Archive for January, 2011
Overcoming Fear
Jan 18th
We all fear things. Fear itself is a basic survival instinct. It’s a natural response to a specific stimulus used to recognize danger and initiate fight-or-flight responses. Many common fears include ghosts, cockroaches, spiders, snakes, heights, water, enclosed spaces, tunnels and bridges, needles, exams, clowns and public speaking. These fears can be innate (you don’t know why you’re afraid of certain things) or they can be acquired by a frightening traumatic accident. For many people, their fears do not affect their quality of life. For some, however, fear can mean something completely different.
Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD is a severe More >
Treating Alzheimer’s – A walk in the park?
Jan 5th
Anecdotally it seems obvious that people who stay physically active face old age with greater resilience than their more sedentary peers. A new study, analyzing over a decade’s worth of data might be just the motivation to get couch potatoes moving.
Cyrus Raji et.al. from the University of Pittsburgh have shown that loss in brain volume (a symptom of old age) is decreased in those who are more physically active. A cohort of 299 adults (mean age of 78 years) were analyzed over the course of 13 years. After correcting for various factors, the Pittsburgh group concluded that walking around 72 More >
