Is there a way to easily counteract loneliness — by yourself?
rns out merely being nostalgic has notable affects on making you feel less lonely: Four studies tested whether nostalgia can counteract reductions in perceived social support caused by loneliness. Loneliness reduced perceptions of social support but increased nostalgia. Nostalgia, in turn, increased perceptions of social support. Thus, loneliness affected perceived social support in two distinct ways. Whereas the direct effect of loneliness was to reduce perceived social support, the indirect effect of loneliness was to increase perceived social support via…
1 min read
United States Gross National Happiness, measured via Facebook Status Updates:
a theatlantic.com The Atlantic Monthly reports that Facebook is keeping tabs on the national mood via its Gross National Happiness Index. It "counts the number of 'positive' and 'negative' words used in each status update, converts them to percentages, finds average percents based on all users that day, then subtracts the 'negative percent' from the 'positive percent' to get a value for the y axis—but the results are clear: Weekends and holidays are better than midweek, and Mother’s Day and…
1 min read
What makes medication 2-4x as effective? Adding a placebo:
a eurekalert.org: Researchers used the placebo effect to successfully treat psoriasis patients with one quarter to one half of their usual dose of a widely used steroid medication, according to an early study published online today in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine. Early results in human patients suggest that the new technique could improve treatment for several chronic diseases that involve mental state or the immune system, including asthma, multiple sclerosis and chronic pain. By designing treatment regimens that mix active…
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Do nice doctors heal you faster?
a scientificamerican.com Empathy Heals: Patients whose doctors show concern recover from colds faster It feels good when someone pays attention to our concerns and our feelings—and it turns out such empathy is good for our health, too. Researchers at the University Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health report in Family Medicine that patients of doctors who expressed such concern had a cold for one day fewer than patients whose physicians focused on just the facts. In randomized controlled trials…
1 min read
Does exercise boost immunity?
a well.blogs.nytimes.com The bulk of the new research, including the mouse studies mentioned, reinforce a theory that physiologists advanced some years ago, about what they call “a J-shaped curve” involving exercise and immunity. In this model, the risk both of catching a cold or the flu and of having a particularly severe form of the infection “drop if you exercise moderately,” says Mary P. Miles, PhD, an associate professor of exercise sciences at Montana State University and the author of an…
1 min read
