Weight Feather

I could listen to your body "help you lose weight?

A new study has linked the ability of people to measure your heart rate to how to keep your weight under control

Can you count heartbeats - without taking the pulse? Whether you realize it or not, you almost certainly have weight Feather. We all have a "feel interoceptive," knowledge of visceral signals from inside our body. The nerves pass our internal organs of our isolated cerebral cortex, weight Feather where it creates a dynamic representation of our internal physiology - internal control panel, if desired.

Interoceptive awareness (IA) is the ability to receive and process signals from the physiologic edge matrix weight Feather. Our staff interoceptive awareness level, as measured by the ability to accurately count our own heartbeat, is a stable trait that varies substantially across the population weight Feather. Good cardiac sensitivity has also been linked to susceptibility to other visceral organs as well.

Is it important? Could be. In recent years, weight Feather several researchers have reported links between IA and our sense of "I" and the ability to recognize and manage emotions. Now, Dr. Beate Herbert and colleagues found evidence that the IA is related to body mass index, weight Feather with the poorest scores IA predict higher BMI.

Their research, published in appetite, suggests that interoceptive awareness is good allowing eaters "intuitive" - ​​those who eat in response to physical rather than emotional and therefore signals to eat only when hungry - to keep weight.

Could it be that the board several times to diet - to forget the rules and just "listen to your body" - has a basic neuroscience Like everything that affects the human brain is not so simple. Some of us find Dr. Herbert can perceive our visceral signals perfectly,weight Feather but you can choose to ignore them because they find them confusing.

This discomfort could interoception Dr. Herbert told me, complicate our eating habits: "It is not enough to perceive interoceptive assessment of those signals as positive or negative correctly is an independent cognitive process, which also determines the feeding behavior must be allowed to yes .. to act on these signals received ".

Earlier this year, a team of psychologists led by Professor Manos Tsakiris at Royal Holloway, University of London, measures knowledge of visitors interoceptive London Science Museum weight Feather. I asked if he thought IA affects our eating habits. "Studies have shown that interoception plays an important role in eating disorders," he said. "It is linked to a deeper awareness of emotions in general and anorexia - for emotional reasons - choose not to eat, weight Feather but so far it is not known if an interoceptive awareness deficit is a cause or an effect of anorexia.".

The question of cause and effect is significant, and research professor in the body image and interoception Tsakiris is a good example weight Feather. It is believed that women with low IA show a strong tendency to "self-objectification" weight Feather. Consider your body primarily as "objects", assessing the appearance of the function has been suggested that self-objectification removes But IA TSAKIRIS findings suggest otherwise. Low AI that is actually the cause and not the consequence of self-objectification.

We could consider a vicious circle: low interoceptive awareness not only predicts the risk of eating disorders, but also a tendency to objectify unhealthy for us? And if so, weight Feather is there any hope for those of us who may not be particularly attentive to the wheels?

Meditation, perhaps surprising, weight Feather as it is to draw attention to internal states does not seem to make a difference.

Dr. Herbert offers another possibility weight Feather. "The experience of cardiac excitation [the effects of stress, emotions, etc] Throughout our lives could activate brain structures known to be important for the treatment of cardiac interoceptive signals," he said. weight Feather Could expose them to exciting experiences enhance our overall interoceptive sensitivity - including the ability to receive signals from the stomach "At the moment, weight Feather we do not have data on the development of cardiac interoceptive sensitivity, or sensitivity to other body signals during adulthood."