Jon Barron's Natural Health Blog

Planning to buy a car? If you want the best deal, wait until you’re in a really foul mood. A study out of the University of New South Wales found that subjects who felt miserable paid more attention to their surroundings, had better discrimination, were less gullible and showed better recollection than their more cheerful cohorts. (So you’d better hope your car salesman is in a good mood — assuming you’re one of the few people buying a car nowadays!)

The researchers put subjects through a series of tests in order to reach their findings. In one such test, the subjects observed a staged fight between students and a teacher in a lecture hall. A week later, the subjects reported to the lab where they watched 10-minute videos intended to induce either happy, sad, or neutral moods. Those subjects who saw the depressing videos did much better at recalling accurately what had happened during the fight earlier in the week compared to the students who saw the happy film. Apparently, good moods led subjects to spruce up their memories with irrelevant and misleading details — almost like putting flowers on the table in a dirty room. The grumps, though, remembered events with sober clarity. (Perhaps part of cramming for finals should be watching Gigli just before the exam.)

In another test, subjects again watched mood-altering films. Then, they had to rate the accuracy of a series of urban myths. The subjects who saw the depressing films did a much better job of discerning reality than did those who had watched happy flicks. They also communicated more clearly. The sad subjects did far better at stating their case in written arguments. Study director and professor of psychology Dr. Joseph Forgas explained that a "mildly negative mood may actually promote a more concrete, accommodative and ultimately more successful communication style."

Apparently, the researchers found that gloomy weather exerted the same effect on subjects. On beautiful, sunny days, the memory lagged, but on gray, miserable days, the memory functioned just fine. So perhaps it’s no accident that Microsoft is based in Seattle; then again, that would make Silicon Valley harder to explain.

According to Dr. Forgas, "Our research suggests that sadness…promotes information-processing strategies best suited to dealing with more demanding situations. Whereas positive mood seems to promote creativity, flexibility, cooperation, and reliance on mental shortcuts, negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking paying greater attention to the external world." Well, there you go. That’s why Google and Apple are in sunny California rather than rainy Seattle.

Ironically, the inaccurate cheerful folks had more confidence in their memories and judgements than did the depressed subjects. This led the researchers to warn that happy people may make lousy witnesses at judicial proceedings. (Of course, it’s an easy fix. Just require all witnesses to watch Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf right before the trial.)

Forgas says that, "The finding makes sense in evolutionary terms. Animals that are wary of their environment are more likely to perceive threats to their survival. This supports the idea that mood states are evolutionary signals about how to deal with threatening situations. That is, a negative mood state triggers more systematic, more attentive, more vigilant information processing. By contrast, good moods signal a benign, non-threatening environment where we don’t need to be so vigilant."

It’s interesting that the relaxed mind tends to embellish and create stories, while the vigilant mind simply recounts facts. Could it be that when we feel happy, the right brain functions more actively and clouds the logical left brain?

In any event, the findings converted the researchers over to the "grumpy is good" school of thought. "Positive mood is not universally desirable: people in negative mood are less prone to judgmental errors, are more resistant to eyewitness distortions and are better at producing high-quality, effective persuasive messages," the report said. Now that we know the truth, it’s easy to see that the campaign slogan for the next Presidential election will not be the upbeat, "Change you can believe in." Instead we can look forward to something more along the lines of, "Depressed and loving it."

But before you turn on the evening news to induce despondency, know that being glum isn’t all good. In fact, plenty of studies show that depression takes a huge toll on your health, and it can even shorten your life. So choose your fate carefully: healthy, happy, and a bit dull-headed…or wretched, ailing, and sharp as a saber.

:hc

Back in September of 1968, 100 women became famous for protesting outside a Miss America pageant — throwing their girdles, bras, hair curlers, high heels, and other "instruments of torture" into a huge trashcan. The media picked up the action, and women nationwide discussed whether they really needed to keep wearing the restrictive and oft-times painful garments. In the case of high heels, the answer at that time, at least among the feminists, was a resounding "no."

The gist of the argument against heels was political — high heels make it impossible for women to run, so women in heels become easy prey for predatory men. Also, as author William Rossi explains in The Sex Life of the Foot and Shoe, men get erotic pleasure from watching the "sashaying buttocks and undulating hips of the high-heel walk" — a fact that infuriated feminists who believed that the constricting discomfort of heels was too high a price to pay for stimulating male fantasies.

But beyond politics, even back then, it was clear that there were plenty of reasons to avoid high heels. In heels, women got blisters and bunions, twisted their ankles, and hurt their backs. Now, a new problem with heels has come to light: they can cause damage to feet and ankles that shows up years after the shoes have been put to rest.

A study by Boston University and The Institute for Aging Research of Hebrew Senior Life reviewed medical data on the feet of over 3,300 men and women. The researchers found that when older women suffered pain in the back of their feet and in their ankles, there was a strong association to having worn high heels for long periods of time earlier in life. And those who wore pumps or sandals didn’t fare much better, according to the data.

Given that foot pain ranks as one of the top 20 reasons people over the age of 65 go to the doctor, and that more than 43 million Americans have foot problems, these results are significant. In the study, 29 percent of the women reported generalized foot pain on most days, as did 19 percent of the men. Those women who had worn "good" supportive shoes for most of their lives were 67 per cent less likely to experience ankle or heel pain than women who wore less supportive shoes. But in fact, most women had not opted for a life in sneakers. The study found that 64 percent of the women surveyed had worn heels, sandals, or pumps for most of their lives — shoes categorized by the researchers as "poor choices." In contrast, less than two percent of the men wore shoes in the poor choice category. Good choices, according to the researchers, include sneakers and athletic shoes. Work boots and rubber-soled shoes fall somewhere in the middle.

Research conducted by the American Podiatric Association found that 39 percent of women wear high heels every day.  Of those daily wearers, 75 percent have shoe-related foot pain and related problems such as hammer toes, calluses, corns, tendonitis, lower back pain, and plantar warts. The Association warns women that heels higher than three inches put seven times the pressure on the ball of the foot, which can damage bones. In fact, one study published last year in Clinical Biomechanics found that standing in high heels for long periods can result in a deformity of the big toe where it angles in toward the other toes. Even worse, perhaps, is a finding out of the Harvard Medical School that links wearing high heels to the development of osteoarthritis in the knees.

"High heel shoes may alter foot structure and alignment…while sandals and slippers are considered to lack the support of a conventional shoe," said Dr. Howard Hillstrom of the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. And Dr. Marian Hannan of the Harvard Medical School adds, "Wearing shoes with poor arch support or shoes that negatively affect any aspect of foot biomechanics could lead to a breakdown in the health and operation of the foot’s musculoskeletal system."

The researchers say that with every step we walk, the foot absorbs shock from contact with the ground. Most of the stress goes to the heel area (in non high heel shoes). Better shoes offer both cushioning and support so that the heel isn’t subjected to constant pounding , while the worst shoes offer neither. 

So back to the political argument. If high heels and women’s shoes in general consign women to foot deformities, arthritis, and extreme foot and ankle pain that make it difficult to walk later in life, just how far have we come from the practice of foot binding in China? The obvious similarity is that just as in China, women today suffer a high price for high fashion, but the difference is that women now do have a choice: they can opt to wear sneakers instead of spikes. At the least, they can wear heels only when absolutely necessary.

If the thought of wearing sneakers horrifies you, don’t despair. It may in fact be possible to wear sandals and pumps of a certain type without suffering damage.

Dr. Hannan points out, "The issue is not simply whether one is wearing a good shoe, but if one is wearing a good shoe for one’s foot type." Some sandals do, in fact, offer excellent support, and some foot types actually respond better to certain types of sandals than to other shoes. Just make sure that whatever shoes you wear offer good support, plenty of cushioning, minimal lift, and that they fit really well. And if you do wear heels, stretch your heel and calf muscles afterwards, give your feet and legs a soak and massage, take smaller steps, and opt for shoes that at least have straps in the back.

:hc