Are Kind Words An Answer For Stress?

Stress caused by the daily pressures of life, affects every system of your body.  Your efforts to relieve stress will fail, if you don’t understand how to process it.  How do you prepare to deal with the toxic damage, stress can cause to your health?

Jim LaValle, a licensed pharmacist and naturopathic medicine practitioner, has an interesting approach to stress relief.  He believes each person needs to take an active role in relieving stress, by practicing kindness to others.  Thus, by using kind words during your interactions with others, you’ll have a tremendous impact on their stress, as well as your own.  All without taking drugs.

Check out this short interview of Jim LaValle, courtesy of ihealthtube.com.

Health VideosKind Words: The Stress Reliever

 

This seems to give a new feeling to the phrase, “what goes around, comes around”.

The Bottom Line:  You need to look at how you process stress in your life.  If you lash out at others with your stress, you don’t relieve your stress and just heap more stress upon them.  Your relationships matter, don’t let them suffer because of your pressures.  Nurture them by allotting some time each day to vent your stress through meditation, exercise, reading or whatever calms you.

Try using kind words to others.  What do you have to lose?

It’s your life, live well.

Don’t Let Stress Damage Your Health!

I’ve heard many people tell me, “I’m stressed out”, over the 56 years of my life.  While in the past I would chuckle at such comments, I don’t find anything funny about stress now.  Frankly, stress is dangerous to your health.

Experts often refer to the “fight-or-flight” response of your brain, when it perceives stress in your life.  Your brain responds by sending signals for your body to release a torrent of hormones to fight the stress invaders.  This is meant to be only a temporary response.

However, in modern society, “stress triggers” are constantly bombarding you.  Thus, your body doesn’t get a chance to return to its normal relaxed state of being.  High levels of stress can cause serious health issues.

In the following video, Dr. Maggie Peterson discusses how stress affects your body.  You’ll be surprised at the number of ways stress affects your health.

Health VideosHow Stress Affects the Body

 

Enough about the dangers of stress.  How can you equip yourself to deal with stress-related problems?

In the next two posts, I’ll cover some practical tools you can use to manage your stress.  You can’t hide from stress, so you might as well learn how to tame it.  See you next time!

It’s your life, live well.

Video:  Courtesy of ihealthtube.com.

Are You Powerless To Change Your Health?

54682uftzfzrpf 201x300 Are You Powerless To Change Your Health?You’ve heard it all before.  A healthy life can be achieved through proper diet, exercise, and lifestyle.  But, have you heard this mantra from a man 88 years of age?

David H. Murdock, is the 88 year old Chairman of Dole Food Company.  Also, he writes a blog about healthy living for the Huffingtonpost.com.

Mr. Murdock believes that “food knowledge” is power.  In a recent blog post he said:

“… my belief is that knowledge is power, and too many people feel powerless to know what they should eat for proper nutrition and thereby change their eating and exercise habits.”

Does this sound familiar to you?

Murdock goes on to give his keys to great health as:

  • Eating lots of fruits and vegetables;
  • Regular exercise, at least 4-5 times a week;
  • Eating lots of fish;
  • Drinking juice made of several different kinds of fruits and vegetables; and
  • Enjoying a substantial breakfast each day.

However, Murdock admits that he hasn’t always eaten perfectly, during his long and successful life.  Also, tragedy has touched his life several times.  The loss of his wife to cancer, and two of his sons to accidents, made him keenly aware of the value of life.  Thus, the importance of taking control of his health through knowledge.

Murdock concludes his post by saying:

Length of life means little without quality of life…”

You can read his entire post on Huffingtonpost.com, at the link provided here.   Check it out today!

The Bottom Line:  The simplicity of this man’s approach to healthy living, is inspiring to me.  Undeterred by tragedy, he remains an active and engaged 88 year old man.  Most times, it rings true that results speak louder than words.  David Murdock, is an example of what healthy living can do for you.

Are you going to follow his template for longevity?

It’s your life, live well.

Image:  Marcus 74id / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Can You Build Muscles To Prevent Diabetes?

One of every three people in the U.S. have either pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes.   This represents an estimated 105 million people in America.  What makes these numbers even more worrisome, is the fact that diabetes also contributes to many other health problems.  Can anything be done to stop this tsunami?

Researchers at the  Medical School of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), have found something which could aid in the prevention of pre-diabetes.  There  appears to be an association between the body’s muscle mass, and lower incidence of insulin resistance and pre-diabetes.

Insulin resistance is a condition, where the insulin produced by your body fails, to adequately regulate your blood sugar levels.  As your blood sugar rises, your pancreas works harder to produce more insulin.  Eventually, your liver, fat and muscles do not respond to insulin.

This leads to pre-diabetes, where the blood sugar levels are higher than normal, but fall short of the levels necessary for a diagnosis of diabetes.  What makes pre-diabetes so dangerous, is that usually there are no symptoms.  Unless you get blood work done by a doctor, you will fail to know you have it.  Some experts estimate there are at least 7 Million people in the U.S., who are undiagnosed.

The UCLA study found that with every 10% increase in a participant’s muscle mass, resulted in:

  • 11% decrease in the incidence of insulin resistance; and
  • 12% decrease in pre-diabetes.

The Study’s author, Dr. Preethi Srikanthan, stated:

“Our findings suggest that beyond focusing on losing weight to improve metabolic health, there may be a role for maintaining   fitness and building muscle mass.”

In other words, losing weight may help some people, but for others building muscle mass may be a better prevention factor.  Obviously, more study is needed on these findings.  However, it does give health professionals another tool in their arsenal for fighting diabetes.

You can see a great video featuring Dr. Srikanthan, at this link to ibtimes.com.

As a public health issue, diabetes is a major cause of:

  • Blindness;
  • Lower-limb amputations;
  • Kidney failure;
  • Stroke; and
  • Heart disease.

It’s a disease connected with nothing but bad results, for everyone affected by it.  There’s a primer of pre-diabetes, courtesy of the National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse, you will find at the link here.

The Bottom Line:  Don’t take diabetes lightly, because of the dire consequences associated with having the disease.  Make sure to talk with your doctor and get blood work done.  Often, diabetes is a disease produced by lifestyle choices.  Apparently, from the numbers presented, an awful lot of Americans are making bad lifestyle decisions.

Are you going to join the ”Big D” club?

It’s your life, live well.

 

Are You At Risk For Alzheimer’s Disease?

Do you know the risk factors which increase your risk of Alzheimer’s disease?  There appears to be 7 lifestyle factors, which could be changed and result in a 50% reduction of new Alzheimer’s cases worldwide.

New research, presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Paris, shows 7 “potentially modifiable risk factors”, contributing to the nearly epidemic wave of this horrible disease.  The 7 lifestyle factors are:

  • Physical inactivity;
  • Smoking;
  • Mid-life hypertension;
  • Mid-life obesity;
  • Depression;
  • Low education; and
  • Diabetes.

Deborah Barnes, PhD., a Psychiatry professor at the University of California, San Francisco, observed:

“We were surprised that lifestyle factors such as physical activity and smoking appear to contribute to a larger number of Alzheimer’s cases than cardiovascular diseases in our model…But this suggests that relatively simple lifestyle changes such as increasing physical activity and quitting smoking could have a dramatic impact on the number of Alzheimer’s cases over time.”

Alzheimer’s disease presents a worldwide public health issue.  The lifestyle factors identified, have contributed to an estimated 17 million cases worldwide and 3 million in the U.S.  The economic impact is currently US $604 billion worldwide, with about $183 billion of that expenditure in the U.S.  Our health care systems will be strained even more in the future, as Alzheimer’s cases are projected to triple by the year 2050.

You can read the news release from the Alzheimer’s Association regarding the research findings, at the link here.

To learn more about the basics of Alzheimer’s, follow this link to the association’s web site.

The Bottom Line:  If you are not familiar with Alzheimer’s disease, now is the time to find out.  You don’t want to confuse the mild memory changes associated with aging, with the more dramatic brain tissue degeneration that is Alzheimer’s.  Once again, lifestyle factors within your control are contributing factors in the incidence of this disease, as they are with other chronic diseases.  Ignore these risk factors at your own peril.

Are you just going to sit and wait for something to happen?

It’s your life, live well.