Jun
29
Two interesting articles on BBC Health recently.
The first talks about a University of Toronto study which claims that one death in 25 is linked to alcohol consumption – one in 10 in Europe and one in seven in the former Soviet Union. The researchers say, “Globally, the effect of alcohol on burden of disease is about the same size as that of smoking in 2000, but it is greatest in developing countries.”
These include India and China, where alcohol consumption is rapidly increasing.
 photo credit: Rivard
Women’s consumption of alcohol is increasing rapidly, but men are still five times more likely to die from alcohol-related illness, and young people are more likely to be negatively affected by alcohol than older people.
The paper says that, although there have been some benefits of moderate drinking in relation to cardiovascular disease, these are far outweighed by the detrimental effects of alcohol on disease and injury.
In addition to diseases directly caused by drinking, such as liver disorders, a wide range of other conditions such as mouth and throat cancer, colorectal cancer, breast cancer, depression and stroke are linked to drinking.
Depression is a particularly worrying one, since global rates of depression are rising anyhow (though the cause and effect relationship between depression and drinking often goes both ways). So is cancer – according to the other BBC article (by Professor Martin Wiseman of the Global Cancer Research Fund), cancer rates are predicted to double in the next 40 years.
photo credit: DON PUGH PERTH WESTERN AUSTRALIA
Prof. Wiseman, who appears well-named, states: “scientists estimate about a third of the most common cancers could be prevented if people ate healthily, maintained a healthy weight and were regularly physically active.” His article recommends adopting the model of Bogota in Columbia, which has deliberately restructured the city to be friendlier to walking and cycling. This is good news for the New Zealand Government’s National Cycleway Project, too (and I’m seeing more cycleways round and about Auckland, though there is a long way to go before they become a viable network, and I still wouldn’t ride a bicycle here myself).
In terms of health improvement, the recommendations are the usual ones: stay active, eat healthily, drink moderately if at all, stop smoking or don’t start – we’ve heard all these a thousand times. There’s often a crucial gap, though, between what we know we ought to do and what we actually end up doing. Somehow some part of ourselves sabotages the process and we end up back in our old patterns.
That’s what I set out to change with hypnotherapy. People who come to me usually know how to live healthily and they want to do it, but there is that gap between desire and action. In a relaxed state, your mind can bridge that gap and help you live better, more healthily and (we hope) for longer.
Technorati Tags: exercise, cancer, alcohol, hypnotherapy, motivation, healthy lifestyle, personal change
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Dec
5
My British colleagues Adam Eason and Sophie Nicholls have both featured this story from the Independent on their blogs this week: Less is More: How to cut down on drink.
photo credit: Bohman
I always enjoy reading spontaneous testimonies from ordinary people who have been helped by hypnotherapy. This one is fairly typical. “I didn’t ‘go under’” (whatever that means – I have no idea), “I didn’t feel anything magical”, “I thought it hadn’t worked”, “I couldn’t account for it – I just started acting differently without trying to”, “I’m feeling so much better, I’m a changed person”. Yep, that was hypnotherapy, all right.
Drinking alcohol in moderation is a very timely topic, as we come into the “festive season” – where “festive” is often a euphemism for “overindulging and then regretting it”. But alcohol, and food, are a problem for people year-round, and they don’t need to be.
A few people, of course, are addicted to alcohol, they have a physical dependency, and they need to stop drinking it completely. But most people who drink more than they are comfortable with or more than is good for them can cut down to a healthier level, where they’re actually enjoying the occasional drink and feel fine afterwards. It just takes a simple mental readjustment.
photo credit: sanbeiji
Drinking too much, eating too much, smoking, sitting in one place staring at a screen, and the various other weapons of mass distraction we employ as a society are not effective ways of dealing with stress, anxiety or discomfort. In fact, they will lead to more stress, anxiety and discomfort, not less. What works is facing our discomfort squarely, employing some simple techniques of emotional and stress management that work without equipment or external substances, and realigning our minds so that we are pursuing our best selves.
If you’re in Auckland and you’d like to work on some of these issues, contact me and we’ll set up a time. If you’re outside Auckland… that’s why I record my hypnotherapy scripts. You can get them on audio CD or as individual MP3 downloads, and they’ll also be on the CD accompanying my forthcoming book, all available in the Hypno NZ shop.
Technorati Tags: hypnosis, hypnotherapy, alcohol, drinking, emotion, stress, anxiety
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Nov
20
New Zealand has a new government in place, one with, I hope, quite a different philosophy of social change to the previous one. I don’t think my health blog is necessarily the place to talk politics, but I do want to talk about different approaches to changing behaviour, sparked off by a blog post on GNIF Brain Blogger about changing student drinking behaviour.
Many students drink excessively, including underage students. There are a number of possible responses to this.
One response, which I think is completely wrongheaded, is to advocate lowering the legal drinking age. Some college presidents in the US are actually promoting this as a solution. The idea appears to be that the current drinking age is unenforcable and is leading to clandestine binge drinking, which will somehow disappear if it is made legal. To me, this is rather like advocating the decriminalization of assault in order to lower violent crime statistics. It’s been tried here – the legal drinking age in New Zealand was lowered from 21 to 18 a few years ago, over the protests of the same groups who are now, of course, dealing with the inevitable aftermath of rising youth binge drinking, crime and alcohol-related deaths. Liberalizing the laws because they’re not being observed is not a good solution.
photo credit: International Festival
As the Brain Blogger article points out, education – even in an educational institution – appears to have little effect on changing behaviour. Awareness campaigns attempting to convince students, through flyers and newspaper advertisements, that binge drinking is “uncool” and against campus social norms may not be that effective either.
The article concludes:
Perhaps the main motivation for why college students consume alcohol is to escape from reality, release stress and relax in a social setting. These factors are key in understanding why alcohol consumption is at an all time high among college age students, regardless of attempts by college campuses to reshape student attitudes.
Programs that focus upon constructive methods of relieving stress and encouraging students to find healthy alternatives to partying could be more effective in reducing alcohol use on college campuses. Posting flyer’s [sic] and newspaper advertisements focusing on alternatives to partying would be more helpful than pressuring students to stop drinking by deeming it “uncool.”
This, I think, goes to the heart of the issue. Changing behaviour by changing the external pressures for or against the behaviour only goes so far. People, even young people, do things for internal reasons. In particular, they do things which change their internal state for internal reasons.
What I believe is needed – not only for this issue but for many others – is to increase people’s awareness of their internal states and their ability to manage those states constructively. In other words, increase their self-awareness and self-efficacy, so that they no longer feel the need to use destructive behaviours.
There are plenty of simple techniques to increase self-efficacy, and I promote some of them right here. What I’d like to see our new government doing is what I set out to do with my clients: Increasing people’s life skills and their ability to live life positively, constructively and creatively.
Technorati Tags: social engineering, self-efficacy, techniques, self-management, emotional management, stress, life skills, behavior change, personal change, social change, sociology, alcohol, drinking, youth, binge, self-awareness
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