A Successful Weight Loss Diet Starts from the Inside

If you're like most women, you've been on a million weight loss diets, from Weight Watchers and Atkins to South Beach and celeb diets. You voraciously read magazines for their weight loss tips and gravitate toward the headlines that promise you can lose weight fast. The chances are good that you have, indeed, lost weight on many of these diets, but the chances are even better that you've gained it all back - plus some. Your skinny jeans become your tight jeans, and then they get tucked in the back of your closet, along with your fantasies of becoming a size 0.


Weight Loss Diet Failure


You've probably bought into the propaganda that says you've failed at dieting; a different - and more accurate - way of looking at it is that the weight loss diet has failed you. That's because most diets focus on short-term changes that result in temporary weight loss, but never tackle the underlying factors that make you put on the pounds to begin with. In other words, they focus only on the "outside" problem - your body - and neglect everything below the surface - your emotions, your intellect, and your relationships. 


A diet for summer might work for swimsuit season, but if you don't strengthen your foundations before you lose weight, those Diesel skinny jeans won't fit when fall rolls around.


Turning Failure into Success


In order to lose weight and keep it off, you need a guide who will lead you on an exploratory journey to discover the power and control that you possess. Then, you need to be taught how to harness those powers to achieve all that you want in life - including fitting into your skinny jeans. 


You may have been told - either verbally or through insidious advertisements - that if you don't have power over your eating, you have no power at all. Nothing could be further from the truth. Every woman is magnificent, and every woman has mental powers, emotional powers, social powers and physical powers just waiting to be tapped. When you heal your past wounds, and recognize and reinforce the power within you, you have laid the foundation for permanent weight loss. 


Practical and Fun


If a weight loss diet is a drag, you'll never succeed in reaching your goals. On the other hand, if you have an empowering program to follow that is also practical and fun, you hold the keys to success. In fact, you can even drop a whole size in two weeks. 


The "secret" - if you want to call it that - is to adopt a well-tested exercise program that can instantly fit into your lifestyle. Remember, the success lies in simplicity, clarity, and practicality. Then, you need to adopt an eating plan that works synergistically with your exercise plan to build on the foundation of the inner work you have done in order to embrace your personal power. 


Remember that, with the right guide, you can do more than go on yet another weight loss diet; you can truly win in all areas of your life and achieve an outer beauty than matches your inner beauty.

A Step Closer to Drug Addiction and Phobia Treatment

Scientists are now looking into solving drug abuse cases by studying on a certain medication that could possibly be the most effective drug for treating addiction. This specific drug is also known to control phobias. The US Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory provides further evidence that a drug known as D- cycloserine could play a role in helping to extinguish the craving behaviors associated with drug abuse, or specifically, with the addiction to psychotropic drugs. Their study found that mice treated with D-cycloserine were less likely to spend time in an environment where they had previously been trained to expect cocaine than mice treated with a placebo.


A graduate student from Stony Brook University working under Brookhaven Laboratory, Carlos Bermeo said that since the association between drugs and the places where they are used can trigger craving and/or relapse in humans, a medication that could aid in the reduction or even extinction of such responses could be a powerful tool in the treatment of addiction.


The D-cycloserine was originally developed as an antibiotic. But this drug has also shown to extinguish conditioned fear in pre-clinical (animal) studies, and has been successfully tested in human clinical trials for the treatment of acrophobia or fear of heights. This finding led the researchers to wonder whether D-cycloserine could extinguish drug seeking behaviors as well. Last 2006, a group of scientists not associated with the Brookhaven Lab tested this hypothesis in rats. They found out that D-cycloserine facilitated the extinction of “cocaine conditioned place reference”-- in which the tendency for the animals to spend more time in a chamber where they had been trained to expect cocaine than in a chamber where they had no access to the drug whatsoever. This study builds on the previous work and adds information on the drug dose effect, the lasting properties of the treatment, and the locomotor effects of this compound.


In the study, the group worked with C57bL/c mice. The animals were first trained to receive cocaine in a specific environment. Once conditioned, place preference was established (animals willingly spent more time in a cocaine-paired environment than in a neutral environment), the mice were treated with either D-cycloserine or saline and were allowed to spend forty minutes in either the previously cocaine-paired environment in which the drug was no longer available, or the neutral environment. According to one of their researchers, this paradigm would be analogous to a clinical approach where the addict is returned to their natural environment where drug use was done, but this time with no drug available. He added that reduced seeking of the drug in the same environment—that is the extinction behavior—is a great indicator of future success in treatment and reduced chance of relapse.


However, these researchers said that it is important to remember that these are very preliminary results from a small animal study, and much further research will be required before testing this drug in humans. Nonetheless, it is inspiring to know that this drug may show promise in treating cocaine addiction that continues to take a toll on society and for which no pharmacological treatment currently exists. Such research studies would take us a step closer in treating phobias, as well as drug abuse.

A Sleep Study - What to Expect

When sleep apnea is suspected a sleep study is recommended in most cases. It is a very good tool to collect comprehensive information about somebody’s sleep pattern.


Multiple data channels will record certain physiological parameters taken from your sleeping body. These are: blood oxygen saturation, airflow through your nose, chest effort, muscle tension, eye movement, and brain activity.


A number of electrodes and other sensors will be attached to your head and chest, like during a routine EKG. The study usually takes place in a specially equipped room called a sleep lab in a hospital or a sleep clinic. You will be asked to bring your regular sleeping supplies.


When you show up in the lab you will learn all you need to know about the study, you will also have a chance to ask all the questions you may have. The whole procedure is rather relaxing, there is no pain or risk involved. The technician that will work with you wants you to feel comfortable and relaxed so you can have as good a sleep as possible. 


The only complication being that, as mentioned before, there will be several electrodes and sensors attached to various places on your body that may be slightly uncomfortable and may limit your freedom of movement. 


Once you are in bed all the wires and tubings will be connected to the recording equipment. Usually it is located across the wall in the neighboring room so you are not disturbed by its operation. 


At any time if you need to leave the bed the study will be stopped and you will be allowed to leave the room, it will just take a minute to disconnect you from the equipment. Even if you are not able to sleep through the night they will usually collect enough data to come up with a diagnosis.


Most people who have sleep apnea are sleep depraved and fall asleep easily. There will also be a camera and a microphone in the room so the position, movements, and sounds of your body during sleep can be correlated with the recorded data. 


Once the study is over all sensors and electrodes will be deattached and you will be free to go home. Within a day or two your study will be scored and the results reviewed by a doctor specializing in sleep disorders. 


If the study reveals that you have sleep apnea your doctor will choose the best treatment option based on the severity of your disease and other factors including medical insurance and personal preference. 


For more information on Sleep Apnea go to http://www.the-sleep-zone.com/informationonsleepapnea.html