Health

Ways to Change Negative Thinking

Published

5 months ago

April 3, 2024

We all have thoughts that invade our brains from time to time and mess with our moods. We all get down.

Whether it’s your job, your social life, your family, or something completely different, sometimes the negativity can be too much.

“We all have it. We all have it,” says Mark Reinecke, a professor emeritus of psychology and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.

Natalie Dattilo, PhD, a clinical health psychologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, agrees.

“Thoughts that we have that we would classify as negative or unhelpful are pretty normal. We all have thoughts that somebody might say, ‘Oh that’s kind of negative.’ “

Sometimes it is, and sometimes that’s just kind of an accurate description of a bad situation.”

But what can you do about those negative thoughts?

They may be common, but negative thoughts aren’t harmless or to be taken lightly. Research shows that having them over and over, while you have depression and anxiety, can lead to serious emotional and physical problems.

A bout of negative thinking now and then or a random negative thought here or there may not mean much. But having them over and over for a period of time can quickly overwhelm a person. Using words like never or always — “It’s always going to be like this,” or “I’m never going to be any good” — are a red flag.

Ruminating — dwelling on negative thoughts — can be dangerous.

“People often talk about thought loops and thought spirals, this sort of chaining of bad things,” Dattilo says. “It does tend to snowball. And that’s the part where it can become problematic.

“It’s less about the content of the thought, and more about the process, and the inability to let it go, having it run through your mind over and over and over again,” she says “Those tend to be negative for people. People are rarely ruminating on other things.”

How can you tell that the way that you’re thinking is doing more harm than good?

“Is it affecting your relationships? Is it affecting your work? Is it leading you to do things that are really harmful, like alcohol and drug use? Are the ways that you’re coping with it getting you into trouble? If they are, you probably need to talk to somebody,” Reinecke says.

“If it’s persistent, if it goes on for more than 2 weeks, if you just can’t get out of this cycle, you probably need to talk to somebody.

“If you have suicidal thoughts, and particularly if you make any behavior — you write a suicide note or pick up that bottle of pills in the medicine cabinet — you need to talk to somebody,” he says.

Reinecke suggests several ways to help break the grip of negative thinking. Many of the methods he suggests fall under the umbrella of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a treatment that focuses on ways to change unhealthy ways of thinking and behaving.

Essentially, it’s thinking about the way we think. A psychologist or psychiatrist can help you with it.

In the meantime, some ideas:

Acknowledge the emotions. Feeling sad because of the death of a loved one? Laid off? Anyone would be sad. It’s serious stuff. You have to realize that it’s natural to have negative thoughts.

Identify and clarify the thought. Pick apart the most distressing thought. Why is it bad to feel this way? Understand the implications of the way you’re thinking. Treat the thought as an object.

Evaluate the emotions. Sit back and think it through. What’s the evidence for and against this way of thinking? By trying to be clear and rational, you often come to a new insight. Set the thought aside, even for just a moment: “Hmmm, that’s interesting,” or “Well, there you have it.” Taking the emotions out of the equation can help you gain a different perspective.

Come at it from a different angle. Is there another way to look at this? Example: How could this be of benefit to me? Maybe you’ll recognize that adversity builds character, resilience comes from loss, and that good can come from pain.

So what? “And by so what,” Reinecke says, “I mean ‘so what?’ ” The idea is that whatever you’re going through, in the grandest scheme of things, is not that big of a deal. Death is part of life. People go on, and even thrive, after broken relationships all the time. Keep whatever is causing your negative thoughts in perspective, don’t be reactive, and take the longer-term view.

Experts suggest a range of other methods to cope with negative ways of thinking:

Distractions like exercise, reading, doing a puzzle, meeting with friends — simply trying to clear your mind of the problems that affect it — is certainly one way. Writing things down, a form of clarifying your thoughts, is another.

“Sometimes the answer is right there in front of you,” Dattilo says.

Friends and family members can help by staying engaged with, and not withdrawing from, those who are wrangling with unhealthful ways of thinking. Acknowledging their point of view, maybe offering a sympathetic ear — “Well, sounds like you have a lot on your mind,” or “Do you think it would help to think about it like this?” — can be useful.

Certainly, professional help is always an option. The key to quelling harmful, negative thoughts may be more in how we think, rather than what we think.

“There’s a lot of people who tend to see the world [as] glass half-empty but believe that they’re fully justified in the way that they see it,” Dattilo says. “My job isn’t to necessarily argue with them about that, or to convince them to see the world differently.

“My question to them would be, ‘How does it make you feel to think that way?’ And if your goal is to feel better, or have better relationships, or to have more fun, ‘Does thinking like that help you?’ “

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Health

Walmart Is Selling a $300 Power Tower for Just $128, and Shoppers Say It's 'Surprisingly Sturdy'

Published

17 hours ago

September 7, 2024

Michael Charboneau

Men’s Journal aims to feature only the best products and services. If you buy something via one of our links, we may earn a commission.

When building a home gym, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the equipment options, especially when you’re working with limited space and a tight budget. But when you focus on versatile gear and hunt for deals, creating a useful setup is easily doable. Thankfully, Walmart has been slashing prices on a ton of fitness equipment, including its bestselling adjustable dumbbells and even a complete home gym system. Now, it’s reduced the price of a popular power tower by over $170, and it even ships for free.

The Pooboo Body Champ Multifunction Power Tower is on sale for $128, a 57% discount on its normal price of $300. This incredibly versatile workout station has earned nearly 250 five-star ratings from Walmart shoppers who’ve praised its “strong and sturdy” build and “quality fit and finish,” and it’s currently one of the top 5 bestselling models on the site.

Pooboo Body Champ Multifunction Power Tower, $128 (was $300) at Walmart

Don’t let the brand’s bizarre name fool you—this power tower is a well-made piece of gym equipment. It features steel construction and is rated to hold up to 480 pounds (the tower itself weighs 66 pounds). A nearly 42-inch H-shaped base gives it excellent stability, so it won’t wobble or shake when you’re exercising, and anti-slip feet on the bottom keep it securely planted on the floor. It’s also adjustable (from 71.4 inches to 94 inches) to accommodate users of varying heights. And, once it’s set up, you can use it for a huge range of exercises, including dips, pull-ups, chin-ups, push-ups, vertical leg raises, knee raises, and more.

According to Walmart reviewers, the Pooboo Body Champ stands out for its solid build and usefulness. “It’s a surprisingly sturdy piece of equipment,” a shopper said. “Everything about this fitness tower is perfect. I originally purchased this with the intention of only doing pull-ups on it, but after quickly assembling the power tower, I came to realize just how versatile it is. It has cushions for knee and leg raises, it’s sturdy, and the perfect width for dips.” Another shopper agreed, saying, “This was a much-needed addition to my home gym.”

“This thing is amazing and worth every penny,” said another, who added that it’s “easy to install and can hold a lot of weight.”

At just $128, this Pooboo power tower is a screaming deal, and it’s sure to get lots of use during your workouts. But this discount won’t last long, so grab one today before the price pumps back up.

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Health

Alzheimer’s Drug May Save Lives Through ‘Suspended Animation’

Published

1 day ago

September 7, 2024

Harvard Gazette

By Lindsay Brownell | Wyss Institute Communications | Harvard Gazette

Could buy patients more time to survive critical injuries and diseases, even when disaster strikes far from a hospital

Donepezil, an FDA-approved drug to treat Alzheimer’s, has the potential to be repurposed for use in emergency situations to prevent irreversible organ injury, according to researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.

Using Donepezil (DPN), researchers report that they were able to put tadpoles of Xenopus laevis frogs into a hibernation-like torpor.

“Cooling a patient’s body down to slow its metabolic processes has long been used in medical settings to reduce injuries and long-term problems from severe conditions, but it can only currently be done in a well-resourced hospital,” said co-author Michael Super, director of immuno-materials at the Wyss Institute. “Achieving a similar state of ‘biostasis’ with an easily administered drug like DNP could potentially save millions of lives every year.”

This research, published Thursday in ACS Nano, was supported as part of the DARPA Biostasis Program, which funds projects that aim to extend the time for lifesaving medical treatment, often referred to as “the Golden Hour,” following traumatic injury or acute infection. The Wyss Institute has been a participant in the Biostasis Program since 2018, and has achieved several important milestones over the last few years.

Using a combination of predictive machine learning algorithms and animal models, the Wyss’ Biostasis team previously identified and tested existing drug compounds that had the potential to put living tissues into a state of suspended animation. Their first successful candidate, SNC80, significantly reduced oxygen consumption (a proxy for metabolism) in both a beating pig heart and in human organ chips, but is known to cause seizures when injected systemically.

In the new study, they once again turned to their algorithm to identify other compounds whose structures are similar to SNC80. Their top candidate was DNP, which has been approved since 1996 to treat Alzheimer’s.

Achieving a similar state of ‘biostasis’ with an easily administered drug like DNP could potentially save millions of lives every year.

–Michael Super

“Interestingly, clinical overdoses of DNP in patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease have been associated with drowsiness and a reduced heart rate — symptoms that are torpor-like. However, this is the first study, to our knowledge, that focuses on leveraging those effects as the main clinical response, and not as side effects,” said the study’s first author, María Plaza Oliver, who was a postdoctoral fellow at the Wyss Institute when the work was conducted.

The team used X. laevis tadpoles to evaluate DNP’s effects on a whole living organism, and found that it successfully induced a torpor-like state that could be reversed when the drug was removed. The drug, however, did seem to cause some toxicity, and accumulated in all of the animals’ tissues. To solve that problem, the researchers encapsulated DNP inside lipid nanocarriers, and found that this both reduced toxicity and caused the drug to accumulate in the animals’ brain tissues. This is a promising result, as the central nervous system is known to mediate hibernation and torpor in other animals as well.

Although DNP has been shown to protect neurons from metabolic stress in models of Alzheimer’s disease, the team cautions that more work is needed to understand exactly how it causes torpor, as well as scale up production of the encapsulated DNP for use in larger animals and, potentially, humans.

“Donepezil has been used worldwide by patients for decades, so its properties and manufacturing methods are well-established. Lipid nanocarriers similar to the ones we used are also now approved for clinical use in other applications. This study demonstrates that an encapsulated version of the drug could potentially be used in the future to buy patients critical time to survive devastating injuries and diseases, and it could be easily formulated and produced at scale on a much shorter time scale than a new drug,” said senior author Donald Ingber, the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, and the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Bioinspired Engineering at Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

This research was supported by DARPA under Cooperative Agreement Number W911NF-19-2-0027, the Margarita Salas postdoctoral grant co-funded by the Spanish Ministry of Universities, and the University of Castilla-La Mancha (NextGeneration EU UNI/551/2021).

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This story is reprinted with permission from The Harvard Gazette.

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Health

Can Stuff in Rosemary Extract Fight Cocaine Addiction?

Published

2 days ago

September 5, 2024

Futurity

Researchers have discovered that an antioxidant found in rosemary extract can reduce intakes of cocaine by moderating the brain’s reward response, offering a new therapeutic target for treating addiction.

September 5, 2024 by Futurity Leave a Comment

By Pat Harriman-UC Irvine

The study in the journal Neuron describes researchers’ focus on a region of the brain called the globus pallidus externus, which acts as a gatekeeper that regulates how we react to cocaine.

They discovered that within the GPe, parvalbumin-positive neurons are crucial in controlling the response to cocaine by changing the activity neurons releasing the pleasure molecule dopamine.

“There are currently no effective therapeutics for dependence on psychostimulants such as cocaine, which, along with opioids, represent a substantial health burden,” says corresponding author Kevin Beier, an associate professor of physiology and biophysics at the University of California, Irvine.

“Our study deepens our understanding of the basic brain mechanisms that increase vulnerability to substance use disorder-related outcomes and provides a foundation for the development of new interventions.”

Findings in mice revealed that globus pallidus externus parvalbumin-positive cells, which indirectly influence the release of dopamine, become more excitable after being exposed to cocaine. This caused a drop in the expression of certain proteins that encode membrane channels that usually help keep the globus pallidus cell activity in check. The researchers found that carnosic acid, an isolate of rosemary extract, selectively binds to the affected channels, providing an avenue to reduce response to the drug in a relatively specific fashion.

“Only a subset of individuals are vulnerable to developing a substance use disorder, but we cannot yet identify who they are. If globus pallidus cell activity can effectively predict response to cocaine, it could be used to measure likely responses and thus serve as a biomarker for the most vulnerable,” Beier says. “Furthermore, it’s possible that carnosic acid could be given to those at high risk to reduce the response to cocaine.”

The next steps in this research include thoroughly assessing negative side effects of carnosic acid and determining the ideal dosage and timing. The team is also interested in testing its efficacy in reducing the desire for other drugs and in developing more potent and targeted variants.

Scientists from the University of West Virginia and the University of Colorado participated in the study.

Support for this work came from the National Institutes of Health, One Mind, the Alzheimer’s Association, New Vision Research, BrightFocus Foundation, and the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation.

Source: UC Irvine

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Previously Published on futurity.org with Creative Commons License

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