By N. Moreau On a chilly morning such as the one I am writing this article on, I yearn for nothing more than a warm blanket and the hearth of my cozy bed. Wim Hof, however, most likely yearns for colder, freezing temperatures beyond the scopes São Paulo can offer. Known as “The Iceman”, Wim Hof is a Dutch extreme athlete know for withstanding polar temperatures. To most readers, this might sound like torture, but to Wim Hof the cold is an escape, almost like a natural-born Yeti.
Born in 1959 in the Netherlands, Hof wasn’t always an ice enthusiast. He endured a long period of depression after his wife’s inexplicable suicide, but he came out a stronger man, one who is connected with nature and one who found salvation in freezing. He developed his ability for controlling his body's response to cold through manipulating his breathing and creating his own method of meditation; after breathing deeply in and out around 30 times, one should hold their breath for as long as comfortable, and then repeat. Hof’s technique is believed to increase oxygen intake, therefore reducing stress, improving focus and mental clarity. He attributes much of his ability to this breathing method, saying that it enhances the body's ability to adapt to and endure harsh temperatures and other environmental conditions. Hof first gained media attention in 2007 when he climbed the mighty Mount Kilimanjaro in shorts, proving to the world that either “cold is psychological” or he is, secretly, the abominable snowman. Since then, he has set 26 World Records all for activities related to extreme cold, including the longest ice bath ever and the fastest half marathon barefoot on ice and snow. Apart from his super-human achievements, Wim Hof has also become quite a popular man in the realm of health, fitness and wellness. His methods for manipulating his mind and therefore his body are unlike anything else and have been proven as a way to improve physical and mental well-being. Hof became the “alchemist of his own chemistry”; the way he can influence his nervous system and immune response challenge previously held scientific ideas about the limits of human physiology, proving more and more the power of the mind. Overall, the power we have over our minds and reactions to the world around us can't be understated. With the right mindset and training, humans can achieve anything. Most of us don’t really explore the potential of our minds and bodies, but with the correct discipline, maybe I can force myself to leave my cozy little haven. Though I may not be any Wim Hof, I will admit I always feel more energized after a cold shower. Hopefully, Hof’s story will inspire you to sit down, breathe, and chill (as in freeze, mindfully).
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By A.S. Thiollier The mind is a powerful organ. But of course, we all know that. What you may not know is that the mind is so powerful that it can trick your own body into thinking that you have received painkillers that were never administered. So powerful that it is able to cure itself of depression without any antidepressants or medication. And, until very recently, doctors didn’t know that either.
A placebo is roughly defined as sham medicine, a pill that cannot have any attribution to the improvement of those who take it. Until recently, placebos were used in studies to test the effectiveness of real medications. Half the participants would receive the medication, and the other half unknowingly receive the fake pill. In these studies, if both groups had the same reaction to the medication, it was considered a failure, even if the response was positive. However, more and more studies have proved that placebos can work as a replacement for real medication with equally effective results. More recently, experts have concluded that the positive effects resulting from placebos do not mean that real medications are not working, but instead that another, natural mechanism may be causing the improvements. Currently, the placebo cure rate ranges from 15%-72%, all occurring only from the mind’s reaction to being medicated. If one were to take pain medicine for migraines, your mind connects the act of taking medication with feeling better, so the action of taking a placebo pill has been proven to cause a therapeutic benefit. This is related to reactions including the production of feel-good neurotransmitters – endorphins and dopamine – and the heightened activity in regions of the brain that are related to emotional reactions, self-awareness, and moods. However, the placebo treatment is not a cure, it can only improve how you are feeling, for example, the sensitivity of pain. Placebos “have been shown to be most effective for conditions like pain management, stress-related insomnia, and cancer treatment side effects like fatigue and nausea” according to Ted Kaptchuk, a professor studying the placebo effect. But what about if you know it is a placebo? If you know that it’s fake? In Kaptchuck’s study, three groups were assessed on their reactions to different treatments for migraines. The first group received no treatment, the second a migraine pill labelled with the name of the drug, the last a fake pill labelled placebo. Surprisingly, despite the patients being aware that the placebo was not a real drug, the placebo was 50% as effective as the migraine drug in reducing the pain caused by a migraine attack. Besides taking fake medication, the placebo effect has other applications that can be significant in your everyday life. When a test is approaching and you need to study, your mind may immediately connect this thought with your becoming stressed out. Each time this happens, the same response of stress occurs due to habit, even if you do not necessarily need to be feeling that way. If you take the time to step back and become aware of the fact that this stress is unnecessary, you have the power to redirect this immediate reaction to be less difficult for you. The key to the placebo effect is positive thinking and determination. You have the chance to command your mind to help you go through life as easily as possible. By: B. Schwartzman Lucio The ‘Placebo Effect’ is when a person’s physical or mental health seems to improve after taking a placebo (an inert) treatment. For example, a person might take pills for a headache, and with time, that person may begin to associate pain relief with those pills. The phenomenon predicts that if this person receives a similar pill, but that contains no medication, they will likely report decreased pain, due to this association. The Placebo Effect illustrates how powerful the human mind is.
A quote by Wayne Dyer can illustrate: “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change”. In the case mentioned above, if you perceive the headache pill as being a pain killer, eventually, your mind will associate the pill with relief, and even if it does not have the medical power to cease pain, your mind may do the job in decreasing the headache pain. For several years, the Placebo Effect was considered a failure in medical studies. However, researchers have been recently considering the potential of the Placebo Effect as a remedy itself. What happens is that the brain anticipates the outcome and can promote the body’s well-being regardless of the medications contained in the appropriate pills. In this process, the human body can magically create natural chemical reactions. Nowadays, many people are dependent on strong prescription medication such as Zolpidem, which is an addictive sleep medication. Many people feel that they cannot sleep without these strong medications. Although this might be true at first, many times, being able to sleep becomes associated with the pill. These pills are especially destructive and addictive in the long-term, being able to cause memory loss, impaired coordination and alter synaptic activity. Other side effects may include anxiety and depression. As many begin to discover the side effects of sleep medication and attempt to cease their use, they find it hard as their brains associate quality sleep with the consumption of sleep pills. Scientists now experiment and investigate whether the Placebo Effect and the use of placebo medication can substitute sleep medication and still provide users with quality sleep. Still, whilst the real efficacy of placebo medications remains unknown, it is known that our mind is our most powerful tool, being to help us, but trick us, whether it is for good, or for bad. By: B. Sapoznik All the information you’re meant to remember is stored in your brain. Inside the brain, the hippocampus is the general part which is designated for the storage of information in your body. It records memory, alongside the memory you need for patterns and the daily intake of information (learning). The hippocampus is the “Hard Drive” of your head – meaning it is the main storage location. However, it has always occurred to me that this storage should be finite, and only a limited amount of information can be stored there, whether temporary or long-term information. But how much information can our brains really store?
There are many different opinions on this matter. Obviously, there is no fixed number for the amount, as every person’s brain reacts/functions uniquely. However, some people believe the brain has infinite storage space, as we fit every memory and there isn’t a fixed value for the number of memories we can have if we’ve lived them. So, some say that the storage won’t be occupied, it’d just cram more information. On the other hand, some believe that there can’t be infinite memory and that the brain has trillions of synapses which might hold an incredible amount of data, but at some point, we would subconsciously remove irrelevant information to store the new information. Although, according to research, the average adult brain should be able to store 2.5 million gigabytes of data – equivalent to 2.5 petabytes of crude information (that’s a lot). It derives from the study that suspects that each synapse stores 4.7 bytes of information. Of course, it depends on various factors such as quantity of sleep, age, genetics, development, etc. Though, it is still a considerable average. To put it into perspective, that is enough to run 3 million hours of TV shows. Or, if you want it in another form, that’s equivalent to 11,750,000,000 (11 billion 750 million) books. However, we can’t be sure that this works in real life, again, this is just an estimate. If you want to test the science, you can try to make a newborn sacrifice his life to prove science right and memorize 342 years of TV over his lifespan, and let’s see if it’s correct. Moreover, there isn’t a fixed answer to the question. Apart from the estimate, there isn’t a fixed number because everything varies from person to person. Whilst we can’t be sure of an answer, it can be affirmed that everything you need to remember for your next test can be remembered, and that even though our memory is probably not infinite, there is usually always space for more information. |
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