Annemieke

Avec la marque "Olivier Maingain", le parti amarante entend renforcer l’assise et la légitimité de ses candidats inconnus. Il ne faut pas se balader bien longtemps dans les villes et villages du sud du pays pour se rendre compte à quel point ...

Even with its gorgeous foliage and festivities, autumn triggers anxiety and depression for many people. The shorter days and lack of sunlight affect our circadian rhythms; we feel the stress of upcoming holidays; and the claustrophobia of winter is lurking around the corner. I’m not a dietitian, but I’ve learned a lot from experts about food and mood, and I’ve learned what works for me.

Mother Nature, fortunately, has done her part in providing many foods and spices during this season that can aid our sanity. From enjoying freshly picked apples to munching on dry pumpkin seeds, autumn is full of good-mood foods that can help us enjoy the season.

1. Pumpkin Seeds

Pumpkin seeds are one of Mother Nature’s most potent mood boosters. They’re chock-full of zinc (containing 23 percent of our daily recommended value in just one ounce), which Emily Deans, MD, calls an “essential mineral for resiliency” in her Psychology Today blog Zinc: An Antidepressant. The mineral also increases our ability to fight off inflammation, which can cause depression and anxiety.

In addition, pumpkin seeds are rich in magnesium, our calming nutrient: According to a 2012 study in the journal Neuropharmacology, magnesium deficiencies induce anxiety, which is why the mineral is known as the original chill pill.

2. Squash

Squash was already one of my favorite fall foods before I knew it was packed full of mood-boosting ingredients. Just one cup of butternut squash contains 15 percent of the daily recommended value of magnesium, 17 percent of potassium, and 18 percent of manganese — all critical minerals to keep you sane. One cup also contains a whopping 52 percent of vitamin C, which lends a helping hand to our immune system and to our entire central nervous system.

3. Cinnamon

Cinnamon was used as early as 2000 BC in ancient Egypt to treat a host of different health conditions. A study at Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia showed that even smelling cinnamon enhanced cognitive performance. The spice is especially good for anxiety and depression because it helps regulate blood sugar. And one teaspoon provides 22 percent of the daily recommended value of manganese, a critical trace mineral that helps with nerve function and connective tissues, aiding the central nervous system in general. In addition, cinnamon plays a role in neutralizing free radicals that can damage cell membranes and DNA.

4. Turkey

If you’re fretting about all the family drama that happens at Thanksgiving, rest assured that the turkey will be helping you stay sane. It’s a good source of the amino acid tryptophan, which helps your body produce the feel-good chemical serotonin.

5. Turmeric

I throw the spice turmeric into the fall foods category because I start experimenting with it once the weather turns cool. This yellow spice that we eat in different kinds of curry contains a natural anti-inflammatory agent, curcumin, that helps mitigate depression and anxiety. The abstract from a 2014 study in the Journal of Affective Disorders reads:

Curcumin, the principal curcuminoid derived from the spice turmeric, influences several biological mechanisms associated with major depression, namely those associated with monoaminergic activity, immune-inflammatory and oxidative and nitrosative stress pathways, hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activity and neuroprogression. We hypothesised that curcumin would be effective for the treatment of depressive symptoms in individuals with major depressive disorder.

6. Apples

As I mentioned in my blog 10 Foods I Eat Every Day to Beat Depression, apples are high in antioxidants, which can help to prevent and repair oxidative damage and inflammation on the cellular level. They’re also full of soluble fiber , which balances blood sugar swings. One of my favorite fall snacks is some almond butter on apple slices, so I get my omega-3 fatty acids along with some fiber.

7. Eggplant

In addition to being a good source of fiber, copper, vitamin B1, and manganese, eggplant also contains important phytonutrients, including phenolic compounds and flavonoids, that are potent antioxidants. One study found that anthocyanin phytonutrients in the skin of eggplants, called nasunin, protects brain cell membranes from damage by zapping free radicals and guarding the lipids (fats) in brain cell membranes.

8. Sweet Potato

Just one baked sweet potato provides 214 percent of our daily recommended value of vitamin A (an antioxidant superpower), 52 percent of our vitamin C, and 50 percent of our manganese. This healthy starch is also full of copper, pantothenic acid, vitamin B6, biotin, and potassium — all very helpful in fighting depression and anxiety.

Sweet potatoes contain anthocyanin pigments and other flavonoids that have been shown in studies to have strong anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial activities. According to one study published in the Journal of Biomedicine and Biotechnology:

Because of their diverse physiological activities, the consumption of anthocyanins may play a significant role in preventing lifestyle-related diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular and neurological diseases.

Join the Nutrition & Mood Group on ProjectBeyondBlue.com, the new depression community.

Originally posted on Sanity Break at Everyday Health.

Hans Hofmann's painting 'The Gate' via Wikipedia.

Abstract expressionist art in the style of, say, Hans Hofmann or Jackson Pollock, often looks as though it has been thrown at random upon the canvas. It's common to hear sceptics scoff that a child or even an animal could have produced it, the implication being that the so-called art is indistinguishable from the mess and scribblings produced by infants and animals. A new study in the Journal of Cognition and Development challenges such claims.

The researchers at Boston College in America presented children with unlabelled abstract paintings paired with superficially similar art work by children and animals (chimps, monkeys and gorillas), and found that even the youngest group aged 4 to 7 could discriminate the professional art from the decoys, albeit that this was revealed through the fact that they consistently said they preferred the paintings by children and animals and saw them as better quality.

The researchers led by Jenny Nissel see this as a positive result for abstract artists and their fans:

"Those who deride abstract expressionists’ work do so because they view such works as no better than child art: Both kinds of works are considered low in quality," the researchers write. "Children apparently have an equally low view of abstract expressionism: They see such works as lesser in quality than child and animal art. But the most important point, in our view, is that children, like adults, can tell the difference between these two classes of images. The fact that even preschoolers can make this discrimination should help to counter museum goers’ claims that a Jackson Pollock painting is no different from paintings on the preschool classroom wall."

-- Can Young Children Distinguish Abstract Expressionist Art From Superficially Similar Works by Preschoolers and Animals?
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Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

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Le viol collectif dans lequel deux joueurs du FC Courtrai auraient été impliqués s’avère être une invention.

The workplace environment you spend 40 or 50 hours in per week has a very real and substantial impact on your mental health, according to multiple studies and expert opinions from psychologists all around the world.

According to a 2011 research study on how workplace design contributes to mental health and well-being, the average person spends 33 percent of their waking time in their workplace on a weekly basis. As such, the physical workplace environment has a major impact on everything from happiness and mood to productivity and focus. The study concludes that “good working conditions enable employees to work effectively” and that “investments in the physical workplace that create those conditions pay back quickly.”

One of the biggest issues for business owners involves choosing between different office spaces. At any given time, there are hundreds of different office spaces for lease in big cities. Take, for example, Atlanta, Georgia. As of December 2015, there are nearly 200 listings currently available in the metro area. Some offer open floor plan designs, while others have more traditional private floor plans with individual offices and boardrooms. According to studies, selecting one over the other can significantly affect workplace productivity.

In 2011, psychologist Matthew Davis analyzed more than 100 studies about office environments and found that, though they foster a “symbolic sense of organizational mission,” open office floor plans are actually “damaging to the workers’ attention spans, productivity, creative thinking, and satisfaction.”

When cross-referenced against standard partitioned offices, Davis found that employees in open offices dealt with more uncontrolled interactions, lower levels of concentration, less motivation, and higher levels of stress. That’s a strong price to pay for trendy architecture.

While some people are able to deal with more noise than others, research shows that noise distracts everyone. This study in cognitive control found that habitual multitaskers are more susceptible to interruptions and take longer to recover from interruptions. In offices with open environments or poor noise control, these employees are much more likely to become distracted and underperform.

The fact is that millennials – a group that now represents a large portion of the workforce – are natural multitaskers. Employers aren’t going to be able to fix this. As a result, this means that something has to be done to the workplace environment to reduce the number of distractions. Many business owners are finding that offices with private offices and cubicles are better than open floor plan designs.

A 2006 report by the Department of Health Working Group of Arts and Health in the UK found that art has a direct impact on the mental well-being of both hospital patients and staff members. In 2010, a followup study by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine further explored this issue.

“The fact that patients frequently express a preference for landscape and nature scenes is consistent with this observation and with evolutionary psychological theories which predict positive emotional responses to flourishing natural environments,” the report reads. “Patients who are ill or stressed about their health may not always be comforted by abstract art, preferring the positive distraction and state of calm created by the blues and greens of landscape and nature scenes instead.”

It’s not just hospitals, though. Carrying this idea over to the office, you can clearly see that art has an impact on the brain. By surrounding yourself with peaceful scenes – as opposed to loud, combative imagery – you can encourage more positive emotional responses.

Did you know that light has a direct impact on workplace performance? According to a 2013 study, “there is a strong relationship between workplace daylight exposure and office workers’ sleep activity and quality of life.”

When contrasted with workers who spend their time in offices without windows, those with exposure to natural light received an incredible 173 percent more white light exposure during work and slept 46 minutes more per night on average. The study produced a number of other interesting findings, but the gist of the research is that more natural light is better for mental health and physical well-being.

Office photo available from Shutterstock

Nummenmaa and collaborators, from several universities in Finland, propose that our emotions are represented in our somatosensory system as culturally universal categorical somatotopic maps.

Emotions are often felt in the body, and somatosensory feedback has been proposed to trigger conscious emotional experiences. Here we reveal maps of bodily sensations associated with different emotions using a unique topographical self-report method. In five experiments, participants (n = 701) were shown two silhouettes of bodies alongside emotional words, stories, movies, or facial expressions. They were asked to color the bodily regions whose activity they felt increasing or decreasing while viewing each stimulus. Different emotions were consistently associated with statistically separable bodily sensation maps across experiments. These maps were concordant across West European and East Asian samples. Statistical classifiers distinguished emotion-specific activation maps accurately, confirming independence of topographies across emotions. We propose that emotions are represented in the somatosensory system as culturally universal categorical somatotopic maps. Perception of these emotion-triggered bodily changes may play a key role in generating consciously felt emotions.

Figure - Bodily topography of basic (Upper) and nonbasic (Lower) emotions associated with words. The body maps show regions whose activation increased (warm colors) or decreased (cool colors) when feeling each emotion.