The Benefits of Swimming for Health and Fitness

Despite being born and raised in the cold, landlocked prairies of Canada, I have been a swimmer for my entire life and have always believed that there was more to the activity than simply splashing around in your skivvies or being pitted up against fellow pimply peers in a 100 meter sprint.

This new report was produced by the Swimming and Health Commission and the Commission was established by an organization called Swim England to identify evidence for the health benefits of swimming and to promote future research in this area. It is a rather long, detailed and well-referenced document called The Health and Wellbeing Benefits of Swimming which I encourage you to go check out but I will attempt to highlight here what I found to be the most interesting takeaways from the study.

Let's Dive In!

Right off the top, it is estimated in this study that those who swim for recreational or competitive purposes are eight times more likely to meet general physical activity guidelines (which includes being active for at least 150 minutes per week).

Long-term swim training can also improve cardiorespiratory fitness or endurance in certain subsets of the population as well, such as healthy pre-pubertal girls and adults, women during pregnancy, children with asthma, and adults with osteoarthritis (which is a rather common condition affecting joints, causing pain and stiffness). We’ll get into each of those a little later but you can see how far into the deep end the researchers went.

The study states that it is clear from the evidence that being able to swim and swimming regularly can have considerable health and wellbeing benefits. Research has identified that any amount of swimming participation compared to those who engaged in none, was associated with a 28% and 41% reduction in all cause and cardiovascular disease cause mortality respectively. The striking evidence of where swimming has afforded significantly improved health, quality of life and a sense of community are additionally impressive.

How Does Swimming Boost Health?

Most studies exploring the relationship between physical activity and physical health have generally focused on activities such as walking, cycling, running or aerobics classes despite the fact that swimming and other forms of aquatic exercise (aqua-jogging and aqua-aerobics for example) are some of the most popular choices for meeting physical activity recommendations – for their aerobic, strength and balance elements. This is often attributed to the fact that exercise in an aquatic environment confers many benefits – minimized weight-bearing stress, a humid environment and a decreased heat load (unless you swim in one of those oddly warm Therapeutic Pools that they had in my neighborhood as a kid… it was hard distinguish my sweat from the pool water).

The study compared the health aspects of swimming with alternative forms of aerobic exercise, and sedentary behavior. Participants included 10,518 women and 35,185 men aged 20- 88 years old. Now as with most studies of this type, the majority were Caucasian and of middle/upper socio-economic status, which is something I know many universities and research groups are trying to correct seeing as this is not a great way to draw sweeping conclusions over our much more diverse global population.

Screening included a formal subjective and objective history, anthropometric measurements, blood tests and a graded exercise test. Participants were categorized as ‘sedentary’ (no participation in activity over the previous three months), ‘walkers’ (primarily engaged in run/walk/jog at a pace ≥15min/mile), ‘runners’ (primarily engaged in run/walk/jog at a pace ≤15min/ mile), and ‘swimmers’ (exclusively engaged in swimming activity).

The results were pretty darn clear that all types of physical activity produced demonstrable health benefits in comparison to a sedentary lifestyle but of all the groups, swimming and running achieved the highest treadmill test duration and maximal metabolic equivalent levels. Although interestingly enough, the Body Mass Index (BMI) of swimmers was significantly higher than that of runners.

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Higher BMI?

I deviated from this particular study for a few minutes to find out why BMI might be higher in a swimmer despite the fact that elite swimmers typically undertake 4000-20,000 m per day in their training, which burns thousands of calories. Two theories seem to be popular.

1. It has been suggested that swimming doesn't cause the appetite drop that accompanies heavy running or cycling training, so swimmers may overcompensate for the energy they have just burned. Some research goes on to suggest that this is due to the cool temperatures in which swimmers train.

2. Swimmers are less active outside their training sessions because they are so tired from the hours spent training that they sleep, sit or otherwise avoid any real energy expenditure outside their sessions. Which to me seems less likely that reason number one.

Also, when a sport is performed in the water, fat provides more buoyancy than muscle mass. This allows swimmers who have a higher percentage of fat to float more readily in the water. Instead of having to use energy to stay horizontal, the athlete can focus on their stroke and kick to move them forward. Swimmers with a lot of muscle mass may have more strength, but it ends up being wasted on the mechanics of trying to staying high in the water.

There does not seem to be one clear reason for this but if you watch footage from the Olympics you likely noticed that each and every sport has a particular body type, and swimming leans toward the rounded shoulders and smooth curves which are more biomechanically useful in the water than bony angles. Correlation? Causation? You choose.

Valuable Lifetime Activity

But back to the study, where the authors conclude that “swimming constitutes a valuable lifetime activity” and appears to produce healthy levels of cardiorespiratory fitness and is a viable alternative to other forms of exercise.

This is further supported by the results of a prospective study of the health effects of physical activity and fitness in 40,547 men which concluded that swimmers had lower mortality rates than those who were sedentary, walkers or runners even after controlling for age, body mass index, smoking/alcohol and family history. Similar results have been demonstrated by a cohort study of over 80,000 British adults where swimming participation was associated with a significantly reduced risk of all-cause mortality of 28%, and cardiovascular disease mortality of 41%.

Is It More Than Just Exercise?

Clearly, heading to your local pool offers a great opportunity for aerobic activity, however, the specific interaction between physiological and hydrodynamic effects of being immersed in water are also super interesting and might be lending additional advantages.

The study listed five factors that the role of water might be playing in the positive results being found.

Density - The human body density is slightly less than that of water, therefore the volume of water displaced weighs more than the immersed body resulting in an upward force equal to the volume of water displaced. You can think of this as being like a compression stocking for the part of your body that is submerged.

Hydrostatic Pressure - Pressure is proportional to the liquid density and the immersion depth (which means the deeper you go the more pressure there is). Hydrostatic pressure results in plastic deformation of the body (your body gets squeezed), shifting blood towards the heart, raising right atrial pressure, and causing a cephalad displacement of the diaphragm (cephalad means “toward the head”). You can think of this as a turbo boost which reduces the work of breathing associated with expiration, your heart’s preload, its cardiac output, and the body’s venous blood flow.

Buoyancy - Immersion to the xyphoid (a small bump of cartilage in the sternum) off loads bodyweight by 60% or more, and to to C7 (near the bottom of your cervical spine) by 75% or more. Buoyancy results in ‘off loading’ of peripheral and spinal joints. You can think of this as greatly reduced gravity and impact.

Viscosity - Limb movement in water is subject to drag force and turbulence. Viscous resistance offers opportunities for strength training via the principle of loading. You can think of this as the water being like a resistance band that’s been attached to all your limbs, turning all your movements into a strength training regime.

Thermodynamics - Water may be used over a wide range of temperatures due to its heat capacity and conduction properties. Many public pools operate at 27-29°C, although sometimes increased to 33.5-35.5°C for ‘therapeutic’ sessions. You can think of this as being like a mild icing for your sore muscles or a mild hot tub for again your sore muscles. You can find out more about cold water uses in a previous Get-Fit Guy post and you can also imagine how much harder you would be able to workout when the water is adding a cooling benefit that would usually be relegated to your perspiration and respiration.

After examining the effects of swimming on cardiovascular and cardiometabolic health, pulmonary health, musculoskeletal (MSK) health, neurological health, health for people with disability, health for the frail elderly, health for women (specifically post-menopausal women with osteoporosis, pregnant women and women with breast cancer) the study summary stated that the unique nature of the aquatic environment as a medium for exercise can layer on a large number of specific advantages, especially as compared to land-based exercise.

Which makes sense now that we see it as an exercise environment that offers reduced weight-bearing stress, higher humidity levels, decreased heat load and a greater margin of therapeutic safety in terms of falls-risk, swimming and aquatic exercise can be seen to safely and effectively meet the needs of a wide-range of individuals, in both the treatment and prevention of physical health issues.

In Chapter 2 (of the 7 chapter study), the researchers looked at very specific subsets of the population to see how swimming benefited them.

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They Began with Children

A recent study in a large city in England investigated the impact of the local authority providing free swimming passes to 1,011 young disadvantaged children in a pre and post-test study. The authors found that providing free swimming passes helped increase self-report physical activity levels among children, with the most notable improvements seen among those who were sedentary or insufficiently active at baseline.

Another study called: Aerobic exercise interacts with neurotrophic factors to predict cognitive functioning in adolescents recruited adolescents who had in the past two months completed some or all of the following: intensive rowing, swimming and triathlon training and compared their neurocognitive performance versus age and sex matched controls that were not engaging in regular exercise. The authors found that frequent exercisers (which could have been any of the activities I just listed) had better cognitive performance, which was attributed to increases in brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). However, it was not possible to confirm or refute whether the differences in cognition among the “swimmers” and the controls were actually due to swimming or simply getting more exercise in general since we know exercise in general makes us smart!

In 2013, a study into the cognitive benefits of swimming lessons for children, reported that children participating in regular swimming lessons achieved a range of developmental milestones much earlier than the wider population regardless of socio-economic background or gender. Swimmers were between six and twelve months ahead of the norm in physical skills, cognitive skills, mathematics, language development, counting and ability to follow instructions. The reason this is important is that these areas are considered to be the key skills used in “formal education contexts” which, the authors believe, may give swimmers a “considerable advantage” as they start their academic studies.

What About Adults?

A survey study among 200 females aged 40-60 years across five cities in Korea suggested that participation in swimming was associated with improved life satisfaction, mental health and self-perception of health.

Another study of 300 adults reported that participating in swimming lessons was associated with better self-rated health, including better psychological health, reduced levels of stress and lower levels of disability.

And Older Adults?

One study found that regular older swimmers who reported swimming between two and five times a week over a period on average of 2.5 years, had significantly better executive function on three tasks, compared to sedentary older adults of similar age and gender who did not swim.

A recent Cochrane review found some evidence that aquatic exercise improved anxiety symptoms and sleep among people with fibromyalgia.

Another Cochrane review suggested that aquatic exercise has a small improvement on quality of life among people with hip or knee osteoarthritis and low back pain.

And others?

I am not going to get into all the categories in the study (like I said before, it is comprehensive) but they went on to look at swimming and its benefits for other medical conditions such as:

• Pregnancy

• Cancer

• Mental health

• Dementia and cognitive decline

• Cerebral palsy

• Learning disabilities

• Autism

Concluding that “There is growing recognition that exercise can cross many boundaries and meet the wellbeing needs of the population from the cradle to grave.”

Off to the Pool!

Many of us have fond memories of going to swimming lessons as children, playing in the community outdoor pool on a hot summer day, splashing around in a lake or the ocean on vacation, and perhaps even competing in some local, provincial or national swim meets. Who knew all the good we were doing for our wellbeing while having all that fun and forever associating the bleachy, acrid smell of chlorine with the happy, nervous moments of seeing and being seen in your bathing suit.

I for one am sold and I am now headed to the pool to do some drills, practice my flip turns and reap all the benefits that swimming has to offer. Who’s with me?

If you are a lifelong swim fan like me or have questions about how to incorporate swimming into your routine, head over to http://ift.tt/1xq4tPg or http://twitter.com/getfitguy. Also don't forget to subscribe to the Get-Fit Guy podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, SoundCloud, Spotify, Google Play or via RSS.

Make a Plan for Motivation

We all have things we want in life, without knowing exactly how to get them. So we don’t even get started. People say “Make a plan! Then take baby steps! And you’ll get there.” Well that’s great, except if we don’t actually know how to get where we want to go. So in that case, we don’t make a plan… and often don’t get started.

But scientists have discovered something exciting! It turns out that plans are useful even if they don’t tell us exactly at to do. Plans aren’t just a roadmap from point A to point B; it turns out that they do way more.

Plans give confidence, motivation, and results even if we get their steps completely wrong. Which makes plans useful in far more places than you’d think. To be confident, motivated, and resultified, use plans — even imperfect plans — everywhere.

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Eric Barker, author of the Barking Up the Wrong Tree blog. He’s the only person whose newsletter and blog I read regularly. He turns research-based results about psychology into actions we can take. He taught me something important about plans: plans are how you get unstuck. Simply having a plan, whether it’s accurate or not, is enough to make us feel confident and get us moving. Our brains are scared of the unknown, so as with anything we fear, our brain does the whole “flight, ”fight,“ or ”freeze" thing. Making a plan gives our brains something to know. So they feel safe, just by having a plan, and are better able to get us what we want. That calms down our brain, so we can think clearly and actually figure out how to reach our goal for real.

Today’s tip is really simple: use plans to get yourself moving, even if you don’t know all the steps. Let’s look at a few places where we don’t usually think of plans as a tool, but where they’ll get you moving anyway thanks to the confidence effects.

Use plans for building a social life

If you’re a workaholic like myself, you may have trouble finding the time to catch up with friends and cultivate new social connections. You may become a hermit, and let your hair grow down to your knees, and start talking to small animals.

Then we start thinking things like, “I can’t call Ashley because it’s been so long and I won’t know what to say about why I haven’t called and it will be embarrassing and I’m a horrible person and I don’t know how to get started, and … Hi, Bunny!!!”

Our brain goes down these hare-brained paths because it doesn’t know what else to do. So tell it what to do. Make a plan! A plan will help us get un-stuck from our introverted, hermetic ways. And it doesn’t need to be a detailed plan.

Here’s a sample plan: Step 1. “Call Ashley.” Step 2. “Say ‘I am so sorry for abandoning you at the altar. Let’s be friends again and go bowling Thursday.’” Once you get on the phone, you may or may not stick to the plan, but just having a plan will get you moving.

My personal plan to build a social life is to buy a television set and start inviting people over for movie nights. It’s been the plan for a couple of years. Have I followed it? NO! But having the plan has chilled me out enough that I’ve been making friends in other places instead. Just having the plan got me moving.

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Use plans for finding romance

They say that breaking up is hard to do. You know why? Because first, you have to find a shmoopie to break up with. That’s intimidating!! Sure, “there’s an app for that,” but the instructions are unclear. My friend (who shall remain nameless for obvious reasons) was so excited to download the app that they got confused and spent an hour swiping the wrong way for every person in a 50 mile radius of my house. I mean, their house. So now they have to idea how to find love, and are resigned to living a life of lonely videogames. 

Any plan is better than nothing; it provides focus.

NO!! Stop!! Romance is a numbers game! If you’re scared to play the numbers, it’s time to get unstuck. You’ve got several hundred frogs to kiss to find your shmoopie. So you’re afraid of catching lip warts from a hundred frogs? Get over it. That’s why we have penicillin. Create a plan: Step 1. Get vaccinated against lip warts. Step 2. Start kissing. Step 3. Be thankful that all you have to do is kiss the frogs. In the original fairy tale … let’s just say the warts were harder to get rid of.

There’s no surefire plan, but any plan is better than nothing. Once you have the plan, focus on on that and your brain will calm down and start moving.

You can even make a plan for the different steps: Make a plan for how to meet new people. Make a plan for how to approach the people you meet. And make a plan for how to talk to the people you approach. I recommend saying “Hi! We haven’t met yet. My name is insert-your-name-here.” Just having these plans makes you more confident about finding someone in general. And confidence is attractive, so you get a nice bonus.

Crucially, when your plan doesn’t go according to your expectations (and I promise you, it won’t always be smooth), don’t give up! Tweak your plan if you want to, and keep putting yourself out there. You can even scrap the plan entirely and choose a new one. They’re free. 

Use plans for advancing your career

Some people are super-organized about their careers. But for many of us, we just have a vague idea that we’ll be promoted and move forward as time goes on. Then the intern we hired gets promoted over our head and requires us to wear a tutu to work every day. If we were a ballerina, this would be fine. But as it is, the tutu clashes with our fashionable paisley ensemble. (All bow down to the amazing power of rayon.) 

Just having a plan, any plan, will help you get moving in your career. Step 1: listen to Get-it-Done Guy episode #462, Take Charge of your Career and Grow a Pair to decide what career advancement would mean for you. Step 2: search out specific job opportunities by reading trade magazines within your industry, checking the job board at your current company, and holding a seance to seek the advice of your dead ancestors, who really can’t be expected to know anything about the early–21st-century job market, but when she was alive, Aunt Sadie had an opinion about everything, so you know at least she’ll talk to you. Step 3: network your way into those companies to get interviews.

Is this a realistic plan? Sure. It’s super high-level, but that’s still enough to engage your brain. Simply focus on whichever step is foremost and you’ll find yourself making progress.

Plans are more than a roadmap to accomplish something. You can use them to build your confidence and get unstuck when you don’t know what to do. Use them anywhere you’re stuck, even places we don’t normally think of planning. Building a social life, finding a shmoopie, and jump-starting your career are just a few places where a plan may be more valuable for its confidence and motivation than for the actual steps it says to take. So wherever you’re stuck right now, make a plan—any plan—and get moving.

Using plans as a confidence-building tool for overcoming procrastination is just one tiny topic that Eric shared. In our full interview, he discusses why being valedictorian doesn’t necessarily lead to success, 

You can listen at http://ift.tt/2vf8KJz.

This is Stever Robbins. Follow GetItDoneGuy on Twitter and Facebook. I run programs to help people have Extraordinary Lives and extraordinary careers. If you want to know more, visit http://ift.tt/1l2uWN6.

Work Less, Do More, and have a Great Life!

How Did Scientists Edit the Genes of Human Embryos?

Our genetic code is the foundation of who we are. The DNA and RNA molecules that carry our genetic information dictate our past (like our innate skills), our present (like the color of our eyes, hair, and skin), and our future (our predisposition toward genetic diseases). But what if we could edit those genes, picking and choosing which ones we want to keep and which ones we want to edit out? Would we even want to?

Scientists using the CRISPR-Cas9 system made headlines last week for being the first to cleanly “fix” a mutation known to cause a heart disorder in regular human embryos. How did they accomplish such a feat, and what does this mean for the future of genetic engineering?

What is CRISPR-Cas9?

Since we’ve discussed CRISPR-Cas9 here at Everyday Einstein before, I’ll only summarize how it works. The CRISPR system works as a type of gene-sized scissors that allows us to snip out unwanted parts of our DNA and replace them with healthy or otherwise preferred copies.

After scientists noticed that the DNA of bacteria and single-celled organisms was structured in a repeating pattern called “clustered regularly interspaced palindromic repeats” (or CRISPR), further research revealed that the nonrepeating spacers between each section of the pattern were copies of the DNA of harmful viruses that had previously posed a threat. The bacteria and simple organisms were keeping a log on the weaknesses of their past foes in case they should encounter them again.

For CRISPR to act effectively as an immune system for the bacteria, it would also need a way of transporting this stored information through the cell. That is where the Cas proteins come in, with Cas-9 being one of the most well understood of the bunch. The Cas proteins hitch a ride with RNA molecules that have been encoded with the intruder DNA looking for a match elsewhere in the cell. Once a match is found, the RNA molecule and Cas protein work together to keep the virus from replicating any further by latching onto the viral DNA and chopping it up.

Can we edit the genetics of human embryos?

In 2012, molecular biologists revolutionized gene editing by demonstrating that they could use the CRISPR-Cas9 system, including a programmable RNA molecule, to find, snip, and replace not just viruses but any sequence of genes. A form of “edit-search-replace” for DNA. Since that discovery, scientists have already been able to use CRISPR to eliminate Hepatitis B and HIV in genomes in human cells.

Last week’s announcement takes the practice of genetic engineering a huge step further by moving beyond human cells to human embryos. A team of scientists at Oregon Health and Science University used CRISPR-Cas9 to correct a genetic mutation linked to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a genetic disorder that results in a thickening of the muscles of the heart with no apparent cause and which can lead to heart failure.

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CRISPR-Cas9 was applied to sperm from a carrier of the disease as they were injected into eggs from non-carrier donors. The scientists then observed as the CRISPR-Cas9 scissors went to work removing the portion of the DNA with the mutation and replacing it with a healthy copy of the sequence from the maternal genes. Two key aspects of their study was first, the addition of the CRISPR-Cas9 to the egg at the same time as the sperm rather than hours later as had been done in previous studies, and second, the use of a short-lived version of CRISPR that would not hang around and cause potentially unwanted future edits.

In their paper titled ‘Correction of a pathogenic gene mutation in human embryos’, the authors note that the editing worked in 36 of their 54 regular human embryos. (Earlier work by Chinese scientists involved the successful editing of only immature embryos that were not capable of surviving until birth.)

What laws are there concerning the editing of the human genome?

The embryos used in the experiment at OHSU were not implanted in a woman’s uterus, and many more experiments must be run, using different mutations and different donors, for example, before that can be done. But for would-be parents who fear passing on a genetic disease, the possibilities the study suggests are a potential game changer. Those with access t o the gene editing tool could remove any doubt that they had passed on genetic predispositions toward sickle cell anemia, cystic fibrosis, or even breast cancer.

Doctors are already able to create embryos in vitro and then select only the ones that do not carry a specific genetic illness for implantation, a process called “preimplantation genetic diagnosis”. However, those embryos not chosen for implantation are often discarded.

While there is an obvious appeal to be able to control the disease-causing genetic mutations we pass on as parents, that level of control raises a wealth of concerns. Will gene editing eventually be used to create “designer babies” with more desirable traits? Who decides which qualities are desirable?

Currently, in the United States, research in genetic engineering is allowed but regulations prevent the US government from funding any research involved in the genetic engineering of human embryos, including studies like those at OHSU. Opponents of the federal government ban suggest it only moves the research into the realm of private industry while others believe it is an important limitation as the law tries to keep pace with scientific advancement.

While the answers to many of the questions surrounding the ethics of genetic engineering may be murky, one thing is clear. A fair and ethical path forward can only be found if scientists and law makers from diverse cultural backgrounds are included in the conversation.

Until next time, this is Sabrina Stierwalt with Everyday Einstein’s Quick and Dirty Tips for helping you make sense of science. You can become a fan of Everyday Einstein on Facebook or follow me on Twitter, where I’m @QDTeinstein. If you have a question that you’d like to see on a future episode, send me an email at everydayeinstein@quickanddirtytips.com.

Image courtesy of shutterstock.

6 Money-Saving Tips to Keep Your Clothes Organized

Laundry Slam Dunk

Turn a drawstring laundry bag into an ingenious hanging hamper with an old embroidery hoop. Just slip the opening of the bag through the hoop and it will stay open while you use the drawstrings to hang it from an over-the-door hook or in the closet. Bonus: It looks enough like a basketball hoop that it makes it a tiny bit easier to get our boys to straighten up their rooms!

New Hangers

In need of some new hangers? Try your local department store. When making a purchase, let the sales clerk know that you’d like to take the hangers too. If you notice any empty hangers lying around the register area, ask for those as well—it couldn’t hurt!

DIY No-Cost, No-Slip Hangers

The hangers in our closet really needed an overhaul: We were tired of finding clothes on the floor, and also not so keen on the prospect of buying all new padded hangers. So, we decided to make our own: All you need is a hot glue gun! Dab glue onto the shoulders or bottom rung of the hangers. Let it dry, then remove any flyaways around the spots of glue. Once the hangers are completely cool, hang your clothes and voila! Shirts, dresses, and pants stay put.

Free Keychains

The next time you get a free keychain, use it to create more space in your closet! Just run the head of a hanger through the key ring, then hang another hanger from it. This creates a cascading hanger system without having to buy a thing!

Shower Curtain Rings

Got new curtain rings (or took our advice to change them out with ribbon)? Use the old ones to organize your coat closet. Hammer a nail into the wall, then hang a couple of curtain rings on it. They can be used to grasp items like gloves, hats, and purses, or you can run a scarf through one.

Reversed Hangers

When you’re hanging blazers and suit jackets, reverse the position of the hanger to save yourself trips to the cleaners for pressing. Using a wooden hanger, turn it so that curve is facing you when you slip the jacket or blazer over it. The backward hanger will keep the jacket’s shoulders nice, tight, and wrinkle free.

Don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

9 Things That Don't Work for Moms Today

This week Mighty Mommy is joined by author Laurie Gelman. Laurie was born and raised in the Great White North. She spent twenty-five years as a broadcaster in both Canada and the United States before trying her hand at writing novels. Class Mom is her first book and boy is it great: Funny, poignant, and endearing.

As moms, we wear a zillion different hats, many that we didn’t have a clue would be part of motherhood until we were in the trenches and finding out for ourselves.

Listen to the conversation between Mighty Mommy and Laurie and be prepared to chuckle as you, too, will probably relate to these scenarios in your own parenting life. Laurie totally understands this and shares 9 things that just don’t work for her as a mom today.

1.      When the kids volunteer you to drive everyone somewhere 

2.      When their homework becomes my homework 

3.      Losing control of the car radio 

4.      Being a short order cook 

5.      Being a sherpa and human garbage pail 

6.      Being blamed for everything 

7.      Being a professional getter 

8.      Expected to be crafty 

9.      Expected to be a human encyclopedia

What similar things aren’t working for you as a mom these days?  Share your thoughts with us in the comments section at http://ift.tt/1zMEe2L, post your ideas on the Mighty Mommy Facebook page, or email me at mommy@quickanddirtytips.com.

And don't forget to check our Class Mom, available from Amazon, B&N, IndieBound, and Books-a-Million.

Listen to a special audiobook clip below and buy the audiobook on Audible:

Also visit my family-friendly boards at http://ift.tt/1wyJKr5.

How to Listen to Your Gut and Make the Right Decision Every Time

This week, I got a really intriguing email from an anonymous listener. She’s a science PhD student and, on the one hand, is really into hard facts and figures. On the other hand, she’s having a hard time using her well-honed logic to change a deep, soul-level worry.

To be specific, a fortune teller once told her she would always be the third wheel in relationships, and for years, it’s turned out to be true. Logically, she knows this isn’t really her destiny. She knows it’s a limiting story she tells herself, but how to overcome something that feels so true?

We’ve all been there: torn between logic on one hand and intuition on the other. What to do? Do you listen to your gut or honor your mind? And how do you know if your gut is telling the truth or feeding you information based on fear?

Now, given the “evidence-based research” part of my tagline, it may be surprising to hear that luck, gut feelings, and intuition absolutely have a place in your life. You can’t Spock your way out of every situation.

And while the “science of intuition” may sound like an oxymoron on the level of jumbo shrimp, living dead, or freezer burn, it’s actually an important field of study. If you want to hear it from the source, decades of the research are distilled in Nobel-prize winner Dr. Daniel Kahneman’s acclaimed Thinking Fast and Slow.

For now, here’s the nutshell: It turns out we humans have two systems to process information. One is the rational system. Researchers out of Cornell University describe the systems succinctly: they call the rational system “slow, effortful, deliberate, often rule based, sequential, and a more recent part of our evolutionary heritage.” The intuitive system, by contrast, is “rapid, effortless, automatic, associationist, holistic, and evolutionarily older.” As the older of the two systems, the intuitive system is the first in line to offer up information, which helps explain why it’s so hard to go against our gut, like our anonymous listener is experiencing. The rational system has to squash or alter our intuition, which is sometimes absolutely the right thing to do, but can sometimes lead us astray.  

So how do we find the right balance? If we’re used to being in our heads, how do we let our gut take the lead? Or if our guts are sending the wrong message, how do we get our logic to override our intuition? This week, here are four things to try:

Method #1: Tap into what’s called Wise Mind.

Dr. Marsha Linehan is a pioneering psychologist who, back in the 1980s, tried to treat people who were chronically suicidal with the hot new therapy at the time: cognitive behavioral therapy. Now, pure CBT is extremely logical and reasoned. And Linehan discovered that her patients felt incredibly invalidated by it. Their worth and belief in themselves had been shattered from being raised in emotionally abusive, invalidating homes, and trying to challenge their logic felt like a repetition of the message that they weren’t capable or worthy. Linehan changed all that by creating dialectical behavioral therapy, and since then, DBT has become a gold standard go-to for helping folks with borderline personality disorder, cutting, substance abuse, and more.

Among other groundbreaking ideas, a concept Linehan developed to augment to the logic of CBT was that of Wise Mind.

Wise Mind is the overlap between what she calls Reasonable Mind and Emotion Mind. Both reason and emotion are necessary—we need reason to plan ahead, follow directions, schedule your time. You can’t intuit your way through your tax forms or assembling IKEA furniture (and believe me, I’ve tried).

But we also need emotion. There’s no logic to the experience of cuddling a puppy, enjoying a great meal, or grieving a loss, but what would life be if you couldn’t do those things?

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So how to tap into the power of both? Enter Wise Mind. Wise Mind is a peaceful sense of knowing. It’s a gut feeling of truth. It’s a way to combine both reason and emotion and—ta da!—it’s remarkably similar to the intuition we’ve been talking about.

How do you know you’re in it? Here’s an example. Answer this question: how do you know racism is wrong? The answer has both reasonable and emotional elements: you could write out a logical list of why racism is wrong, and at the same time, you probably have a strong emotional reaction to the concept of racism—maybe anger or indignation. Put the logical and the emotional together, and you have Wise Mind: the deep “knowing” that racism is wrong. You can explain why, you can feel why, and you just know that it is. Wise Mind is the feeling you get when you know something to be true.

But what if your gut is clouded by fear? For our listener, does she know, with a sense of Wise Mind’s peace and truth, that she’ll never find true love? Or does she fear she’ll never find true love? My money’s on the latter. What to do? Next, try...

Method #2: Discern the difference between intuition and fear.

Intuition is knowing. It could be knowing something good, like this is the person you will marry, or something bad, like this guy is definitely trying to scam you.

Fear, on the other hand, is more about uncertainty. It’s not knowing. It’s the “what ifs.” In contrast to intuition, which can predict something good or bad, fear predicts the worst. For example, “When I talk to my roommate about not smoking in the house, she’s going to yell at me.” Or, “What if the car dealership tries to put one over on me?” Or, “What if the fortune teller was right and I never find love?”

In sum, intuition is a quiet: “yes, this is.” Even if the result is negative, like breaking up with someone or sensing that you shouldn’t get in the car with this particular Uber driver, intuition says “Yes, this is the truth,” while fear says, “Oh no, what if this is the truth?”

Method #3: Tap into the calm that follows chaos.                               

This one can’t be orchestrated (nor would you want to) but you can recognize and take advantage of it when it happens naturally.

After a crisis—a big fight, a period of upheaval, or an emergency—there is often a period where you feel spent but calm in which you can feel your intuition strongly. The sense of “knowing” what to do is particularly clear.

This might have happened to you. After a blowout fight with a partner, did you suddenly know it was time to break up? After a personal crisis, did you suddenly know what you had to do to get your life on track? Why you can see most clearly when your eyes were just full of tears is anyone’s guess, but it’s a useful moment to tap into.

Like I said, this has to come naturalistically. Don’t go pick a fight or start some drama. But do see it as a silver lining to the cloud of hard times.

Don’t go pick a fight or start some drama. But do see it as a silver lining to the cloud of hard times.

Method #4: What would you tell a friend?

This one is pretty straightforward: if a friend came to you with the same idea, what would you tell them? “I just have a feeling that I shouldn’t sign this contract.” “Everyone is telling me otherwise, but I just know this is the person we should hire.” Regardless of the answer, it can be helpful to look at it from an outside perspective. If a friend told you the same thing, would you dismiss it? Look more closely? Encourage them to reason it through? Or go with their gut? Do the same for yourself.

So tap into that calm voice that knows, not the fear that whispers “what if.” For our listener, and possibly for you, her gut feeling sounds closer to fear than truth. Although that means there’s work to be done, the good news is that fear can be faced.

In the meantime, dig under that fear and ask your gut for the truth. It may be quiet, it may be rusty, but in time, you’ll hear it loud and clear.

How to Write a Compelling Introductory Paragraph

Sometimes, the beginning isn’t the best place to start—at least when it comes to writing essays. Composing a great first paragraph is important, but tackling it before your ideas are fully formed can lead to trouble. Don’t let your essay start with a whimper. Instead, put it on the fast track to success with these four tips for writing compelling introductory paragraphs:

1. Don't write your introduction first

Maybe you have the perfect anecdote in mind for your introduction, or maybe you’re experiencing the anguish of a stubbornly blank computer screen. Either way, a wiser approach is to outline your thesis statement and your main points first—then you can flesh out your introduction. End your first paragraph with a strong thesis statement that summarizes the central idea of your essay clearly and succinctly. Once you know where your destination is, it’s much easier to decide on the direction for your opening paragraph.

2. Incorporate a bit of intrigue

What was the most interesting thing that you learned while studying this topic? Is there a way to use this information to introduce your essay? Starting off with a “wow” factor that’s relevant to your overall argument can be a powerful writing strategy.

However, no matter how interesting your topic is, resist the urge to cram too many ideas or facts into your first paragraph. Your introduction is vital because it frames your writing as a whole. It should hint at what’s to come without giving away every detail. Try these two simple steps to lead into your thesis sentence at the end of your introductory paragraph:

●     Start with one compelling fact or observation that will keep the reader engaged enough to read more.

●     Then, add another sentence or two to show how you are linking that introductory idea to your thesis statement.

It’s that simple. Don’t try to make it more complicated. You have the rest of your essay to fill in the details and give the broader context.

3. Avoid obvious statements

Don’t use broad generalizations that tell the reader nothing about where your essay is headed. Avoid clichés like, “Since the beginning of time... ” or, “The dictionary defines (term) as …” or, worst of all, “This essay will cover…” Those statements don't tell your audience anything new, and worse, they can appear unoriginal.

4. Finally, revise your work

Once you have your introductory paragraph drafted, it's time to review it with a critical eye. Try doing a word count of your paragraph, and then cutting that down by 20 percent. Your introduction may be longer or shorter depending on the overall length of your essay, but for an essay that’s a few pages long, challenge yourself to keep your first paragraph to 100 or fewer words.

Consider this example:

Original draft: The residents of the island of Puerto Rico have been U.S. citizens for 100 years, yet they do not have the right to cast their votes for the nation’s president every four years. Twice in the past five years, people who voted in elections in the Caribbean territory have favored the idea of statehood, yet a deep divide remains over what is the right course of action. The decision to make Puerto Rico the 51st U.S. state would help to stabilize the island’s dire financial situation while benefiting the nation as a whole, both in terms of the economy and the culture. (104 words)

After editing: Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens for 100 years, yet they do not have the right to vote for their nation’s president. Twice in the past five years, voters in the Caribbean territory have favored the idea of statehood, yet a deep divide remains over the right course. Making Puerto Rico the 51st U.S. state would help to stabilize the island’s economy, while benefiting the nation as a whole financially and culturally. (74 words)

See how much stronger self-editing can make your introductory paragraph, just by cutting a few extra words? The faster you can get to your interesting facts and your overall point, the more grateful (and impressed!) your readers will be. 

Lora Wegman is a contributing writer for Varsity Tutors, a live learning platform that connects students with personalized instruction to accelerate academic achievement.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.