Alverstoke online gift shop opens

So, today, to mark the 10th of 10th of 2010, our new online gift-shop opens. We will be bringing you plenty of exotic jewellery and home decor. The reason behind this new move is that we just want to share the glittery and jewelled goodies that my friend Elena comes across in her travels. She spends many hours in bazaars and exotic Eastern markets haggling over goods that are really quite luscious.

At present, since we are a cottage industry, we do not have a card system, and would just ask people who are interested to email us at HampshireHelp@gmail.com to place your orders. However, if enough of you want to buy from us, I promise I will attach the requisite card-processing gizmo to the site and that'll make things much simpler.

Government And The Missing Apostrophe

The government's response to the petition asking them to re-consider whether the two part-time mums doing their best to work (as the government wishes) and care for their children in a safe and familiar environment must register as childminders:

'The Childcare Act 2006 requires anyone providing ‘childcare for reward’ to register with Ofsted, with the aim of ensuring every child in a commercial childcare service is safe and well cared for. Parents would expect no less. However, our intention has always been that friends and families caring for children through informal arrangements should be exempt from having to register and we believed that was what always happened. In the light of this recent case we are talking to Ofsted about how we can make sure there’s a shared understanding with Ofsted, and with parents, of what the law means and how it should interpreted. Since 1997 we have invested £25bn in childcare and early years services, doubling the number of childcare places available for children under 8 to support working families and providing more support than ever before with childcare costs, with over £3.8 million a day going directly into parents hands to help pay for childcare through tax credits.'

What a shame that the government's education and childcare system has left the government itself unaware of the existence of the apostrophe.

Young People - Sex and the Broken Society

"Epidemiology is like a bikini. What is revealed is interesting. What is concealed is crucial." 

Huge apologies to whoever said this, as I don't have a source. But just bear it in mind as you consider how you feel when you read hysterical headlines about teenage pregnancies 'rocketing' in Britain? If you are a young adult, doesn't this make you feel a bit picked upon? As though you're being spied upon? Maybe you feel worried and a little threatened? 

If you are a parent, don't you feel as though you are a failure? 

What the newspapers aren't saying is that almost everywhere in the world, (according to a study from The Lancet) most people first have sex between the ages of 15 and 19. And as or our teen pregnancies, many other, more sensible newspapers and sites are reporting that in fact, in the UK, there has been a 'slight rise, for the first time in five years.'

Men are more likely to start having sex before girls or young women do, and there is no discernable worldwide trend towards more sex at an earlier age. More people are having what might be called pre-marital sex, particularly in the West, where it is also more likely that people will have more partners, however monogamy is still the dominant type of relationship. And finally, in countries where women are increasingly likely to marry young, they are less likely to first have sex before marriage. 

(As an aside, in many countries, marriage actually just used to be defined as the act of two people living together, or having mated. Which confuses things slightly. Under this definition, pre-marital sex is still possible if you are both living in your own respective parents' or carers' houses, but if you're living with the person then it can't be pre-marital sex. A bit like 'insanity', marriage is really a legal state.)

We often hear about sex being treated as a commodity. Seeing first experiences being documented like this is enough to make you wonder who exactly is using sex as a commodity? Young people who are finding out about themselves, their changing bodies and attitudes? Or the newspapers, who, as newspaper sales are hit hard by the digital age, are increasingly desperate to write attention-grabbing headlines with little factual foundation? 

It is important to remember that for a young person, one of their rites of passage is to claim ownership of their bodies. A lot of parents start out (naturally) feeling that they 'own' their children. As children grow and develop, the whole basis of how they can turn out in later life is to do with how they negotiate with their parents or carers over their need for more freedom, over their own bodies and over where they go, how long for and with whom. In this context, it is hugely important that children and young people do not just see sex as a physical act - it is a complex, multilayered process, to do with identity, past history, social situation and confidence, that, not unlike electricity, has a history of having been treated as a commodity, but that in fact should perhaps be quantified (or qualified) in other ways. 

Many of the papers bang on about 'how sex should not just be an act' and then go on to treat it as just that by counting the numbers of occasions it has taken place and the number of partners that an 'average' young person in the UK might have had. 

In fact, sex is one of the most difficult things to quantify. You can talk about the male orgasm and say that if ejaculation has taken place in one (or all) of a number of areas, a sex act might have taken place. But what about the female orgasm? What about young women who can have intense feelings that are almost orgasmic without them having even been touched? What about when sex takes place in the head? What about penetration without ejaculation? What about orgasms that are so mechanical it's as though a person doesn't experience them?

In fact a lot of sex takes place in the head, and is to do with how people feel about themselves (not surprisingly). Not to do with 'part a had x effect on part b'. 

Let's stop counting partners and penetration and start thinking about how to make young people feel more confident about taking ownership of their bodies and minds. 

If you are a teacher, you will know how important it is to have 'high expectations' of the young people that you are in touch with. It is also important to use statistics wisely. Teenage pregnancies might be on the increase in Britain, but it's not necessarily for the reasons being quoted, or with the assumed associated behaviours of increasingly younger first sexual contacts. In order to help young people it's definitely important to understand what's going on, and not be led by a few columnists (and, to be fair, many concerned people as well) who wield statistics like untrained mercenaries. 

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OFT closes down Debt Advice Sites

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is going to ask at least thirteen businesses which run 27 websites, offering debt advice, to change their sites or shut them down. 

There is nothing wrong with offering debt advice, and obviously more people are turning to these businesses. However some of these sites attempt to masquerade as free advice sites, such as The Citizen's Advice Bureau, and do not make it clear that you will end up paying for the debt management plan that they set up for you. These debt management companies are deliberately misleading people by using website addresses similar to those of charities.

If you are need to ask for financial advice, do please ask the person who is offering to help whether they have a consumer credit licence.

The OFT will either prosecute those firms that are not licensed, or remove the licence from those that are, if they do not comply. 

"There is a danger that with increasing unemployment, more people could run into financial difficulty and we are concerned that at the point where they are most vulnerable and seeking advice, they are being deliberately misled by people who are trying to gain a commercial advantage from them," says Ray Watson, director of credit at the OFT.

"We believe they are misleading consumers by holding themselves out as free advice agencies such as Citizens Advice, the Consumer Credit Counselling Service, the Money Advice Trust and Advice UK."

The 13 companies have not been named, but many of the genuine charities have been concerned about fee-charging debt management companies who aim to give the impression they are connected with government organisations or charities.

Do research the company who you are thinking of approaching. You can look at the 'about us' tab in order ot get more information about them.

How to make financial decisions

Should people of lower cognitive ability be trained to be more financially patient? Apparently we don’t make financial decisions in as rational a way as we might like to think. Although financial studies can be carried out in situations that perhaps don’t accurately mirror the situations in which we might find ourselves in the real world, when deciding how to spend money, there are a couple of interesting studies out that supposedly shed more light on what happens when our financial decision-making is going on.

One study shows that men with more testosterone are likely to punish others involved in transactions, even at their own financial expense, and the other shows that apparently people with superior cognitive ability take more risks, and are likely to postpone immediate pleasure for greater gains at a later date.

Using the Ultimatum game as a testing ground, it was found that men with higher testosterone levels were more likely to reject low bids, even if it meant that both parties would then lose a cut of the final pool. The game features a budget from which a proposer offers a portion to a responder. If the responder rejects the proposal then both parties lose out.

‘Twenty-six male students played the Ultimatum Game with real money after having their testosterone levels measured by saliva swab over three days. Terence Burnham at Harvard University found the students with higher testosterone levels were more likely to reject a poor offer from the proposer: 45 per cent of the men with above-average testosterone chose to reject a low $5 offer from a budget of $40 compared with 7 per cent of men with below-average testosterone.’ 

It has been proposed that a reason for rejecting low bids is to build up a reputation for being, well, basically, ‘hard’. A low offer can be seen as an insult to the responder and to repeatedly refuse these offers means that perhaps one then is less likely to receive a low offer in the future, as by rejecting offers, the responder is ‘educating’ the proposer.

In the Proceedings of the Royal Society, Terence Burnham said: ‘If our understanding of Ultimatum Game rejections and other related phenomena can be improved through studies of hormones, morphology, and neurological activity the ramifications for economics might be quite broad and positive.’ 

In other research, carried out at the University of Bonn and the Institute for the Study of Labour, in Germany, by Thomas Dohmen and colleagues, it was shown that cognitive abilities might be related to financial patience and risk aversion. There is thought to be a relationship between prosperity and high IQ, and this study attempted to tie up these factors.

Just over 1000 German adults were tested, using subscales from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. David Wechsler, in 1981, wrote: ‘Intelligence is multifaceted as well as multidetermined…What it always calls for is not a particular ability but an overall competency or global capacity” (1981, p. 8).

According to Wechsler, intelligence is influenced by personality traits and other nonintellective components, such as anxiety, persistence and goal awareness. These nonintellective factors are important, according to Wechsler, but he remarks, ”no amount of drive will develop a dullard into a mathematician” (1981, p.8).

On the basis of this rather condemnatory approach to intelligence, half the participants had to then make a series of choices between either a guaranteed lower amount ranging from 10 euros to 190 euros or a 50 per cent chance of winning 300 euros. This then looked at their financial risk aversion. Remaining participants were then tested for their financial patience, choosing between 100 euros today or a series of larger amounts in 12 months time. There was a one in seven chance that participants would receive the outcome of one of their choices.

Armin Falk, from the University of Bonn, says, of the results on financial decision-making: ‘The more intelligent the test subjects were, the more patient and tolerant of risk they were.’ The researchers said that with cognitive ability assumed to be at least partly inherited, these new findings could help explain the intergenerational transmission of poverty and socio-economic status.  Whether or not this is the case, I would next like to see research carried out that tests whether these men who rejected low bids would also reject this hypothesis. People talk about ‘being able to afford to take risks.’ I would have thought that that is precisely the point. If you are poor, then you are more dependent on knowing for certain where your next money or meal is coming from, and not gambling it away.

Other research, carried out by Jaideep Bains, PhD, a University of Calgary scientist and his team of researchers at the Hotchkiss Brain Institute has discovered that neurons in the hypothalamus, the brain's centre for stress responses, interpret 'off' chemical signals as 'on' chemical signals when stress is perceived. "It's as if the brakes in your car are now acting to speed up the vehicle, rather than slow it down." says Bains.

 Normally, neurons receive different chemical signals that tell them to either switch on or switch off. The off switch, or brake, only works if the levels of chloride ion in the cells are kept at a low level. This is accomplished by the transporter protein KCC2. Stress can lower the activity of this protein, causing the brake, a neurotransmitter called gamma-Aminobutyric acid, not to work properly.

A loss of the brain's ability to slow down could explain why too much (although how much is too much is a question in itself) stress can have such a terrible effect on people's lives.

"There is still much work needed in the basic science of this phenomenon before there are any new advances in the medical treatment of stress," says Bains, while Yves De Koninck, PhD, and president-elect of the Canadian Association for Neuroscience and professor of Psychiatry at Laval University, believes that "This opens entirely new and quite unexpected avenues for controlling stress responses.” This research may go further to helping us understand why financial decision-making may appear to be irrational – if you are under stress then decision-making gets put under enormous pressure, as is possibly shown by these latter findings. All the more reason for trying to go easy on yourself if you are in debt, or feeling depressed and unable to cope. Just say to yourself, ‘Look after your GABAs and the pounds will look after themselves.’

Hewitt SA, Wamsteeker JI, Kurz EU, Bains JS. Altered chloride homeostasis removes synaptic inhibitory constraint of the stress axis. Nat Neurosci. 2009 Mar 1; doi:10.1038/nn.2274 

How do I choose a Counsellor or Psychotherapist?

Calls to counsellors and therapists are on the increase, as we are subjected not only to stories about the trouble that we are in economically, socially and generally, but also as jobs are lost, debts suddenly become unmanageable and it all gets too much for us. Families and marriages can be put under almost intolerable pressure as financial problems lead to divided opinions on what are basically your living priorities.

However, some of us are put off from asking for help by the fact that it’s almost impossible to choose a complete stranger to whom we know it’s possible we might end up baring our souls.

For those with little or no money, in fact, choosing a counsellor isn’t a problem; there is no choice. The first route to ending up in counselling can be by going to see your doctor and telling them you’re depressed and can’t cope. In many ways, this is the easiest option – you should be referred to an NHS counsellor who will contact you and give you a list of times at which you could come for an initial appointment. No decisions to make over who and what, but a few over when and why and how.

Some might hesitate at this point. The appointment times can be difficult. Many of us under pressure are in this position because we literally have no time. We’re working two or more jobs, we have children, we work compressed hours or whatever, and the hours for appointments can seem a little unforgiving. You can ask for time off work to see a counsellor, but we are in a period where we feel under scrutiny from our employers. It’s easy to feel that we are being watched, and it has to be said that many employers, still make negative and insensitive remarks about depression that make you feel like you would rather run a mile than say you want time off to see a mental health professional.

So, don’t panic. (Even if you suffer from panic attacks.) In fact, although I wouldn’t advocate the use of anti-depressants or tranquilisers alone, seriously, it can be worth chatting to your doctor about your fears, and getting a short-term prescription (if they feel this is appropriate) for anti-depressants or tranquilisers, that will help you to take the deep breath that you might need in order to talk seriously to yourself, not your employer, about your needs.

Look at it this way. You want to earn money. You want to do this the best way you can. Whether or not you like your job, most of the problems you face at work (if you do) will be as a result of the relationships you have with people there. The way in which you relate to people can very much be influenced by factors that you will probably end up discussing with your counsellor. Do whatever it takes to get that first appointment, unless you know that it could seriously threaten your job. Don’t feel bad about phoning in sick, or saying you have a family emergency. Sometimes the end justifies the means. You could be taking the first step that, over time will make you a better and more confident and more productive worker. (Though saying ‘more productive’ kind of sounds a bit Victorian slaver-driver.) Get that appointment, however silly you feel and go, and discuss things.

I will be writing more on what a first session can feel like, but now I’m going to talk about what to do if you haven’t been referred by your doctor.

So you’re in the position of having to actually choose from a selection of counsellors either thrown up by Google or found from the Yellow Pages, or maybe given to you by a friend. I’m going to list a number of things to think about that might help in making that final choice.

In fact research has shown that rather than using check-lists to decide whether or not to choose one option over another, using our intuition can often lead to making a good choice. In the meantime, while you decide whether to trust your intuition (after all, if you’re depressed, you might feel you’ve made some bad choices in the past, and have low self-confidence), here are some factors to take into consideration:

Think about the location of your counsellor: Maybe you don’t have your own transport, or you need to get back in time to get the kids from the childminder, or to pick up from school. Unless you’re very worried about ‘being seen’ choose someone near to you. The less obstacles there are to seeing your counsellor, the more likely you are to go, if you decide they are right for you. Counsellors themselves can be nervous about seeing very local people. (They won’t say this though.) Don’t be surprised if in the future, you bump into your counsellor, outside your session, and they aren’t chatty. They are there for you professionally, and one of the ways they do their job best is by NOT being your friend. Friends have opinions, and are involved in what you do. Counsellors and therapists have a valuable objectivity which means they see you without as much prejudice as your friends do.

Type of counselling:

Ok, I’ll be honest here. I have two degrees, and I still get caught out and ask myself ‘what the hell is that?’ when reading about a type of therapy. It might help to try to understand a little about therapeutic approaches. It’s quite normal to think when your counsellor says ‘I’m a … whatever counsellor’, ‘Well does that work, or not?’ In fact there are a lot of different ways to approach helping people. Yes, they have been tested, but it’s quite difficult to collect data on what helps or not. What is quite evident though is that just seeing and talking to someone who is focussed on you, for an hour of your time, that is yours alone, is helpful in itself. (That’s also why, even if you’re a first-time mum with a baby from whom you don’t want to be separated, it’s still good to get child care just for that hour.) So, if you can, find out a little about different types of therapy, and then at least you know what they’re talking about. Then if you know what you want, check the counsellor’s profile to see if that’s what they offer. Most will offer a mix. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is very popular (and mostly, effective, at present.)

On the other hand, don’t worry too much if you’re not pre-armed with this information. They are still there to help you, and you alone – when a mechanic fixes your car you don’t really need a degree in engineering so you understand how they’re doing it.

Professional Accreditation:

Would you like to see a counsellor/psychotherapist who is a member of a professional body? If they are, they will make it clear on their profile. BACP is definitely good. There are degrees of affiliation: registration, accreditation and membership. However, there is still the possibility that an unqualified person could help – there are natural and sympathetic listeners out there, and being a member of a professional body doesn’t guarantee success. However, unless you are a risk-taker, (in which case you will need to look at this another way), there is less risk attached to seeing someone who is a member of, or linked to, a reputable organization.

Your Counsellor's Qualifications:

Ask for your counsellor’s qualifications. Ask how long they studied and whether full or part-time, whether from home and with what institution.

Fees:
Fee can be variable. They can depend on the location and the experience of the counsellor. Some are open to negotiation. If you don’t have much money, they might even offer you the very difficult option of paying ‘what you can afford.’ This is enough to send you over the edge in itself. What if you’re seeing them because you overspend? It’s going to be difficult to talk openly about how you spent a grand on a handbag you couldn’t afford, if you also have to tell them you can only pay ten pounds an hour. Anyhow, fees can vary from free to around £90 per 50 minute session. On average, expect to pay about £35 - £45 per 50 minute session.

Finally:
Deciding to go to counselling or psychotherapy is a massively important step for you to have taken.  Now, take your time, and try to get a feel for what you want, before making the decision about who to choose. You don’t have to stick to the person you first end up seeing. You don’t have to tell them everything all in one go. You can use the first session just to gauge their response to you. Remember they won’t respond as a friend does. You might be telling them about something quite traumatic and feel short-changed if they don’t respond as you expect. Remember they are there to help you, not to collude with your mood. They are not there to feel your feelings (although some will), they are there for you to talk to them without fear of judgement. Just think about how good it is to talk into an empty space, and then rather than focussing on whether you like them or not, walk away at the end of the session and take time to reflect on how you feel afterwards. Counselling isn’t just about what happens in the 50 minutes, but on the impact of that shorter hour on the rest of your life. You might feel angry or impotent during the session and then find that the rest of your week goes more smoothly than you expected, or that you find yourself taking steps you didn’t expect you would – like trying to address a debt problem, or deal with a difficult boss, or a marriage problem, in a slightly different way than you have before. Most of all, you should remember you have a space and time that is your own.

More on debt and depression

 

Laughter Work Out

Laughing for an hour a day could help you to burn as many calories as if you had been lifting weights for thirty minutes.

The G.O.L.D. Daily Laughter Diet study led by Dr. Helen Pilcher, who formerly of the London Institute of Psychiatry, and her fellow researcher, Timandra Harkness, is bound to spread a ray of hope through the gloom of January, a time associated with depression.

Dr Helen Pilcher, a comedian and neuroscientist has been researching the effects of laughter, and found that laughing for an hour can burn between 100 - 120 calories. This is a far more enjoyable way of dieting than say, hoovering for forty minutes, walking for twenty minutes, or weightlifting, and the bonus is that if you laughed for an hour a day for a whole year, you could lose over eleven pounds in weight.

Laughter has many positive health effects: and has many similarities to an aerobic work-out.

When you giggle, you can end up gasping for air, which then helps to increase the amount of oxygen in your blood. As your chest goes in and out then your abdominal muscles work hard, and, even better than all of this, your endorphin levels are raised, while stress hormones are lowered.

Other bonuses mentioned in the study are that you don't have to spend money on exercise equipment: expensive running kit and shoes, just sit in front of your TV for example, and switch on. And, hopefully, injuries sustained from over-laughing are few and far between, whereas over-exercising injuries are common. Obviously, it's not recommended that you do no exercise at all.

Some health benefits suggested are:


• Increases blood flow equals a vascular work out, which is great for the heart (Miller, 2005). Laughter increases artery diameter by 22%, just like aerobic exercise.

• Increased oxygen in the blood. Temporary increase in heart rate (by 10-20%) and blood pressure and in oxygenated blood flow. (Boone 2000).

• Boosts levels of dopamine in the brain - the 'feel good' signalling hormone.

• Laughter can help to deal with pain - experimental partcipants who watched comedy while experimenters tightened a cuff around their wrists experienced less discomfort than those watching unfunny films.

• Decreases levels of cortisol by around around 39%, and adrenalin around 70% lower. Both can help people to feel stressed, if ungoverned.

• Laughter promotes levels of immunoglobulins (disease-fighting proteins) and immune cells (T cells, natural killer cells)

• Increases success rate of IVF

• Increases leptin (key protein found in milk, involved in fat metabolism) concentration in breast milk.

• Can help blood sugar levels. A study of diabetes patients by the University of Tsukuba in Ibaraki, Japan, showed that laughing at stand up comedy for 40 minutes after a meal lowered the increase in their blood sugar, compared to the same group watching a boring 40-minute lecture without jokes. A similar response was seen in non-diabetic subjects.

What happens when you laugh:

A laugh can cause around fifteen muscles in your face to start working - including the zygomatic major muscle, which makes you smile. Increased blood-flow makes your face light up, giving you a healthy glow. As your diaphragm moves up, this causes the abdominal muscles to contract and relax, which then forces air out of the mouth - a laugh. (Unless you're a 'huffer' - a silent laugher.)

MRI scans show that brain changes take place, too. The left side cortex is busy, analysing the meaning of the words, while the frontal lobe is involved in the emotional response, and the right side of the cortex helps you understand the joke. The motor areas in the cerebellum will create your physical responses, while a visual will promote activity in the occipital lobe.

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