AWeber - FOHAC Pleasure vs. Self-soothing #350

Published: Sun, 04/17/16

Fair Oaks Health News

Welcome

April 17, 2016

Pleasure vs. Self-soothing

Hi ,

In the hustle and bustle of the average life things can get pretty stressful at times. Work, traffic, the spouse and kids, the endless chores waiting to be done, it all piles up and we get stressed. What do you do to reduce that stress? How do you sooth the savage stress beast living in your chest, neck, or belly? Maybe a couple of cold ones from the fridge, maybe getting lost in the internet, maybe that pint of ice cream, or maybe you grabbed some of your favorite fast food treats and a 32 ounce soda on the way home and can now slip into a restful food coma.

Stress happens, and most typically we engage in some sort of self-soothing behavior to help us cope with the stress. Self-soothing is a better option than going postal on the neighbor’s kids that are always over at your house when all you want is a little peace and quiet. Self-soothing works and it does help us feel better, even if feeling better is really just feeling less stressed by feeling less in general. Most self-soothing works by helping us to block out the feelings we don’t like. Sometimes this is by direct chemical action on the brain, like with alcohol or sugar, other times it is by distracting us with other sensations.

The concern I have with self-soothing is that most people have come to believe that this soothed state is the same as pleasure. We have been trained to think that the intense taste sensations from high sugar and fat foods are pleasurable. We have been taught that the buzz from alcohol feels good – when in fact it is only a state of feeling less. In too many areas of our life we have given up the pursuit of true pleasure and settled for the ease of simple soothing.

Pleasure is a functional survival mechanism hardwired into our brains. In simple terms, pleasure is the rewarding good feeling that comes from doing things that directly enhance our moment-to-moment or long-term survival. A simple example: if we play a high stakes poker game and win enough money to meet our survival needs for the next year, we are going to feel extreme pleasure.

Philosophers have debated the nature of pleasure for thousands of years, but in the last hundred years the neurobiology and brain chemistry of pleasure is giving us a better understanding of the role of pleasure in both humans and animals. One current understanding is based on tracking the specific neurotransmitters that stimulate the pleasure centers in the brain and the behaviors that evoke these responses. Three fundamental behaviors are observed: novelty seeking, harm avoidance, and reward dependence. All these pleasure behaviors involve stimulatory neurotransmitters. This is the key I want to point out about pleasure – it is an active state of increased awareness generated by increased output of stimulatory neurotransmitters in response to our doing something that meets some level of our survival needs.

If we are hungry, getting something to eat to satiate that hunger produces pleasure. If we are lonely, going out and connecting with others (if we do a good job of connecting) will produce pleasure. If we are being chased by evil ninjas, effectively avoiding their evil intent feels good. If we are the top in our sales division and get the big bonus, that feels good. These are all behaviors that produce positive results for our lives. This is the key I want you to recall when I look at soothing behaviors and false pleasures.

Our brain does not know the difference between imagination and reality. The same brain pathways fire off signals to the same regions when we imagine an event as when we actually experience the event. So if we are watching a movie and identifying with the main character being chased by evil ninjas, our imagination will fire neurotransmitters to the pleasure centers when the character avoids the evil ninjas just like it would if we were experiencing the event in real life. The huge difference is that the movie is not real life and we did not actually do anything to enhance our survival. We were in pretend mode. Pretend mode can be a powerful tool for preparing for action, but it can also contribute to the gradual decimation of our self-esteem if it never moves into action. Pretending just to pretend is a self-soothing behavior to enable us to evoke artificial feelings. This is the intent of self-soothing most of the time – to evoke artificial good feelings without actually having to engage in doing something that enhances your survival. Consequently most self-soothing has negative consequences to one’s health and well-being.

A very obvious example of self-soothing with negative consequences is drug abuse. A little crystal meth might make you feel like you are on the top of the world for a while, but all the while it is destroying your health physically, emotionally, and socially. Alcoholics know the

consequences of using alcohol to manage their stress. Food-aholics wipe out their digestive tracts, pancreas, liver, brain, and eventually their hearts. Yet those using them perceive each of these behaviors as pleasurable.

The problem is not the self-soothing in itself, but that the people substitute self-soothing for effective action that would reduce their stress through positive change. Pretending to feel better does nothing to actually make you better. Pleasure is designed to be the reward for actually doing something that works to make you better. Chasing the reward without doing the work to deserve the reward gradually destroys your health because your body needs the actual improvements the work will bring you. Just faking the pleasure signals does nothing to solve the needs of the body that were creating the anxiety and stress signals in the first place.

We have gotten very good at creating ways to simulate the reward/pleasure feeling state – better living through chemistry. This defeats the biological reason for pleasure. It has become so confused in our lives now that we no longer seek out the simple pleasures that support our ability to survive and thrive. We want the trophy for winning without having to learn how to play. This doesn’t work for us, for our health, for our lives.

Seek out the rewards for embracing life. Tackle the new and different to discover whole new ways to experience your life. Learn the skills of living life here and now with joy and vulnerability and strength.

Live life,

David

Ellen update:

Here we see Ellen getting back into her artwork. She loves to create art using many layers of transparancies printed with parts of flowers. She takes lots of pictures of flowers and then alters them on the computer to produce very simple forms she then cuts out and recombines with other flowers to finally make entirely new shapes and forms.

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Osterporosis? You need WBV!
What is WBV? It stands for Whole Body Vibration. Clinical studies show increased bone mass with just 10 minutes of WBV three times a week. WBV is available in the office for use anytime we are open for only $10 a week, or for a super bonus of only $20 a month.

On the Wire

15 Reasons not to trust nutrition research

Modern science is not the holy source of truth we want to believe it is. In fact most scientific research published these days is simply false. Everything from industry bias - meaning the corporation that pays the university for the research usually gets the results they want - to ego and a dozen other reasons all work to produce false study results that mostly exist to promote products and agendas other than our own. Read the article at

15 Reasons

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"Happiness, true happiness, is an inner quality. It is a state of mind. If your mind is at peace, you are happy. If your mind is at peace, but you have nothing else, you can be happy. If you have everything the world can give - pleasure, possessions, power - but lack peace of mind, you can never be happy."

~ Dada Vaswani

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Butter more heart healthy than oil

Here is a perfect example of how research has been distorted for financial gain. The National Institutes of Health reexamined studies done 50 years ago on the heart benefits of corn oil and the evils of saturated fat. They looked at some of the unpublished data and found that in fact the study participants that used corn oil had more heart attacks than those that used butter even though their cholesterol went down. All that was reported from the studies was that oil lowered cholesterol, but hid the fact that more people were dying from the use of corn oil. The money interests and ego beliefs of that time wanted to promote the use of vegetable oil on the false belief that cholesterol caused heart attacks, even though there was no evidence to say that cholesterol was bad. That belief has been pushed so hard down our throats for so long that it is hard for our brains to even entertain the truth - cholesterol is not bad - it is the bandage trying to cover up the artery damage caused by rancid oils and other toxic chemicals in our diet.

Butter

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"Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it."

~Soren Kierkegaard
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Coffee is good for your liver

Several studies have demonstrated lower levels of inflammation and decreased non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in people that consume 3 to 6 cups of coffee a day. Caffeine does not appear to be the beneficial component as decaf coffee produces the same results. Coffee beans are very high in antioxidants which may be the answer, but there may be something else yet to be discovered.

Coffee

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"Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing."

~ William Butler Yeats

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Our address is 9725 Fair Oaks Blvd.
Our hours are M - F 9 to 1 and M, Tu, & Th 3 to 6

Finding the new location is very easy. Coming from highway 50 up Sunrise Blvd, you turn left and go up a block. We are on the right hand side - the building just past the Subway Sandwich shop. If you are coming down Sunrise from the Mall area then just turn right on Fair Oaks Blvd and up a block on the right.

If you are coming from the Roseville area you could come down Sunrise Blvd, but that is a long trek. It is probably shorter time wise to come down Auburn Blvd - San Juan Ave like you have been for the Sunset office, but instead of turning left at Sunset, keep going straight 3 more lights to Fair Oaks Blvd and turn left. Go down 2 lights to New York Ave, go through the intersection, and immediately turn into the turn lane once the center divider ends. We are on the left.

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visit http://www.fairoakshealth.com"

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About Dr. DeLapp

Dr. DeLapp has been a philosopher, non-force Chiropractor, medical intuitive, and health innovator for over 30 years. He began experimenting with medical intuition in 1972 while studying physics at UC Davis. In addition to physics he designed and completed an individual major in the philosophy and psychology of education. Shortly after he choose to pursue a career in the only truly health oriented profession available at that time, Chiropractic. He graduated with honors in 1981 with his doctorate and opened a private practice.
Since that time he has continued his research into the effects of consciousness and learning on health.
He developed the Biomagnetic Retraining system for correcting movement abnormalities.
Since 1991 he has focused on developing a powerful system for uncovering and assisting the mind-body connection in health and personal growth. The in-depth coaching, guided by the subconscious direction from the body, is called Heartflow and the simpler mind-body retraining for health and unfoldment he has named Gracework. Both are available at Fair Oaks Health.

Fair Oaks Healing
& Arts Center
Staff