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What are some benefits of meditation that we might not know about?Meditation is quite a complex subject and it is not entirely possible to describe it relatively simply in a forum such as this. This description is long because it is written on a scientific basis.Does science have anything to say on meditation? Indeed it does for we are now on the threshold of unlocking the secrets of the mind. While it was entirely impossible to be objective about the state of mind of so called advanced Buddhist meditators before, the new state of the art functional magnetic resonance imaging techniques have enabled neurologists, cognitive scientists and psychologists to have an entrancing view into the neural activity of the brain, something which was altogether impossible just one or two score years ago. Functional MRI is non invasive and safe. It does not require radioactive tracer substances, unlike positron emission tomography (PET) or single photon emission tomography (SPET), and uses the brain’s natural haemodynamic (blood flow) response to neural activity as an inbuilt tracer. Some techniques include the use of blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) imaging, which depends on the ratio of oxygenated to deoxygenated haemoglobin. In those areas of the brain with increased activity, there will be higher metabolic requirements and therefore increased blood flow which temporarily changes this ratio, and the magnetic resonance signal can be picked up by ultra fast scanners. In simple layman terms, it means those areas of the brain which are actively being used will convert sugars to energy with the use of oxygen brought by the blood stream and this will be reflected in the levels of oxygenated haemoglobin.Apart from its myriad applications in medicine and industry, the machines are being used to explore many dimensions of uses including that of lie-detection, although the golden grail is still that of mind-reading. Present machines can pinpoint metabolic activity at a resolution of about 4 millimeters in diameter, but are still relatively slow, tracking activity occurring for two seconds or so. To catch a thought, a level of complexity requiring the recording of a signal lasting for mere milliseconds, would require magnets up to several times that of the present models which are about 3 to 4 tesla in strength. This is not likely to be feasible because magnets of such strength can induce heat in the brain or zap the vestibular system ( the balance centres in the inner ear), making you dizzy in the process. Hence current investigators favour the use of software analysis of brain patterns which occur as people think of certain concepts or ideas. Still, there is a lot to be done, for what is English to you or me would be gibberish to a Bhutanese when the f MRI brain decoder is used on him.This odd couple, of Buddhist monk and grey haired scientist, really is a nascent rapprochement between science and faith. For this we might even have to thank the Maoists, for if they had not decided to make the Dalai Lama into the most prominent religious refugee in the world, he would not have arrived on the shores of the United States and centres like M.I.T. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a pantheon of engineering which is now coordinating work on ‘Investigating the Mind’ in collaboration with his Tibetan and other Buddhist practitioners.What has so far been found is certainly interesting. When psychologist Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin peered into the mind of a French-born monk named Matthieu Ricard with a scanner, he asked the monk to attain a meditative state of compassion and measured the neural activity in the brain. He did the same with some 150 other untrained volunteers and found brain activity fairly evenly divided between the prefrontal cortex, that part of the brain just behind the forehead, of both the right and left lobes. Neuroscientists Steven E Shelton and Ned H Kalin at the same University have now established that right prefrontal lobe activity is associated with fear and anxiety responses and heightened defensive behaviors and a locus of negative emotions as well as higher cortisol levels in the blood. On the other hand, left frontal lobe activity was associated with calmness and contentment as well as feelings of positive emotions and a lower level of secreted corticotrophin- releasing hormone resulting in lower cortisol levels. What was found unusual in the scans of the monk was that his neural activity pattern was skewed so far to the left he was virtually ‘off the curve’ according to Prof Davidson.And here we are, it seems mental discipline exerts its effects on the neural processes in some definitive way that we are now deciphering. So, the Wisconsin scientists did studies on other monks, asking them to attain a state of open awareness, of non judgmental attachment to emotions and feelings as well as happenings around them. Brain activity in the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain which seems to have a role in assigning emotional meanings to perceptions, seemed to plunge quite dramatically in these meditation experts. To further their understanding the researchers blasted recordings of baby laughter or women screaming and found hardly any reaction from the emotion-processing regions, yet when these monks tuned into the compassionate mode, the left superior prefrontal region spiked in activity. There is a particular area of the prefrontal cortex which seems to be involved in almost all aspects of conscious activity such as coordinating our thoughts and switching back and forth between tasks – something akin to a central executive which directs the content of conscious activity whether this is speech or calculation or activating visual memory. This area is known as area 46.Which brings up a question – are these smiling monks in Dharamsala, home base of the exiled Tibetan leadership, truly happy?From what has been described so far, it may well be hypothesized that they really are, for according to Professor Owen Flanagan of Duke University in North Carolina, the studies published in the New Scientist magazine seem to confirm that in experienced practitioners, the left prefrontal lobes are consistently more active and therefore these people are more likely to experience positive emotions and good mood.Somehow this leads us to think they may have installed a kindly and more wholesome chief executive officer in that particular region of their brain!Researchers led by Paul Ekman at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Centre found that conscientious meditation practice can tame the amygdala, an area of the brain which is the hub of fear memory, and thereby attenuate responses to shocking experiences, and situations likely to incite anger and frustration. The amygdala is a component of the limbic system, which comprises also the hippocampus, thalamus and hypothalamus as well as olfactory bulb and certain circuits in the cerebral cortex and is that part of the brain which has a major role in experiencing and expressing emotions. Initially evolved for evaluating smells, the limbic system in lower animals helped in deciding whether some object should be approached or avoided but in higher animals, the sense of smell has become less important than vision or hearing for purposes of feeding, reproduction or defense of territory. In the lower mammals such as hedgehogs and rats or lemurs, which have less cortical tissue (read - a lot less brainy) this limbic system does perceive, remember and learn to avoid danger.Present research suggests that in mammals the prefrontal cortex assesses danger when presented with data from the visual cortex (located at the back of the head). Association fibres from the prefrontal cortex interconnected with the amygdala and hippocampus of the limbic system directs the hypothalamus to initiate the release of hormones that support the motor responses to perceived threat such as adrenalin and cortisol from the adrenal glands located near the kidneys.There is a genetic component to anxiety as any family doctor or psychiatrist who deals with dysfunctional families would readily tell you. Recent reports in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology reported by Norman Schmidt and others suggest that people with a particular variation in the 5-HT transporter gene (5 –HTT) show an enhanced response in an induced anxiety experiment.Since life inevitably throws up stressful situations with divorce, bereavement and economic upheavals or job insecurity amongst them, our adaptive responses – whether we sink into depression or bounce back from adversity would seem to depend on certain genetic traits. The long form of the 5-HTT gene is linked to increased regulation of 5 –HT ( 5-hydroxytryptamine or serotonin) levels in the brain which means that neurons take up 5 -HT faster, leaving less available. This has been correlated to anxiety states and depression in patients. On the other hand the short form of the gene seems to confer a more stable temperament in those participants who were tested. Of course a single gene is rarely the culprit and more genes may be involved but certainly genetic as well as psychological traits do seem to be harbingers of certain psychological disorders. The other critical component is the environment because in the absence of severely stressful events, people with the long form of the 5-HTT gene are no more likely to commit suicide than those with the short form. In other words, there is no expression of the gene without the environmental input. Would meditation really help in a fundamental way in this situation? Does meditation, Buddhist or otherwise, change the brain in terms of its emotional circuitry?To answer that question, Davidson recruited 39 employees of a biotech firm in Wisconsin and randomly assigned 23 of them to receive meditation training of between two to three hours once a week for a total of eight weeks; while the other 16 received no such training. The training was conducted by Professor Jon Kabat-Zinn of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, who taught them the technique called mindfulness, in which the meditator views each passing thought as impartially and as non-judgmentally as possible and attaches no emotional reaction to it. The idea is that you are just a passive observer of your own thoughts. At eight weeks, and again at sixteen weeks later, electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings of the activity of the frontal cortices of the meditators had shifted; with more neuronal firings in the left compared with those in the right frontal-regions nestled just behind the forehead. The control group showed no such right to left shift. Any conscientious sceptical observer would then tell you that the numbers were small but it is also true that observers have noted this was a relatively well executed study with a control group and a sound method.Since EEG recordings are relatively crude devices for measuring spatial and synaptic changes in the brain which would account for the shift in frontal cortex activity from right to left, functional MRI had to be used for this purpose. By examining this little almond shape structure deep within the brain known as the amgydala, (amygdale is the Greek word for almond) and its connections with the prefrontal cortex, these researchers found that the inhibitory signals from the prefrontal cortex appear to rein in the activity of the amygdala and its associated negative emotions such as fear, anxiety, depression and anger and these signals seemed to be under some form of voluntary control.As to whether meditation induces structural changes in the connections between the frontal lobes and amygdala, a newer technique known as diffusion tensor imaging will be used to look into the possibility. Scientists and New-Age gurus are suddenly enchanted by the view of the plastic brain, the possibility that the brain, like the rest of the body, can be altered intentionally. Just as your muscles are sculpted into an Adonis shape by aerobics and weight training, it seems that the gray matter in the brain may become more densely aggregated with particular networks by repeated mental training. The brain is a curiosity in that it seems to be able to change its neuronal connective networks by expanding and strengthening those circuits that are used and by shrinking and weakening those which are rarely activated. This has been found to be true in addicts. Eric J Nestler and Robert C Malenka reported in the Scientific American in March 2004 that drug abuse produces long-term changes in the reward circuitry of the brain. Chronic use of cocaine, alcohol or heroin or other addictives can change the behaviour of a key part of the brain’s reward circuit extending from the dopamine producing nerve cells of the ventral tegmental area, at the bottom of the third ventricle near the base of the brain, to dopamine sensitive cells in the nucleus accumbens located in the forebrain. The dopamine release also produce certain proteins (delta FosB) which in turn activate specific genes which then generate other proteins such as CDK5 which induce sensitizing responses as well as others, like CREB(cyclic AMP response element-binding protein), which promote tolerance. The pathways then become highly responsive to presence or absence of the drug, producing the cycle of addiction that is seen. Although psychological, social and environmental factors are certainly important, there is a suggestion of genetic susceptibility in up to 50 percent of cases because some cases do run in families.Professor Richard Davidson of Wisconsin University , has also conducted studies on monks who have spent more than 10,000 hours in meditation, and compared their brain scans with those of novices. How do we know these monks have such meditation logs as it were. Well, in places like Bhutan, when monks go on retreats, they climb off to a mountain hut miles away from civilization, and stay there for 3 years, 3 months, 3 weeks and 3 days alone, with only their supporters bringing them food and necessities every few weeks. Now, that is what they called a retreat! At the end of which they come out smiling, and even if you tried to sour them up with a foul mouthed tirade or two, it would just as likely drip right off. Monks with the requisite training show a dramatic increase in high frequency brain activity called gamma waves during compassion meditation. Compassion meditation involves generating a kind of loving kindness towards all beings, and with practice, these practitioners can attain a mental state in which compassion permeates the whole mind, with no other transgressing thoughts.With the scans that had been performed on the monks and the novices, there was a clear difference between the two sets. The increase in high –frequency brain activity called gamma waves is thought to be a coordinated form of brain neuronal signaling which knits together far-flung brain circuits, and may underlie higher mental activity such as consciousness. There is a diagram on brain wave coherence which is probably related to this finding and it is discussed later in this chapter. The novice meditators showed a slight increase in gamma activity, but most of the monks showed extremely large increases in such patterns. This brings Professor Davidson to theorize that the mental training can bring the brain to a greater level of consciousness.Other details in his scans showed enhanced activity in the left pre-frontal cortex, ( the seat of positive emotions) and this seemed to swamp the activity of the right pre-frontal cortex, the seat of negative emotions such as anxiety. A sprawling circuit seemed to be activated when these monks were shown scenes of suffering, compared to relatively subdued activity in the novices. Interestingly, other regions of the brain which were responsible for planned movements became lighted, suggesting that these brains were primed to do something to help those in distress. One of the monks studied, French born Matthieu Ricard, stationed currently at Shechen Monastry in Katmandu, Nepal, is a Ph.D in genetics. He recalled that his feelings at the time of the test were “ Like a total readiness to act, to help” While they may have been pre-existing differences between the two sets – the novices and the monks, the very fact that the monks with the greatest brain changes were those with the most hours of meditation gave a distinct clue that the changes were actually due to mental training. Davidson has published these findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.So, the Buddha was actually correct when he emphasized this fact above all else, because without meditation the mind would be too unwieldy and unlikely to attain enlightenment.Studies done as far back as 1963 and 1966 by Dr Akira Kasamatsu and Dr Tomio Hirai of the Department of Neuro-Psychiatry at Tokyo University on Zen meditation involved a ten year study of the brain wave and EEG tracings of Zen masters. These have also revealed subtle changes in their brain wave recordings particularly with regard to alpha waves.About 90seconds after the onset of meditation in an accomplished Zen master, this slow rhythmic brain wave pattern (α waves) establishes itself, becomes more entrenched at a rate of about 7 to 8 per second about half an hour into the exercise and persists even for some minutes after stopping meditation. Alpha waves are usually seen only in people quietly at rest with their eyes closed but in these experiments, the Zen masters had their eyes open. Thus this brain wave pattern in alert normal wakeful consciousness is unusual and not found in persons who have not made considerable progress in meditation. Moreover, it was found that a Zen master’s assessment of the state of attainment of their disciples or other practitioners correlated directly with the latter’s EEG changes. Another interesting feature is concerned with what is termed alpha blocking and habituation. If a person is reading quietly and suddenly hears a loud noise, his attention is momentarily distracted to the source of the noise for a few seconds. If the same sound were to occur again a few seconds later, his attention is again diverted but would likely be not as strongly as before nor as long. With regular repetitions of the sound at fixed intervals, he becomes virtually oblivious to the sound and continues reading. The Zen master and the novice have different responses in this scenario. Read on…A normal relaxed person with closed eyes generates alpha waves on the EEG as shown in the diagram above. If you interrupt his peace with a loud noise, his alpha waves disappear for seven seconds or more and this is termed alpha blocking. In the case of the Zen master, this alpha blocking is much shorter in duration, about two seconds on average in response to the first noise. In the former, if the noise is repeated at 15 second intervals, there is virtually no alpha blocking by the fifth successive noise and this diminution in response is termed habituation and persists as long as the noise is heard at regular and frequent intervals. Strangely enough, in the case of the latter Zen master, no habituation is seen and his alpha blocking lasts two seconds with the first sound, two seconds with the fifth sound and two seconds with the twentieth sound! Paradoxically, as a result of his meditation, he has developed a greater awareness of his environment.And now comes an interesting facet hitherto unbeknown to most and alluded to earlier– that meditation has the power of transforming the mind! The enlightened mind is significantly different from ordinary minds! This is an objectively verifiable state, especially in those who practice transcendental meditation until they develop awareness even through all stages of sleep.The above is a computer analysis of the electrical brain activity or (EEG) of a beginner and an advanced meditator comparing brain function orderliness, integration and coherence. The more of white waves, the more coherence – see next diagram.Since EEG coherence reflects coordination of cerebral activity and has a strong correlation with creativity, IQ, and a low level of neuroticism, the old adage that some one who is disorganized is a scatter brain probably held some merit! In the normal frenzied working place, people who do not meditate have little or sporadic EEG-coherence on testing. The point is that as one learns transcendental meditation, EEG coherence begins to spill over into ordinary waking activity – in other words, TM trains the mind to work more and more coherently all the time. As time progresses and the meditator becomes more adept, the frontal brain activity becomes more pronounced and the increase in coherence seems to beget a state consonant with increased creativity, empathy and high ethical standards. In more than 500 studies at over 200 scientific institutions and universities in about 30 countries, Buddhist and Transcendental Meditation has been found to promote healing of stress related disorders and prevent its onset by improving stress tolerance. The improvement in quality of cerebral functioning is demonstrable even in very old people above the age of 81. Indeed it is a revolutionary revisit to the old vedic traditions which has now been proven true that one need not stop learning even when you are an octogenarian if you practice TMThat the brain has this ability to generate new cells (neurogenesis) would have been anathema to those dogmatic scientists of yesteryear who believed that we were all born with a fixed number of nerve cells but over the past decades, it has been confirmed that the brain does have the innate ability to rewire itself, at least in discrete areas of the adult brain.Moreover, the new frontier of research is in what is known as neuroplasticity, which postulates that there is a capacity for the brain to adapt in response to daily life changes and nowhere is this more apparent than in children. Many people have this erroneous idea that our brains are the result of the unfolding of a fixed genetic program, courtesy of our parents and in which we have no choice in the outcome. But, in reality present data indicates that with the plasticity in connections between the thinking and feeling as well as motor and memory regions of the brain, the belief that each of us has a ‘set point’ in terms of intelligence or emotional happiness is well nigh untenable and we now know that this so called ‘set-point’ is a lot more movable than we think.So, what has neuroplasiticity got to do with how you think? The answer is – a lot. Moods and emotional tsunamis have been linked to different biological modifications which include brain alterations in the hippocampus ( part of the limbic system ). Three dimensional MRI volumetric measurement of this area of the brain reveal a loss of volume of from 8% to 19% in people with major depression even as early as 7 months after a major depressive episode in comparison to healthy subjects in a recent report from the American Journal of Psychiatry (Frodl T, Meisenzahl E, Zetzsche T) 2002.Dr Yvette Sheline showed that the degree of hippocampal and amygdala atrophy ( loss of tissue) is correlated with the duration of the illness suggesting that it is the result of the illness and not the cause; because patients who recovered from their illness did not exhibit such loss, whereas those depressives who did a dive from high places had such findings at autopsy. At a cellular level, there is noticeable glial cell loss in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus, as well as in the prefrontal cortex in both major depression and bipolar depression. Bipolar depression refers to those patients who exhibit manic as well as depressive episodes. Since glial cells are involved in synaptic function (synapse = nerve junctions) and neurotransmission, it is not unreasonable to see why depressed people have such lowered activity because the depression has caused alteration in neuroplasticity. Even in animals such as rats, if you restrict their activity and put them under repeated mild stress, their brains show a decrease in cell proliferation ( neurogenesis) in the hippocampus and there is some evidence that it (depression) even encourages apoptosis ( normal physiological cell death). Obviously, if you want to preserve some brain, it pays to be happy!Elderly people who practice Transcendental Meditation (TM) have been found to have drastically reduced medical costs. In a study in Quebec by Herron and Cavanaugh reported in the Journal of Social Behaviour and Personality (2001) on some 163 elderly people above the age of 65, during the 9 years before TM was commenced, there was no significant difference in health expenditure between the control group who did no meditation and the TM group. However, after another 5 years, those who meditated were found to have 70 percent reduction in health care expenditure from data provided by the health insurance provider. It certainly proves that it is a good reason for any elderly fogey to start learning TM, if one intends to pay the doctor less! An added benefit is the fact that those who do TM are generally physiologically 12 years younger than their chronological age, based on measurements of “biological age” indicators such as blood pressure, near-point vision, and auditory discrimination. Correlated benefits include reduction in blood pressure, improvement in angina pectoris (heart pain due to coronary arterial blocks), and even a 50 percent reduced cardiovascular disease mortality reported in the American Heart Association Journal, Circulation, in February 1996.

First of all, Gunn is infamous for being hard. Admissions officers who see that bad grade will understand that a C at Gunn is a B+ (at worst) anywhere else.Second, as I wrote in APs Make You Look Complacent, Not Curious,Think about it from an admissions officer's perspective.Say you've got... I dunno... 8,000 applicants who took AP U.S. History; AP Calculus; AP Biology; AP Physics; AP Language; and AP Calculus.And then you've got one student who was curious about Marine Biology. So she took a Marine Biology elective -- you know, instead of AP Whatever. And she loved it so much that she applied for an internship at an aquarium -- and used the money to get scuba certified! Then, with several dives under her weight belt, she completed her Underwater Naturalist certification. Meaning she could (and did) go out into the wild and identify animals, plants, real examples of commensalism, parasitism, amensalism and synnecrosis.Realizing that the underwater world is completely different at night, she then took a part-time job to pay for a Night Diver course at her local dive shop. Fascinated by all this, she knew she would (probably) do something biology-related in college, and decided to take her one and only AP in Biology.Which student would you admit? Read more > Your situation is a little different, but it's basically the same.No admissions officer EVER said to another admissions officer, "Whoa! Hey! Did you see the student who got a 4.9 GPA?" "Did you see the student who took 12 APs?"Trying to get into college but having the highest GPA, SAT score or number of APs is a game you are all going to lose. No matter how high your GPA is, someone else's is higher. No matter how many APs you took, someone else took more.Don't get me wrong. A C is unideal. Good grades are important. But it sounds like you have a decently high GPA - it's high enough that that alone will not disqualify you from admission.So what you should really focus on now - other than working on your depression and motivation (and it sounds like you've got that mostly under control) - is figuring out and playing to your strengths.As I wrote in Forget Defense Against the Dark Arts - Professor Moody Should be a College Counselor,Here's the thing about college admissions in the US: they don't just admit the students with the best scores. They're looking for so much else! They're looking to build a curious, passionate, diverse student body with a range of skills.This means selecting some students whose strength is breadth (they've taken lots of AP classes, participated in many extracurriculars, etc.), and some students whose strength is depth (they've spent much of their energy focused on one major pursuit).So if you're one of those students who loves the challenge of an AP -- who loves studying for the sake of studying, doing whatever it takes to get the A, etc. -- maybe the strength you need to play to is breadth. You have shown a commitment to learning by taking advanced-level courses in the humanities, math and science. Maybe you don't know what you want to do with that knowledge. But you do know you're hungry and you've got a strong work ethic...But maybe APs are completely uninteresting to you because there's a pursuit that you want to spend more time on. Something academic, perhaps, like marine biology or ornithology. Or, perhaps, some obscure, non-academic pursuit. Let's pick an example a lot of high-achieving, helicopter-type parents might scoff at: fashion.There's no reason you can't knock an admissions officer's socks off with your passion for fashion. Because there's no limit to how deep you can take that passion. You can use the energy that other students spend on APs to develop niche expertise, like Susan Gregg-Koger did with ModCloth -- what started as a girl collecting thrift store finds turned into a $15 million business. Or you can buy a sewing machine and take online courses in design -- maybe even create your own line and debut it at a local mall.Or you can make your own online sewing course for teenage girls -- you've got this hypothesis that, if girls could only make or tailor their own clothes, everything would fit them perfectly and they'd have better self-esteem. You could even test yourhypothesis by running a study -- perhaps with an advisor from your high school or a local community college. (Want to know more? Check out One Model Tried On 10 Different Pairs of Size 16 Jeans. Here's Why They All Fit Differently.)Or you could start your own blog or online store -- and earn money or social influence (or fail fantastically -- that's a valuable learning experience, too). Or make the best costumes your school play has ever had. Or organize a huge fundraiser to provide stylish, professional interview outfits for low-income women, single mothers, or the homeless population in your community. You could start a small personal shopping business for dads who need help picking out a gift for their daughters. Or... something else!No college is going to look at your application and say, "Well, I guess it's cool that she provided interview clothes to 30 low-income mothers in her town and helped get 3 homeless women off the street... but I really wish she'd taken more APs." "I guess it's cool that she found a correlation between tailored clothing and self-esteem, and then launched an online course so she could do something about it -- but taking AP Stats with the rest of her class would have demonstrated realcuriosity."Instead, they'll be impressed by the leadership, entrepreneurship, design thinking, data analysis, empathy, marketing, or whatever skills you learned along the way. They'd be impressed by your initiative. You'd be showing that you are the kind of student who will take advantage of all the amazing resources a top-tier university offers. Not just the library. Read more >Colleges don't care if every single one of their students is good at math. But they do want every single one of their students to have a spark or interest in something. What's yours?Not sure? Ask yourself this.What do you wish you had more time for?What subjects do you spend less time working on, because you're better at them, and you feel you need to focus on the things you're worse at?What activity or interest do you have that you're afraid to tell your parents about, because you think they'd tell you to stop wasting your time?If you really want to stand out, in college admissions and in life, you need to either develop niche expertise (at anything! Literally any interest or hobby can turn into a TED talk, a business, a career, a discovery -- not that that should be your motivation, but still) and/or learn how to do things that computers can't do better than humans. (Read more about this in my post, Achievement isn't normal. It's log-normal. Here's that that means for your child's future.)Still not sure? Hit me up on Paved With Verbs. We can brainstorm some strategies to get you excited and make you stand out. Because, yes, I can help make your essay sound wonderful, even if you don't necessarily have anything you're excited to share. We can spin your experiences into a captivating story. But my goal with my students is to work with them before essay time so that when it's time to write essays, they have plenty of exciting success stories, failures, interests and accomplishments to write about.Three last things.1) It sounds like the reason you're struggling in school is due to mental health issues. (I mean, honestly, it might not even be mental. It could be physical. Your body and brain might simply be too exhausted for you to perform or care right now. The body and the brain are so closely linked.) Most schools have a section on their application where you can explain temporary drops in your grades. (Trust me - I'm a College Admissions Coach.) Don't go overboard on the excuses train, but do consider crafting a succinct explanation about what's going on with you right now, what you've learned from it, etc.2) Getting Into Your First Choice College is NOT an Accomplishment. I mean, it's super hard work to get through high school - not to mention doing well enough in your classes and extracurriculars to even be considered at a top school like Emory or UVA. But when it comes down to it, it's basically impossible to predict what will be the deciding factor in your admission. Don't feel bad if you don't get into your first choice - if you're determined to succeed, it won't matter where you go to school.3) A while back, I wrote High-achieving teens feel empty. Therapy doesn't help, but this might. It talks about some of the skills kids today don't learn because they're too busy studying. You might want to check it out. Particularly the part about taking a gap year. Gap years aren't insanely popular in the U.S. yet, but they're starting to catch on. My high school, Phillips Exeter Academy, is one of the best in the world. (According to Business insider, it is the best.) And guess what? They have begun actively encouraging students to take gap years before college. They've even set up a few scholarships to fund students' gap years! Which makes me so proud. And makes a ton of sense. When you spend time traveling the world, volunteering, exploring or even studying a little - you become a much more mature and global citizen. You'll get a lot more out of college, because you'll have a better sense of who you are and what you want. Not to mention, if you don't end up getting into the school of your dreams, you'll have a second chance to apply (and having taken a gap year could make you a much more interesting candidate). And if you do get into the school of your dreams, they will happily let you defer a year and begin in the fall of 2017.

"Almost 40 percent of Americans get less than 7 hours of sleep a night, a recent Gallup poll found, and an estimated 70 million Americans have a sleep disorder.Everyone knows that it's important to get enough sleep - but you may not realize just how many things can go wrong when you don't.Here are 25 unfortunate risks of partial and total sleep deprivation, some more common than others.1. Irritability"Complaints of irritability and [emotional] volatility following sleepless nights" are common, a team of Israeli researchers observed. They put those complaints to the test by following a group of underslept medical residents. The study found that the negative emotional effect of disruptive events - things like being interrupted while in the middle of doing something - were amplified by sleep loss.Source: Sleep, 20052. HeadachesScientists don't yet know exactly why sleep deprivation leads to headaches - but it's a connection doctors have noticed for more than a century. Migraines can be triggered by sleepless nights, and 36 to 58% of people with sleep apnea wake up with "nondescript morning headaches."Source: Headache, 2003; Headache, 20053. Inability to learnSleepiness has long been an issue among adolescents. One study of middle school students found that "delaying school start times by one hour, from roughly 7:30 to 8:30, increases standardized test scores by at least 2 percentile points in math and 1 percentile point in reading."But it's not just kids. Short-term memory is a crucial component of learning, and sleep deprivation significantly impaired the ability of adult volunteers to remember words they'd been shown the day before. In another study, researchers found that while people tend to improve on a task when they do it more than once, this isn't true if they are kept awake after they try it the first time - even if they sleep again before doing it again.Source: Nature, 1999; Nature Neuroscience, 2000; Education Next, 20124. Weight gainPeople who are underslept seem to have hormone imbalances that are tied to increased appetite, more cravings for high-calorie foods, a greater response to indulgent treats, and a dampened ability to control their impulses - a very dangerous combination. It's true that you burn more calories when awake, but not nearly enough to cancel out the many excess calories you consume when exhausted.Source: Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 2012; PLOS Medicine, 2004; Nature Communications, 2013; PNAS, 20135. Poor visionSleep deprivation is associated with tunnel vision, double vision, and dimness. The longer you are awake, the more visual errors you'll encounter, and the more likely you are to experience outright hallucinations.Source: International Journal of Occupational Medicine and Environmental Health, 20106. Heart diseaseWhen researchers kept people awake for 88 hours, their blood pressure went up - no big surprise there. But even subjects who were allowed to sleep for 4 hours a night had an elevated heart rate when compared to those getting 8 hours. Concentrations of C-reactive protein, a marker of heart disease risk, increased in those fully and partially deprived of sleep.Source: Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 2004; PLOS ONE, 2009; Sleep Medicine Reviews, 20127. SlownessYour reaction time is severely impeded when you don't get enough sleep. When researchers gave West Point cadets two tests that require quick decision-making, some were allowed to sleep between the tests, while others were not. Those who had slept did better the second time - those who had not did worse, and their reactions slowed down. A study in college athletes found similar results.Source: Sleep, 2009; Asian Journal of Sports Medicine, 20128. InfectionYou know that great thing your immune system does, where when you get an open wound of some kind it doesn't always get infected immediately? Prolonged sleep deprivation and even one night of sleeplessness can impede your body's natural defenses against microorganisms.Source: American Journal of Physiology, 1993; The FASEB Journal, 19969. Economic risk-takingPlanning to make some changes to your portfolio? You might want to make sure you're well-rested. "A single night of sleep deprivation evoked a strategy shift during risky decision making such that healthy human volunteers moved from defending against losses to seeking increased gains," researchers concluded.Source: The Journal of Neuroscience, 201110. Overproduction of urineWhen people sleep, the body slows down its normal urine production. This is why most people don't have to pee in the night as much as they do during the day. But when someone is sleep deprived, this normal slowdown doesn't happen, leading to what researchers call "excess nocturnal urine production." This condition may be linked to bedwetting in children and, in adults, it's tied to what's called nocturia - the need to use the bathroom many times during the night.Source: American Journal of Physiology, 2010; American Journal of Physiology, 201211. DistractednessHaving trouble paying attention to what you're reading or listening to? Struggling with anything that requires you to truly focus? "Attention tasks appear to be particularly sensitive to sleep loss," researchers have noted. If you want to stay alert and attentive, sleep is a requirement. Otherwise, you enter "an unstable state that fluctuates within seconds and that cannot be characterized as either fully awake or asleep," and your ability to pay attention is variable at best.Source: Archives of Italian Biology, 2001; Seminars in Neurology, 200912. Less effective vaccinesVaccines work by spurring your body to create antibodies against a specific virus. But when you don't sleep, your immune system is compromised, and this doesn't work quite as well. In one small study, 19 people were vaccinated against Hepatitis A. Ten of them got 8 hours of sleep the following night, while the rest pulled an all-nighter. Four weeks later, those who had slept normally had levels of Hepatitis A antibodies almost twice as high as those who'd been kept awake.Another study found that a sleepless night did not have a longterm effect on immunity after a flu vaccine, it concludes that the effect might be specific to certain diseases. "Sleep should be considered an essential factor contributing to the success of vaccination," the Hep A researchers wrote.Source: Psychosomatic Medicine, 2003; Journal of Immunology, 2011; BMC Immunology, 201213. Impaired speechSevere sleep deprivation might make you sound like a bumbling idiot - much like having way too much to drink. "Volunteers kept awake for 36 hours showed a tendency to use word repetitions and cliches; they spoke monotonously, slowly, [and] indistinctly," one study noted. "They were not able to properly express and verbalize their thoughts."Source: Sleep, 1997; International Journal of Occupational Medicine and Environmental Health, 201014. ColdsIf you're wondering why you're sick all the time and seem to pick up every bug that travels around the office, it's probably because you're not getting enough sleep. When a group of 153 people were exposed to a common cold, those who had gotten less than 7 hours of sleep in the two weeks prior were almost 3 times more likely to get sick than those who'd had 8 or more hours of sleep. How well you sleep is also a factor - those who had spent 92% of their time in bed actually asleep were 5.5 times more likely to catch a cold than those who had been peacefully slumbering 98-100% of the time they were in bed.Source: Archives of Internal Medicine, 200915. Gastrointestinal problemsOne in 250 Americans suffer from Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), and sleep deficiencies make its symptoms much worse. Regular sleep loss also makes you more likely to develop both IBD and inflammatory bowel syndrome, which affects an estimated 10-15% of people in the U.S. And patients with Crohn's disease were twice as likely to experience a relapse when they weren't getting enough sleep.Source: World Journal of Gastroenterology, 201316. Car accidentsDrowsy driving is often compared to drunk driving: You really shouldn't do either. "Motor vehicle accidents related to fatigue, drowsy driving, and falling asleep at the wheel are particularly common, but often underestimated," one review concluded. Pilots, truck drivers, medical residents, and others required to stay awake for long periods of time "show an increased risk of crashes or near misses due to sleep deprivation."Source: Seminars in Neurology, 200917. Depleted sex driveTestosterone is an important component of sexual drive and desire in both women and men. Sleeping increases testosterone levels, while being awake decreases them. Sleep deprivation and disturbed sleep, consequently, are associated with reduced libido and sexual dysfunction, and people suffering from sleep apnea are at particular risk.Source: American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 2007; Behavioral Brain Research, 2009; Journal of Sexual Medicine, 2009; Sleep Medicine, 2010; Brain Research, 2011 18. PainPeople in pain - especially those suffering from chronic pain - tend not to get enough sleep. This makes sense: Pain can wake you up in the night and make it hard to fall asleep in the first place. But recently, researchers have begun to suspect that sleep deprivation may actually cause pain or at least increase people's sensitivity to pain. One study found that after research subjects were kept awake all night, their pain threshold - the amount of painful stimulus they were able to endure - was lower.Source: Journal of Sleep Research, 2001; Sleep Medicine Reviews, 200619. DiabetesBeing awake when your body wants you to be asleep messes with your metabolism, which in turn increases your risk for insulin resistance (often called "pre-diabetes") and type 2 diabetes. "Interventions to extend sleep duration may reduce diabetes risk," one study in adolescents concluded. And four large studies in adults found a strong association - though not a cause-effect relationship - between regular sleep loss and the risk of developing diabetes, even after controlling for other habits that might be relevant.Source: Journal of Applied Physiology, 2005; Sleep, 2012; Annals of Internal Medicine, 201220. SloppinessMost people notice that when they're sleepy, they're not at the top of their game. One study found that one sleepless night contributed to a 20-32% increase in the number of errors made by surgeons. People playing sports that require precision - shooting, sailing, cycling, etc. - also make more mistakes when they've been awake for extended periods of time.Source: The Lancet, 1998; Physiology & Behavior, 200721. CancerScientists are just beginning to investigate the relationship between sleep and cancer, and different kinds of cancer behave differently. But since disrupted circadian rhythm and reduced immunity are direct results of sleep deprivation, it's no surprise that preliminary research seems to indicate that people who don't get enough sleep are at increased risk for developing certain kinds of cancer, most notably colon and breast cancers.Source: Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 2003; Pathologie-biologie, 2003; Cancer, 2011; AAOHN Journal, 201122. Memory problemsSleep disruptions in the elderly can lead to structural changes in the brain that are associated with impaired long-term memory - and sleep-related memory deficits have been observed in the general adult population as well. As early as 1924, researchers noticed that people who slept more forgot less. Poor sleep and not enough of it have also been linked to higher levels of β-Amyloid, a biomarker for Alzheimer's.Source: Cell Signal, 2012; Nature Neuroscience, 2013; JAMA Neurology, 201323. Genetic disruptionA 2013 study shed some light on why sleep is tied to so many different aspects of our health and wellness. Poor sleep actually disrupts normal genetic activity. After one week of sleeping less than 6 hours per night, researchers found that more than 700 genes were not behaving normally, including some that help govern immune and stress responses.Some genes that typically cycle according to a daily (circadian) pattern stopped doing so, while others that don't normally follow a daily pattern began doing so. What does this mean? Just one week of less-than-ideal sleep is enough to make some of your genetic activity go haywire.Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 201324. Unhappiness and depressionIn a classic study led by Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, a group of 909 working women kept detailed logs of their moods and day-to-day activities. While differences in income up to $60,000 had little effect on happiness, a poor night's sleep was one of two factors that could ruin the following day's mood. (The other was tight deadlines at work.)Another study reported higher marital happiness among women with more peaceful sleep, although it's hard to say whether happy people sleep better, better sleep makes people happier, or - most likely - some combination of the two. Insomniacs are also twice as likely to develop depression, and preliminary research suggests that treating sleep problems may successfully treat depressive symptoms.Source: Science, 2004; Behavioral Sleep Medicine, 2009; Journal of Affective Disorders, 201125. DeathMany health problems are associated with sleep deprivation and poor sleep, but here's the big one: People who consistently do not get 7-8 hours of sleep are more likely to die during a given time period. Put more simply: We all die eventually, but sleeping too little - or even too much - is associated with a higher risk of dying sooner than you otherwise might."Source: 25 Horrible Things That Happen If You Don't Get Enough Sleep