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3 Evening Habits to Improve Life & Well Being - Thomas DeLauer
Write out your Next Day - Study
A study conducted at the Dominican University in California looked at the science and effect of goal setting
The study viewed 267 people - men and women with many different professions; including entrepreneurs, educators, healthcare professionals, lawyers and bankers
They were divided into groups, according to who wrote down their goals, and who didn’t
Those who wrote down their goals on a regular basis achieved their desires at a significantly higher level than those who did not - they were 42% more likely to achieve their goals by simply by writing them down on a regular basis (1)
Goal Setting and the Brain
The reasoning behind this study has to do with your brain’s left and right hemisphere
The flat bundle of neural fibers that connects the two hemispheres is called the corpus callosum - This is the conduit through which the electrical signals between the right brain, which is imaginative, and the left brain, which is literal, make contact.
These electrical signals then move into the fluid that surrounds the brain and travel up and down the spinal column
The signals then communicate with every fiber, cell and bone in the body and enables us to transform our thoughts into reality
Just thinking about your goals or plans for the following day only uses the right hemisphere of your brain, which is imaginative - writing it down taps into the logic-based left hemisphere
Cold Showers
Build Resilience and Reduction of Stress
Cold showers act as a small form of oxidative stress on your nervous system. And overtime, the body adapts to this, making you calmer and more collected
Continuous cold exposure works as an adaptation to repeated oxidative stress, and is postulated as a mechanism for body hardening - the exposure to a natural stimulus, which results in an increased tolerance to stress
Additionally, a study published in the journal Free Radical Biology and Medicine looked at healthy subjects who swam regularly in ice-cold water during the winter - they were evaluated before and after short-term whole body exposure
Found that repeated exposure to cold water led to lower levels of uric acid and increased levels of glutathione in the blood - both of which help to reduce stress (4)
May Help Improve Sleep
A study from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine looked at the effectiveness of a technique called frontal cerebral thermal transfer in alleviating symptoms of insomnia.
The technique involves cooling down the prefrontal cortex using a plastic cap covered with water circulating tubes, seeks to slow down the metabolism in the frontal cortex - designed to counteract the increased metabolism in this part of the brain associated with insomnia
The study included 12 women with insomnia and 12 women without insomnia who were similar in age and examined their sleep quality with and without the cooling caps
Found that cooling the brain of those with insomnia reduced the amount of time it took them to fall asleep and increased the amount of sleep they got, bringing their results in line with the participants who did not have insomnia
On average, when given the highest intensity treatment, those with insomnia were able to fall asleep in 13 minutes compared to the 16 minutes it took their non-insomniac peers - also enabled those with insomnia to get more sleep, matching the percentage of time their peers spent sleeping while in bed at 89%
Color Association
Compartmentalization is a defense mechanism, or a coping strategy, that helps us deal with conflict - Isolating and focusing a certain emotion on a specific color allows us to dissociate that feeling with the real world
Different colors produce different psychological, emotional, and physical effects. Some colors are calming and can help you relax and release your worries; some colors are stimulating.
References
1) The Power of Writing Down Your Goals and Dreams | HuffPost. (n.d.). Retrieved from
2) Uric acid and glutathione levels during short-term whole body cold exposure - ScienceDirect. (n.d.). Retrieved from
3) Can’t Sleep? Maybe Your Brain Needs a Cold Shower. (n.d.). Retrieved from
4) Treating primary insomnia: clinical effectiveness and predictors of outcomes on sleep, daytime function and health-related quality of life. - PubMed - NCBI. (n.d.). Retrieved from
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