Weight Watchers: Spirituality And Therapy

Of course it does all depend on what you mean by spirituality, but I can't help thinking that we should take notice whatever. Here's the full report-article: Why Weight Watchers Succeeds: Meetings Provide A Blend Of Spirituality And Therapy The final paragraph reads: "For many members, weekly meetings are crucial for their well-being. 'The presence of fellow Weight Watchers is equally therapeutic as it is spiritual: it transforms the support group into a greater, spiritual power that engenders therapeutic aid to members struggling with their diets,' the authors write. 'The support group gives meaning to members' at times trauma-ridden overweight condition, grants forgiveness for members' weight loss failures, offers valued oversight and overarching guidance needed to make it through the trials and tribulations of the week, ..."
Fat is a spiritual issue; can we take this on board equally constructively in church?

Support for the talking cure

Reasearch seems to be confirming what we kind of know from reflection on our own and others' experience: that talking about our feelings that can help us to bring them into a better relationship with the rest of our life. It's written about briefly here: Cross Words: Talking About Bad Feelings Helps Control Them | Wired Science from Wired.com and the headline summary: "Naming feelings takes some of the emotional impact out of them by engaging a brain region that aids self-control, according to new research.". The downside is that it also downsizes happy feelings too. I wonder whether that could relate to using tongues as a praise language; It would seem that perhaps glossolalia doesn't engage the relevant bit of the brain identified in this research and so the heightened feelings associated are not down-played (and this bit of research seems to indicate it doesn't engage those parts of the brain). On the other hand what about expressing praise corporately? I would say, from observation (and I have in mind both religious and secular gatherings) that the corporate dimension actually increases the sense of euphoria.

Acupuncture Shows Promise In Improving Rates Of Pregnancy Following IVF

An intriguing bit of research showing a 10% improvement in pregnancy rates using acupuncture. Here's the synopsis: Acupuncture Shows Promise In Improving Rates Of Pregnancy Following IVF and this is the summary of the results.

"acupuncture given as a complement to IVF increased the odds of achieving pregnancy. According to the researchers, the results indicate that 10 women undergoing IVF would need to be treated with acupuncture to bring about one additional pregnancy. The results, considered preliminary, point to a potential complementary treatment that may improve the success of IVF and the need to conduct additional clinical trials to confirm these findings."

Of course be careful of the preliminariness of this and also note, as I keep saying with complementary therapies that degrees of proven success are not endorsements of the traditional explanations for them therapies; you can get something right for the wrong reasons or impose on some results an incorrect interpretation. This is not proof that chi philosophy is right, merely that some people with that way of looking at things made a useful discovery at some point which they were able to harmonise with their beliefs.

Emotional Memories Can Be Suppressed With Practice

Further evidence of the plasticity of the brain, in this case enabling people to deal with difficult memories. It could also end up feeding into the repressed memories debate.

"These results indicate memory suppression does occur, and, at least in nonpsychiatric populations, is under the control of prefrontal regions," the researchers wrote in Science. The most anterior portion of the prefrontal cortex highlighted in the study is a relatively recent feature in brain evolution and is greatly enlarged in humans when compared to great apes, said Depue.

The study showed the subjects were able to "exert some control over their emotional memories," said Depue. "By essentially shutting down specific portions of the brain, they were able to stop the retrieval process of particular memories."