Optimal Being

  Summary:  Perceived time significantly impacts the healing of physical wounds. Researchers found wounds healed faster when participants believed more time had passed, challenging conventional beliefs about psychological effects on physical health. The research emphasizes the need to consider a broader range of psychological influences on physical well-being and suggests that abstract beliefs about the body’s functioning directly affect health outcomes. Further investigations aim to uncover the underlying mechanisms and broader implications of this intriguing discovery. Key Facts: Perceived time plays a crucial role in the actual healing process of physical wounds, regardless of the actual elapsed time. The study suggests a broader range of psychological influences on physical health, beyond the traditional focus on emotions and behavior. Researchers are conducting further investigations to better understand the mechanisms and implications of this mind-body connection in heal...

Consider the prospect of restoring a damaged brain or reconnecting a severed nerve. In news that could be significant for patients with brain or nerve issues, researchers at Rice University have developed a new material that they say can stimulate neural tissue in a less invasive manner than previous treatments, and also allow nerve signals to flow again despite a severed connection. The research team at Rice says they've developed a magnetoelectric material, meaning it converts magnetic fields into electric fields. Doctors have long pondered whether such a biomedical material could help patients suffering from brain and nerve problems, but previous experiments on magnetoelectrics had a difficult time making neurons react to the converted electrical signal. "We asked, ‘Can we create a material that can be like dust or is so small that by placing just a sprinkle of it inside the body you’d be able to stimulate the brain or nervous system?’" asked lead researcher Joshua Che...

Strength athletes who replace some of their workouts with sessions in which they imagine training with weights achieve almost the same progression as athletes who don't miss any training sessions. Sports scientist Mathias Reiser of Justus Liebig University Giessen came to this conclusion after doing a trial with 43 healthy students. Imaginary training is a good option for athletes with a lively imagination. Imaginary training Imagining that you are training strengthens muscles. This was proved in a famous study done by sports scientist Vinoth Ranganathan.  [Neuropsychologia. 2004;42(7):944-56.]  Without even moving your biceps, for example, you can strengthen them just by thinking of curls. Researchers in the Netherlands discovered that it was possible to  strengthen the calf muscle  of subjects using this method, and that people with serious injuries  recovered more quickly . Scientists at the University of Lyon  discovered  that imaginary training is...

  Free radicals , and   reactive oxygen species (ROS)   in particular, play an important part in aging. These are (usually small) molecules lacking an   electron   needed for stability; they will steal an electron from the first thing they bump into. Like pulling a cog out from clockwork, stealing an electron from a protein or enzyme is usually not good for the finely-tuned biochemical machinery of our cells. The free radical might be rendered safe in the process, but it has left some form of chaos and damage in its wake. Free radicals are sufficiently dangerous to biochemical machinery that some of our body's defenders  use bursts of free radicals as a kill mechanism . Scientists generally concur that accumulated damage throughout the body due to free radicals is one important root cause of age-related degeneration - but the devil is in the details. The vast, overwhelming majority of those free radicals are generated by your own metabolism as an unavoidabl...