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TOKYO — From the “leaning tower of pizza” to a fish slicing and cooking itself and a dragon emerging from a dragon fruit, Japanese artisans’ quirky plastic food sculptures went on display this week at an exhibition in Tokyo.

The models were made with the same painstaking detail as the rock-solid noodle soups and crispy-looking plastic snacks that have long been displayed outside Japanese restaurants where they are called “shokuhin sampuru”, or “sample food products”.

Sampuru are common outside ramen shops and family restaurants across Japan a century after stores began using wax models to advertise their menu to a growing middle class.

“Normally we have to follow orders from clients. We take their views on board when we’re making items,” plastic food artist Shinichiro Hatasa, 57, told AFP.

But when dreaming up fun designs, “you can use your imagination. How it ends up is totally up to you,” he said.

For the exhibition, Hatasa crafted an ear of corn leisurely sunbathing on a beach.

Other creations on display included a deep-fried shrimp with four breaded legs roaming like a tiger on a mountain of shredded cabbage and a Tetris game made of chicken.

A Japanese breakfast dish of fermented soybeans called natto appeared to spiral in the air, resembling a powerful cyclone — nicknamed, naturally, a “nattornado”.

Around 60 sculptures were on display, some silly but others designed to showcase the artists’ formidable skills.

“They are not real, but they look so real. It’s wonderful,” said exhibition attendee Reiko Ichimaru.

‘Burgers are for beginners’

All the models were handmade by specialists at Iwasaki Group, Japan’s leading maker of “sampuru”, which celebrates its 90th anniversary this year.

At an Iwasaki factory in Yokohama near Tokyo, artisans first take moulds of ingredients from actual meals cooked by the firm’s restaurant clients.

Then they begin the meticulous work of decorating the samples to look as realistic as possible, from moisture droplets on chilled glass to subtle bruises on a fruit’s surface.

“Fresh things are more difficult to make. Fresh vegetables, fresh fish. Cooked items are easier,” because the colours are less complicated, factory head Hiroaki Miyazawa, 44, told AFP.

“Hamburger patties are for beginners,” he added.

Fake food is a multi-million-dollar market in Japan, but sampuru production has been hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, which reduced demand for dining out.

Sampuru makers hope more tourists will soon be allowed into the country to boost the restaurant industry, but they are also putting their unique skills to use elsewhere.

For example, Iwasaki artisans have made replica bananas at different degrees of ripeness for factories to use to train new employees.

Orders have also come in from IT sales merchants, who want to use mock 5G wi-fi routers in their presentations.

Meanwhile, at the exhibition, the more original offerings are delighting children and adults alike.

“I think the number of restaurants using plastic food displays is decreasing,” said Yutaka Nishio, 52.

“It’s interesting to preserve this as art. It’s really great.”

PARIS — The world would save nearly 700 million tonnes of carbon pollution each year — more than Canada’s annual emissions — if every person adopted the Dutch way of life and cycled on a daily basis, new research showed on Thursday.

The transport sector currently accounts for a quarter of all fuel-related greenhouse gas emissions, which are warming the planet. 

Half of those emissions are from passenger cars, and worldwide transport demand is predicted to triple by mid-century. 

As they seek to decarbonise transport, governments and industry have turned towards electric vehicles, with 6.75 million units sold in 2021 alone. 

Vehicle sales are tracked and published each year. However, it has been difficult to calculate the production and ownership of a much older, low-carbon technology: The bicycle. 

An international team of researchers has now compiled the first global dataset of bicycle ownership and use by country dating back to the early 1960s, using statistical modelling to fill in any information gaps.

They found that between 1962-2015 global production of bikes outstripped that of cars, with China accounting for nearly two-thirds of the more than 123 million bikes manufactured in 2015.

Writing in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, the team showed that bicycle ownership was generally higher in upper-income and upper-middle-income countries — but then so was the percentage of journeys undertaken by car. 

This meant that high bicycle ownership does not necessarily lead to high bicycle use. 

Among the 60 countries included in the dataset, the share of bicycle use for journeys was only five per cent. Some countries, simply lack bicycle stocks, while others with high bike ownership, such as the United States, tended to view cycling as more of a leisure activity than a mode of transport. 

‘Going Dutch’

The team calculated that if everyone emulated the Danish commute of cycling an average of 1.6 kilometres each day, the world could save some 414 million tonnes of CO2 a year — equivalent to Britain’s annual emissions. 

“Going Dutch” and cycling 2.6 kilometres daily like people do in The Netherlands would save 686 million tonnes, and bring with it associated health benefits due to more exercise and improved air quality. 

“A worldwide pro-bicycle policy and infrastructure development enabled modal shift like the Netherlands and Denmark can lead to significant untapped climate and health benefits,” the authors wrote.

They said this dual benefit demanded better bicycle data collection, and said there was “an urgent need to promote sustainable bicycle use via supporting policy, planning, and infrastructure development”.

The study’s lead author, Gang Liu, a professor at the University of Southern Denmark’s Department of Green Technology, said the research showed that bicycles had an important future role in lowering global transport’s carbon footprint.

“Addressing such gigantic challenges requires not only technology-side strategies, such as lightweight design or electrification,” he told AFP. 

“But also needs demand-side strategies, such as alternative mobility patterns — sharing mobility, on-demand mobility, and ride sharing — and transport mode change, such as reducing short-distance car use by cycling.” 

HOUSTON — Rick LaBrode has worked at NASA for 37 years, but he says the American quest to return to the Moon is by far the crowning moment of his career.

LaBrode is the lead flight director for Artemis 1, set to take off later this month — the first time a capsule that can carry humans will be sent to the Moon since the last Apollo mission in 1972.

“This is more exciting than really anything I’ve ever been a part of,” LaBrode told journalists at the US space agency’s Mission Control Centre in Houston, Texas.

The 60-year-old confided to AFP that the eve of the launch is likely to be a long night of anticipation — and little rest.

“I’m going to be so excited. I won’t be able to sleep too much, I’m sure of that,” he said, in front of Mission Control’s iconic giant bank of screens.

Artemis 1, an uncrewed test flight, will feature the first blastoff of the massive Space Launch System rocket, which will be the most powerful in the world when it goes into operation. 

It will propel the Orion crew capsule into orbit around the Moon. The spacecraft will remain in space for 42 days before returning to Earth.

From 2024, astronauts will travel aboard Orion for the same trip, and the following year, at the earliest, Americans will once again step foot on the Moon.

For the duration of Artemis 1, a team of about a dozen NASA personnel will remain in Mission Control 24 hours a day. The centre has been renovated and updated for the occasion.

Teams have been rehearsing for this moment for three years.

“This is a whole new deal — a whole new rocket, a whole new spacecraft, a whole new control centre,” explained Brian Perry, the flight dynamics officer, who will be in charge of Orion’s trajectory immediately following the launch.

“I can tell you, my heart is going to be tum tum, tum tum. But I’ll work hard to keep focused,” Perry, who worked on numerous space shuttle flights over the years, told AFP, tapping his chest.

Moon pool

Beyond upgrades to Mission Control for the mission, the entire Johnson Space Centre is a bit over the Moon about Artemis.

In the middle of the giant astronaut training tank — the world’s largest indoor swimming pool at more than 61 metres, long, 30 metres wide and 12 metres deep — a black curtain has been erected.

On one side of the so-called Neutral Buoyancy Lab is a mockup of the International Space Station, submerged. 

On the other, the lunar environment is gradually being recreated at the bottom of the pool, with giant model rocks made by a company specialising in aquarium decorations.

“It’s only been in the last few months that we started to put the sand on the bottom of the pool. We just got that large rock in two weeks ago,” said the lab’s deputy chief Lisa Shore. “It’s all very new for us and very much in development.”

In the water, astronauts can experience a sensation that approaches weightlessness. To train for eventual voyages to the Moon, simulations must replicate the Moon’s one-sixth gravity.

From a room above the pool, the astronauts are guided remotely — with the four-second communications delay they will experience on the lunar surface.

Six have already done training and six more will do so by the end of September. The latter group will wear the new spacesuits made by NASA for Artemis missions.

“The heyday of this facility was when we were still flying the space shuttle and we were assembling the space station,” explained the lab’s office chief John Haas.

At that time, 400 training sessions with astronauts in full spacesuits took place every year, as compared with about 150 today. But the Artemis program has infused the lab with new urgency.

When AFP visited the facility, engineers and divers were testing how to pull a cart on the Moon.

‘New golden age’

Each session in the pool can last up to six hours. 

“It’s like running a marathon twice, but on your hands,” astronaut Victor Glover told AFP. 

Glover returned to Earth last year after spending six months on the International Space Station. Now, he works in a building dedicated to simulators of all varieties.

He said his job is to help “verify procedures and hardware” so that when NASA finally names the Artemis astronauts who will take part in crewed missions to the Moon (Glover could be on that list himself), they can be “ready to go”.

Using virtual reality headsets, the astronauts can get used to walking in dark conditions at the Moon’s South Pole, where the missions will land. 

The Sun barely rises above the horizon there, meaning there are always long, dark shadows that impair visibility.

The astronauts must also get used to the new spacecraft like the Orion capsule, and the equipment on board. 

In one of the simulators, seated in the commander’s chair, personnel are trained to dock with the future lunar space station Gateway.

Elsewhere at the space centre, a replica of the Orion capsule, which measures a mere 9 cubic metres for four people, is in use.

“They do a lot of emergency egress training here,” Debbie Korth, deputy manager of the Orion programme, told AFP.

Korth, who has worked on Orion for more than a decade, said everyone in Houston is excited for the return to the Moon and for NASA’s future.

“Definitely, I feel like it is like a new golden age,” she said.

SIEM REAP, Cambodia — The melodic songs from families of endangered monkeys ring out over the jungle near Cambodia’s Angkor Wat temple complex — a sign of ecological rejuvenation decades after hunting decimated wildlife at the site.

The first pair of rare pileated gibbons were released in 2013 as part of a joint programme between conservation group Wildlife Alliance, the forestry administration and the Apsara Authority — a government agency that manages the 12th-century ruins.

The gibbon duo, named Baray and Saranick, were born from parents rescued from the wildlife trade and produced offspring a year later.

“We have now released four different pairs of gibbons within the Angkor forest and they have gone on to breed and now seven babies have been born,” Wildlife Alliance Rescue and Care Programme Director Nick Marx told AFP.

“We are restoring Cambodia’s natural heritage back into their most beautiful cultural heritage.”

Globally, gibbons are one of the most threatened families of primates, while the pileated gibbon is listed as endangered.

Marx says his team rescues some 2,000 animals a year and many more will soon call the Angkor jungle home.

There are hopes that once the baby gibbons reach sexual maturity in about five to eight years, they will also pair up and mate.

“What we are hoping for the future is to create a sustainable population of the animals... that we released here within the amazing Angkor forest,” Marx said.

‘Big victory’

Cambodian authorities have hailed the gibbon baby boom that began in 2014.

“This means a big victory for our project,” Chou Radina from the Apsara Authority said, adding that as well as gibbons, tourists could now see great hornbills flying over Angkor Wat.

The programme has released more than 40 other animals and birds including silvered langurs, muntjac deers, smooth-coated otters, leopard cats, civets, wreathed hornbills, and green peafowl.

All were rescued from traffickers, donated or born in captivity at the Phnom Tamao wildlife sanctuary near Phnom Penh.

The Angkor Archaeological Park — which contains the ruins of various capitals of the Khmer Empire, dating from the ninth to 15th centuries — has some of the oldest rainforest in Cambodia.

It is also the kingdom’s most popular tourist destination.

Since Angkor Wat became a world heritage site in 1992, its jungle, which covers more than 6,500 hectares, has benefited from increased legal and physical protections.

There are hopes that wildlife sightings will also spark interest in local and foreign tourists and boost conservation education efforts.

Rampant poaching, habitat loss from logging, agriculture and dam building has stripped much wildlife from Cambodian rainforests.

Last year, authorities removed 61,000 snare traps, environment ministry spokesman Neth Pheaktra said, adding that the government had launched a campaign to discourage hunting and eating of wildlife meat.

But widespread poverty even before the pandemic left many households without much choice but to continue hunting so their families could eat protein.

Animals are also hunted for traditional medicine and to be kept as pets.

According to Global Forest Watch, from 2001-2021 Cambodia lost 2.6 million hectares of tree cover, a 30 per cent decrease since 2000.

Commercial interests are trumping protection efforts in some quarters — the Phnom Tamao zoo and wildlife rescue centre is under threat from a shadowy rezoning development plan, Marx said.

Back at Siem Reap — the gateway city to Angkor Wat — villager Moeurn Sarin shops at the market for bananas, watermelon, rambutan and fish to feed the pileated gibbon families and otters.

“We are happy to conserve these animals,” the 64-year-old said, adding he likes to watch the gibbons’ tree swinging antics.

“In the future, these animals will have babies for the young generation to see.”

PARIS — The bitcoin boom spawned new billionaires and videos of beach parties and Lamborghinis. The crypto crash brought devastation for small investors and bankruptcy for many companies.

Blockchain technology underpins crypto and has been hailed as a world-changing innovation, but does it have any use beyond creating speculative financial instruments?

AFP asked crypto critic Stephen Diehl, author of recently published “Popping the Crypto Bubble”, to run the rule over some of the most popular claims made for blockchain technology.

More secure voting?

As tension and confusion engulfed the United States after the 2020 election, Changpeng Zhao, billionaire founder of crypto firm Binance, had a suggestion. 

A “blockchain-based mobile voting app”, he tweeted, would mean “we won’t have to wait for results, or have any questions on its validity”. 

Fellow crypto billionaire Vitalik Buterin replied that there were “significant challenges” but he thought it was “directionally 100 per cent correct”.

So far, experiments have been very small scale. 

For Diehl, blockchain was more likely to introduce problems than solve them.

“From the American perspective, every single district runs its own voting programme,” said.

“This is seen as a feature because to corrupt any one election you would have to corrupt many, many civil servants.”

“Centralising the voting system in one digital place would be pretty risky — then all you have to do is corrupt the blockchain and you could corrupt democracy.”

Automated 

house buying?

Blockchain at heart is a ledger, a way of storing transactions that is — according to fans — secure, transparent and permanent.

Those qualities have led countless enthusiasts to propose that the technology could in effect replace paper contracts for things like house buying.

Diehl said it was “absurd” that the blockchain was “going back to things that were solved a millennium ago to justify its own existence”.

“This is the system we’ve had since the Middle Ages — you have a government registry of land, a title and deed that get transferred when the ownership changes,” he said. 

“The blockchain isn’t solving anything here.”

Payments 

without banks?

The blockchain emerged from a 2008 white paper on bitcoin, which was conceived as an alternative to fiat currency. 

The opening line reads: “A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.”

Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency. There are now more than 10,000 others sitting on many different blockchains. 

Big firms have been desperate to find ways to accept payments in crypto. 

Diehl pointed out that cryptoassets are speculative instruments not suitable for payments. 

“When was the last time you paid for your coffee with Apple stocks,” he asked. 

“It just doesn’t happen. You want something that’s going to be stable so the price of your coffee is the price of your coffee next week.”

Supply chain tracking?

Want to know where your mango came from? Some supermarkets believe the best way for you to find out is to access a blockchain-based system capable of tracking the fruit from the tropics of Central America to your cornerstore. 

Walmart and Carrefour are among the firms trumpeting blockchain systems.

Carrefour told AFP earlier this year that shoppers would be able to scan a QR code and discover the provenance of an array of products. 

The shops hope the blockchain will provide security, certainty and transparency. 

Diehl pointed out that digital supply chain management has been around for years and is perfectly adequate without blockchain. 

“Blockchain is not adding any incorruptability to the system,” he said, pointing out that people in the supply chain could tell lies on the blockchain as easily as on any other platform.

“If I have a carton of apples and report that I put 100 per cent of them on the truck, but then I skim off 50 per cent for myself, the blockchain is not going to prevent that.”

BEIJING — Strapped in tight, the prone poodle nervously eyes the vet as he gently sticks fine needles into its back and paws, summoning the ancient art of acupuncture to treat the pet’s aches and pains.

Duniu is just one of a growing number of animals being signed up for traditional medicine in China — care their masters say is less invasive and comes with fewer side effects than conventional treatments.

In one Beijing practice, pets of all shapes and sizes come for treatments.

“The advantage of traditional Chinese medicine is that there is no surgery,” 38-year-old Zhai Chunyu tells AFP, accompanied by Duniu, his poodle.

“So the animal’s suffering is reduced.”

At just three years old, Duniu suffers from Legg-Calve-Perthes disease, which affects the thigh bone and can lead to painful osteoarthritis.

“He was in so much pain that he could no longer put his paw on the ground” and “had no appetite”, says Zhai, who works in finance.

“A doctor advised me to have the head of the femur removed. But I didn’t want to because I have another poodle who has been there and he suffered a lot from the operation and the after-effects.”

But then a friend advised him to try acupuncture.

“After five to six sessions, we saw the results. Duniu manages to walk and even run a little now,” Zhai says.

‘Treat them gently’

Animal acupuncture is centuries old in China, says veterinarian Li Wen, who founded his practice in 2016.

“Traditional Chinese medicine is not intended to replace conventional medicine” because “both have their strengths” and are complementary, he says.

Before starting the treatment, the vet first checks the animal’s body, examines its eyesight and the colour of its tongue, takes its pulse and asks its owner questions.

He then plants his needles at acupuncture points specific to dogs and cats.

“Out of the 10 animals that I receive on average every day, there are always one or two who rebel,” Li says.

“You have to communicate with them, treat them gently, reassure them that you’re not here to hurt them.”

Recordings of soft bamboo flute music and the chirping of birds are played at the clinic to help the animals relax.

Li mainly deals with cases of paralysis, limb weakness, epilepsy, pain and urinary retention.

But acupuncture can also be used for ailments when no other treatment is available.

That was the case with Xiaomei, a 12-year-old male Labrador suffering from nerve compression in his lower back. 

“Last September, after swimming, he was unable to get back on his feet. A veterinarian then told us that it was impossible to treat and that he would become paralysed,” his owner Ma Li, 41, tells AFP.

“Thanks to acupuncture, he still has difficulties but can walk normally and even run.”

‘He loves it!’

“The first time, he was scared,” says Yang Lihua, a 65-year-old retiree accompanied by her Pekingese Niannian, who is suffering from a herniated disc.

“Now he loves it! After the session, he is so relaxed that he sleeps in the car on the way home.”

The acupuncture market for animals remains limited for the moment, Li says.

“But since 2016, it has been gaining popularity,” he adds.

“As education levels, living conditions improve and incomes rise, more and more people are realising the benefits of this medicine.”

Ma’s Labrador jumps into the back seat of her mistress’s car after her session, looking content.

“Doesn’t he look happy?” she exclaims.

Filling the role of luxury SUV in a Volkswagen line-up that includes a larger, more affordable, but less sophisticated Teramont SUV, the current Touareg is hardly the first Volkswagen flagship SUV to share architecture with more upmarket cousins in the wider Volkswagen group stable. 

The third generation Touareg is, however, the German manufacturer’s most convincing luxury SUV yet, and takes the model line from competent and capable, if uninspiring near-premium SUV, to a bona-fide premium player with the right performance, comfort, dynamic, luxury and technology credentials.

Sharper style

Sharing its MLBevo group platform with the Audi Q8 and Q7, and Lamborghini Urus, Bentley Bentayga and Porsche Cayenne exotics, the current Touareg was launched in 2018. Classier and more athletic than its more rounded and comparatively blander predecessors, it incorporates tauter, more chiselled surfacing, more deliberate lines, and sharper edges. With slimmer heavy browed headlights, vast multi-slat chrome grille, and more defined wheel-arches and sills, the Touareg now also includes dual exhaust ports, tailgate-top spoiler and slimmer, more stylish rear lights for a more statuesque stance. Underneath, it also incorporates more lightweight aluminium construction elements.

Available in Middle East markets with a choice of two turbocharged direct injection engines including an entry-level 2-litre four-cylinder developing 248BHP and 273lb/ft torque, it is, however, the larger 3-litre V6 that is the more impressive option better suited to the Touareg’s newfound premium status. Developing 335BHP and 332lb/ft, the Touareg’s V6 engine is quick spooling and responsive from standstill. Building in a smooth, refined and urgently welling manner towards its rev limit, the Touareg’s engine meanwhile rides on an easily accessible and muscularly broad mid-range torque sweet spot.

Responsive and refined

With near absent turbo lag from standstill and an abundantly rich mid-range underwriting power accumulation, the Touareg is effortlessly confident when overtaking on highway or on inclines. It is meanwhile responsive coming back on power when exiting corners. Driving all four wheels through a quick and smooth shifting 8-speed automatic gearbox with a wide range or ratios to ensure efficiency, versatility, refinement and responsiveness, the Touareg is meanwhile impressively quick through the 0-100km/h acceleration benchmark, which it dispatches in an estimated 5.9-seconds, before reaching for a 250km/h top speed.

A sure-footed drive with engine located slightly forwards of the front axle and pressing down to gain excellent traction, the Touareg’s four-wheel-drive system is, meanwhile, able to vary power distribution between a maximum of 70 per cent to the front and 80 per cent to the rear, as necessary. With reassuring road holding and various driving modes to choose from that adapt various parameters for different driving situations and styles, the Touareg also features an optional off-road package that includes individualised driving settings and sand and gravel driving modes. 

Party tricks

With optional air suspension that provides for an increased ride height and 550mm water fording capability, the Touareg rides in a comfortably refined manner with supple absorption of road imperfections, even when equipped with firm low profile 285/45R20 tyres. Forgiving in its ride, the Touareg avoids a feeling of disconnection or vagueness, but rather turns in tidily with light but reasonably direct steering feel, and progressively settles into body lean through hard driven corners, as its electronically controlled anti-roll bars tauten up.

With weight pressing on the outside and rear, the Touareg’s four-wheel-drive meanwhile allocates power as necessary and finds the traction to pounce out onto the straight. A more wieldy and manoeuvrable SUV than its size and approximate 2-tonne weight suggest, the Touareg’s best party trick is perhaps its optional four-wheel-steering. Turning rear wheels opposite to front at low speeds to effectively shorten its wheelbase and make it more agile, the Touareg’s rear wheels, however, turn in the same direction at speed, for responsive and stable direction changes.

Extensive equipment

Surprisingly nimble through winding roads and easy to manoeuvre in tight parking garages with its 11.9-metre turning circle, the Touareg is, meanwhile, well-equipped with a variety of standard and optional driver assistance systems that includes parking cameras, night vision thermal cameras, heads-up display, interactive LED headlights, partly automated steering and lane departure, and Traffic Jam Assist system. More so, with a 48v battery system already powering adjustable electro-mechanical anti-roll bars, the Touareg could also potentially be equipped with other 48v-powered systems, such Audi and Bentley cousins’ high tech motor-driven adaptive suspension. 

A premium SUV with a classy and uncluttered cabin, quality materials and textures, and plenty of comfort and convenience features — including massaging front seats — the Touareg notably features a huge high definition 15-inch infotainment screen and 12-inch configurable digital instrument panel. Sophisticated and user-friendly, the Touareg’s digital displays are complemented by an airy ambiance and interior mood lighting. Meanwhile, the Touareg’s driving position is comfortable and well-adjustable, rear space generous and cargo volume accommodating, expanding from 810- to 1,800-litres with rear seats folded.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 3-litre, in-line, turbochargedV6-cylinders

Bore x stroke: 84.5 x 89mm

Valve-train: 24-valve, DOHC, direct injection

Gearbox: 8-speed automatic, four-wheel-drive

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 335 (340) [250]

Specific power: 111.8BHP/litre

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 332 (450)

Specific torque: 150.2Nm/litre

0-100km/h: 5.9-seconds (est.)

Top speed: 250km/h (est.)

Fuel capacity: 75-litres

Length: 4,878mm

Width: 1,984mm

Height: 1,702mm

Wheelbase: 2,894mm

Track, F/R: 1,653/1,669mm

Ground clearance: 188mm (+70mm adjustability)*

Approach/departure angles/break-over: 23.3°/17.2°/13.5° 

Water fording: 550mm*

Aerodynamic drag co-efficient: 0.32

Headroom, F/R: 1,049/990mm

Cabin width, F/R: 1,584/1,547mm

Luggage volume, min/max: 810-/1,800-litres

Kerb weight: approximately 2,000kg 

Steering: Electric-assisted rack & pinion

Turning Circle: 11.19-metres**

Suspension: Five-link, optional air suspension

Brakes: Ventilated discs

Tyres: 285/45R20

*With optional air suspension

**With optional four-wheel-steering

By Rania Sa’adi
Licensed Rapid Transformational Therapist and Clinical Hypnotherapist

Do you sometimes feel stuck in your job, life or even a relationship, unable to move forward? It is because you have probably created a “comfort zone”. 

A comfort zone is a “made up” area in our mind, an illusion, in which a person lives in a psychological state of happiness, peace of mind where everything is static, and therefore no change is ever possible. But the good news is that it is NOT real and if you had the power to create it, you have the power to uncreate it.

When speaking about “comfort zones”, a couple of questions come to mind. Firstly, why do our minds create such an area where, although comfortable, we feel stuck in? Secondly, if we are so comfortable in that comfort zone, what good is there to get out of it? 

To answer the first question, it is always good to remember that our mind’s first and foremost job is to protect us from threats or danger and keep us alive.

That’s why it rejects what’s unfamiliar or uncomfortable because it feels “unsafe”. It will always take us back to what’s familiar for our protection; this is how the “comfort zone” is created.

Why is it a good idea 

to get out?

What this zone is doing is keeping us static, away from innovation, challenge and motivation. Development is the natural approach to life. Staying in the comfort zone for a long time goes against that natural cycle and, therefore, has many adverse effects on our physical and mental health. One of the best ways to self development is to go out there and try new things, fail and succeed, all to learn and grow into better human beings. A growth mindset is the only way to achieve your goal in life.

To reach that area where learning and growth happen, we need to step into the fear zone and cross it to the other side, where most people lose their drive to get out. But remember, not taking risks is the biggest risk of them all.

Expanding your 

comfort zone

I encourage you to practise positive self-talk. The subconscious mind often tends to be negative for the purpose of protection. Despite the good intention of the mind, negative thinking causes anxiety and stress. It limits development, success and reaching our goals. So, changing our thoughts and self-talk from negative to positive motivates us to step outside our comfort zone.

How to change negative thoughts

Foremost, we need to pay attention to what we say to ourselves to change negative thoughts. Let’s catch those negative thoughts and ask ourselves:

How does it feel?

Is there real proof of what I’m saying?

Do I talk to my child or my friend like that?

Is this type of thinking leading me to the desired result?

What alternative thinking will change my feeling better about myself and thus lead me to a constructive result?

New words

One of the easiest techniques to change negative self-talk is to change the words you use. For example, change “I’m worried” to “I’m excited”. Notice that they both have the same physical impact on the body: Accelerated heartbeat, lack of concentration, muscle tightening and stomach butterflies, but one gives us energy, motivation, enthusiasm and the other keeps us where we are and holds us back.

New habits

An additional way to help us get out of our comfort zone is by starting to implement new, more beneficial habits that will help us move forward and override old bad habits. By doing this, you make the unfamiliar familiar. Start by introducing those new habits gradually into your life.

Finally, reward yourself every time you take a new positive step towards your development. The mind works by associations and linking pleasure to a difficult task enhances the building of a new positive habit. The mind also learns by repetition. Therefore, the more the habit is repeated, the easier it becomes part of your lifestyle.

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

PARIS — A controversy in the scientific community over recent claims anti-depressants can be ineffective at treating depression has highlighted the difficulties in understanding mental health conditions.

One of the prevailing theories currently focuses on serotonin. Depression has been linked to a lack of the molecule, which is involved in transmitting emotions to the brain. 

Claims that depression has no link to a chemical imbalance in the brain related to serotonin, casting doubt on the need for anti-depressants, have sparked fierce reaction.

A study by psychiatrists Joanna Moncrieff and Mark Horowitz in the journal Molecular Psychiatry in July concluded that there was no proven link between a lack of serotonin and depression.

The authors said it queried the underlying assumption behind the use of anti-depressants, which are mostly developed to alter serotonin levels, undoing a theory that for decades acted as a framework for research.

The study is based on several previous publications, but it quickly attracted criticism — particularly its presentation by Moncrieff, known for her scepticism towards biological explanations of depression and her radical stance against the pharmaceutical industry.

“I’m broadly in agreement with the authors’ conclusions about our current efforts, though I lack their adamantine certainty,” psychiatrist Phil Cowen said on the Science Media Centre website.

“No mental health professional” would endorse the view that a complex condition like depression “stems from a deficiency in a single neurotransmitter”, Cowen added.

‘Mainstream’ psychiatry

Some peers have questioned the methodology, which measured an indirect trace of serotonin rather than taking direct measurements of the molecule.

Moncrieff, who wants to break with what she calls “mainstream” psychiatry, believes the serotonin theory still occupies an important, albeit less prominent, place in the profession.

“Even if leading psychiatrists were beginning to doubt the evidence for depression being related to low serotonin, no one told the public,” the British psychiatrist wrote on her blog.

The connection between depression and serotonin is firmly rooted in the popular imagination. French author Michel Houellebecq gave the title “Serotonin” to his 2019 novel in which the main character is depressed.

Moncrieff’s undermining of the serotonin theory to argue against current anti-depressants, going beyond the conclusions of her own study, has sparked the most vehement criticism.

Swiss psychiatrist Michel Hofmann told AFP her study was “serious” and contributed to expert debates about depression.

“But I don’t think it is an article that should have any impact in the short term on the prescription of anti-depressants,” he said.

Moncrieff has warned that anti-depressant treatment should not be suddenly interrupted. But for her, the benefits of a course of anti-depressants are doubtful if it is based on a discredited theory.

But many stress that the effectiveness of the treatments has been scientifically assessed, irrespective of the primary cause of depression.

The medicines used to treat depression “are usually many and ultimately, in most cases, we don’t know what exactly makes a treatment effective”, Hofmann added.

Debates on the role of serotonin only illustrate how difficult it is to understand the biological and social workings of an illness as complex as depression.

The challenges are forcing researchers to move away from models that are incomplete by their very nature.

“We are still at theories and we continue to search and test models against each other,” Hofmann said.