I feel grateful for living in Sweden, but at the same time feel sad because of obvious reasons.
Norway has jumped from 4th place in 2016 to 1st place this year, followed by Denmark, Iceland and Switzerland in a tightly packed bunch. All of the top four countries rank highly on all the main factors found to support happiness: caring, freedom, generosity, honesty, health, income and good governance. […]
In this video presented by NPR's science tumblr Skunk Bear, you'll going to see something that ordinarily is invisible to the human eye – how sound look like.
Researchers in Denmark who split 1,095 daily Facebook users into two groups, half given access to the site as normal and the remainder forced to quit cold turkey, found that after a week those on a break from the social network felt 55% less stressed.
"We look at a lot of data on happiness and one of the things that often comes up is that comparing ourselves to our peers can increase dissatisfaction," said Meik Wiking, CEO of the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen.
"Facebook is a constant bombardment of everyone else's great news, but many of us look out of the window and see grey skies and rain (especially in Denmark!)," he said. "This makes the Facebook world, where everyone's showing their best side, seem even more distortedly bright by contrast, so we wanted to see what happened when users took a break."
These three simple words, "I am excited" (excuse me for The Pointer Sisters reference above), can help transform anxiety into excitement. For those of you who are familiar with the quote "Fear is excitement without the breath" from Fritz Perls, founder of Gestalt therapy, this might not come as a total surprise.
[…] When most people feel anxious, they likely tell themselves to just relax. "When asked, 'how do you feel about your upcoming speech?', most people will say, 'I'm so nervous, I'm trying to calm down,'" said Alison Wood Brooks, a professor at Harvard Business School who has studied the phenomenon. She cites the ubiquitous "Keep Calm and Carry On" posters as partial evidence.
But that might be precisely the wrong advice, she said. Instead, the slogan should be more like, "Get Amped and Don't Screw Up."
That's because anxiety and excitement are both aroused emotions. In both, the heart beats faster, cortisol surges, and the body prepares for action. In other words, they're "arousal congruent." The only difference is that excitement is a positive emotion‚ focused on all the ways something could go well.
Calmness is also positive, meanwhile, but it's also low on arousal. For most people, it takes less effort for the brain to jump from charged-up, negative feelings to charged-up, positive ones, Brooks said, than it would to get from charged-up and negative to positive and chill. In other words, its easier to convince yourself to be excited than calm when you’re anxious.
You find Brooks full paper "Get Excited: Reappraising Pre-Performance Anxiety as Excitement" to read for free here.
Individuals often feel anxious in anticipation of tasks such as speaking in public or meeting with a boss. I find that an overwhelming majority of people believe trying to calm down is the best way to cope with pre-performance anxiety. However, across several studies involving karaoke singing, public speaking, and math performance, I investigate an alternative strategy: reappraising anxiety as excitement. Compared to those who attempt to calm down, individuals who reappraise their anxious arousal as excitement feel more excited and perform better. Individuals can reappraise anxiety as excitement using minimal strategies such as self-talk (e.g., saying "I am excited" out loud) or simple messages (e.g., "get excited"), which lead them to feel more excited, adopt an opportunity mindset (as opposed to a threat mindset), and improve their subsequent performance. These findings suggest the importance of arousal congruency during the emotional reappraisal process.
And in closing, I highly recommend you to watch health psychologist Kelly McGonigal's excellent TED talk "How to Make Stress Your Friend" that urges you to befriend stress and thus transform it into something more pleasurable and healthier.
If I experience many new things during a short period of time, let's say a week or a weekend, it sometimes feel like it happened months ago when I reflect on the experience shortly after.
Last summer, this phenomenon yet occured when me and my wife whent on a short trip outside town, and coming back it felt like days had passed when in fact we had just been away for something like 5–7 hours.
So, a popular saying says that time goes fast when having fun. For me, the combination of fun and experience new things tend to slow things down. This summer trip got me curious, and a search led me to an article on The Huffington Post called "This Simple Mental Trick Can Slow Down Time" that explained why I had felt the way I felt.
Most of us know the feeling well: As we grow up and fill our days with more busyness, time seems to fly by faster and faster. Of course, we know that time is moving at the same rate as it did during childhood, when lazy summer days seemed to stretch on infinitely. But what's changed is our perception of time. According to neuroscientific research recently highlighted by Inc. Magazine, how the brain perceives time passing determines whether our days feel luxuriously long, or short and harried -- and it's something that we have a certain level of control over. By paying attention and actively noticing new things, we can slow time down.
And in this clip, "The Speed of Life" presented by Derek Muller from the YouTube channel Veritasium, an experiment with repetitive images (at the 3:45 minute mark) supports the theory mentioned above:
Outside Magazine's correspondent Gordy Megroz decided to get more sleep so he better could endure the physically demanding ascent to climb the 13,770-foot peak Grand Teton in Jackson, Wyoming.
After some minor changes of habits, the payoff was tremendous, something that can act like a good reminder for the rest of us to not neglect our sleep.
Going into my experiment, I worried that not working at night would put me way behind schedule. But after just three days, I was feeling so refreshed each morning that I was far more efficient behind the desk. By six I'd completed most of my work for the day and still had plenty of energy for my workouts, without having to caffeinate.
Ten days later, my friend Andy and I climbed to the top of the Grand, summiting just before sunset. On the way back down, after a good nine hours of effort, Andy let out a big yawn. "Man, I'm getting tired," he said. "Weird," I responded. "I'm not."
Featured image: New York City, 1972 by photographer Michael Putnam taken from Putnam's book "Sleep" 2007. Via The New Yorker.
In this lovely TED Talk, psychiatrist Robert Waldinger shares the findings from Harvard University's 75-year-old study on adult development about what constitutes a good life. A group of 724 men was selected to participate in this study in 1938 – a group of sophomores at Harvard University and a group of boys from the poorest neighborhoods in Boston – and over the years, they have all been given questions about work, homelife and health .
And as a result of this fine study, these men's answers and lifes are pointing towards something important that you can benefit from today: build healthy and trustworthy relationships to build a good, happy and healthy life.
Featured image: Timberline Lodge Ski Club Party, Mt. Hood, Oregon, Jan 1942. Photography by Ralph Morse / LIFE Photo Collection. Via A Cup of Jo. H/t Vintage Ski.
In a collaboration with sound therapists from British Academy of Sound Therapy, Manchester trio Marconi Union created an instrumental eight minute track called "Weightless" (2011). The track is so relaxing that Dr David Lewis-Hodgson from Mindlab International, who conducted the research, said that it created the greatest relaxation response of all the music tested in this research study, making it "the world's most relaxing song" according to Lyz Cooper, founder of the British Academy of Sound Therapy.
Boffins say the eight minute track, called Weightless, is so effective at inducing sleep it should not be listened to while driving.
[…]
Scientists played the song to 40 women and found it to be more effective at helping them relax than songs by Enya, Mozart and Coldplay.
The study - commissioned by bubble bath and shower gel firm Radox Spa - found the song was even more relaxing than a massage, walk or cup of tea.
[…]
Studies found Weightless was 11 per cent more relaxing than any other song and even made many of the women "drowsy" in the lab.
It induced a 65 per cent reduction in overall anxiety and brought them to a level 35 per cent lower than their usual resting rates.
The song features guitar, piano and electronic samples of natural soundscapes.
It is pierced throughout by buddhist-like chants that induce a trance-like state.
And according to the study, these are the top ten most relaxing tracks:
In a study done by researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, the results show that one night of sleep deprivation equals the harmful effects of being on a six-month-long high-fat diet.
"Our study suggests that one night of total sleep deprivation may be as detrimental to insulin sensitivity as six months on a high-fat diet," said Dr. Josiane Broussard, who directed the study. "This research demonstrates the importance of adequate sleep in maintaining blood sugar levels and reducing risk for metabolic diseases like obesity and diabetes."
Sure, you can't out train a bad diet, and you can't get fit without adequate and proper exercise, but even if you're on point with both of those, if you don't get enough sleep, your overall health is suffering.
Featured image: A vintage postcard that reads "Sonno Profondo" (Deep Sleep) from 1953, depicting a father and his son on the beach. Via Pinterest.
The latest I-LABS research shows that toddlers who watch an argument use that emotional information to avoid making adults angry.
The study, led by I-LABS' Betty Repacholi and Andrew Meltzoff, shows that children as young as 15 months can detect anger when watching other people's social interactions and then use that emotional information to guide their own behavior.
"Through studying the roots of social-emotional learning we are illuminating an important aspect of human personality and what helps kids succeed in life and school," said Meltzoff, co-director of I-LABS. "There's been a lot of attention on child problem-solving, but if we want to understand what makes kids tick, we need to study their social emotional lives, too."
A new seaweed, which has been created and patented by researchers from Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center, tastes just like bacon. Great news for those of us who wants to keep the flavour, but don't want to eat meat.
The bizarre but tasty creation is actually a new strain of red marine algae called dulse that is packed full of minerals and protein and looks like red lettuce.
[…]
“Dulse is a superfood, with twice the nutritional value of kale,” said Chuck Toombs, a faculty member in OSU’s College of Business and a member of the team working to develop the product into a foodstuff. “And OSU had developed this variety that can be farmed, with the potential for a new industry for Oregon.”
[…]
“There hasn’t been a lot of interest in using it in a fresh form. But this stuff is pretty amazing,” said chief researcher Chris Langdon. “When you fry it, which I have done, it tastes like bacon, not seaweed. And it’s a pretty strong bacon flavor.”
Scientists have discovered, that when we shake hands with someone, we immediately afterwards sniff our hands to convey information from the newly picked up scent:
You won't believe you do it, but you do. After shaking hands with someone, you'll lift your hands to your face and take a deep sniff. This newly discovered behaviour – revealed by covert filming – suggests that much like other mammals, humans use bodily smells to convey information.
We know that women's tears transmit chemosensory signals - their scent lowers testosterone levels and dampens arousal in men - and that human sweat can transmit fear. But unlike other mammals, humans don't tend to go around sniffing each other.
Wondering how these kinds of signals might be exchanged, Noam Sobel and his colleagues at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel turned to one of the most common ways in which people touch each other - shaking hands. "We started looking at people and noticed that afterwards, the hand somehow inadvertently reached the face," says Sobel.
How does your body size compare to some of the giants of the ocean? A team of scientists and undergraduate students give us the answer in this interesting illustrated chart after having analyzed the body size for 25 marine species, including whales, sharks, squids, and other ocean giants.
To take a short nap is an art in itself. Depending on what you need to do right after you wake up, it determines the lenght of your nap. A really interesting read!
"Naps are actually more complicated than we realize," said David Dinges, a sleep scientist at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine. "You have to be deliberative about when you're going to nap, how long you're going to nap and if you're trying to use the nap relative to work or what you have coming up."
It's more to exercise than the release of endorphins. Leo Widrich has written a great article about exercise and how it boost your brain at the same time. And the best part, even gentle exercise lets you reap the health benefits. I exercise daily, and reading about the scientific findings, spur me on to continue.
A recent study from Penn State university shed some light on the matter and the results are more than surprising. They found that to be more productive and happier on a given work day, it doesn’t matter so much, if you work-out regularly, if you haven’t worked out on that particular day:
"Those who had exercised during the preceding month but not on the day of testing generally did better on the memory test than those who had been sedentary, but did not perform nearly as well as those who had worked out that morning."
New York Times best-selling author Gretchen Reynolds has written a whole book about the subject matter titled "The first 20 minutes". To get the highest level of happiness and benefits for health, the key is not to become a professional athlete. On the contrary, a much smaller amount is needed to reach the level where happiness and productivity in every day life peaks:
"The first 20 minutes of moving around, if someone has been really sedentary, provide most of the health benefits. You get prolonged life, reduced disease risk — all of those things come in in the first 20 minutes of being active."
A study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, suggests that we don't display our emotions that easily when we look at money:
In one of the six studies, researchers showed undergrads either ten pictures of money or of seashells (ostensibly so that they could rate the lighting and clarity of the photos), and then asked them to fill out a seemingly unrelated survey asking when it’s appropriate to keep their emotions to themselves. Those who’d seen the images of money were less likely to endorse the idea of outward emotional expression than the people who’d looked at the seashell pictures.
Other studies with similar setups showed that people with money on their minds didn’t use as many emotional words in written communication; they also were more likely to judge pictures of smiling or frowning people as more emotionally extreme. “Thinking about money increases individuals’ disposition to perceive themselves in a business-like relationship with others, in which … the expression of emotion is considered inappropriate,” the authors write. “Therefore, these individuals express less emotion in public and expect others to do likewise.”
A fun day on the International Space Station! NASA astronauts Steve Swanson and Reid Wiseman together with European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst put a GoPro camera into a floating ball of water when exploring the phenomenon of water surface tension in microgravity. I like the end part best when Steve Swanson plays with the ball of water with his hands.
I´m about to get on the mat and do an hour long yoga session. It´s late in the evening, but due to recent changes in my daily routine, exercise early morning or day might not always be possible.
I´ve been thinkning that exercise this late isn´t so beneficial, but luckily this science report came my way today and proved me wrong. The report published in Sleep Medicine gives that exercise before bedtime can result in better sleep:
Against expectations and general recommendations for sleep hygiene, high self-perceived exercise exertion before bedtime was associated with better sleep patterns in a sample of healthy young adults. Further studies should also focus on elderly adults and adults suffering from insomnia.
[…]
Greater exercise exertion was associated with higher sleep efficiency, shortened sleep onset latency, fewer awakenings and shorter duration of awakenings after sleep onset, less light sleep and more deep sleep.
[…]
Among a sample of healthy young adults, self-perceived exercise exertion and objectively assessed sleep were positively associated. The present pattern of results puts into question both scientific and lay opinion that increased exercise exertion in the evening should be avoided immediately prior to bedtime.
Featured image: Woman exercising with dumbells, 1920s. Copyright by Bettmann/CORBIS. Found via vintage everyday.
So many times I´ve been amazed at how long a few minutes seem to last when I´ve turned off my computer or TV and sat down to focus on an assignment with just a pen and paper at my disposal. Time seems to slow down since there are no distractions, and I come out of it feeling refreshed and with a new sense of how much I´m able to accomplish in just a short while.
I´ve noticed that a task such as reading a book sometimes can be a bit difficult because the habit of skimming through text on the Internet, but after awhile I tend to maintain focus and reading then become a rather tranquil experience.
Many scientifically proven strategies to boost your mental performance involve easily embraceable, common-sense tactics that can have an immense impact on the long-term health of your most important natural resource. One such tactic is eliminating toxic multitasking.
[…]
So often we find ourselves in environments that erroneously place a high value on being able to multitask, the prevailing perception being that the more you can do at once, the more expertly intelligent and efficient you are. Alarmingly, some people even believe that multitasking is a good workout for the brain.
This type of thinking is damaging to your health.
Multitasking is a brain drain that exhausts the mind, zaps cognitive resources and, if left unchecked, condemns us to early mental decline and decreased sharpness. Chronic multitaskers also have increased levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, which can damage the memory region of the brain.
The truth is, your brain is not designed to do more than one thing at a time. It literally cannot achieve this, except in very rare circumstances. Instead, it toggles back and forth from one task to the next. For example, when you are driving while talking on the phone, your brain can either use its resources to drive or to talk on the phone, but never both. Scans show that when you talk on the phone, there is limited activation of your visual brain – suggesting you are driving without really watching. This explains how we can sometimes end up places without knowing exactly how we got there.
Frequently switching between tasks overloads the brain and makes you less efficient. It’s a formula for failure in which your thoughts remain on the surface level and errors occur more frequently.
The Health Editor James Hamblin from The Atlantic talks about this subject in an excellent way. I think we all recognize ourselves more or less listening to what he has to share with us:
A new study from Uppsala University, Sweden, shows that one night of sleep deprivation increases morning blood concentrations of NSE and S-100B in healthy young men. These molecules are typically found in the brain. Thus, their rise in blood after sleep loss may indicate that a lack of snoozing might be conducive to a loss of brain tissue. The findings are published in the journal SLEEP.
Fifteen normal-weight men participated in the study. In one condition they were sleep-deprived for one night, while in the other condition they slept for approximately 8 hours.
“We observed that a night of total sleep loss was followed by increased blood concentrations of NSE and S-100B. These brain molecules typically rise in blood under conditions of brain damage. Thus, our results indicate that a lack of sleep may promote neurodegenerative processes”, says sleep researcher Christian Benedict at the Department of Neuroscience, Uppsala University, who lead the study.
“In conclusion, the findings of our trial indicate that a good night’s sleep may be critical for maintaining brain health”, says Christian Benedict.
