Category Archives: Body & Mind

Lift the Weight of Depression by Lifting Weights

Any physical movement is good for you and the evidence keeps piling up. A meta-analysis of the relationship between resistance exercise training (RET) and depression concludes that lifting weights does indeed help your mental health. Because studies usually look at only aspect of mental health we need more research looking across studies to provide a solid foundation and that’s what we’re seeing here.

One thing I realized when going to the gym is that it took weeks to get that positive feeling from working out. Don’t expect instance levity in your mood or skills. There’s no reason to start at the extreme by lifting way more than you can. Start with lighter weights and slowly work your way up to whatever you like.

After reviewing the literature, Gordon and team found that regardless of age, sex, or health status, RET is “associated with a significant reduction in depressive symptoms.” The largest gains were found in adults with elevated symptoms, which gave the researchers hope that RET “may be particularly helpful for reducing depression symptoms in people with greater depressive symptoms.” They also found that supervised workout sessions resulted in larger gains than in unsupervised sessions.

As Gordon says, it’s impossible to blind people for this sort of research—you know who is lifting weights and who is not. As with most studies, the placebo effect could be at work. But given all we know about the benefits of exercise, this is a placebo with few side effects (overexertion and muscle strains being the most prominent). The benefits outweigh any potential risk.

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If You can Tolerate Ambiguity Then You’re More Likely to Trust People

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The ability to tolerate ambiguity varies from person to person and that ability can impact how we interact with the world around us. The intolerance of uncertainty contributes to one’s anxiety and some researches think that individuals strive to make their lives more certain for comfort. Indeed, there has been research into views on uncertainty and political views. In these uncertain times it’s helpful to think about how people think about uncertainty.

Brown University just released a study on the connection between ambiguity and tolerance trust levels in relationships. People who can cope with vagueness demonstrate more prosocial behaviour in terms of trusting others.

Tolerance of ambiguity is distinct from tolerance of risk. With risk, the probability of each future outcome is known, said Oriel FeldmanHall, author of the study and an assistant professor of cognitive, linguistic and psychological sciences at Brown University. The many unknowns inherent in social situations make them inherently ambiguous, and the study finds that attitudes toward ambiguity are a predictor of one’s willingness to engage in potentially costly social behavior.
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That incomplete knowledge, she said, means “social exchanges are rife with ambiguous — and not risky — uncertainty: we can’t apply specific probabilities to how a social exchange might unfold when we don’t have certainty about whether the person has trustworthy intentions.”

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Improving Your Fitness Through Incidental Movement

Do you find it hard to fit the gym into your schedule and you just can’t seem to find any time to workout? Don’t worry about it! Instead of stressing about getting to the gym just change up your daily routine. One of the easiest things you can do to improve your fitness level is to stop driving a car and take any other form of transportation; and even if you don’t have a car then you can still change your day up. As long as you prioritize walking on a daily basis your fitness (and happiness) levels will increase!

The first beneficial thing about many of these alternative modes of getting around is that they involve physically moving your body parts. Yes, even taking the bus or the subway involves walking, standing, and balancing (using proprioception) that we don’t use when we are sitting on our butts in a car seat. Even using one of the car share programs involves walking to the parking spot where the car is kept and then walking home again after you drop the car off.

The second beneficial thing with these carless alternatives is that they have many deep health benefits like lowering stress levels, raising your mood, and perhaps even helping you get better sleep. But more on that later.

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A Community-Driven Map of Pre-Colonized Land

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If you’ve ever wondered about the history of the land you’re on then this website (and app) is for you! The website Native-Land collects historical data from around the world of what peoples claimed what land so any curious individual can investigate some cartographic history. Layers on the map include territory, language, and treaties which cover North America. Mapping territory can complicate reconciliation issues as it may inadvertently rewrite history; to counter this the online teacher’s guide brings up good resources and questions.

Temprano emphasizes that Native Land maps are constantly being refined by user input, and he welcomes data submissions. On the website, he also cautions about the nature of mapping. “I feel that Western maps of Indigenous nations are very often inherently colonial, in that they delegate power according to imposed borders that don’t really exist in many nations throughout history. They were rarely created in good faith, and are often used in wrong ways.”

Reorientation to the Indigenous perspective, though, just might offer an entirely new way to experience this continent.

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Thanks to Delaney!

Being Lazy Doesn’t Mean Your a Bad Person

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Too many of us look at others and think they are no-good lazy people. Think about the person living on the streets or a friend who never seems to be able to keep their job. We see people who are struggling through life and instead of thinking about what external forces influenced how they ended up in dire straits we assume it has to do with their moral behaviour. E Price calls on us to take a holistic look at individuals when we accuse them of “immoral” laziness:

People love to blame procrastinators for their behavior. Putting off work sure looks lazy, to an untrained eye. Even the people who are actively doing the procrastinating can mistake their behavior for laziness. You’re supposed to be doing something, and you’re not doing it — that’s a moral failure right? That means you’re weak-willed, unmotivated, and lazy, doesn’t it?

For decades, psychological research has been able to explain procrastination as a functioning problem, not a consequence of laziness. When a person fails to begin a project that they care about, it’s typically due to either a) anxiety about their attempts not being “good enough” or b) confusion about what the first steps of the task are. Not laziness. In fact, procrastination is more likely when the task is meaningful and the individual cares about doing it well.

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