The above is a great article published in Scientific American which may explain why some people remember traumatic events so vividly and others in the same events do not have the inense memories.

It would at least in part explain why some individuals suffer from PTSD Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and others involved in the same event have less or no problems as a result.

Click on the link at the top of this post to read the complete original article.

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Reviewed by: John M. Grohol, Psy.D.
on July 26, 2007 at 11:31 am

Managing emotions is an arduous task for some but a skill that is essential to success in business and personal relationships. Often individuals who can not manage their emotions choose dangerous or destructive courses of action.

Emotional control, a trait associated with adulthood, is best learned during adolescence, a life period often characterized by wide swings of powerful emotions.

“There’s a stereotype that teens don’t manage their emotions, their emotions manage them,” said Reed Larson, a professor of family ecology at the University of Illinois.

Accordingly, Larson and colleagues studied if teenagers can be taught to manage their emotions. Their article is published in this month’s journal of Child Development.

Read More AT Psych Central

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Researchers say obesity is not only caused by genes, but by overweight people being part of social networks of obese individuals. Investigators say the finding helps explain an epidemic of obesity over the past 30 years. VOA’s Jessica Berman reports.

Since the mid-1970s, the number of overweight and obese individuals has skyrocketed. The World Health Organization estimates there are now 1 billion overweight people, at least 300 million of whom are obese.

Experts define obesity as weighing in excess of 30 percent of ideal body weight, a condition that puts obese individuals at extreme risk for heart attack, stroke and diabetes.

Medical researchers know that obesity runs in families because of genes. But, it turns out, that is not the whole story. Investigators have found that social networks play a significant role in determining body type.

Matthew Gilman is head of the obesity prevention program at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Gilman says while genes can explain obesity, they cannot explain the so-called obesity epidemic.

“Genes haven’t changed in the last 30 years, but our environment really has,” he said. “And this study is adding a new perspective to that environment, that of social networks.”

Sociologists at Harvard University and the University of California at San Diego studied the intricate social networks of more than 12,000 people between 1971 and 2003.

After an exhaustive study of the individuals’ relationships – including friends, family and neighbors – the investigators found that a person’s chances of becoming obese increased 40 percent if he or she had a sibling who became obese and 37 percent if they had a spouse who became obese.

Most surprising though, was the risk of obesity among unrelated friends. The study showed that if the friendship was casual, a person’s risk of becoming obese increased by 57 percent if the friend became obese. If the relationship was strong and the two people claimed each other as friends, then if one became obese, the friend’s risk of obesity jumped by 170 percent.

The findings are published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

James Fowler is a sociologist at the University of California and one of the study’s authors.

“We were stunned to find that people who are hundreds of miles away have just as much impact on a person’s weight status as friends who are right next door,” he said. “And so what this suggests is that it’s not the case that this causal relationship is due to people eating together or exercising together. Rather, it has to do with them sharing ideas about what healthy behavior is like.”

Co-author Nicholas Christakis of Harvard University says the findings have implications for the development of effective weight loss programs.

“We think our results suggest that treating people in groups my be more effective than treating them individually,” he noted. “So, collective or group dieting or efforts to participate in sports or other activities that are collective may be more effective than individual attempts alone.”

Observers say this is the first time it appears that groups of people have infected one another with a non-infectious disease, and they predict the study may lead to a new field called network medicine.

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Dan Gilbert talks about happiness. On TED/WNYC – New York Public Radio

Psychologist Dan Gilbert challenges the idea that we’ll be miserable if we don’t get what we want. Our “psychological immune system” lets us feel real, enduring happiness, he says, even when things don’t go as planned. He calls this kind of happiness “synthetic happiness,” and he says it’s “every bit as real and enduring as the kind of happiness you stumble upon when you get exactly what you were aiming for.”

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A few months ago Reverend Will Bowen, a pastor in Kansas City, Missouri, asked his congregation to make a simple pledge to not complain for 21 days, according to MSNBC. Each participant was given a purple bracelet as a reminder of the pledge, and with each complaint, the bracelet is switched to the other wrist and the 21 day count restarts.

The no-complaints movement has quickly become mainstream, and so far over a million no-complaint bracelets – which the church offers free of charge – have been ordered. Requests for the bracelets are coming in from as far away as Australia and South Africa, as well as from American troops in Iraq.

Some participants tried up to seven months to achieve 21 complaint-free days, but even with relapses, all efforts have resulted in millions of stopped complaints. As Rev. Bowen sums it up, “that’s a lot less ear pollution.”

Challenge:
Could you last 21 days with no complaining, criticizing, gossiping or sarcastic remarks? Take the no-complaints pledge, and encourage those around you to do the same.

To read the original article go here:
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/17362505/

I encourage you to take this 21 day challenge. I also encourage you to be aware of your thoughts as you give up the habit of complaining and also suggest that you write a journal or keep a diary of the changes in thought processes that occur as the 21 days unfold.

Please post the results of your challenge on the blog or email them to me if you are willing to share with me. I am interested.

Gene

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By Neil Osterweil, Senior Associate Editor, MedPage Today
Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco
December 21, 2006

ST. LOUIS, Dec. 21 — Bacteria in the gut may be arbiters of weight loss or gain, according to a revolutionary theory proposed by researchers here.

The way it works, said Jeffrey I. Gordon, M.D., of Washington University, and colleagues, is that when an overweight person goes on a diet, one group of efficient bacteria moves out of the gut and another less-efficient group moves in to fill the void.

This finding suggested that manipulation of intestinal microbes might some day be used to treat obesity, they reported in the Dec. 21 issue of Nature.

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Those clothes of yours feeling a little tighter these days as you just can’t resist the urge to nibble on those holiday goodies that someone always seems to leave lying around? Maybe you’re already looking around for the best deals on fitness club memberships — so you can start working off those extra pounds at the gym on Jan. 2.

If you want to avoid the weight gain, you should’ve started working on burning off those extra calories already. A couple of preventative walks could’ve earned you a few guilt-free shortbread cookies.

It takes substantially more to work off your basic Christmas dinner — even a modest feast can add up to 4,000 calories or more pretty quickly. The average 155-pound person would have to walk 55 kilometres to work that off.

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Obese people have higher levels of unusually efficient bacteria in their guts than lean people do, offering a possible explanation for why they get fat, researchers reported today.

Humans need bacteria in their guts to help convert otherwise indigestible foods into a form that is digestible, and the bacteria in obese people are better at the process, a team from Washington University in St. Louis reported in two papers published in the journal Nature.

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