Breakthrough in delivering drugs to the brain
By James Gallagher
Health reporter, BBC News
A new way of delivering drugs to the brain has been developed by scientists at the University of Oxford.
They used the body’s own transporters – exosomes – to deliver drugs in an experiment on mice.
The authors say the study, in Nature Biotechnology, could be vital for treating diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Muscular Dystrophy.
The Alzheimer’s Society said the study was “exciting” and could lead to more effective treatments.
Research barrier
One of the medical challenges with diseases of the brain is getting any treatment to cross the blood-brain barrier.
The barrier exists to protect the brain, preventing bacteria from crossing over from the blood, while letting oxygen through.
However, this has also produced problems for medicine, as drugs can also be blocked.
In this study the researchers used exosomes to cross that barrier.
Exosomes are like the body’s own fleet of incredibly small vans, transporting materials between cells.
They then fused the exosomes with targeting proteins from the rabies virus, which binds to acetylcholine receptors in brain cells, so the exosome would target the brain.
They filled the exosomes with a piece of genetic code, siRNA, and injected them back into the mice.
The siRNA was delivered to the brain cells and turned off a gene, BACE1, which is involved in Alzheimer’s disease.
The authors reported a 60% reduction in the gene’s activity.
“These are dramatic and exciting results” said the lead researcher Dr Matthew Wood.
“This is the first time this natural system has been exploited for drug delivery.”
Customised
The research group believes that the method could modified to treat other conditions and other parts of the body.
Dr Wood said: “We are working on sending exosomes to muscle, but you can envisage targeting any tissue.
“It can also be made specific by changing the drug used.”
The researchers are now going to test the treatment on mice with Alzheimer’s disease to see if their condition changes.
The team expect to begin trials in human patients within five years.
Dr Susanne Sorensen, head of research at the Alzheimer’s Society, said: “In this exciting study, researchers may have overcome a major barrier to the delivery of potential new drugs for many neurological diseases including Alzheimer’s.
She said the blood-brain barrier had been an “enormous issue as many potential drugs have not been properly tested because you couldn’t get enough of them into the brain.”
She added: “If this delivery method proves safe in humans, then we may see more effective drugs being made available for people with Alzheimer’s in the future.”
Dr Simon Ridley, head of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: “This is innovative research, but at such an early stage it’s still a long way from becoming a treatment for patients.
“Designing drugs that cross the blood brain barrier is a key goal of research that holds the promise of improving the effectiveness of Alzheimer’s treatments in the future.”
Exosomes may have other medical applications.
Alexander Seifalian, a professor of nanotechnology and regenerative medicine at University College London, told the BBC: “Experimental evidence indicates that exosomes can prime the immune system to recognize and destroy cancer cells, making them a potential tool as cancer vaccines.”
He also said exosomes “could well form the cornerstone of nanoscale drug delivery systems of the future.”
He added: “The apparent versatility and established biosafety of exosomes underscores the potential of these biological membrane vesicles to be of tremendous potential in the realm of nanotechnology and regenerative medicine.”
Reference Link : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12776222
Courtesy : BBC News
Quantum computing device hints at powerful future
By Jason Palmer
Science and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas
One of the most complex efforts toward a quantum computer has been shown off at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas in the US.
It uses the strange “quantum states” of matter to perform calculations in a way that, if scaled up, could vastly outperform conventional computers.
The 6cm-by-6cm chip holds nine quantum devices, among them four “quantum bits” that do the calculations.
The team said further scaling up to 10 qubits should be possible this year.
Rather than the ones and zeroes of digital computing, quantum computers deal in what are known as superpositions – states of matter that can be thought of as both one and zero at once.
In a sense, quantum computing’s one trick is to perform calculations on all superposition states at once. With one quantum bit, or qubit, the difference is not great, but the effect scales rapidly as the number of qubits rises.
The figure often touted as the number of qubits that would bring quantum computing into a competitive regime is about 100, so each jump in the race is a significant one.
The team’s key innovation was to find a way to completely disconnect – or “decouple” – interactions between the elements of their quantum circuit.
The delicate quantum states that they create must be manipulated, moved, and stored without destroying them.
“It’s a problem I’ve been thinking about for three or four years now, how to turn off the interactions,” UCSB’s John Martinis, who led the research,” told BBC News.
“Now we’ve solved it, and that’s great – but there’s many other things we have to do.”
Qubits and pieces
The solution came in the form of what the team has termed the RezQu architecture. It is basically a blueprint for a quantum computer, and several presentations at the conference focused on how to make use of it.
“For me this is kind of nice, I know how I’m going to put them together,” said Professor Martinis.
“I now know how to design it globally and I can go back and try to optimise all the parts.”
RezQu seems to have an edge in one crucial arena – scalability – that makes it a good candidate for the far more complex circuits that would constitute a quantum computer proper.
“There are competing architectures, like ion traps – trapping ions with lasers, but the complexity there is that you have to have a huge room full of PhDs just to run your lasers,” Mr Lucero told BBC News.
“There’s already promise to show how this architecture could scale, and we’ve created custom electronics based on cellphone technology which has driven the cost down a lot.
“We’re right at the bleeding edge of actually having a quantum processor,” he said. “It’s been years that a whole community has blossomed just looking at the idea of, once we have a quantum computer, what are we going to do with it?”
Britton Plourde, a quantum computing researcher from the University of Syracuse, said that the field has progressed markedly in recent years.
The metric of interest to quantum computing is how long the delicate quantum states can be preserved, and Dr Plourde noted that time had increased a thousand fold since the field’s inception.
“The world of superconducting quantum bits didn’t even exist 10 years ago, and now they can control [these states] to almost arbitrary precision,” he told BBC News.
“We’re still a long way from a large-scale quantum computer but it’s really in my eyes rapid progress.”
Reference Link : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811199
Courtesy : BBC News
Crowd-sourcing aids Japan crisis
People living close to the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan are collaborating to plot local radiation levels.
The RDTN.org website allows people to submit their own radiation readings and maps them alongside official data.
Users wishing to contribute to the site will need to buy radiation detection equipment
It is one of several so-called crowd-sourcing initiatives set up in the wake of the devastating earthquake and tsunami.
Another website, JapanStatus.org, also offers similar information.
To contribute to the RDTN site people will have to purchase a radiation detection device and the site directs people to four sources of such equipment.
Readings submitted to the site suggest that radiation levels of between 0.178 – 0.678 microsieverts per hour can be detected in and around Onuma Hitachi City that lies south of Fukushima.
Progress appears to be being made to restore power to the Fukushima Daiichi plant although, according to official sources, the situation remains very serious.
Villagers living nearby have been told not to drink tap water due to higher levels of radioactive iodine.
Other efforts to pool advice on how to cope with the disaster include new pages on The Global Innovations Commons, a site which compiles out-of-date patents.
It includes dozens of patents related to cooling down reactors from companies such as Hitachi and Siemens.
There is also information which could help with the rebuilding efforts, including water filtration technologies, shelter and building techniques and tsunami warning systems.
Reference Link : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12803643
Courtesy : BBC News
India’s Saina Nehwal wins Swiss Open title
Indian badminton player Saina Nehwal has won the Swiss Open Grand Prix Gold title with a victory over the Korean player Ji Hyun Sung in Switzerland.
Nehwal, who was ranked second in the tournament, won 21-13, 21-14 in 43 minutes in the women’s singles final.
Saina Nehwal is ranked fourth in the world
The world number 4 player defeated Ji Hyun, ranked number 19.
Nehwal, the first Indian to win a Super series tournament, won a gold at the Commonwealth Games and the India Grand Prix gold last month.
Last year Nehwal also won three Super Series titles – Singapore, Indonesia and Hong Kong Open.
The 21-year-old shuttler, from the northern state of Haryana, was the first Indian woman to reach the singles quarter-finals at the Olympics.
Nehwal is also the first Indian to win the World Junior Badminton Championships.
Last year she was awarded the country’s highest sporting honour, the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award.
Reference Link : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12802326
Courtesy : BBC News
Brotherly Bond
19 March 2011 Last updated at 01:20 GMT
// Teenage carer bullied over having ‘small’ family
Fourteen-year-old Ethan has a tough time helping care for his younger brother and his mother who have a form of dwarfism called skeletal dysplasia.
“The best thing about being smaller than everyone else is that you can fit down the back of the sofa, and it’s handy for when you’re playing hide and seek and things, because you can hide where everyone else can’t,” said 10-year-old Aidan.
Ethan’s little brother Aidan has a genetic condition which means his bones did not develop properly, affecting his height and movement. He inherited it from his mother, Michelle, and it means Aidan often has to use a wheelchair.
Michelle said: “It affects all our joints and it’s a curvature of the spine, which Aidan has had corrected, and also all the long bones are curved as well.”
Aidan and Ethan, who are from Cambridge, have a unique relationship.
While their father Lee, who is a support worker for adults with disabilities, is at work, Ethan helps get Aidan dressed and takes him to school, as well as help his mother cook dinner and with housework.
Ethan said: “Sometimes I get annoyed, but that’s life and you just have to get on with it.”
But sometimes helping his brother can cause friction between the pair.
Aidan said: “It can be a bit frustrating when I want to do something myself and Ethan comes in and helps.
“(But) Sometimes it can be good because you don’t have to do everything when you can’t sort of do it yourself.”
Ethan has found that the toughest thing to cope with was bullying, which has been so bad he has been forced to move schools.
“People at my old school used to take the Mick – like calling my mum a midget and oompa loompa,” he said.
“I’ve found not to tell anyone at school. Over the years I’ve had quite a bit of bullying.
“In my old school, how it started was they’d ask why my mum was small and I’d tell them that she was born with a bone condition and they just thought it was funny.”
At the height of the bullying, Ethan was walking home from a party with his mother when he was attacked in the street by a stranger.
“A boy just walked up to us and started shouting he then pushed me off my bike, and I hurt my knee and my hand, and he started hitting me and kicking me, asking me who I was.
“I didn’t reply and he retaliated more. I managed to get away on my bike and he threw a glass bottle at me and it hit me in the back.”
He reported the assault to the police, and his attacker was sentenced to 80 hours of community service.
He said: “The advice I’d give someone who’s getting bullied is to tell someone and not suffer in silence.”
Living with limited movement also means Aidan has to face daily challenges.
He was desperate to regain his independence and walk up stairs by himself, and after an operation to straighten his legs, he underwent intensive therapy to build up his strength.
The 10-year-old needed hydrotherapy treatment, but feared water, as earlier in life he had had a breathing tube.
But after some initial fears, he embraced the pool.
“When I got in the pool for the first time, I was very wobbly. But then afterwards I didn’t want to get out again,” Aidan said.
But he already has set himself a new challenge: “I’d like to play football next.”
Ethan has also set himself a challenge, to become a DJ. After studying the craft in music lessons with his friends, he played in front of his school friends at a school disco for the first time.
He wanted Aidan to share the experience, and got him on stage with him. And that brotherly support meant he had the confidence to perform.
“It’s quite scary but once Aidan came on I really enjoyed it. It really helped when I was helping him.”
Reference Link : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12758501
Courtesy : BBC News
A Success Story : ABBAS JUMANNE Family
The Mandarin may be small but it is having a big impact on Tanzanian families. Yesterday I received this report from our friends at Floresta regarding a family who have had one of our lights for a year.
Introduction
Abbas Jumanne Abbas family joined Floresta VICOBA group since 2007 at Matala, Matala is a village in Kilimanjaro region, Moshi rural district and the family has 8 members. Four (4) kids are studying in Primary schools and one (1) kid is in secondary school. Before the introduction of solar lights in March 2010, we were using a lamp that uses kerosene and lanterns for lighting during studying during the evening or at night and cooking time. Our main activities are crops production and livestock rearing in small scale production.
The distribution of solar lights by Floresta Tanzania has changed our lives since March 2010 as described in several aspects below;
Education
Solar lights brought studying harmony to kids in accomplishing their home works as observed after introduction of this simple light, It is simple in handling and no harmful effect like injury, When kids woke up during the night, they simply switch on solar light as compared to kerosene lamps of which most of them fail to light it and ask their parents to help them which seems like a disturbance to them, Kids tend to study at night two days in a week due to unavailability of kerosene and the problem has been solved by Floresta and they are now studying everyday to accomplish their home work. Kids have raised their capacity by studying effectively during the evening and night. Example my child who is studying secondary has raised from top 20 up to the position of top 10 students in the class, this is due to the use of solar light that has little disturbances.
Health
By observation our children had a problem of eyes irritation when using kerosene lamps and lanterns for studying, probably this contributed to lower their capacity in studying, and also Kerosene lamp has a problem of producing pop sound/bursting which is danger to kids. Hence solar lights (Illumination) seem to be more effective in this manner for health of our families and no disturbances.
Economically
Kerosene is very expensive and its cost per liter tends to shoot from time to time. We have many things to accomplish with the available money rather than using in kerosene whereby in my family we were using 5 liter per month.
We are staying far from town and it involves costs for travelling while looking for kerosene but with the use of solar lights there is no costs associated, just the initial cost of buying it. The amount served from not purchasing kerosene help us in bus fare for our child who is studying in secondary at Himo which is a day school.
The use of solar lights serves time for other activities rather than looking for kerosene from a distance.
Kerosene lamps involve other costs of buying lamp glass as it is fragile of which approximately four to five times per year it may break and hence need replacement while in solar lights there is no such costs, no maintenance has been required so far (we have had the light for one year) unlike other products which were brought in the village which have had problems.
Reference Link
http://illuminationhq.com/blog/a-success-story-abbas-jumanne-family/
Courtesy
ILLUMI Nation HQ
ILLUMI Nation : illuminating nations one at a time with LED lamps: Tanzania
ILLUMi nation has a single goal: the elimination of kerosene as a domestic fuel source in the developing world.
About
Illumination has a single goal:
the elimination of kerosene as a domestic fuel source in the developing world.
Currently there are over 2 billion people throughout the world who do not have access to grid-connected electricity. For most of these people, kerosene is their principal fuel source for light.
Illumination aims to replace kerosene lamps with purpose designed solar LED lamps. Replacing kerosene based lighting with solar LED lighting provides very significant health and economic benefits to those in developing countries. Furthermore it substantially reduces the amount of Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG) emitted into the Earth’s atmosphere, thus also benefitting the more affluent members of the global community.
The illumination HQ Team
Here at Illumination HQ we have gathered a team of very professional people from a wide variety of backgrounds who all share a committment to improving the lives of those in developing countries. We also believe that we have to enjoy what we are doing to really be successful, therefore we are not adverse to having a bit of fun along the way. The Illumination HQ team is:
- Shane Thatcher – Plenty Steward
- Jim Fraser – Mandatory Old Man
- Liz Aitken – Numbers Wizard
- Eli Mtango – Government Relations
- Edith Banzai – Distribution
- Sebastian Foot – Rainmaker
- Alex Lauber – Gentleman of the Robe
- Nick Barr – Threat Detector
- Kevin Lok – Carbon Ninja
- Harry Kikstra – Life Improver
Explicitly the benefits of the program in Tanzania
- A reduction in global carbon emissions of around 700,000 tonnes.
- Each light will save a family USD 100 annually from a mean monthly income of between USD 150 and USD 300 ($1800-3600 annually).
- Save Tanzanian families over $200 million per year in households costs
- Every light distributed will contribute to local charities, facilitating the advancement of other community based projects.
- Local staff will be employed for the project keeping cash benefits local.
- 25% of house fires in Tanzania are caused by kerosene lamps, this danger is eliminated through the use of solar lights.
- Health problems associated in breathing kerosene fumes in closed areas will be eliminated.
- Lights are priced so that after 2 weeks each family will be cash positive resulting from the elimination of kerosene costs.
Reference Link
http://illuminationhq.com/
Courtesy
ILLUMI Nation HQ
Saving Lives From Anal Cancer
Paulette Crowther, second from left and wearing a wig because of her chemotherapy, with her children, (from left) Camille, Tristan and Justine Almada, on New Year’s Eve 2009.Paulette Crowther’s three children were grown and she was plotting a midlife career change when a routine colonoscopy picked up cancer, but not of the colon — of the anus.
The diagnosis was a shock. Ms. Crowther, a 51-year-old mother of three from New York City, had had no symptoms and was feeling just fine. It felt like a bolt from the blue. The cancer had already spread.
But as Ms. Crowther and her children scoured the Internet for information, they couldn’t help but wonder whether the cancer could have been prevented, or caught earlier at least.
Some 80 to 90 percent of anal cancers are caused by the human papillomavirus, or HPV, the same kind of virus that causes cervical cancer. And decades earlier, when Ms. Crowther was in her 20s, she had been treated for cervical dysplasia, a condition that often precedes cervical cancer – and is also caused by an HPV infection.
If only she had known.
“We think Mom could have been saved if she’d been monitored and screened more often,” said Ms. Crowther’s oldest child, Justine Almada, 27. “Studies show that if you have cervical dysplasia, you’re at higher risk. At the very least, she should have been made aware of that.”
She added, “Anal cancer is quite treatable if it’s found early.”
The same types of human papillomavirus implicated in cervical cancer, HPV 16 and 18, are also linked to anal cancer. And in December, the Food and Drug Administration expanded the approved uses of the HPV vaccine Gardasil to include prevention of anal cancer and precancerous lesions.
Ms. Crowther — who was fiercely devoted to the brood she raised in Lower Manhattan, largely on her own after a divorce, and whom the children call their “best friend” — died last April. Within three months, Justine and her siblings, Tristan and Camille Almada, ages 25 and 23, had established the HPV and Anal Cancer Foundation.
The foundation’s aim is to raise awareness about the link between the human papillomavirus, an incredibly common sexually transmitted infection, and a whole list of cancers, each of which affects a relatively small number of people but which, taken together, affect tens of thousands. Besides anal cancer, HPV infections are linked to some gynecological cancers, like vulvar and vaginal cancers, certain penile cancers in men and certain head and neck cancers.
With a robust Web site — analcancerfoundation.org — and an expert scientific advisory board, the organization also aims to increase awareness about preventive screening, provide support to family members and caregivers and raise money for research on treatment, which remains limited for metastatic disease.
“What keeps us going is the thought that if someone had done this already, it could have prevented what happened to Mom,” said Camille, who recently stepped in to run the tax-exempt foundation.
The irony is that while Ms. Crowther was still alive, she never told anyone what kind of cancer she had. Experts say that’s not unusual for people with anal cancer, who often are ashamed of their disease. “The assumption most people make is that if you have anal cancer, you had anal sex,” Camille said. “That’s not true. Heterosexual men also have HPV in their anus, because HPV is so prevalent. But also: who cares if you had anal sex?”
Dr. Cathy Eng, an associate professor in gastrointestinal medical oncology at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, said: “It’s really important to emphasize that the average person is in fact a female in her late 50s, early 60s — that’s the average patient.” The actress Farrah Fawcett, of “Charlie’s Angels” fame, who documented her battle with anal cancer on film, was fairly typical; she was 62 when she died of the disease in 2009. Dr. Eng added, “People associate anal cancer in general with men who have sex with men who are H.I.V.-positive; that’s not the case.”
While men who have sex with men are at elevated risk for developing anal cancer, the disease strikes more women than men: cases are diagnosed in some 2,000 men and 3,260 women each year in the United States. The disease is on the rise, with new diagnoses increasing by 2 percent a year in both men and women, according to national cancer statistics. Each year, 720 people die of anal cancer.
Other risk factors include having a history of cervical cancer or other gynecological malignancies, having a suppressed immune system, an atypical Pap smear and testing positive for HPV 16 or 18. Having had multiple sex partners, having a history of sexually transmitted disease and having had receptive anal intercourse, even without full penetration, likewise increase risk.
Early symptoms like blood in the stool or a feeling of pressure can easily be mistaken for hemorrhoids. “An important message is: if your hemorrhoids don’t get better, you need to talk to your doctor,” Dr. Eng said.
There is no clear medical consensus on screening for anal cancer. Choices include a digital rectal exam or digital anal exam, done as part of a physical or gynecological checkup, or an anal Pap smear. Dr. Joel Palefsky, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, offers a screening procedure called high-resolution anoscopy, which may be an especially sensitive screening technique. But it is not widely available.
“If a woman has had cervical cancer, she is clearly at increased risk for anal cancer,” Dr. Palefsky said. “We’ve known about the connection for a while. People didn’t pay a lot of attention until recently.”
Another of the foundation’s goals is to destigmatize the disease and end the isolation many patients feel. “When you have cancer, you shouldn’t be ashamed of it; it’s terrible enough to have cancer,” Camille said
Reference Link
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/saving-lives-from-anal-cancer/
Courtesy
The New York Times Company
Go Easy on Yourself, a New Wave of Research Urges
Do you treat yourself as well as you treat your friends and family?
That simple question is the basis for a burgeoning new area of psychological research called self-compassion — how kindly people view themselves. People who find it easy to be supportive and understanding to others, it turns out, often score surprisingly low on self-compassion tests, berating themselves for perceived failures like being overweight or not exercising.
The research suggests that giving ourselves a break and accepting our imperfections may be the first step toward better health. People who score high on tests of self-compassion have less depression and anxiety, and tend to be happier and more optimistic. Preliminary data suggest that self-compassion can even influence how much we eat and may help some people lose weight.
This idea does seem at odds with the advice dispensed by many doctors and self-help books, which suggest that willpower and self-discipline are the keys to better health. But Kristin Neff, a pioneer in the field, says self-compassion is not to be confused with self-indulgence or lower standards.
“I found in my research that the biggest reason people aren’t more self-compassionate is that they are afraid they’ll become self-indulgent,” said Dr. Neff, an associate professor of human development at the University of Texas at Austin. “They believe self-criticism is what keeps them in line. Most people have gotten it wrong because our culture says being hard on yourself is the way to be.”
Imagine your reaction to a child struggling in school or eating too much junk food. Many parents would offer support, like tutoring or making an effort to find healthful foods the child will enjoy. But when adults find themselves in a similar situation — struggling at work, or overeating and gaining weight — many fall into a cycle of self-criticism and negativity. That leaves them feeling even less motivated to change.
“Self-compassion is really conducive to motivation,” Dr. Neff said. “The reason you don’t let your children eat five big tubs of ice cream is because you care about them. With self-compassion, if you care about yourself, you do what’s healthy for you rather than what’s harmful to you.”
Dr. Neff, whose book, “Self-Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind,” is being published next month by William Morrow, has developed a self-compassion scale: 26 statements meant to determine how often people are kind to themselves, and whether they recognize that ups and downs are simply part of life.
A positive response to the statement “I’m disapproving and judgmental about my own flaws and inadequacies,” for example, suggests lack of self-compassion. “When I feel inadequate in some way, I try to remind myself that feelings of inadequacy are shared by most people” suggests the opposite.
For those low on the scale, Dr. Neff suggests a set of exercises — like writing yourself a letter of support, just as you might to a friend you are concerned about. Listing your best and worst traits, reminding yourself that nobody is perfect and thinking of steps you might take to help you feel better about yourself are also recommended.
Other exercises include meditation and “compassion breaks,” which involve repeating mantras like “I’m going to be kind to myself in this moment.”
If this all sounds a bit too warm and fuzzy, like the Al Franken character Stuart Smalley (“I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me”), there is science to back it up. A 2007 study by researchers at Wake Forest University suggested that even a minor self-compassion intervention could influence eating habits. As part of the study, 84 female college students were asked to take part in what they thought was a food-tasting experiment. At the beginning of the study, the women were asked to eat doughnuts.
One group, however, was given a lesson in self-compassion with the food. “I hope you won’t be hard on yourself,” the instructor said. “Everyone in the study eats this stuff, so I don’t think there’s any reason to feel real bad about it.”
Later the women were asked to taste-test candies from large bowls. The researchers found that women who were regular dieters or had guilt feelings about forbidden foods ate less after hearing the instructor’s reassurance. Those not given that message ate more.
The hypothesis is that the women who felt bad about the doughnuts ended up engaging in “emotional” eating. The women who gave themselves permission to enjoy the sweets didn’t overeat.
“Self-compassion is the missing ingredient in every diet and weight-loss plan,” said Jean Fain, a psychotherapist and teaching associate at Harvard Medical School who wrote the new book “The Self-Compassion Diet” (Sounds True publishing). “Most plans revolve around self-discipline, deprivation and neglect.”
Dr. Neff says that the field is still new and that she is just starting a controlled study to determine whether teaching self-compassion actually leads to lower stress, depression and anxiety and more happiness and life satisfaction.
“The problem is that it’s hard to unlearn habits of a lifetime,” she said. “People have to actively and consciously develop the habit of self-compassion.”
Reference Link
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/go-easy-on-yourself-a-new-wave-of-research-urges/?ref=health
Courtesy
The New York Times Company
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