You Are What You Eat

My latest Science of Willpower column is up on Psychology Today:

"My apologies to any PhD students reading this blog. I recently stumbled upon two studies that suggest you can get college students to abandon an unhealthy behavior if you can convince them it's what graduate students do. Apparently grad students are so uncool, college students do not want to be identified with their habits. Even when those habits include junk food and binge drinking, two mainstays of undergraduate life for many.

The studies, published in the Journal of Consumer Research, provide insight into potential strategies for public health. They also reveal how our desire to shape our self-image, and how others perceive us, lead us to make healthy or unhealthy choices."

Read the full Psychology Today post here.

On a side note, one of the studies was conducted at Stanford University, using dorm flyers warning undergrads they might be mistaken for a "sketchy grad student" if they drank too much. Having been a grad student at Stanford back in the day, I found this enormously funny. As much as the pressures to finish your dissertation might drive you to drink, I personally never met a sketchy grad student who crashed the undergrad parties. But whatever it takes to keep those undergraduates sober (enough)!

The Problem with Dieting

Latest Science of Willpower column up on Psychology Today!

"Bad news for yo-yo dieters this week: according to a recent study, cycles of feast and famine can create fast-food junkies–at least in rodents. The researchers put rats on a cyclic diet of 5 days of standard rat chow, followed by 2 days of the equivalent of rat fast food (high fat, high sugar, highly delicious). In other words, a compressed version of most dieters' swings between self-control and indulgence....

....Another study offers hope for ending the cycle. Researchers at Laval University in Québec, Canada have been following the benefits of a unique weight control intervention for over a year. This intervention, called 'What about losing weight?' emphasized the possibility of being healthy at every size."

Read the whole thing here.

Change Your Posture, Change Your Mind and Mood

Check out my latest column on Psychology Today-- Change Your Posture, Change Your Mind and Mood.

"Quick, notice your posture as you read this. Are you slumped at your desk, shoulders curved forward, spine rounded? Or sitting up straight, with a tall spine but relaxed shoulders?

How you're sitting may be influencing how you're feeling - not just in this moment, but throughout the day. A recent study in the European Journal of Social Psychology (Brion, Petty, & Wagner 2009) looked at how posture influences self-confidence....."

Mindfulness Reduces Medical Burnout

A new study from the University of Rochester Medical Center reports that mindfulness meditation can reduce burnout in physicians. And we know they need it, thanks to another recent report in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that physician distress and fatigue significantly increase the risk of medical errors.

An important part of the mindfulness training was mindful communication. These communication skills led to an increased sense of support and connection with colleagues, as well as increased empathy for patients.

Coincidentally, my introduction to the now-ubiquitous Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction program developed by Jon Kabat Zinn was in an elective class for medical students at Stanford. Community members were also in the class -- people who had been recommended to take the class because of illness or pain -- which made the experience even more eye-opening and educational.

Physicians and physicians-in-training, heal thyself first! Get thee to a mindfulness meditation class.

The Diabolic Secret Powers of Junk Food

My latest column on Psychology Today features a new study that will make you question the loyalty of your favorite comfort food:

"It seems too clever, too diabolic to be true. A recent study shows that foods high in saturated fat -- ice cream, cheese, red meat -- cause your brain to secrete chemicals that tell the body to ignore biological signals of fullness (like leptin and insulin). The result: you don't "feel" full, and you keep eating. It's as if junk food had been shaped by the forces of evolution, learning to fool humans into ever-increasing consumption. And it explains why we seem to have an endless appetite for some foods, like pizza and a pint of Ben and Jerry's."


Read more here....Enjoy!

New study: depression increases risk of dying in cancer patients

A new report in the November 15 issue of Cancer analyzed 26 studies that looked at how depression influences cancer progression and survival rates.

Cancer patients who experienced depression were at higher risk for dying. The increased risk was as high as 25% for mild symptoms and 39% for those diagnosed with clinical depression.

This study points to the importance of social support and complementary care, whether psychological, spiritual/religious, or mind-body interventions like yoga, meditation, and exercise. All of these have been shown to improve a sense of control, hope, or meaning during an experience that can feel dehumanizing, uncontrollable, and frightening.

The authors of the report are quick to point out that cancer patients should not be pressured into some forced kind of "positive thinking" or discouraged from feeling and expressing negative emotions.


Study citation: Jillian R. Satin, Wolfgang Linden, and Melanie J. Phillips. Depression as a predictor of disease progression and mortality in cancer patients: a meta-analysis. Cancer, 2009; DOI: 10.1002/cncr.24561

STUDY: In Defense of Laziness

Great article on the New York Times about a study from Stanford showing that sleeping 10 hours a night improved the performance of athletes.

It's not just athletic performance that sleep improves--it's well-documented that sleep deprivation hurts work performance, emotional self-control, and even willpower.

The interesting thing about this study was how great everyone felt sleeping 10 hours a day. If you feel like you're not on top of your game, either at work, in relationships, or taking conscious control of your actions, consider resting rather than ramping up and working harder. A little laziness may refuel you!