries, for example Spain and Tibet. When US Army and Air Force service members are assigned to different geographic areas, they are more at risk of developing obesity in low-altitude areas than in high-altitude ones. Colorado is the highest-altitude US state and also has the lowest incidence of obesity.

Stay Calm by Reading This Graphic Novel About Stoicism

Getting angry at things is easy, understanding one’s anger is hard, but by practicing the hard part you can become a better human. As always, it’s useful to learn from the work of people that came before us. Donald Robertson and Zé Nuno Fraga wrote and illustrated a graphic novel to help people understand that work in Stoicism. Their graphic novel Verissimus: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius is nice and easy to read and look at iy.
Stoicism is a philosophy that embraces calmness and thinking about oneself in relation to others (and what makes other people think too). If you’ve ever wondered about it then grab this book and give it a try.

I think this attitude of humility is central to Stoicism. We tend to minimize or ignore our own weaknesses in a way that makes us all slightly conceited and narcissistic. The more angry we feel, the more unforgiving and self-righteous we tend to become. We may disapprove of the actions of another but we tend to become less acutely enraged when we consciously accept that we’re capable of exhibiting similar flaws ourselves. Psychologists used to call this “projection” — when you point a finger at someone, three of your own fingers are pointing back at you! Marcus thought that as soon as we notice ourselves becoming irritated with another person, therefore, we should take it as a signal that we must have lost sight of this. We’re being arrogant and ignoring our own weaknesses and should, instead, stop and think — we should look within ourselves.

Increase Happiness by Getting Out of Your Comfort Zones

If you ever feel that you’re in a rut then do something to get you out of your comfort zone. A new study reveals the importance for expanding one’s boundaries to increase one’s happiness.

Going out of your comfort zone doesn’t need to be skydiving, public speaking, or anything extreme. It all depends on you and what you need to do to expand yourself.

An increasingly large body of research in social psychology has underscored the power of brief situational interventions in promoting purposeful change. The present research contributes to the literature on positive psychology interventions (PPIs) by testing a novel volitional intervention that encourages people to engage in activities ‘outside their comfort zone.’ Participants were randomly assigned either to a condition that encouraged them to engage in an activity outside of their comfort zone over the following two weeks or to a control condition that encouraged them to keep a record of their daily activities. The intervention boosted the life satisfaction of people who were relatively less happy at baseline, with exploratory analyses tentatively suggesting benefits strongest among people who went outside their comfort zone by helping others. Discussion centers on the potential of behavioral ‘stretch’ interventions to promote positive change and well-being among people dissatisfied with their life.