Figmentations

While I do believe in the mind-body connection, that what we think and believe has an effect on our body and our outcomes, some theories are more of a stretch than others. Clearly lack of sleep coupled with mental stress will eventually takes its toll on our immune system, our overall health, and our weight.

In the Dec 2nd issue of Parade magazine, there is an article on the impact of stress on weight gain. The article points out that when under stress, not only are we more prone to emotional eating and more likely to forgo our exercise routine, but “stress seems to release a chemical reaction that triggers fat cells to grow and multiply in number.” Thus, weight gain can be amplified when we are under stress. And in this scenario, the weight gained is the more dangerous type, around our mid-section. A useful possibility to keep an eye on.

So, stress does have a negative physiological affect on us. And, in the same way there are things that will have a positive physiological effect on us, including relaxation, positive thoughts, compelling goals, as well as feel-good joy achieved through helping others and from having a meaningful life purpose.

However, the recent study about the likelihood that the initials in our name can affect our performance, particularly for people with a ‘C’ or a ‘D’ in their name, and baseball players with a ‘K’ in their name (who “struck out slightly more often than batters whose names didn’t”), seems to be a bit of a stretch.

People can have associations or anchors to particular things, such as how the thought of a lemon can make you salivate, so I suppose an association to a letter is possible. But, I can’t help but believe there are more powerful factors that influence ones performance than a person’s initials.