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Body Image And Illness
By
H. Bernard Wechsler |
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Do you believe your feelings direct your brain? Do you think it’s a scientific fact your emotions overwhelm reason and logic in major decision-making? Does new information (knowledge) offer you the power to put your thinking-brain back in the driver’s seat?
Columbia University School of Public Health completed a study on
Body Image and sick days. Sound unscientific, but there appears to be a definite link between our desire to lose weight and how much sickness we sustain.
Professor Peter Muennig, M.D. of Columbia found younger people, Whites, and in particular women, suffer from negative body-image, and it makes them sick and
reduces their longevity. Those who are happy with their weight are plain healthier.
Published March 2008 in the American Journal of Public Health, psychological stress caused by worrying about your shape and weight is responsible for an increase in morbidity (illness) and mortality (death).
Key Predictor
Listen to this conclusion: the desire to weight less is an accurate predictor of
physical and mental unhealthy days. Folks with a negative mental image (hate their
body) affect their immune system and become ill more often than people who are
either satisfied or ignore their weight.
Physicians compare your mental attitude of negative self-image causing stress, to BMI (Body Mass Index). BMI is your height and weight measurements comparing obesity to the standard health range.
How you feel about yourself is the critical factor. You can be chronically obese, 5 foot 6 inches and weigh 250 pounds, and be healthy, productive and rarely ill – if you are internally driven and love and accept your mind and body unconditionally.
Both men and women who are convinced they should weigh less for emotional reasons, to be more attractive to the opposite sex, gain promotions based on
their appearance, and to live longer, are dead wrong according the Columbia University research.
Is Everybody Wrong
Get this: two-thirds of the 150,000-study group stated they wanted to be skinnier,
while only one-third were satisfied with their shape, looks and weight. People over the age of 50 were more likely to accept themselves as-is without delusions of winning future Miss or Mr. America beauty contests.
The media is in business to convince you to live by their official standards (externally driven) in order to sell you billions of dollars of low calorie, weight loss products and services.
Listen to Dr. Muennig, ‘our studies show there is a positive relationship between your actual weight and your desired (idealized) weight. It has mental causation,
causing physical repercussions; a negative self-image is the source of chronic stress.’
Lifestyle
Please remember these statistics to outlive your doctors. Only 25% of the variation
in your lifespan is genetic (inherited and predetermined). That means 75% - if you
do not get struck down by a Mack truck, is based on lifestyle.
Who says so? Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, lead scientist
Dr. Laurel Gates. Her team followed 2,357 patients over twenty years. The secret of
using the 75% lifestyle changes to live to age 99 is exercise, no smoking, limited alcohol, veggies and fruit daily, and use-it-or-lose-it (referring to your brain) to build cognitive reserve. She found a healthy body weight contributed to longevity.
Being in good shape could add as much as 10-14 years to your lifespan, according to
Dr. Gates and a recent British study. Imagine an additional 14 years of healthy living. Are you motivated to take action to improve your lifestyle?
Use It Or Lose It
According to Queensland Brain Institute, 2.12.08, new research offers evidence that
nerve (brain) cells die from degenerative diseases because they do not receive enough stimulation. Chemical and electrical stimulation (reading, thinking, playing
chess etc.) produce more gray cells in the brain.
Dr. Elizabeth Coulson concluded, ‘if a cell is not stimulated by other cells, it self-destructs’. Reduce up to 40% the risk of Alzheimer, stroke and motor neuron diseases by being a lifelong learner. See: Journal of Neuroscience February 2008.
Endwords: it is our mission to reach 11 million folks to become lifelong learners.
Learning to enjoy the process of reading and memory (and lifestyle changes) is said to lead to longevity of up to 14 years.
If you have the skill to read and remember three (3) books, articles and reports in the time your peers can hardly finish one, you are stimulating your mind and following the principle of Use it or Lose it. Ask us how.
See ya,
copyright © 2008
H. Bernard Wechsler,
www.speedlearning.org
hbw@speedlearning.org
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Author's Bio
Author of Speed Reading For Professional, published by Barron's.
Partner with Evelyn Wood in speed reading, graduating 2 million
including the White House staffs of four U.S. Presidents.
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