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· Arousal · Exercise · Posture
· Sleep
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The Cause of Internet and TV Addiction? www.causeof.org |
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Other Suggestions
· Boredom · Fatigue · Hypovolemia (Low Blood Volume) · Hyperactivity, Adrenaline Addiction · Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) · Insomnia · Obsessive Compulsive Disorder · Temporomandibular Disorders (TMD)
· The Brain: Frontal Lobes: Pseudodepression
Symptoms "The most frequent symptom of chronic sinusitis is postnasal drip…" "Another common symptom of chronic sinusitis is nasal congestion or blockage. You may be aware of decreased air passage on one or both sides of your nose. Nasal congestion may extend to the Eustachian tubes. This results in ear fullness and occasionally impacts hearing. While some people with chronic sinus infections become run-down and fatigued, fever is uncommon."
Sinusitis and Dry Eye Dry Eye Syndrome: Related Conditions
· Other Suggestions: Distractions
When using a computer, some people have a tendency to support their head with one hand while using a mouse with the other hand.
For example, a right handed person may use a mouse with their dominant right hand, while supporting their head with their subdominant left hand. This may exacerbate mixed dominance. For more information about mixed dominance please visit the Laterality page.
Try to schedule the times that you use the computer for the hours when you will be fully awake.As you become tired, you are more likely to become dissociated or habituated while sitting in front of a TV or a computer monitor.
Hypovolemia (Low Blood Volume) "…Hypovolemia is a state of decreased blood volume."
"Common causes of hypovolemia are · Dehydration, · Bleeding, and · Drugs such as diuretics or vasodilators typically used to treat hypertensive individuals. · Rarely, it may occur as a result of a blood donation."
"Hypovolemia can be recognized by · Elevated pulse, · Diminished blood pressure, and · The absence of perfusion as assessed by skin signs (skin turning pale) and/or capillary refill on forehead, lips and nail beds [the tissues upon which the nails rest]. · The patient may feel
These signs are also characteristic of most types of shock."
"Note that in children, compensation can result in an artificially high blood pressure despite hypovolemia. This is another reason (aside from initial lower blood volume) that the even the possibility of internal bleeding in children should always be treated aggressively."
"Also look for obvious signs of external bleeding while remembering that people can bleed…internally without any external blood loss."
"Also consider possible mechanisms of injury (especially the steering wheel and/or non-use of seat belt in motor vehicle accidents) that may have caused internal bleeding such as ruptured or bruised internal organs. If trained to do so and the situation permits, conduct a secondary survey and check the chest and abdominal cavities for pain, deformity, guarding or swelling. (Injuries to the pelvis and bleeding into the thigh from the femoral artery can also be life-threatening.)"
· Research Topics: CFIDS: Low Blood Volume and CFIDS
Hyperactivity, Adrenaline Addiction · "When fluid levels drop, the brain produces more adrenaline so · The heart has to pump more blood to compensate for this." Our FM/CFIDS World: Are Electrolyte Drinks for You?
· Arousal: Hyperactivity/High Arousal: Low Adrenaline
"Severe hypovolemia leads to hypovolemic shock."
CFIDS · Research Topics: Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS)
Minor Hypovolemia "Minor hypovolemia from a known cause that has been completely controlled (such as a blood transfusion from a healthy patient who is not anemic) may be countered with · Initial rest for up to half an hour, · Oral fluids including moderate sugars (apple juice is good) and the · Advice to the donor to eat good solid meals with proteins for the next few days. Typically, this would involve a fluid volume of less than one liter (1000 ml), although this is highly dependent on body weight. Larger people can tolerate slightly more blood loss than smaller people."
Dehydration · Other Suggestions: Dehydration: Prevention
More Serious Hypovolemia "More serious hypovolemia should be assessed by a nurse or doctor. When in doubt, treat hypovolemia aggressively."
"Severe hypovolemia leads to hypovolemic shock."
· Other Suggestions: Dehydration · Research Topics: Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS)
Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) · Other Suggestions: Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)
· Other Suggestions: Keeping a Checklist
· The Brain: Frontal Lobes: Auditory Digit Spans
· I have personally found some forms of meditation to be helpful in reducing stress. Stress can cause your brain to release endorphins, which may not always be desirable. · Meditation is also recommended as an adjunct to the Bates method. · Some people warn against meditation because it heightens your senses, thus allowing you to more easily perceive flicker, but I believe that the benefits outweigh the caveats. More information about meditation can be found in the research topic: · Research Topics: Alpha-Theta Therapy: Meditation
Description “Mirror work is a ‘growing down’ activity in which you look at yourself face to face and eye to eye in the mirror (preferably full length) and you tell yourself positive affirmations [for example] so that you…” Coping.org: Adults' Tool Box: 'Growing Down: Tools for Healing the Inner Child': Mirror Work
Testimonials · “In Ancient times mirrors were held to be sacred…they only had pools of water and pieces of metal available to observe their own reflection. The only way to get a clear image of what you looked like was to trust an artist to draw or paint your portrait. · …The Latin word for drawing another person portrait was, Enlightenment. · …Today we have highly advanced mirror technology available, which I believe is very useful in treating mental and physical illness. · The ancients believed mirrors to be useful for divination, and also for absorbing evil. That's why people still say it is 7 years bad luck if you break a mirror. We don't put much thought into mirrors anymore, and its considered superstition if you do. But it shouldn't be, because mirrors are a better tool for bio-feedback than the electronics and computers people use today. A recent study found that people who were paralyzed could still work computers when hooked up to medical instruments which measured bio-rhythms and brainwaves. And scientologists believe they can control their emotional states with lie detectors. But a mirror is an even more valuable tool. · People don't have an objective understanding of who they are, and 'the man in the mirror' often takes advantage of that. When I look in the mirror for a little bit of time, I see someone completely different from who I think I am. The man in the mirror behaves in strange ways, and when I disassociate from myself he does things that I can't control. But when I meditate on the mirror I begin to relax and I've been able to learn new skills. · After talking to the mirror [e.g. affirmations for self-esteem] I've learned to wiggle my ears, and lift one eye-brow. And once I even stared into my eyes until my pupils started dripping into my iris [not recommended; looking into someone’s eyes can increase stress and eyestrain], which was extremely scary… · However I think I am giving up on wasting time on the computers, and will continue to practice Zen while looking into the mirror, because although I consider them [referring to ‘wasting time on computers’] to be side-effects--the ‘man in the mirror’ has control of me. He is writing this paper, and thinking for me. He moves my fingers, and winds up talking about things I'm really not even interested in. But if I meditate on who I really am, and try to remain self-aware I can take control of myself. So that's what my job is now full time. Just listening to music, and gazing into the mirror. ·
I haven't been talking to
myself, pacing about, or drinking [sounds like self-stimulatory behavior].
I've been smoking less, and I haven't been over-eating. And I've
actually been completely entertained while looking in the mirror. And I'm
going to · So perhaps I will continue to post every now and again, but I'm not going to make an obsessive habit about it and I will be thinking about what Corey White [the author] wants to write, and not letting the man in the mirror do all of my ‘hacking’ [writing]. · But Legend [I believe this paragraph is an analogy of mathematical principles involving ‘subjective randomness’] has it that you actually are the man in the mirror and he is you, and if something ever changed in the mirror world, there is a chance that you would switch places with the man in the mirror. That's because there is no logical way to determine if you were still yourself at that point, without the notion of subjective randomness. · I've hooked myself up to a lie detector [a biofeedback device] while I'm watching myself in the mirror. The lie detector helps me focus on myself, and I'm doing muscle relaxation and psychological relaxation so I am able to regain clarity of who I am and what I really want to do with my life [sounds like proprioception]. · The legend of the mirror was passed down through my family, and through mystical experiences I've had when I've been in ceremonies. And I'm finding that living deliberately [reducing life to the essentials; making a conscious determination of what really matters; enjoying what matters most] is more enlightening than any of the miracles I've ever experienced. But without them, perhaps I would still be foolish enough to think that I was in control over my life and that the man in the mirror was just a projection. · We live in a state of sensory deprivation where we never look at ourselves in the mirror, and can't see our faces or most of our bodies. We don't even know if we are being honest with ourselves either without being hooked into a lie detector, and can't gauge our emotional responses to circumstance. We just go with the flow and never take control over our own failures. Well I'm fighting back. · But today I found the cure. The mirror and lie detector have not been enough. The side effects from the medication I take are too much for me to control my own behavior, and they cause me to chain-smoke, and behave in obsessive, absurd ways. Then I remembered a post I made about the answer to life the universe and everything, which I believed was the tooth brush. So I got a cup of water, and a bowl and began to dip the tooth brush in the water, brush my teeth, and spit in the bowl. I've been doing it all afternoon without smoking a single cigarette. · I think I will be able to cope now, without ever posting to Usenet again!” alt.magic: 'I Found A Cure!' by Corey White
· “Mirror symmetry is ubiquitous in natural visual scenes, and detection of mirror symmetry seems to be a global, automatic, effortless and important aspect of visual perception. · The perception of mirror symmetry has not been studied in humans with amblyopia. · In this paper we measured and quantified the detection of mirror symmetry in adults with naturally occurring amblyopia. · Our results show that amblyopia may severely impair the detection of mirror symmetry, and that this impairment is not simply a consequence of reduced stimulus visibility. Rather, we suggest that this loss may reflect, at least in part, a deficit in the integration of local orientation information.” Vision Research (Journal): Perception of mirror symmetry in amblyopic vision
· “Research in our lab focuses on how we perceive visual forms and patterns, and how form perception is degraded by abnormal visual experience early in life (amblyopia). · Specifically, we use psychophysics [deals with the relationships between physical stimuli and sensory response], computational modeling and brain imaging (fMRI) to study the neural mechanisms of normal pattern vision in humans, and to learn how they are degraded by abnormal visual experience (amblyopia). · While amblyopia is known to influence the properties of neurons in cortical area V1 recent work in our laboratory suggests that amblyopia may also result in damage to higher cortical areas.”
· “Perceptual learning can improve visual performance in amblyopic children. · The improvement can be parsed into two important factors: · Decreased equivalent input noise and · Increased efficiency. · Perceptual learning techniques may add an effective new method to the armamentarium [the collection of equipment and methods used in the practice of medicine] of amblyopia treatments.”
“Our sole purpose in responding…is to draw attention to some very recent work, showing significant long term improvements in visual performance in the adult amblyopic eye that, potentially, could be adapted for use as an effective alternative to occlusion therapy. Visual perceptual learning—improved visual performance on a given
psychophysical task after extensive training—is a well established
phenomenon in the normal visual system.2 This form of learning is
often tightly coupled to stimulus characteristics encoded early in
visual cortex, such as the orientation or spatial frequency
(size) of a visual stimulus. The stimulus specificity of
perceptual improvements British Journal of Ophthalmology: 'Learning with a lazy eye: a potential treatment for amblyopia'
· Vision: Binocular Functions: Amblyopia · Research Topics: Brainwaves: Alpha Waves: Low Alpha Waves (staring at a blank wall [problems with pattern recognition])
Treatment of Partial Paralysis Could the treatment of partial paralysis in stroke patients also be applied to other conditions such as amblyopia? “Stroke patients with partial paralysis could benefit from a therapy that tricks the mind into thinking the frozen limb can move. The technique uses a reflection of the patient's good side so at appears as if the left moves with the right or vice versa.” BBC News: Health: 'Mirror helps beat paralysis'
· "’In the mirror the good hand looks like the bad hand so it looks like it's moving even though it's not. · So we feed the brain the proper input visually and we hope that helps the output.’" BBC News: Health: 'Mirror helps beat paralysis'
· “Patients, assigned mirror therapy, were placed on a practice schedule of 15 minutes twice daily for six days a week. · The practice involved trying to move their hands or arms symmetrically while watching their good arm in the mirror.” BBC News: Health: 'Mirror helps beat paralysis'
“Another patient said that although ‘all my other methods of therapy exercise my muscles, the mirror is the only one which exercises my brain and nerves’.” BBC News: Health: 'Mirror helps beat paralysis'
“Men who regularly balance their laptop computers on their laps when working may be jeopardizing their ability to have children, according to a new study from fertility researchers at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. The potential risk comes from the heat generated by the laptop computer and the close position of one's thighs when balancing the computer on one's lap, the researchers found. This heat is transferred to the scrotum, where the temperature can rise several degrees, putting users within the danger zone for testicular dysfunction.” Wired News: Laptops a Hot Fertility Issue
Related Topics: · Research Topics: Color Temperature
Calibrating a Monitor: Introduction: “Ideally, all monitors should have the same brightness, contrast and color temperature. There are 3 ways to calibrate a monitor:” Realtime Soft: Multi-Monitor FAQ
Using Monitor Controls: “All monitors have controls to adjust brightness and contrast, some also let you adjust colors. You can access the controls through buttons on the monitor or an on-screen menu.” Realtime Soft: Multi-Monitor FAQ
Using Monitor Calibration Features of the Display Driver: “Most display drivers provided by the card or chipset manufacturer let you adjust brightness, contrast and color. To adjust these settings, · open Display Properties, · go to the monitor's advanced settings and · look for an appropriately named tab.” Realtime Soft: Multi-Monitor FAQ
Using Special Software: “There are several tools available for monitor calibration, one that is readily available for download is PowerStrip. The advantage of a tool like this is that you can adjust all monitors from a single location, and you can create different monitor profiles, for example a brighter one for use at day, and a second for use at night.” Realtime Soft: Multi-Monitor FAQ
“For solid and repeatable results, a colorimeter (a tool to measure the display characteristics of a monitor) is recommended. The following packages include a colorimeter and calibration software: Spyder, ColorBlind Prove it!.” Realtime Soft: Multi-Monitor FAQ
Color Charts: “If you don't have a colorimeter, you can use a color chart to help with calibrating the monitors. See Star Systems' web page on color calibration for various charts and more information on the topic.” Realtime Soft: Multi-Monitor FAQ
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) What is OCD? "A neurologically based disorder where individuals experience compulsions to engage in perseverative behaviors (handwashing, food rituals, lining up objects, ) which are tied to obsessive thoughts. Usually the person engages in the ritual to temporarily relieve feelings of anxiety. Children may particularly engage in ritualistic behaviors at bedtime." Autism Spectrum Resource Center: Autism Spectrum: Diagnoses
· Research Topics: Similarities with ADD: Symptoms: Self-Stimulating Behaviors · Other Suggestions: Self-Esteem · Sensory Processing: Laterality · Sensory Processing: Interhemispheric Integration · The Brain: Adrenaline: Adrenaline Addiction
Laterality · Sensory Processing: Laterality: Correcting Laterality: Going 'Subdominant'
The Frontal Lobes · The Brain: Frontal Lobes: Self-Control
· Other Suggestions: Keeping a Checklist: Backsliding: Eyestrain
· The Brain: Adrenaline: Adrenaline and Stress
· Vision: Bates Method: Palming: Casual Palming
The Four Agreements "The ideas behind the 'agreements' are straightforward-four simple ways to change your everyday thinking and the way you interact with others." Book Review: The Four Agreements
Aerobic Exercise · Exercise: Aerobic Exercise: Effects: Psychological Benefits
Affirmations and Visualization "Using affirmations (positive statements that we repeat to ourselves in a positive way) and visualization together is like a 'double whammy' for creating belief in your desired goal. One or the other alone will work, but by using the two together, your success will come easier and faster. Affirmations, through repetition, reach your subconscious mind and leave a deep impression. Repeated statements work as if they were creating a groove in a record. The more the repetition, the deeper the groove, and the more long lasting its effect. With affirmations you choose statements to repeat over and over again throughout the day, positive statements that are beneficial to you. You can use affirmations to plant positive seeds in your subconscious concerning any area of your life, such as health, success, happiness or even prosperity and wealth."
· Research Topics: Similarities with ADD: Negative Thinking · Vision: Vision and Brainwaves: Immobility and Flexibility
It's generally a good idea to avoid too much stimulants.
What are Stimulants? Examples of Stimulants "Stimulants such as nicotine, found in tobacco products, and caffeine are the two most widely used stimulants. Stimulants are often referred to as 'uppers.'"
"Over 80% of stimulants prescribed are for weight loss, such as Preludin.® Stimulants such as Ritalin® are prescribed for childhood hyper-kinesis, MBD (minimal brain dysfunction), and narcolepsy (a rare sleep attack disorder.)"
"Amphetamines, cocaine, nicotine, and caffeine are all stimulants."
Effects of Stimulants The category of stimulants also covers several groups of drugs that tend to increase alertness, energy, and physical activity. They produce what is often called a 'rush,' by stimulating the central nervous system.
"Some people use stimulants to counteract the drowsiness or 'crash' feeling caused by sleeping pills or alcohol. This up/down cycle is extremely hard on the body and dangerous."
Some Conditions Affected by Stimulants Hypoglycemia People with hypoglycemia should avoid stimulants.
ADD Stimulants may be beneficial for some types of ADD, and detrimental for others. Similarities with ADD: Symptoms: Attention Similarities with ADD: Types: Overfocused ADD
Beta Brainwaves
More Information about Stimulants Caffeine
Related Topics Earplugs
An Excess of Endorphins · The Brain: Endorphins: An Excess of Endorphins
No-Elastic Socks · Muscle Tension: Fibromyalgia: Treatment: Products (no-elastic socks)
Proprioception · Proprioception: Improving Proprioception: Tactile, Kinesthetic and Proprioceptive Sites
Shower Massagers (not recommended)
Tooth Sensitivity · “Maintain good oral hygiene - Continue to clean all parts of your teeth and mouth thoroughly. · Use a soft bristled toothbrush -This will result in less toothbrush abrasion of the tooth surface. · Use desensitizing toothpaste - There are many on the market. With regular use you should feel a decreased sensitivity. Try spreading a thin layer on the exposed roots with your finger or a Q-tip before you go to bed. You'll need to find the product that works for you, likely through trial and error. · Consider what you eat- If you frequently eat foods high in acids, such as citrus fruits (example: sucking on lemons), they can gradually dissolve the enamel over time, leading to dentin exposure. The citric acids may aggravate the hypersensitivity and initiate a painful reaction. · Use fluoridated dental products- As an example, with a daily application of a fluoridated mouthrinse, hypersensitivity usually decreases. Ask your dental hygienist about a daily fluoride rinse for home use.” The Wisdom Tooth : Tooth Sensitivity
Note: Some people believe that fluoridation of water supplies is unhealthy. · Nutrition: Water: Types of Water: Filtered Water: Fluoride Tap Water
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