Karen's Newsletter

1. Sound Reasons for Getting a Sound Night’s Sleep

Other than eating and breathing, sleeping is the most important source of energy renewal. Few people recognise just how dramatically insufficient sleep affects their performance and energy levels both at work and at home.

Even small amounts of sleep deprivation have a significant impact on strength, cardiovascular capacity, mood and overall energy levels. Some fifty studies have shown that mental performance – reaction time, concentration, memory and logical/analytical reasoning – all decline steadily as sleep deprivation increases.

Sleep needs vary by age, gender and genetic predisposition, but the broad scientific consensus is that the average human being needs seven to eight hours a night to function at an optimal level.

If you find it hard to get a good night’s sleep, then you could try the following:

• Begin an exercise program that fosters flexibility, aerobic fitness and strength. Exercise releases powerful chemicals that calm the mind improve mood, increase energy during the day, and importantly promote sound sleep patterns.
• Magnesium taken at night promotes sleep, as does Kava, and St. Johns Wort. Speak first with your health care professional

How many hours sleep are you getting? Optimal level or sub optimal?

Sources: "Insomnia” ABC Radio All in the Mind. 26th March 2005
Power of Full Engagement Jim Loehr and Tony Swartz 2003
Prescription of Nutritional Healing Phyllis Balch and James Balch 2000

2. Meditation: Just How Effective Is It?

New research suggests that meditation not only produces a calming effect, but may produce lasting changes in the brain.

In a study that appeared in the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, researchers compared the brain activity of eight long-time Buddhist monks and ten healthy students. Both groups were asked to meditate, while researchers measured brain activity before, during and after meditation using electroencephalograms.

They found striking differences between the two groups in a type of brain activity called gamma wave activity. Gamma wave activity is involved in mental processes including attention, working methodically, learning and conscious perception. The Buddhist monks had a higher level of this sort of gamma wave activity before the meditation, and this difference increased dramatically during meditation.

The monks also had more activity in areas associated with positive emotions, such as compassion and happiness. Researchers say the fact that the monks had higher levels of this type of brain activity before meditation began suggests that long-term practice of Buddhist or other forms of meditation can alter the brain.

Dr. Richard Davidson, director of the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin has also been running tests on the brains of Buddhist monks. His results show that the prefrontal cortex is a significant player in the regulation of emotions. In previous tests, Davidson had established that people who exhibit a higher ratio of persistent activity in the left prefrontal cortex – an area associated with feelings of joy, happiness and enthusiasm – have happier temperaments and tend to bounce back quickly from negative events. Those who have a higher ratio of activity in the right prefrontal cortex are more prone to anxiety, fear, sadness and depression.

Preliminary tests show that as well as helping people manage destructive emotions like anger, hatred and jealousy, meditation may have startling effects on the brains plasticity – its ability to be moulded or rewired by experience.

To rule out that years of meditation in a closed community were needed to experience positive effects, Richard Davidson conducted an eight–week meditation study with 25 workers at Promega, a biotech firm in Wisconsin. Prior to the study, the workers, who ranged in age from 23 to 56, exhibited high levels of right–brain activity and reported feeling stressed-out and unhappy with their jobs. But after eight weeks of meditation training and practice, the activity in the left side of their brains increased significantly, and the workers reported feeling happier, with a renewed sense of enthusiasm for their life and work. Four weeks later, the meditators still showed elevated left-brain activity. The control group showed no change.

While more long-term tests are needed to eliminate other factors that might have contributed to the workers’ elevated moods, scientists are postulating that with prolonged practice, meditation could alter a person’s emotional setting so that a positive state of mind could become their emotional default.

But Davidson‘s early research suggests that, just as exercise strengthens muscles, meditation can strengthen the parts of the brain that calm anger and fear and elicit happiness. And, unlike pleasant activities, like dancing that result in temporary mood changes, meditation has a cumulative effect over time so that the depth of negative emotions becomes much shallower.

How can you add a 15 minute meditation session to your day?

Sources: The End of Stress As We Know it. Professor Bruce McEwan 2004
"Taking the Meditation", Good Weekend Magazine, August 2004

3. A Few Food Reminders

Have you been watching your caffeine levels? Is caffeine affecting your health, performance and wellbeing?

Is your lunch menu contributing to that mid-afternoon energy dip?

Do you keep a supply of nutritious, high-energy snacks at work (for example, a tub of yoghurt, dried fruits and nuts, nuts and seeds, low GI fruits such as apples, pears, peaches and nectarines, and carrot and celery sticks you can have with humous)?

Have you increased the raw food content of your diet?

4. Deep Relaxation CD

This relaxation induction CD will help you to systematically relax every muscle from the top of your head to the tips of your toes. It also includes a rapid relaxation induction. Deep Relaxation runs for 15 minutes

I recommend that you don't listen to it while driving or operating heavy machinery.

Normal retail price $39. Great idea for a gift.

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Any questions?

Upcoming course dates for Towards Health, Performance and Wellbeing

4, 10 May 2005

Coming soon! – Towards Health, Performance and Wellbeing – Putting It Into Practice, a six week program of three hour seminars.

Karen St Clair Is a practicing psychotherapist-nutritional therapist, and the founder of Canberra Stress Management - Canberra's first specialised stress management service, catering to the needs of the public and private sectors. She is an author, a nationally accredited trainer, and has worked with people as a trainer and a therapist in the areas of health and wellbeing since 1987.

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