Dantalion Jones's Open Salon Blog

Mind Control - Video about Conspiracy

Thu, 31 May 2012 00:05:00 -0400

10 Negative Effects of Anxiety on Your Brain

Wed, 30 May 2012 05:05:00 -0400

Anxiety is a debilitating condition, causing sufferers to constantly experience stress, worry, and uneasiness. As a chronic medical problem, anxiety can wreak havoc on your body and your brain, causing panic attacks, heart trouble, and even deadly strokes. Perhaps the most worrying aspect of anxiety is its potential to damage your brain, sometimes even permanently. Read on to learn about ten of the most disturbing negative effects that anxiety can have on your brain.

Stroke:

Perhaps the scariest effect of anxiety on the brain is the increased risk of stroke. When "fight or flight" hormones are constantly on the attack, your heart risk and subsequent stroke risk goes up. In fact, research from Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association indicates that middle-aged men with symptoms of psychological distress including anxiety are "more than three times as likely to have a fatal stroke" than those who do not have problems with anxiety.

Dead hippocampus cells:

Overloading your stress system can have a huge impact on stress hormones. As the sympathetic nervous system (the one responsible for stress) works so hard, some stress hormones just don’t know when to stop. When this happens, and stress hormones are active in the brain for too long, they can injure and even kill hippocampus brain cells. Although all of the parts of your brain are obviously essential, the hippocampus is even more vital because it’s needed for memory and learning.

SSRIs can result in memory loss, disorientation:

Selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, commonly known as SSRIs, are typically used to treat chronic anxiety disorders. But one aspect of the drugs that’s sure to induce further anxiety is the possibility for memory loss and disorientation as a side effect. There are reports of "memory loss, tics, and jerking side effects" in SSRI patients, with the possibility of long-term brain damage from use of the drugs.

Early memory decline:

We already know that lingering stress hormones can take out brain cells in your hippocampus, the area of the brain that’s responsible for memory. So naturally, it’s easy to understand that anxiety can lead to early memory decline. This is especially true for elderly people who suffer from both depression and anxiety, as they are risk factors for memory problems.

Cognitive performance:

Academic researchers from the University of Alberta, University of Illinois, and Duke University have discovered that anxiety-inducing distraction can have a major impact on cognitive performance. Clearly, if you’re preoccupied by anxiety, it’s difficult to think about much else. The research clearly showed that there is a "detrimental impact of emotion distraction."

Lack of concentration:

Following along the same lines as cognitive performance, problems with anxiety can cause a lack of concentration. Anxietyfreechildren.com explores the effects of anxiety and concentration on school performance, and has found that stress and fear can negatively impact concentration and school work, making it difficult for students to focus on tasks and find road blocks in their thought process. This leads to low grades, poor performance, and difficulty creating and maintaining relationships with their peers.

Hyperactive brain circuits:

Generalized anxiety disorder are at risk for hyperactive brain circuits, an abnormality in the brain. Researchers have identified increased metabolic rates in a variety of areas of the brain in both passive activity and during vigilance tasks, which leads them to believe that patients with GAD are at risk for hyperactive brain circuits.

Insomnia:

For many patients, anxiety and insomnia go hand in hand. Anxiety can cause insomnia, just as insomnia can lead to problems with anxiety. This sleep disorder can cause poor quality of sleep and difficulty functioning throughout the day. Insomnia is often one of the first symptoms of depression or anxiety.

Slowing of frontal-prefrontal lobe function:

With chronic stress and anxiety, your body and brain are kept in an always-on state of alert, which leads to long term effects on the brain. MRI scans have indicated that patients who suffer from chronic anxiety show a "significant slowing of prefrontal lobe function."

Loss of brain tissue:

In addition to the slowing of frontal-prefrontal lobe function, MRI scans indicate that chronic anxiety sufferers may also have a loss of brain tissue. This change, along with the aforementioned frontal-prefrontal lobe function slowing are "the basis of many forms of mental disturbance and mental illness."

Mind Control - Medical Drugs

Tue, 29 May 2012 00:05:00 -0400

Mind Control - 11 Reasons Laughter Really May Be the Best Medicine of All

Mon, 28 May 2012 00:05:00 -0400

We’ve all heard the old saying that laughter is the best medicine, but new research is demonstrating that there may be some serious weight behind the adage. Numerous studies have shown that laughter can have a powerful effect on your well-being, happiness, and overall health and longevity, often in ways of which you aren’t even aware. Want to learn more? Read through our list of the health benefits of laughter to get a quick education on the matter. You may just find yourself wanting to watch a comedy, call up a funny friend, or even take a laughter yoga class after learning all the amazing benefits a good laugh can offer your overall health.

It relaxes the whole body.
Feeling tense? A good laugh may be just the thing to help you loosen up. Laughter uses numerous muscles throughout the body, and while these muscles are engaged many other muscles in your body relax. After you laugh, the muscles you use to laugh relax as well, leaving you much less tense than before and often feeling much more energetic. Additionally, muscles can also become tense due to not getting enough oxygen, something laughter can also help to remedy by increasing the flow of oxygen in the body.

It boosts the immune system.
According to research published in Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine,laughter could be a key factor in helping to boost the immune system. The biggest way in which laughter helps to boost the immune system is by reducing stress, which can negatively affect health in a wide range of ways. Some studies suggest that laughter may also boost the level of protective white blood cells in the body, especially a type that attacks cancer cells, and can also increase the level of infection-fighting antibodies and other types of immune cells.

It triggers the release of endorphins.
If a good belly laugh leaves you feeling high on life, you’re not just imagining things. Laughter triggers the release of endorphins, the body’s natural feel-good chemicals. These chemicals can give individuals a sense of overall well-being and may even temporarily reduce pain and discomfort.

It protects the heart.
Laughter is especially crucial when it comes to maintaining a healthy heart, or so research suggests. Laughter improves the function of blood vessels and increases blood flow, both of which can help to protect you from heart attacks and other cardiovascular issues. More specifically, laughter helps to improve the inner lining of the blood vessels, called the endothelium, causing vessels to relax and expand, which increases blood flow. This is beneficial to both your heart and your brain, both of which require a steady flow of oxygen.

It reduces blood sugar levels.
Whether you’re diabetic or not, you shouldn’t discount the importance of laughter in helping to lower blood sugar levels. Regular laughter has been shown to significantly reduce levels of glucose in the body, a factor which can be important to both diabetics and non-diabetics alike.To see the biggest change, get in some good laughs immediately following a meal.

It helps maintain or restore a positive emotional outlook.
Depression is a serious issue, but research suggests that it could help to do a bit of laughing if you’re feeling down. In a study of depressed and suicidal senior citizens, research found that the patients who recovered the best were those who had a sense of humor. In these adults, laughter was found to reduce levels of depression and insomnia and to improve mental cognition and sleep quality. In addition, the release of endorphins caused by laughter can have a powerful effect on mood, improving outlook and general sense of well-being.

It increases blood flow.
The increased blood flow that comes along with laughing can help just about every part of your body. With increased blood flow come increased levels of oxygen in the body, which can help boost the heart and the brain, and in some cases have even been shown to improve creativity. If that wasn’t already enough, this increase in blood flow may also help to reduce digestive problems and speeds up healing.

It helps us to cope with difficult situations.
There’s no way around it: some things in life are just hard to deal with. Yet laughter can help make difficult situations easier to cope with. In a study of medical professionals who work with the terminally ill, those who worked in an environment where humor was used judged their workplaces to be more effective and reported greater job satisfaction and less stress. Similar results were found in the elderly, with those using humor reporting a better ability to cope, leading to greater life satisfaction.

It strengthens relationships.
New research into laughter suggests that it may have emerged as a common human behavior tens of thousands of years ago, and could have played a pivotal role in human evolution. Why? Laughter helps to promote group bonding and can act as a sort of social glue that helps even disparate groups come together. Even today it’s hard to deny the power of laughter to build and strengthen relationships with friends, family, and coworkers. And those with strong social ties often report better health and a better outlook on life than those with weaker ties.

It reduces stress.
Perhaps one of the best benefits of laughter is its ability to reduce stress. Laughter lowers the amount of the stress hormone cortisol in the body by slowing the body’s stress response. In place of those stress hormones, laughter prompts the body to pump out loads of healthy hormones and chemicals instead, like serotonin and interleukins. The result is a big impact on your overall health, as stress has been linked to serious conditions like heart disease, depression, and cancer.

It has effects similar to exercise.
While you shouldn’t stop working out, new research suggests that laughter can give you many of the same effects. Cardiologist Michael Miller found that in a study of 20 healthy people, laughter did as much good for their arteries as aerobic activity. Miller’s findings are hardly isolated. Laughter researcher William Fry found that it took 10 minutes on a rowing machine for his heart rate to reach the same level as after just one minute of hearty laughter. It even burns calories, at the rate of 50 calories per 10-15 minutes.

Legal highs making the drug war obsolete

Sun, 27 May 2012 00:05:00 -0400

If you want any evidence that drugs have won the drug war, you just need to read the scientific studies on legal highs.

If you’re not keeping track of the ‘legal high’ scene it’s important to remember that the first examples, synthetic cannabinoids sold as ‘Spice’ and ‘K2′ incense, were only detected in 2009.

Shortly after amphetamine-a-like stimulant drugs, largely based on variations on pipradrol and the cathinones appeared, and now ketamine-like drugs such as methoxetamine have become widespread.

Since 1997, 150 new psychoactive substances were reported. Almost a third of those appeared in 2010.

Last year, the US government banned several of these drugs although the effect has been minimal as the legal high laboratories have over-run the trenches of the drug warriors.

A new study just published in the Journal of Analytical Toxicology tracked the chemical composition of legal highs as the bans were introduced.

A key question was whether the legal high firms would just try and use the same banned chemicals and sell them under a different name.

The research team found that since the ban only 4.9% of the products contained any trace of the recently banned drugs. The remaining 95.1% of products contained drugs not covered by the law.

The chemicals in legal highs have fundamentally changed since the 2011 ban and the labs have outrun the authorities in less than a year.

Another new study has looked at legal highs derived from pipradrol – a drug developed in 1940s for treating obesity, depression, ADHD and narcolepsy.

It was made illegal in made countries during the 70s due to its potential for abuse because it gives an amphetamine-like high.

The study found that legal high labs have just been running through variations of the banned drug using simple modifications of the original molecule to make new unregulated versions.

The following paragraph is from this study and even if you’re not a chemist, you can get an impression of how the drug is been tweaked in the most minor ways to create new legal versions.

Modifications include: addition of halogen, alkyl or alkoxy groups on one or both of the phenyl rings or addition of alkyl, alkenyl, haloalkyl and hydroxyalkyl groups on the nitrogen atom. Other modifications that have been reported include the substitution of a piperidine ring with an azepane ring (7-membered ring), a morpholine ring or a pyridine ring or the fusion of a piperidine ring with a benzene ring. These molecules, producing amphetamine-like effects, increase the choice of new stimulants to be used as legal highs in the coming years.

New, unknown and poorly understand psychoactive chemicals are appearing faster than they can be regulated.

The market is being driven by a demand for drugs that have the same effects as existing legal highs but won’t get you thrown in prison.

The drug war isn’t only being lost, it’s being made obsolete.

Dantalion Jones's Open Salon Blog

Mind Control - Video about Conspiracy

10 Negative Effects of Anxiety on Your Brain

Stroke:

Dead hippocampus cells:

SSRIs can result in memory loss, disorientation:

Early memory decline:

Cognitive performance:

Lack of concentration:

Hyperactive brain circuits:

Insomnia:

Slowing of frontal-prefrontal lobe function:

Loss of brain tissue:

Mind Control - Medical Drugs

Mind Control - 11 Reasons Laughter Really May Be the Best Medicine of All

It relaxes the whole body.

It boosts the immune system.

It triggers the release of endorphins.

It protects the heart.

It reduces blood sugar levels.

It helps maintain or restore a positive emotional outlook.

It increases blood flow.

It helps us to cope with difficult situations.

It strengthens relationships.

It reduces stress.

It has effects similar to exercise.

Legal highs making the drug war obsolete