Here are three pieces on health with unusual points to consider: read them, think about them and watch how your conversations with neighbors become more interesting. (You’ll dazzle them.)

First, colleague John Clague of Oregon writes on what mind is. Or does anyone know? And are they telling?

“Dr. Dan Siegel, as a brain researcher, is astounded that neither scientists, including psychiatrists, nor philosophers or academicians have come up with a good working definition of mind, nor can they describe what thinking is.

“Neurobiologist Dan Siegel recently visited Portland to speak at a conference on integrative medicine. He opened his talk with the question: “What is mind?” He asks this question of all his audiences. Over his years of speaking to perhaps 100,000 science professionals and another 100,000 educators, nearly 95% of them have never even considered the question, he says. They had no lecture on the subject in all their education.

“Mind is clearly not the same as a brain firing electrical impulses through neurons, according to Siegel. No one even knows how much brain and mind overlap. He has come to believe that subjective experience is real, consciousness is real, but the challenge that arises for those in his field is: how can a scientist address what is real when it can’t necessarily be measured in the laboratory?” (Read on; click on link to see what can be done.)

Second, colleague Don Ingwerson writes on health, happiness and money. (We love money.)

“Every time I look around, I find another article about what happiness can do for someone. The most recent reported that happiness can actually help people make more money (according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).

” ‘Whether smart or simple, tall or short, self-confident or insecure, happier people earned bigger paychecks than more doleful peers: Deeply unhappy teens” future incomes were 30 percent lower than the average, while very happy teems earned 10 percent above average.’

“While this study shows that the outward expression of happiness can benefit our pocketbooks, there is also evidence showing its value to health and our general well-being.” (Read more by clicking on link above.)

Third, colleague Wendy Margolies writes about weighty matters and the elephant in the living room (Is it us?)

“When a group of children was shown a series of body silhouettes ranging from scrawny to obese they were unable to identify the image that resembled themselves. Most kids, according to Dr. Jennifer McGrath, Director of Pediatric Public Health Psychology Lab, didn’t recognize if they were overweight or obese. They thought they were average. She also recalls talking to a pediatrician who didn’t want to tell a family that their child had a weight problem.

“What if everyone, even your doctor, treats it like the elephant in the room?

“Obesity costs the Canadian economy somewhere between $4.6-billion and $7.1-billion a year. Those costs are split pretty evenly between direct health-care costs and indirect costs such as lost productivity for people unable to work as a result of illness from obesity.” (Click on link above to learn what the state of American health has in common with Canada)

Thanks, John, Don and Wendy!

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