Sunday, January 19, 2014

TED Talks

I love TED Talks. I subscribe to the TED talks health podcast. They are short (15-20 minutes) and cover all sorts of interesting health topics. I have a few favorites and have even taken notes on some of them. I wanted a central place to store the notes so I'm putting him here.

Disclaimer: Don't read too much into this. I was a psych major. The brain fascinates me...


+ Voices were a meaningful response to traumatic life events- particularly childhood events. And as such, were not my enemies but a source of insight into solvable emotional problems.

+ Each voice was closely related to aspects of myself. And that each of them carried overwhelming emotions that I'd never had the opportunity to process or resolve. Memories of sexual trauma and abuse. Of anger, shame, guilt, low self worth. The voices took the place of this pain and gave words to it.

+ The important question in psychology shouldn't be "what's wrong with you?" but "what's happened to you?"

+ Don't tell me what other people have told you about yourself. Tell me about you.


+ The opposite of depression is not happiness but vitality.

+ Depression was something that was braided so deep into us that there was no separating it from our character and personality.

+ Three things that people tend to confuse: depression, grief, and sadness. Grief is explicitly reactive.

+ Depression is a slower way of being dead.

+ The truth is full of lies.

+ Shutting out depression strengthens it. While you hide, it grows.

+ If you told me that I’d have to be depressed for the next month, I would say as long as I know it will be over in November, I can do it. But if you said to me “you have to have acute anxiety for the next month” I would rather slit my wrists than go through it. It was the feeling all the time like that feeling you have if you’re walking and you slip or trip and the ground is rushing up at you but instead of lasting half a second like the way that does, it lasted for 6 months. It’s a sensation of being afraid all the time but not even knowing what it is that you’re afraid of.



+ Hunger and energy are controlled by the brain.

+ Your brain has its own sense of what you should weigh. No matter what you consciously believe. It's called your "set point."

+ Hypothalamus acts as a thermostat

+ People who have lost 10% of their body weight burn 250-400 calories less because their metabolism is suppressed.

+ Set points can go up, but they very rarely go down.

+ Intuitive eaters are less likely to be overweight and they spend less time thinking about food. Controlled eaters are more vulnerable to overeating in response to advertising, super-sizing, and the all-you-can-eat buffet.

+ Girls who have dieted in their early teenage years are 3x more likely to become overweight 5 years later. Even if they started at a normal weight.

+ Diets may seem harmless, but they actually do a lot of collateral damage. At worst, they ruin lives. Weight obsession leads to eating disorders, especially in young kids.

+ In the US, 80% of 10-year old girls say they have been on a diet. Our daughters have learned to measure their worth by the wrong scale.

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