Category: Anxiety

Greatest psychological and neurophysiological benefits seen from exercise with this attitude.

People gain the greatest psychological and neurophysiological benefit when they really believe in exercise, new research finds.

A positive attitude towards sport and exercise is a self-fulling prophecy, explained the study’s first author Mr Hendrik Mothes:

“The results demonstrate that our belief in how much we will benefit from physical activity has a considerable effect on our well-being in the manner of a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

For the study 76 people exercised for 30 minutes on a stationary bicycle.

All saw one of two videos beforehand.

The first praised the positive effects of cycling, the second did not.

The results showed that people who already had positive views of exercise enjoyed the exercise more, had lower anxiety afterwards and better mood.

The video that was positive about cycling had the same effect.

The researchers also made recordings of the electrical activity in the brain

These revealed that those with positive expectations about exercise or who had seen the video were more relaxed on a neuronal level.

Mr Mothes said:

“Beliefs and expectations could possibly have long-term consequences, for instance on our motivation to engage in sports.

They can be a determining factor on whether we can rouse ourselves to go jogging again next time or decide instead to stay at home on the couch.”

Appreciate what you already do

Beliefs are a powerful thing: consider a 2007 study on 84 hotel attendants (Crum et al., 2007).

Some were encouraged to appreciate how much exercise they were already doing as part of their job.

The rest were told nothing.

Incredibly, the average weight of those encouraged to appreciate the exercise they already did reduced from 145.5 lbs to 143.72 lbs.

Over the same period the rest showed no significant change.

That’s like dropping a bag of sugar. In four weeks. With no additional exercise.

Now that’s the power of the mind-body link right there, measured in pounds and ounces.

The new study was published in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine (Mothes et al., 2016).

Image credit: marcovdz

Nature provides people ‘a sense of renewal’ which lowers anxiety, new research finds.

People who feel connected to nature have lower levels of anxiety, recent research finds.

Nature seems to provide people an escape from busy urban environments — a way to let their minds recover.

It may be that it is not even necessary to be in nature to get the benefit, as long as one feels connected to it.

For the research people were asked about what nature meant to them.

Here are six of the themes that emerged when people talked about what nature gave to them:

1. Relaxation

The authors explain:

“…nature induced relaxation and acted as a relief from stress.

Nature was also described as being responsible for feelings of peace and calm.

Some participants indicated that nature provided a sense of renewal, was re-grounding, and created feelings of fulfilment.”

2. Time out

The authors explain:

“…nature providing a sense of being away from the everyday, escape, and refuge.

Participants saw being in nature as being away from the urban environment and providing a sense of freedom.”

3. Enjoyment

People described how being in nature gave them a sense of enjoyment, joy, happiness and contentment.

4. Connection

More than pure enjoyment, though, being in nature gave people the sense of…

“…being connected to something larger and revolved around feeling immersed, being part of something bigger, at one with, or connecting with what was important.

Being connected to nature was occasionally spoken about in terms of being at one with the world which also had secondary benefits of feeling peaceful.”

5. Sensory engagement

A spiritual aspect was also important, the authors write:

“…nature was stimulating to the senses and was associated with ideas of beauty

This often included a spiritual aspect or a sense of the flawlessness of nature.

Nature allowed them to breathe fresh air, experience natural elements, such as sunshine, and find space to be alone.”

6. Healthy perspective

People reported that…

“…nature was responsible for wellbeing and positive health.

Those participants who mentioned the health benefits of nature considered that nature was very important to their everyday lives, their mental health, overall wellbeing, and fitness.”

The study was published in the Journal of Health Psychology (Martyn & Brymer, 2016).

People experiencing anxiety walk in this direction.

People experiencing anxiety tend to walk to the left, new research finds.

It results from more activity in the right-hand-side of the brain.

The conclusions come from a study in which people were blindfolded and asked to walk in a straight line.

The more inhibited and anxious people tended to veer to the left.

In comparison, people who experience more positive emotions tended to veer off to the right.

The more inhibited and anxious they were, the more people accidentally wandered to the left.

The more positive and approach-oriented, the more they accidentally wandered to the right.

The differences are thought to be due to how approach and avoidance mechanisms are organised in the brain.

Broadly speaking the left-hand-side of the brain is linked to the motivation to approach situations and people.

Since the left-hand-side of the brain is connected to the right-hand-side of the body, people with an approach motivation walk to the right.

The reverse is seen in those with inhibitory or anxious motivational processing.

The study was published in the journal Cognition (Weick et al., 2016).

Blindfolded image from Shutterstock

Social anxiety disorder is thought to affect around 1 in 8 people, and is more than just being shy.

A combination of SSRI antidepressants and cognitive-behavioural therapy is the best treatment for social anxiety disorder, a new study concludes.

Brain scans showed that the combined therapy reduced the neural response in the amygdala — part of the brain central to processing fear and anxiety.

Social anxiety disorder is thought to affect around 1 in 8 people, and is more than just being shy.

The condition often strikes at important moments in people’s life and usually leads to a significant reduction in their quality of life.

The study compared people with social anxiety who received therapy plus antidepressants with those receiving therapy plus a placebo.

Nine weeks after treatment, those who had taken the antidepressant combined with the therapy were doing better.

They were even more improved compared with the other group 15 months later.

Dr Malin Gingnell, one of the study’s authors, said:

“We have now preliminary support to say that the SSRI escitalopram adds to the effect of CBT for social anxiety disorder and that clinical response is linked to reduced activation of the amygdala.”

Set against this study, a recent review of the research I reported found that:

“Social anxiety disorder is most commonly treated with antidepressants, but these are not the most effective treatment.

…cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is more effective and the benefits continue after the initial treatment has finished.

[…]

The researchers found that it was the psychological therapies that were the most effective.

As a result these should be the first choice treatment.

Antidepressants were also effective, but were associated with side-effects, and they don’t work for some people.

More importantly, the beneficial effects of medication tend to wear off after discontinuation.”

The study was published in the British Journal of Psychiatry (Gingnell et al., 2016).

Anxious woman image from Shutterstock

Research tests the aroma oils that can reduce anxiety and blood pressure.

Giving yourself a foot massage with aromatherapy helps reduce anxiety and blood pressure, new research finds.

People in the study gave themselves 45-minute foot massages three times a week for four weeks.

The researchers describe the essential oils they used:

“…we included lavender, ylang-ylang, marjoram, sandalwood, and chamomile in the aroma oil blend.

Lavender relaxes the autonomic nervous system, calms and relaxes the level of emotion, and alleviates insomnia, while ylang-ylang decreases BP and HR, and reduces depression and stress.”

Fifty-seven people took part in the study, which lasted 8 weeks, including four weeks of foot massages.

Half did the massages while the other half acted as a control group.

Those in the foot massage group showed lower blood pressure and anxiety after two months in comparison to the control group.

Those in the massage group also had better mental health afterwards.

It is not completely clear if the aromatherapy added anything to the foot massage, the study’s authors admit:

“[although] it was difficult to differentiate the effects of the aromatherapy from the effects of the massage therapy… [the combination] may be an effective way to increase mental health and improve blood pressure.”

Other studies, though, have suggested the benefits of particular aromas, the authors write:

“…studies have shown that ambient odors of lavender and orange decreased anxiety and lightened mood in a dental office, and massages with aroma oils promoted skin absorption of the oils stimulating blood and lymphatic circulation, improving the oxygen and nutrient supply, relaxing muscle tone, and relieving emotional stress.”

In comparison to other types of treatment for hypertension, though, self-administered foot massages looks like a good bet:

“Other non-medical treatments that prevent hypertension, such as changes to an unhealthy diet, reducing excessive energy intake, increasing physical activity, and decreasing tobacco use, are not easy to maintain.

In contrast, our trial suggested that performing self-administered aroma foot massages is easy and may improve BP more than other interventions that require participants to make a lifestyle change.”

The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE (Eguchi et al., 2016).

Could the famous ‘10,000 hours’ rule be wrong?

For elite athletes, practice only accounts for 1% of the difference in how they perform, new research finds.

Outside sports, practice may have surprisingly little to do with performance.

It flies in the face of the old axiom that ‘practice makes perfect’.

The researchers also found that it didn’t matter how early in life the athletes started their sport.

Dr Brooke Macnamara, lead author of the study, said:

“While practice is necessary for elite athletes to reach a high level of competition, after a certain point, the amount of practice essentially stops differentiating who makes it far and who makes it to the very top.”

The results come from an analysis of 52 separate studies on the relationships between performance and practice.

Practice mattered more at levels below the elite, but still not as much as many might imagine.

Across all skill-levels studied, practice accounted for 18% of the difference in performance.

Dr Macnamara said:

“Human performance is incredibly complex.

Multiple factors need to be considered, only one of which is practice.”

The idea that 10,000 hours of practice is enough to create an expert or elite athlete could be mistaken, Dr Macnamara thinks:

“The concept of 10,000 hours taps into the American ideal of hard work and dedication leading naturally to excellence.

But it does not account for the inherent differences across people and across sports.”

Early specialisation in one particular sport was not an advantage, the researchers found.

“People and parents who buy into the 10,000-hour rule can push early specialization in a sport, leading to physical or mental burnout before it’s clear that a child even has a penchant for that sport.”

Other factors thought to be important over and above practice include:

• performance anxiety,
• working memory,
• confidence,
• fast-twitch muscles,
• and maximum blood-oxygenation.

Dr Macnamara said:

“As we look at multiple factors, I don’t think we’ll ever be able to–with 100 percent certainty–predict someone’s performance in any activity, not just sports.

But we can do better than we’re doing now.”

The study was published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science (Macnamara et al., 2016).

Image credit: Justin Smith

Workaholics are two or three times more likely to suffer these psychiatric disorders.

People who are workaholics are also more likely to experience other psychiatric disorders, new research finds.

Workaholism often co-occurs with OCD, ADHD, depression and anxiety.

The conclusions come from a very large study of 16,426 adults in Norway.

Dr Cecilie Schou Andreassen, the study’s first author, said:

“Workaholics scored higher on all the psychiatric symptoms than non-workaholics.

Thus, taking work to the extreme may be a sign of deeper psychological or emotional issues.

Whether this reflects overlapping genetic vulnerabilities, disorders leading to workaholism or, conversely, workaholism causing such disorders, remain uncertain.”

7 signs of workaholism

Rate of these on a scale of 1 (never) to 5 (always).

• You think of how you can free up more time to work.
• You spend much more time working than initially intended.
• You work in order to reduce feelings of guilt, anxiety, helplessness or depression.
• You have been told by others to cut down on work without listening to them.
• You become stressed if you are prohibited from working.
• You deprioritize hobbies, leisure activities, and/or exercise because of your work.
• You work so much that it has negatively influenced your health.

Scoring a 4 (often) or 5 (always) on four or more of these statements indicates a workaholic.

Some of the highlights of the findings include:

• 32.7 per cent met ADHD criteria (12.7 per cent among non-workaholics).
• 25.6 per cent OCD criteria (8.7 per cent among non-workaholics).
• 33.8 per cent met anxiety criteria (11.9 per cent among non-workaholics).
• 8.9 per cent met depression criteria (2.6 per cent among non-workaholics).

Dr Andreassen concluded:

“In wait for more research, physicians should not take for granted that a seemingly successful workaholic does not have ADHD-related or other clinical features.

Their considerations affect both the identification and treatment of these disorders.”

The study was published in the journal PLOS One (Andreassen et al., 2016).