Ida Trisolini is the Staff Clerk and middle school teacher at Carolina Friends School, and has been an educator for 30 years. She has served in multiple roles at Carolina Friends School, including Interim Head of Middle School and Interim Assistant Head for Teaching and Learning. Ida is a graduate of the Institute for Engaging Leadership, a two-year Quaker Education program. She attended a Quaker high school and college, graduating from Swarthmore with a BA in psychology. She also has a background in Wilderness Education and Curriculum Development. Ida is also a published poet and an artist who loves to explore relationships, nature, and how the two intersect; she also serves on the board for Peaceful Schools NC, a restorative practices program of Carolina Friends School.
Carolina Friends School students at a morning “settling in.”
By Ida Trisolini
In a world providing endless activity and distraction, a little bit of silence is a welcome relief. But is it actually good for you? Recent scientific studies suggest that it is.
One such study, conducted by Duke biologist Imke Kirste in 2013, looked at the effect of noise on adult mice. Kirste exposed the mice to three types of noise: music, white noise, and infant mouse calls. The control group experienced silence. In the first three groups, sounds produced some positive effects in the brain but the control group experiencing silence actually developed new brain cells in the hippocampus, a part of the brain that encodes memory. Kirste hypothesized that the unnatural experience of silence prompted the mouse brains to actually increase in activity.
Physician Luciano Bernardi showed how silence can be beneficial to health in his 2006 study of the effect of music on the brain. Bernardi exposed test subjects to six types of music and measured various health markers such as blood pressure and brain circulation. He discovered that randomly inserted stretches of silence had a larger effect than the music itself. Silent pauses between stretches of music proved to be far more relaxing to the brain than either “relaxing” music or a longer silence played before the experiment started. The effect of silence in this case seemed to be heightened by sharp contrast, allowing the subjects to pay careful attention and then release attention.
Quakers believe that when we are silent, allowing all of the outer world’s distractions to fall away, we can truly hear the wisdom that we each possess. At Carolina Friends School, we practice silence at Settling In and Settling Out, during Meeting for Worship, and often at the beginning of a class or meeting to help us get centered and prepare to listen to that wise inner self.
Silence supports the health of our community. It can lead to a healthy mindfulness, allowing us to calmly acknowledge and accept our feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations. We see the positive benefits in our classrooms every day.
Building Silence Into Our Lives
At Carolina Friends School, we are committed to the work of building a community of trust, care, acceptance, and celebration of all kinds of difference. In order to fully open ourselves to celebrating others, we must first celebrate and know ourselves. Practicing silence allows that opportunity. Through marked times of silence purposefully built into our daily and weekly schedules, we spend time with ourselves while we sit with others. It allows us time to focus on the joy and love that surround us and appreciate the ways in which we are all connected. In our always-on, wired world, experiencing silence may seem impossible. But carving out some time for silence could be therapeutic and even make us smarter. Now that is something to be quiet about.
A little appreciated hidden health risk, observes Dr. Charles Ferzli of the TMJ & Sleep Therapy Centre in Cary, is poor sleep. “Indeed,” he says, “quality sleep is a critically important foundation for health, and poor sleep contributes directly to many serious diseases—including diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, depression, and more. It is during our nightly sleep cycle that our body regenerates and heals. And when that cycle is disrupted, it affects inflammatory processes in the body, contributing to disease and impairing our ability to heal.
“Plastic surgery is not a one-step solution to obesity. While body contouring procedures can provide transformative results, they have major limitations on how much fat they can safely remove. Further, not only does excess weight have serious health consequences, but obese patients are at greater risk of complications during and after surgery.”
“Any conversation about the risk of so-called ‘silent diseases,’ will inevitably lead to a discussion of hormones and hormone imbalance,” observes Dr. Jennifer Burch of Central Compounding Pharmacy in Durham. “Osteoporosis, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease—all these conditions are influenced in significant ways by our hormones, and particularly by hormone imbalances.
“One lesson I’ve learned in my 29 years in this business,” says Bill Dolch, “is that most people are unaware of the toxins they’re exposed to in their own homes.” Mr. Dolch is the owner of Certified Indoor Air, Inc., of the Triangle, a company providing comprehensive mold testing and air quality inspections in the Greater Triangle area.
In today’s world, many diseases remain silent until they reach advanced stages. Conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, sleep apnea, obesity, and chronic stress quietly undermine our health without immediate symptoms. These hidden threats, compounded by drug side effects and environmental toxins, pose significant challenges for diagnosis and treatment.
When parents and caregivers think about hidden threats to their children, social media and messaging is a huge source of anxiety for many. At a time when many adults are themselves feeling more isolated and reports of childhood anxiety are rising, it is right to feel cautious. At the end of July, the Senate passed a bipartisan bill proposing new safety and privacy regulations for minors on social media and on-line communication platforms. This work was fueled in large part by testimonies from families whose children succumbed to bullying, harassment, and other negative impacts of on-line networks. While this legislation…
Among the more challenging aspects of my work,” notes Dr. Gregg, “are the risks involved when a patient has an underlying disease, such as diabetes.
“Diabetes patients,” she explains, “have significantly higher risks from surgery because of their high blood sugar levels, especially when the disease is not well controlled. There is an increased risk of infection, slower wound healing, and potential kidney and heart problems. So it is critically important that we evaluate each patient’s case carefully, make sure they are aware of these increased risks, and—most importantly—that we get clearance from the physician helping them manage their diabetes….
Founded in 1935, after a meeting between two strangers in Akron, Ohio, Alcoholics Anonymous has helped save and impact countless lives since its inception. Through its unique approach in utilizing a “spiritual solution to a medical problem,” the organization’s famous 12-Step Program has spawned other peer-to-peer “Anonymous” groups with the same basic principle that only those similarly afflicted can truly comprehend a mutual malady. This type of support transcends religious, racial, socioeconomic, and cultural differences, as reflected in A.A.’s two million active members across 120,000 groups in 180 countries. At its core, A.A. is a process by which people get…
I believe most of us are walking around carrying some kind of pain. We may experience the loss of a beloved partner, whether through a breakup or death. Many of us grieve parents, grandparents, children, friends, or other loved ones. Some of us have lost jobs or a place to live. Many of us have experienced diminishments to our health or way of life. We may have lost our innocence through betrayal or emotional, physical, or sexual abuse in a relationship that should have been safe. We all have our share of pain. Even if we have support at the…
“Not only is the skin our largest organ but, for the careful observer, it often reveals vital information about an array of diseases that, in early stages, are free of symptoms,” observes Dr. Gregory Wilmoth of Southern Dermatology and Skin Cancer Center in Raleigh.
We tend to think that menopause is all about hormones, right? Therefore, taking hormones should provide relief for hot flashes, vaginal dryness, weight gain, moodiness, hair loss, and more. As a physician who has been prescribing bio-identical hormone therapy (BHRT) for women for nearly two decades, I can say that prescription hormones alone often provide only partial answers.
“Typically, depression weakens the ability of the patient to manage and moderate the pain they’re experiencing, so they often slip into a loop: increasing pain induces more severe depression which intensifies the pain.”
