Gratitude Journal May Enhance Health in Cardiac Patients: I Am Grateful for….

Published in the Huffington Post: Gratitude

 

“Effects of Gratitude Journaling on Heart Rate Variability and Inflammatory Biomarkers

in Asymptomatic Heart Failure Patients”

By Paul Mills, PhD, Kathleen Wilson MS, Meredith A. Pung PhD, Kelly Chinh BS, Brook Henry PhD, J. Christopher Wells BS, Alex Wood PhD, Shamini Jain PhD, Barry Greenberg MD, Alan Maisel MD, Ottar Lunde MD, Deepak Chopra MD, Laura Redwine PhD

Departments of Family Medicine and Public Health, Psychiatry, and Medicine, UC San Diego, La Jolla, CA

Department of Behavioral Science, University of Stirling, Stirling Scotland

o-POSTER-570

 

For the last decade or so, the field of behavioral cardiology has shifted its focus from being primarily on psychological traits such as hostility, stress, and depression to more positive psychological attributes such as gratitude, compassion, and empathy. In individuals with heart failure, gratitude has been identified as an important resource for alleviating the struggles associated with symptoms. In a recent cross-sectional study on over 180 asymptomatic heart failure patients, we reported that more gratitude was associated with less depression, better sleep, and less peripheral inflammation.  In this new study, to be presented at the University of California, San Diego Institute for Public Health’s Annual Public Health Research Day (to be held April 9, 2015), we report on the results of a randomized clinical trial where patients were randomized to either 8-weeks of gratitude journaling plus their usual care or 8-weeks usual care alone. Journaling was used as a way to cultivate gratitude. We found that patients who journaled about gratitude had increased heart rate variability (a measure of reduced cardiac risk) as well as reduced circulating levels of inflammatory biomarkers IL-6 and sTNFr1, which are associated with cardiovascular disease. Gratitude journaling is a low-cost and easily implementable intervention that may have significant beneficial effects to enhance health in cardiac patients. ​

Response to Jerry Coyne's Misrepresentation of My Position on HIV/AIDS

Jerry Coyne has set himself up repeatedly to use smear tactics in order to portray me as irrational. It’s unfortunate that he didn’t go to medical school, but I did. Of course the HIV virus causes AIDS.

 

Coyne had to dig up a conversation from 1990 and place it in the worst possible light even to find a hint that I am an AIDS denier. Since I’ve written dozens of books, hundreds of online articles, ten peer-reviewed scientific articles, and a daily stream of tweets, wouldn’t I have mentioned AIDS denial at least once if that’s what I believed? Most deniers shout it from the rooftop.

 

That wasn’t the point I was making in the conversation with Tony Robbins. I chose the phrase “precipitating agent” quite deliberately.

 

Exposure to HIV isn’t a guarantee of acquiring it, unlike Ebola, for example, where contact of even the slightest kind with fluids from someone with Ebola can lead to infection. HIV is far more difficult to transmit. Who, then, is most liable to actually be infected? There are certain conditions, such as an open wound, even a tiny one at the gum line, where access to the bloodstream allows the virus to enter. So poor personal hygiene, such as not brushing your teeth and allowing your gums to swell and bleed, is most certainly a risk. That’s one thing I was touching upon.

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'I Am the Master of My Fate' — A New Take on Free Will

By Deepak Chopra

master

Back when schoolchildren regularly read uplifting poetry, there was a famous Victorian poem that affirmed the human birthright of free will. It was “Invictus,” by W. E. Henley and began:

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

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Solving Climate Change Now: The Clean Energy “Moonshot” Approach

 

Picking climate change as the problem I’d like to fix is the easy part — who wouldn’t pick it? The hard part is to envision a solution that isn’t either blue sky or far away in the future. That’s where a unique program called the California Clean Energy “Moonshot” offers a real-time, present moment answer.

The “Moonshot” is a community effort that can be expanded globally. It aims at 100 percent renewable energy production with 0 percent carbon emissions. How? Several premises are at work:

  • The technologies for renewable clean energy already exist in the form of solar and wind power, hydrogen fuel cells, and advanced storage techniques for electricity.
  • Large power grids lose massive amounts of energy during transmission. They are inefficient, inflexible, and no one wants them built in their backyard.
  • By turning to microgrids at the community level, the liabilities of massive power grids are eliminated.
  • Microgrids can be made profitable enough to attract business investment, with vast pools of private capital waiting in the wings to fund them.

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Sonima’s Wisdom and Me

By Deepak Chopra, MD
 
The cutting-edge programs of the Sonima Foundation are based on an ancient wisdom principle. True wisdom occurs spontaneously, and in this case, I remember the story of how one child discovered it very early.  Alfred Stieglitz, who became one of the greatest photographers of the twentieScreen Shot 2014-10-03 at 1.48.38 PMth century, grew up in Hoboken, New Jersey. His father had fought for three years in the Union army before buying himself out so that he could be home to see his first child grow up.
 
One winter the boy was seen slipping out the back door, which at first seemed only a bit odd. It was the dead of winter and freezing cold. But when he kept doing it, his parents investigated. It turned out that Alfred was slipping money to a bedraggled vagrant without telling anyone.
 
The family wasn’t rich, and his father rebuked him. “Why are you giving your money to a stranger?”
“Don’t you see?” Alfred replied. “I’m doing it for myself.”
 
The same wisdom principle, that in helping others we help ourselves, could change the world. That’s why I feel so dedicated to the Sonima foundation, because they have taken an idea close to my heart—the wellbeing of children—and expanded it. Through a groundbreaking health and wellness program, the foundation is creating the leaders of the future who will be healthy in body, mind, and spirit.
 

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