How a tired brain can slow your physical performance
Posted: September 7, 2011 Filed under: Health, Psychology Leave a comment »
By Alex Hutchinson
“It sounds crazy,” Samuele Marcora admitted during his talk at a conference on fatigue at Charles Sturt University in Australia last month, “but it’s actually not.”
Dr. Marcora, a professor at the University of Kent’s Centre for Sports Studies in Britain, has spent the past few years unravelling the surprising links between tired brains and physical performance. His initial results suggest that what we perceive as physical limits are actually highly dependent on our levels of motivation and mental fatigue – and that we may be able to use this fact to our advantage.Back in 2009, Dr. Marcora and his colleagues published a study in which 16 volunteers cycled to exhaustion after spending 90 minutes either watching “emotionally neutral” documentary movies or performing a demanding cognitive test called the AX-CPT, which requires “sustained attention, working memory, response inhibition and error monitoring.”
Although the cognitive test didn’t produce any physical fatigue, the volunteers gave up on the cycling test 15 per cent sooner when they were mentally fatigued compared to when they had simply watched the documentaries.
Dr. Marcora explains these results using a new “psychobiological” model of fatigue that views exercise limits as a balance between motivation and perceived effort: We stop not because our muscles are starved of oxygen or depleted of fuel, but because the effort it would take to keep going is greater than the rewards for continuing. In this picture, a tired brain and tired muscles are equally capable of increasing your perceived effort, and ultimately making you quit.
This principle doesn’t apply only to endurance sports. At the fatigue conference last month, researchers from the University of Technology, Sydney, presented data on the effects of mental fatigue on intermittent sports such as soccer, which mix short bursts of intense sprinting with longer stretches of low and medium intensity.
Using the AX-CPT test to induce mental fatigue prior to a simulated 45-minute game, the researchers found that the short, high-intensity sprints – when motivation was maximal – were unaffected by mental fatigue.
Dopamine squirts, intermittent reinforcement, and mobile apps
Posted: July 28, 2011 Filed under: Health, Psychology, Research, Technology Leave a comment »
Is this you? Your phone vibrates and you pull it out of your pocket to check and see if anything interesting caused the vibration. You have a moment of boredom in a store, in a checkout line, while waiting for your spouse to get dressed – so you pull out the phone and run through a checklist of information to peruse – looking to see if anything exciting has occurred in your digital universe be it Twitter, Facebook, or any of a thousand different things people can check on these days. Finally, after prolonged lack of exposure to your smart phone, your overall sense of boredom is heightened. You get fidgety, you get bored quickly, and you feel disconnected and out of touch. Often times you simply don’t know what to do with yourself w/out a laptop or your mobile phone.
If this is you, don’t be ashamed. You’re just like millions of other people who are being conditioned by their “smart” mobile devices. Every time your phone vibrates to alert you of the possibility of something interesting, exciting, or even mundane (but new) – your brain is getting what psychologists call a “Dopamine squirt”. Over time, your brain links the phone vibration, ring, or the “new SMS” tone to a brief release of dopamine. You feel this tiny little rush of excitement that feels like adrenaline every time your phone vibrates, jingles, rings, or otherwise begs for your attention. Since this is dopamine we’re talking about, you actually suffer mild withdrawal symptoms when you are away from your phone or your phone is idle/quiet for a long period of time. You get fidgety, anxious, bored, etc.
Intermittent Reinforcement is another psychological term that is used to refer to the behavior of people tethered to their smart phones. Even if their phone has been programmed to alert them to the arrival of something new and noteworthy, millions of people will pull out their phones and do a quick scan for “new or interesting stuff”. The next time you’re in an airport, or a Starbucks, or any other crowded place (especially one with business people on their lunch break), sit back and do some people watching. Watch how often people pull out their phone, do a scan, then put their phone back. The scary part comes when you see the same person do this 4, 5, 10 times in a row while waiting in line for their coffee, sandwich, or standing on a street corner waiting for the “walk” signal to light up.
Creative kryptonite and the death of productivity
Posted: July 9, 2011 Filed under: Health, Psychology, Research, Technology Leave a comment »
By Jonathan Fields
Great work, brilliant ideas, extraordinary art requires space.
Time away. Room to process, synthesize, allow connections between seemingly disparate parts to effervesce out of the ether of the mind.
Genius is the offspring of the in-between.
But, increasingly, technology is removing the in-between.
We don’t just walk in contemplation, we walk, talk and type.
We don’t just drive, we drive, talk and every time we stop the car, we check, tap and reply. Red lights, the bain of a life-long quest to get “there,” have now become a sought after opportunity to catch up on any communication that may’ve arrived since the last red-light…5 blocks ago.
But when we fill in all the organic in-betweens with texting, e-mailing, DMing and updating, we unintentionally kill the a critical step in the ideation process—percolation and contemplation—and along with it go creativity, innovation and despite your opposite intention, productivity.
So, why do we do it?
Filling in the in-between, we say, lets us get so much more done. Wrong.
Hyperconnectivity gives us the perception of getting more done, it makes us feel like we’re doing more, because we’re using every free moment of every waking hour.
There is often a huge chasm between being busy and being productive.
Hyperconnectivity requires a massive volume of switchtasking, which destroys true-productivity and efficiency because every time you page through your various modes of connectivity and respond to different prompts, you lose focus. To regain that focus requires a certain amount of time and cognitive effort.
Put another way, there is a ramping cost every time you switch gears, then return.
So when you spiral through every known mode of communication hundreds of times a day, you may be busy as hell, but you damn sure aren’t productive. At least nowhere near the level you could be. You’ve just created the illusion of productivity.
By the way, if you’re wondering if that’s you, here’s an easy test:
Next time someone asks what you did at the end of a day, if you know you were crazy busy but you can’t immediately pin-point a small number of substantially-meaningful accomplishments, critical insights or measurable forward movement…let alone recall any tasks beyond “oh I answered a lot of emails, put out fires and had a bunch of meetings…you’ve very likely fallen into hyperconnected lost-sock land.
All of which begs an even bigger question…
If hyperconnectivity really isn’t about efficiency and productivity, like we claim it is, what is it about?
are your friends making you fat?
Posted: October 13, 2010 Filed under: Health, Research Leave a comment »>
Can having obese friends increase your risk of packing on pounds? A new study suggests it can, if you’re a man.
The study, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, finds that the obesity epidemic can spread like a virus through social networks. When a person becomes obese, his friends and siblings are likely to gain weight as well.
“We were stunned to find that friends who live hundreds of miles away have just as much impact as friends who are next door,” said James Fowler, one of the study’s authors and an associate professor of political science at the University of California San Diego (UCSD).
He adds that this may be due to the fact that friends may subconsciously share ideas about what constitutes a healthy weight.
The research was based on more than 12,000 people taking part in the three-decade-long Framingham Heart Study.
At each update in that study, doctors monitored participants’ height and weight and also recorded information about their neighbors, friends and spouses.
Using new software, Harvard and UCSD researchers created diagrams that plotted obesity and relationships, mapping the past 30 years.
Obesity and Socializing
While mapping networks of neurons in the brain or HIV prevalence among different communities has been popular in the past, this is the first time that obesity has been put under the lens of social networks.
The researchers found that when a person becomes obese, the chances that a friend will become obese increases by 57 percent. Siblings of obese people have a 40 percent increased risk of obesity, and their spouses’ risk increased by 37 percent.
On average, having an obese friend made a person gain 17 pounds, which put many people over the body mass index (BMI) measure for obesity.
Female friendships did not seem to be impacted by obesity. But the chances that a man might gain weight from having a fat pal doubled for so-called mutual friends — friends who both listed each other as buddies.
“There is an important implication here for a broadening perspective on treatment for obesity,” said Dr. Nicholas Christakis, the study’s lead author. “Attitudes are changing about what constitutes an acceptable body size, more so than a sharing of behaviors.
“We don’t think that this is the only cause of obesity. This is adding one additional factor or explanation.”
Still, the research could have weighty implications in a society in which adult obesity rates have shot up from 15 to 32 percent over the past three decades. Currently, around 66 percent of adults are considered overweight.
Norms Trump Networks for Gals?
One of the questions raised by the study was why women’s weight didn’t seem to depend on having obese friends.
“There is a strong social bias for women towards thinness,” said Dr. Robert Kushner, president of the American Board of Nutrition Physician Specialists.
“Social norms may trump social networks here. Guys don’t have the same social pressure. Men may be more influenced by their friends.”
Other diet experts agree that the inner workings of male friendships may have a lot to do with weight gain.
“Current social stigma against obesity is greater among women, and women jointly discuss weight and support each other in dieting and exercising,” said Jeffery Sobal, a professor of nutritional science at Cornell University. “Men may engage in joint activities that increase weight, such as consuming more calories or spending time in sedentary activities.”
So depending on a man’s network of friends, he’s just as likely to be chomping down wings and guzzling beer while watching the game as he is to be shooting hoops with the boys.
You Are Who You Eat With
If heavy friends can make someone gain weight, can thin friends make someone shed the flab? Not necessarily, say the researchers — but it might be worthwhile to start a diet or lifestyle change in groups.
“The public needs to know that it’s very important to get your friends and family on board when making a lifestyle change,” said Amy Wachholtz, a medical psychiatrist with the Duke Diet and Fitness Center.
“You are more likely to be successful if you have friends and family members to support you,” Wachholtz said. “It’s not just size of social network but also how committed they are to losing weight. Getting a friend who’s also very committed is going to help you.”
Jennifer Nelson, director of clinical dietetics at the Mayo Clinic, agrees. “Social networks definitely have an effect. This is something to be aware of for both the patient and the health care provider,” she said.
“We as health care providers should be mindful of addressing the social group, not just the individual.” By Katharine Stoel Gammon care of ABC News Medical Unit.
further reading: The New York Times magazine article
>25 Superfoods For Your Entire Body
Posted: October 6, 2010 Filed under: Health Leave a comment »>
These 25 superfoods will keep your immune system strong, your skin soft, and your energy levels skyrocketing
25 Superfoods For Your Entire Body
Your Hair
Spoon Up: Low-fat cottage cheese
Hair is almost all protein, so attaining a strong, vibrant mane starts with eating enough of it. Reduced-fat cottage cheese is a protein heavyweight, with 14 grams in half a cup.
Pack: Pumpkin seeds
Zinc helps reduce shedding, says Francesca Fusco, M.D., assistant clinical professor of dermatology at New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center. Toss a tablespoon of these zinc-heavy seeds into your cereal.
Your Brain
Surf for: Arctic char
This cold-water fish is a great source of the omega-3 fats DHA and EPA, which can improve brain function and ward off the blues, says Elizabeth Somer, R.D., author of Age-Proof Your Body. Omega-3s help squelch inflammation in the brain and regulate feel-good neurotransmitters. Sprinkle fillets with sea salt, ground pepper, and fresh lemon juice, then pan-fry on medium-high until one side is slightly brown. Flip and cook until the inside is slightly pink (6 to 8 minutes total).
Saute: Kale
Feed the 100 billion neurons in your noggin with nutritious kale. A study in the journal Neurology reports that getting two-plus servings per day of veggies — especially leafy green ones like kale — slows cognitive decline by 40 percent. Temper kale’s bitter flavor by sautéing it lightly with 1 teaspoon of lemon juice, a chopped garlic clove, 2 tablespoons of pine nuts, and a pinch of salt.
Your Nose
Nosh: Sunflower seeds
Hay fever affects more than 40 million Americans, according to the National Institutes of Health. Halt the drip with vitamin E. Researchers suspect it calms the parts of your immune system involved in allergies. With 49 percent of your daily vitamin E needs in an ounce, these seeds are your shnoz’s best friend.
Your Eyes
Scramble: Whole eggs
Forgo egg-white omelets. The yolks are an all-star source of two antioxidants — lutein and zeaxanthin, carotenoids that fight cataracts as well as macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness. Don’t worry: University of Massachusetts researchers have concluded that eating an average of one egg yolk a day will not hurt your cholesterol levels.
Steam: Orange cauliflower
Yes, that really is orange cauliflower popping up in your produce aisle. Food scientists at Cornell University reworked the white variety to provide 25 times as much beta-carotene, which maintains the protective covering over the cornea. As with any low-cal vegetable, you can enjoy peachy cauliflower with reckless abandon, provided you don’t drown it in salt and fat-laden butter.
Your Skin
Simmer: Tomatoes
Cozy up to your nearest Italian eatery. The fruit is especially beneficial when cooked—more of the carotenoid lycopene makes it into the skin, where it can limit UV damage to lower skin-cancer risk and hold off wrinkles.
Experiment with: Hemp
The omega-3 fatty acids in hemp help your skin retain moisture so you don’t look like a cast member from Dawn of the Dead. Toss a tablespoon each of lemon juice, pine nuts, and shelled hemp seeds into a blender with ³ cup of hemp-seed oil, a chopped garlic clove, a pinch of salt, and ½ cup fresh basil. Whirl to create a delicious and healthy pesto.
Your Lips
Munch On: Walnuts
To get moist, beautiful, chap-free lips, your body needs to constantly replace old skin cells with new ones. “Omega-3 fats help regulate this turnover so that it happens all the time,” Fusco says. And unlike much-lauded almonds, walnuts have tons of the phat fats. So do your lips a favor and pucker up to an ounce (about 14 shelled halves) a day; eat them plain or add them to salads, cereal, oatmeal, trail mix, or your favorite muffin recipe.
Your Nails
Grill up: Beef
Of all the sources of highly absorbable iron in your supermarket, beef is among the best. Low iron levels, which are common in women, not only zap your zip, but, Fusco says, can cause brittle nails. With the least fat of the common cuts, top round (and other round cuts) deserve high billing on your broiler pan.
Your Breasts
Add: Broccoli sprouts
Sulforaphane, found in baby broccoli, fires up enzymes that may stop breast-cancer cells from growing. Johns Hopkins University researchers discovered that broccoli sprouts have up to 20 times as much of this compound as fully grown plants. Pimp your sandwiches and salads with ½ cup of robustly flavored broccosprouts — developed by scientists at Johns Hopkins. A one-ounce serving contains 73 milligrams of the naturally occurring precursor of sulforaphane.
Your Heart
Snap Up: Asparagus
Italian researchers have found that the B vitamin folate reduces homocysteine, an amino acid believed to promote inflammation, which can up your risk of heart disease. Eight steamed asparagus spears deliver 20 percent of your daily folate requirement, as well as other heart-chummy nutrients like potassium.
Sip: Purple grape juice
Pull over, OJ! According to researchers at the University of Glasgow, purple grape juice is high in phenolics, “a group of powerful antioxidants that swallow up heart-damaging free radicals,” says Anne VanBeber, R.D., Ph.D., a nutrition professor at Texas Christian University. To cut calories while guarding your arteries, mix equal parts grape juice and seltzer.
Your Gut
Reach for: Dried plums, aka Prunes
These high-fiber fruits help keep your gastric system working like a finely tuned machine. They may shrink your stomach, too. A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that among 74,000 women surveyed, those who got more fiber were 49 percent less likely to suffer weight gain. Make your own trail mix with a handful of chopped pitted prunes plus walnuts, pumpkin seeds, dried blueberries, and hemp seeds.
Toss in: Tempeh
Made from whole soybeans that are then fermented, tempeh pads our guts with beneficial bacteria. After taking up residence, VanBeber says, these live microorganisms improve digestion, reduce gas production, and kill bacteria that cause ulcers. Like tofu, tempeh soaks up the flavors around it, so crumble a block and toss it into chili, soup, and pasta sauce.
Your Muscles & Joints
Mix in: Ricotta cheese
Loaded with all of the amino acids muscles need to grow and mend, whey protein is a virtuoso when it comes to helping you build a buff bod. While milk curd is used to make most cheeses, ricotta is produced from the whey that’s left behind in the cheese-making process. Mix low-fat ricotta with scrambled eggs, salsa, and broccoli sprouts for a killer breakfast.
Drizzle: Extra-virgin olive oil
Ditch fat-free dressings. Olive oil contains oleocanthal, an anti-inflammatory that may work like ibuprofen, report scientists in the journal Nature. Drizzle two teaspoons of Spectrum organic extra-virgin ($12 for 12.7 oz, spectrumorganics.com) onto your veggies.
Your Bones
Indulge in: Chocolate
Chocolate is rich in magnesium, vital to bone health. “It forms the crystal lattice that gives bone its structure,” VanBeber says. That may be why University of Tennessee scientists linked higher mag intake with greater bone-mineral density. Nibble an ounce of the dark stuff each day.
Open up: Canned salmon
New research suggests that the omega-3s in these fatty swimmers can boost bone density. Canned salmon is inexpensive and typically lower in heavy metals like mercury than many other fish. “Canned salmon [with bones] is also a good source of calcium — another bone must,” Somer says. For a better burger, make patties with a tin of salmon, an egg, ¼ cup breadcrumbs, ¼ cup chopped onion, and ½ tablespoon cumin powder.
Your Teeth
Peel: Mango and Kiwi
Together, these two tropical fruits deliver more of the proven gum protector vitamin C than an orange. Bonus: Researchers in Italy have found that each fruit portion you down daily (that’s just a single kiwi) reduces your risk for oral cancer by nearly 50 percent.
Stir-Fry: Shrimp
If you have periodontal disease, you’re churning out more cytokines, proteins that stimulate inflammation — turning your mouth into a hotbed of pain and bleeding. Research has shown that vitamin D can put the smackdown on cytokines. Three ounces of shrimp provides 65 percent of the RDA of vitamin D, so cast the crustaceans into your next wok full of vegetables. By Matthew G. Kadey, M.S., R.D., of Women’s Health.
Thanks to Chris for sharing!
>The Addictiveness of Unhealthy Foods
Posted: September 8, 2010 Filed under: Health, Research Leave a comment »>
Scientist have previously proven links between drug addiction and fast-food addiction, but now there is a growing body of research that is finding out how junk food is hard wiring our brains for cravings.
The latest study, published March 28 in “Nature Neuroscience,” likened the affects of high-fat, high-calorie fast food to those of cocaine or heroin, in animals at least.
The researchers showed that the pleasure-center in rats brains were overstimulated from the fast food similar to an addict’s cocaine binge. Eventually, the pleasure centers became so overloaded that rats needed more and more food to feel normal, according to Paul H. Kenny, an associate professor of molecular therapeutics at the Scripps Research Institute.
Throughout the study, Kenny and his co-author studied three groups of lab rats for 40 days. The first group ate healthy food. The second ate a limited amount of junk food. The third group, however, was allowed to gorge on high-fat, high-calorie foods and became obese.
The startling side effect? The brains of the obese rats changed.
“The body adapts remarkably well to change — and that’s the problem,” Kenny said in a press release. “When the animal overstimulates its brain pleasure centers with highly palatable food, the systems adapt by decreasing their activity. However, now the animal requires constant stimulation from palatable food to avoid entering a persistent state of negative reward”.
During the study, the rats lost complete control over the ability to regulate whether they were hungry, often eating despite electric shocks. When the obese rats were put on a healthy diet, they refused to eat, starving themselves for two weeks.
In another study, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City showed that feeding rats a diet high in saturated fat, calories and sugar — which is the typical make-up for a fast-food menu item — lowered the rats ability to respond to leptin, a hormone that helps regulate eating behavior by controlling how full one feels. As rats grew fatter, the amount of leptin in their bodies increased signaling that they were dangerously close to starvation. They continued to overeat and gain weight.
Those who yo-yo diet face similar problems that those going through withdrawal do, Boston University researchers proved last year. According to Pietro Cottone, an assistant professor in the Laboratory of Addictive Disorders at BU, dieters seek out foods to avoid the negative feelings that they experience if they are deprived of their favorite comfort foods.
“These findings confirm what we and many others have suspected,” Kenny said, “that over-consumption of highly pleasurable food triggers addiction-like neuroadaptive responses in brain reward circuitries, driving the development of compulsive eating. Common mechanisms may therefore underlie obesity and drug addiction.”
Check out our writer’s take on whether food addiction is worse than drug addiction.
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Wow that’s a neat article.. I’m lovin’ it!
>The Discovery of Umami
Posted: June 4, 2010 Filed under: Health, Research Leave a comment »>
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Professor Kikunae Ikeda of Tokyo Imperial University was thinking about the taste of food: “There is a taste which is common to asparagus, tomatoes, cheese and meat but which is not one of the four well-known tastes of sweet, sour, bitter and salty.”
It was in 1907 that Professor Ikeda started his experiments to identify the source of this distinctive taste. He knew that it was present in the “broth” made from kombu (a type of seaweed) found in traditional Japanese cuisine. Starting with a tremendous quantity of kombu broth, he succeeded in extracting crystals of glutamic acid, an amino acid, and a building block of protein. 100 grams of dried kombu contain about 1 gram of glutamate, the sodium salt of glutamic acid. Professor Ikeda found that glutamate had a distinctive taste, different from sweet, sour, bitter and salty, and he named this taste “umami”.
Professor Ikeda decided to make a seasoning using his newly-isolated and distinctive-tasting ingredient. To be used as seasoning, glutamic acid had to have some of the same physical characteristics which are found, for example, in sugar and salt: it had to be easily soluble in water but neither absorb humidity nor solidify. Professor Ikeda found that monosodium glutamate had good storage properties and a strong umami or savory taste. It turned out to be an ideal seasoning. Because monosodium glutamate has no smell or specific texture of its own, it can be used in many different dishes where it naturally enhances the original flavor of the food.
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Thanks to Michele for the news tip!
>Healthy Sleep ‘Linked to Longer Lifespan’
Posted: May 6, 2010 Filed under: Happiness, Health, Research Leave a comment »>
Getting less than six hours sleep a night can lead to a shorter life span, UK and Italian researchers have warned.
They said people regularly having such little sleep were 12% more likely to die over a 25-year period than those who got an “ideal” six to eight hours.
They also found an association between sleeping for more than nine hours and early death, although that much sleep may merely be a marker of ill health.
Sleep journal reports the findings, based on 1.5m people in 16 studies.
The study looked at the relationship between sleep and mortality by reviewing earlier studies from the UK, US and European and East Asian countries.
Premature death from all causes was linked to getting either too little or too much sleep outside of the “ideal” six to eight hours per night.
But while a lack of sleep may be a direct cause of ill health, ultimately leading to an earlier death, too much sleep may merely be a marker of ill health already, the UK and Italian researchers believe.
Time pressures
Professor Francesco Cappuccio, leader of the Sleep, Health and Society Programme at the UK’s University of Warwick, said: “Modern society has seen a gradual reduction in the average amount of sleep people take and this pattern is more common amongst full-time workers, suggesting that it may be due to societal pressures for longer working hours and more shift-work.
“On the other hand, the deterioration of our health status is often accompanied by an extension of our sleeping time.”
If the link between a lack of sleep and death is truly causal, it would equate to over 6.3 million attributable deaths in the UK in people over 16 years of age.
Prof Cappuccio said more work was needed to understand exactly why sleep seemed to be so important for good health.
Professor Jim Horne, of the Loughborough Sleep Research Centre, said other factors may be involved rather than sleep per se.
“Sleep is just a litmus paper to physical and mental health. Sleep is affected by many diseases and conditions, including depression,” he said.
And getting improved sleep may not make someone better or live longer, he said.
“But having less than five hours a night suggests something is probably not right.
“Five hours is insufficient for most people and being drowsy in the day increases your risk of having an accident if driving or operating dangerous machinery.”
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By The BBC
>Making "Men" & "Women" One-Dimensional
Posted: May 1, 2010 Filed under: Health, Love Leave a comment »>By Marty Klein, PhD. Every week or two some magazine wants to interview me about sex. Twenty years ago, when I was young(er) and hungry, I usually said yes. Now I usually say no.
Today I said yes to a well-known national magazine. You see it in every supermarket and airport, with a good-looking busty model on the cover. Let’s call the publication “Urban Woman.” (UW)
The article they called me about is “75 things about men–in 1 sentence each.” The staff writer, a respectful, pleasant woman about 26, hoped I would answer about a dozen questions. By the end of the interview, we were glad to be rid of each other. The questions included:
• Why do men always ignore you after they finish?
• What are men most insecure about?
• How do you know if men like a new thing you do in bed?
• Why are men so rude when looking at your boobs?
• Of course, men always think about other women when they’re in bed with you. Who are they most likely to think about?
The problems with questions like these, this article, and practically EVERY article in magazines about dating, romance, love, and sex, sex, sex, are soooooo familiar:
• They stereotype men and women: men are like this, women are like that
• They ignore the reality that “men” and “women” are heterogeneous categories: they claim that ALL men are like this, and ALL women are like that
• They perpetuate inaccurate information: men do and think and feel this, women do and think and feel that.
It’s ironic that this publication boasts that it’s the most sex-positive magazine on the market; its founder was legendary in her insistence that women claim their sexuality. Indeed, each month’s cover displays another woman with huge, barely-covered breasts, featuring articles like “How to climax every time” and “How to drive him wild even when he’s tired.” But for all their pseudo-frank talk about sex, these articles always end up problematizing it.
UW loves the traditional battle of the sexes, maintaining women’s anxiety about losing or winning it. And because “communication” is SO not-sexy, the editors overlook it for things like lingerie, positions, talking “dirty,” and sexy vacations. A self-help article that says “let’s face it-talking during sex ruins the mood” can’t possibly be of much help.
UW’s young female staff in New York does most of the “writing”–which means taking the story ideas they’re assigned and calling experts to provide quotes proving the story’s primary thesis. They take the title, thesis, and expert quotes, add a few conjunctions, and crank out yet another article written by a kid with very little understanding of sex or relationships (much less writing).
This perfectly nice staff writer didn’t like a lot of my answers, because they challenged the foundation of her questions. No, most men DON’T think about other women when they’re with you. No, most men DON’T freak out when a woman initiates sex. No, most men DON’T hate “foreplay.”
But I was sincere when I answered, kept my answers brief as she’d requested, and brought to bear the glorious edifice of my 30,000 hours as a psychologist and sex therapist.
Ironically, it was my best answer that she appreciated the least. When she asked “What do men think when they see a new woman naked for the first time?” I told the truth: “Wow!” She thought I was either putting her on or was simply misinformed.
I dunno–do you really have to be a guy to understand that amazing experience?
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By Marty Klein, PhD
>Study to Probe Mobile Health Risk
Posted: April 22, 2010 Filed under: Health, Research, Technology Leave a comment »>
The world’s largest study on the safety of using mobile phones has been launched by researchers in London.
The project will recruit 250,000 phone users across five different European countries including the UK.
It will last between 20 and 30 years and aims to provide definitive answers on the health impacts of mobile phones.
Research to date has shown no ill effect, but scientists say those studies may be too short to detect longer term cancers and other diseases.
The study is known as Cosmos – the cohort study on mobile communications.
It is being funded in the UK by the Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research programme, an independent body, for an initial five year period.
A member of that group, Professor Lawrie Challis, said the study was crucial.
“We still cannot rule out the possibility that mobile phone use causes cancer. The balance of evidence suggests that it does not, but we need to be sure.”
The co-principal investigator of the study, Dr Mireille Toledano from Imperial College London, added that there are still “gaps in our knowledge, there are uncertainties”.
She said: “The best thing we can do as a society is to start now to monitor the health of a large number of users over a long period of time – that way we can build up a valuable picture as to whether or not there are any links in the longer term.”
She stressed the study was not just about brain cancer.
People were now using mobiles in many different ways including surfing the web, which means the phones are not always held against the head.
She added: “We will be looking at a range of different health outcomes, including other forms of cancers such as skin cancers and other brain disease such as neurodegenerative diseases.
“We will also be monitoring things like if there’s a change in the frequency of symptoms such as headaches, tinnitus, depression or sleep disorders.
“These are things that people commonly report in association with their mobiles and these are things we are going to be following up on over time as well.”
Bias
One of the greatest concerns about research to date is that it has usually depended on participants recalling how much they have used their phones.
Scientists say this can affect the outcome. The Cosmos project will be prospective – meaning that it will record actual phone use into the future.
Around 100,000 mobile phone users in the UK across different networks will be invited to take part.
Mobile phone users will also be recruited in Finland, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands.
Dr Toledano says the scientists will monitor mobile usage but not the numbers people call. And once participants fill in a questionnaire and give permission to access their records the project will operate very much in the background.
“It’s really not intrusive,” she said. “Most of it is very passively done, once they’ve given us their permission to sign up, we’ve really made it very easy and that’s why we’d encourage people to take part.”
The researchers will report their initial findings in five years.
They will monitor WIFI, cordless phones and the use of baby monitors by participants as well as mobiles, to obtain a complete picture of exposure to all types of electromagnetic radiation.
More than 70m phones are in use in the UK at present, out of a global total of 6bn.
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By Matt McGrath. Science reporter, BBC World Service.
