The Placebo & Nocebo Effect

You may have come across the words ‘Placebo and Nocebo’ from Internet, Books or someone who is interested in psychology and related research. In this blog I will try to explain these terms in simple words and also give you some ways which can help you make or break habits or change your perception towards something you have always wanted to do.

The Placebo & Nocebo effects are very much the opposite of each other and they govern your life indirectly because they are always affecting you subconsciously because of things you may have experienced, read or seen in your life.
Let’s take a look at the scientific meaning of these words :

A placebo is anything that seems to be a “real” medical treatment — but isn’t. It could be a pill, a shot, or some other type of “fake” treatment. What all placebos have in common is that they do not contain an active substance meant to affect health.
— src: webMD

Nocebo: A negative placebo effect as, for example, when patients taking medications experience adverse side effects unrelated to the specific pharmacological action of the drug. The nocebo effect is associated with the person’s prior expectations of adverse effects from treatment as well as with conditioning in which the person learns from prior experiences to associate a medication with certain somatic symptoms.
–src: Medicine Net

Science community has been carrying more and more experiments and trying to come up with an exact explanation as to why Placebo or Nocebo effect take place, and how do they make our bodies change physically within a short period of time.
When we talk about placebo, we always have to talk about the power of suggestion and power of our subconscious . It is the same effect which a hypnotist, psychiatrist or social media have on you. But it differs in the intensity and the impact it has on your life.

Nocebo also does the same thing which Placebo does but on a negative scale, it can make you feel pain which doesn’t exist. It can have long term effects like depression. It has been experimentally proven that a person can induce these feelings and can make you mentally and physically weak if you do not realize it soon enough. You may have experienced it in your lives before visiting a dentist or going through a small surgery where your mind starts forming images of your body going through extreme physical pain but in reality it turn out to be nothing more than a pinch of sting.
This is just a small example of Nocebo effect.

Both these effects make you wonder about the immense power which your mind possess, a power which makes you believe in something which is not even in existence and also react to it physically or emotionally.

Always keep one thing in mind, “YOU are always in charge of what effect something will have on your life” It means that if a certain thing is going to happen and you already know about it , it can either have a placebo effect or Nocebo effect on you but you are still in charge on what you will let your mind decide. This applies to everything in your life including the diet you are on, the job you are doing, the meal you are about to cook, the date you are going on etc,. all these small things can either meet your expectations or not but it is always in your hand how you want to treat the thing you are doing right now.

How can you take advantage of these effects ?
The very knowledge you have possessed about these effects can be advantageous to you because now you can take control of things which you were initially putting on autopilot. If you were initially skeptical about these effects you can take a look at some of the research papers which have been carried on in various different fields of study by just doing a simple google search.

You can now be more optimistic about any task you are handling and can treat it with positivity and feeling good about the outcome.

What is the power of suggestion, how can I use that?
The power of suggestion is a simple process which a person can take advantage of with a small amount of effort everyday, Basically you will be providing your mind with suggestions about what you really want to achieve, say for e.g.:  You want to wake up everyday at 6.00am but no alarm is helping you till today, a small exercise like before sleeping when your body is in a complete relaxed state you can mentally tell yourself that I will be able to wake up at 6.00am tomorrow no matter what. It also requires a small will power and a reason which you can associate to your suggestion because without it no suggestion holds power on you. You must try to reason your mind why you want to wake up at 6.00am may be because you are talking up running which will in turn improve your health.

Always know that the power of your mind is more than anything in this world and anyone who realizes this everyday can literally change his perception towards everything and be more productive and creative in anything you want to achieve.

An Easter egg for everyone ENJOY: 

Music and Memory

One of my favorite research topic of 2015 was about the effect music has on a person’s memory. It fascinated me so much that I started reading medical papers and research about what exactly happens in the human brain while listening to music and can it be helpful to us in some or the other way.

Guess what Music can actually help us in a lot of ways, and that does not include moving on after a breakup 😉 but on a serious note, it helps us focus, heal, study and in some cases reduce the effects of dementia. Don’t believe me? Stick around for a while and I will prove that to you.

Music, as we all know, is something which has always been closer to our hearts, remember the time when your feet started moving or your fingers started tapping just after hearing your favorite song on the internet. Well it does have a scientific explanation to it and it has to do a lot with neuroscience, It’s not that boring trust me I will try to explain it in simple words.

neurons

brain

The image on the left is well an edited picture of your brain and on the right is an edited picture of neurons which reside within your brain. To be precise they are the building blocks of your Nervous system which include your brain. And for those of who are not aware neurons form a major portion of your brain, you have as many as 100 billion (100,000,000,000) neurons in your brain right now (that is a lot!!). These neurons serve as a messenger in your body and transmit and receive impulses in the form of electricity via talking to adjacent neurons gathering data from all organs and submitting it to the brain for further processing.

So the talking or communication between two neurons is called neural pathway which is an important concept to understand how music helps patients with dementia to remember memories from the past. So when you listen to your favorite music at a party or while studying to dance or focus the type of music you listen to have a big effect on these neurons which helps you in a certain way to dance like a wild party animal or to study long hours at the library.

Ever wondered your brain getting with millions of neurons while listening to a beautiful symphony or Rock song. Well, now you know how your brain is responding the next time you listen to your favorite beats, below-shown diagram is an MRI image of the same.

Source: Soundmattersblog.com Brain on Music

Coming to the next part of our blog, how is music helping people with dementia and Alzheimers. There is an active research going on at Alzheimer’s foundation of America, Brookdale Center for Healthy Aging of Hunter College, CUNY, and many other medical institutes. There are dedicated websites which are completely focused on this research some of which are Music&Memory, Alzheimer’s foundation of America, Brain Journal and much more.
I also came across a documentary on Netflix called ‘Alive Inside‘ which is completely related to the topic we are discussing, and it’s so well directed that critics have appreciated that documentary for a long time. In the film, there are several cases which have been shown beautifully how patients with Alzheimer’s respond to music giving their loved ones a hope to communicate and connect with them.

Watch an excerpt from the Movie ‘Alive Inside’ here.

So how does music do it? How is it helping people remember stuff from their past who normally cannot even recognize their own family members?
According to Alzheimer’s foundation of America its because:

This happens because rhythmic and other well-rehearsed responses require little to no cognitive or mental processing. They are influenced by the motor center of the brain that responds directly to auditory rhythmic cues. A person’s ability to engage in music, particularly rhythm playing and singing, remains intact late into the disease process because, again, these activities do not mandate cognitive functioning for success.

src : Alzheimers foundation of America website

Music has always been an important part of humans life since ages it has been used to heal from within, or to go to a complete state of relaxation while doing meditation or hypnotherapy or towards inducing the brain in a trance state after consumption of Ayahuasca which is a brew made by Shamans which after consuming can show you a completely different universe within your mind.

So take out your headphones and lit your neurons on fire!!
If there are any questions related to the topic please comment below or email me at rohanshirodkar29@gmail.com. I will surely answer all your questions. 

What is true Happiness?

Before starting with the post, I want to wish all my readers a Merry Christmas and a happy & prosperous new year which is about to begin, may the coming year bring more happiness and love in your life than ever.

So coming back to the post. This post is about happiness and it’s importance in today’s time more than ever. Also some tips on how you can always be happy.
When I say the word Happiness the first thing that pops up in your wonderful brain is the personal definition of happiness which is true to you as an Individual. So what’s happiness and how some people are always happy (or most of the time)? Does happiness depend on money or the things we possess in this life, what exactly is happiness?

Happiness, as I define on my personal terms, is just a simple feeling within our mind which we experience throughout our body at times when things are the way we want them to be.

So why can’t we be happy at all times, why are people depressed and why do we care so much about happiness anyways?
There are many reasons for that, those reasons fall into different categories one of them is biology and it says that happiness is induced in our body by secretions of happy hormones like Serotonin, Endorphin, Dopamine. The next category has a spiritual base which says that being happy is our true state (blissful state or Nirvana state) is our original form and our every action should be towards achieving and being in that state.

But people get in an illusion that the state of Nirvana is easily achieved by attaching happiness with material things like Money, Cars, lavish lifestyle, possessing big houses etc. you get the idea. And then we wonder why people commit crimes, abuse others verbally/physically, use drugs and alcohol out of proportion. It all has to do with that person achieving happiness on a personal level. We do not gain the same happiness by performing actions which others find happiness in. For Eg: Some might find happiness in playing some sport, some might find it in dancing and some might find it while researching on space. It varies so much because everyone has their own definition of happiness. But all these happiness come nowhere close to the happiness one gains in a meditative state. It might come as a shock to some people hearing this for the first time that a person meditating by closing his eyes in an isolated environment with no thoughts of ego in his mind is hundred times happier than a billionaire celebrating his birthday on a private island with the most luxurious things in his possession. Well, its not just any happiness we are talking here it’s a blissful state of existence which we all experience before birth and after death.

And that is also one of the reasons why people love to use psychedelics because they get a glimpse of that feeling for a small time. Spiritually aware people who have never used drugs in their entire life are always in that state and if not can consciously create that feeling whenever and wherever they want.
There are many people who suffer today with depression, PTSD, anxiety disorders and many such disorders related to mental states because of various factors which may or may not have been in their control. But taking the easy way out by indulging in fast food, overuse of drugs and drinking alcohol will just shift your mental state for a couple of hours what about later?

A person who has a daily wage job, living with family, having 2 meals a day can be happier than a person who lives in a mansion with his family and has 4 meals a day. How’s that possible some may wonder, the answer lies in expectation of a person with his life? Now some may argue at this point that without money you won’t be able to educate your children or have 2 good meals a day also live in livable conditions at home, they are correct and I personally think so too that in whatever conditions we are born in we should not be satisfied with them and we should try and change them for giving ourselves and our family a good life, also if we have more than enough then giving others food or money can definitely make you happy and add to some good karma points in your life 😉 . But then again your continuous struggle towards earning more stuff will make you sad, at that point, you can compare yourself with those who are happy and content with whatever they have in their life. You would have definitely observed that the generation that has lived before you have been happier than your generation. Have you ever thought of the reason behind it? Why has my grandfather always been happy with a simple lifestyle and never suffered any type of depression, the answer is simple we are moving towards a generation where we think the more things we possess the happier our lives will be, which is not true as you might have come to know till now, if not this is the best time to think about it.

So to end the post with few lines I would tell you that being happy has always been easy and it’s how you define happiness is the only thing which is going to make difference in your life on a personal level. But for eternal bliss and staying happy in a more impactful way you can start meditating and see the difference for yourself.

Comment your experiences, Like this post and Share them on facebook if you think it will help others.
Ciao..

The Big Questions

Who am I? Is everything in this universe connected? Is the observable universe an illusion? Why everything in Nature happens in a perfect order? Why is there a perfect symmetry in all living and non-living object? Are we living in a multidimensional and multiverse at every moment? What happens after we die? Does the consciousness still continue to exist?

These are just some of the questions I am sure you have asked yourself or googled about if you have ever been interested in knowing something more than what is taught in today’s educational institutions or just for exploring the frontiers of spirituality.

I was always curious and still am curious about finding answers to some of these questions and believe me the more I ask, I get closer towards finding the answer but with more complicated and complex questions.  I know this life is not just about getting an education, then a job or just about earning money and getting along with life it’s about something more important more meaningful.  And then the biggest question is If we are able to question about this stuff, it is possible to find answers for them. Because if there were no answers towards some concept we cannot even question it.

For Eg: When we think about questioning our non-existence, it’s difficult to comprehend the concept of us being non-existent. And we cannot enquire about it further because the moment you think about something it starts the existence of everything.

But some questions like consciousness and its relationship with our intellect and memories is possible and the answers can be explored when we are in a state of deep thinking or relaxed state. In our daily life, we cannot think about such concepts because of all the chaos which is going on in our mind. For such questions to be answered we need to be in a meditative state because we do not need any stress or chatter going on in our mind.

Every spiritual person who has ever come across any theories or answers towards these big questions will be in a state of relaxation and like a sudden bolt of lightning he is like “Ohh that’s why it exists”. It’s unique and personal every time with everyone.

The basis of all religion have always been on the basis of such questions and that has motivated people to search and explore spirituality that is looking within their selves for the answers.

So If you are like me and trying to find answers for such questions you can just relax by doing some deep breathing exercises and get in a meditative state and ask the question over and over again in your mind, and slowly as your mind chatter will settle down a small voice in your head will start giving you glimpses of wonderful things from which the answers will emerge.

 

Subconscious Health

Well apart from the ambiguous title of the post, I want the reader to understand that all the opinions and thoughts expressed in this blog are just my theory and observation, it may or may not be scientifically proven yet.

So let’s begin, First let me ask you three simple questions. Make sure you answer them in your mind as you read this post, it will make things interesting.

1. Do you believe in the law of attraction or law of thought?
   If the answer is yes good. If no read the next question.
2. Do you believe in the subject of Subconscious mind?
   If the answer is yes I saw it coming. If no please read the next question.
3. Do you believe in Hypnosis or Hypnotherapy?
   If yes I knew it. If still no you better start using the Internet for something good like say umm.. ‘Wikipedia‘ or ‘WebMD‘.

Now the reason for asking you those three “not-so-silly” questions was not to make you feel bad if you answered no to the last two questions, but rather to make you understand the role of your subconscious mind in your daily life, more specifically the role it plays on your health as far as the scope of the post goes.

(F.Y.I about that first question I will be writing about it in detail in my coming posts.)

Your subconscious mind has a deeper impact than you can imagine. The so-called “conscious” actions which you do every day are a result of your subconscious thoughts. The habits which you have formed over the years, the words which you have heard over time, the posts which you have read in your entire lifetime and also the advertisements which you have seen or heard over television, internet, radio or people.

I would be talking about how everyday media can subconsciously affect your health even worse than not eating healthy food or maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
Every single word which you have not paid attention to till today is still lying around in some corner of your brain it’s just that you have not created a ‘neural pathway‘ towards it so you don’t remember it yet.
So your health is basically a mirror of your thoughts or subconscious stuff you have gathered and really paid attention to. So if tomorrow you come across a post on Facebook with a title saying “You won’t believe what researchers have found”and when you clicked on it says something about sugar causing cancer in the long run. And if you really read every word of it with 100% attentiveness and start worrying about it. There is a chance you will have cancer just because you read that post.

Now this is not some bluff I am trying to play with words. You can think about it in this way, A hypnotist has put you in a state of trance and instructed you that whenever someone calls your name your eyes will itch. Now the result of this varies according to the patients will and mental power but it will eventually work. Ever heard about “Placebo-surgery“? If not I would advise you to take a look at it, it will blow your wonderful mind.
So basically it suggests that a fake surgery sometimes can get you the same positive outcomes as the real one. Pretty Neat, huh?

So coming back to the post and not getting lost in the beauty of pseudo-science. I want to tell you that every advertisement about treatment you come across or any research which you come across if it does not make you feel good, just laugh about it and mentally say to yourself that this is all a sham, and its not always true.

Let me give you a small example
Check out the post below
A Post saying drinking (alcohol) is actually good for you  : It basically says that moderate amount of alcohol is good for you. 

Now take a look at the next post:

A post saying not even moderate drinking good for your health.: It says that all the claims made by other posts suggesting moderate drinking is false.

That brings us to the end of our small post.
This was just a small post about how conscious thoughts about unconscious things can affect your health and change the quality of life, I would be writing more in-depth posts about these topics in the coming days. So stick around, like / share or comment on this post if you like it.

Does Spirituality mean believing in something that does not Exist?

We always have heard people who are religious in nature not accepting concepts of spirituality because they find it difficult to believe in the oneness of God. The concept of God has been exploited by various religions and are customized today as per one’s need. I prefer calling it “Personal God”. Very few people realize that Spirituality has a science behind it, and it always works no matter what. Spirituality works like laws of physics work, they are perfect in all sense and they will always be so. When I say that they work, some people can question me with “How did I come to know?” I can answer your question in this very blog.

I was always religious and being born and brought up in a Hindu family, I was accustomed to a normal Hindu religion which was following many gods and never to question its existence or ask for any reason. This all changed later on and I became who I am now. And I really feel comfortable with the knowledge I have gained through time, reading, exploring & searching for some questions which I never got to ask before. For people who don’t agree with me or are criticizing me right now please read the whole blog and then continue with the same.

Spirituality is a science of oneness, it can be called as getting to the original form of a human being. Well, that certainly sounded superfluous for people hearing it for the first time. But yeah that is the truth. To put my whole knowledge which is collected over year in just one line, I would say that “We all are one and one Energy alone.” This is what spirituality is for me. To find the oneness with other humans, nature, and this mystical universe. Which is same as a universe which exists within each of us, because we are composed of exactly the same matter and energy which has composed this whole existence. And your thoughts are a big part of it, manipulating the entire existence as per your beliefs and feelings. Does universe exist when we cease to exist? Yes, we do exist when we are not in some physical body. And we will continue to exist forever, going through various forms because we are just energy and energy alone. We are never going to be destroyed ever again. But then the question comes, How were we created in the first place? The ultimate question of all ages. The answer for me is we were always there, it means we were already existing before we came into being and we will always be existing forever.

But how does this explanation argue with Other religions and the concept of GOD? For me this universe and the energy which is existing within all of us. The sum total of all this is the real GOD. This is an intelligent universe, its customizable according to our beliefs and thoughts. Because that is the only medium of communication between you and the universe.  You can manipulate matter, conditions, experiences which come in your life. So Spirituality is knowing this ultimate truth, the regular practitioner of meditation would know that the happiness one receives when one is in that state is hard to describe and we soon realize that we are happy and want nothing from this life. We are just one and we all come into the same world, have a ifferent experience and then leave this temporary body and move to next one. Spirituality is 100 times better than one religion or all religion because we do not get bind to some rules which if we do not want to follow, still we have to follow. Instead it teaches us about love, kindness, helping someone, compassion and other good things which bring out the good in us.

The POOR you

You are probably reading this blog because you are concerned or you want to contribute something towards eradication of poverty. Well, I welcome you to my world. The feeling which I always have after watching a homeless guy getting froze in cold nights, or when a small child search for food inside a garbage container without enough clothes to cover his body. It just fills my eyes with tears and my mind with anger and heart with feeling of humanity. So why does this poverty keep on growing like a weed?

Now, there are so many experts in this fields who have worked out their “expertise” and found causes about the economy and illiteracy & addiction to drugs and alcohol to be some of the reasons of poverty. Well, yeah true but what’s the solution? What is that we can do on our part?  I have been thinking a lot on this topic and came up with many solutions which I am going to share under the title Dynamic Poverty, and you can also contribute to this cause by writing your solution. The first and the most effective solution to weed out this poverty, together as a society is by becoming HUMAN, well to be frank I think that it can totally minimize poverty. I mean it sounds so ridiculous when I say to people that they do not behave like humans when they see someone else suffer, but that attitude changes when I say to them, “put yourself in their place and imagine what will you do if you are homeless”. Suddenly there are emotions, fearful thoughts, anxiety and various other emotions which bring out the real human inside every person. We are all humans and we are all connected, the breath we share is the same, and in a deep sense we all live in a world that is composed of the same matter as every one else is composed of and thus the feeling. Till now, you should be wondering about the off topic which I am taking and asking yourself that, how can that possibly be of any relation with Poverty. But I tell you, be patient and you can and will change the world in a better way. The basic illusion of duality which differentiates you and him is the cause of Poverty. The moment you realize that you and that person are the same, there wont be any other poor person for you and Poverty as a whole shall be extinct. Spiritual thinkers and Economist are two far corners of the world but I tell you an immediate solution to the elimination of poverty is at  the midpoint of the line joining the two sections. Because as soon as they realize they are suffering and causing themselves misery, we can all come together and find a solution to this problem forever.

When I first said to myself that the blog title should be dynamic poverty, I assumed myself to be a homeless person and I thought that, the views of great economists who try and form strategies to eliminate the poverty as a whole by designing business strategies or monetary strategies in a certain country doesn’t matter to me, but the only thing that matters is what other people who completely ignore me when they walk across me think. So the next time when you see someone who can really need your help, assume it to be you and then help him, talk to him as if someone should talk with you because at an abstract level “He is you”.

Finding Yogi

Please be advised that the following post is my view on the topic, and I am not pointing a finger at any individual person whom you believe is a true Yogi/Sadhu/God men. I am presenting my personal perspective on this topic. 

“Not all people are same, some are real some are just good actors”

Me and you both are in search of our true self, our roots, the real meaning of our life. We have asked this question to our self, to our elder’s, to the priest’s in temple’s or any worship places we have been but still we did not find a clear answer. So finally we gave up and surrendered our self to the new generation con-men of our society who take help of our weakness and make it their own strength. Which resulted in a start of a generation where these Baba’s started Raping girls, making money from poor people’s hard earned money, some started purchasing properties, Cars, and many other things, all under the name of showing you or answering your so called “complex questions about true meaning of our soul” which you have not yet found for yourself. Having millions of dollars worth of cash, properties, investments, These so called ‘BABA’s’ take an important part of your brain which is the Subconscious mind and play tricks on it. By showing fake miracles, speaking godly words and phrases, taking non-sense and made-up meanings of an original context of a literature, and at the end of the day you claim to have seen a ‘God’ in that fake person.

History of this world had some wonderful and enlightened souls such as Buddha, Jesus, Sai Baba, Swami Vivekananda etc. who impacted the world in a beautiful manner, a true eye awakening moment for the people living on this planet. Then there were some prominent saints too, such as Sant Tukaram, Eknath, Namdev who lived in 16th century India who devoted their entire life in search of God and wrote beautiful poems, verses, books and various articles on the real meaning of god and most importantly stressed on an important part of “helping others” as a first duty of a person towards god. Never did these pure souls took a single penny from people attending their “Satsang”(A meeting in which saints share their knowledge with people). But things have changed, and it gave rise to Business minded baba’s making money out of something which is so basic as Yoga or as “complex” as an explanation of your soul. The mere need of getting answers from someone who knows anything about our true duties, present life, afterlife, how to wash away sins etc. gave rise to ‘God Business’. Isn’t the term a bit harsh to read and realize the reality? Also, does it present a hysterical irony that the person who claims to wash away your sins is committing a bigger sin by selling his knowledge, products, books, Ganga’s holy water, photos of god’s, bracelets and necklaces having photos of God? To be frank, I don’t believe in the concept of “Personal God”, those who are hearing this word for the first time, I will present a small explanation.

Personal God is a term which is used when people take their own concept of God and follow them blindly excluding all other types and forms of God. These people don’t believe in 1 common God but in billions of separate forms. Like a person who believes to be a follower of Lord Shiva will not believe or follow other person’s god-like Lord Jesus or Lord Buddha. This is what I refer to as Personal God. The common Psychology behind having a need to follow one particular type of god is because the human mind cannot believe in something which he cannot see, that is why the concept of God being everywhere and in every individual does not get followed by many people and we end up choosing our own form of God. I asked a person who was a follower of Lord Shiva that why did he choose him, Did he like the way he meditates or Did he like the background history of how he was created, the explanation he gave, made me realize how hilarious the world is. He said that my parents said that I should follow him, and once he had gone to a church with his friends and his parents got mad at him and told him not to follow any other religion other than our own.

The reason I am discussing the topic of personal god and different religion is because deep down that is the real reason for racial discrimination, riots in the name of religion, wars, and discrimination of religion.

And these con-men take help of our weakness and turn their small investment of few hundred rupees into crores of Indian rupees.

I guess the search for a true yogi is looking in a mirror, maybe read some good books and question the reality of the world and become more self-aware of our true self by helping people who need us.