Saga Mind and Body

10/20/2025

For the first time, an artificial eye implant, the PRIMA System, has restored reading vision to blind patients by transforming light into signals the brain interprets as sight. This breakthrough in neurotechnology paves the way for approved treatments and excites people like us who are committed to sharing the latest advancements in brain science and mental wellness.

Learn more and see the science at sagamind.ca

Electronic Eye Implant Restores Reading Vision in AMD

For the first time, blind patients have regained reading vision through an artificial eye implant.

The PRIMA System—an ultra-thin microchip combined with AR glasses—restored the ability to read in 84% of people with severe vision loss from geographic atrophy caused by dry AMD.

The technology transforms infrared light into electrical signals that the brain interprets as sight.

The findings pave the way for the first approved treatment for advanced dry AMD, offering new independence and hope for those living in darkness.

10/18/2025

Researchers analyzed brain scans from over 19,000 people and discovered that around age 44, the brain’s neural networks start to destabilize, peaking around 67 before plateauing in later life. This instability means different regions of the brain aren’t communicating as efficiently—a key factor in cognitive decline.

These two decades may be the most important

10/18/2025

10/17/2025

“Childhood trauma is not only a painful psychological experience but also leaves lasting biological marks at the molecular and brain levels”

New research reveals that child maltreatment leaves measurable biological “scars” on DNA, altering brain structure and function.

10/17/2025

🧠 The Habit Loop Of Anxiety

When you feel anxious, your amygdala (the brain’s emotional alarm system) detects potential threat and fires rapidly. This activates your sympathetic nervous system, flooding your body with stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. Over time, these reactions can become automatic — forming a habit loop of anxiety stored in neural pathways between the amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex.

Brain Areas Involved:
Amygdala: Detects threat
Prefrontal Cortex: Regulates and reinterprets emotions
Hippocampus: Stores emotional context and new learning
Anterior Cingulate Cortex: Mediates emotional control and attention
Vagus Nerve: Sends calm signals to the body

✨ Your anxious brain is trainable. Every calm response builds a new circuit of safety and control.

👉 Read more here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/neuroscience-of-141267391

10/17/2025

Ask us about how to make real changes to your neurochemistry. It's possible.

When you change the way you think, you change your brain and life. 👍 😊

Beat Depression and Anxiety by Changing Your Brain
by Debbie Hampton https://buff.ly/sHtNdRq

10/17/2025

High blood sugar, also called hyperglycemia, often creeps in quietly, showing up with vague signs like being tired all the time or constantly thirsty. You might brush off the urge to drink more water or the fact that you’re running to the bathroom more often, but these subtle symptoms are early red flags. As your blood sugar stays high over time, your body starts to struggle. The kidneys pull water from your tissues to flush out extra sugar, leading to dehydration, dry mouth, and endless thirst. You may feel constantly hungry too, because even with all that sugar in your blood, your cells are starving for energy they can’t access.

Blurry vision and fatigue are also common as fluids shift around the body and cells fail to get the fuel they need. High sugar levels mess with your immune system too, making infections—especially yeast infections—more frequent. Your skin might become dry and itchy, and wounds could heal more slowly than usual. If nerve damage starts to set in, numbness, tingling, or even sharp pain in your hands or feet can develop. In some cases, blood sugar can go dangerously high, leading to serious conditions like ketoacidosis or coma.

If symptoms like extreme thirst, stomach pain, rapid breathing, or fruity-smelling breath occur, don’t wait—call for help. Even mood changes and weight loss can be linked to high sugar levels. The longer hyperglycemia goes untreated, the more damage it does—so it’s crucial to spot the signs early and take action.

10/10/2025

When I notice my own breathing at 13.4 breaths per minute, that's my body on autopilot. It keeps me going, but it feels a bit... shallow. Like my system is idling a little high, maybe because of background stress or just the habit of not taking full breaths. In that state, my heart ticks along at its normal resting pace, but it doesn't have much rhythmical variation. My body is in a neutral gear, but it's not deeply relaxed.

Now, when I consciously slow it down to 5.4 breaths per minute, something very different happens. It's like I'm manually switching my system into a different mode. The long, slow exhales in particular feel like they're pressing a brake pedal on my whole body.

I can actually feel my heart rate begin to drop with each exhale. That's my vagus nerve, the main cable of my calming system, waking up. This specific slow rhythm, around 5.5 seconds in and 5.5 seconds out, creates a perfect wave. My heart speeds up just a tiny bit on the inhale and slows down more noticeably on the exhale. This creates a much larger, healthier variation between my heartbeats—that's the high HRV. It's a sign that my body is in a state of coherence, where my heart, lungs, and nervous system are all talking to each other in sync.

As this happens, I can feel myself calming down. My blood pressure likely dips a little as my blood vessels relax. My mental chatter slows down, just a bit. I move from a state of just being "alert" to feeling way more calm and focused.

So for me, the lower rate isn't better because it's just a lower number - it's better because it's a tool I can use to shift my body from a state of passive blah to one that is in recovery and getting stronger. And it's so easy.
.ca

How to use this video: Sit still, and synchronize your breathing with the animation. There is no need to breathe very deeply, about 50% of maximum depth is a...

10/10/2025

Why Comfort Food Feels Like Medicine for People in Chronic Pain

Most people living with chronic pain use comfort foods—like chocolate or sweets—as a way to cope, a new study finds.

Eating provides brief pleasure and distraction, and may even have mild biological pain-relieving effects.

However, researchers warn that this short-term relief can fuel a harmful cycle, as weight gain and inflammation can worsen pain over time.

The findings suggest pain management programs should address emotional and dietary coping strategies alongside medication and therapy.

10/10/2025

October 10 is World Mental Health Day

This day reminds us that there is no health without mental health.

The 2025 theme, “Mental Health in Humanitarian Emergencies,” focuses on supporting those affected by crises such as natural disasters, conflicts, and public health emergencies.

By working together as communities, we can help people recover, rebuild, and access the mental health support they need.

10/09/2025

You know the feeling. The tightness in your chest. The shallow breath. That buzzing sense of dread. For years, we’ve tackled anxiety from the top down—through thoughts and talking. And that’s essential work. But what if you could also work from the body up? What if you could directly coach your nervous system back to calm?

This isn’t science fiction. It’s biofeedback. And your journey might already have begun, without you even realizing it.

Simply put, biofeedback is the process of gaining awareness and control over physiological functions—like heart rate, blood pressure, your sweat, breathing, and muscle tension—by using electronic instruments that give you real-time data. It’s like installing a dashboard for your nervous system.

You see a metric spike, you learn a technique to bring it down. Over time, you learn to make the shift without the screen. You’re not just thinking about being calm; you’re engineering it from the inside.

You're Already Doing It (Sort Of) - Think about the last time you put on a lofi beats playlist to focus. Or used an app for binaural beats to unwind. You were using auditory cues to guide your brain state. That’s a form of entrainment—a cousin to biofeedback. You’re creating the conditions for your system to follow.

Now, look at your smartwatch. That alert telling you to "Breathe"? That’s a basic, but powerful, biofeedback prompt. It’s an external signal that you’ve drifted from your baseline, nudging you back to a regulating behaviour.

The Gold Standard: Heart Rate Variability (HRV) - if you want to get serious about this, the metric to watch is Heart Rate Variability (HRV). Contrary to what you might think, a healthy heart isn’t a perfect metronome. It has subtle, healthy variations between beats. A higher HRV generally indicates a more resilient, adaptable nervous system—one that can handle stress and recover quickly.

Stress and anxiety crush your HRV.

The goal of biofeedback training is to increase your HRV, moving your system from a rigid, stressed state to a flexible, coherent one. This is the foundation of powerful techniques like HeartMath.

A Practical Start: Your Personal Toolkit - You don’t need a lab to begin. You can build your own practice.

Start with the Tech You Have: Don’t ignore the breathe alarm on your watch. When it goes off, actually do it. For one minute, follow the circle. Inhale as it expands, exhale as it contracts. This is diaphragmatic breathing 101.

Use Sound with Intention: Instead of just background noise, use lofi or binaural beats actively. Sit for 10 minutes, focus on your breath, and let the soundscape guide your brain into a more relaxed, theta-dominant state.

Explore an HRV App: Download a reputable HRV biofeedback app. You’ll use your phone’s camera to measure your pulse. The app will guide you through breathing rhythms that maximize your HRV, often with a simple game-like interface (e.g., make a flower bloom with your coherence). It’s direct training.

Get Curious, Not Critical: This isn’t about performance. It’s about awareness. When you see your HRV is low, get curious. "What's different today? Less sleep? More coffee? A tough conversation?" You become a detective of your own well-being.

Calm isn’t just a concept. It’s a physiological state you can learn to access. Biofeedback gives you the tools to stop fighting your own body and start working with it.

It’s the missing piece for many—moving from understanding your anxiety to actively regulating it.

The goal isn't to never feel anxious. It's to know, with confidence, that you have the tools to find your way back. Feel free to drop us a line at info@sagamind.ca for more information.

06/09/2025

Someday’s Coming

Someday.

I remember a moment captured in time. I was making breakfast at my restaurant, The Bad Dog Grill, and I realized I hated my life. It was 7:30 am and I wanted a beer. If I cut my hand one more time, maybe I can go home today. I just knew I would never get out of that kitchen. Then one day I was.

I have spoken with people in prison, or doing time in a bad relationship, who have been convinced I was wrong. This hell is never going to end. I will never meet someone who loves me. I will never want to live again. I can never move on from this. Then you do, though rarely like on television. We sincerely need to have a conversation some time about what recovery really looks like. God never sent me a thunderbolt and one day I didn’t wake up fixed. It’s gradual and tedious and most of us have no flipping clue what “better” really should look like.

Many of us grow up believing that we are supposed to move beyond, not just move on. Somehow we are supposed to forgive that monster or forget about that loss or magically get normal. Those are wonderful motivational posters but in the real world we usually become scarred by life and I’m not just talking about table saws and missing fingers. Life beats the hell out of many of us and it is going to take a religious event or a Canadian Tire pool full of good tequila for things to feel spanky. It is tempting to pine for the innocence or the waistline or the eyebrows of our youth but, and I hate being the one to tell people this, that ship has sailed, been attacked by Somali pirates and sunk by the North Korean military. You are never going to be who you once were and when you think about it, that may be a very good thing. I know you used to be able to run for miles and jump over fences and turn everyone’s eye but chances are you were way way dumber. Do you really want to be 18 and perky again? Willing to give up all that experience and drink the Koolaid?

When I was younger I was convinced I knew the score, and I was an idiot. Sorry to get all technical on you there. I could not give up what I know now for who I was then. That is difficult to write but it rings true for me.

Someday. Someday things will be different than they are today. Before the steam engine you could be attacked by the Huns in one millenia than the Mongols in another and the tactics would be similar because both armies used horses and bows and arrows. The world was defined for centuries by a single warrior, usually on a mount. The players may have changed but the world hadn’t. Time barely moved. The vast majority of the planet never travelled beyond their district. There was no Wifi. When the Mongols used gunpowder against the Hungarians no one even understood what that sound was, and why is there a hole in me? Generations passed with little noticeable difference.

This is not that time. I cannot promise you much, but it does appear self-evident that this culture is addicted to unstoppable momentum. A woman in a bad marriage is far more apt to leave than she was four hundred years ago. Heck, forty years ago.

It may not get good but it probably won’t stay the same. Fewer of us are willing to put up with monotonous misery anymore. There is no possible way soldiers would sit in trenches today, like they did in World War One, unless there was an Xbox and free Facebook. Two months of sitting in water and rats and dysentery and I don’t know about you but I’d probably go over the hill and let them shoot me, just out of boredom and from the constant itching. I hate itching. It may be possible that we are not the strongest generation that ever lived. Those old 90-year-olds killed people and it still would not serve to p**s too many of them off, especially on a cruise when they race their walkers and gave me the evil eye. My grandfather left his family for over four years to drive a gas truck to the Front. Did he even have air conditioning? The times, they are a’changing.

Someday’s coming, for all of us. To quote Mr. Smith, “that is the sound of inevitability”. Your depression may not be terminal and that kid may talk to you again, someday. Someday you will know things that you don’t right now and your situation will change just enough that you will look at life differently. What often looks like “things finally going your way” may have at least something to do with how much you change, and that is the best news I can tell you. Sure you are going through hell, but if you are keeping your head just above the waves you are undoubtedly learning important lessons that you would never understand without going through this Armageddon. You are reading a blog by a therapist, so you are probably wise enough to know you aren’t wise enough yet to handle the whole enchilada. Me too. I desperately hope I am not a finished product.

Overcoming your stuff has more to do with just getting in the ring, than it has to do with winning every round. I can’t tell you how many times I fail at almost everything, and my job is to keep getting up in the morning and giving a damn. That’s me, it may not be you. For people with ADHD just keeping your act together is often hard enough without all the gushy little rewards. The empaths suffer so very much, just being alive. Being the strong one sucks. The person who carries the weight of the world is often crushed. Most of us would self-medicate if we could get away with it, Scot(t)-free. We haven’t even discussed one of my favorite themes – the real world is often boring and relentless and stressful. Stir in a few mental health issues, and a loss or two, and you may be tempted to just give up.

Don’t do it. Someday’s coming. It may be years or it could be today (probably not) but change happens whether we like it or not. This is the one constant in the Twenty-first Century. If you are awake you may have noticed the global village is experiencing the most profound cultural revolution since the Enlightenment. The internet, combined with catastrophic cultural changes, has transformed the world forever. There is no way to put the rabbit back in the hat.

I am not going to launch into a diatribe on how we are all headed to hell in a handbasket. There is plenty of time for that. Lately I’ve wondered if there is not a pot of gold in this electronic GMO rainbow. I can remember, even in my lifetime, when you had to go to a library if you wanted to read about anything. The world was slower and if you are depressed or dealing with impossible situations, slow never feels good.

Hold on. Someday’s still coming. I just wish, sometimes, it would hurry the hell up.

All kids need is a little help, a little hope and someone who believes in them.
Magic Johnson