The Scottish psychologist R.D. Laing once said: True guilt is guilt at the obligation one owes to oneself to be oneself. False guilt is guilt felt at not being what other people feel one ought to be or assume that one is. Moderate feelings of guilt are beneficial because they encourage the individual to do the right thing. If nobody felt guilty about anything it would likely lead to a fearful world and it could even threaten the survival of the human species. There is also a more negative form of guilt which is excessive and harmful. This refers to a situation where the individual carries a sense of guilt around with them most of the time. The reasons for why the individual may become a victim of excessive guilt include: They have a poor self image. It can be a sign of mental health difficulties. Some people fall into negative thinking and this tends to include guilt. The individual has been a victim of physical or sexual abuse. Unhealthy relationships can leave people with feelings of guilt. Excessive stress. Alcohol or drug abuse.
Nadine Stewart was convinced she was going to die. Just ten minutes after setting off for a pop concert with her sister, she felt a tingling sensation in her arms and pain in her chest.
‘I knew I was having a heart attack,’ says Nadine, 41, a customer services adviser from Morecambe, Lancashire. ‘I begged my sister to take me to A&E: I ran in and screamed that I was having a heart attack.
‘They put me on a monitor and my heart was fine — what I had suffered was a panic attack. I have no idea to this day what caused it, but it terrified the life out of me.’
Nadine Stewart has to do everything nine times or fears her husband will die
But worse was to come. ‘Afterwards, I developed a fear that if I didn’t do something nine times, something terrible would happen to me, my husband Paul or a member of my family.’ says Nadine.
‘If I made a drink I had to stir it nine times. If I locked the door I had to check it nine times and if I used a cloth to wipe a surface I’d have to wipe it nine times. I don’t know why it was nine. I realised I was being utterly irrational. But every time I tried to curb it — such as only stirring my drink three times — I’d begin to panic.'
‘If I didn’t do these things nine times, I’d imagine Paul and me veering off the motorway in our car and see his injured face in the aftermath.’
Nadine had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), recognised by the World Health Organisation as one of the top ten most disabling disorders in terms of its effect on quality of life.
Last month both the British actress Emily Blunt and the MP Charles Walker revealed they suffered from it, with Walker admitting he had to do everything in multiples of four — and felt the need to wash his hands hundreds of times a day.
Who knew?
Surveys estimate that fewer than
10 per cent of those suffering OCD are currently receiving treatment.
Surveys estimate that fewer than
10 per cent of those suffering OCD are currently receiving treatment.
They are not alone. Around a million people in the UK are thought to be undergoing treatment for OCD, the majority of them women. Women are twice as likely as men to develop anxiety disorders such as OCD — and high-achieving perfectionists are particularly at risk.
‘There are two parts to OCD, the obsession and the compulsion,’ explains Joel Rose, of charity OCD Action. ‘The obsession is a thought that pops into your head, about harm coming to someone you love or you causing harm to someone.'
‘Everyone has these thoughts but most of us ignore them and get on with our lives. Someone with OCD will develop a compulsive ritual as a reaction to them. It can be continually washing their hands or something invisible like repeating the same phrase over and over in their heads.'
‘The time spent on these compulsions lengthens with time. A severe OCD sufferer might spend six or seven hours a day washing their hands in the hope nothing terrible happens to their children.’
The cause of the condition is not known, though a stressful event in someone’s life may trigger an underlying problem.
Nadine has never pinpointed the root of her troubles — though they began in the year she started a new job, moved house and got engaged. ‘I had no reason to feel anxious,’ she said, ‘though I suppose there was a lot of change.
‘I became scared of choking to death so I stopped eating and lost three stone in less than three months. I couldn’t leave the house without Paul, and even then it would take me three hours to pluck up the courage.’
Someone who can empathise with Nadine is Jeni Scott, 31, who’s had OCD for three years.
It began when her father had a heart attack and her mother was diagnosed with cancer, soon after Jeni left university.
‘I became obsessed with doing things in order,’ says Jeni, a tutor from Newport, Wales. ‘I started making lists but it had everything on it such as “get up, have shower, make a cup of tea” and if I didn’t stick to it I would punish myself by denying myself a treat.
Actress Emily Blunt, star of Five Year Engagement, has revealed she suffers from OCD
‘I developed a phobia of being in the rain in the wrong clothes and had to take a backpack with spare bra, pants, coat, shoes and umbrella everywhere with me. I’d carry antibacterial gel in my bag and use it every ten minutes. I’ve still no idea why I did it, I just found it helped me.’
Aisha Faisal, from Reading, Berkshire, also suffers from OCD — and it’s getting worse. ‘I developed it in my teens when my mother fell ill and I had to clean the house,’ the 26-year-old says. ‘Now I’m obsessed with everything being super-clean. I wash my hands 14 or 15 times a day, I shower for an hour at a time and wash the shower head and bath thoroughly before I step in.
‘If someone touches me, I cringe. My neighbour touched my scarf to tell me it was pretty and I had to have a shower and put all my clothes in the wash.’ Aisha, who has three children under four, admits her obsession extended to giving birth.
‘Each time I had Caesarean sections — the thought of having a natural birth makes me feel physically sick.’ She made the surgeons assure her everything had been scrubbed thoroughly before each operation. Understandably, her OCD worries the rest of her family. ‘My husband Ali finds it very hard to see me like this. I won’t let him touch me when he comes in from work: he has to shower and put on clean clothes before he can hug me.'
‘With three young children, being clean is impossible and I bathe them twice a day in the winter and sometimes four times a day in the summer if they’re hot and sticky.’
As a result of her obsession her own hands are red raw and she suffers from eczema. ‘I have been to the GP but it’s very difficult to treat. I know I must do something soon, because my eldest daughter, who is four, is picking up on my behaviour and I feel very guilty about that.'
‘The other day she came in from the garden and said she was dirty so needed to get out of her clothes and I washed her and cleaned her thoroughly. My husband can’t believe our electricity bill because the washing machine is on constantly.’
While Aisha is still in the grip of OCD, Jeni and Nadine have overcome the condition. According to the NHS, the two recognised forms of treatment are Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), which helped Jeni, and anti-depressants.
But Nadine used another therapy called The Linden Method — a two-day workshop costs £995 — when she reached her lowest point early last year.
‘I was unable to work, leave the house or answer the phone,’ she says. ‘My vision became blurry, my hands would spasm and I’d get pains like rheumatism. I began to think: “What’s the point in living?” yet I was too scared to kill myself.’
The Linden Method — which has also helped OCD sufferers Jemma and Jodie Kidd — works by convincing the sufferer’s sub-conscious that they are safe.
‘I’m a different person,’ says Nadine. ‘I can leave the house, I’m applying for jobs, taking up hobbies and it’s transformed my relationship with Paul.
‘He says it’s like having a wife in a wheelchair who can walk again. Except I feel I can not only walk, I can fly.’
The widely used diabetes drug metformin comes with a rather unexpected and alluring side effect: it encourages the growth of new neurons in the brain. The study reported in the July 6th issue of Cell Stem Cell, a Cell Press publication, also finds that those neural effects of the drug also make mice smarter. See Also: Health & Medicine Brain Tumor Stem Cells Nervous System Mind & Brain Brain Injury Intelligence Neuroscience Strange Science Reference Neural development Stem cell treatments Diabetes mellitus type 2 Embryonic stem cell The discovery is an important step toward therapies that aim to repair the brain not by introducing new stem cells but rather by spurring those that are already present into action, says the study's lead author Freda Miller of the University of Toronto-affiliated Hospital for Sick Children. The fact that it's a drug that is so widely used and so safe makes the news all that much better. Earlier work by Miller's team highlighted a pathway known as aPKC-CBP for its essential role in telling neural stem cells where and when to differentiate into mature neurons. As it happened, others had found before them that the same pathway is important for the metabolic effects of the drug metformin, but in liver cells. "We put two and two together," Miller says. If metformin activates the CBP pathway in the liver, they thought, maybe it could also do that in neural stem cells of the brain to encourage brain repair. The new evidence lends support to that promising idea in both mouse brains and human cells. Mice taking metformin not only showed an increase in the birth of new neurons, but they were also better able to learn the location of a hidden platform in a standard maze test of spatial learning. While it remains to be seen whether the very popular diabetes drug might already be serving as a brain booster for those who are now taking it, there are already some early hints that it may have cognitive benefits for people with Alzheimer's disease. It had been thought those improvements were the result of better diabetes control, Miller says, but it now appears that metformin may improve Alzheimer's symptoms by enhancing brain repair. Miller says they now hope to test whether metformin might help repair the brains of those who have suffered brain injury due to trauma or radiation therapies for cancer.
Next time if you get a missed call starting with +92; #90 or #09, don't show the courtesy of calling back because chances are it would lead to your SIM card being cloned. The telecom service providers are now issuing alerts to subscribers —particularly about the series mentioned above as the moment one press the call button after dialing the above number, someone at the other end will get your phone and SIM card cloned. According to reports, more than one lakh subscribers have fallen prey to this new telecom terror attack as the frequency of such calls continues to grow. Intelligence agencies have reportedly confirmed to the service providers particularly in UP West telecom division that such a racket is not only under way but the menace is growing fast. "We are sure there must be some more similar combinations that the miscreants are using to clone the handsets and all the information stored in them," an intelligence officer told TOI. General Manager (GM) BSNL, RV Verma, said the department had already issued alerts to all the broadband subscribers and now alert SMSes were being issued to other subscribers as well. As per Rakshit Tandon, an IT expert who also teaches at the police academy (UP), the crooks can use other combination of numbers as well while making a call. "It is better not to respond to calls received from unusual calling numbers," says Tandon. "At the same time one should avoid storing specifics of their bank account, ATM/ Credit/Debit card numbers and passwords in their phone memory because if one falls a prey to such crooks then the moment your cell phone or sim are cloned, the data will be available to the crooks who can withdraw amount from your bank accounts as well," warns Punit Misra; an IT expert who also owns a consultancy in Lucknow. The menace that threatens to steal the subscriber's information stored in the phone or external memory (sim, memory & data cards) has a very scary side as well. Once cloned, the culprits can well use the cloned copy to make calls to any number they wish to. This exposes the subscribers to the threat of their connection being used for terror calls. Though it will be established during the course of investigations that the cellphone has been cloned and misused elsewhere, it is sure to land the subscriber under quite some pressure till the time the fact about his or her phone being cloned and misused is established, intelligence sources said. "It usually starts with a miss call from a number starting with + 92. The moment the subscriber calls back on the miss call, his or her cell phone is cloned. In case the subscribers takes the call before it is dropped as a miss call then the caller on the other end poses as a call center executive checking the connectivity and call flow of the particular service provider. The caller then asks the subscriber to press # 09 or # 90 call back on his number to establish that the connectivity to the subscriber was seamless," says a victim who reported the matter to the BSNL office at Moradabad last week. "The moment I redialed the caller number, my account balance lost a sum of money. Thereafter, in the three days that followed every time I got my cell phone recharged, the balance would be reduced to single digits within the next few minutes," she told the BSNL officials.
New motoring laws have come into force in France making it compulsory for drivers to carry breathalyser kits in their vehicles. As of July 1, motorists and motorcyclists will face an on-the-spot fine unless they travel with two single-use devices as part of a government drive to reduce the number of drink-drive related deaths. The new regulations, which excludes mopeds, will be fully enforced and include foreigner drivers from November 1 following a four-month grace period. Anyone failing to produce a breathalyser after that date will receive an 11 euro fine. French police have warned they will be carrying out random checks on drivers crossing into France via ferries and through the Channel Tunnel to enforce the new rules. Retailers in the UK have reported a massive rise in breathalyser sales as British drivers travelling across the Channel ensure they do not fall foul of the new legislation. Car accessory retailer Halfords said it is selling one kit every minute of the day and has rushed extra stock into stores to cope with the unprecedented demand. Six out of 10 Britons travelling to France are not aware they have to carry two NF approved breathalysers at all times, according to the company. The French government hopes to save around 500 lives a year by introducing the new laws, which will encourage drivers who suspect they may be over the limit to test themselves with the kits. The French drink-driving limit is 50mg of alcohol in 100ml of blood - substantially less than the UK limit of 80mg.
Fake. Phony. Scam artist. No matter what you call it, being at the wrong end of a health hoax is never fun. You might expect sneaky marketing claims from fast-food chains, but these seven foods are more along the lines of a sucker punch.
| Nutella |
Sure, their commercials make the spread sound like a wholesome mix of hazelnuts, skim milk, and a touch of cocoa, but it turns out Nutella's about as healthy as a Milky Way. One woman was so appalled when she realized that two tablespoons of her go-to breakfast spread packed in 200 calories, 21 grams of sugar, and 11 grams of fat, that she took the company to court…and won. (In fact, if you bought a jar of Nutella between January 2008 and Feb 3, 2012, you're entitled to a refund.)
But Nutella isn't the only nutrition sham at the grocery store. No matter how you slice it, a number of "healthy" foods fall seriously short on their promises. How many of these fast-talkers are fooling you?
'HEALTH' FOODS THAT AREN'T HEALTHY
| "All-Natural" Breakfast Cereals |
Kashi, Kellogg's "natural" brand, is currently under fire from consumers over the fact that the ingredients used in their cereals aren't completely natural as their marketing implies. In fact, scientists from the Cornucopia Institute recently detected GMO material in 100 percent of the soy in Kashi GoLean.
'HEALTH' FOODS THAT AREN'T HEALTHY
| Sports Drinks |
While Gatorade may be beneficial if you're putting in an extremely hard workout—like marathon hard—most of us are just getting an unwelcome dose of sugar, salt, and loads of sketchy artificial food coloring. Plus, a new study in the journal General Dentistry suggests that sports and energy drinks are responsible for serious tooth enamel damage and decay.
'HEALTH' FOODS THAT AREN'T HEALTHY
| Energy Bars |
The reason you feel a boost from your bar is most likely due to the copious amounts of sweetener added to it. Many companies disguise just how much sugar is hidden inside by using various types of sugar—like high-fructose corn syrup, brown sugar, and cane juice—to try and fool you. Case in point: PowerBar ProteinPlus Chocolate Brownie bar, which offers up 30 grams of sugar from at least three different sugar sources.
'HEALTH' FOODS THAT AREN'T HEALTHY
| "No Artificial Preservatives" Meats |
Oscar Mayer recently announced that it will no longer be using artificial preservatives in their "Selects" line of hot dogs and deli slices. While we applaud the weiner company for taking out nasty chemicals like potassium chloride and sodium nitrate, that doesn't mean that these foods are now healthy. Processed meat is still processed meat, and a daily serving of bacon or salami can up your risk of death 20%, according to research from the Harvard School of Public Health.
'HEALTH' FOODS THAT AREN'T HEALTHY
| Bottled Green Tea |
We've touted the benefits of green tea for years, but those sweetened, bottled beverages aren't what we've been talking about. Some mass-produced bottles have only a miniscule amount of the powerful catechins, and they're loaded with sugar. SoBe Energize Green Tea, for example, offers up more than 50 grams of sugar in one 20-ounce bottle.
'HEALTH' FOODS THAT AREN'T HEALTHY
| Egg Substitute |
We're not saying that egg substitute is necessarily bad for you, but they're not necessarily better for your cholesterol than the real thing—something most of us assume. A new study from the University of Connecticut found that people who ate whole eggs actually increased their HDL (the healthy cholesterol) more than those who ate egg substitutes.
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