Month: June 2021

 

According to a new genetic study published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, waking up one hour earlier could reduce the risk of major depression by 23%.

Researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder and the Broad Institute of MIT, as well as Harvard, conducted the study on 840,000 people. And the results show some of the strongest evidence yet that a person’s propensity to sleep at a certain time can influence depression risk.

This is among the first studies to quantify how much — or how little — change is required to influence mental health.

Senior author and assistant professor of integrative physiology at CU Boulder, Celine Vetter, says, “We have known for some time that there is a relationship between sleep timing and mood, but a question we often hear from clinicians is: How much earlier do we need to shift people to see a benefit?” She continues, “We found that even one-hour earlier sleep timing is associated with significantly lower risk of depression.”

In previous observational studies, it was shown that night owls are as much as twice as likely to suffer from depression, regardless of how long they sleep. However, because the mood disorders themselves can disrupt sleep patterns, the relationship between sleep and depression is hard to decipher.

For this study, researchers collected data from 85,000 people who wore wearable sleep trackers for 7 days.  They also had 250,000 participants fill out sleep preference questionnaires. They then assessed those people’s genetic data, in addition to the genetic data of about 500,000 others.  The idea was to get a more granular picture of how variants in genes influence when we sleep and when we wake up.

According to the samples, about a third of surveyed subjects self-identified as morning larks, 9% were night owls, and the rest were in the middle. The average sleep mid-point was 3 a.m., meaning a bedtime of 11 p.m. and a 6 a.m. wake-up.

The researchers noticed that each one-hour earlier sleep midpoint corresponded with a 23% lower risk of major depressive disorder. So if someone who goes to bed at 1 a.m. would instead go to bed at midnight, and sleep the same duration, that person’s risk could be cut by 23%. And if they go to bed another hour earlier, at 11 p.m., their risk could be cut by up to 40%.

Vetter is offering some advice for those who want to shift themselves to an earlier sleep schedule. She says, “Have your morning coffee on the porch. Walk or ride your bike to work if you can, and dim those electronics in the evening.” In essence: “Keep your days bright and your nights dark.”

 

Meditation is one of those practices that’s being used across the world by countless people from different religions and cultures. People use it for many reasons, which include clearing their minds, relaxation, reducing stress, and awakening a deeper connection to something greater than themselves. Practicing meditation allows your brain to benefit from mental exercises. It encourages a better focus on the body and helps you stay in the present rather than worrying about the future, or getting sad about the past.

When looking for ways to meditate, there are different types of meditation practices available, each with its own benefits and methodology. There are no right or wrong ways to meditate, it’s mainly what works best for you, your lifestyle, schedule, and energy.

Here are five effective types of meditation, and how they work.

 

YOGA

To start, we’ll go with the most well-known meditation technique — yoga. The yogic techniques and postural exercises are known as the asanas. Yoga helps to empty the mind of unnecessary thoughts, but it also requires an intense amount of concentration.

 

 

TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION

Transcendental Meditation, also referred to as TM, is a specific form of silent meditation. According to The Mayo Clinic, it “allows your body to settle into a state of profound rest and relaxation and your mind to achieve a state of inner peace without the use of concentration or effort.”

 

 

SPIRITUAL MEDITATION

This method of meditation is used to help clear the mind, and deepen our connections to something greater than ourselves. There are thousands of religious and spiritual traditions that include meditation practices in different forms. And in general, spiritual mediation is something you “partake in with the desire to connect with a higher power,” Jen Alico, a certified meditation coach, told Healthline. According to Alico, this form of meditation is about more than just stress reduction or relaxation.

 

 

MOVEMENT MEDITATION

Movement Meditation is a technique used for those who find it hard to sit in one place. Maybe you find squishing a stress ball relaxing, or find it helpful to go on walks alone to gather your thoughts. Even sitting at the beach and playing around with the sand can be a form of movement mediation. Movements like these connect you with your inner self.

 

GUIDED MEDITATION

Now if you’re someone who needs guidance to help you meditate, or you’re someone who’s into using meditation apps like Headspace or Calm, this might be the technique for you. This practice does require you to close your eyes, sit still, and imagine yourself in different situations or places. But a meditation guide will use certain sounds or smells — like essential oils, or birds chirping — to help you achieve that deep meditative state. Guided meditation is very similar to the Japanese practice of Reiki, which aims to harness the powers of the subconscious mind to control hormones, blood pressure, and anxiety.

 

Meditation is a skill that takes time to learn and practice. There’s no such thing as having a perfect meditation, so the important part of all of this is to not give up right at the start. It’s okay for your focus to wander once in a while, or to forget to follow your breath; this practice is all about the experience and the journey, and keeping it consistent.

The best thing about meditation is that it can be done at any time of the day. It all depends on what works best or you.

There are numerous benefits to meditating, some of which include:

• A strong and authentic sense of who you are on a soul level
• A reduction of unhealthy stress
• Increased self-esteem, self-trust, and acceptance
• Clarity in life’s purpose
• A sense of belonging
• Increased creativity
• Inner peace and stillness
• More balance in your sense of being
• Better sleep
• Can help improve back pain, asthma, and heart health

 

A yoga instructor is teaching classes naked to help boost the confidence of women in South-West London.

Doria Gani has been practicing yoga for twelve years since battling cervical cancer, but she had never practiced it naked until 2015. Gani visited Nevada to attend the Burning Man Festival and that’s when she began to embrace nudity in her practices.

Gani asked a person with a camera to take some photos of her doing yoga poses naked, and she felt entirely free of shame. She’s now grown to love and accept her body, and wants to help others do the same. She knows it’s not easy: she had come to terms with the fact that she will never be able to have children, and that there’s a permanent caesarean-type scar on her pubic bone from her cancer surgery.

Back when she grew up in Tuscany, Italy, she spent a long time battling with body demons. She says she never felt slim enough for her 5ft 2in frame, and at the age of 25 she developed bulimia and lost a lot of weight. A year after developing this eating disorder, she recovered, but still had negative thoughts about her body.

When Gani turned 29 she moved to London to improve her English and got a job in Covent Garden. Four years later she noticed she was bleeding after having sex with her then-boyfriend. She told The Sun, “A smear test and biopsy revealed the worst possible news: I had stage 3 cervical cancer. In May 2009, I had surgery, followed by chemotherapy and radiotherapy, which pushed me into early menopause. It was devastating to be told I would never be able to have children.”

After months of treatments, she went into a yoga class held by Macmillan Cancer Support. It was a practice she’d never tried before, but after just three classes she “felt happier and stronger.”

In March 2014, Gani decided to take six weeks off work to train as a yoga teacher in India. A year later she attended the Burning Man Festival, and saw a model posing naked under a huge sculpture. She decided to try it.

“Stripping off, I walked up to a guy with a camera and asked him to take pictures of me. I was nervous at first as I started doing yoga poses and he snapped away, but I concentrated on my breathing, lost in the moment,” she said.

Watch Gani talking about why she teaches naked yoga.

When she came back to London, she wanted to share the feeling she’d had by teaching naked yoga, and in April 2016 she started doing one-on-one classes around her HR job.

Since then Gani has started teaching group classes and has said that while some students leave chatting and smiling, others have left crying — which she said happens when you release stress and trauma. She’s left her HR job to go full-time as a teacher, and even operated classes over Zoom during the pandemic.

Yoga has allowed Gani to let go of the past, and stay mentally and physically fit. She says that now, “Helping others to love their bodies has become my life’s work.”

 

The NYPD is hosting in-person self-defense classes for the city’s Asian community. They hope to support that community by showing them how to protect themselves.

NYPD Inspector and head of the Asian Hate Crimes Task Force, Tommy Ng, told ABC7, “I don’t want Asian Americans to be afraid to go about their daily life. I want to build confidence in the Asian community. No one should be afraid of walking down the street, taking the train.”

New York has seen an increase in Asian hate crimes, and since officers can’t be on every corner, every second of the day, the police decided to give Brooklyn residents the means to protect themselves.

 

 

A college student who attended one of the classes told ABC7 he’d like to follow up with more lessons over the summer. “You can have a lot of power, but if you don’t have technique, you could be defenseless,” said Derrick Tsang.

Given the necessity and popularity of the classes, the NYPD has decided to offer another free self-defense course on Sunday in Chinatown.

Watch Inspector Tommy Ng giving some tips self-defense tips in the video below. 

 

 

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