Thank You

In the past 2-3 years I have experienced a huge increase in personal sensitivity, especially related to emotional stimuli. This has led to understanding that I am a ‘Highly Sensitive Person’ (www.hsperson.com), or, ‘Innate Sensitive’ in Jungian Psychology .

During this process, and time, many times I become simply irate, after obvious courtesy is ignored (holding a door, letting a car through, basic social courtesy). Over the past few years I feel this had become more and more prevalent, believing it to be a localised issue firstly (that people in the new area we live, are more prone to social discourtesy), however I now believe that it may be a wider societal issue.

This new published study shows that courtesy matters, a lot:

Undervaluing Gratitude: Expressers Misunderstand the Consequences of Showing Appreciation.

Abstract

Expressing gratitude improves well-being for both expressers and recipients, but we suggest that an egocentric bias may lead expressers to systematically undervalue its positive impact on recipients in a way that could keep people from expressing gratitude more often in everyday life. Participants in three experiments wrote gratitude letters and then predicted how surprised, happy, and awkward recipients would feel. Recipients then reported how receiving an expression of gratitude actually made them feel. Expressers significantly underestimated how surprised recipients would be about why expressers were grateful, overestimated how awkward recipients would feel, and underestimated how positive recipients would feel. Expected awkwardness and mood were both correlated with participants’ willingness to express gratitude. Wise decisions are guided by an accurate assessment of the expected value of action. Underestimating the value of prosocial actions, such as expressing gratitude, may keep people from engaging in behavior that would maximize their own-and others’-well-being.

KEYWORDS:

gratitude; happiness; open data; open materials; preregistered; social cognition; social connection; well-being

PMID: 29949445

 

My wife always urges me to calm down about it, when I get upset, asking why it matters to me, if others are not polite, but I can’t help it, my high sensitivity makes me constantly look at the world and reflect how actions of people affect those around them.

Why would you ignore thanking someone? someone who has obviously been kind, gracious, or polite, to you? Happiness creates a positive thought form, we need more of this in our lives.

Thank you for reading this, and thank you for being thankful!

Body Clock Proteins, Macrophages and Moreless

Reading about new research results of a study into Inflammation and the body clock, here :

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-08/r-nrr082018.php

Researchers at RCSI and Trinity College Dublin have revealed insights into how the body clock controls the inflammatory response, which may open up new therapeutic options to treat excess inflammation in conditions such as asthma, arthritis and cardiovascular disease. By understanding how the body clock controls the inflammatory response, we may be able to target these conditions at certain times of the day to have the most benefit. These findings may also shed light on why individuals who experience body clock disruption such as shift workers are more susceptible to these inflammatory conditions.

The body clock, the timing mechanism in each cell in the body, allows the body to anticipate and respond to the 24-hour external environment. Inflammation is normally a protective process that enables the body to clear infection or damage, however if left unchecked can lead to disease. The new study, led by researchers at Dr. Annie Curtis’s Lab at RCSI (Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland) in partnership with Prof. Luke O’Neill’s Lab at Trinity College Dublin, is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a leading international multidisciplinary scientific journal.

Dr Annie Curtis, Research Lecturer in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Therapeutics at RCSI and senior author, explained that: “Macrophages are key immune cells in our bodies which produce this inflammatory response when we are injured or ill. What has become clear in recent years is that these cells react differently depending on the time of day that they face an infection or damage, or when we disrupt the body clock within these cells”.

Dr. Jamie Early, first author on the study, said: “We have made a number of discoveries into the impact of the body clock in macrophages on inflammatory diseases such as asthma and multiple sclerosis. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms by which the body clock precisely controls the inflammatory response were still unclear. Our study shows that the central clock protein, BMAL1 regulates levels of the antioxidant response protein NRF2 to control a key inflammatory molecule called IL-1β from macrophages.”

“The findings although at a preliminary stage, offers new insights into the behaviour of inflammatory conditions such as arthritis and cardiovascular disease which are known to be altered by the body clock”, added Dr Early.

Funded by Science Foundation Ireland, the research was undertaken in collaboration between RCSI, Trinity College Dublin and the Broad Institute in Boston, USA.

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The paper, The Circadian Clock Protein BMAL1 Regulates IL-1β in Macrophages via NRF2, will be published on Monday, August 20, at 3 pm US ET/8pm GMT.

 

ChooseLife Thoughts : This is a good research area, Moreless used to repeatedly state ‘no proteins 4-6 hours before bed, no significant protein 6 hours ideally‘.

It rang true to me, he said if you eat significant protein before bed, your Autonomic Nervous System would potentially be held off from repair in key early sleep phases, as the digestion of proteins require more Oxygen than say vegetables/salad. If digestion is incomplete at the point of sleep, this triggers the endocrine system to focus blood flow there, rather than supplying electromagnetic force to tissue repair, recovering the adrenals (which happens between 11pm-1am it is believed), and other vital parasympathetic/R&R functions.

Coupling this information of Moreless, with Carey Reams suggestion, to just eat salad largely at dinner (with a good olive oil as dressing, he claimed this cleared the digestive tract well, creating a gelatine like substance to help avoid foods sticking, setting you up for the following day), light foods at dinner, which very likely shaped the base of Moreless thinking. They dovetail this research.