Resumo de Book Of Facts - Reader's Digest

MIND CONTROL

Meditation, yoga and other mind control techniques, which have been practiced in the East since about 1000 BC, can have a measurable effect on the body, scientists have found. They can even affect the body in ways that are ordinarily beyond the reach of conscious control. Researchers in Britain in the mid 1970s taught yoga relaxation techniques to half of a group of people who suffered from high blood pressure. The trained group was later able to lower their blood pressure by an average of 16 per cent, simply through using the techniques. Normally, blood pressure- like the heart?s pulse rate- is controlled unconsciously by the body?s nervous system.
In the early 1980s, British researchers discovered that similar results could be achieved with biofeed-back. In this technique, the patients were hooked up to machines that displayed their blood pressure visibly, and they were encouraged to concentrate on trying to reduce the reading by mental effort alone.

IT FEELS NO PAIN

Pain from any injury or illness is always perceived by the brain. Yet, curiously, the brain itself is immune to pain: it contains none of the specialized receptor cells that sense pain in other parts of the body. Surgical operations on the brain sometimes have to be carried out while the patient is conscious, so that the surgeon can enlist the patient?s help to pick his way through the brain?s complex tissue. Once the discomfort of the initial incision through the skull and the brain?s coverings has been deadened by a local anaesthetic, the patient feels no pain.
The technique has been used, for example, to locate areas of the brain responsible for epileptic fits. Weak electric shocks are applied to different parts of the brain until the patient reports feeling the first symptoms of a fit. The area which produces the symptoms is then surgically removed or destroyed.

BUILT-IN PAINKILLERS

Sportsman who play on despite injury, and soldiers who fight on despite wounds, may not be demonstrating unusual courage. They may simply not notice the pain until the game or the battle is over.
Medical researchers believe that part of the reason may be that the brain creates its own painkillers, known as endorphins and enkephalins, which are capable of blocking the sensation of pain without having any of the undesirable side effects associated with manufactured drugs.
Extreme physical effort and stress both trigger the brain to produce more of the painkillers- hence the player?s and the soldier?s immunity.

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