The Secret of How to Be Happy

Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert says that you ‘synthesize’ your happiness. That you have a ‘psychological immune system’ that helps you change your views about your world, in order to feel better about the world in which you find yourself.

Not only that, he also maintains that when we imagine what could make us happy, such as new clothes or winning the lottery our brains are invariably wrong in advising us that those things will make us happy.

In fact, statistics show that paraplegics are just as happy as lottery winners one year after the event of either becoming injured, or winning the lottery!

We tend to think that getting things such as a job, a new car, or a trip around the world is what will make us happy.

However, studies have shown that we make ourselves happy by simply imagining that we are happy. So getting what we want doesn’t actually have anything to do with being happy.

Why is this?

Your prefrontal cortex works as an experience simulator, which means you can imagine an experience in your head before you try it out in real life. This ability is essentially what brought humankind out of the trees and into shopping malls – it allows you to desire things and events, imagining they will make you feel a certain way.

The problem is that your simulator works rather poorly. In reality, gaining or losing something turns out to have far less impact and duration than you expect them to have. After about three months, the event (or item) has virtually no impact on your happiness…

So, your ability to create “synthetic” happiness is in fact your key to sustained happiness. Which, by the way, is very real, even though it is not “natural.” Synthetic happiness is a choice you make when you don’t get what you want, whereas natural happiness is what you feel when you do get what you want.

However, you often don’t get exactly what you want.

Additionally, your belief that being able to change your mind will increase your happiness turns out to be completely false. Your ‘psychological immune system’ actually works best when you’re totally stuck, when there’s no turning back and making other choices, because that is when your mind can find a way to be happy with your reality.

This is vitally important, beyond the obvious fact that being happy feels better than being unhappy. In fact, there is little doubt about the powerful effects positive emotions can have on your physical health and well-being. At the same time, there is equally little doubt about the effects that negative emotions can have on you.

Happiness will not only protect your body from stressors that can lead to coronary heart disease, but it can even boost your immune system's ability to fight off the common cold.
Unfortunately, “happiness” can be a rather nebulous term. For most people, it is virtually impossible to define what truly makes you happy.

So I want to reiterate a definition that nearly everyone can grasp and apply with greater ease.

Happiness can more accurately be identified by your brain as “whatever gets you excited.”

Happiness is that which makes you jump out of bed in the morning with eager anticipation to start your day. Once you identify that activity, whatever it is, you can start focusing your mind around that so you can structure you life to do more of it.

Personally, my happiness is tied to my mission to catalyze the change of the entire fatally flawed health paradigm. This is what makes me somersault out of bed each morning, and it is the driving force that allows me to truly enjoy the many, many hours of my “work” weeks.

Being able to manifest positive emotions and happiness is perhaps one of the greatest gifts you have been given as a human being.

And, interestingly enough, Gilbert’s talk resonates along the same lines as a previous article I wrote about how limiting choices can increase your happiness, which is quite fascinating, because most of us live with the false belief that more choices mean greater chances of finding contentment and happiness.

It also resonates with the fundamental rules of optimal health… You don’t need ten pills a day to get healthy. It’s a false belief, manufactured by the pharmaceutical industry through the mass media.

In reality, you only need to focus on a few very basic things to optimize your health:

• Address emotional traumas
• Get optimal sun exposure
• Drink pure water
• Avoid toxins
• Eat the right fats
• Eat right for your Nutritional Type
• Eat raw foods
• Control your insulin and leptin
• Exercise
• Sleep properly

Health, like happiness, can be optimized by limiting your options to that which is natural, and realizing there’s no “magic pill.”

Are You Watching Your Diet?Why eat fattening, tasteless nutritional bars, when you can sink your teeth into a delicious, nutritious energy bar loaded with rich dark chocolate, shredded coconut and other natural ingredients that are GOOD FOR YOU.

* These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

Mercola.com

Cut Sugar and Supplements -- and Live 15 Years Longer?

Restricting the simple sugar glucose from your diet, while avoiding vitamin supplements, may extend your lifespan, according to German researchers.

While your body needs glucose, a sugar found in high amounts in sweets, too much of it is harmful.When the researchers used a chemical to block worms’ ability to process glucose, their lifespan was extended by up to 25 percent, which is equal to 15 human years.

The beneficial effect came from an unlikely source: free radicals. Typically, free radicals are thought to cause damage to your body, and many consume antioxidants and vitamins to fight them.

However, when the worms were unable to use glucose for energy, they increased energy power from other cells -- a process that generated more free radicals than normal.In response, the worms generated enzymes that fought the free radicals and strengthened their long-term protection against the damaging molecules.

The study also points to a reason why antioxidants may not be beneficial in the long run.When some of the worms were given antioxidants, the free radicals were neutralized. However, this also prevented the worms from generating the beneficial, long-term defenses.
Cell Metabolism October 2007, Vol 6, 280-293, 03 Reuters October 2, 2007

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

Even though this study was conducted on worms, and therefore may not translate directly to people, it still reveals some interesting points to consider.

First, limiting glucose (sugar) in your diet is a well-known key to longevity. In worms, cutting down on this one element increased their lifespan the equivalent of 15 human years, which is a major improvement.

If you avoid glucose in your diet, does this mean that you’ll live for another 15 years? It’s impossible to say, but what I can say is that you may very likely live quite a bit longer.Your blood glucose levels actually rise slightly every time you eat.

This is natural. What is not natural is that, with the average American now eating about 2.5 pounds of sugar every week, your blood glucose levels may very likely become excessively elevated, then stay that way.It is a well proven fact that sugar increases your insulin and leptin levels and decreases receptor sensitivity for both of these vital hormones.

This can lead to:

• High blood pressure and high cholesterol
• Heart disease
• Diabetes
• Weight gain
• Premature aging

The problem lies in the vast amounts of processed sweets, such as soda -- which is now the number one source of calories in the United States -- that Americans are now consuming, along with the large amount of refined carbohydrates.

When you eat these low-quality carb foods -- things like white bread, sugar, pasta, pastries, cookies, and candy -- your blood sugar levels rise. This, in turn, causes your insulin and leptin levels to rise as well, which will accelerate the effects of aging.

Avoiding sugar, on the other hand, helps you to control your insulin and leptin levels, which will help you to feel and look younger for longer.If you’re having trouble with the notion of giving up your favorite sweet treats and refined carbs, The Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) is one of the best solutions I know of for this challenge.

EFT is an energy psychology tool that includes a marvelous technique called Turbo Tapping, which has helped tens of thousands of people kick the sugar habit.

Also, instead of focusing on what you will be losing (negative focus), it helps to look at all the things you will be gaining, such as increased energy and a lower risk of many diseases.

Meanwhile, you can enjoy healthy foods that are in-line with your nutritional type, such as meats, dairy products, fresh veggies, nuts and seeds, and much more.

Are Supplements Healthy or Harmful? The above study also raised an interesting point about free radicals. Free radicals are highly reactive molecules that steal electrons from the first thing they encounter, such as a cell wall, or a strand of DNA.

The loss of an electron, in turn, oxidizes these cells, which makes them unstable and easily breakable. As this free-radical damage continues, your cells can no longer perform properly, and hence, tissues begin to degrade and disease sets in.

An interesting point to consider is that it is not unusual that in trying to do a good thing, some supplements could actually harm you. Depending on your clinical circumstances, suppression of free radicals may actually be harmful. It all depends on your specific circumstances. So the key here is to realize that fact. It seems that, once again, your body may have far more intelligence in knowing the appropriate actions to take for you.

No matter what, you still need a certain level of free radicals, as your body uses the chain reaction of the free radicals to turn air and food into chemical energy. They also play a vital role in your immune response, attacking foreign invaders and bacteria.

It is certainly possible that taking some antioxidants may actually prevent some free radicals from doing the job they were designed to do. Playing doctor with using supplements as drugs can clearly cause complications, so don’t play with them lightly or use them willy nilly.

You need to have expert counsel or carefully study the literature before you embark on a supplement regimen.So it turns out that it may not be wise to drastically cut back on these natural free radicals in your body (even breathing produces free radicals). That said, it’s not wise to let them get out of control, either.

If you eat a lot of junk food and sugar, don’t sleep enough, are stressed, and are exposed to a lot of environmental pollution, your body could easily become overwhelmed by free radicals, and be unable to neutralize them on its own.

Your ticket to keeping free radicals in check, and to leading a long, healthy life, remains leading a balanced lifestyle that includes antioxidants and vitamins from fresh, whole foods, with a minimum of artificial interventions.

Dr Mercola.com

Acupuncture, real or sham, works better than standard care for low back pain

This article was published on Monday, October 8, 2007 6:26 PM CDT in Your Family
By Carla K. JohnsonASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

CHICAGO (AP) -- Fake acupuncture works nearly as well as the real thing for low back pain, and either kind performs much better than usual care, German researchers have found.

Almost half the patients treated with acupuncture needles felt relief that lasted months. In contrast, only about a quarter of the patients receiving medications and other Western medical treatments felt better.

Even fake acupuncture worked better than conventional care, leading researchers to wonder whether pain relief came from the body's reactions to any thin needle pricks or, possibly, the placebo effect."

Acupuncture represents a highly promising and effective treatment option for chronic back pain," study co-author Dr. Heinz Endres of Ruhr University Bochum in Bochum, Germany, said in an e-mail.

"Patients experienced not only reduced pain intensity, but also reported improvements in the disability that often results from back pain and therefore in their quality of life."

Although the study was not designed to determine how acupuncture works, Endres said, its findings are in line with a theory that pain messages to the brain can be blocked by competing stimuli.

Positive expectations the patients held about acupuncture -- or negative expectations about conventional medicine -- also could have led to a placebo effect and explain the findings, he said.

In the largest experiment on acupuncture for back pain to date, more than 1,100 patients were randomly assigned to receive either acupuncture, sham acupuncture or conventional therapy.

For the sham acupuncture, needles were inserted, but not as deeply as for the real thing. The sham acupuncture also did not insert needles in traditional acupuncture points on the body and the needles were not manually moved and rotated.

After six months, patients answered questions about pain and functional ability and their scores determined how well each of the therapies worked.In the real acupuncture group, 47 percent of patients improved.

In the sham acupuncture group, 44 percent did. In the usual care group, 27 percent got relief."We don't understand the mechanisms of these so-called alternative treatments, but that doesn't mean they don't work," said Dr. James Young of Chicago's Rush University Medical Center, who wasn't involved in the research. Young often treats low back pain with acupuncture, combined with exercises and stretches.

Chinese medicine holds that there are hundreds of points on the body that link to invisible pathways for the body's vital energy, or qi.

The theory goes that stimulating the correct points with acupuncture needles can release blocked qi.Dr. Brian Berman, the University of Maryland's director of complementary medicine, said the real and the sham acupuncture may have worked for reasons that can be explained in Western terms: by changing the way the brain processes pain signals or by releasing natural painkillers in the body.

In the study, the conventional treatment included many methods: painkillers, injections, physical therapy, massage, heat therapy or other treatments. Like the acupuncture patients, the patients getting usual care received about 10 sessions of 30 minutes each.

The study, appearing in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine, used a broad definition for low back pain, but ruled out people with back pain caused by spinal fractures, tumors, scoliosis and pregnancy.

Funding came from German health insurance companies, and the findings already have led to more coverage in Germany of acupuncture.

In the United States, some health plans cover acupuncture for some conditions, but may require pre-approval, according to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. An acupuncture session can cost $45 to $100, Young said.Web

watchArchiveswww.archinternmed.com

The Greatest Nutrition Researcher of the 20th Century

Dr. Weston A. Price was a dentist and dental researcher who went on an investigation that spanned the globe to determine why native populations, who ate traditional foods, exhibited perfect physical health well into old age.

His research took him to remote tribal communities -- Swiss, Eskimos, Polynesians, Africans, New Zealanders, and more -- and what he discovered made him one of the foremost authorities on the role of foods in their natural form, and the development of degenerative illnesses as a result of the addition of processed foods to your diet.

His book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, stands as a classic work on the subject.The video below delves into Dr. Price’s work in greater detail, and provides insight into why eating your traditional diet of locally grown, seasonal, raw foods is so important to your health.

Dr Mercola's comment:

Dr. Weston A. Price was one of the major nutritional pioneers of all time.

He was a dentist around 1900 who noticed something that health care practitioners still try to deny today: that with the introduction of processed food, health started to decline.

Specifically, Dr. Price noticed an incredible increase in tooth decay when people began eating processed foods. When he began his journey around the world, he found that, as he suspected, native people who were still eating their traditional diets had nearly perfect teeth.

I am constantly amazed at how powerful a predictor of health your teeth are. When I have seen chronically ill patients with nearly cavity-free teeth, I am encouraged that they will likely get well quickly.

If, on the other hand, their mouths are full of fillings and root canals, the prognosis is not as good.Dr. Price also used teeth as an indicator of overall health, and his classic book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration is full of wonderful pictures documenting the perfect teeth of the native tribes he visited who were still eating their traditional diets.

The Price-Pottenger Foundation created this video, and they are one of the two primary organizations that promote the work of this great scientist.

Interestingly, they just converted thousands of Dr. Price’s previously unpublished research photos from around the world, and they plan on releasing that soon.They also have an amazing archive of books that Dr. Price and many others wrote and hope to have Google digitize them and make them available.

If anyone reading this knows how to connect with the Google library scanning project please contact our customer service department and let us know as this would be a major benefit to all of us.Dr. Price was a dentist so he focused on dental health, and he found that native people eating native diets did not get tooth decay. The Healthy Ingredients of Native Diets.

What makes Dr. Price’s work so incredible is that even though it was written in 1920, it is still very true today. That is one of the signs of a health truth: it lasts for many years. If it was true in 1907 in should be true in 2007.

Dr. Price noticed some similarities between the native diets that allowed the people to thrive. Among them:

• The foods were natural, unprocessed, and organic (and contained no sugar except for the occasional bit of honey or maple syrup).
• The people ate foods that grew in their native environment. In other words, they ate locally grown, seasonal foods.
• Many of the cultures ate unpasteurized dairy products, and all of them ate fermented foods.
• The people ate a significant portion of their food raw.

All of the cultures ate animal products, including animal fat and, often, full-fat butter and organ meats.

When Dr. Price analyzed his findings, he found that the native diets contained ten times the amount of fat-soluble vitamins, and at least four times the amount of calcium, other minerals, and water-soluble vitamins as that of Western diets at that time.

Their diets were also rich in enzymes because they ate fermented and raw foods (enzymes help you to digest cooked foods).Another major factor that made the native diets so healthy was that their intake of omega-3 fats was at least ten times higher than in today’s diet.

Regular readers of the newsletter know that today most people’s ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fats (from vegetable oils) is far from the ideal 1:1 ratio of our ancestors.

Today, most people eat far too many omega-6 fats and far too few omega-3 fats, leading to a ratio that’s more like 20:1 or even 50:1!How YOU Can Take Advantage of Dr. Price’s Pioneering WorkEven though we live lives that are far different from those of our ancestors, you can still benefit from their traditional diets by making some simple changes in your own life.

Namely:

• Find out your nutritional type, and eat accordingly. This will tell you which foods are ideal for your unique biochemistry.
• Eat at least one-third of your food raw.
  Avoid processed foods and all artificial flavorings, colorings, and artificial sweeteners. Instead, seek out locally grown foods that are in-season.
• Enjoy fermented foods like kefir and cultured veggies.
• Make sure you eat enough healthy fats, including those from animal sources like omega-3 fat, and reduce your intake of omega-6 from vegetable oils.

And, if you have any interest in natural health, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration is a MUST read.

In fact, you don’t even have to read the book as the pictures it contains say it all.

You can also learn more from the Price-Pottenger Foundation and the Weston A. Price Foundation. I am proud to be on their advisory boards and would encourage you to consider joining their organizations. They are dedicated to restoring nutrient-dense foods to the human diet through education, research, and activism.

Mercola.com