during periods of mind-wandering, regions of the brain’s default mode network were activated. Then when participants became aware of this mind-wandering, brain regions related to the detection of salient or relevant events came online. After that, areas of the executive brain network took over, re-directing and maintaining attention on the chosen object. And all of this occurred within 12 seconds around those button presses.

the Killingsworth and Gilbert study I mentioned earlier found that when people’s minds were wandering, they tended to be less happy, presumably because our thoughts often tend towards negative rumination or stress. That’s why mindfulness meditation has become an increasingly important treatment of mental health difficulties like depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and even sexual dysfunction.

In my research, we filmed an interaction between a couple and had each partner turn a rating dial as they watched their tape afterward. On this graph (at left), you can see how one couple rated their interaction. The blue dots represent the wife’s ratings over 15 minutes of conversation; the red dots represent the husband’s ratings. When you add them together, these ratings are a constant, which means that in this interaction, her gain is his loss and his gain is her loss. This is what’s called in game theory a “zero-sum game.” You’ve probably all heard of the concept. It’s the idea that in an interaction, there’s a winner and a loser. And by looking at ratings like this, I came to define a “betrayal metric”: It’s the extent to which an interaction is a zero-sum game, where your partner’s gain is your loss. On the other hand, by trust we really mean, mathematically, that our partner’s behavior is acting to increase our rating dial. Even though we’re disagreeing, my wife is thinking about my welfare, my best interests. When we scientifically tested these so-called trust and betrayal metrics, we found that a high trust metric is correlated with very positive outcomes, such as greater stability in the relationship. In a 20-year longitudinal study of couples in the San Francisco Bay Area that I recently completed with UC Berkeley psychologist Bob Levenson, we found that about 11 percent of couples had a zero-sum game pattern, like in that graph. Every six years, we would re-contact all of the couples in the study, and they would come back to Bob’s lab at Berkeley. Yet we noticed that many of the zero-sum couples weren’t coming back. I thought maybe they dropped out because they found the whole thing so unpleasant. Well, it turns out that they didn’t drop out. They died.

Hostility also has been found to be the part of type A behavior that seems to have the most pernicious health effects, such as a heightened risk of cardiovascular disease. Forsaking a grudge may also free a person from hostility and all its unhealthy consequences. It probably isn’t just hostility and stress that link unforgiveness and poor health. According to a review of the literature on forgiveness and health that my colleague Michael Scherer and I published, unforgiveness might compromise the immune system at many levels. For instance, our review suggests that unforgiveness might throw off the production of important hormones and even disrupt the way our cells fight off infections, bacteria, and other physical insults, such as mild periodontal disease.

To ruminate on an old transgression is to practice unforgiveness. Sure enough, in Witvliet’s research, when people recalled a grudge, their physical arousal soared. Their blood pressure and heart rate increased, and they sweated more. Ruminating about their grudges was stressful, and subjects found the rumination unpleasant. It made them feel angry, sad, anxious, and less in control. Witvliet also asked her subjects to try to empathize with their offenders or imagine forgiving them. When they practiced forgiveness, their physical arousal coasted downward. They showed no more of a stress reaction than normal wakefulness produces.

This view might make sense for solitary species, like the golden hamster, which flees upon being attacked, or territorial species, like many birds, that rely upon territorial arrangements to avoid deadly conflicts. But many mammals, and in particular primates, need each other to survive. Ostracism and marginalization are tickets to shortened lives. Among humans, individuals who have fewer and less healthy social bonds have been shown to live shorter lives, have compromised immune function, and be more vulnerable to disease. Our sociality, and that of many nonhuman primates, requires a mechanism that brings individuals together in the midst of conflict and aggression.

suggest that lonely people have significantly more trouble bouncing back from life’s stresses and strains. For instance, lonely and non-lonely college students in their study reported similar daily activities, but lonely college students experienced more stress in those activities. Among older adults, lonely individuals said they felt more helpless and threatened than did non-lonely people. What’s more, higher stress levels were associated with worse health: Lonely college students had higher blood pressure than non-lonely ones, putting them at greater risk for heart disease, and this health disparity was even greater between lonely and non-lonely older adults. Plus, Hawkley and Cacioppo found that these lonely older adults had higher levels of stress-related hormones, such as cortisol and epinephrine, which may weaken the immune system over time.

teaching college students to “count their blessings” and cultivate gratitude caused them to exercise more, be more optimistic, and feel better about their lives overall.

Giving evokes gratitude. Whether you’re on the giving or receiving end of a gift, that gift can elicit feelings of gratitude—it can be a way of expressing gratitude or instilling gratitude in the recipient. And research has found that gratitude is integral to happiness, health, and social bonds.

First Native Case Of Mosquito-Borne Tropical Disease Chinkungunya Confirmed In Spain Aug 26 2015—NEWS—The ECDC said the mosquito species is not the one responsible for the 2013 Americas outbreak. Presence of the Aedes Albopictus mosquito. Source: ECDC. (Click to enlarge) The European Centre for Disease Prevention & Control (ECDC) confirmed the first case of the tropical disease chinkungunya to be transmitted in Spain on August 21. "This is the first chikungunya case reported from Spain without travel history to endemic areas,˝ said the ECDC report. The patient is a 60-year old man of undisclosed nationality who was likely infected in Gandía (Valencia) and who developed symptoms of the disease—which include fever, severe joint pain, muscle pain, headache, nausea, fatigue and rashes—during a "short" trip to France at the beginning of July. A statement published by the Spanish Health Ministry on August 4 said it was "very likely" the man had been infected by a mosquito of the species Aedes Albopictus in Gandía, "but not conclusive", due to his trip to France "for part of the incubation period". The ECDC believes it "unlikely" the man became infected in France due to the short duration of his stay there and the lack of reported na

El Salvador chikungunya cases near 100,000, Dominican Republic at half-a-million

Can We Eat Grass?

About 90% of people who get serious listeria infections are pregnant women, their newborns, people older than 64 or people with weakened immune systems, such as patients with cancer or H

You won't get sick immediately from eating old cooking oil, but having oil that has been sitting around for a while means the oil has very likely gone rancid.

Here are 10 detoxifying techniques which have solid science behind them

“How do we engage in this lifelong process of detoxification? As a foundation, this involves eating healthy food. This means organic, GMO-free food,” he said in an email interview. “Herbs such as cilantro help us to eliminate metals such as lead and mercury,” he said. “Herbs like turmeric and garlic help to lower the levels of inflammation that are often the underlying causes [of chronic diseases.]”

Best health outcomes for Māori: Practice implications

Best health outcomes for Maori

What a man wants to be is better than what a man wants to seem, for in aiming at that he is aiming more at reality. Hence men say that justice is of small value, since it is more desirable to seem just than to be just, whereas with health it is not so. That is better than other things which is more useful than they are for a number of different purposes; for example, that which promotes life, good life, pleasure, and noble conduct. For this reason wealth and health are commonly thought to be of the highest value, as possessing all these advantages.

The excellence of the body is health; that is, a condition which allows us, while keeping free from disease, to have the use of our bodies; for many people are "healthy" as we are told Herodicus was; and these no one can congratulate on their "health," for they have to abstain from everything or nearly everything that men do.-- Beauty varies with the time of life.