Does Stress Really Kill Brain Cells?

Wonder what’s happening in your brain when you’re stressed?

Here are some facts you need to know:

PROBLEM 1: Loss of Brain Tissue from Stress
Stress kills brain cells. UCSF researchers report that stress causes a serious loss of brain tissue from brain cell death. Washington University School of Medicine researchers report that even mild flare-ups of psychological stress damage memory and brain functions.

A major National Institute of Health’s study shows that even mild stress releases a brain enzyme linked to bipolar manic-depressive disorder. This explains why stress leads to disturbed thinking, impaired judgment, impulsivity, and distractibility.

SOLUTION TO STRESS:

Over 40 years of research and clinical studies have proven that brainwave training can immediately reduce your stress, repair the damage, and train your brain how to avoid future stress-related damage. It is the ultimate stress management tool.

PROBLEM 2: Physical Brain Shrinkage
Many researchers have found that certain thinking patterns damage thinking and memory, and even result in physical brain shrinkage.

Dr Lupien of Montreal’s McGill University studied brains scans of 92 people over 15 years. The brains of those with low self-esteem had shrunk to 20% smaller than those who felt optimistic and good about themselves. The low self-esteem individuals also performed far worse in memory and learning tests.

SOLUTION:
Research has proven your brain is capable of full recovery. It is actually plastic, and with the correct stimulation can continue to grow even into advanced age.

Researchers Siegfried and Othmer report that frequent brainwave training yields a 23% increase in IQ plus substantial increases in self-esteem, motivation and energy.

Come discover the Web’s first complete Mental Workout ezone. Click here to => Take a Look .

posted by Jill Ammon-Wexler
Amazing Success

Goal Imprinting Secrets

I was just part of a special goal-achievement training by Dr Jill that I found really useful, and she gave me permission to share what I learned.

First of all, just deciding to create a new a habit or personal situation does NOT automatically ensure you will achieve what you desire. The decision is only the first step. Next comes focused action.

The part of the training I want to share with you has to do how to imprint your goal or impress it solidly in your subconscious mind.

This involves taking conscious control of your thoughts to better manifest the changes you want to make. Imprinting occurs when your subconscious mind is impressed with a mental image of your desired end result.
Imprinting involves three action steps:

1. First you emotionally affirm your goal.
2. Next you picture yourself having achieved the end result.
3. Finally, you pump more and more emotion into actually having the feeling you have already achieved your goal. So if you want to lose 20 pounds, you picture how it feels to have that new pair of jeans or dress on, and feel the self-satisfaction and joy that goes along with that.

Here’s a little review of what Dr Jill taught us:

Affirm Your Goal
An affirmation is just a statement written out in first-person present tense as though you have already achieved your goal. Writing this is an action that deliberately programs your subconscious mind.

Visualize the End Result
Mentally picture having accomplished your goal. See yourself actively creating the end result taking the steps that led to it. This is creates a virtual reality in your subconscious mind that will eventually replace your current reality, or belief system.

If you currently feel fat, your new subconscious virtual reality will replace that vision with one of you as lean and on-purpose.

Generate Positive Emotion
Your subconscious mind does NOT respond to words it responds to feelings and emotions. The more emotion you put behind your goal, the faster you’ll get there. See and feel yourself having reached your goal.

In the case of wanting to lose 20 pounds, for example, forget feeling fat. Focus on feeling the joy and excitement of feeling slender and healthy and take the steps to get yourself there. And celebrate along the way.

PS: You can learn more about how to do all this in Dr Jill’s Power of Focus ecourse. Check it out.

Light Your Creative Spark

Sudden ah ha insights are an ultimate source of creativity. Imagine if YOU could learn to summon them at will.

What happens in your mind when you get a sudden ah ha creative insight? When a light bulb seems to go off in your mind, and you suddenly just know the answer to a question or problem?

Such creative insight almost always comes suddenly, according to psychologist Jonathan Schooler of the University of Pittsburgh.

When you solve a problem in a methodical way, you usually know whether or not you’re coming close to a solution.

But with insight-type problems, most people have no clue when they are about to get a solution, Schooler explains. The solution almost seems to be delivered to you.

 Ah Ha Insights Unveiled
Science is yielding new insight into this ultimate form of creative thinking. And these insights can help YOU increase your creativity. Psych professor John Kounios of Drexel University and Mark Jung-Beeman of Northwestern University are studying ah ha insights using high tech equipment.

The researchers are asking people whether their answers to a complex word puzzle just popped into their heads  or if they used a more systematic approach to coming up with their solution. While all this is going on, the people are hooked up to EEG and fMRI machines to monitor their brains.

The EEG measures the when, Kounios explained, it records patterns of brainwave activity over time.

The fMRI, a brain imaging device, on the other hand, measures the where. It takes a picture showing which spots in the brain get the most blood flow  indicating they are more active during a given task.

The researchers discovered some surprising brain activity patterns occur at the moment the right answers just pop into one’s mind as a sudden insight.

The EEG showed a burst of brain activity in the right hemisphere about a third of a second BEFORE the research subjects hit a button indicating they had the answer.

The fMRI revealed that a tiny spot in the right temporal lobe just above your right ear lights up when people get an answer through insight. Have you ever noticed you might put your fingertips to your right temple when you’re searching for an answer to a question?

Insightful Precognition

 Chance favours the prepared mind.~~ Louis Pasteur

But then … the researchers discovered something even more remarkable:

Those who would later get the answer with insight had increased brain activity before they even saw the question. This brain state before the problem is presented actually predicts whether the subjects will solve it with insight or not. Kounios said. 

What happens is those who use insight to solve problems actually put their brains into a state in which they were more likely to have a flash of insight, he explained. It seems these people pulled a chain to turn on their mental light bulbs  just like they show in comic strips.

Here’s Two Clues
Krounos’s results suggest there’s something truly unique about ah ha insights. There’s been this long debate over whether insight is anything special, he said. In his experience, it’s definitely something special.

Clue 1: Psychologist Jonathan Schooler, who has also done insight experiments, found that people have more trouble getting ah ha solutions when they try to talk themselves through the steps. Sometimes it’s better to just shut up, Schooler concluded.

 Humm.

Clue 2: Kounios also reported that insight comes more easily when people don’t try so hard. They let go a little bit, he said. They relax and turn their focus to other things.

The Ah Ha State and Creativity
Like insightful problem solutions, creative ideas in the arts also often seem to come from out of the blue.

In a radio interview ex-Beetle Paul Simon once said he was just fooling around with some chords one day, when suddenly he began to play Bridge Over Troubled Water for the first time. He said it was as if the song just created itself in his brain.

Work like that in Kounios’ lab helps to demystify creativity by connecting it to a very real brain process, Christoff Koch, a neuroscientist at the California Institute of Technology tells us.

I agree.

We’re only conscious of a small fraction of our true brainpower

Insight, creativity, and our other most treasured mental abilities seem to flow out of the subconscious mind and just suddenly burst into consciousness. What a marvel our human minds are.

Entering the Ah Ha Zone
Anyway, it now seems there IS something to the sensation of a light bulb going off in our brain when we get a sudden creative insightful.

Stop and think about the moments you’ve had such experiences. You will likely recall being very relaxed. Einstein claimed to get his greatest creative insights in the shower.

Ask yourself what activities tend to best help you empty your mind? Then get these activities into your life when you’re trying to solve a problem, or get a creative insight.

Here’s a brain smart key: Logical analytical thinking is just the opposite of creative ah ha thinking. Your mind can only do one or the other at a given time.

If you have a particular problem you’re trying to solve, try this approach. First do your logical analysis. Then just let go. Do something totally different and relaxing. Just forget the problem

Allow your subconscious mind to play with the question or problem. Just go about your life, and allow the insight to flash into your conscious mind.

You CAN do this. It’s actually built into your mental hardware.

You’ll recognize it when it comes. That light bulb will flash.

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