Tag: mind

No, none of it’s true.

In 2013, blogger Cara Goodman made a shocking admission.
She’d attracted about 1,500 followers on her alaska-says-sun Tumblr account, primarily by blogging about her extraordinarily difficult life. She had HIV, cancer, anorexia nervosa, and she was deaf. She’d gone through unthinkable personal trauma, which she’d detailed for her readers, and every time her life seemed to improve, she’d inevitably face another hardship.

But in 2013, Goodman came clean: She’d made it all up.
“I engaged and manipulated loving friends with whom I had real life relationships to help me perpetuate my lies,” Goodman wrote in an emotional apology letter. “I lied to you all. I am not a hero, a victim, or a walking cluster of tragedy. I’m not HIV positive, nor do I have cancer.”
Goodman explained that she’d recently become pregnant, and she realized that she was harming her family and friends by lying about her life. She wanted to live a life with integrity and become a good mother to her daughter. She would not post again, she wrote, unless she was sought out.
As the shocking admission spread, many of Goodman’s former followers set up pages to track the fallout. One blog, Answers About Cara, claimed that Goodman continued to post under different identities; another, Faker Blogs, expressed anger at Goodman’s “reformed” persona.

The case isn’t unique. In 2015, Australian Instagram star Belle Gibson built an empire with 200,000 social media followers, telling of the rare heart condition she’d had in high school and the cancer diagnosis that had changed her life—claims that, as it turns out, couldn’t be substantiated.
In a 2015 interview with The Australian Women’s Weekly, she admitted, “No. None of it’s true.” A judge later ordered Gibson to pay $410,000 AUD for falsely claiming that the proceeds from her products would benefit various charities.

These two cases might seem similar, but there’s an important difference.

Gibson was lying, at least in part, for money; Goodman seems to have lied for attention. When people lie about serious medical conditions, motivation matters.

That’s what all [people with factitious disorder] have in common: the search for love and care and concern that these people feel unable to get in any other way.

Goodman likely has a factitious disorder—a mental condition in which a person knowingly lies about an illness in order to get sympathy. Gibson, on the other hand, is a classic case of malingering—feigning an illness for a more tangible personal benefit.

Dr. Marc D. Feldman literally wrote the book on factitious disorder (in fact, he’s written four, with a fifth in the works). He’s the clinical professor of psychiatry and an adjunct professor of psychology at the University of Alabama, and he’s also a distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He told HealthyWay that factitious disorder exists on a spectrum, and the internet has acted as an enabler for some of these people.
“The most extreme examples of factitious disorder are called Munchausen’s syndrome,” Feldman says. “That refers to people who evolve a lifestyle of doing little else but traveling from hospital to hospital, getting themselves admitted, even undergoing surgeries that they really don’t need.”
Feldman coined the term “Munchausen by internet,” which psychologists are using to describe individuals who act out factitious disorders online.
“People go online and lie about their medical conditions to attract attention and sympathy, and that’s what all [people with factitious disorder] have in common: the search for love and care and concern that these people feel unable to get in any other way,” Feldman explains.

That behavior can seem quite perplexing to laymen, who often see Munchausen sufferers as exploitative.
“People looking at the situation may be really complexed as to why somebody would do this,” Feldman says. “You have to understand it in terms of people’s individual psychodynamics. Something internal is driving them to behave in this way, and in that sense, it’s not obvious to the observer.”

Psychologists first identified Munchausen syndrome in 1951, but Dr. Feldman says the behavior has always existed.

The name, by the way, comes from the literary character Baron Munchausen, who was well known for entertaining dinner guests with impossible tales of his adventures.

Unlike the fictional nobleman, however, Munchausen patients often face serious repercussions as a result of their lies.
“By definition, factitious disorder patients are aware either that they’re not really sick, or that they’ve self-induced the illness they claim to have,” Feldman says. “…I think they’re coming from a place of desperation. They don’t know what else to do. Now, they tend to have personality disorders, which just means that they have long-term maladaptive ways of trying to get their needs met. They do things that are self-defeating.”
The scope of the problem is remarkable. One study found that 1.3 percent of hospital patients have factitious disorders, while a separate review suggested that the number may be as high as 3 percent among referrals. However, Feldman notes that large-scale studies are inherently difficult, since doctors only catch the most extreme cases. That also leads to issues when doctors attempt to find the root causes of the behaviors.

“These patients lie about their health, and they lie about other things as well in some cases,” Feldman says. “They very often say that they’ve been abused in childhood…and as with any adult, talking about childhood, it’s hard to know what’s really happened. It’s hard to corroborate events that may have happened 20 years earlier.”

While Munchausen disorder is troubling, Munchausen by proxy is an even more disturbing condition.

In this syndrome, a caregiver makes up an injury or illness for another person—typically a dependent child. By definition, Munchausen syndrome by proxy (MSPB) involves abuse, and some patients evade detection for decades.
The case of Gypsy Rose Blancharde and her mother, Dee Dee Blancharde (formerly Blanchard), is one of the most high-profile examples of MSBP.

For almost all of Gypsy’s life, Dee Dee claimed that her daughter had various health issues including cancer and muscular dystrophy; she didn’t. Dee Dee forced Gypsy to take dozens of medications a day; Gypsy used a wheelchair for over a decade, despite the fact she was able to walk.
The Blanchardes received community support in the form of donations, free vacations, and even a wheelchair-accessible home.
In 2015, Gypsy conspired with her boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, to kill Dee Dee. Though Godejohn committed the act, Gypsy is currently serving 10 years for her part in the crime.

Physicians who were involved in Gypsy’s care have been criticized for missing the signs of Munchausen syndrome. How could Dee Dee have misled medical professionals for so long?
“Doctors, as a group, are tremendously gullible, and it has to do with how we’re trained,” Feldman explains. “We’re taught to listen to what the patient says as the single best indicator of what’s going wrong. We’re not taught, in medical school or residency, to question what a patient or family says, and I think that’s how you stumble into situations like that of Gypsy Rose Blancharde.”
“Doctors might have their suspicions, but they don’t pursue them,” Feldman continues, “partly because they can’t imagine that in a Munchausen by proxy case, the mother would lie about her child’s health, but also because they don’t have the time to really ponder a case and really read through all of the outside records.”

He adds, “People seem surprised when somebody with minimal education like Dee Dee Blancharde could mislead so many doctors, but it’s really easy to do. And it’s counterintuitive, but it’s a fact.”

MSBP also occurs via the internet, but as Feldman notes, it’s impossible to determine the scale of the issue.

The internet makes it too easy to hide. He notes that when people use the internet to lie about medical conditions, their behavior isn’t technically considered a disorder—but he expects that to change.
“I think we’re only recognizing the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Munchausen by internet,” he says. “…Nobody can say how common it is, because again, I think we’re missing most of the cases. The patients are so extreme in what they have to say that [the lie] becomes obvious. Most patients are more subtle than that.”

In a 2000 paper on factitious disorder and the internet, Feldman noted some of the symptoms that patients—whom he calls “posers,” since, again, Munchausen by internet isn’t an official disorder yet—frequently display when posting on forums and blogs.

I think they’re coming from a place of desperation.

Posers often discuss dramatic recoveries and make fantastic personal claims. The characteristics of their supposed illnesses are portrayed extravagantly, or they’re duplicated from other sources, and the length, frequency, and duration of the posts don’t match the claimed severity of the illness (for instance, a person with septic shock might write a 2,000-word diatribe).

Sufferers will also claim that online groups aren’t sufficiently supportive. They may also be unusually upbeat about severe crises. In some cases, they write blogs or social media posts from “other people writing on their behalf” that just happen to use identical writing patterns.

Still, calling out Munchausen sufferers can be somewhat dangerous.

Feldman recommends using a compassionate approach rather than simply calling attention to lies in a public forum.
“I think it’s okay to confront a poser with inaccuracies or inconsistencies in what they’re saying, but I think it needs to be done by just a small group of people in a private email, as opposed to posting on the website, ‘You’re a liar,'” he explains.
“If the poser is able to accept what’s being said, [that process] leads to a lot greater understanding and satisfaction on the part of the people who have been victimized.”

And while people with factitious disorder might seem selfish or uncaring, Feldman says that’s not the case.
“They’re not getting the nurturance and care that the rest of us have learned to get in healthy ways,” Feldman says. “Out of desperation, they go onto the internet or fake an illness in real-life, while perhaps knowing that it’s ultimately going to backfire.”
“But they don’t know what else to do. And I’ve talked to a lot of these patients, and they’re nice people who are perhaps misguided, or perhaps have a personality limitation that means that they can’t be straightforward when they need something. They lie to try to get it.”

A social media trend is emerging among today’s teens, and unlike many recent trends (illicit Snapchat stories come to mind), this is all about keeping things locked down.

Finstagrams (“finstas” for short) are secret Instagram accounts many teens are using to share privileged information about their lives with a limited number of people. They aren’t being used in place of regular or “real” Instagram accounts—sometimes referred to as “rinstagrams”—though. Instead, a finsta is a supplementary account for posting things that they don’t want to post on their public profiles.

It wasn’t that long ago that I was a teen. I remember what it was like to want to keep certain things about my life private. Of course, I kept my innermost thoughts in a journal hidden under my bed, but today’s teens are operating a little differently. Gone are the days of LiveJournal and Xanga (and don’t even think about actually putting pen to paper).

These days, high schoolers are actually sharing their experiences and what they think about their lives with their friends—through their finstas.

Recently, HuffPost published an alarming article about these private accounts and how teens were using them to hide certain lifestyle choices from their parents. The trend caught on after parents started using social media, according to the article. Teens just wanted a place where they could be free from their parents’ judgmental gaze.

“Originally born from the desire to carve out a space free from nosy parents, finstas have morphed into a malicious animal capable of reducing even the most well-adjusted and mentally healthy teens to rubble,” Daniel Patterson, the HuffPost writer, warns in his article.

If HuffPost does indeed have their facts straight, the vast majority of finstas are being used to share revealing pictures, hide partying, or talk about dangerous habits without their parents seeing their posts.

But how much of that is actually true?

Just how risky are finstagram accounts?

The idea of teens running private accounts can be alarming at first, but there isn’t a lot of proof that most teens are using them to hide dangerous lifestyle choices.

Of course, there are always teenagers who engage in risky behavior and, yes, some post about it online.

“I used to follow a lot of private account that did center themselves around [party] culture and violence…I think it was these kinds of bad decisions they were making that ultimately caused me to stray away from those kinds of issues and focus on the brighter and happier posting style,” an anonymous teen tells Urbo.

However, she says that these accounts seem to be few and far between. She thinks claiming that all, or even most, finstas were created for this reason is taking it too far.

The main reason people have finstas is so they can act silly or dumb.

It is hard to say if browsing the finstagram hashtag gives an accurate representation of the secret world of finstas (since most users are keeping their accounts private—meaning they won’t show up in public feeds curated from hashtags). Some teens may have missed the memo, though, and have both their normal account and finsta account set to “public.” And that’s where the hashtag comes in.

I did a quick scroll through the most recent public #finsta posts and noticed two vastly different kind of accounts. Yes, there are some pictures that deserve to be reported (and you can bet I did), but the majority of the posts I saw were fairly harmless.

There’s a meme about the cat with weirdly long legs in Le Chat Blanc by Pierre Bonnard. There is a picture of someone’s lunch. There’s a selfie of a girl doing facial masks with her friends. It’s kind of fun, honestly.

“The main reason people have finstas is so they can act silly or dumb,” Sage, age 15, says about her motivations behind creating a finstagram. According to Sage, most of her friends’ finstagrams are exactly like hers: They’re posting memes or less-than-flattering pictures or just ranting about something weird that happened at school. In fact, she says she has never stumbled on an account being used to conceal substance use or other risky behaviors.

“I follow a lot of accounts that started out as finstas and eventually morphed into meme-centered accounts, solely serving the purpose of making other people laugh, and I wanted to be a part of that community,” explains another teen, who is remaining anonymous at her parents’ request.

Why do teens want a private Instagram account anyway?

If most teens aren’t using their accounts to hide dangerous behavior, why have a private account at all? If a finstagram is simply memes, silly selfies, and posts about their day, why not post these pictures on their regular account?

My finsta, I typically use for…pictures I just don’t think are ‘good enough.’

According to Sage, there is a lot of pressure when your family and the entire school are following your account. She shared that her rinsta—her real account—is actually pretty boring and that the pictures are much more curated. It’s the type of stuff she wouldn’t mind a potential employer seeing. That’s how many teens use their normal Instagram accounts; at first glance, it seems they’re hardly posting to their accounts at all.

And that’s because many of them are using finstas, which seem to function as a daily diary, according to Dr. Lynn Zakeri, who is a clinical therapist working with teens in the Chicago area. When she chats with her clients about their finstas or the finstas they follo
w, they say they are largely sharing things they wouldn’t want to be read by the general public.

They might go as far as sharing intimate details about a bad day, hoping their followers will help them to feel better, or they might post pictures in hopes of having their self-esteem bolstered.

“I use my main Instagram for higher quality photos of either myself or my friends and [me],” says Katie Baker, an 18-year-old college freshman. She created her finsta in high school when the trend was first catching on.

She continues, “My finsta, I typically use for candids, landscape photos, or even just pictures I don’t think are ‘good enough’ for the main account. A lot of people just make their accounts funny, but there are those select few that post the crazier side of their lives.”

Here’s how a finsta works.

In general, the rules for most finstas a fairly simple. First, most teens are keeping these accounts private (although I found a handful who did not). Secondly, they can post as often as they want and their posts can be as unfiltered as they want.

It’s a way for people to post things without feeling a sense of judgement from their peers.

Want to complain about your day? Use your finstagram. Want to share a super cute (and heavily edited) picture you took during girls’ night out? That belongs on your rinstagram.

The rise of the finsta certainly seems to prove one thing: All those lectures parents have given their kids about privacy on the internet may have actually taken hold. Most kids have strict rules about who can and can’t follow their finstagram.

One anonymous teen said that their friends usually will deny a parent or teacher’s follow request and only allow friends they trust to follow them.

Baker backs up this assertion: “Most people have their finsta on private so they only allow the people they want and trust to follow their account. I have a finsta because it’s just funny to me to post stupid or ugly pictures on social media that I wouldn’t normally post, but only for a smaller audience,” she says.

“If I have never met or had a simple conversation with someone that tries to follow me, then I won’t allow their request.”

Finstas might not be dangerous, but are they healthy?

Although it seem that most teens are using their finstas to blow off a little steam or share funny pictures instead of sharing risky lifestyle choices (that they might not even be making), that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a healthy practice to engage in for any teens.

“I hear about it from junior high kids that this is where more bullying happens, more promiscuous images appear, and more testing boundaries,” explains Zakeri. Some kids may talk about self-harm ideations or share about their depression because they feel they have privacy from parental intervention—intervention they likely desperately need.

Zakeria believes that a private account, specifically one that shares intimate details about a teens life, might be a cry for attention. She tends to ask what a teen needs emotionally that they believe they can get from a private account.

Are they just sharing spam because it’s silly and fun? Probably not a big deal. Are they looking for attention they’re not getting in real life? That’s a much bigger concern.

“Any kid that needs an outlet on a fake account, as a clinical therapist and a parent, I want to know what needs are being met in the real world,” says Zakeri.

Ultimately, Zakeri says there are bigger, underlying issues that drive a teen to create a finstagram and then share personal and private information with an exclusive set of followers. Specifically, she says that the motivation behind a finstagram is the bigger concern.

Perhaps, they’re not getting the judgement-free support they need from the adults in their life, as one anonymous teen so perfectly explains in a conversation with Urbo:

“The vast majority of finstas on Instagram aren’t spreading negativity, rather it’s a way for people to post things without feeling a sense of judgement from their peers.”

Old habits die hard.

The very nature of habits is that they stick. In fact, the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines habit as “a settled tendency or usual manner of behavior.” Meaning: Habits are kind of a part of who you are unless you know how to break them.

It makes sense then, that so many people are in the throes of kicking habits they’d rather have said goodbye to long ago. Despite ample evidence that a smoking habit can do damage to nearly every part of the body, 36.5 million people living in the United States were still smoking regularly as of 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

You develop those areas of the brain that support that habit.

Even though strict laws have been implemented to curtail texting and driving, thousands of people are killed each year because of distracted driving, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

So, what gives? Do people simply not care that their bad habits are killing them and the people around them?

It isn’t that simple. The truth is that breaking a habit that is etched into our routine is pretty complicated because the brain has a way of tricking us into maintaining the tendency, even when we don’t want to.

Understanding how your brain is working against you is the first step in finally saying sayonara to those irksome tendencies you’ve been plotting to kick to the curb.

It’s all in your head.

Perhaps the most frustrating reason habits are so hard to break is that they are literally all in your head. Habits are actually etched into your brain, according to Dr. Deborah Norris, neuroscientist and psychologist-in-residence at American University.

“When you use areas of the brain, that area of the brain grows. So when you have a habit, particularly a mental habit or way of thinking and behaving, you develop those areas of the brain that support that habit,” Norris explains to HealthyWay.

As a result, the more we engage in a certain habit, the more the areas of the brain that encourage the habit—good or bad—become stronger while the areas not associated with the habit go less used or even stagnate.

It’s all about the reward.

Unfortunately for us, most of our bad habits were formed because we experienced a reward for a certain behavior. Positive reinforcement is in part to blame for especially sticky habits, even when the rewards seem overshadowed by negative effects. These rewards are often predicated on how a habit makes us feel in the moment, even if it has negative long-term consequences.

The first job I have at my clinical practice is getting them thinking about what they do want.

Habits are a part of a loop that has three parts, according to an NPR interview with business writer Charles Duhigg. The first part of this loop is a trigger—something that reminds our brain it’s time to switch to autopilot. After the trigger is the behavior itself, which happens in response to the trigger. Last is the reward—whatever happens that tells our brain the habit has a positive consequence.

It’s amazing, really, our brain’s ability to complete complicated tasks without much thought, but it can also be frustrating when we want to eliminate repetitive, go-to thought processes or actions from our lives. According to Duhigg, to have more power over our habits, we must work to understand the different factors that are parts of the trigger–routine–reward cycle of whatever habit we’re trying to tackle.

It’s a part of who you are.

Norris shares that before we ever engage in a bad habit, there is a way we think about the tendency that sets us up for failure when it comes to quitting. We tend to see our bad habits as parts of of our identities, and in some cases, we don’t even have the appropriate language to disrupt the belief that this is “just who we are.”

For example, Norris referred specifically to the habit of smoking, pointing out that people who smoke see themselves as a person who smokes. There isn’t actually a positive label for someone who doesn’t, either, we have a smoker and a non-smoker, but our language stops there.

This can mess with our beliefs about our identity, and Norris suggests the first step to fighting back against the idea that a bad habit is part of who we are is creating a label for the type of person you want to be without the habit in your life.

“When people come to me and want to quit smoking … the first thing we have to do is establish their identity as who they would be if they didn’t do this negative habit that they don’t want. The first job I have at my clinical practice is getting them thinking about what they do want. Because when we stay focused on what we don’t want, that’s what we generate.&rdq
uo;

Want to quit smoking? Try “free breather” on for size. Ready to ditch overeating for good? See what happens when you start calling yourself a “healthy eater” instead.

You don’t have the time.

Another challenge when it comes to breaking a bad habit is the amount of time it takes to solidify the change. Even though a commonly held belief is that habit change takes 21 days, that actually isn’t true. Instead, recent research has found that the time it takes to break or make a habit varies greatly from person to person, according to the European Journal of Social Psychology.

I have more energy. I have more stamina. I feel better getting dressed in the morning.

Just how much time does it take? The lucky ones can solidify a habit change in as little as 18 days, but others require as many as 254 days to make a new behavior automatic. When it comes down to it, the proven key to developing a habit is repeating it over and over and over again in response to a specific trigger or cue, according to the study’s authors.

You’re not connecting the dots.

If you’re having trouble ditching a bad habit or getting a new, beneficial one to stick, it might be because of a disconnect in the way you think. Amazingly, our brain has a strange way of thinking about who we are now and who we will be in the future that makes it hard to weigh the consequences of our actions accurately.

In fact, research published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Science revealed that how we think about our future self greatly influences how we behave in the future. The less connected we feel to who will be in the future, or our needs in the future, the more likely we are to make choices that only benefit our present self.

It’s as if we look at a massive doughnut and think to ourselves, “Increased risk of diabetes and heart disease for my future self? Who cares about that schmuck? My present self wants a treat!”

You’re not infinitely powerful.

As much as we’d like to pretend it isn’t true, we’re only human. We don’t have infinite willpower at our disposal, and that makes it hard to make big changes. Our limited power has a bigger effect on our choices than we might think, according to a study by Roy Baumeister in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

We actually run out of willpower easily. So if we make a great decision that requires a lot of strength, the very next good decision is going to be significantly harder to make. This was discovered by tempting participants with the smell of fresh baked cookies.

After smelling the cookies, half of the group was instructed to eat only radishes and the other half was asked to eat only cookies. (This sounds downright cruel, in my opinion!) Both groups were told they were participating in research on taste perception, not willpower.

Breathing, expelling carbon dioxide out of the body, literally, physically deactivates the hypothalamus.

Before participants left for the day, they were asked to refrain from eating chocolates or radishes for 24 hours, when they would report back for the second half on the study.

Upon their return, the participants were required to participate in a problem-solving activity that was actually impossible to solve. Those who had been allowed to eat chocolate were more likely to stick it out, whereas those who had been required to eat radishes wanted to quit early on.

The researchers involved in the study believe that the reason behind these behaviors is a depletion of willpower. Sticking it out is hard, and when you’re presented with decisions that require self-control over and over again, your brain simply gets tired of the doing the “right” or “hard” thing.

How to Trick Your Brain Into Letting Go of Habits

There are a lot of strategies for breaking bad habits (or picking up some new ones), but Norris said there is one that stands out above the rest—mindfulness.

In a clinical setting, clients who are trying to make changes are asked to identify the positive dimensions of the change they want to make and are then instructed to imagine what it will feel like to live life without that habit. They’re asked to spend time imagining who they feel like they will be once they’ve made the change.

“People will say, ‘Oh, I have more energy. I have more stamina. I feel better getting dressed in the morning.’ So we begin to explore mindfully what that feels like and that is a very powerful tool in action.”

The reason this works so well, according to Norris, is really similar to how repeated habits strengthen the parts of the brain they use. Mindfulness has a similar effect. When we use mindfulness to engage new parts of the brain, we strengthen those parts, gradually becoming equipped to let go of the bad habit entirely.

So, how does someone use this approach outside of a clinical setting?

“I suggest that people start with an open mind. They’re not trying to accomplish something, they’re exploring the opportunity. …We encounter our frustration [with the habit] and we allow it to be there.”

Moving forward with an open mind, Norris says the second step is proceeding with curiosity about the physical experience they have with or without the habit. This can be done with a body scan, which is a widely practiced mindfulness exercise that involves practicing self-awareness from head to toe. Those who are just beginning to practice meditation can find a guided body scan meditation on the UCLA Mindfulness Awareness Research Center website.

Finally, use deep breathing as the final element of your new mindfulness practice. This isn’t some woo-woo practice; there are actual physiological benefits in the brain that result from deep breathing.

“It allows the brain to shift more rapidly. So, if we’re trying to let go of old pathways in the brain and build new pathways, that breathing, expelling carbon dioxide out of the body, literally, physically deactivates the hypothalamus, it deactivates the stress response and that allows more rapid transformation,” Norris explains.

When I was a kid, I shared a room with my baby brother and routinely slept through his nighttime crying. In college, I was profiled by the campus newspaper for my impressive napping skills. To say I am a heavy sleeper is a bit of an understatement.

That all went out the window the second I became a mother, though. Even in the post-labor exhaustion of the first night alone in our hospital room, I woke in a panic at the slightest sound from our son’s bassinet. The immediate physical and emotional connection I felt with him flabbergasted me. I’d never experienced anything like it before.
Now I know there’s a reason for my newfound sleeplessness, one that can’t be blamed solely on pesky nighttime feedings.

A recent study by Elseline Hoekzema and colleagues, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, showed that significant, long-lasting changes occur in a woman’s brain during pregnancy.

Baby, you’re always on my mind.

Because the effects of pregnancy on the human brain have not been studied in-depth, Hoekzema set out to discover what actually happens inside a woman’s brain during pregnancy.
According to the study’s abstract, Hoekzema’s research showed “that pregnancy renders substantial changes in brain structure, primarily reductions in gray matter (GM) volume in regions subserving social cognition. …Furthermore, the GM volume changes of pregnancy predicted measures of postpartum maternal attachment, suggestive of an adaptive process serving the transition into motherhood.”

Women experience a significant reduction in gray matter during their teenage years as well, which scientists attribute to a surge in sex hormones during adolescence. According to the study, “In adolescence, these GM reductions are … generally regarded as an essential process of fine-tuning connections into functional networks and is thought to represent a refinement and specialization of brain circuitry, which is critical for healthy cognitive, emotional and social development.”
As a result of the study, scientists concluded that increased hormones during pregnancy cause women to experience a similar reduction in gray matter volume in the association areas of the cerebral cortex, which are responsible for forming social attachments.

Dr. Jaime Knopman, cofounder of Truly, MD and Director of Fertility Preservation at Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine New York, tells HealthyWay, “These changes appear to persist for up to two years post-delivery. Although it is not totally clear why these changes occur, it is thought that these changes help [women] respond to their babies and adapt to motherhood.”
As Knopman notes, these changes can last well into the postpartum period. While Hoekzema only studied postpartum women for two years, the effects of pregnancy on a woman’s brain could actually last much longer. In an animal study, rats experienced permanent changes in the brain long after pregnancy.

Hoekzema’s report also explains that a loss of gray matter does not mean loss of brain function. In fact, the greater the gray matter reduction, the stronger a woman bonded with her baby postpartum. This effect was not observed in new fathers or in either women or men who recently adopted new babies.

Forget something? Blame it on baby brain.

While I was pregnant, I was notoriously forgetful. I’d get to the grocery store and realize I’d left my purse at home. This forgetfulness has only gotten worse since my son was born. Just last week I brewed the morning coffee, only to find hot coffee pooling on the floor and the pot sitting where I’d left it by the sink.

Knopman explains, “While pregnancy has its most visible impact on your belly, it can have a significant impact on all parts of your body—including your brain. Yes, pregnancy brain is not a joke! …Pregnancy is dominated by hormones—estrogen and progesterone levels soar during this period. The surge in these hormones [has] been correlated with the change in structural and organizational changes in the brain.”
Dr. Angela Jones, Astroglide’s resident sexual health advisor, agrees. “I see [pregnancy brain] on a pretty daily basis, expectant moms not being able to remember the questions they were going to ask me at a particular visit: ‘Sorry, it’s pregnancy brain.’ I think it is a great start in recognizing just how dynamic pregnancy is and all of the potential systems that are affected. With all the hormonal fluctuations [and] surges characteristic of pregnancy, it’s nice to have some semblance of an explanation as to what exactly is going on and why we experience ‘pregnancy brain.’”

Knopman continues, “While theoretically a change in gray matter could contribute to the brain fog frequently experienced during and after pregnancy, scientists have long thought that the mental changes experience are due to a rise in hormone (estrogen and progesterone) and their impact on brain neuronal circuits.”
The study didn’t definitively correlate the brain fog pregnant women commonly experience with reduced gray matter in the brain, but it didn’t rule out the possibility that the two are connected, either.
Hoekzema concluded that GM reduction in certain parts of a woman’s brain helps promote bonding between mother and child. Similarly, Knopman says that the brain fog women experience postpartum “is a way to forget all else and focus on your baby—simply stated, an evolutionary response to think about nothing but your newborn.”

Help your evolutionary biology sync with your modern mama life.

If you’re walking around in a bit of a haze during the last trimester, there are a few things you can do to sharpen your memory. During those last weeks of pregnancy, I wanted nothing more than to lie on the couch and eat Dairy Queen Blizzards that my husband dutifully walked down the block to get.
The absolute last thing I wanted to do was walk with him to get my frozen treat. However, a nightly walk could have done more than satisfy my sweet tooth. According to my OB-GYN’s office, exercise can actually help sharpen your memory. Unless you’re Serena Williams, most doctors recommend pregnant women get 30 minutes of light cardio, like walking or swimming, daily.

My doctor also suggested taking naps throughout the day to reduce the amount of brain fog I experienced. Considering I woke up to use the restroom approximately a dozen times a night, coupled with the fact that it is nearly impossible to find a comfortable sleeping position when pregnant, this nap prescription was not hard to follow.
Plus, now that my son is born, naps are a thing of the past. My advice? Nap away, and don’t feel guilty about it!

Can you avoid the baby blues?

Postpartum mood disorders such as depression affect up to 1.3 million women annually. Jones says, “It’s completely normal for any new mom to experience what is called postpartum blues. Postpartum blues is characterized by feeling overwhelmed, anxiety, periods of tearfulness, mood swings, etc. and usually has its onset two to three days post delivery and can last up to two weeks.”

I, for one, experienced the baby blues when we brought my son home from the hospital. Everything, and I do mean everything, made me weepy. Commercials, a certain song on the radio, even an episode of The Golden Girls reduced me to tears. The self-care information I was given at hospital checkout said this is standard for most women as hormone levels fluctuate and their bodies return to “normalcy” following delivery.
However, Jones explains that baby blues that last longer than two weeks aren’t normal.

“Postpartum depression is [often] overlooked and attributed to postpartum blues. The difference is, postpartum blues typically resolves … if more than two weeks have passed and you are still feeling sad, overwhelmed, having difficulty bonding with baby, crying all the time, having difficulty sleeping, not eating, feeling depressed, withdrawn, not enjoying activities that routinely bring you pleasure, feeling inadequate … the list goes on and on, you should see your OB-GYN immediately.”
Hoekzema’s study may be able to predict if a woman is more likely to develop postpartum depression. Researchers’ findings “indicated that the GM volume changes of pregnancy significantly predicted the quality of mother-to-infant attachment and the absence of hostility.”

The study goes on: “To further investigate the possibility of an adaptive restructuring to facilitate aspects of motherhood, we examined the observed brain changes in relation to indices of maternal caregiving. Multivariate regression analyses using the three dimensions of the Maternal Postnatal Attachment Scale demonstrated that the GM volume changes of pregnancy significantly predicted quality of mother-to-infant attachment and the absence of hostility toward her newborn in the postpartum period.
“In addition, a substantial overlap was observed between the GM tissue undergoing volume reductions across pregnancy and the brain areas of strongest neural responsivity to pictures of the women’s babies in a postpartum MRI session. Taken together, our findings provide preliminary support for an adaptive refinement of social brain structures that benefits the transition into motherhood.”

In layman’s terms, the study suggests that women who do not experience significant reduction in gray matter volume experience greater difficulty forming attachments to their babies, which may increase the likelihood that they will experience postpartum mood disorders.
“While this study doesn’t come close to being able to draw definitive conclusions such as if changes noted are lasting, or treatment options for possible links to affected areas of the brain, specifically postpartum depression … I think it is a great start in recognizing just how dynamic pregnancy is,” says Jones.

With just under 4 million babies born each year in the United States, the research Hoekzema and her colleagues are conducting is just the beginning of what scientists and doctors can learn about pregnancy’s effect on a woman’s body, long after labor and delivery.

With October fast approaching, over 50 percent of Americans will see at least one scary movie during the month of ghouls and goblins.
Horror is big business. Last week, Stephen King’s It made box office history with a $117.2 million opening weekend, the largest September debut in history.
In a sense, that wasn’t a surprise. Over the last decade, well-done horror films like The Ring, Paranormal Activity, and The Conjuring have launched successful franchises—often with lackluster sequels—and shows like The Walking Dead and American Horror Story have found broad audiences.

The popularity of the garish and disconcerting leads to an interesting question: Why is horror so popular? Fear is, after all, an unpleasant feeling.
So how do films succeed when they set out to shock and terrify their audiences?

Brain chemistry seems to play a significant role.

As Dr. Margee Kerr of Robert Morris University told The Atlantic, people differ in their chemical responses to scary situations.
“One of the main hormones released during scary and thrilling activities is dopamine, and it turns out some individuals may get more of a kick from this dopamine response than others do,” Kerr says.
Some people don’t get the same kick, so they don’t end up enjoying the fight-or-flight response triggered by a truly horrifying scene. Interestingly, people who enjoy scary movies tend to experience more autonomic arousal (in other words, more of a physical response) than the people who don’t enjoy them.
Psychiatrist Steven Schlozman of Harvard Medical School says that thrill seekers who enjoy scary movies love tapping into their fight-or-flight response. However, they’re also training their brains to recognize patterns and to react to changes in those patterns.

As an example, he conjures the image of a cute puppy; show the picture to a group of people, and they’ll fawn over it. Photoshop a pair of cat’s eyes onto the dog, however, and you’ll elicit a completely different response.
“Now you are messing with pattern recognition,” Schlozman says. “You have two recognizable patterns that don’t belong in the same picture, and that freaks people out.”
In this clip, psychologist Dr. Lynne Kenney discusses the involvement of the autonomic nervous system and explores why you might even writhe or twitch during the scariest scenes:

Thrill seekers enjoy these experiences since they’re able to work through fear and survival patterns in a safe environment while feeling just uneasy enough.
“Each time you verge more toward the uncanny, [those] folks get the feeling in their gut that things aren’t right, and the more fun they have,” Schlozman says.

People may dislike scary movies if they’ve had high-impact experiences with horror.

Kerr says that people need to know that they’re in a safe environment in order to enjoy a good scare.

“I’ve talked to more than a handful of people who will never set foot in a haunted house because they went to a haunt at a young age and were traumatized,” Kerr says. “The chemicals that are released during fight-or-flight can work like glue to build strong memories [called] flashbulb memories of scary experiences, and if you’re too young to know the monsters are fake, it can be quite traumatic and something you’ll never forget, in a bad way.”
There you have it: If you love scary movies, it’s likely due to a combination of brain chemistry and your previous experiences with the genre. You know that you’re safe and you’re ready to challenge your brain with an unexpected set of patterns—while enjoying a nice dopamine rush with every jump and shriek.

If you hate scary movies, however, your brain might put the brakes on that dopamine rush. You might not feel truly safe, particularly if you had a bad experience with a frightening flick in your younger years.
In either case, you’re not alone. Maybe those who opt out of a Halloween horror flick can indulge in a family friendly favorite like It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown or Hocus Pocus instead.

What happens in your head when you turn on your favorite music?
Quite a bit, actually. Scientists are only beginning to discover the various ways that music interacts with—and in some cases, changes—the human brain.

Here are a few of the most interesting findings.

It makes you more susceptible to suggestion.

Ever wonder why every grocery store has quiet, non-offensive music playing in the background?
“When shoppers are exposed to music in a store, sales resistance decreases,” marketing professor James Kellaris told Newsweek. Basically, when you’re thinking about music, you don’t think as hard about whether you really need that value pack of Oreos.

That’s also why stores tend to play the hits.
“If you hear an excerpt of a familiar piece of music, it might cue recall of the entire piece,” Kellaris said. That changes how your mind perceives time, and makes you more willing to spend your time milling about the store.
Incidentally, that’s also part of the reason that hold music is so effective. You’re less likely to hang up the phone if you’re not sure how much time has passed, and music helps create the illusion that you’re not going to be waiting that much longer.

You pay more attention if you’re listening to somewhat predictable music.

Research from Stanford University showed that the parts of the brain involved with making predictions, paying attention, and updating events in the memory were more active when study participants listened to music.

Essentially, music helps our brains organize information. It sharpens our ability to anticipate certain events—the end of a movement of a classical piece, for instance. When we hear music with unexpected elements, the ventral regions of our brain activate, and we note the differences between what we’d expected and what actually occurs.
The Stanford researchers theorize that human brains evolved to use music as a sort of attention-sharpening tool and say the brain may actually use the same mechanism to follow a specific conversation in an otherwise noisy room.

You’re more capable of exercising for long periods of time.

Research shows that music affects the way that our minds respond to fatigue. The mechanism could be quite simple: Music provides a distraction.
“Given that exercise is often tiresome, boring and arduous, anything that relieves those negative feelings would be welcome,” Costas Karageorghis of Brunel University in London told the Scientific American in discussing a 2009 study published in the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology.

The same article suggests that the human brain also has a direct connection between auditory neurons, which allow us to hear sound, and motor neurons, which are responsible for movement. Some research indicates that music can trigger a reflex reaction.
In other words, even when we’re not actively thinking about our music, it could be affecting our physical capabilities. Karageorghis even referred to music as a legal performance-enhancer.

Ambient noise can make people more creative.

A 2012 study found that moderate amounts of ambient noise improve people’s creative ability and performance. Researchers believe that the noise “washes out” distractions, activating abstract cognition.

The study’s authors also noted that high level of noises have the opposite effect, so while you might be slightly more creative if you turn on some quiet ambient tunes, you’re not going to experience the same effect if you’re sitting right next to a jet engine.
We’re clearly in the early stages of understanding music’s impact on the brain. Still, there’s evidence that music has a profound effect on how we think—certainly something to keep in mind during your next Spotify session.

A recent study of more than 46,000 scans concluded that there are “significant gender differences” in the brains of men and women. The authors believe that further examination of the results might help scientists understand and treat psychiatric disorders better in the future.

The researchers used single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT)—a type of imaging that, unlike an x-ray, actually shows blood flow to tissue and different organs—to analyze the brains of participants. Whereas previous studies had noted differences in the brains of men and women, this is the largest-scale study on the topic conducted so far.

The big news from the study was that women had higher brain activity in general. Women’s brains also had more blood flow to the prefrontal cortex, which facilitates focus, impulse control, and decision making.

The results led to spectacular claims from one of the study’s authors.

The lead author of the study, Daniel Amen, MD, claims that because of this increased brain activity, women have greater strengths in many areas. He lists empathy, intuition, collaboration, self-control, and appropriate worry as areas where women’s brains are superior to men’s.

“Females are neurologically well-equipped to lead, manage and help us resolve the major problems of the world,” Amen wrote.

“Men have been in positions of power since the inception of the human race, and while the progress of civilization is impressive, we still face war, strife, power struggles, ill health and more every day.”

Unsurprisingly, Amen’s assertions received serious backlash from those who thought it went too far. One blogger accused Amen of trying to sell books by pandering to women. The same blogger also suggested that SPECT brain scans are unnecessary and expose patients to dangerous gamma rays.

Whether you believe Amen’s conclusions are sound or not, there is solid proof that the brains of men and women have differences.

An analysis of the brains of 5,216 participants from the United Kingdom confirmed that there are noticeable differences in the brains of men and women. For instance, men have a higher total brain volume than women (though to be clear, that doesn’t necessarily equate to higher intelligence).

The study showed that while men had larger brains on average, they also had much more variation in brain size than women. The researchers surmise that this could be due to something they call a “female-protective” mechanism. While the phenomenon is not entirely understood, a women’s two X chromosomes can protect her from certain mutations that men are susceptible to. This leads to less physical variation in females in general, including brain size.

Understanding the differences could help treat mental disorders.

Other differences include that men’s brains had a higher cortical volume on average, while women had thicker cortices. These differences may not mean much to laypeople, but in the right hands, the data could help psychiatrists treat mental disorders, which affect men and women differently and are known to be associated with these brain structures.

For instance, women are almost twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease as men are. “There are enough biological questions pointing to increased risk in women that we need to delve into that and find out why,” says Maria Carrillo, chief science officer of the Alzheimer’s Association. “There is a lot that is not understood and not known. It’s time we did something about it.”

Over time, medical terms often change.
Doctors may want to use more formal language in order to differentiate between diseases, or they may simplify complex terms in order to make talking to patients easier.

For example, you’ve probably never met someone complaining about having “influenza,” but you’ve almost certainly suffered through a flu, which is exactly the same thing.
Here are a few other fascinating examples of how medical terminology changes over time.

1. The Vapors

At the time, it meant a variety of illnesses and nervous conditions, most commonly experienced by women during the Victorian era.
Now, we call it depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, panic attacks, and various other mental-health terms.

The name “the vapors” likely came from the belief that depression came from the uterus, stomach, or spleen. As English physician Henry Stubbe wrote in his “discourse concerning chocolata” in 1662, by eating chocolate, a female patient “feels the Hypochondriacal vapours…to be instantly allayed.”
Translation, please? According to Stubbe, chocolate alleviates some symptoms of irritability, anxiety, and depression.

William Safire, writing for The New York Times, also notes that Victorian women would sometimes fake a case of the vapors in order to escape from unpleasant company.

2. Mortification

At the time, it meant the death of body tissue.
Now, we call it gangrene. Typically, it affects the extremities, so mortification—a word that essentially means death—was fairly accurate in describing the appearance of gangrene.

Eventually, however, the meaning of “mortification” changed. These days, it refers to extreme embarrassment, which is quite different.
Obviously cases of necrotic tissue needed a new name.

3. Dropsy

At the time, it meant severe swelling.
Now, we call it edema. Often painful, edema can occur in virtually any part of the body for a variety of reasons. If you’ve ever woken up with swelling around your eyes, you’ve experienced a mild form of edema.

Dropsy was a very general term, sometimes applied to cancerous tumors, hydrocephalus, and symptoms of heart disease. Basically, if something was bigger than it was supposed to be, old-time doctors labeled it “dropsy” and moved on to their other ailing patients.
As is often the case with older medical terms, the word dropsy can be traced back to Ancient Greece.

It comes from the Greek word for water, “hudrops,” which eventually turned into “hydropsy,” then simply “dropsy.”

4. Winter Fever

At the time, it meant a serious illness with potentially life-threatening respiratory symptoms, typically occurring after influenza (aka the flu).
Now, we call it pneumonia. For centuries, physicians believed that pneumonia was a set of symptoms indicative of another sickness. Modern physicians recognize it as its own distinct infection.

Thankfully, pneumonia mortality rates have dropped dramatically due to the widespread availability of antibiotics.
So, why the name “winter fever”? Simple: The symptoms occur most frequently in the winter.

Scientists still aren’t completely sure why we’re more likely to contract diseases in cold weather, but the prevailing idea is that our immune systems react less quickly at low body temperatures.

5. Apoplexy

At the time, it meant a potentially fatal condition that occurs when a person is overwhelmed with anger.
Now, we call it a stroke.

Apoplexy actually comes from the Greek word for “to strike.” Eventually, modern medical professionals switched the name away from this archaic term to make American patients treat the condition more seriously.
Back in the day, you’d describe someone as “apoplectic” if they were extraordinarily angry. An “apoplectic fit” could mean either a temper tantrum or an honest-to-goodness, life-threatening stroke.

Once again, William Safire of The New York Times comes through with a great anecdote. Legendary actor Ethel Merman played Annie Oakley in Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun, and in one scene, she was meant to show off her incredible marksmanship by shooting at a duck. Unfortunately for Merman, her stage gun didn’t fire, but the prop duck fell over anyway.
Merman walked over to the duck, held it up, and ad-libbed, “What do you know—apoplexy!”

6. Bone Shave

At the time, it meant severe pain running down the lower back and into one or both legs.
Now, we call it sciatica. The new name is more medically descriptive, as sciatica occurs due to pressure on the sciatic nerve. It’s difficult to treat, but if caught early, patients can address their symptoms with physical therapy.

So, why “bone shave”? As anyone who’s dealt with sciatica knows, it’s an extraordinarily painful condition. It feels a bit like your bones are, well, being shaved.
That’s just another reason to make sure you’ve got proper posture.

7. Ecstasy

At the time, it meant a nervous condition in which a person had rigid muscles, fixed posture, decreased sensitivity to pain, and the “loss of reason.”

Now, we call it catalepsy, although that’s just the name for the symptom. The illness itself may have been something as serious as Parkinson’s disease or epilepsy, although the aforementioned “loss of reason” may indicate that some ecstasy patients had schizophrenia or severe depression.

8. Manic Depression

At the time, it meant clinically significant mood swings, often moving from extreme highs (manic states) to extreme lows (depressive states).
Now, we call it bipolar disorder.
This change is pretty recent. Until about 1980, “manic depressive” was the more common term, but research began to reveal something important: Most patients don’t have actual manic episodes. About 80 percent of patients with bipolar disorder only ever display episodes of depression.

As such, scientists chose the more descriptive term “bipolar disorder” to show that patients move between two states—or poles. Today, “manic depressive” is only used to describe an individual who has actual manic episodes.
Of course this nomenclature, too, could change over time.

9. Dry Bellyache

At the time, it meant a mysterious irritation of the bowels, commonly associated with painting. That led to its alternate name, “painter’s colic.”
Now, we call it lead poisoning.
As William Henry Smith wrote in the 1873 Smith’s Family Physician:
“Dry Belly-ache is generally attended with some degree of danger, which is always in proportion to the violence of the symptoms, and the duration of the disease. Even when it does not prove fatal, it is too apt to terminate in palsy, and to leave behind it, contractions of the hands and feet.”

Smith was attentive enough to attribute the disease to “the inhalation of vapours arising from incited lead,” although he also attributed it to “acrid food.” We now know that dry bellyache is one of the first symptoms of severe lead poisoning, which frequently occurred when lead-based paints were commonplace.

10. Fainting Fits

At the time, it meant, well, fainting fits, often accompanied by seizures.
Now, we call it epilepsy.
In ancient times, epilepsy was often considered a spiritual affliction, caused by wayward ghosts or demons who refused to give their victims peace. Through the 17th century, in fact, many educated people still considered epileptic fits to be a sign of possession. Early treatments included skull trepanation (drilling a hole in the skull) and bloodletting.
That changed in the mid-1800s when doctors began successfully treating epilepsy with bromide. Today, people with epilepsy can often minimize seizures with medication and lifestyle changes.

In each of these cases, the diseases themselves have (mostly) remained the same. The name is the only thing that changed, but a new name can be powerful.
Scientists might be more willing to spend time investigating “epilepsy,” as opposed to “fainting fits,” and a person with “winter fever” might think to seek treatment in the summer if they realize they have symptoms of “pneumonia” instead.

In another hundred years, we’ll likely have a completely new set of words in our medical lexicon—and that’s certainly fine by us. Change is, after all, a sign of progress.

Ever just draw a blank when you’re trying to remember something?

It’s a common problem, but… Wait, what were we talking about?

Chances are you’ve done it more times than you’d care to admit. What exactly is happening when you can’t remember a simple piece of information you know you should know?

“On a daily basis, we so much spend a lot of time functioning on auto-pilot, carrying out routine activities without much conscious effort or awareness,” clinical psychologist Jodi J. De Luca, PhD told Reader’s Digest. “It’s amazing we’re able to remember anything at all.

There are two primary cognitive factors that tend to bring about this “mental-block” phenomenon.

The first is known as “blocking.” Basically, when you’re trying to call up a stored memory, similar or associated memories can come to the surface instead.

One or more of the associated memories can “block” the memory that you’re actually trying to retrieve. For instance, you might try to remember a certain song from a movie you’ve seen, but only be able to come up with a different song from the same movie.

The other factor is known as “interference.” Initially proposed  by German psychologist John Bergstrom in 1892, the theory of interference posits that newly acquired information can disrupt or interfere with your brain’s ability to retrieve old information. One example of this phenomenon is the embarrassing (but common) gaff of calling a romantic partner by an ex’s name.

Sometimes, though, forgetfulness is more than a simple mental misfire.

According to Courtney Rodriguez, LMHC, NCC, “When we are under any kind of stress, whether physical, psychological, or emotional, the parts of the brain that are important to survival are heightened, while those less critical to survival are overpowered.”

Of course, most of the time the actual stressors aren’t a matter of life or death, but because of the way our brains have evolved, we respond to them as such. While some of these stressors can be momentary and dependent on your immediate situation, others can be recurring or chronic—for instance, not getting enough sleep or certain vitamin deficiencies.

So how can you prevent (or at least reduce the occurrence of) the occasional memory lapse?

According to scientists, there are a few surprisingly straightforward ways to improve your memory and information retention, although they’re easier said than done.

According to a study conducted by the University of Texas at Dallas Center for BrainHealth, regular aerobic exercise is not only good for your physical fitness, but it can improve your memory and overall brain function.

New York Neurology & Sleep Medicine medical director Allen Towfigh, MD, also told Health that getting a healthy amount of sleep (seven to nine hours for most adults) can go a long way toward ensuring your memory retention and that you recall work as well as you should.

Finally, the American Academy of Neurology has found that having a moderately challenging job or hobby can do wonders for your memory. If the job is too stressful, though, it can actually have the opposite effect.

In any case, don’t worry; occasional lapses in memory are completely normal. Just be sure to get plenty of sleep, and…wait, we had a great conclusion for this.

It’ll probably come to us—maybe after a quick nap or a jog around the block.