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By Therese J. Borchard
Associate Editor

Stress is like dark chocolate. A little of it won’t kill you. In fact, small blocks here and there can be good for you, or at least give you a reason to get of bed in the morning.

But chronic and severe stress can damage your body and mind, blocking the fluid communication to and from most organs — especially in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and in the limbic system, the brain’s emotional center. Believe me, you want these two systems–much like the House and Senate — running as smoothly as possible, with low levels of the delinquent stress hormones in your bloodstream.

Which is why I have handy some tress busters. I use an average of five a day. Today I’m using all ten. Here they are, and good luck!

1. Simplify.

Cut your to-do list in half. How? Ask yourself this question after every item: Will I die tomorrow if this doesn’t get accomplished? I’m guessing you’ll get a lot of no’s. I’m sure Franklin Covey has a more efficient and elaborate system. But here’s mine: Every morning I immediately jot down my to-do list. Once I experience the first heart palpitation, the list gets cut in half.

2. Prioritize.

Let’s say you’ve got five huge work projects due next week, two Cub Scout commitments you promised your son, your mom’s overdue taxes on your desk, your wife’s 40th birthday celebration to plan, and your sister’s computer to fix. What do you do? You record all the tasks on a sheet of paper or on your computer and you give each one a number between 1 and 10: 10 being the most important (life threatening) to one (stupid bloody thing I signed up for). Start with the 10s. If you never get beyond the 8s, that’s okay!

3. Use pencil, not pen.

If you rely on your to-do list as much as I do, then you’ll want to start using pencil instead of pen. Because one important stress buster is to try to stay as flexible as you can. Things change! And change is not our enemy, even though our brain categorizes it as such. You want to be able to erase a task or reminder at any time, because who the heck knows what your day will be like.

4. Give away your cape.

If you haven’t already guessed by now, you are not a superpower and don’t possess supernatural qualities and capabilities. I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to join the race … the human race. Which means surrendering to limitations and conditions–like the number of hours in a day (24) and the amount of time it takes to get from point A to point B. In your car. Not in your bat mobile.

5. Collaborate and cooperate.

There are lots of people out there with to-do lists that look very similar to yours. Why not let them do some of your tasks so that you all don’t have to do them? The moms around me have mastered this concept, as they have set up a babysitting co-op: one mom volunteers to watches a neighbor’s kid and by doing so earns babysitting points that she can redeem when a neighbor watches her kids. In the blogging world, I have begun to collaborate with some other mental-health writers so that we all don’t have to scan the same media outlets for depression-related stories. If I catch something I send it to them, and vice versa. It’s an effective system.

6. Laugh.

Just as chronic and severe stress can damage organic systems in our body, humor can heal. When people laugh, the autonomic nervous system mellows out and the heart is allowed to relax. Laughter can also boost the immune system, as it has been found to increase a person’s ability to fight viruses and foreign cells, and reduce the levels of three stress hormones: cortisol, epinephrine, and dopac. Plus it’s just fun to laugh. And having fun is it’s own stress buster.

Read in Full: http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/04/28/10-quick-stress-busters/

 

By Brandi-Ann Uyemura
Associate Editor

Health psychologists have a dual mission: to help prevent mental and physical illness and disease and to promote healthy living. From cancer to diabetes, health psychologists deal with a wide variety of issues underlying physical illness and chronic disease. According to Maureen Lyon, Ph.D, clinical health psychologist and associate research professor in pediatrics at George Washington University, health psychologists use their knowledge to “enhance the quality of life of individuals.”

Interestingly, much of what health psychologists teach (deep breathing, mindfulness, stress reduction, etc.) works for everyone. Our fast-paced life and increased dependency on technology often results in disconnection, stress and lack of sleep, which all wreak havoc on our health. Fortunately, there are simple steps you can take today to begin living a healthier life.

Here, two health psychologists offer tips for living more happily, peacefully and mindfully.

1. 1. Breathe deeply. Want to do something in the next five minutes that will change your life? Breathe deeply. Clinical health psychologist Amanda Withrow, Ph.D said that unconsciously “we breathe into our chest.”
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3. 2. The way we should be breathing, however, is diaphragmatically. “Diaphragmatic breathing is slow, deep breathing into our bellies.” It is an important stress management tool and great because it’s free, can be done anywhere and at any time. “What’s really cool these days is that there are smartphone applications that can guide you through deep breathing and help you to practice properly.” In fact, one of our World of Psychology bloggers, Summer Beretsky, covered three of them here.
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5. 3. Give and get a hug. According to Lyon, “Give and receive four hugs a day.” Why? Research shows that hugging makes you live longer. Human beings need touch. It “soothes and calms us,” Lyon said. “It brings down that reactive arousal system that can get activated when we feel threatened in any way and especially in stressful situations.” And hugs don’t have to be just of the human type — dogs and cats count too.
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7. 4. Be mindful. Forget about that mounting to-do list, the fight you had with your best pal, or your Facebook update or Twitter account. Take time out to get back to the present moment. Withrow uses this exercise to help patients be more mindful. She asks them to list five things they see, hear, feel, smell or taste. Doing this helps pause worrying and refocuses attention on the present moment.Another way Withrow suggests we be more mindful is by paying attention to our inner dialogue. A lot of our thoughts are like the acronym for FEAR: false evidence appearing real. If you can learn to be mindful of your thoughts and think more objectively, it can have a positive impact on your behavior and your life.
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9. 5. Stop the cruel talk. What’s one way you can start being kinder to yourself? Learn to be more self-compassionate. “I think this whole thing about being cruel to oneself, judgmental, attacking one’s self is really endemic in our culture and is really a problem,” said Lyon. And it is not indicative of how much money you have, the house you own or your job. People in other cultures who are not financially wealthy have more social support and are nicer to themselves and each other. Why? Because of the thoughts and beliefs they have about themselves.Lyon said that negative thinking about one’s self is a contributing factor to a lot of depression and anxiety. Depression is often anger turned back onto one’s self. Labeling and name-calling yourself stupid, for example, can have a negative impact on your life. Health psychologists like Lyon work with people to “stop the war with themselves” through helping individuals recognize negative self-talk when it happens and showing them the link with depressive symptoms.
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11. 6. Create your own family of choice. You cannot control the family you’ve been given. But you can create your own. Lyon said that she has many clients who come from a difficult childhood where family members were abusive, physically dangerous and emotionally harmful. She said longitudinal studies show people who have been humiliated, abused or neglected “are at a much higher risk of dying at a younger age and developing a complex chronic condition.”So how do you reap the benefits of having a supportive family if your own family continues to be abusive or toxic? Create your own. Find friends and even older people who can act as parental figures for you. “Rather than encouraging you to, let’s say, drink to excess or use drugs, they would actually support you making healthier choices for yourself. Instead of holding you up for ridicule, this would actually be about doing something good for yourself.”
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13. 7. Love yourself and then love your neighbor. In their pre-flight instructions, flight attendants demonstrate how to use the oxygen mask if needed, and tell passengers to put on their own mask first before helping others with theirs. The same applies to self-care.“It’s a distortion to think that self-care is selfish,” Lyon said. Realistically, you will not be able to help anyone else unless you first take care of yourself.
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15. 8. Take care of your physical health. This may be a shocker, but Lyon said that the optimum recommendation for physical activity (including aerobic exercise and strength training) is 90 minutes a day. That might seem overwhelming for most. But the good news is that 20 minutes three times a week or ten thousand steps a day is enough to help you increase longevity.
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Read in Full: http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/04/25/10-tips-for-healthy-living/

 

By Jennifer Gibson, PharmD | Editor Shaheen E Lakhan

Headache disorders can be painful and debilitating conditions. Ranging from infrequent tension-type headaches to cluster headaches to migraines, headaches affect nearly every individual at one time or another. Pain – particularly of the neck and back – accompany many headaches. Traditional pharmacological treatment begins with acetaminophen (Tylenol), but this is not effective for all headache sufferers. More potent pain-killers are used in a step-wise manner to treat pain associated with headache, and preventive and abortive treatments are available and effective for certain types of headache. The most alarming headache treatment option to emerge is the use of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and psilocybin (a hallucinogen derived from mushrooms).

Read in Full: http://brainblogger.com/2011/04/21/headache-treatment-alternative-or-illicit/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GNIFBrainBlogger+%28Brain+Blogger%29