John Cleese takes us on a tour of a laughter therapy practice in India.
Laughter promotes stress reduction, community bonding, stronger immune system... and joy. What a simple solution!
In recent studies of married couple supportiveness issues in their first few years of marriage, researchers learned that too much support is harder on a marriage than not enough. When it comes to marital satisfaction, both partners are happier if husbands receive the right type of support, and if wives ask for support when they need it.
The married support findings
illustrate the need for couples to understand the various ways they can
be supportive, and the importance of communicating what they need and
when, said Erika Lawrence, associate professor of psychology
in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Marriage issues are
solved with understanding and slightly changed support behaviors.
"The idea that simply being more supportive is better for your marriage is a myth," Lawrence said. "Often husbands and wives think, 'If my partner really knows me and loves me, he or she will know I'm upset and will know how to support me.' However, that's not the best way to approach a supportive marriage. Your partner shouldn't have to be a mind reader. Couples will be happier if they learn how to say, 'This is how I'm feeling, and this is how you can help me.'"
Too much of a good thing in marriage issues
In one study, Lawrence and colleagues discovered that receiving more support than desired is a greater risk factor for marital decline than not being there for a spouse.
"If you don't get enough support, you can make up for that with family and friends -- especially women, who tend to have multiple sources of support," she said. "When you receive too much support, there's no way to adjust for that."
The supportive marriage issues study involved 103 husbands and wives who completed surveys five times over their first five years of marriage. The questionnaires looked at how support was provided and measured marital satisfaction.
Types of supportive marriage
Four kinds of marriage issue support were identified in the study:
Worst! Too much unwanted advice!
Results showed that too much informational support -- usually in the form of unwanted advice-giving -- is the most detrimental.
Always Wanted in Marriage: Genuine Esteem Support!
In contrast, you can never go wrong providing esteem support, assuming it's genuine.
Too little marriage support was more common than too much.
Receiving less support than desired was a complaint of about two-thirds of men and at least 80 percent of women. Only about one-third of men and women reported receiving more support than they wanted.
The paper, published in the Journal of Family Psychology, was co-authored by Rebecca L. Brock, a UI graduate student in psychology.
Marriage Support isn't one-size-fits-all
A related supportive marriage study showed that for men, it's important that their wives provide the right kind of support, offering emotional, informational, tangible or esteem support as needed. For wives, it's more important that their husbands try to be supportive -- even if what they do doesn't quite hit the mark.
"Both parties are more satisfied if the husband gets the right kind of support, and if the wife feels like she's supported," Lawrence said. Marriage issues are shared by both genders. "Husbands shouldn't throw their hands up if they're not sure what to do. They need to stay in there and keep trying, because we found that women appreciate the effort to be supportive."
Dialog solves marriage issues
Lawrence said dialog is key to a supportive marriage. If you need support, request it; if you're providing support, ask how you can help -- don't assume you know what to do. Afterward, talk about what worked and what didn't, and adjust accordingly.
"The assumption is that men just want to be left alone and women want to be held and listened to," Lawrence said. "In reality, different men want different kinds of support, and different women want different kinds of support."
Marriage Issue Research
For this study of marriage support, 275 newlyweds completed questionnaires about supportive behaviors and marital satisfaction, the type of support they received, and whether it was sufficient. Twice during the study, 235 married couples visited the lab to discuss how they would approach a goal such as stress management, a career change, improving family relationships or being more assertive. Researchers shot video of the 10-minute conversations and observed how couples asked for, provided and accepted support.
The supportive marriage behaviors paper was published in the journal Personal Relationships. Lawrence was the lead author, with co-authors from the University of Iowa, CIGNA Health Solutions, Santa Clara University, the University of California, San Francisco, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Both marital support studies were supported by grants from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute for Child and Human Development, and the UI.Teachers are 32 times more likely to experience voice problems, according to one study. And unlike singers or actors, teachers can't take a day off when their voices hurt.
Now a new study by the National Center for Voice and
Speech (NCVS) reveals how teachers use their voices at work and at home
and uncovers differences between male and female teachers. Its findings
will be presented at a meeting of the 2009 Acoustical Society of America
(ASA).
Eric Hunter, deputy director of the NCVS, and colleagues equipped teachers with the NCVS voice dosimeter, a device which captures voicing characteristics such as pitch and loudness rather than actual speech. The dosimeter sampled their voices 33 times per second. The researchers analyzed 20 million of these samplings which were collected during waking hours over a 14 day period for each teacher.
Female teachers used their voices about 10 percent more than males when teaching and 7 percent more when not teaching.
The data also indicated that female teachers speak louder than male teachers at work.
"These results may indicate an underlying reason for female teachers' increased voice problems," writes Hunter.
All of the teachers spoke about 50 percent more when at work, at both a higher pitch and a volume (about 3 decibels louder).
Instead of resting their overworked voices at home, the teachers also spent significant amounts of time speaking outside of work.
Me thinks it's time to let the students do some of the talking!
I've picked up bits of studies over the years that report stats hinting that students have very few opportunities to speak in the classroom -- maybe it's time to create some new best practices that are good for the children's development of communication and social skills...and time to give the teacher a rest!
SOURCE: 2009 Newswise, Inc
Grameen Health in conjunction with the 6th Annual World Health Care Congress put out a request for a poster session on extremely affordable global health solutions: "The poster Session will promote such innovations that seek to meet demands for low-cost, high-quality health care through a bottom-up understanding of unmet health needs and display a culture for continuous, incremental improvement of existing services to meet needs better... This session is intended as a platform for extremely affordable solutions in health care delivery using innovative enabling technologies and business models."
Mobile Solutions for Nutrition Monitoring
Childrens' Health Monitoring using mobile phones:
Open source, mobile phone based monitoring platform to address critical gaps in Malawian health care provision. Working with the Ministry of Health in Malawi, we are revamping their early warning famine surveillance system, employing affordable and readily available mobile technologies to empower local stakeholders with the tools necessary to effectively monitor nutrition conditions in their region. In addition, our project will enable the Government of Malawi, UNICEF Malawi, and their partners to geographically map and track child malnutrition trends accurately and in real time.
Maybe we need something like this for monitoring the hunger, safety and educational wellbeing of our children in America.
Women-Owned Franchises: Diagnostics
Throughout rural India, a scarcity of medical professionals has triggered a crisis - skyrocketing the opportunity costs to attain health care in urban areas. Without viable alternatives, the rural populace turns to unregistered practitioners - resulting in a low quality of care. By supporting the entrepreneurial spirit of women-owned franchises, this growing network addresses health needs at the village. Drishtee drives each unit to break-even within a year. Qualified women applied to become DHF entrepreneurs; successful candidates received low-cost medical and business training. Medical equipments are financed as a loan. At training completion, DHFs are capable of conducting basic diagnostics, first-aid, eye screenings, and retailing OTC medicines and hygiene products. Drishtee partners with local private hospitals to provide physicians and specialists for weekly and monthly village clinics. Prices are scaled according to community needs.
Home-based or small business health screenings with transmission to your doctor. That makes sense!
Mobile Games for Healthcare
Freedom HIV/AIDS is first ever initiatives on HIV/AIDS awareness using mobile phone games, and it is also the largest ever-social initiative on the mobile devices.). The initiative has effectively been able to reach out to over 27 millions people in providing HIV/AIDS awareness and health communication through mobile phones. Mobile devices are the most prevalent tools in the hands of a common man all specially in the developing world. The number of mobile phone users in India reached 347 million at the end of 2008 (according to data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India). In addition, more people in India have access to mobile phones than landline telephones or PCs, which makes mobile phones an extremely powerful medium for communication in India. Mobile is the device of the future, whether it is communication, education, health care, e-governance or information. In India, 24% of mobile users live in small towns and villages. Seeing the success of the launch of first four games in India, Freedom HIV/AIDS worked towards scaling the program, with rolling out of new games for regional consumption.
Wow...mobile phone information delivery is the way of the future!
WaterHealth International: Clean Water Solutions
Access to clean, safe water is one of the world's most urgent health crises. WaterHealth International's mission is to achieve unprecedented scale in providing affordable, clean, and safe water worldwide in order to save lives and enhance economic development. WaterHealth's unique combination of break-through technology and innovative business models enables the delivery of highly affordable, clean water to even the most remote, low-income rural communities. WaterHealth's business approach to this challenge includes partnerships for implementation with commercial institutions, international agencies, local and central government bodies, and non-governmental organizations. WaterHealth's modular community-owned water "micro-utilities" are designed especially for rural and peri-urban communities. Each facility, known as a WaterHealth Centre, utilizes a multi-stage filtration system in conjunction with the company's proprietary, breakthrough ultra violet light disinfection technology, UVWaterworks™. The technology is highly efficacious against a broad spectrum of microbial pathogens, and the integrated system purifies and disinfects water with high microbial contamination, to produce safe, potable that meets or exceeds WHO guidelines.
There are American communities that don't have access to clean, fresh water, too.
SOURCE: Zyozy.org