I have talked before about the perils of multi-tasking and partial attention.

New research by Professor David Strayer at the University of Utah has confirmed previous research indicating that speaking on a mobile phone is at least as dangerous as driving while over the legal alcohol limit. The research is published in the journal Human Factors. Cell phones are so distracting because of a phenomenon called "inattention blindness," where the drivers enter a kind of "virtual reality" with the person they’re talking to. In the research, the drivers who talked on phones remembered half as many of the objects they looked at compared to those who were driving without talking on phones. Furthermore, the drivers did not even realize that they weren’t really "seeing" everything in front of them on the road: they thought they were driving perfectly safely. So it is likely that using a cell phone – even a hands free model – is considerably more distracting even than eating or drinking while driving.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you can safely juggle driving and your cell phone: you may drop one or the other.

“Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.”
– Henry David Thoreau (American Essayist and Philosopher, 1817-1862)

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There’s a nice article at a website that I like a lot. This one recommends adopting an approach of examining our capacity for work in four different ways: physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual.

There are powerful reasons for using multidimensional perspectives to help people not just function at their best, but also to be resilient in the face of adversity. I would like to add two things to this article.

First is an exceedingly useful concept is the “complexity quotient” (CQ), which measures our ability to adapt to changing complexity. It is another way of thinking about a person’s “capacity.” Successful leaders, winning athletes and healthy individuals are extremely flexible and have a high CQ. They can raise their game and adapt quickly. On the other hand, they also have the ability to let go when the pressure is off. After recovering from a mental breakdown, the psychologist Carl Jung was known not only for his remarkable scholarship, but also for his extraordinary ability to relax and to become childlike and to think up all sorts of games for his children. These are signs of a well-rounded, balanced and integrated personality. Sometimes we see people in whom this ability goes haywire, and they overcompensate with drugs, alcohol or risky sexual behavior.

Second, I think that it’s valuable to also add the capacity of your relationships and your energy. Robust, dynamic and supportive relationships can enhance your capacity for work and play, and they buffer you from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. We do not usually think about the capacity of the subtle systems of the body, but they are there and very real. Strengthening them with techniques such as breathing, yoga or qigong, can dramatically improve your quality of life and capacity for effectiveness and enjoyment.

Technorati tags: Capacity Complexity quotient Subtle systems Biofield

When we think about burnout, most of us concentrate on the psychological, relational and subtle aspects of the problem. But it is really important to be aware that just about any activity that isn’t balanced and moderated can burn us out.

I have just read a very nice article about avoiding workout burnout. We have all known youngsters who have so over-indulged in something like chocolate cake that they have become sick. Despite Mae West assuring us that “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful,” even the most positive of activities can turn around and bite us if not done in moderation. How many of us have returned to the gym and behaved like a bull in a china shop. And paid for it for the next three days….

One thing to add to this nice article. If you do over do it in the gym, and your muscles feel as if you’ve just gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson, you can usually reduce the period of pain and stiffness with the supplement Methylsulfonylmethane (MSM). So long as you are not sensitive to it, three 500mg capsules can be very helpful.

“Temperate temperance is best; intemperate temperance injures the cause of temperance.”
–Mark Twain (a.k.a. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, American Humorist, Writer and Lecturer, 1835-1910)

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Clinicians throughout the world are looking forward to being able to use a new medicine for obesity called rimonabant, which will be marketed as Acomplia by Sanofi-Aventis. It was launched in the United Kingdom yesterday, after being given official European Union marketing approval last week. We do not expect to get it in the United States until sometime in 2007, assuming that the FDA gives it approval. The medicine is not cheap, but interestingly there is also some data to suggest that it may help some people stop smoking.

So why the interest? The original idea for the compound was based on the observation that many people become very hungry if they use cannabis and specific cannabinoid receptors were found in the brain that are responsible for many of the actions of the drug.

A recent and important study involving a two-year investigation of 3045 obese or overweight individuals was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It indicated that treatment with 20 mg/day of rimonabant plus diet for 2 years promoted modest but sustained reductions in weight and waist circumference and favorable changes in metabolic and cardiac risk factors.

Only about half of the people in the study completed it, so we must interpret the data cautiously. The idea of using a pill to manage weight is appealing as a weight-loss aid for some patients. But as I have pointed out before, the control of weight is highly complex, and it is highly unlikely that a pill will be successful on its own. What are needed are long-term, comprehensive lifestyle changes, together with careful attention to the psychological and subtle aspects of weight control.

We have had a great many requests to publish our own comprehensive weight management strategy – The Atlanta Approach – that we have been using with great success for almost two decades. If there is interest in me doing so, I shall put our notes together into a downloadable eBook.

Technorati tags: Rimonabant Acomplia Cannabinoid receptor Weight management The Atlanta Approach

It often seems as if treatment guidelines change every year. The levels at which experts recommend treating cholesterol, glucose levels and blood pressure have all changed recently. Some cynics say that it’s all a device by drug companies to get more people on treatment, but that’s not really true. The guidelines change as we get more evidence that not treating something leads to bad consequences in the future. A good example would be the level at which experts recommend treating elevated blood glucose. The recommendation was changed when it was discovered that even small elevations of glucose could have a dramatic impact on the development of coronary artery disease.

We now have another change, this time with blood pressure. Everyone knows that high blood pressure can be dangerous. But researchers have recently defined something that we call pre-hypertension (a systolic blood pressure 120 to 139 mm Hg or diastolic blood pressure 80 to 89 mm Hg). What was not known for sure was what impact pre-hypertension would have on the incidence of cardiovascular disease.

A study published in the journal Hypertension has clarified the issue. The research involved 2629 people participating in the twelve-year-long Strong Heart Study. Pre-hypertension was more common in people with diabetes. And as expected, from the link between blood pressure and insulin resistance, impaired glucose tolerance or impaired fasting glucose in pre-hypertensive people greatly increased the risk of developing cardiovascular disease risk. We now need to do more research to see if interventions, such as drug treatment for blood pressure control for pre-hypertensive individuals are warranted. This is particularly important if people also have impaired fasting glucose, impaired glucose tolerance, or diabetes is warranted, because risk factors for coronary artery disease are cumulative: the more risk factors, the bigger the risk.

What this means is that your health care provider should help you keep your blood pressure lower than we thought, particularly if you have a personal or a family history of problems with blood glucose or of heart disease.

Technorati tags:Hypertension Insulin resistance Diabetes mellitus Coronary artery disease