2016/05/08

reward project basis

Dora and Fatih REWARD FOR LIFE ®

-REWARD IDEAS
-BENECEPTION (medial reward body-mind pathways ...BEN qi jing shen) > nociception (lateral reward BIAO) ((real ben = why ben -> biao))
-reward are instinctive NEEDS (genetical+epigenetical) to be accomplished
...since or a need is accomplished or ...it raises till convertion (dopa-beta-hydroxilase and habenula) to stress pathways
->reward are DUTIES for health of people and society
->rewards are RIGHTS for health and wellbeing

-REWARD STRATEGIES
1. diet
2. fitness
3. shen soul (mind)
4. love life
5. sleep
6. extra rewards

2016/01/28

Reward projects and concepts: reward for salutogenesis

Dora and Fatih

-epigenetics and reward
-reward as need, right, duty ... fulfillment
-reward positive gap basis for salutogenesis: RM > RL
-common reward concepts: RL nociception, RM beneception
-from occidental to oriental medicine from the reward point a view

-REWARD STRATEGIES (Dora and Fatih (c))
(1) diet 
(2) fitness 
(3) mind 
(4) love life 
(5) sleep 
(6) extra rewards

...and the right to reward according to common needs
reward is a right and a duty

cfr all our texts, articles, books and so on

2015/11/19

REWARD integrated strategies

Dora Dragoni, MD etc
REWARD integrated strategies 

(protected and included in
-Creative Commons 4.0 
-my PhD project
-all my previous 12 articles, and writings)

...a part from getting a measure of stress quantity and quality
this has to be however balanced with positive rewarding lifestyle, based on:

1) DIET:
- nutrition: occidental basis, TCM ideas, Ayurveda ideas
- fitness: occidental exercises, qi-gong, yoga asana

2) MIND
- mental training techniques
- mindfulness
- zen practice
- mantra 

3) AFFECTIVE LIFE

5) ANY KIND OF WELLBEING PRACTICE
- time with pets
- massage

6) eventual CAM techniques


2015.11.19

D.D.
F.D.

2015/11/13

CAM and Reward for Wellness - International Journal of Complementary & Alternative Medicine - MedCrave

http://medcraveonline.com/IJCAM/IJCAM-01-00035.pdf


Volume 1 Issue 6- 2015


Nutritionist, Acupuncture fellow at AMAB, Italy



*Corresponding author: Dora Dragoni, Medical Doctor, Acupuncture Fellow (3rd/3 year), Personal Trainer, Mental Trainer, Nutrionist, AMAB, Italy, Tel: +39 338 5085731; Email: dora.dragoni@studio.unibo.it Received: October 21, 2015 | Published: October 26, 2015




Keywords: Reward; Wellness; Health; CAM; Stress; Acupuncture; Ayurveda; Diet; Nutrition; Fitness; Mental training; Epigenetic; Affective life; Lifestyle, Right to health; Prevention; Longevity




Abstract Review Article CAM strategies are at the same time ancient healing strategy systems, since ayurveda is 5000 years old and Traditional Chinese Medicine with acupuncture is 3000 years old, so they are proved to be effective and safe, …and they are also a new care approach, since occidental world still asks if they are really scientifical despite the evidence, the millennary effectiveness, the thousands of studies and researches, and the fact that people are using them more and more. CAM are called alternative in comparison to the official therapies systems, such as drugs and surgery. Antonovsky starting from 1979 underlines how, in a correct salutogenetic approach, to create health we should at first rule the lifestyle, manage a good diet (nutrition and physical activity), then proceed toward light caring treatments, passing then to acupuncture and such kind of medicine methods, and only in late stages recur to artificial molecules or even more.n It’s simple to understand that, as World Health Organization declares “health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” [1], so from that it derives this observation: relieving symptoms in some ways doesn’t correspond to creating wellness. Reaching a well-being global condition is an autonomous process that each person can live, thanks to therapists and all those who want to participate with an active and positive role into others lives. CAM are indeed lots of healing systems: Traditional Chinese Medicine (acupuncture, chinese fitotherapy, tui na massage, qi-gong, dietetic), ayurveda (yoga, mantra, use of spices and dietetic culture, therapeutical massages); but also integrated therapies, that are: diet, from the greek world δίαιτα that means lifestyle, particularly nutrition and physical activity, mindfullness and relaxation techniques (from mental training to any oriental zen form of meditation), and even simply understanding that affective life has a main role into our daily routine, becoming of course able to apply this need to our daily habits. The latest studies focus on reward system, the brain pathways and nuclei involved in the perception and feeling of positive signals and emotions, related to our main needs and istincts, such as food, sex, reproduction, parental behaviours. It is known that when medial paths prevale we have a good mood, positivity, wellness and pleasure perceptions. But in case of stress conditions dopamine is converted into cathecolamines and lateral ways are prevalent, with a global stressful mood and all the organic consequences that derive from that: Mayo Clinic on its site [2] publishes that stress is strictly related with all the most diffused diseases, such as cardiopathies, gastrointestinal dysfunctions (these two can also be called dysautonomias), allergies and autoimmune disorders, reumatologic diseases, headache/migraine, insomnia, and all the mood and sex dysfunctions. So it’s important to prevent stress, managing it creating wellness daily habits and situations. In this article I talk about the characteristics and functions of all main CAM (as I said: nutritional and fitness suggestions, acupuncture, ayurveda, mind relaxation tips, and affective life approaches), underlining their neuroscientific and global mechanisms of action: acting on reward system as well, they are able not only to relieve stress, symptoms and pain, but they also can improve in great ways our well-being global condition, and with the wellness feeling that derives from that: we are stronger (getting the so called “resilience”, the ability to overcome obstacles), able to face in the better and most positive ways our life, managing it how we want.


2015/10/20

“4th Global ACUPUNCTURE and Therapist Annual Meeting”


http://acupuncture.conferenceseries.com


2015/10/10

11) ARTICLE: Diet, Health and Wellness (2015.10.07)

http://medcraveonline.com/JNHFE/JNHFE-02-00073.php


Opinion
Volume 2 Issue 5 - 2015
Diet, Health and Wellness
Dora Dragoni*
Nutritionist, Acupuncture fellow at AMAB, Italy
Received: October 7, 2015 | Published: October 7, 2015
*Corresponding author: Dora Dragoni, Medical Doctor, Nutritionist, Personal Trainer, Acupuncture Fellow at AMAB, Italy, Tel: +39 338 5085731; Email: 

Citation: Dragoni D (2015) Diet, Health and Wellness. J Nutr Health Food Eng 2(5): 00073. DOI:10.15406/jnhfe.2015.02.00073


Keywords: Diet; Nutrition; Lifestyle; Wellness, Health; Reward; Fitness; Mediterranean diet; Italian Cuisine; Turkish cuisine; TCM; Food culture; Ayurveda; Multi-Strategies; Right to food



Abstract


Food is part of us: it is nutrients, tastes, and flavours…and it is one of the basic social ways we spend time with others. So it is important to know conscious approaches to it, to choose wisely how we eat, to regulate our diet at better, to have healthy and pleasant foods, and to prefer social eating solutions.
No matter if we are in fit or we want to improve our BMI, we should choose healthy foods, like organic ones, we should balance our diets with the best proportions of nutrients, and we should know which flavours adapt to our way of being (according to traditional chinese medicine, for example); or in case of diabetes, or other dysmetabolisms, we should even more pay attention to our nutrition and lifestyle, in order to stay in the better equilibrium. Even pregnancy, infancy, and sport habits need particular attentions, since all are physiological situations in which diet has an important role.
Understanding how considering our daily and weekly nutrition is the first step. Then we should choose the foods, amongst the healthiest, that fit best to our preferences. And moreover it would be important to have an overall global lifestyle: having a regular physical activity, in order to get to fitness body and mind conditions, and try to train with daily relaxation and mindfullness techniques as well, like yoga, zen practices, or maybe others based on concentration or even visualization. In case of some dysfunctions we could recur to CAM strategies: complementary and alternative medicines are considered more and more important and worth (like acupuncture, fitotherapies, mental training and so on).
The basis could be the mediterrenean diet, declared in 2010 “intangible cultural heritage for humanity” by Unesco, and typical of mediterrenean countries: the world “diet” comes from the ancient greek world “diaita” that means “lifestyle” indeed. So preferring complex carbohydrates (at lower glycemic index), white meats, fish (rich in omega-3), some fresh cheese, and lots of vegetables and fruits (for vitamins and fibers), dry fruits and nuts (containing omega-6), adding some herbs and spices as well (I can say that for some cultures, like ayurveda, they are a real healing system), evitating sweets and fats (helping in such a way metabolism), and reducing coffee as well, is the ‘nutrition side’; to this we should also have a daily sport activity and if we can find some time to relax at sun it would be great for our body and mind as well - vitamin D is related to higher fertility rates according to recent studies.
In conclusion we can underline the relationships between nutrition, lifestyle, emotions and reward system, the brain pathways involved in the modulation of stress and in the wellness perceptions and feelings, that are the basis for healing, resilience and health: even World Health Organization declared that health is not the absence of diseases but it has to be the complete body and mind well-being.

2015/03/30

9) ARTICLE - "Stress & health: wellness for body and mind" [2015.04.01]

Stress & health: wellness for body and mind


KEY WORDS
wellness, stress, reward, acupuncture, psychotherapy

ABSTRACT

Well being means for sure to manage stress conditions. Understanding what is stress, and how to prevent, is the first point. Then we should improve our life styles: such as diet and physical activity. Of course how we feel is important too, our surroundings and the related emotions. Some advanced techniques can always help: for example, acupuncture and psychotherapy.


More and more scientific studies and wellness systems are examining the interactions between stress and well being, and are trying to understand and to find some ways of treatment to be and stay at our best.
But what is stress? Stress is a physiological response that our body has in order to overcome a problem. It can lead to maximal parameters in order to fight at best during a particular occasion.
Of course it has biological bases: his central regulations take place in hypotalamus. The hormone released for such response is the CRH, that provoques the production and secretion of another hormone, the ACTH, from the pituitary to all our body. From that we have the production of cortisol, secreted by adrenal glands.
The effects of stress are a lot: at first we have an increase of the blood pressure, and of glycemia. Furthermore a chronical stress condition leads to toxicity: due to the hyperglicemia, and determined by the catabolic inbalance this can have as consequence, and a cellular oxydation (resposible even of cancers).
Another consequence is that the ormonal equilibrium disbalances toward stress hormones and not of physiological ones: deriving from that, the mood symptoms and the sexual and social dissatisfaction.
It is common known that the immunitary system is damaged by stress molecules: it can become both hyperactive and then disregulated. Many diseases are spreading in these dacedes: autoimmune diseases particularly (type 1 diabetes, reumathoid arthritis, celiac disease). Flogistic alterations are also found in depression, so psicho-neuro-immuno-endocrinology is becoming one of the sciences helping us understanding how we are.
Some studies are explaining how headache is related to a raised amout of request to our brain (with till a 300% blood flux in brain), that cannot always face to such conditions from a metabolic point of view and the disbalance leads to molecular lacks: acting on opioids could help (as the acupuncture headache preventive treatment contributes to demonstrate).
Even Mayo Clinic has focused the attention on the correlation between stress and many common and diffused diseases, such as: headache, gastric symptoms, some chest and heart disfunctions (called also “dysautonomia”), the trend to get colds and flus, psychological disregulations, being often angry and dissatisfied, have an unsatisfactory affective and sexual life.

The point to pay attention is that, by regulating our mind and ways of living, we can manage stress conditions, preventing them and solving them as well.
Acting on the REWARD system (neural pathways), that counteracts stress, can be done at many practical levels:
    DIET – many studies are done about sugar reduction or even deprivation: after 40 days rats see the first benefits in how they feel and behave with better blood parameters at first. We should avoid hypercalorical diets, and introduce always 1,5 liters of water at least; prefer vegetables and fruit, to guarantee the correct amount of fiber intake
    SLEEP – a good regular sleep is one of the main elements to improve to reduce the stress amount. We always say that 7 hours of sleep are a good quantity, or even more
    PHYSICAL ACTIVITY – doing a fitness training everyday for at least 45 minutes is good in inducing both relaxation and improvement of physical body shape (from which happiness). It is known that physical activity is good in the prevention of Alzheimer disease, and it acts both at a mental and somatic level
    RELAXATION TECHNIQUES – we can distress our mind with yoga sessions or tai chi trainings. Even meditation, in every form, is useful to relax mind and soul. Mental training could help particular needs, such as those of sport persons, based on both relaxation and visualization
Of course we could also manage stress consequences in great ways:
    ACUPUNCTURE – this very old system involves amazing theories developed through centuries in Asia (mainly in China, but also in Japan and Korea), and it is proved by the newest studies understanding how the stimulation of the opiate system, by needling specific cutaneous points, leads to a rebalancing of many molecules, particularly hormones and neurotransmitters
    PSYCHOTHERAPY – if well done, and taking in consideration the whole person, it can help you find a good mind approach to life after a stressful period (particularly if there are even body symptoms, that can be a physical expression of a more general spiritual bad feeling). Helping your psyche and mind will bring you more happiness, a better social life and a satisfying sexual life: of course love and sex are the main keys to see life in the right way, they bring to the increase of many molecules, such as oxytocin, that are related to how we approach to other people, and they of course also act at body level, by reducing pain and inflammation, and on the whole by improving how we feel and we are.

www.mayoclinic.org
Maciocia, The foundations of chinese medicine

Dragoni D., Reward Pathway and Metabolism, Neuroscienze.net

2015/03/26

2015/02/09

acupuncture & insomnia

http://www.healthcmi.com/Acupuncture-Continuing-Education-News/1426-acupuncture-beats-drug-for-sleep

2014/03/03

acupuncture & reward

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24288658
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17906602
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16565594
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15850733
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2575345
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3032850
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6125996
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2982220
http://en.doctmag.com/unconventional-medicine/A-new-method-for-treatment-of-obesity-according-to-Traditional-Chinese-Medicine/
...

2013/04/16

8) ARTICLE - cervello ordinato - ordered brain [2013.04.16]


The Orderly Brain

INTRODUCTION
Interaction in the context of therapeutic improvement is based on the understanding of the points to be solved in the perspective that should be obtained.
Brief therapy entails the patient’s greater understanding of the problem to be solved. Classic therapy involves and implies a series of situations that patient and therapist have to understand and solve; see reality.
The developments in the context of improvement concern a few points
-deterrences
-ways to arrive at the implementation of decision making
-empowerment
-          the so-called brain programming evolution of neurolinguistic programming
-dissociations
The various “mental levels” are conditioned by correct thoughts; see types of rewards chosen after a series of obvious considerations; see therapeutic solutions.
If therapy is not carried out (see best choices) there would be somatizations to be resolved; see ideas carried out.

DETERRENCES
Deterrences can usually be placed at the cortical level.
They obviously derive from a processing path carried out by the person under induced self- or hetero-hypnosis.
Metaphor is always a valid tool for not explicitly revealing problems that the patient might not have understood or has not processed completely or not in an entirely personal way.
After analysing the case with the therapist and through self-reprocessing, we reach a solution that the patient is able to carry out; see surrounding conditions.
At that point deterrence becomes a work tool for therapist and patient.
Brief therapy is a consequence of this.

DECISION MAKING
The decision making process is carried out (see dopaminergic pathways going from mesencephalic reward pathway to cortex).
In the simplest cases, it is an automatically carried out system, in others it entails rapid processing, in still others it involves interaction with the therapist, which for the most part achieves the final solution.

EMPOWERMENT
This system typically involves the processing of a plan parallel to the therapeutic plan in which the somatising patient strengthens him/herself towards a balance that resolves or improves the pathological picture.
It turns into internal medicine or metabolic therapy when the patient becomes aware of the pathology and of the problem to be solved.
Thus diabetics and those with metabolic disorders must understand how to improve their condition.
E-health medicine, whether we are talking about self-management of the therapeutic diagnostic picture or self-regulated information of the pathology towards healing, seems more and more to be the solution for pathological cases.
Thus empowerment involves stabilisation of the pathological case towards a condition of balance in the situational complex.

FROM NLP TO BRAIN PROGRAMMING
A therapeutic development consists of the reduction in verbal reaction at the moments when the patient tries to process his/her condition. This means that the therapist solves cases that are either similar to each other or correlated in the resolution method.
The patient’s prayers could be seen as expressive mode in cases in which religiosity is strongly experienced.
It is true, however, that the patient who expresses him/herself often on his/her own problems appears to have processed the situations that he/she experiences in a mature way.
At the same time, the therapist can compare cases without obviously correlating them to avoid taking for granted that a deterrence is always valid in each case.
Brain programming should not be interpreted as a form of exorcism, which is always negative, rather it should be interpreted as a quick and effective solution for synchronously carrying out deterrences.
Negating forms of ironic telepathy between doctor and patient, we arrive in any case at the understanding of the case; see mental order that doctor and patient must have.
The patient processes problems in a personal way. And the therapist, having experienced a process of elaboration of his/her own conditions, knows how to solve, in reality, the problems and resolved crucial issues of the patient or of the person who turns to him/her to carry out what he/she knows and how.

DISSOCIATIONS
Unconscious dissociations are those that cause us to go from dopamine to gaba, as a sort of electric minus that the brain places on an electric plus which it negates, thus explaining the dissociative pictures of the various spectra; see DSM.
Conscious dissociations are, on the other hand, those for which, in cases of simply solved problems, there will always be gaps remaining between solved problem and way in which the solution was carried out.
Possible dissociations should be reassociated; see possible therapist therapist comparisons and comparisons with the literature pertaining to cases.

CONCLUSION
Physical activity as therapy/non-therapy remains the best key for protecting physical metabolic balance, and it should be placed alongside verbal forms of improvement of the person.
No therapy is ever finished even though all deterrences and forms of empowerment are always the resolution key to be carried out in the best way possible.

- Reward pathway and decision making, Academic press by Jean Claud Dreher.
- Empowerment conference proceedings (Denmark 2012)
- Riccardo Arone di Bertolino – L’ipnosi per un medico, La Martina
- Dora Dragoni – Reward pathway & motricidade, Neuroscienze