Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is highly prevalent in sports, mainly for treating musculoskeletal issues. 50-80% of athletes use alternative therapies compared to 40-40% of the general public. Athletes often need effective recovery but prefer to invest in unproven and often potentially harmful interventions. For example, Michael Phelps, at the 2016 Rio Games, had visible circular bruises across his back and shoulders. These purple marks resulted from cupping, a Chinese medicine that involves covering sites of soreness with small glass suction cups.

Athletes are prime targets for marketing rhetoric

People like to take mental shortcuts that lead to quick but imperfect solutions. This is also visible when we make health and fitness decisions. Proponents of some alternative therapies exploit this economy heuristic. They offer great rewards for comparatively little investment. Athletes are more susceptible because they pursue any potential advantage to win, regardless of how alternative it might seem.

People are conditioned for the ‘quick fix’

Some experts think psychological advantages in sports are more important than physical ones. Sixty-seven per cent of elite athletes said they would happily engage in a placebo-mediated deception if it effectively improved their performance.

Placebo products can have powerful psychobiological effects

Many athletes trust the nutritional opinions of their peers over qualified experts. However, this is a symptom of a broader societal problem. The past decade has shown anti-science movements and attacks on scientists worldwide. Therapy can become popular because it goes against an established order.

A dissatisfaction in or distrust of conventional science

US athletes receive only $37,500 in prize money for winning an Olympic gold medal. British athletes receive no prize money. This cause many athletes to strike sponsorship deals with marketing agencies, often using their large social media followings to advertise.

Athlete sponsorship

Professional athletes are supported by a network of physicians, physiologists, nutritionists and psychologists. Interventions are generally discussed as a group, but sometimes choices are made by the performance director or coach. A survey of the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine found that 88 per cent of physician members had prescribed at least one type of CAM for sports medicine pathologies in the preceding year, mostly chiropractic, acupuncture and yoga.

Professional athletes rarely train and recover in isolation

The widespread use of unproven remedies and products in sport is not only harmful to athletes but also to wider society

health

Health

exerciseandfitness

Exercise & Fitness

sports

Sports

Why do so many athletes turn to extreme and unproven remedies? | Psyche Ideas

Consider if you are reading a novel, a play, an expository work. It may sound simple, but it is not. For example, is Gone with the Wind a romance or history of the south? Any book that consists mainly of opinions, theories or speculations conveys knowledge and is an expository work. It is also important to know in which way a book is instructive. For example, a book on physics does not deal with a problem the same way as a book on morals. The best way to do this is with inspectional reading.

Know what you are reading

Practical books tell you how to do something you want to do or should do, along with an argument for the right way of doing it. Theoretical books are concerned with something to be seen or understood. It teaches you that something is true.

Practical vs. theoretical books

Every book has a structure that should be understood. There is a difference between a pile of bricks and a single house. A book is like a single house. It is made up of different rooms, sizes, shapes, outlooks, uses. Each major part has an amount of independence. A good book, like a good house, have a great structure. <ul><li>Say what the whole book is about as briefly as possible.</li><li>Then, set forth the major parts of the book, show how they are organised into a whole.</li></ul>

Blueprints

The author may or may not tell you what the questions were that caused him to produce his work. It is your task as a reader to formulate the questions as accurately as you can. You should be able to state the main question the book tries to answer and be able to state the subordinate questions if the main question is complex with many parts.

Find out what the authors problems were

There are four levels to reading. This article deals with the third level: analytical reading.

The first rule of analytical reading is that you must know what kind of book you are reading.

writing

Reading & Writing

books

Books

Analytical Reading

Imposter syndrome is a collection of thoughts and behaviors related to feeling like you are a fake or a fraud, despite your accomplishments.
Doubting your abilities, in spite of your accomplishments can create a considerable amount of anxiety, fear, and depression, and it can lead to burnout in the workplace. But sometimes, what might be perceived as “imposter syndrome” is actually the result of a toxic or biased work environment.

It's Not You, It's Them

Although the solutions for overcoming imposter syndrome often focus on the individual experiencing it, the workplace environment also plays a critical role—especially given that it is most often seen in women and people of color, many of who may not have supportive mentors or colleagues who look like them.
Even if women demonstrate strength, ambition, and resilience, our daily battles with microaggressions, especially expectations and assumptions formed by stereotypes and racism, often push us down. Imposter syndrome as a concept fails to capture this dynamic and puts the onus on women.

The Work Environment

When the concept of imposter syndrome was first developed, it didn’t take into account the impact that a biased workplace can have on a person. Lacking this context, as well as the inclusion of a diverse set of participants in the original studies, the focus has been on fixing the individual experiencing imposter syndrome, rather than the environment that might be causing it.
This includes:
<ul>
<li>A very fast-paced workplaces, along with workplaces that place a high value on external achievements. </li>
<li>A workplace where managers only offer criticism, rather than praise or encouragement.</li>
</ul>

Imposter Syndrome And The Biased Workplace

Another factor that makes a person susceptible to impostor syndrome is if they are either a pathbreaker or the first (or only) person of a race or gender to hold a position or ascend to a certain level within the company. 
In this situation, not only are they are possibly navigating a biased system, they are often doing so without guidance from others who understand their unique situation.

The Pioneers

The best solution for preventing imposter syndrome is for workplaces to become more inclusive. Until that happens, though, in addition to recognizing the role the work environment plays, there are a few strategies people can use to mitigate the effects.
If you can’t find the support you need within your immediate work environment, get creative about finding it externally, such as by joining a professional society or seeking out a mentor from a different division. It helps to identify and name your inner critic to help create a bit of separation from it.

Survive An Unsupportive Work Environment

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

career

Career

humanresources

Human Resources

Is It Imposter Syndrome, or Does Your Company Suck?

Instagram has many tools to help you get a better grasp on your audience's engagement. However, its swipe up links on stories has been replaced with stickers. Users can now direct their audience to external websites instead.  The sticker function is an effort to streamline their sticker selections.

Stickers replaced 'Swipe Up' links 

Marketers used the swipe up feature to track metrics, optimise click-through rates, and use it as a quick way to connect to landing pages. <ul><li>But the swipe up feature also didn't allow your viewers to really interact with your content.</li><li>Your viewers couldn't comment or reply to a story with a swipe up link.</li><li>They were only for those with 10K plus followers or a verified account.</li></ul>

The downside of the 'Swipe Up' feature

They give you greater creative control. The stickers look and work the same as other stickers. You can change the style and size and put it anywhere in your story.More engagement. Users can get quick reactions and replies on posts with a link sticker.

Stickers are an upgrade

<ul><li>Make it pop. Use bright colours and attractive stickers.</li><li>Ensure your brand is visually consistent.</li><li>Use clear CTAs. People want to be told how they need to interact with your content.</li></ul>However, be aware that the transition from the swipe up feature may take a while to catch on, and your link sticker numbers may fail to grow immediately. However, when they do, you'll be prepared.

Building more engagement with link stickers

Learn how to use an Instagram link sticker and use the platform to grow your business: https://clickhubspot.com/wqx With the removal of the Instagram Swipe Up feature, Link Stickers are the new kid on the block. But what is an Instagram Link Sticker? How do you use it? What does it look like? Do you need a code or something special to create one? Watch this video and learn everything you need to know about the new Instagram Link Sticker Feature and how to use it to drive traffic back to your website! 📔 Grow Your Career and Business with HubSpot Academy: https://clickhubspot.com/Popular-Courses 📔 Favorite Free Certification Courses: • Digital Marketing Certification: https://clickhubspot.com/od6 • Social Media Marketing Course: https://clickhubspot.com/Social-Media-Certification • SEO Training Course: https://clickhubspot.com/SEO-Training-Course • Inbound Course: https://clickhubspot.com/Inbound-Certification • Inbound Marketing Course: https://clickhubspot.com/Inbound-Marketing-Certification • Email Marketing Course: https://clickhubspot.com/Email-Marketing-Certification • Inbound Sales Course: https://clickhubspot.com/Inbound-Sales-Certification • Taking your Business Online Course: https://clickhubspot.com/Business-Online About HubSpot: HubSpot is a leading CRM platform that provides education, software, and support to help businesses grow better. The platform includes marketing, sales, service, and website management products that start free and scale to meet our customers’ needs at any stage of growth. Today, thousands of customers around the world use HubSpot’s powerful and easy-to-use tools and integrations to attract, engage, and delight customers. ⚠ Disclaimer: The videos on our YouTube channel are for informational purposes only, and are not intended as an endorsement for any of the products or services that we feature. #HubSpot #instagram

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Marketing & Sales

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Videos

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Society, Arts & Culture

How to Use an Instagram Link Sticker | Swipe-up removal

For most of human history and in almost all places it would have seemed absurd for employers to give their employees personal feedback.Things have changed today because the tasks of business are more psychologically complex than in the past. There’s been an entirely practical realization that to get the best performance, people need to be psychologically in a good place: which means well-motivated, in good spirits, even enthusiastic and eager around the tasks they are doing. This is the only way not to waste a lot of money.

How the idea of feedback changed

Even if they don’t especially like it, the senior management needs to take the mental well-being of the employee very seriously. We have moved from the era of physical management to that of psychological managementThe task might be to get a sales force to believe in the merits of a new product, so they can sell it wholeheartedly; to get an IT manager to be more creative in the way they interact with other sectors of the business. For all these kinds of tasks, it becomes crucial to get the employee into the right frame of mind.

From physical management to psychological management

<ul><li>Denial: hiding bad news. </li><li>Dangerous independence: the people that don't share information.</li><li>Disguised ignorance: the person who hides what they don’t know. </li><li>Poor teaching skills: someone who can’t teach effectively, what they know to those who need to share it. </li><li>Poor learning skills: the people that don’t listen properly when something is being explained. </li><li>Despair and pessimism: always anticipating disaster.</li><li>Over-optimism and naivety: the denial of real troubles. </li><li>Impatience: ticking the boxes fast</li><li>Cynicism: the disengaged and resentful people.</li><li>Social awkwardness: a mix of lack of confidence and shame.</li></ul>

Psychological Obstacles to the success of a business

For most of human history and in almost all places it would have seemed absurd for employers to give their employees personal feedback. 

corporateculture

Corporate Culture

communication

Communication

Why Feedback Matters | The School of Life

Rage Quitting, the act of leaving your job in anger is a fantasy of many who are sick of workplace issues like micromanagement, abusive seniors and exploitative working conditions.The pandemic has increased the stressful conditions of employees, and given rise to the great resignation of 2021, where millions of people quit their jobs, some in piled-up rage.

Rage Quitting

Higher educated people, people at highly skilled jobs and millennials are more likely to quit in rage, as they may have a safe landing zone. They are the ones who impact the employers the most.  People in low-paying, laborious and repetitive jobs often quit in rage but are not noticed as their place is filled up in minutes.

Knowing Your Worth

<ol><li>Abusive supervision gives rise to emotional exhaustion.</li><li>Lack of employee safety and dangerous working conditions.</li><li>Employers switching schedules without notice and creating avoidable difficulties and complications, due to a lack of care and empathy towards the staff.</li><li>Whatever the reason for rage quitting, employers should take it as a wake-up call and take proactive steps.</li></ol>

Reasons Of Rage Quitting

The pandemic has made people open their eyes to the fact that their jobs can kill them, and how little the employers care for the safety of their lives. The ill-treatment had always existed, but the employees had their eyes closed before, apparently.

Death Anxiety

<ul><li>Many people who are extremely angry and frustrated towards their soul-crushing jobs are not quitting in rage, due to not having anything to fall back to.</li><li>Rage-quitting also puts the final pay cheque in limbo, and it is the employee who ultimately stands to lose.</li><li>Rage quitting has increased in 2021, as the stigma of quitting is diminishing.</li><li>The employees left behind often have to work longer hours to fill the gap of employees who suddenly exit.</li></ul>

Rage Quitting: The Truth

Walking out of a job in anger can seem extreme – but there are often powerful motivations for doing it.

Why 'rage quitting' is all the rage

In the modern world, we face constant stressors that leave us in a continual state of stress. Stress can lead to mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion. Emotional exhaustion is an invisible enemy. A person suffering from it will often not know how to articulate how they are feeling. Emotional exhaustion will creep in and affect every part of their lives, eventually leading to burnout.

Emotional exhaustion is an invisible enemy

In 1982 Christina Maslach coined the term "emotional exhaustion" as part of her definition of burnout. She reasoned that feeling drained or hopeless were not meaningless complaints but part of something that is far more harmful. Symptoms of emotional exhaustion:<ul><li>Lacking motivation</li><li>Difficulty sleeping</li><li>Fatigue</li><li>Irritability</li><li>Unable to focus</li><li>Increased apathy or cynicism</li></ul> These symptoms often seem contradictory. How can you feel tired and have difficulty sleeping?

Key symptoms of emotional exhaustion

As stress will always be part of our lives, we need to find sustainable coping mechanisms to help us effectively deal with emotional exhaustion. Strategies include:<ul><li>Improve sleeping habits. Put down your phone before bed and avoid caffeine in the evening.</li><li>Make time for self-reflection. Taking up journaling can help to manage early symptoms of emotional exhaustion.</li><li>Take a break. Take some time out to recharge, relax, and rethink your goals and relationships with work.</li></ul>

How to deal with emotional exhaustion

The term “emotional exhaustion” describes an overwhelming depletion of a person’s emotional capacity, usually due to stress from the work environment.

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

mentalhealth

Mental Health

Emotional exhaustion: a leading indicator of burnout

The population-wide BMI statistics show that nearly 60 per cent of people in the UK and US are overweight. BMI is the ratio of body weight in kilograms divided by the square of one's height in metres. It is represented as kg/m2. <ul><li>A 'normal' BMI is 20-25kg/m2. </li><li>A BMI of 18kg/m2 and lower is underweight.</li><li>A BMI of 25-30kg/m2 is considered overweight. </li><li>Over 30kg/m2 is classed as obese.</li></ul> BMI is flawed as it only uses weight and height. It cannot differentiate between muscle and fat.

Body Mass Index (BMI) is flawed

BMI is easy to calculate and easily scalable. For most of us, the higher our BMI, the more fat we tend to have.  But BMI shouldn't be used by health care professionals as an accurate measure to inform treatment or advice. It has to be used with other information, such as fasting insulin and glucose levels, blood pressure, and a family history of metabolic disease.

BMI is useful to a point

DUEL-energy X-ray absorptiometry or DEXA is the gold-standard method of calculating fat percentages. It is very accurate but also expensive and not suitable for use in population-wide studies. Another approach is the use of body-fat scales, where an undetectable electrical current is passed through your body. Since muscle contains more water, it conducts electricity better than fat. A greater electrical resistance will mean you have more body fat. But they are often inaccurate.

Other approaches to measure fat-mass

Fat cells get bigger when you gain weight and smaller when you lose weight. But the number of cells stays about the same. Your fat cells are designed to store fat. When cells become full, the fat ends up in the wrong places, such as our muscles or liver, and that's when we can suffer from diseases such as type 2 diabetes.  Our fat cells can expand to different sizes depending on our genes, meaning that health varies depending on ethnicity. If you go past your safe fat-carrying capacity, you will get ill.

Why too much body fat is bad for you

A report published by the Women and Equalities Committee says that the use of the Body Mass Index should be scrapped. So why do we still use it?

food

Food

BMI: We know it's flawed, so why do we still use it?

New figures show that around one in eight people across Test Valley suffer from depression, with 13.1 percent of adult GP patients across the borough having had a diagnosis of depression in 2019-20.WITH increased numbers of people suffering from anxiety, stress, and depression this last year, nature has often offered comfort to those struggling to cope.

Nature As A Cure For Mental Health

Kingsclere has varied countryside including open downland, steep slopes, small fields, and woodland.This walk is not for the faint-hearted. It has some steep gradients but is worth trying for the beautiful views.&nbsp;Route distance: 5 miles.

Kingsclere Walk



Danebury is one of an extensive network of fortified sites across the Hampshire countryside.The site is a rich chalk grassland and from the hillfort, there are magnificent views including several other hill forts and prehistoric burial mounds.History: Evidence suggests that Danebury Iron Age Hill Fort was built 3000 years ago. It started life as a Late Bronze Age stock enclosure, while the main defenses that are now visible were built around 2500 years ago. The fort remained in use until c.100BC.Route distance: 0.8 miles

Danebury Hill Fort

Hannington is situated high in the North Wessex Downs.A network of public rights of way gives walkers opportunities to explore and enjoy spectacular views that extend south and west from For Down, and north and south from Michael’s Field.During most seasons you can see skylarks, yellowhammers, and many other wild birds. Fieldfares and redwings are regular visitors in winter.Route distance: 4.5 miles.

Hannington Cottingtons Hill

The valley is about half a mile wide, flanked by low ridges, with Harewood Forest to the north and west.An excellent network of footpaths, including part of the Test Way, links the settlements. The paths provide some memorable views of the old cottages, the landscape, and the river.History: Dead Man's Plack itself is a Grade-II listed 19th-century monument erected in the memory of Earl Athelwold. According to legend, Athelwold was killed there in 963 by his rival in love.Route distance: 6.5 miles

Longparish Dead Mans Plack

Today marks the beginning of Mental Health Awareness Week with the theme this year based on connecting with nature.

Mental Heath Awareness Week 2021: North Hampshire walks perfect for connecting with nature

Matcha is a trendy new green tea which is finely powdered, and traditionally mixed with hot water, whisked and drunk.
The matcha tea is manufactured in a delicate manner to preserve their texture and flavour. They are dried and aged before being stone-ground into fine powder. It has about the same amount of caffeine as found in coffee, along with a natural substance called l-theanine, which induces an ‘alert calm’ in the body, a kind of relaxation without drowsiness.

Matcha Green Tea

<ul>
<li>Matcha Tea has long been associated with ancient Zen tea-drinking ceremonies performed by monks.</li>
<li>It is part of the Zen mindfulness meditation, where the entire process of preparing and drinking tea is a complete meditation.</li>
<li>The fine green tea offers minerals, vitamins, polyphenols (a form of antioxidants) and other nutrients that regulate blood sugar and protect against heart disease and cancer.</li>
<li>Drinking matcha tea using the ‘slow down’ technique of Zen monks has added benefits: lower inflammation, lower blood pressure, and reduced stress hormones.</li>
</ul>

Origins And Benefits Of Matcha Tea

The strong, umami taste of Matcha tea is like a mixture of grass and spinach and may need to be sweetened to taste, though milk is not recommended.
Lead consumption is a concern, as with all kinds of green teas. Matcha tea may have more lead content than other green teas.
Apart from tea, matcha powder can be used as an ingredient in various dishes like muffins, brownies and puddings.

The Taste Of Matcha

Matcha is a form of green tea made from a powdered version of the actual tea leaves. Find out more about matcha and the health benefits here.

Why do so many athletes turn to extreme and unproven remedies? | Psyche Ideas

Analytical Reading

Is It Imposter Syndrome, or Does Your Company Suck?

How to Use an Instagram Link Sticker | Swipe-up removal

Why Feedback Matters | The School of Life

Brianna S.