Left it too late to send a Mother’s Day card? Try this…

Oh no, disaster has struck and you have forgotten to post the Mother’s Day card. What to do next. Have you thought about sending an e-card? E-cards are flattering because you are acknowledging that your parent is sophisticated and web-savvy, stylish (check out the great designs available), eco-friendly and free – as they say, what’s not to like?

Here’s some sites I came across which are worth a look:

Museum of Modern Art, New York http://www.moma.org/ecards/

My Punchbowl http://www.mypunchbowl.com/ecards

So, all’s well and you are back in the good books. (Of course, you could always tell her that a lovely gift is on the way from http://thefutureperfectcompany.com/… )

Love that teapot!

“Hi Philippa

Is pain all in the mind?

Today’s Times reports how new medical technology suggests that the best way of treating chronic pain is with CBT style brain re-training rather than with drugs.

Chronic pain affects nearly eight million people in the UK and as well as being debilitating and distressing for the people affected, costs the economy more than £12 billion a year in disability and care costs.

Professor Irene Tracey of the Oxford Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain, is pioneering a new scientific understanding of pain which reveals how we may be wrongly treating millions of patients who suffer it every day.

Until now, pain has been seen as a symptom. But it is a disease in itself, argues Tracey: one that can cause serious brain damage. She and a growing number of specialists are using hi-tech imaging scanners to reveal how medicine often tackles pain from the wrong perspective. The source of the problem is in our heads — and as such, the way we treat it needs to be radically reassessed.

Powerful modern medical scanners mean that we can now see our pain responses in detailed action. The brain scans also reveal how our mood, attitude and beliefs all determine how we experience pain. “When you are anxious or depressed, it can make pain worse,” says Tracey. “When you are distracted, enjoying a song or movie, it does not feel so bad.”

The long-term effects of negative beliefs may create a devastating spiral. The more anxious, stressed and depressed you become about your pain, the more you may physically rewire your brain’s architecture so that it ultimately becomes hypersensitive to physical stimulus.

To break the stress-anxiety-pain cycle, chronic pain sufferers need to be given emotional support early on. University Hospital Leicester, for example, offers a two-month pain-management programme based around cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) rather than drugs.

The Leicester course is run by Dr Beverly Collett, a consultant in pain medicine for 24 years. “In many of my patients it is not possible to find any physical cause of pain in the area that seems to be affected. I see people with constant back pain whose back-scans show up as normal. I see women with chronic pelvic pain who test negative for conditions such as endometriosis,” she says. “But we know now that in persistent pain, calcium and sodium signalling channels are activated in the spinal cord and brain. Once you start these cells firing, they continue to fire.”

This theory has signifiant implications for how we treat pain. Will people readily accept that therapy and not drugs are the answer? I can’t help thinking that many people will resist the idea that “the pain is in their head” and seek CBT only as a last resort once they have exhausted all the medications available.

To read the article in full, go to:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/features/article7054236.ece

Experience Exchange wins DBA challenge

Congratulations to the team behind www.sageandonions.com who yesterday won the DBA Inclusive Design Challenge with an initiative to encourage people of all ages to trade experiences and skills.

The DBA Inclusive Design Challenge is an annual design competition to create a mainstream product, service, environment or communication which can be enjoyed by people of all abilities. Now in its 10th year, the Challenge was launched by the Royal College of Art Helen Hamlyn Centre in collaboration with the Design Business Association (DBA) as a creative response to the poor levels of design of goods and services aimed at older and disabled people, a significant and growing group as the population ages.

This year’s brief was entitled Active Ageing – designing for our future selves and looked at the challenges of our growing ageing population remaining active and productive in later life.

Creative consultancy, Clinic came up with the idea of The Experience Exchange whereby people of all ages would swap skills and experience, rather like projects such as freecyle. Groups would be set up locally and people would be encouraged to attend events to get to know each other and identify experiences which could be swapped. It is thought that this idea would be most likely to attract people with time but not necessarily money, such as the retired but also parents with young children and students. So for example, one person could swap cooking skills for help with car maintenance.

An interesting idea. I found when setting up my business that experienced people are usually really pleased to be asked for advice and many have been very generous with their time and expertise. So, I for one, can see that, with the right sort of organisational framework, this could work.

Need for less sleep as we get older is a “myth”

The Times last week carried an interesting story claiming that the popular notion that we need less sleep as we get older is a myth.

According to research, while older people tend to sleep for fewer hours than they did when they were younger, this apparently has a negative effect on the brain’s performance and they would benefit from getting more.

Sean Drummond, a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Diego, said that older people are more likely to suffer from broken sleep, while younger people are better at sleeping efficiently straight through the night. More sleep in old age, however, is associated with better health, and most older people would feel better and more alert if they slept for longer periods.

He said “It’s definitely a myth that older people need less sleep. The more healthy an older adult is, the more they sleep like they did when they were younger. Our data suggests that older adults would benefit from continuing to get as much sleep as they did in their 30s. That’s different from person to person, but the amount of sleep we had at 35 is probably the same amount we need at 75”

The absolute number of hours spent asleep matters more for older people, while for younger people sleep quality is more important, Dr Drummond said. “If you were to fall asleep, never wake up until the alarm goes off and then jump out of bed, you have 100 per cent sleep efficiency. In older adults that happens less and less frequently. The most common characteristic of sleep as we age is that you wake up in the middle of the night.

“There’s data to suggest that what breaks down as we age is not the need to sleep but the ability to sleep in a solid chunk. As we age the strength of our circadian rhythms breaks down. It’s harder to be awake during the day and to be asleep at night.”

To read the article in full: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/living/article7035842.ece