We May Be Born With an Urge to Help
What is the essence of human nature? Flawed, say many theologians. Vicious and addicted to warfare, wrote Hobbes. Selfish and in need of considerable improvement, think many parents.
But biologists are beginning to form a generally sunnier view of humankind. Their conclusions are derived in part from testing very young children, and partly from comparing human children with those of chimpanzees, hoping that the differences will point to what is distinctively human.
The somewhat surprising answer at which some biologists have arrived is that babies are innately sociable and helpful to others. Of course every animal must to some extent be selfish to survive. But the biologists also see in humans a natural willingness to help.
When infants 18 months old see an unrelated adult whose hands are full and who needs assistance opening a door or picking up a dropped clothespin, they will immediately help, Michael Tomasello writes in “Why We Cooperate,” a book published in October. Dr. Tomasello, a developmental psychologist, is co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
The helping behavior seems to be innate because it appears so early and before many parents start teaching children the rules of polite behavior.
“It’s probably safe to assume that they haven’t been explicitly and directly taught to do this,” said Elizabeth Spelke, a developmental psychologist at Harvard. “On the other hand, they’ve had lots of opportunities to experience acts of helping by others. I think the jury is out on the innateness question.”
But Dr. Tomasello finds the helping is not enhanced by rewards, suggesting that it is not influenced by training. It seems to occur across cultures that have different timetables for teaching social rules. And helping behavior can even be seen in infant chimpanzees under the right experimental conditions. For all these reasons, Dr. Tomasello concludes that helping is a natural inclination, not something imposed by parents or culture.
Infants will help with information, as well as in practical ways. From the age of 12 months they will point at objects that an adult pretends to have lost. Chimpanzees, by contrast, never point at things for each other, and when they point for people, it seems to be as a command to go fetch something rather than to share information.
December 1, 2009
WellIn Month of Giving, a Healthy Reward By TARA PARKER-POPE
When Cami Walker of Los Angeles learned three years ago that she had multiple sclerosis, her health and her spirits plummeted — until she got an unusual prescription from a holistic health educator.
Ms. Walker, now 36, scribbled the idea in her journal. And though she dismissed it at first, after weeks of fatigue, insomnia, pain and preoccupation with her symptoms, she decided to give it a try. The treatment and her experience with it are summed up in the title of her new book, “29 Gifts: How a Month of Giving Can Change Your Life” (Da Capo Press).
Ms. Walker gave a gift a day for 29 days — things like making supportive phone calls or saving a piece of chocolate cake for her husband. The giving didn’t cure her multiple sclerosis, of course. But it seems to have had a startling effect on her ability to cope with it. She is more mobile and less dependent on pain medication. The flare-ups that routinely sent her to the emergency room have stopped, and scans show that her disease has stopped progressing.
“My first reaction was that I thought it was an insane idea,” Ms. Walker said. “But it has given me a more positive outlook on life. It’s about sstepping outside of your own story long enough to make a connection with someone else.”
And science appears to back her up. “There’s no question that it gives life a greater meaning when we make this kind of shift in the direction of others and get away from our own self-preoccupation and problems,” said Stephen G. Post, director of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care and Bioethics at Stony Brook University on Long Island and a co-author of “Why Good Things Happen to Good People” (Broadway, 2007). “But it also seems to be the case that there is an underlying biology involved in all this.”
An array of studies have documented this effect. In one, a 2002 Boston College study, researchers found that patients with chronic pain fared better when they counseled other pain patients, experiencing less depression, intense pain and disability.
Another study, at the Buck Institute for Age Research in Novato, Calif., also found a strong benefit to volunteerism, and after controlling for a number of variables, showed that elderly people who volunteered for more than four hours a week were 44 percent less likely to die during the study period.
How giving can lead to mental and physical changes in health isn’t entirely clear, although studies suggest that altruism may be an antidote to stress. A Miami study of patients with H.I.V. found that those with strong altruistic characteristics had lower levels of stress hormones.
By contrast, being self-centered may be damaging to health. In one study of 150 heart patients, researchers found that people in the study who had more “self-references” (those who talked about themselves at length or used more first-person pronouns) had more severe heart disease and did worse on treadmill tests.
And like Ms. Walker, numerous people have reported feeling better after helping others. A 1988 Psychology Today article dubbed the effect the “helper’s high.” Analyzing two separate surveys of a total of 3,200 women who regularly volunteered, the article described a physical response from volunteering, similar to the results of vigorous exercise or meditation. The strongest effect was seen when the act of altruism involved direct contact with other people.
For Ms. Walker, a former creative director for an advertising agency, most of the gifts involved time, emotional support or small acts of kindness. After the first 29 days, she began a new cycle, a pattern she continues. Neither she nor Mbali Creazzo, the spiritual adviser who taught her about the month of giving, knows why it is 29 days rather than 30 or 31 — it may have something to do with the lunar cycle, which is 29.5 days.
Ms. Walker says she now approaches daily giving as a crucial part of her treatment, just like regular medication. She has also found new purpose in her experience and started a Web site, 29gifts.org, that encourages giving to improve health.
“Giving for 29 days is not suggested as a cure for anything,” Ms. Walker said. “It’s simply a coping mechanism and a simple tool you can use that can help you change your thinking about whatever is going on. If you change your thinking, you change your experience.”
Dr. Post, of Stony Brook, agreed. “To rid yourself of negative emotional states,” he said, “you need to push them aside with positive emotional states.
“And the simplest way to do that is to just go out and lend a helping hand to somebody.”
This all works perfectly for the ‘average’ or even mildly depressed person, however the more psychically unwell a person-in general-the less well this works.
via Well – Daily Giving Is Seen as a Healthful Treatment – NYTimes.com.
MENTAL HEALTH FACT
Brain Ache. Why should we breathe deeply when we’re anxious?
Carbon dioxide raises the acidity of the brain, which activates fear, said researchers. Making our tissues less acidic – by inhaling more oxygen – calms the feelings of panic and anxiety. “Some breath exercises to control fear might act by raising the pH of the brain,” said Dr Adam Ziemann of the University of Iowa.
Deep breathing, still the simplest, most cost effective, quickest and most efficient anti-anxiety treatment.
Decades ago, when I was recovering from alcoholism. I recall walking down the street one day looking at my feet as usual, when some slight change made me look up. The world was in color again. I hadn’t realized that my alcoholism had literally robbed me of the visual experience of color in the world. A few weeks ago when my Selegiline started taking effect, I noticed a visual change. As I looked through the glass door and off across the backyard and through the yards behind mine. I could see a depth I had not noticed for a long time if ever and a little more brightness to the scene. It may not mean anything, but I enjoyed it and I will keep looking for whatever changes may be taking place. Progressively, I’ve been feeling better. The best way I can describe it is, I feel like a can someone quit shaking, a can someone had been shaking continuously for decades. I’m feeling a little smoothness in my days. Sometimes I feel as though anxiety had been a glue holding me together. Much of it has flowed away leaving my cells to float happily in the atmosphere, which may be where they belong.
Then there’s the regular holiday season thing-usually I feel unbearably pressure at this time of year. Today I noticed I was feeling comfortably apathetic. It gets done, it doesn’t get done, who cares, it will probably get done. I call that an incredibly big improvement. HOPE At this rate I could even have Christmas spirit next year!
Again, here is a list of the combinations that may be working for me. Metformin of 500 mg a day (brain protective), Lithium Carbonate 750 mg a day (prevents the manic/hypomanic phase of bipolar disorder), Selegiline 35 mg a day (antidepressant, brain protective), BuSpar 20 mg a day (anti-anxiety), Chlorphenamine maleate 12 mg a day. (“ In addition to being an H-1 histamine receptor antagonist, chlorpheniramine has been shown to work as a serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor or SNRI. [1] A similar antihistamine, brompheniramine, led to the discovery of the SSRI zimelidine. Limited clinical evidence shows that it is comparable to several antidepressant medications in its ability to inhibit the reuptake of serotonin and also norepinephrine (noradrenaline).[2] However, extensive clinical trials of its psychiatric properties in humans have not been conducted. It inhibits serotonin reuptake less than norepinephrine reuptake, [3] however the literature is not consistent in this respect (compare Hellbom (2005) with Domino (1999)). From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia”) It’s WAY cheaper than PRISTIQUE!! I also take Vitamin D 5000 iu (brain food), Melatonin 9 mg (for sleep), Valerian Root 1350 mg (for sleep), fish oil EPA/Omega 3, 4100 mg a day (10 caps, brain food). Some of you may have read, “Help My H. P. A. Axis has Crashed”, which I wrote a couple weeks ago. I believe it and I’m taking the rehabilitation of the very seriously. I just got my Adrenal 80 mg (whole desiccated glandular concentrate) , which I will be taking two of a day and my Porcine Thyroid 130 mg , which I will also be taking two of per day. Then there is the Emotional Freedom and Healing practitioner I saw last month, my success at exercising, intermittently (swimming laps) and my aromatherapy, a mixture of rosemary and lavender oils, which may well be contributing to my current, vastly improved level of comfort. Knock on wood. Cross my fingers…
DISCLAIMER : This is what I do. I do not recommend that anyone else do it or encourage anyone else to do what I do. I am an experiment. You are welcome to watch.