Tagged With "Drug Use"

The British psychologist Kimberley Wilson works in the emergent field of whole body mental health, one of the most astonishing frontiers we are on as a species. Discoveries about the gut microbiome, for example, and the gut-brain axis; the fascinating vagus nerve and the power of the neurotransmitters we hear about in piecemeal ways in discussions around mental health. The phrase “mental health” itself makes less and less sense in light of the wild interactivity we can now see between what...

"When I realized all of our drinking glasses were really just Prego spaghetti sauce jars." 1. "We never had any other kids cartoon channels other than PBS KIDS. My friends now talk about how much they loved watching SpongeBob SquarePants and Steven Universe, and I've never seen those shows." 2. "During third grade when I got sent home because my shirts kept showing my belly. My mom couldn't afford to buy new clothes when I grew. The teacher was always super rude about it too and acted like I...

For some people, no matter how much they try to eat healthy, when intense emotions surface, overcoming food cravings seems impossible. We reach for the comfort foods that we hope will make us feel better in the short term, but afterwards often end up feeling down in the dumps. That feeling of shame can be overwhelming — particularly in a diet-driven society where maintaining a healthy relationship with food is difficult, especially if it’s used as a coping mechanism. But why do some people...

How do you improve your life? Many of us assume that flourishing in the face of adversity requires a certain kind of mindset . Believing in your power, staying focused on future goals, being proactive, and leveraging social relationships are four outlooks that can help, many of us suspect, in overcoming life’s obstacles. Driven by the belief that people can change their lives by thinking differently, public organizations in the UK and the US have made a deliberate effort over the past decade...

When Dr Bessel van der Kolk published The Body Keeps the Score in 2014, it was a huge hit with yoga people. That is not a euphemism for “rich, underoccupied people”, it is just people who do yoga. Certain physical activities do something weird to your brain: ancient memories resurface, often with new feelings or perspectives attached; you start treating yourself with more compassion. It doesn’t make sense until you read Van der Kolk. After that, nothing has ever made more sense. His thesis...

The brain doesn’t fully develop until about the age of 25. This fact is sometimes quite surprising and eye opening to most adults. It can also be somewhat overwhelming for new parents and professionals who are interacting with babies and young children every day, to contemplate. It is essential to realize however, that the greatest time of development occurs in the years prior to kindergarten. And even more critical to understand is that by age three 85 percent of the core structures of the...

https://thesociologicalreview.org/magazine/october-2020/food/why-is-our-culture-preoccupied-with-how-bipoc-children-eat/ "Almost all of our public health solutions for children rely on individual behaviours, like not drinking soda. Not drinking soda will not solve racism. Whether a person does or does not eat any amount of potato chips is not the key to ending structural poverty. Disproportionately relying on public health measures that target individual behaviours doesn’t appropriately...