Caroline > Recent Status Updates

Why aren't saunas everywhere as part of healthcare?: "In Finland, the sauna has been called the poor man's pharmacy. Emerging research substantiates this sentiment; going to the sauna has an astounding list of health benefits that make me wonder why it isn't prescribed for conditions ranging from insomnia to hypertension to chronic pain to asthma. In addition to easing stress and promoting relaxation, sauna [BELOW]

"...what's known as the Peak-End Rule in psychology suggests that people judge and remember experiences based on how they felt at the "peak," or most extreme and intense point, and at the end of the experience. So these extreme—and usually rare—instances can become our default memory of what winter is like, even when evidence suggests that's not usually the case." [CONT'D BELOW]

"Mindsets are true but biased: they zoom in on one slice of complicated phenomena. Similarly, our attention is selective: it's meant to filter. Attending to every light, sound, and physical sensation at all times would put you in sensory overload. We can't notice and observe everything, so our mental shortcuts—including our mindsets—help determine our focus. [...] One of the ways mindsets become [BELOW]

Author is right that these days seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is unfortunately, like so many other psychological disorders, experiencing over self-diagnosis. Specific criteria characterize this disorder, and most people don't meet those: "Estimates vary, but research generally suggests that in the US, somewhere between 0.5 percent and 3 percent of people suffer from the disorder [...] The vast [BELOW]

"While there were questionnaires that asked about seasonal depression, distress, and sleep disorder in winter, there were no surveys that made room for the potentially positive aspects of the season. This not only created problems for my study, it hinted at biases in the larger scientific framework for researching winter. If we can only study what we can measure, the fact that there were no existing [BELOW]

"Sometimes all you can do is try to get the conspiracist to focus on the real world and spend less time online. Researchers have shown that activities and goals that give conspiracists a real-world focus can help to break the spell. When conspiracists are focused on real-life objectives, outside their online circles, those groups and conspiracies begin to matter less to them. Most people prefer [BELOW]

"Serendipity [...] is the bread and butter of conspiracism and conspirituality. In this world, nothing happens by accident. Everything in life is scripted and planned, both by the "black hat" forces of evil and the "white hat" good guys. Coincidences don't exist. Correlation is causation. It's not just that conspiracists assume a connection between two or three seemingly unrelated events. They [BELOW]

It's significant that both women the author profiled lived through repeated traumatic events in childhood and are socially isolated and adrift. The last two traits in particular create a trap: These attracted them to a toxic combination of New Age beliefs and conspiracy theories (a combo dubbed "conspirituality" here) in the first place. Then, conspirituality circles [BELOW]