Weekly Roundup: Overthinking Happiness, Cannabigerol Lowers Anxiety, Ketones Reverse Cognitive Decline, and Your Brain Can Store 10x More Information
Weekly roundup of fascinating brain and behaviour research
This week happiness, reducing anxiety, brain processing for us all, and in the aging brain. Please read on…
Overthinking Happiness…Makes You Less Happy!
Well, we all want to be happy. We’ve done our own research into this concluding that emotional needs are critical to this. But this research has shown what some have long suspected - that the pursuit, or more specifically overthinking of happiness, seems to backfire and reduce happiness. Oh dear!
Zerwas et al. collected data and conducted three separate studies over more than 10 years across a diverse population group of over 1’800 people in the USA.
What they found is that rating happiness as important seem innocuous - but the key is that those who judge, rate, their happiness experience have lower wellbeing. And surprisingly those who judge their happiness more seem to experience more negativity over positive events. It seems that there is simply too much overthinking.
Rather than judge happiness is seems better to simply accept where you’re at - but also to simply accept all emotions. This is what the researchers recommend and what previous research has shown - that experiencing wide ranging emotions is actually good for you.
On the topic of emotions previous research has also shown that mixed emotions (bitter/sweet and awe/fear) are also good for you:
On the topic of wellbeing a study just out has looked at Cannabigerol, a lesser-known cannabinoid without the intoxication typically associated with whole plant cannabis, and how it can reduce stress and anxiety and hence improve wellbeing.
Cannabigerol Lowers Anxiety - and Improves Memory
Carrie Culter et al. conducted a double-blind, placebo-controlled, experimental trial with 34 healthy cannabis users. They found that cannabigerol reduced stress, and reduced anxiety. This is similar to the effects of cannabis and other cannabis derived products. However, this is without some of the effects of cannabis, but also of note is that memory also seemed to improve.
This is promising because there have been well-documented adverse effects of cannabis also including decreased memory and focus.
Now let’s look at wellbeing from the perspective of healthy brains.
Think to Reduce Dementia
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