A team of researchers has recreated the characteristics that could have the first flower that existed on our planet, 140 million years ago.

The Blockchain is usually a word loved by many, but misunderstood by others. No problem, understanding it is not impossible mission. Basically it consists of a huge chain of blocks that is responsible for validating information and thus provide security to people .

For example, if a person wishes to transfer money to another person, he could use the blockchain. What this technology does is take the information that represents that money and replicate it in many parts, that way, if someone wants to alter its value, it will not be able to do it since, although, it may have modified the data of one block, the others , which continue with the original value, will be the witnesses who will determine that this information is wrong .

This translates into an enormous potential that impacts on the trust of the people . For example, banks are traditionally responsible for helping people carry out their transactions, their job is to assure their clients that the amount of money delivered by one person will be the same as that of another person. The Blockchain can do the same, cheaper and without intermediaries. Pure technology

With the promise of eliminating intermediaries in the market, Blockchain could also threaten other businesses that operate with digital platforms, such as Uber.

As explained by Mauricio Tovar, Co-director of the research group InTIColombia of the National University , within the framework of the Blockchain Summit Latam , while Uber charges, by its intermediation, 25% for the trips made in its application, a group of designers and developers could create a similar service that uses Blockchain charging only 5%.

The difference for the collection of the commission would make the user, by economy, prefer a service and discard the other, something that would mean the disappearance of Uber in the market .

In addition to the above, the Blockchain could also be used to verify the identities of drivers, vehicles and passengers, thus providing security in the community that uses this type of collaborative economy.

They began their journey integrating in mobile phones, tablets and laptops, but little by little the fingerprint sensors, as they lower costs, begin to appear in all kinds of devices . Lextar has released Lexar JumpDrive Fingerprint F35 USB memory, a USB flash drive with integrated fingerprint reader.

The fingerprint sensor protects the content of the pendrive , and you can only access the data it contains, if it detects the fingerprint of its owner correctly.

It is an interesting security measure because if your USB drive is stolen or you lose it, nobody will be able to see what it contains.

The new device is a standard USB, it is not a micro USB, or USB Type C and can store up to 10 different fingerprints, so it is possible to unlock it with any finger. Or maybe you're interested in being able to use it by several people. In this case it is usually assigned the index finger, heart or thumb, which are the most accessible when using a fingerprint reader.

China will send a lighting satellite, also known as an artificial moon, into space in the year 2020, the official newspaper The People's Daily reported Tuesday, citing sources from the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC). ).

The design of this device, which will illuminate an area with a diameter of 10 to 80 kilometers in the city of Chengdu (southwest), began years ago, although it is now that it has taken shape thanks to the advancement of technology.

The satellite was designed to complement the light of the moon at night and will have an illumination eight times superior to the original, enough to replace the lights of the street.

Apple has announced the launch of a new magnetic charger for Apple Watch that attracts attention because it comes with USB-C connector (via TheVerge).

This new charger is designed to charge the Apple wearable through the recent MacBook or any other laptop that has the port that is becoming the standard.

It is mentioned that the accessory is only available in option of 30 centimeters in length (unlike the charger with USB Type-A that is also sold in variants of 1 or 2 meters) and has a price of USD $ 29.

October is a month of anxieties. The winter months often trigger seasonal affective disorders. It is something that is studied and there are multiple factors involved in it. Hence the importance of shielding ourselves from possible downgrades. For this, nothing better than learning to forget the past.

To say that this month has some bad memories is to fall short. However, it is necessary to remember the good things that emerged from the bad. We grow and learn from our past, even when we need to repeat our past lessons until we learn what life teaches us

Many people would like to skip this month. What we usually have in our heads are not sad memories in which you wallow, but the kind of memories that suddenly appear when an aroma or a sound activates you and floods you with emotions. Then you relive what happened again and again. You feel visually and emotionally exhausted as if you were on a swing, back and forth, about to fall and be saved at the last moment.



Normally, with the passing of life, we begin to forget the details of bad memories. It is as if they begin to blur. However, they often leave deep scars. So when we believe that this memory is already part of the unconscious past ... it appears and usually scares (and much).

The past is not our fault

You have to have one thing clear. We can not feel guilty for our memories. Nobody knows anything before learning it. Normally the things that happened to us were not our fault, although we think otherwise. In order for you to realize this, it usually takes an outsider to show it to you. Maybe a psychologist could help you overcome it if it is the guilt that torments you. If not, you can work with your memory properly.

The most important thing to be able to forget the bad of our past is, paradoxical as it may seem, to bring it to light. When we are aware of a memory, we let it flood us and we immerse ourselves in it. We see that what happened is part of the past and that it can not do anything to us. Then we "process" that memory. The important thing is to realize that if we can not do it alone, there is a current within psychology, a specialist in this type of process. It's called EMDR therapy .

Without going into details, meditation can also help us to undo those knots that keep us tied to those memories. For this it is very positive to look for what in psychology is called "the safe place". This would be a pleasant memory (real or invented) where we feel completely safe. A memory that brings it to mind consciously awakens in us feelings of love, affection, security, etc.
How to forget the past?

Maybe that's why you miss day, week or month to get it. But you have to achieve it. Since the safe place will always be there for us and we can go to him in moments of tension or anxiety. It also works for depressive states.

An example of a safe place would be:

"I remember when I was a child and I was lying on my grandfather's lap. The house used to have a smell of cakes my grandmother made in the oven. My parents and my brothers were also there, happy, around the table. But I was happier with my grandfather, on his couch. I still remember the smell of his colony "

It is important the theme of the smells, tastes, sensations in general that help us to transport us to that place. They are a faster way than normal thoughts to get to that safe place.

Once we have consolidated our safe place, I repeat: after days, weeks or months working on it, we will be able to work to forget (process) the negative memories.

We will start by going to the memory that hurts us. We will go to him for a few moments while we try to process the memory. We will stop there until we notice that our inner state changes. If we feel agitated we will return immediately to the safe place. It is not necessary to continue immediately. We can let a few days pass. According to EMDR , while we sleep our mind will continue to work on that memory and it is likely that we can dream about it.

When we are ready again, we will work on the memories again. We will go to the negative memory, we will relive it and we will evaluate if the agitation in our body continues having the same intensity as before. We will use the safe place as many times as necessary, and we will also make all the breaks we need. Little by little we will be able to verify that the agitation when remembering the memory is diminishing.

Leave behind the past

Finally, after several days of work with the memory. We will be able to remember it without any agitation. Without negative connotations. We may be able to affirm that we have overcome the negative part of the memory and we can remember it consciously without any problem. Even positive memories associated with him will appear. Because, among other things, we can say that thanks to our efforts we have overcome this problem. That we have managed to improve as human beings. And that we are able to overcome all the obstacles imposed on us by life. Transmuting them into lessons and learning. As one should define the concept of "alchemy" in which formerly it was thought that all metals could be converted into gold. In our case, alchemy meansturn the adversities of life into real opportunities to improve as people.

A study shows how memories can be intentionally forgotten.

Memories are not small, autonomous incidents that are flying through the mind waiting for you to come back to them. They are much more. When you decide to remember something from your past you are taking up a huge fusion between sensory and narrative details at the same time .

If an experience of a family beach day arrives in your brain , it will come, surely, accompanied by the smell of the ocean, sunscreen, a conversation between your parents, their gestures, your desire to stay always playing on the shore. .

Years later, while you are on the beach with your friends, one or two details of that childhood memory will suffice for your brain to relate them to that afternoon of the past. The most significant and important is that the context gives rise to the memories . Rather, memory is inseparable from its context .

Ed Cooke, author of Remember, Remember: Learn the Stuff You Thought You Never Could , explains that "for most students, for example, it is a chore to cram the mind of knowledge on the eve of an exam because once done our Brain is emptied of all this learning that we no longer need . After a few days, we will hardly remember what we had that exam and not even talk about the details. "

"What happens is that it seems that we have forgotten on purposeand to our surprise, it may be that it is involuntarily like this" Cooke continues. A new study by Jeremy Manning and Kenneth Norman, this question is filled with light: under the right conditions it is possible to deliberately forget things.

The experiment of Manning and Norman shows that "the way to forget a memory is to discard the mental context in which those memories were apprehended for the first time ".

The study had a specific number of people who were instructed to remember and forget some new words that they did not knowwhile teaching them some images. The researchers, while this was happening, observed the functioning of the brain.

"When the brain wants to remember the context that was present during the learning is kept active (the details of the environment: the smell, the temperature, the colors), whereas when the brain wants to forget it tries to discard that context, disguise it, leave it alone in a structure empty of content ".

Manning and Norman explain that the process is complicated, since that context has been, in turn, the key to remember and, in fact, when one visits this context " memory travels directly to what is related to it ".



Manning explains that the study opens the doors to a very important implication and that "all memory studies emphasize how we remember instead of how we forget, since forgetfulness is identified with failure .

But, without a doubt, forgetting can be beneficial . Our study has identified that the context supports us in the process of remembering, which is also the protagonist at the time of trying to forget. "

If you can not empty the context to forget a memory, move to that environment and generate a new one  - ED COOKE Co-founder of Memrise

Also, both researchers want to make clear the complexity of the study because "you can not train a computer to recognize the aspect that has the context in our brain because for each person is different and is also in constant movement and evolution ." That is the reason why images were used in the word experiment.

Until now, explains Ed Cooke, " this technique is the most powerful of all . If you can not empty the context to forget a memory, move to that environment and generate a new one. "

Yes, most of the times we heard about technology in 2017 was in relation to the ways in which social networks are reprogramming our society and how they are affecting the policy. Instead of facilitating communication, economic opportunities and leisure seem to be getting the opposite. Luckily, there were good things.

Although we should not look away from the challenges that the information age is putting on the table, it is reasonable and understandable to also direct attention to other technologies that make you say "that's great". It is easy to expect to see something so amazing or so ambitious that in a decade it seems incredible.
For me, there are many things that I have seen this year that fall into that description. Some, like the sudden interest with blockchain, make me feel more dread than hope. But others either made me smile, encouraged my imagination or were promising.

Computational photography



When I say computational photography, I do it to refer to the broad spectrum of software technologies that engineers are working on to improve the quality of digital cameras. The latest generation sensors and the best lenses on the market will continue to be essential in this regard, but software solutions are allowing new techniques and constantly improving the most economical cameras.

Smartphones are getting thinner and thinner, but the images they can capture only improve. Software is one of the main reasons for this. Apple and Samsung are using software (and dual lenses) to create excellent depth-of-field effects on their phones and even great directors like Steven Soderbergh and Michel Gondry have decided to start using iPhones to record this year. While. The Google Pixel 2 camera won a recommendation from us this year for its excellent HDR processing, as well as integrating a handful of features with artificial intelligence that make it even more useful. The Essential Phone Andy Rubin was widely criticized for its mediocre camera, butSoftware updates have helped improve it in recent months.

The newcomer Rylo tried to wrest the throne from GoPro, the first device that combines an action camera and a 360 in a pocket gadget with significant software improvements and an affordable price. It has the best image stabilization I've tried. Its editing software allows you to record everything around you to leave the choice of shots for later.

Do not get too excited: the software still has a long way to go before bringing a mobile phone image closer to the look of high-end cameras.


Autonomous vehicles
The discourse with autonomous cars has been going around for so long that by now it is almost worldly. Nobody seemed to care that Waymo officially left the drivers of their autonomous cars last November. And that is huge. Waymo will soon launch its first fully autonomous taxi in the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona. As is.


The promise of autonomous cars means more efficient trips to work, more free time, less traffic accidents, great advances in artificial intelligence and all kinds of drastic innovations.

As far as features ready for the general public are concerned, Tesla insists its autopilot with limited auto-driving functions will be ready to drive itself from California to New York very soon. That implies that many Tesla users will soon have an autonomous vehicle just because the company decides to launch a software update.

Do not get too excited: this will mean a brutal economic change. Many people will lose their jobs. It is a very important factor to take into account. Also, with all that extra time on the way to work, many bosses will ask for extra work.

Nintendo


Nintendo is in a good moment. We started 2017 with the sad death of the Wii U, an excellent console that never finished booting and much of the conversation revolved around the lack of ability of Nintendo to create a good game for mobile. It is difficult to express how feasible it seemed at the time that Nintendo was going to follow the old days of other companies like SEGA. And then the Switch arrived.

The Switch does what Nintendo knows best: it is not too expensive, it offers a very striking feature and is accompanied by great games. This functionality, effortlessly switching between console and TV, is really useful and caused many people to want one. The most important thing, however, is that the developers also liked it. Ports of old games like Skyrim and Doom feel like kids precisely because now you can play them on the fly and they are almost as good as their counterparts in consoles and PCs. Indie developers are flooding the store with titles like Stardew Valley and SteamWorld Dig 2 . The games made by Nintendo, like Super Mario Odyssey and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the WildThey have been reviewed by many as the best of the year.

It has not been on the market for a year and the Wii U has already sold almost as many units as the Wii U. The SNES Classic broke records in sales for two months. And the new 2DS XL will maintain the immense catalog of games during the coming months.

Although there is nothing wrong with the PS4 and the Xbox One, their new iterations are partially identical. This year we have seen how they have put improvements in 4K that are powerful but not very exciting. Nintendo is different and we need it to continue to offer good competition.

Augmented reality / Mixed reality



The virtual reality has not finished starting in 2017 in the way that some expected. She is far from dead, and Oculus expects more and more people to start using it with her wireless kit that will cost $ 200. But, with everything, its isolation, the lack of eye tracking and the tendency to make certain users dizzy, the list of problems is extensive. The mixed reality is much more interesting in that it incorporates virtual objects and experiences in the virtual world, solving a large part of the problems of virtual reality and offering different possibilities. 2017 brought us interesting news in that field.

The most modest development comes from the hand of Apple, who introduced augmented reality in their new iPhones and with an AR kit for developers. The functions of the iPhone with augmented reality are not going to go much beyond what we see in Pokémon Go, at least for the moment. But Apple is adding functions little by little that probably improve this section a lot. For now, the most we can hope for are some rudimentary decoration applications and small but useful tools like the AR measuring tape . But remember, the first million iPhone apps were just fart simulators. There are also some who saythat Apple plans to present AR glasses in 2019.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has continued working under the shadow in its HoloLens helmet of mixed reality. The developers have been testing the first prototypes for a long time and from time to time we have great demos that were inspired by Super Mario , the Lemmings and Portal . Microsoft also took some small steps with a line of inexpensive VR glasses , but quite impressive in collaboration with other companies that simulate how mixed reality could work.

And finally, Magic Leap showed their mixed reality glasses that have been so delayed and promised to reach the developers in 2018. They are not as bulky as we feared and, it seems, virtual objects seem to give a sense of permanence and presence. view.

The mixed reality wants you to make holes in the walls of your living room with a laser gun, have a pet dog that constantly walks around your house, build virtual sculptures on the coffee table, fill your surroundings with all the monitors that You can ask, and walk down the street in the real world with avatars of people sitting in their living rooms.

Do not get too excited: mixed reality has a long way to go, so do not expect to walk down the street with the iron giant in the near future. And let's face it, the world promised by Ready Player One sounds pretty awful, so the longer we have to think about this topic, the better.

Adobe



Adobe is the most exciting technology company that few people find exciting. Quick, try to appoint the CEO of Adobe. You can not do it, but Adobe has changed our world radically. Without Photoshop, Twitter would not be half as interesting, and Premiere pioneered consumer-level editing software that allows YouTube's idiotic stars to make two videos per day. Adobe products have also been used for good things that I do not remember now.

In 2017, Adobe introduced a lot of great news for its existing products and showed some new products. He introduced a new version of Lightroom that has been well received, and finally killed Flash , forever. Premiere has some new " immersive video " features that will help you when working with 360º videos.

But Adobe's commitment to developing applications for artificial intelligence includes the true potential for the future. Small changes like enhancingLightroom's automatic configuration with artificial intelligence turned a not very useful feature into something quite useful. Photoshop will also have an " object selection " tool that promises to render obsolete the use of masks and loops when you crop the main subject of a photo. And the tool that thrills me most is the new "Cloak" project , which will allow you to eliminate elements and subjects from a video.

And, of course, we are still waiting for the "VoCo" tool that was shown at the end of last year. It's like Photoshop for sound and is able to make someone's voice say something. Yes, it's scary, but it's also great.

Do not get too excited: false news will be increasingly difficult to identify.

Motion capture


Yes, the movement capture has been around for years, but it's becoming really good on multiple fronts. Hollywood has continued to advance in mocap technology to capture subtle performances. The end of this year's trilogy Planet of the Apes was probably one of the best examples, and it was fascinating to see the film's motion choreographer, Terry Notary , performing his primate routines without computer-generated images in the movie The Square . Without underestimating the work of animators of the apes, see the strange representation of an ape of a human being of flesh and blood as Notary really gave me a better impression of the subtleties that the technology of motion capture is picking up these days.

But the jumps that have impressed me most this year in mocap are in videogames. Creating CGI scenes of video games is usually an arduous task. The movements of the story, the acting and the style of the characters usually bore me. This year, you can see that everything begins to work in games like Uncharted 4 , Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus and, above all others, the performance of Melina Juergens in Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice . I have not even finished Hellblade because it scares me too much. The designers and writers of the game deserve a lot of credit, but it is Juergens who really makes it shine. Ninja Team used a unique preview systemthat allowed him to see his complete character model and direct his performance in real time. It is a wonder.

Things are only going to improve. Say what you want about James Cameron's Avatar , but he was a pioneer in a lot of effects techniques that have spread throughout the industry. According to reports, the three (!) Sequels use a new mocap system that can capture actors underwater. By the time Cameron is finished we will see movement capture with steroids.

Do not get too excited : imagine something like "Princess Leia: a Star Wars story" starring Carrie Fischer.

Smartwatches as medical devices


The Apple Watch could be the most boring Apple has done, but the great smart watch plan, in general, is not boring at all. These glorified messaging machines could save our lives someday.

2017 was the year in which the Apple Watch began to be really good , and also the year in which the FDA approved the first accessory for medical devices. The Kardiabandit is a supplement that can detect an abnormal heart rate. What's more, a UCSF study found that Apple's built-in heart monitor could detect an abnormal heart rate with 97% accuracy when using an artificial intelligence-based algorithm called DeepHeart along with the device. The same team behind that study later discovered that the Apple Watch-DeepHeart combo could detect sleep apnea with 90% accuracy and hypertension with 82% accuracy. Both disorders are quite difficult to detect with current methods.

It is still early to say that smart watches will become a magical medical assistant that will provide a magical solution for preventive medicine, but we are getting to that point.

Do not get too excited : privacy problems abound , and we'll have to solve them before this technology matures, not later.

Alloys Aliens


Aliens! The news cycles last around 12 hours nowadays, so we have all left behind the news that the Pentagon has a secret program to study possible UFOs. The author of the article, later, spoke with MSNBCand expanded a passage from his article that mentioned "modified buildings in Las Vegas for the storage of metal alloys and other materials that program contractors said had been recovered from unidentified aerial phenomena. The researchers also studied people who said they experienced physical effects after encounters with these objects and examined them for physiological changes. " The author states that the government has not been able to discover the origin of these alloys. That does not mean they come from aliens, but they are a new technology.

It also turns out that Blink 182 guitarist Tom Delonge founded an organization that is working to disseminate more classified information: his partner in the organization is the guy who ran the Pentagon's UFO program. Recently, Delonge told the New York Daily News that extraterrestrial alloys are just the tip of the iceberg. He says a government scientist has been working on what he calls "designing the space-time metric." "It's like a time machine," he said. "You get on this ship and turn it on, boom! You are in China in a minute like a ball of light. "

There's probably some kind of rational explanation in all this, but let me have hope damn it.

Do not get too excited : there is no guarantee that the aliens will come in peace, but for my part, I welcome our alien lords.

That today a high percentage of the population consumes pornography both sporadically and regularly is no secret. Many of the people who consume porn are to practice masturbation , and need that kind of "inspiration" when it comes to carrying it out. What many of these people will not know is that pornography is harmful both to themselves and to society in general.

Let's not get confused; that pornography is harmful does not imply that masturbation is so. Also, regarding this whole issue there are a lot of theories that talk about another possible type of porn; because the fundamental problem of pornography is how it is treated right now. A sexist pornography is elaborated and consumed, which reifies and directly attacks women for the sole fact of being, which fetishes racialized people and transgender people . There are theories, then, that point out that the problem is the pornography that is done right now, and that another type of pornography is possible.



But it is still undeniable that porn, to this day, can have many negative effects on your life. And there are seven that are fundamental, which are what we are going to tell you today. Is your decision text link , then, consume it or not.

1. ERRONEOUS CONCEPTION OF SEX
Adolescents, on many occasions, learn what sex is through porn. Porn and masturbation are something like the introductory step of today's youth, and this is very toxic! Especially for women, but also for men. And is that sex is not as shown in pornography , far from it. Sex is something much more natural, it is something that is not so prepared , that is not so "spectacular"; that is, pornography does not stop being fiction. Associating it with real life is a mistake that many can fall into.

2. PORN IS MACHO
One of the biggest complaints that is put to porn, and rightly so, is that it is extremely macho . The figure of the woman always appears excessively sexualized, reified, mistreated and vexed; It's amazing how much porn "simulates" violations. The culture of rape comes, basically, from this pornography.

There is a minority of porn that could be considered feminist , but this is not nearly as affordable as the free porn on the internet.

3. PORN CAN CAUSE IMPOTENCE
Although this sounds contradictory, much less is it, and more and more evidence of them. There are cases of men (like Gabriel Deem ) who, after consuming porn daily, ended up suffering from impotence ; This is because their dopamine levels rise a lot with this type of images, and the brain begins to demand this type of stimulation . No other stimulation is worth it: it only works for him.

And, going back to point one, porn and sex in real life have nothing to do with it.

4. SEEING TOO MUCH PORNOGRAPHY CAN DAMAGE THE BRAIN
The typical myth of "masturbarte will make you blind" is totally false; but that the brain can be reduced after consuming porno in excess is something that has been shown inscientific studies .

According to a study carried out at the Center for Psychology of the Life Cycle in Berlin , porn caused areas of the brain related to the learning of men who were subjected to the test to be considerably reduced. All this is because there was too intense stimulation on the part of the brain, as we explained in the previous point.

5. MASTURBATION CAN END UP BEING TEDIOUS
Masturbation is, in itself, a very beneficial practice for all human beings. Not only do they guarantee that they know each other more, but it also makes them, at the health level, much better .

But masturbation with pornography can end up being something tedious , something repetitive, something that does not allow the imagination. If we give our brain so much, it will ask for more and more.

6. IT CAN BECOME AN ADDICTION
Although it seems unlikely, the truth is that porn can end up being as addictive as any other type of drug . This has been demonstrated by an investigation of the University of Cambridge, which ended up declaring that the brain of people who consumed porn on a daily basis reacted to his lack as a drug addict who does not have his dose. Because, as has been pointed out, pornography causes our brain to generate dopamine in large quantities, and to get used to it.

7. PORN MAKES US STOP ENJOYING THE SAME WAY
By getting used to having sex (or masturbation) so close, so close, sexual practices end up being much less satisfying . All this goes to the background, and even the effort involved in having sex with a person ends up looking unnecessary; There are many people who prefer masturbation to sleep with someone because of the simplicity that comes first.

Having said that, the truth is that everyone is free to decide what they prefer to do with their lives , and whether or not they want to consume pornography. But, to be able to decide in the best way, we must inform ourselves and know what exactly our decision entails ; otherwise, we will be deciding practically blindly. It is necessary to know that porn is a toxic industry, which subjects women and where sexual attacks are the daily bread; it is necessary, in turn, to know all the cases of violations and abuses that exist. Because only in this way will it be possible to decide exactly if it is consumed or not.
Porn can make you not enjoy sex in the same way
Ideally, these abuses should not happen, there should be a porn free of them. But, to this day, this is nothing more than a utopia without any practical application . A minority of porn is free and, this minority, ends up being much more expensive than the majority (and free) pornography that everyone consumes at some time in their life.

WHAT IS PORNOGRAPHY?
Pornography is understood as a set of materials, images or reproductions of the performance of sexual acts in order to provoke the sexual arousal of the recipient.

WHAT IS NOT PORNOGRAPHY?
It is important to distinguish that an advertisement for women or men in swimsuits or underwear, a parade of models or a provocative TV presenter is not pornography.



WHAT LEADS US TO CONSUME IT COMPULSIVELY?
Pornography has been expanding in recent years to become ubiquitous. The Internet has made pornography more anonymous, accessible and affordable than ever, attracting new users, increasing use among existing consumers and driving many people towards sexual compulsivity.

Young people pose in a pornographic attitude on social networks, creating even porn-style videos starring themselves, in which they are shown directly to an incalculable number of strangers.

There are many causes that can lead us to consume pornography. Having been sexually abused, physically or psychologically abused, feeling abandoned by parents or caregivers, feeling negative emotions such as sadness, loneliness, emptiness, anguish or boredom and lacking adequate skills for handling, low tolerance for frustration, or simply having a predisposition toward anxiety, obsessiveness or impulsiveness makes compulsive consumption of pornography more likely.

PORNOGRAPHY: A POSSIBLE ADDICTION
The consumption of pornography produces the release of dopamine, better known in society as "the pleasure hormone", the same substance that your brain produces when you consume alcohol or drugs.

Thus, if high amounts of pornography are consumed, the brain becomes accustomed to this substance needing more pornography to become aroused each time it is consumed. Thus, the images that you saw before no longer satisfy you. You always need more. And you enter a vicious circle that normally is not easy to leave.

POINTS TO KNOW IF I AM ADDICTED TO PORNOGRAPHY
The addiction to pornography belongs to what is known as addictions without substance, and that in the latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-V can be labeled as a 'Control Disorder' of impulses not specified ', which basically consists of the inability of the person to control their need to develop an impulse, in this case, to consume pornography.

The most frequently described symptoms in this disorder are described below (it is not necessary to meet all of the criteria described below to have a problematic use):

1. Having difficulty being a whole day without consuming pornography.
2. On occasion be surprised by your partner, parents, friends or acquaintances visiting these types of pages, causing an uncomfortable situation.
3. Prefer to leave other social, leisure or recreational tasks for spending time consulting pornography.
4. See yourself often involved in the search for increasingly exotic content because traditional sex is monotonous and boring.
5. Consult pornographic content in places where you might have problems, such as at work, at home or on a public computer.
6. The sexual appetite with your partner has descended lately or if you do not have a partner, you do not intend to seek it; instead, sexual activity with pornography continues to be increasingly active.
7. Having trouble masturbating without resorting to pornography.
8. Propose on occasion to stop consulting these contents and relapse once again.
9. Sometimes recognize that you have a problem with pornography and feel bad about it but can not stop using it.
10. Having to erase the browsing history of your computer or mobile every time someone is going to use it for fear that they will see pornography consumption.
11. Present problems to concentrate on daily activities. If you see that your personal, social or economic life has been affected by the use of pornography, you may consider that consumption is problematic and therefore, you need help.

WHAT TO DO TO BRING A MORE HEALTHY LIFE AWAY FROM PORNOGRAPHY?
1. Limit your exposure to the internet when its use is not necessary.
2. Activate an anti-porn filter on the devices you use regularly (computer, mobile, television) and destroy all the pornographic material that you have stored.
3. Place your computer in an open and visible place of your home and / or work so that the temptation is less.
4. Pay special attention to situations, objects, places or people that trigger the desire to consume porn: see what activates the desire.
5. Detect what has led you to consume pornography asking you these questions: why consume pornography? Why waste so much time? What happened before consuming it? What was he thinking? That I felt? Does it happen to me when something happens related to me, to other people, to other problems, to difficulties at work or to the family?

6. If you feel sad, bored, alone or distressed, try to identify why you feel this way and do not let that emotion take you like a wave: focus your attention on something else or activity that allows you to get out of that emotional state negative: stay with friends, make a phone call that entertains you, read a book that is of interest, listen to music, play sports ...
7. If you feel bad, express it with people you trust. Lean on your loved ones.
8. Order your life: schedule your day, take your time with other activities: do sport, have hobbies, eat healthy, sleep at least 7 hours a day. Do not give up before a fall. You can always get back up again. If you keep without consuming, reward yourself with a whim like a meal that you like, buy yourself an interesting novel, a shirt, pants or shoes that you have been wanting for a while to buy yourself any little thing that makes you feel satisfied with your achievement.

YOU CAN
In the consultation we see daily the devastating consequences of consuming pornography: couples and marriages are often broken, jobs are lost, excessive money is spent, mood decreases, social relationships deteriorate And despite all this, You can not stop doing it.

The moment you give up pornography, you will feel more energetic, with an enhanced willpower, with more interest in relationships, less anxious, freer and happier. Do not let society treat pornography as something normal, fun and modern.

The reality shows daily that the continuous and frequent use of pornography can destroy your life, as it happens with drugs, alcohol or any other addiction.

If you see that you can not stop using for yourself, go to a professional - psychologist or psychiatrist - of your confidence. Overcome shame. You have the right to be happy.