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	<title>Health &#38; Family &#187; Maia Szalavitz &#124; TIME.com</title>
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	<description>A healthy balance of the mind, body and spirit</description>
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		<title>Health &#38; Family &#187; Maia Szalavitz &#124; TIME.com</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com</link>
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		<title>Marijuana: The Next Diabetes Drug?</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/21/marijuana-the-next-diabetes-drug/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/21/marijuana-the-next-diabetes-drug/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 21 May 2013 14:35:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Maia Szalavitz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Diet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Drugs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obesity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cannabinoid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cannabis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Diabetes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[insulin resistance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marijuana]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[marijuana weight loss]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[thc]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=86996</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Toking up may help marijuana users to stay slim and lower their risk of developing diabetes, according to the latest study, which suggests that cannabis compounds may help in controlling blood sugar. Although marijuana has a well-deserved reputation for increasing appetite via what stoners call “the munchies,” the new research, which was published in the American Journal of Medicine, is not the first to find that the drug has a two-faced relationship to weight. Three prior studies have shown that marijuana users are less likely to be obese, have a lower risk for diabetes and have lower body-mass-index measurements. And these trends occurred despite the fact that they seemed to take in more calories. Why? “The most important finding is that current users of marijuana appeared to have better carbohydrate metabolism than nonusers,” says Murray Mittleman, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the lead author of the study. “Their fasting insulin levels were lower, and they appeared to be less resistant to the insulin produced by their body to maintain a normal blood-sugar level.&#8221; The research included over 4,600 men and women participating in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between 2005 and 2010. Among them, 48% had smoked marijuana at least once in their lives, and 12% were current cannabis smokers. The authors controlled for other factors like age, sex, income, alcohol use, cigarette smoking and physical activity that could also affect diabetes risk. Even after these adjustments, the current marijuana users showed fasting insulin levels that were 16% lower than those of former or never users, along with a 17% reduction in another measure of insulin resistance as well. Higher levels on both tests are associated with Type 2 diabetes, which is linked with obesity. Marijuana users also had higher levels of high-density lipoprotein, the so-called good cholesterol, which can protect against heart disease. And the regular smokers also boasted smaller waistlines: on average, they were 1.5 in. (3.8 cm) slimmer than the former users and those who had never smoked cannabis. Researchers don’t<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=86996&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/21/marijuana-the-next-diabetes-drug/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Diabetes</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/diabetes/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/148983820.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Close Up Of Marijuana Leaf</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">MaiaSzalavitz</media:title>
		</media:content>
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		<item>
		<title>10,000 Hours May Not Make a Master After All</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/20/10000-hours-may-not-make-a-master-after-all/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/20/10000-hours-may-not-make-a-master-after-all/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 20 May 2013 17:48:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Maia Szalavitz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Behavior]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Brain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Intelligence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[10000 hour rule]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anders Ericsson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[becoming a master]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[genius]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[intelligence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Malcolm Gladwell]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mastery]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[practice]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[proficiency]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Scott Barry Kaufman]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Zach Hambrick]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=86952</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[There are many roads to greatness, but logging 10,000 hours of practice to help you perfect a skill may not be sufficient. Based on research suggesting that practice is the essence of genius, best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell popularized the idea that 10,000 hours of appropriately guided practice was “the magic number of greatness,” regardless of a person&#8217;s natural aptitude. With enough practice, he claimed in his book Outliers, anyone could achieve a level of proficiency that would rival that of a professional. It was just a matter of putting in the time. But in the years since Gladwell first pushed the &#8220;10,000-hours rule,&#8221; researchers have engaged in a spirited debate over what that rule entails. It&#8217;s clear that not just any practice, but only dedicated and intensive honing of skills that counts. And is there magic in that 10,000th hour? In an attempt to answer some of these questions, and to delve further into how practice leads to mastery, Zach Hambrick, associate professor of psychology at Michigan State University, and his colleagues decided to study musicians and chess players. It helps that both skills are amenable to such analysis because players can be ranked almost objectively. So in their research, which was published in the journal Intelligence, they reanalyzed data from 14 studies of top chess players and musicians. They found that for musicians, only 30% of the variance in their rankings as performers could be accounted for by how much time they spent practicing. For chess players, practice only accounted for 34% of what determined the rank of a master player. “We looked at the two most widely studied domains of expertise research: chess and music,” says Hambrick. “It’s clear from this data that deliberate practice doesn’t account for all, nearly all or even most of the variance in performance in chess and music.” Two-thirds of the difference, in fact, was unrelated to practice. And while one player took two years to become a grandmaster; another achieved that level only after 26 years, giving them huge variance in the hours<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=86952&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/20/10000-hours-may-not-make-a-master-after-all/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Behavior</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/mental-health/behavior/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/200213804-001-1a.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">MaiaSzalavitz</media:title>
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		<item>
		<title>Viewpoint: My Case Shows What&#8217;s Right &#8212; and Wrong &#8212; With Psychiatric Diagnoses</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/17/viewpoint-my-case-shows-whats-right-and-wrong-with-psychiatric-diagnoses/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/17/viewpoint-my-case-shows-whats-right-and-wrong-with-psychiatric-diagnoses/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 17 May 2013 21:01:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Maia Szalavitz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Mental Health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Viewpoint]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Addiction]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Asperger's]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[asperger's syndrome]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bipolar]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dsm]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[DSM-5]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[obsessive-compulsive disorder]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ocd]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[psychiatric diagnosis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[psychiatry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[recovery]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=86907</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Over the course of my life, I have been given no fewer than five different diagnoses for mental illnesses, under the diagnostic system laid out in psychiatry&#8217;s “bible,” the DSM.  But it was a sixth diagnosis— one that ironically will no longer appear in the edition being rolled out this week, DSM-5— that probably most accurately describes what is genuinely different about me.  I&#8217;m sharing this because my experience is a case study for explaining why the latest revision to the manual is raising such ire. My journey from diagnosis to diagnosis illustrates both the pitfalls and the promise of psychiatry and why we can expect to improve some ways in which we identify mental illness, and why there are other aspects of diagnosing these conditions that will remain unsatisfactory without further scientific advances. Dr. Allen Frances, who chaired the publishing process for the previous revision, the DSM-IV, and is critical of the DSM-5 in his new book, Saving Normal, published an editorial in the Annals of Internal Medicine highlighting some of his issues with the latest revision.  Citing the “crisis in confidence” in psychiatry over diagnosis, he calls on physicians to “use the DSM cautiously, if at all.”  DSM 5, he argues, is overrun with &#8220;diagnostic inflation&#8221;— for example, labeling grief as depression and placing the 40% of college students who binge drink at risk of diagnosis equivalent to alcoholism. MORE:  Revisions to Health Manual May Turn Binge Drinkers into &#8216;Mild&#8217; Alcoholics Frances isn&#8217;t the only one who has concerns about DSM-5. Last week, the the director of the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. Thomas Insel, posted a blog in which he announced that even for research purposes, the DSM had outlived its usefulness. “NIMH will be re-orienting its research away from DSM categories,” he wrote. The problem, he said, is that the DSM is based on subjective descriptions of collections of symptoms that tend to occur together — but not on the physiological or psychological mechanisms that cause them. As Insel put it, “Unlike our definitions of<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=86907&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Viewpoint</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/viewpoint/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/168640189.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">MaiaSzalavitz</media:title>
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		<item>
		<title>Q&amp;A: Temple Grandin on the Autistic Brain</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/16/qa-temple-grandin-on-the-autistic-brain/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/16/qa-temple-grandin-on-the-autistic-brain/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 16 May 2013 14:00:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Maia Szalavitz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA['Mind Reading']]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Autism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[autistic brain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[temple grandin]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=86607</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Temple Grandin, a professor of animal science at Colorado State University, was one of the first autistic people to chronicle her life with the condition— and is now a bestselling author and well known for her innovative designs for handling livestock. Recently portrayed by Claire Danes in an Emmy-winning HBO movie about her life, Grandin spoke to TIME about her latest book, The Autistic Brain. What most concerns you about the way we work with autistic children today? I’m really concerned about getting people on the higher end of the spectrum good jobs. Autism is a very diverse disorder ranging from someone who remains nonverbal with a very severe handicap to mild autism. And really, half the people in Silicon Valley have got some mild autism. But I’m seeing too many kids today that are really talented and on the high end of the spectrum kind of going nowhere because their skills haven’t been developed. They haven’t learned how to work. When I was 13, I had a sewing job and when I was 15, I cleaned horse stalls. Do you think the label of autism is hurting these kids, making them feel they are limited in a way that someone without the diagnosis might not be? I think sometimes parents and teachers fail to stretch kids. My mother had a very good sense of how to stretch me just slightly outside my comfort zone. No surprises. You can’t chuck them in the deep end of the pool, that doesn’t work but she kind of just knew, you know, to get me to do things, like serve hors d’oeuvres at my mother’s parties and just bow and shake hands with the guests. You write a bit about the controversy over how to define autism and how it has changed over the years in psychiatry’s diagnostic book, the DSM. It’s not like having a diagnosis for tuberculosis. In fact, when I worked on the [part of the book about the] history of the DSM and I saw how it was laid<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=86607&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/16/qa-temple-grandin-on-the-autistic-brain/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Autism</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/autism/</primary_category_link><letterbox>1</letterbox><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/9780547636450_hres.jpg?w=238</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">MaiaSzalavitz</media:title>
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		<title>The Dangers Lurking in Male Sexual Supplements</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/16/the-dangers-lurking-in-male-sexual-supplements/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/16/the-dangers-lurking-in-male-sexual-supplements/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 16 May 2013 11:00:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Maia Szalavitz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Men's Health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cialis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[male enhancement]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[male sexual supplements]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rock hard for men]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sexual enhancement drugs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sexual supplements]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sildenafil]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tadalafil]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Viagra]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=86558</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[“Rock Hard” and similar so-called “natural” supplements for men often contain potentially dangerous drugs — some of which have never been tested on animals, let alone humans. In an editorial published in JAMA Internal Medicine, Pieter Cohen, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a colleague collected some of the lesser known facts about an industry that produces millions of pills — and likely generates tens of millions, if not billions of dollars in profits— but is almost entirely free of government oversight. Here&#8217;s what they found: *  A product sold as “Rock Hard for Men” in 2012 turned out to contain not only counterfeit Cialis (tadalafil)— but also a diabetes drug that can be deadly if used incorrectly.  A similar combination killed more than a dozen men in Asia in 2009. *  One Utah company alone produced more than a million pharmaceutically-tainted pills monthly, earning $2 million between 2007 and 2010, according to an indictment issued in one of the few cases brought against such manufacturers. *  More than three-quarters of male enhancement supplements tested in one study in Singapore contained pharmaceuticals that were not disclosed— and half of them were present in higher doses than recommended. *  Over 45 different versions of drugs in the same class of Viagra have now been found in male sexual supplements.  A Dutch study found that 75% of the products sold in the Netherlands contained at least one analogue, or chemical variant that has the same effect as Viagra. * A product called “Mojo Nights” recently analyzed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) included not just counterfeit Viagra, but also three different analogue drugs. * Just last week, the FDA identified three tainted supplements: “Vicerex” and “Bullet Proof,” which contain counterfeit Cialis and “Lightning ROD,” which includes an analogue of Viagra. MORE: FDA Warns Consumers to Stop Taking Sexual Enhancement Pills “We’re talking about a massive number of brands and millions of millions of pills that are tainted,” Cohen says. “Hundreds of millions of pills are being produced every<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=86558&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Men&#039;s Health</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/mens-health-medicine/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/117629895-1a.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">MaiaSzalavitz</media:title>
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		<title>Your Brain on Laughter</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/09/the-laughing-brain/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/09/the-laughing-brain/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 09 May 2013 19:00:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Maia Szalavitz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Body & Mind]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Brain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Social Connection]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[humor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[laughter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[neuroscience]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[taunting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tickling]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=86367</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Are they laughing at you or laughing with you? Your brain can tell the difference. Curious about how different types of laughter — mocking, joyful or ticklish — are understood, researchers led by Dirk Wildgruber, professor of neuropsychiatry at Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen in Germany decided to explore what these different expressions of hilarity looked like in the brain. They recruited 18 young men and scanned their brain activity as the volunteers listened to three types of recorded laughter. The laugh tracks were generated by professional actors, who were given three specific scenarios — being tickled, feeling joy and taunting someone — and asked to produce the appropriate laugh for those situations. As the participants heard the laughter, they were asked to categorize whether it was happy, mocking or a consequence of being tickled. The men were able to correctly identify the laughs in the majority of cases, though they were slightly less accurate at correctly labeling tickling. In a second test, the men counted the number of bouts of laughter in each recording, using the actor&#8217;s audible inhalation as a signal for when a bout ended. This provided the researchers with a way of distinguishing between types of laughter. Again, the participants were better at identifying the two types of social laughter, as compared with tickling. Why? “Perception of these types of laughter activates a partially overlapping network of brain regions,” says Wildgruber. These types of laughter include areas involved in processing sound and vision, as well as those that allow people to consider what others might be thinking or feeling. Oddly, however, in terms of blood flow to specific brain regions — which is how scientists generally measure whether an area of the brain is activated — the researchers found no distinction between joyous and taunting laughter. Wildgruber suggests that the same regions may be used to process a broad range of social information, just as a computer might use the same hardware for word processing or games. The researchers did, however, see changes in the strength<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=86367&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Brain</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/mental-health/brain/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/122697036.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">122697036</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/0a5ac57e99124922fa628492ad3db6b2?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">MaiaSzalavitz</media:title>
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		<title>The Biology of Kindness: How It Makes Us Happier and Healthier</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/09/why-kindness-can-make-us-happier-healthier/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/09/why-kindness-can-make-us-happier-healthier/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 09 May 2013 09:45:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Maia Szalavitz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Love & Relationships]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Relationships]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Social Connection]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[compassion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[empathy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[friends]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Happiness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[kindness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lovingkindness meditation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[meditation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[social connection]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[social support]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vagus nerve]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=86310</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[There&#8217;s a reason why being kind to others is good for you — and it can now be traced to a specific nerve. When it comes to staying healthy, both physically and mentally, studies consistently show that strong relationships are at least as important as avoiding smoking and obesity. But how does social support translate into physical benefits such as lower blood pressure, healthier weights and other physiological measures of sound health? A new study published in Psychological Science suggests that the link may follow the twisting path of the vagus nerve, which connects social contact to the positive emotions that can flow from interactions. (MORE: Q&#38;A: Jon Kabat-Zinn Talks About Bringing Mindfulness Meditation to Medicine) The researchers, led by Barbara Fredrickson, professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, recruited 65 members of the university&#8217;s faculty and staff for a study on meditation and stress. Roughly half were randomly assigned to take an hour-long class each week for six weeks in &#8220;lovingkindness&#8221; meditation, which involves focusing on warm, compassionate thoughts about yourself and others. In the class, the participants were instructed to sit and think compassionately about others by starting to contemplate their own worries and concerns and then moving out to include those of more of their social contacts. People were taught to silently repeat phrases like “May you feel safe, may you feel happy, may you feel healthy, may you live with ease,” and keep returning to these thoughts when their minds wandered. They were also advised to focus on these thoughts, and on other people, in stressful situations like when they were stuck in traffic. “It’s kind of softening your own heart to be more open to others,” says Fredrickson. The group not assigned to the meditation class was placed on a waiting list for a future class. For 61 days, all the participants logged their daily amount of meditation and prayer (those in the class were encouraged to practice every day) as well as their most powerful experiences of positive and negative emotions. They were also<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=86310&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/09/why-kindness-can-make-us-happier-healthier/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Social Connection</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/mental-health/social-connection/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/98355160-1a.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">98355160 (1)a</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/0a5ac57e99124922fa628492ad3db6b2?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">MaiaSzalavitz</media:title>
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		<title>Psychopaths and Callous Children Show Dysfunctional Brain Responses to People In Pain</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/07/psychopaths-callous-children-show-dysfunctional-brain-responses-to-people-in-pain/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/07/psychopaths-callous-children-show-dysfunctional-brain-responses-to-people-in-pain/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 07 May 2013 18:25:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Maia Szalavitz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Psychopathy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[callous unemotional traits]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[conduct disorder]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[empathy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[insula]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[psychopaths]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[psychopathy]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=86238</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Children who cruelly disregard other people’s pain and psychopathic criminal offenders show dysfunction in similar brain regions— but new research finds that the changes may lead in opposite directions. Two new studies add to conflicting literature that sometimes shows reduced activation in some nodes of a brain network involved in emotion and at other times enhanced activity. What the researchers can agree on is that the same critical circuits go awry when people who are exceptionally callous and brutal witness the pain of others. One particularly important hub, tucked into the folds of the cortex on the border of the frontal and temporal lobes on both sides of the head, is called the insula.  This region monitors the state of the mind and body:  it “knows” what’s going on in the gut and the heart and how pain, need and pleasure feel, whether from heartburn, heart attack or heartache.  Because the insula monitors your own emotional and physical states, it’s also important for empathizing with others. “What does the insula really do?  It helps us to feel, to be aware of our feelings,” says Jean Decety, professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Chicago and lead author of one of the new studies, which was published in JAMA Psychiatry. MORE: Understanding Psychopathic and Sadistic Minds Decety and his colleagues studied 80 inmates, who were classified as either high, intermediate or low on scores measuring psychopathic traits.  The 27 highest-scoring criminals met clinical criteria for psychopathy, which is defined by near complete lack of empathy and cold, manipulative and predatory behavior. Participants were scanned while viewing images of people in pain or in similar situations that were not painful. For example, one image depicted someone’s hand being slammed in a car door by another person; another showed the same hand in a similar position near a car door, but not being hurt.  The inmates also viewed videos of people’s faces, some expressing pain. Unexpectedly, the researchers found significantly increased activity in the anterior insula while the psychopaths saw people in<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=86238&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/07/psychopaths-callous-children-show-dysfunctional-brain-responses-to-people-in-pain/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Psychopathy</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/psychopathy-2/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/83297468a.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">83297468a</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/0a5ac57e99124922fa628492ad3db6b2?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">MaiaSzalavitz</media:title>
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		<title>Mental Health Researchers Reject Psychiatry&#8217;s New Diagnostic &#8216;Bible&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/07/as-psychiatry-introduces-dsm-5-research-abandons-it/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/07/as-psychiatry-introduces-dsm-5-research-abandons-it/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 07 May 2013 12:00:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Maia Szalavitz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Mental Health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mental Illness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[APA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Autism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Depression]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[developmental disorders]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[diagnosis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dsm]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[DSM IV]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[DSM-5]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mental illness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NIMH]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[psychiatric diagnosis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[psychiatry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[schizophrenia]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=86168</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Just weeks before psychiatry’s new diagnostic “bible”—the DSM 5— is set to be released, the world’s major funder of mental health research has announced that it will not use the new diagnostic system to guide its scientific program, a change some observers have called “a cataclysm” and “potentially seismic.” Dr. Thomas Insel, the director of the National Institute on Mental Health, said in a blog post last week that “NIMH will be re-orienting its research away from DSM categories.&#8221; The change will not immediately affect patients. But in the long run, it could completely redefine mental health conditions and developmental disorders.  All of the current categories — from autism to schizophrenia — could be replaced by genetic, biochemical or brain-network labeled classifications.  Psychiatrists, who are already reeling from the conflict-filled birth of the fifth edition of the Diagnostical and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, are feeling whipsawed. Insel, for his part, is lobbying for a more comprehensive approach. For scientific purposes, he argues, the DSM may have outlived its usefulness.  He writes: Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure. In the rest of medicine, this would be equivalent to creating diagnostic systems based on the nature of chest pain…  Imagine deciding that EKGs were not useful because many patients with chest pain did not have EKG changes. That is what we have been doing for decades when we reject a biomarker because it does not detect a DSM category. We need to begin collecting the genetic, imaging, physiologic, and cognitive data to see how all the data – not just the symptoms – cluster and how these clusters relate to treatment response&#8230;Patients with mental disorders deserve better. The NIMH has outlined a new diagnostic system — called Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) — that could ultimately replace the DSM, but it&#8217;s not yet ready for prime time. For the time being, NIMH and the psychiatrists who use the manual will continue to abide by existing classifications<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=86168&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Mental Illness</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/mental-health/mental-illness-mental-health/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/163630480.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Scientific phrenology head</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/0a5ac57e99124922fa628492ad3db6b2?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">MaiaSzalavitz</media:title>
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		<title>New Test Distinguishes Physical From Emotional Pain in Brain for First Time</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/06/a-pain-detector-for-the-brain/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/06/a-pain-detector-for-the-brain/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 06 May 2013 16:00:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Maia Szalavitz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Addiction]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[chronic pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[emotional pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pain detection]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[physical pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rejection]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[social pain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[social rejection]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=85862</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[New research suggests physical pain may have a distinct brain “signature” that distinguishes it from emotional hurt. In the brain, the pain from broken leg and the anguish of a broken heart share much of same circuitry. But the latest evidence points to distinct ways that the brain processes each type of pain and could lead to a greater understanding of how to detect and treat them. “Of all the things I’ve observed in the brain, nothing is more similar to physical pain than social pain,” says lead author Tor Wager, associate professor of neuroscience at the University of Colorado in Boulder, “What we’ve done in the latest paper is to develop something that predicts physical pain at a much more fine-grained level.” (MORE: Can Doctors Feel Their Patients&#8217; Pain?) The research, which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, included 114 young adults who participated in several different experiments. The first test involved scanning the brains of 20 people while they experienced varying degrees of warmth or painful heat on their left forearms. These were calibrated to the individual to be either not painful or mild, moderately or severely painful—but they were not harmful. The second experiment included another 33 people, also exposed to varying levels of painful heat or mild warmth. Using data from the brain activity in the first participants, the researchers developed a program to predict whether people in the second experiment were experiencing pain. The model accurately determined whether they had been subjected to pain or to just warmth 93% of the time. The third study, however, provided the most revelatory information about how physical and emotional pain may differ. In that experiment, 40 people who had recently been dropped by their romantic partners underwent the same type of physical pain testing while their brains were scanned. They were also scanned while viewing either an image of a close friend or a picture of the person whom they still loved, but had lost. What Wager wanted to know, he says, is “Does this physical<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=85862&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Pain</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/pain/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/119991384a.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">119991384a</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/0a5ac57e99124922fa628492ad3db6b2?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">MaiaSzalavitz</media:title>
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		<title>Viewpoint: Medicaid-Based Improvements in Depression Can Lead to Broader Health Benefits</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/06/benefits-of-fighting-depression-priceless/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/06/benefits-of-fighting-depression-priceless/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 06 May 2013 09:45:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Maia Szalavitz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Viewpoint]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Depression]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[health costs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[medicaid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[national health care]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Oregon Medicaid study]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=86081</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Improvements in treating depression could lead to broader benefits in other health outcomes. A new study of Oregon’s expansion of Medicaid disappointed advocates by failing to find improvements in health measures like high blood pressure and cholesterol within two years— but it did show a 30% reduction in depression rates. While these results are far from ideal, we shouldn’t underestimate the broader and long term impact—in both health and human costs— that simply cutting depression could have. According to the World Health Organization [PDF], depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide in terms of productive years lost. In the U.S., only back pain takes away more years of healthy function and the most recent analysis available shows that work hours lost to depression cost the economy some $83 billion annually. On average, 7% of Americans are depressed in a given year, contributing in part to nearly 40,000 suicides yearly. The Oregon Medicaid study itself grew out of a dire economic reality: the state couldn’t afford to expand access to everyone eligible, so it held a lottery. The situation provided the ideal setting for documenting how effective the Medicaid program is in providing needed preventive and treatment services &#8212; by comparing the health of the winners and losers during the program’s first two years. The researchers found no significant differences in blood pressure, diabetes control or cholesterol among the beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries, although they discovered increases in treatment and uptake of preventive services. (MORE: Rashness &#38; Rumination: New Understanding About the Roots of Depression) The winners, however, did show real improvements in mental health, as well as virtual elimination of bankruptcies and other financial catastrophes due to medical expenses &#8212; which may or may not have been related to their healthier mental state. There was no difference between the winners and the losers in terms of antidepressant use, however, so it’s likely that the stress relief from having health insurance played a role. “To my mind, the depression results are phenomenal,” says Harold Pollack, professor of public policy at the University<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=86081&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Viewpoint</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/viewpoint/viewpoint-viewpoint/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/146513325.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/146513325.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/146513325.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Hand</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/0a5ac57e99124922fa628492ad3db6b2?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">MaiaSzalavitz</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Relax: It&#8217;s Good for Your Genes</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/03/relax-its-good-for-your-genes/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/03/relax-its-good-for-your-genes/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 03 May 2013 09:45:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Maia Szalavitz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Body & Mind]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Stress]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[genes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[genetics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[genomics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[meditation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[relaxation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[relaxation response]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=86009</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[While it might seem that your body and brain aren&#8217;t doing much when you&#8217;re on break, relaxing triggers a flurry of genetic activity that is responsible for some important health benefits. When you really relax — using any type of meditative technique such as deep breathing, yoga or prayer — the genes in your body switch to a different mode. Genes that counteract the chemical effects of stress kick in, while those responsible for driving more anxious and alert states take a backseat. And a new study shows that long-term practice of relaxation techniques can significantly enhance these genetic benefits. Dr. Herbert Benson, director emeritus of the Benson-Henry Institute and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, first defined the relaxation response in the early 1970s and led the latest genetic investigation published in the journal PLOS One. “We have within us an innate, inborn capacity that counters the harmful effects of stress,” says Benson. “And this study has shown its genomic basis: namely that specific hubs of genes are changed when people evoke this relaxation response.” (MORE: The Two Faces of Anxiety) “It’s fantastic,” says Dr. Mladen Golubic, medical director of the Center for Lifestyle Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, who was not associated with the study. While other studies have linked the relaxation response to lower stress levels and reduced blood pressure, the current trail details the physiological pathways responsible for producing these benefits. The findings confirm and expand on work Benson&#8217;s group published in 2008 in which they showed that people who meditated over a long period of time showed altered expression of the genes involved in the stress response. In the current study, Benson and his colleagues studied 52 people, half of whom had meditated for four to 20 years using relaxation techniques and half of whom were novices. Both groups had their blood taken and analyzed before and after a 20-minute relaxation session in which they used a CD for guidance. The new meditators agreed to participate in two relaxation sessions; in the<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=86009&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Body &amp; Mind</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/mental-health/body-mind/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/109721662.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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		<media:content url="http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/109721662.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">109721662</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/0a5ac57e99124922fa628492ad3db6b2?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">MaiaSzalavitz</media:title>
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		<title>Brain Scans Can Predict Which Alcoholics Are Most Likely to Relapse</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/02/bran-scan-can-predict-return-to-drinking/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/02/bran-scan-can-predict-return-to-drinking/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 02 May 2013 18:00:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Maia Szalavitz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Alcohol]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[alcohol]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[alcohol treatment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[alcoholism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[brain scans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[drinking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[predicting relapse]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rehab]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[relapse]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[relapse prevention]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=85949</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[For any addiction, external cues and stress can trigger cravings that are hard to resist, and the latest research points to an area of the brain that might be responsible for sabotaging recovery. The study, which was published in JAMA Psychiatry, found that those with elevated activity in a region called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) even while they were at rest were eight times more likely to drink again within 90 days than those whose vmPFC was calmer when they were feeling relaxed. The findings are &#8220;a major contribution,” to understanding alcohol addiction, said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, in a co-written editorial that accompanied the research. The authors, led by Rajita Sinha, professor of psychiatry at Yale University, studied the brain activity of 45 recovering alcoholics who were in a treatment program based on the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, during three different experiences &#8212; a stressful one, one that enticed them to drink, and a neutral, relaxing situation. The scientists compared their brain activity patterns to those of 30 social drinkers of similar age, intelligence and gender. The participants in the rehabilitation program were abstinent for four to eight weeks. In order to generate the three experiences, the researchers asked all of the participants to describe recent stressful events, situations in which they ended up drinking, and circumstances that helped them to feel relaxed (such as sitting on a beach and listening to the waves). These were compiled into personalized two-minute videos that the team played back to the volunteers while they were brains were scanned using functional MRI. The scenarios induced the desired emotional states; heart rates rose during the stressful experiences and fell during the more relaxing ones. But while the alcoholics appeared to be relaxed while picturing themselves on sunlit beaches, their brains &#8212; specifically the vmPFC &#8212; told a different story. “With relaxation, social drinkers relax their prefrontal cortex. It’s deactivation,” says Sinha, “For the alcoholic brain, what we found in this region was hyperactivity, as if<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=85949&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Alcohol</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/alcohol-medicine/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/131953873.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">131953873</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/0a5ac57e99124922fa628492ad3db6b2?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">MaiaSzalavitz</media:title>
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		<title>Abused Children May Get Unique Form of PTSD</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/04/30/abused-children-may-get-different-form-of-ptsd/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/04/30/abused-children-may-get-different-form-of-ptsd/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 30 Apr 2013 09:45:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Maia Szalavitz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Mental Health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Trauma]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[child abuse]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[child maltreatment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[epigenetics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[genes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[post traumatic stress disorder]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ptsd]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=85783</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Child abuse scars not just the brain and body, but, according to the latest research, but may leave its mark on genes as well. The research, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that abused children who develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may experience a biologically distinct form of the disorder from PTSD caused by other types of trauma later in life. “The main aim of our study was to address the question of whether patients with same clinical diagnosis but different early environments have the same underlying biology,” says Divya Mehta, corresponding author of the study and a postdoctoral student at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, Germany.   To find out, Mehta&#8217;s team studied blood cells from 169 people in Atlanta who were participating in the Grady Trauma Project.  Most were in their late 30s to mid 40s and were African American; some had been abused as children but all had suffered at least two other significant traumatic events, such as being held at gun- or knife point, having a major car accident or being raped. On average, the participants experienced seven major traumas. Despite these events, however, the majority were resilient: 108 participants never developed PTSD. Among the 61 that did, 32 had been abused as children and 29 had not.  The authors examined their blood cells, looking for genetic changes that distinguished people with the disorder who had been abused from those who had not. To focus on changes associated with PTSD diagnosis rather than trauma exposure alone, they looked for differences not seen in the resilient group. MORE: How Child Abuse Primes the Brain for Future Mental Illness These genetic alterations are known as epigenetic changes: chemical differences that don’t mutate the DNA itself but affect how actively and efficiently the genes are made into proteins. By either silencing or activating genes, epigenetic changes can influence everything from brain development and functioning to the risk for certain diseases. While not necessarily permanent, some of these changes can last a<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=85783&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Trauma</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/mental-health/trauma-mental-health/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/6484-000057a.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">MaiaSzalavitz</media:title>
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		<title>Want to Hold On to a Memory? Make a Fist</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/04/29/grasping-memory-with-both-hands/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/04/29/grasping-memory-with-both-hands/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:00:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Maia Szalavitz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Memory]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hand clenching memory]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[improving memory]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[memory encoding]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[memory recall]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[recall]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=85726</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Getting a grip — literally — by clenching your right fist before remembering information and your left when you want to remember it can boost your recall, according to the latest study. This strange trick may work because clenching your hands activates the side of the brain that handles the function — in right-handed people, for instance, the left side of the brain is primarily responsible for encoding information and the right for recalling memory. (If you are left-handed, the opposite applies.) To test this idea, researchers led by Ruth Propper of Montclair State University in New Jersey studied 50 right-handed college students, mainly women. They were given a list of 36 words to remember and a small pink ball to clench. One group clenched the ball twice for 45 seconds, each with their right hands before memorizing the words, then did the same with their left hands before writing down as many words as they could recall; another group performed the same task but reversed the order of the fists they made. Two other groups used the same hand each time, one group using the left and the other the right. A final group didn’t clench the ball at all but held it gently in both hands each time. The group that started with the right hand — and activated the left side of their brains, which helps encode memory, and then clenched their left hand, activating the right side of the brain during recall — performed the best on the memory test. “The findings suggest that some simple body movements — by temporarily changing the way the brain functions — can improve memory,” Propper said in a statement describing the results, which were published in the journal PLoS One. Participants recalled an average of 10 words if they clenched their right hand for encoding and left for recall, which was four more than those who used the opposite clenching pattern. (MORE: A New Way to Curb Drinking? Planting False (Bad) Memories of a Bender) And as odd as it<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=85726&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Memory</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/mental-health/memory/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/115049937a.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">MaiaSzalavitz</media:title>
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		<title>Babies&#8217; Brains: When Does Consciousness Emerge?</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/04/26/babys-first-consciousness/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/04/26/babys-first-consciousness/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:38:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Maia Szalavitz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Brain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Child Development]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Infancy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[awareness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[babies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[baby consciousness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[conscious thought]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[consciousness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[infants]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[neuroscience]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=85689</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Finding the point at which babies&#8217; reactions change from being purely reflexive to reflecting more intention is leading researches to focus on the first glimmers of conscious thought in infants as young as 5 months old. “We can prove that the same neuromarkers of consciousness found in adults can be found in babies as early as five months of age,” says lead author Sid Kouider, a researcher at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, of his new study on the earliest signs of conscious thought in infants that was published in Science. To look for consciousness in babies too young to talk, the authors took advantage of research on visual perception, which showed that the brain processes a great deal of visual information before any of it reaches a level of conscious awareness. EEG signals, which are measured by placing electrodes on the head, can clearly distinguish between visual data that is consciously seen and that which is simply taken in by the brain. These signals show a major change when a person first becomes consciously aware of an object that has previously received only subliminal attention. “There are two stages of perceptual processing,” explains Kouider. “The first stage is basically activation of neurons in the sensory cortex. Just a little visual stimulation — even if you can’t see it consciously — is going to activate [this brain region].” The brain still shows electrical activity on an EEG, for example, even if images or words flash by so quickly that they aren’t consciously perceived. (This information registers somewhere in the brain, however, because such “subliminal” data can affect responses to later tasks). The second stage, which can be reported verbally by adults, comes with a different signal and is essentially either “all” — when you can see it — or “none,” if the object isn’t visible at all, indicating a conscious level of attention and processing. To better understand how, and when these different levels of perception might be engaged in babies, the researchers placed EEG caps on 30 5-month-olds,<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=85689&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Brain</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/mental-health/brain/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/sb10066477a-002-1a.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">MaiaSzalavitz</media:title>
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		<title>Depressive Thinking Can Be Contagious</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/04/24/depressive-thinking-can-be-infectious/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/04/24/depressive-thinking-can-be-infectious/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 24 Apr 2013 20:20:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Maia Szalavitz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Depression]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cognitive styles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[college]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[college depression]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[contagious depression]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[depressive thinking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[thinking styles]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=85237</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[We don&#8217;t think of emotional states as passing from one person to another, but a new study suggests some depressive thoughts can go viral. Researchers studying a group of college students found that certain types of depressive thinking can spread from close-living roommates like a lingering flu. Although many people see depression as a chemical imbalance in the brain, scientists say social context and the way you see yourself and the world can be critical in causing and sustaining the illness, which affects around 10% of college-age adults. “Thinking styles are a really important factor in risk for depression,” says the study&#8217;s lead author Gerald Haeffel, associate professor of clinical psychology at Notre Dame University. “How one thinks about life stress and negative moods is one of the best predictors that we have of future depression.” Haeffel and his colleagues recognized that starting life in a college dorm — with students transitioning from the familiarity of high school and family and venturing into a completely new social setting — would serve as an ideal real-world laboratory for studying how social connections and thinking styles of some students can influence others, and how these interactions can affect depression. “For many freshmen, going to college is a seminal life transition,” he says. “They are moving away from home for the first time, and their social context is turned on its head. An important feature of our design was that students were randomly assigned to roommates. This means that students were not able to actively choose someone to live with. [They] had to live with a stranger who might have a completely different style of thinking.” (MORE: How Childhood Trauma May Make the Brain Vulnerable to Addiction, Depression) Previous research showed that depressive thinking styles tend to become stable and consistent by high school, and that they can increase risk of depression (without necessarily causing the condition) over an entire lifetime. “Cognitive vulnerability is not the same thing as depression,” says Haeffel. “Someone can have a cognitive vulnerability but not appear sad or gloomy. It can be<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=85237&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Depression</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/mental-health/depression/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/163674171.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">MaiaSzalavitz</media:title>
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		<title>Q&amp;A: Criminologist Adrian Raine on The Biology of Violence</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/04/23/qa-criminologist-adrian-raine-on-the-marathon-bombs-the-biology-of-violence/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/04/23/qa-criminologist-adrian-raine-on-the-marathon-bombs-the-biology-of-violence/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 23 Apr 2013 20:00:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Maia Szalavitz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA['Mind Reading']]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Psychology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Adrian Raine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[amygdala]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[boston marathon bombings]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[crime]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[criminals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dzhokhar tsarnaev]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mind reading]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tamerlan tsarnaev]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[violence]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=85126</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Violent behavior is a complex product of biology and upbringing, and when that violence involves murder and destruction to the extent that erupted at the Boston Marathon, the questions about what drives such aggression become all the more urgent. Criminologist Adrian Raine, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, has spent more than 35 years trying to answer such questions. TIME spoke with him recently about the Boston bombings and the seeds of violence, which he explores in his new book, The Anatomy of Violence. The question on everyone’s minds now is why… Most mass killers have mixed motives, but more often than not there is a fundamental grievance, a score that needs to be settled with society. For [the older brother], the earlier questioning by the FBI and rejection of his application for US citizenship could have been a contributing factor that got wrapped up with political ideology and a dissatisfaction with his own life. But likely a complex combination of factors created this toxic mix – likely a biological predisposition to violence combined with social triggers and mild mental illness. What would you expect to see in these brothers’ brains and backgrounds? You can either say that these two men had no pathology and were driven by ideology, or that something was wrong. On balance I suspect the latter. If I could brain scan [them], I would expect to see good frontal lobe functioning that is needed for a carefully planned and regulated attack. But they would also show a reduction in the functioning and volume of the amygdala, which would predispose them to fearlessness and lack of conscience. As with the Unabomber, they may also have relatively low resting heart rates, a marker for violence and stimulation-seeking. MORE: Older Boston Suspect Made Two Trips to Dagestan, Visited Radical Mosque, Officials Say Mass killers come from a wide range of social and psychological backgrounds. But there is frequently social instability. I would also suspect some form of psychopathology. There’s a fine line between ideology and unshakable beliefs on the<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=85126&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Psychology</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/mental-health/psychology/</primary_category_link><letterbox>1</letterbox><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/raineanatomyofviolence.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">MaiaSzalavitz</media:title>
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		<title>Your Brain on Math</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/04/23/your-brain-on-math/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/04/23/your-brain-on-math/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:00:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Maia Szalavitz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Brain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dyscalculia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dyslexia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[learning]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[math]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[neuroscience]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[number cells]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[numerals]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=84956</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Among the 100 million or so nerve cells in the brain, it turns out there is a group dedicated to making sense of numbers. No one is born knowing their 1, 2, 3’s or A, B, C’s. However, the brain clearly handles these uniquely human but culturally varied types of knowledge differently. Many people, for example, are far stronger in one area or another, showing a propensity for verbal skills over numerical ones or vice versa. So understanding how the brain codes these different systems could not only aid children with language disabilities, for instance, or those who struggle with processing numbers, but could also help to reveal more about how the brain works to process new information and acquire knowledge. In a new study, which was published in the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers tested seven people with epilepsy who had electrodes implanted in their brains to determine the source of their seizures. Researchers have learned a great deal about the brain with the help of such patients, including more about how the brain works to produce speech and the effect of anesthesia on consciousness. The electrodes help inform doctors about the source of electrical disturbances that contribute to the seizures; some of these patients may then be eligible for additional surgery to remove the damaged region. Because of the unusual circumstance of having electrodes in their brain that can track neural activity, these patients are often approached to volunteer for clinical trials of brain function. In the first experiment aimed at determining the brain&#8217;s &#8220;numeral area,&#8221; participants looked at single digits, letters, foreign numeral symbols from languages they didn’t know and at images of distorted numbers and letters that were unreadable. They were asked to press keys on the computer indicating whether or not they could read each symbol. In a second test, the volunteers saw either numbers, the words depicting numerals (one instead of 1) or words that sounded similar to number words (won instead of one), which they read aloud. The researchers pinpointed a group of around<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=84956&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Brain</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/mental-health/brain/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/75593447a.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">MaiaSzalavitz</media:title>
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		<title>Can Tylenol Dissolve Feelings of Dread?</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/04/19/tylenol-fights-fear-of-the-abyss/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/04/19/tylenol-fights-fear-of-the-abyss/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 19 Apr 2013 12:00:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Maia Szalavitz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Drugs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Emotion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[acetaminophen]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[David Lynch]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dread]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[existential angst]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fear]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fear of death]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[surrealism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tylenol]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=84891</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Thinking about death, fearing the unknown and worrying about the future aren&#8217;t traditionally considered sources of physical pain, but they may be susceptible to the same pain-killing treatments.   Tylenol (acetaminophen) isn’t the most obvious remedy for dread— unlike, say, heroin or a stiff drink, it isn’t known to provide the emotional escape that fear of dying might require. But recent research suggests a strong connection between the pathways responsible for physical and social pain, that hints the same treatments might work for both. One study, for example, revealed an intriguing connection between the over-the-counter medication and its ability to lessen the sting of social rejection. So Daniel Randles, a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia and his colleagues decided to see if the interaction ran deeper. Perhaps, they thought, the pain-processing region in the brain reacts to many types of unexpected, potentially negative events. After all, both pain and social rejection involve unpredictable and distressing events that could lead to behavioral changes to avoid those situations in the future. Uncertainty also tends to increase both types of pain. MORE: Can Doctors Feel Their Patients&#8217; Pain? “Our research focuses on a particular region of the brain, the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (DACC),” says Randles, the lead author of the study, published in Psychological Science. “This region is known to process physical pain and manage social pain as well.” But to recreate the same uncertain, distressing feeling among participants in a study setting, Randles and his team had to get creative. They assigned more than 120 college students to take either a 1,000mg dose of Tylenol or a placebo, and asked half of each group to write about what would happen to their body after they died, and the other half to discuss dental pain, which doesn&#8217;t (at least for most people) trigger the same deep, existential dread or anxiety. To see how the pain killer affected their sense of unease, the volunteers were then asked to consider setting bail for a woman arrested for prostitution. Prior studies showed that thinking<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=84891&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Emotion</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/mental-health/emotion-mental-health/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/157524504.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">MaiaSzalavitz</media:title>
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