Anxiety

Exercise vs. Meds

Bigthink.com has an article discussing the benefits of exercise and how it is beginning to reshape how we think about treatment for psychological issues.

“The results were stunning. After leading the patients in structured exercises — each 60-minute session included a combination of strength training, flexibility training, and cardio — 95 percent of patients reported feeling better, while 63 percent reported feeling happy or very happy instead of sad, very sad, or neutral. A whopping 91.8 percent said they were pleased with their bodies during the sessions.”

It also has this lovely gem of a quote:

“Humans were designed to move. Bipedalism offers us serious advantages in lung capacity and communication systems. Humans are generally weak and slow for mammals, but the combination of mental ingenuity and physical dexterity gave us a competitive advantage, one we've exploited so effectively that, thanks to our technology, we now bow to the cult of the mind while abandoning the reality of our bodies. Yet we're paying the price for our conveniences.”

Sleep and PTSD

Research on how sleep helps us deal with trauma...

"Our memories, as it turns out, are highly dependent on what we forget.During the day, our brains are recording. At night, they switch to editing, cutting out extraneous details and consolidating the important ones. Without this editing phase, the brain would be crowded with so much junk that—like a hoarder looking for their social security card—it wouldn’t be able to find the important things necessary for survival. Forgetting also enables the brain to erase out-of-date and inaccurate facts so they can be replaced with updated information.