Anxiety Treatment Archives - Mind Care Center

Anxiety Treatment Archives - Mind Care Center

As the Opioid Crisis shook the public’s view of painkillers and pharmaceutical companies came under fire for their marketing practices, many patients looked for alternatives. One of the leading contenders; talk therapy

Biofeedback Therapy Tarrytown_Mind Care Center

Biofeedback Therapy Tarrytown_Mind Care Center: Biofeedback Therapy Tarrytown_blog tag_mindcarecenter

Five ways to soothe a mind fixated on anxiety, stress, and streams of information.

Risking: Good Idea, Bad Idea | Energy Healing Therapies in Sleepy Hollow

 

Certain actions or activities carry risks, whether you are engaged in combat for your country, sky diving, investing in high-risk stocks, as a pioneer exploring unknown territory, or simply going beyond your established comfort zone.

Clearly, there is a distinction between necessary, or calculated risk, versus unnecessary or random risk-taking. By consensus, some risks are considered a healthy aspect of personal development, whereas others have negative consequences.

It would seem not a coincidence that there is, reportedly, a high proportion of prison inmates in the US, exhibiting or diagnosed with ADHD, with symptoms that include: impulsivity, poor judgment, risk-taking, or reckless behavior, with disregard for one’s safety and safety of others, not learning from previous experience and higher recidivism.

Neurofeedback, or EEG biofeedback, notably LENS neurofeedback, is an established alternative treatment approach for executive dysfunction, addressing decision-making, and impulse control. Risk-taking issues, for this and for the general population.

Some sports, such as car racing, football (with a high rate of reported concussion), or occupations, such as pilots, those in combat, and frontline medics, carry inherent risks, though less so with training, and competence.

There are many examples of positive risk-taking, such as: stretching oneself beyond perceived capabilities, academically or career advancement, physical childhood challenges with nearby supervision, adhering to one’s moral compass and values in social or political adversity acts of altruism in protecting one’s family or fighting for a cause.

Another aspect is in the realm of the seeker, letting go of attachment to the known, in order to enter the Unknown, as referenced in Religious and Spiritual Traditions.

So, it’s apparent that risk-taking is a natural part of living in all its aspects, positive and negative, carrying with it a classic tension between good and bad choices, freedom, and responsibility.

 More Info : Risking: Good Idea, Bad Idea

From Timid to Warrior: Boosting Self-Esteem

 

Low self-esteem can be described as lacking self-confidence, and self-worth, in one’s abilities. So, how to transcend it, not let it hold us back?

My definition of a warrior is someone who acts in spite of fear. Fear is normal – even healthy when an action for survival is required. Too often, though, we live our lives in self-limiting ways, our potential undermined by various factors, causing us to see situations through the half-empty, rather than the half-full glass – dwelling on the negative, disregarding our achievements; thinking others are better than us; poor self-image; that we don’t deserve to enjoy; self-criticism; fear of making mistakes, avoid taking risks, fear of failure, or success, feelings of incompetence.

Many factors can cause or lead to low self-esteem: parental abuse, that is emotional, sexual, physical, neglect, parental or authority figure disapproval, (‘you’ll never amount to anything!’); bullying’ academic difficulties; social shaming, poor performance, poor body self-image; perception of not belonging; war; chronic stress.

To boost self-esteem, we can find support by joining groups; celebrating achievements, especially under adversity; being around those who make us feel good, versus those who don’t treat us well; good health practices; doing things we enjoy, start something new; treatment alternatives, including LENS neurofeedback, which, by helping to balance and regulate the nervous system, together with supportive counseling, goal-setting, healing techniques, can get us in touch with buried, suppressed aspirations, foster self-growth, self-assurance, energy and impetus for new life directiorns.'

More Info : Biofeedback Therapy Tarrytown

Smoke gets on the brain

Health impact studies of air pollution, including wildfire smoke, have mostly focused on the lungs. But toxicologist Matthew Campen of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque is looking at the brain.

In a study of the inflammatory effects of smoke PM_2.5 on the brains of mice, Campen and colleagues found that inflammation in the lungs was modest compared with the “profound” inflammation in the brain, Campen says. Given what’s known about how damaging smoke can be in the lungs, to find even greater effects on the brain is troubling, he says.

The inflammatory effect on the mice’s brains was almost immediate, within 24 hours of exposure, the researchers reported in the March Toxicological Sciences. The particulates enter the body through the respiratory system, get in the blood, and are small enough to cross the blood-brain barrier and start affecting the brain. Inflammation has been linked with dementia in older people and neurodevelopmental issues in younger people, plus mood disorders like anxiety and depression, Campen says.

“I’m hoping that our study with mice spurs… epidemiologists to take a look,” he says. “The effects we see are much stronger and more worrisome than what we see in the lungs,” he says, but we don’t know yet at what PM_2.5 levels the danger begins. “We need to explore this more rigorously.”

 More Info : LENS treatment in Tarrytown

The Vast Potential of the Vagus Nerve

 

Some say a cure for ailments like anxiety is flowing from the brain. But much is unknown.

By Christina Caron

In recent years, the vagus nerve has become an object of fascination, especially on social media. The vagal nerve fibers, which run from the brain to the abdomen, have been anointed by some influencers as the key to reducing anxiety, regulating the nervous system, and helping the body to relax.

TikTok videos with the hashtag “#vagusnerve” have been viewed more than 64 million times, and there are nearly 70,000 posts with the hashtag on Instagram. Some of the most popular ones feature simple hacks to “tone” or “reset” the vagus nerve, in which people plunge their faces into ice water or lie on their backs with ice packs on their chests.

Now, wellness companies have capitalized on the trend, offering products like vagus massage oil, pillow mists, and vibrating bracelets. These products claim to stimulate the nerve, but they have not been endorsed by the scientific community.

Researchers who study the vagus nerve say that stimulating it with electrodes can potentially help improve mood and alleviate symptoms in those who suffer from treatment-resistant depression, among other ailments. But are there other ways to activate the vagus nerve? Who would benefit most from doing so? And what exactly is the vagus nerve, anyway? Here’s a look at what we know so far.

What is the vagus nerve?

The term “vagus nerve” is actually shorthand for thousands of fibers. They are organized into two bundles that run from the brain stem down through each side of the next and into the torso, branching outward to touch our internal organs, said Dr. Kevin J. Tracey, a neurosurgeon and president of the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, Northwell Health’s research center in New York.

Imagine something akin to a tree, whose limbs interact with nearly every organ system in the body. (The word “vagus” means “wandering” in Latin.)

The vagus nerve picks up information about how the organs are functioning and sends information from the brain stem back to the body, helping to control digestion, heart rate, voice, mood, and the immune system.

For those reasons, the vagus nerve – the longest of the 12 cranial nerves – is sometimes referred to as an information super-highway.

Dr. Tracey compared it to a trans-Atlantic cable.

“It’s not a mishmash of signals,” he said. “Every signal has a specific job.”

Scientists first began examining the vagus nerve in the late 1800s to investigate whether stimulating it could be a potential treatment for epilepsy. They later discovered that a side effect of activating the nerve was an improvement in mood. Today, researchers are examining how the nerve can affect psychiatric disorders, among other conditions.

 More Info Click Here : Energy Healing Therapies in Tarrytown

Mom’s voice loses its grip for teens

 

As kids grow up, unfamiliar voices get more interesting

By Laura Sanders

Young kids’ brains are especially tuned to their mothers’ voices. Teenagers’ brains, in their typical rebellious glory, are most decidedly not.

That conclusion, reported on April 28 in the Journal of Neuroscience, may seem laughably obvious to parents of teens, including neuroscientist Daniel Abrams of Stanford University School of Medicine. “I have two teenaged boys myself, and it’s a kind of funny result,” he says.

But the finding may be deeper than a punch line. As kids grow up and expand their social connections beyond family, their brains need to be attuned to that growing world. “Just as an infant is tuned into a mom, adolescents have this whole other class of sounds and voices that they need to tune into,” Abrams says.

He and colleagues scanned the brains of 7 to 16-year-olds as they heard the voices of either their mothers or unfamiliar women. To focus the experiment on just the sound of a voice, the words spoken were gibberish.

Abrams and colleagues have previously shown that in kinds ages 7 to 12, certain regions of the brain – particularly those parts involved in detecting rewards and paying attention – respond more strongly to mom’s voice than a voice of an unknown woman. But in these same brain regions in teens, the new study finds, unfamiliar voices elicited greater responses than mom’s. The shift seems to happen between ages 13 and 14.

It’s not that these brain areas stop responding to mom, Abram says. Rather, the unfamiliar voices become more rewarding and worthy of attention. That’s how it should be, Abrams says. Exploring new people and situations in a hallmark of adolescence.

Voices can carry powerful signals. Biological anthropologist Leslie Seltzer of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and colleagues have found that when stressed girls hear mom’s voice on the phone, their stress hormones drop. The new results support the idea that the brain changes to reflect new needs, Seltzer says. Though, she notes, the results might change across varying mother-child relationships.

For now, teens and parents frustrated by missed messages can take heart, Abram says. “This is the way the brain is wired, and there’s good reason for it.”

More Info :  Mom’s voice loses its grip for teens