High and Low Blood Sugar Can Make Nightmares

Not a few people ever feel bad dream. Besides being a flower bed, nightmares can also be caused by food that you eat before bed, one of which eating too much sugar or when blood sugar levels down.

An article in the Journal of the Mind and Body cites several studies that try to determine the relationship between eating before going to sleep and dream experiences.

Several studies show that eating excessive sugar before bed can increase brain wave activity. High activity can improve the clarity to make those dreams including nightmares, as reported by LIVESTRONG on Wednesday (07/27/2011).

In addition to sugar, there are other chemicals that can affect dreams. For example, nicotine patches are sometimes packaged with a warning that states can lead to a dream 'real' or unusual.

Junk food that does not contain nicotine, sweets and chocolate contains theobromine and caffeine can also disrupt sleep and cause nightmares if eaten in considerable amounts before bedtime.

Apart from eating too much sugar, it was low blood sugar can also affect the dream. According to MayoClinic.com, blood sugar levels can also affect the child's dream.

When blood sugar is low (hypoglycemia) during sleep, some children will experience symptoms of nightmares. This usually occurs in children who suffer from diabetes.

Some of the signs and symptoms of hypoglycemia in children with diabetes such as frequent nightmares, sweating, fatigue on waking, dizziness, confusion, difficulty speaking, anxiety, personality changes and bizarre behavior, which often occurs in the morning and usually called 'dawn effect'.

For that, you should eat healthy food but not just before bedtime each day to keep blood sugar was always within normal levels.

People Not Happy Always Avoid Eye Contact

People who are sad or depressed often avoid direct eye contact. A psychologist conducting experiments to uncover how mood can affect how a person sees someone else.

That's according to recent research from Dr. Peter Hills, professor of Psychology at Anglia Ruskin University. This study shows that happy people prefer to detect changes in the eyes of people who are not happy. Dr. Hills also found the opposite, that people are sad more accurately detect external changes through changes in hair style.

"Individuals who are depressed tend to avoid eye contact in social situations and in experimental. While the unhappy people who would actively seek eye contact," said Dr. Hills as reported from anglia.ac.uk, Tuesday (07/26/2011) .

According to Dr. Hills, avoidance of eye contact may increase deperesi in individuals who are not happy and can lead to self-isolation. Sadly people will avoid eye contact that would interfere with social communication and cause them to alienate themselves from certain social situations.

"While this can reduce levels of anxiety caused by the situation itself, it can increase social isolation and sadness to deepen their hearts," said Dr. Hills.

Participants who are sad to be avoiding eye contact. People who will process the sad face based on external characteristics rather than internal traits. Internal traits include eye and nose are the most commonly used to recognize faces. "Participants who may be looking at all the sad faces in the same way, as if everything is not known, which increases the risk of experiencing social isolation," said Dr. Hills.

In that study, Dr. Hills and Dr. Lewis faces up to 12 prototypes using computer-based system facial reconstruction. This software uses a number of features to choose from such as head shape, hairstyle, eyes, eyebrows, nose, mouth, and chin shape. The characteristics are then enlarged, diminished or replaced by other characteristics.

To influence mood, participants were given memory exercises while listening to a kind of musical autobiography selected and tested by undergraduate psychology in previous studies. For example Mozart played to create the conditions sadly, the music of The A-Team for the happy situation and the soundtrack of The Hunt for Red October for neutral conditions.

Meditation Can Make Brain Performance Always Young

It is not surprising if the brain during meditation relaxation experience. The surprise is that meditation may have long term effects on brain architecture that makes the brain is always young and slow aging.

Sara Lazar and his team at Harvard University studied meditators (meditators), who has been practicing the art of meditation for 6 hours per week in nine years.

The researchers found that right anterior insula and prefrontal cortex in the brains of experienced meditators who turned out thicker than non-meditators of the same age.

Lazar argues, the process of meditation is the reverse process of depletion of brain structures that normally occur from time to time.Prefrontal cortex of the brain is central to the process of thinking and planning, and meditation can help the brain function of aging so that functions like a young brain.

Recently, a study from UCLA showed that people who meditated also had a strong connection between regions in the brain. The study also showed reduced brain shrinkage that normally occurs as you age. This strong connection that will affect the ability of electrical signals to get to the brain. And significantly, this effect occurs throughout the brain, not just in certain areas.

Assistant professor at the UCLA Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, Eileen Luders and his colleagues have found brain differences between meditators and controls that involve large-scale networks such as the brain frontal, temporal, parietal and occipital lobes and the anterior corpus callosum, as well as limbic structures and brainstem .

"Our results suggest that during long-term meditators have more white matter fibers, more dense or more isolated in the entire brain," Luders said as quoted by psychologytoday, Monday (25/07/2011).

"We also found that decreased white matter tissue associated with normal age is much reduced in the active practitioners of meditation. There is a possibility that the active meditation, especially during long periods of time, can cause changes in the micro-anatomy," says Luders.

According to Luders, meditation may not only cause changes in brain anatomy that is caused by the stimulation of new growth but meditation also can prevent brain damage.

"That is, if done regularly and over the years, meditation can slow the aging-related atrophy of the brain and can affect the immune system in a positive way," says Luders.

Although tempted to assume that the difference between these two effects in groups that actually justify the influence of meditation, there are still unanswered questions, which is a natural brain versus brain due to training.

"There is a possibility that the meditator may basically have a different brain. For example, certain brain anatomy in meditators may have attracted individuals eager to meditation or to help maintain an ongoing exercise. This means that increasing fiber connectivity in the meditators caused inclination to meditation,rather than a consequence of the practice of meditation, "explained Luders.

Therefore, further research is needed before meditation can be recommended as a way to nourish the brain. However, Luders which also is actually a meditator says, "Meditation is a mental exercise seems to be a powerful and potentially alter the physical structure of the brain".