Inspiring News Articles
Excerpts of Highly Inspiring News Articles in Major Media
Below are one-paragraph excerpts of highly inspiring news articles from the major media. Links are provided to the original inspiring news articles on their media websites. If any link fails, read this webpage. The most inspiring news articles are listed first. You can also explore the news articles listed by order of the date posted. For an abundance of other highly inspiring material, see our Inspiring Resources page. May these inspiring news articles inspire us to find ever more ways to love and support each other and all around us to be the very best we can be.
Jane the Concussion Killer ended her battle against evil years ago, but See Jane Run is still vanquishing foes. Both are the alter egos of video game advocate Jane McGonigal, whose slow recovery from a head injury was inspiration to turn wellness into a hero-themed game called "SuperBetter." The San Francisco author and game researcher is taking "SuperBetter" global this month, as a free online game and app. With partners, funding and a network of users who have already signed up, she's hoping "SuperBetter" can help people on their own heroic journeys to tackle depression, obesity and other health issues." 'SuperBetter' is fundamentally about a mind shift," McGonigal says. "It's about claiming your power to be in charge of how you spend your time and energy, and focusing it on the things that matter the most to you. Focusing on things that will bring real happiness, real well-being." [She] became a public face with her 2011 best-seller Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. Reality Is Broken talks about adopting the stimulating challenges and rewards of video games when tackling real-life problems. "I still believe really strongly that gamers can solve some of the world's toughest challenges, but some of the world's toughest challenges are very personal," she says. "Things like depression and obesity are global challenges."
Traditional antidepressants like Prozac work on a group of chemical messengers in the brain called the serotonin system. Researchers once thought that a lack of serotonin was the cause of depression, and that these drugs worked simply by boosting serotonin levels. Recent research suggests a more complicated explanation. Serotonin drugs work by stimulating the birth of new neurons, which eventually form new connections in the brain. Ketamine, in contrast, activates a different chemical system in the brain – the glutamate system. Researcher Ron Duman at Yale thinks ketamine rapidly increases the communication among existing neurons by creating new connections. This is a quicker process than waiting for new neurons to form and accomplishes the same goal of enhancing brain circuit activity. Ketamine has been used for decades as an anesthetic. It also has become a wildly popular but illegal club drug known as "Special K." Mental health researchers got interested in ketamine because of reports that it could make depression vanish almost instantly. Carlos Zarate ... does ketamine research at the NIH. Zarate says patients typically say, "'I feel that something's lifted or feel that I've never been depressed in my life. I feel I can work. I feel I can contribute to society.' And it was a different experience from feeling high. This was feeling that something has been removed."
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