Cognitive Behaviors and SAD

The video looks at resources and techniques for managing your own SAD. Guess what helps - charting, recording, noting, responses, patterns, triggers, and feedback of all sorts.

The Field Develops in Leaps and Bounds

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, I've been busy trying to lick atrial fibrillation. While diet, exercise, monitoring, and drugs have helped, I'm going for the current cure, ablation.

Radical, to be sure, but it avoids pitfalls like continuing chemical care, an increasing inability to reset to regular heartbeat using exercise, the risks of stroke, tissue alterations with time and a really poor mental state I experience with the inevitable cardiac insufficiency.

Wii calendars now record my daily irregular heartbeat simply by putting the "foot" stamp so that it touches the date. When rhythm is normal the simple twist to indicate positive or negative feelings about Wii Fit Age are to the right of the calendar date.

The Wii Fit daily Body Test is my most regular recording tool and looking for ways to indicate a summary of other gathered information is on my mind. The amount of time consummed to post this little piece of information while getting a weight and Wii Fit Age from the Body Test is high. Now that my system has the Homebrew Channel, I hope to find faster ways of collecting data.

Browsing biofeedback http://www.mindmodulations.com/mindmods/ proved to be a rich resource that I'd like to revisit. You might too!

Wild Goose Chasing and Monitoring It...

Home care for the elders in the family led to an exploratory expedition. Interesting sensors, networks, monitoring, and business models out there, for sure.

Life Source Wireless Activity Monitor XL caught my eye. Available at CVS and Amazon, it is a pedometer with wireless data connectivity to your computer. There are other products, or were other products:



http://www.amazon.com/LifeSource-UA-851THW-Wireless-Pressure-Monitor/dp/B001IDY5IG/ref=pd_sim_hpc_1

What to Track and How to Track It

From Wired Magazine, in their style, just what needs to be said. Biofeedback isn't about brainwaves necessarily, it is about keeping track and the ability to review, notice, and than choose to alter patterns.



There is a vast universe of personal metrics to capture. Start with these:

Vital Statistics
height // weight // age // birth weight // birth length

Vital Signs
body temperature // pulse // blood pressure // respiratory rate

Senses
visual acuity // auditory acuity

Blood
glucose level // blood-alcohol level // hemoglobin level // HDL level // LDL level // liver enzyme level


Women Only
estrogen levels // menstrual cycle

Men Only
testosterone levels // sperm count

Living
caloric intake // hours of sleep // exercise duration // exercise intensity // lactate threshold // steps taken in day // mood // medication taken // hours worked // cigarettes smoked




and wait, there is more:

http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/17-07/lbnp_knowthyself
http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/17-07/lbnp_nike

A piece of wisdom from Nike research:
"But that simple, dual-variable tracking can lead to novel insights, especially once you have so many people feeding in data: The most popular day for running is Sunday, and most Nike+ users tend to work out in the evening. After the holidays, there's a huge increase in the number of goals that runners set; this past January, they set 312 percent more goals than the month before.

"There's something even deeper. Nike has discovered that there's a magic number for a Nike+ user: five. If someone uploads only a couple of runs to the site, they might just be trying it out. But once they hit five runs, they're massively more likely to keep running and uploading data. At five runs, they've gotten hooked on what their data tells them about themselves."

But wait, there is still more:

This is why BeingSense is a wannabe: http://www.quantifiedself.com/

As soon as I saw the name of Kevin Kelly (Cool Tools and much more) starbursts appeared on the horizon. Worth the trip and happy to supply the introductory link. You're welcome.

Twittering Biofeedback Mostly Shakey Results

Change continues to accelerate. Keeping up consumes while energizing. Twitter offers an age reflecting signpost. People's conversation says a lot about how well they are keeping up or giving up. It seems to give a "Wii Age" reading. You know, taking into account your real age and how you responded to a couple of tests, this is how old you are acting....like the Wii Fit Body Test results. I still use some of the balance exercises, but tracking my Wii age seems to provide a processed biofeedback record that is the primary reason I turn on the unit these days.

Anyway, Twitter fascinates me. I've been using Twitter search for sometime, mostly to see what sorts of Tweets contain the word "biofeedback". There is information to be discovered through processing. Teaching uses of the platform demonstrate the potential for learning in other ways. Another tool that will change community communication.

Next search idea is to take a look at interest in biofeedback loops related to microorganisms living with us. Continually astounded by the shear mass and range of organisms humans consist of inspire respect for antibiotics as potent medications I'd prefer to avoid. Getting healthier is getting a better crew on board. We live in a biofeedback loop.

Keeping Track - Being AwareJust

Just noticed last post was too long ago. My attention was on finger temperature sensing and handwarming. Paying attention, a sustained narrow focus, foiled my intent of maintaining a regular posting habit. Thanks to a New York Magazine article, "The Benefits of Distraction and Overstimulation", we're back on track.

Here's a teaser:

"The most promising solution to our attention problem, in Gallagher’s mind, is also the most ancient: meditation. Neuroscientists have become obsessed, in recent years, with Buddhists, whose attentional discipline can apparently confer all kinds of benefits even on non-Buddhists. (Some psychologists predict that, in the same way we go out for a jog now, in the future we’ll all do daily 20-to-30-minute “secular attentional workouts.”) Meditation can make your attention less “sticky,” able to notice images flashing by in such quick succession that regular brains would miss them. It has also been shown to elevate your mood, which can then recursively stoke your attention: Research shows that positive emotions cause your visual field to expand. The brains of Buddhist monks asked to meditate on “unconditional loving-kindness and compassion” show instant and remarkable changes: Their left prefrontal cortices (responsible for positive emotions) go into overdrive, they produce gamma waves 30 times more powerful than novice meditators, and their wave activity is coordinated in a way often seen in patients under anesthesia."

Gallagher stresses that because attention is a limited resource—one psychologist has calculated that we can attend to only 110 bits of information per second, or 173 billion bits in an average lifetime—our moment-by-moment choice of attentional targets determines, in a very real sense, the shape of our lives. Rapt’s epigraph comes from the psychologist and philosopher William James: “My experience is what I agree to attend to.” For Gallagher, everything comes down to that one big choice: investing your attention wisely or not. The jackhammers are everywhere—iPhones, e-mail, cancer—and Western culture’s attentional crisis is mainly a widespread failure to ignore them."

Early in research on biofeedback involved book reviews. One set from BioFeedback Without the Machines: A Strategy for Living (Paperback) by George E Soroka (Author) sticks.

Product Description Review
Biofeeback Without Machines helps readers to learn to live without stress and build their life to success. ""Biofeedback without Machines means that we can become the instruments of dramatic and positive change in our own lives. The most significant thing we learn from biofeedback is that we can reclaim the creative process as our own, and in this way develop a truly effective strategy for living based on self determination."" Mike Marchetti, Ph. D. Physicist

The first customer review:
"The technique this book teaches can be summed up in two words: "just notice." That's it. So, if you are looking for technique, there it is. You don't need to buy the book."

...so sharply contrasted with that of the third reviewer:
"This book is a great disappointment. One would guess from the title that this book has something to do with biofeedback without machines. Wrong. This book mainly deals with the author's theories of life. I did not particularly care."

....it made a mental mark that still influences what appears here. Biofeedback, or the generalized content statement beneath the masthead, depends upon personal awareness. While brainwaves are a dramatic view of what is going inside your head, it is certainly not the only doorway. Pay good attention to yourself.

Keeping Track of Yourself - Easy Works

Wii Fit data logging is a motivator for me. A body measurement is a daily goal and the results are habit forming. The system got a daily Yoga habit started, but I rarely go back to the balance board for a check up anymore, the internal check in is more meaningful. The need for a notebook for daily logging contrasts with the automatic record-keeping of the Wii.

One of my weight/BMI graphs:



During the blank period, it was easy to keep a weight log. The variation during the day fluctuated but a pattern was easy to see. With the Wii, an explanation for the 2-3 pound shifts at the same time each day are not easy to explain and cross-checking with the digital scale is hard to reconcile. Point is the long term patterns are most important and you can't see them if you don't keep track.

There are lots of ways to keep notes and how to record feedback of the instruments available is a major issue. I think your cell phone will be a bigger help in the near future, but LifeHacker suggests some other resources until the future arrives. See: Six Easy Ways to Graph Your Life.