Best Stress Medication!

Men Are From Mars -- Neuroscientists Find That Men And Women Respond Differently To Stress

Male and female brains respond differently to stress. Men go into fight or flight mode and women respond emotionally. This can effect how treatment is geared for different people.

Here is the most important part of the article. Read just this if you don't want to read the whole piece:

"FIGHT OR FLIGHT: Certain events act as "stressors," triggering the nervous system to produce hormones to respond to the perceived danger. Specifically, the adrenal glands produce more adrenaline and cortisol, releasing them into the bloodstream. This speeds up heart and breathing rates, and increases blood pressure and metabolism. These and other physical changes help us to react quickly and effectively under pressure.

This is known as the "stress response," or more commonly, as the "fight or flight response." But if even low levels of stress go on too long, it can be detrimental to one's health. The nervous system remains slightly activated and continues to pump out extra stress hormones over an extended period, leaving the person feeling depleted or overwhelmed, and weakening the body's immune system.

STRESS-REDUCING TIPS: There are several easy, practical things people can do to reduce the amount of stress in their lives. (1) Be realistic and don't try to be perfect, or expect others to be so. (2) Don't over-schedule; cut out an activity or two when you start to feel overwhelmed. (3) Get a good night's sleep. (4) Get regular exercise to manage stress -- just not excessive or compulsive exercise -- and follow a healthy diet. (5) Learn to relax by building time into your schedule for reading or a nice long bath.

Men Are From Mars -- Neuroscientists Find That Men And Women Respond Differently To Stress

A Mysterious Link Between Sleeplessness and Heart Disease

Sleep 7 hours a night, my friends. Here's another reason why. Your brain needs it and your organs need it particularly if you're under more stress than you can handle. Why are you not sleeping? Are you staying up late watching TV and surfing the net? Or do you go to bed and have trouble sleeping? With some work on your part and nutritional solutions to your hormonal problems you can normalize sleep and improve your waking hours and your life!

Lack of sleep and lack of regular sleep times has a negative effect on hormone balances. Melatonin, cortisol, and insulin are thrown out of balance. This will age you faster than normal and lead to some diseases on the way. It will cause you to start on prescription meds and put your health and life on a downward cycle. Are you waiting for the crisis to hit before you change your habits? The average person is symptom oriented only. If there's no pain there's no problem they think. Only they don't understand that the first symptom of a heart attack is the heart attack. The deadliest cancers are often asymptomatic until it's end stage and too late. It's already a big event when you feel the pain! The human nervous system does not make pain a priority. It has lots of other things to deal with. By the time you feel pain you're experiencing a major event of some sort. Sometimes it's fixable and sometimes it's not.

Sleep. Recharge your battery. Normalize your sleep and normalize your life. Be in balance with your purpose. Be healthy and choose life!

A Mysterious Link Between Sleeplessness and Heart Disease

By RONI CARYN RABIN December 24, 2008, NYT

People who don’t get much sleep are more likely than those who do to develop calcifications in their coronary arteries, possibly raising their risk for heart disease, a new study has found.
The 495 participants in the study filled out sleep questionnaires and kept a log of their hours in bed. At night they also wore motion-sensing devices around their wrists that estimate the number of hours of actual sleep. At the beginning, none of the participants, who were ages 35 to 47, had evidence of coronary artery calcification.

Five years later, 27 percent of those who were sleeping less than five hours a night on average had developed coronary artery calcification for the first time, while only 6 percent of those who were sleeping seven hours or more had developed it. Among those who were sleeping between five and seven hours a night, 11 percent had developed coronary artery calcification, the study found.

After accounting for various other causes, the researchers concluded that one hour more of sleep per night was associated with a 33 percent decrease in the odds of calcification, comparable to the heart benefit gained by lowering one’s systolic blood pressure by 17 millimeters of mercury.
The study was published on Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The data were drawn from the ongoing Coronary Artery Risk Development In Young Adults study.
Senior author Diane S. Lauderdale cautioned that the new report does not prove a cause-and-effect relationship between a lack of sleep and heart disease.

“It’s important to say that this is the first report and this does not yet prove the association is causal,” said Dr. Lauderdale, an associate professor of health studies at the University of Chicago Medical Center. “Until we know what the mechanism is -- that it’s really a direct or a causal relationship -- there is no point in making recommendations based on this.”

Although a number of studies have suggested that people who sleep less are at greater risk of heart disease and death, this is the first investigation to measure how much its subjects actually are sleeping, said Dr. Sanjay Patel, assistant professor of medicine at Case Western Reserve University and expert in sleep medicine. Patients’ own self-assessments can be very inaccurate, he added.

What isn’t clear is whether reduced sleep triggers physiological changes that increase heart disease risk, or whether a third, unrelated factor causes both changes, he said.

“It’s possible, for example, that people who are under more stress may be both sleeping less and at higher risk of heart disease,” Dr. Patel said.

If so, he added, “If we got those people to sleep more but they still were under a lot of stress, it wouldn’t change their risk of heart disease.”


Higher education levels are also associated with both a lower risk of heart disease and a tendency to get more sleep, said Dr. Lauderdale.

But it is also possible that lack of sleep leads to certain changes, like increasing blood levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which can raise the risk of coronary artery disease over time, Dr. Lauderdale said.

Another possible mechanism could be through the effect that sleep has on average blood pressure levels over a 24-hour period. Blood pressure usually dips when people are asleep, which could provide health benefits for those who get more sleep, Dr. Lauderdale suggested.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/24/health/research/24sleep.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Your Portable Guide to Stress Relief

Ask anybody and they're sure to say that stress levels are at an all time high. It seems that everything we could once count in is now an uncertainty. Where will terrorist bombers hit next? Which financial institution will crumble? Entire governments are going bankrupt, people are losing their jobs and homes, and major corporations are slipping down the slope to oblivian. People seem to be sicker than ever and they're starting younger than ever.

Before all this started we weren't in the best of shape. People are more sedentary, there's more major diseases occurring earlier in life, personal credit is out of control, and technology is putting us out of touch with what's important. How much time is lost by people aimlessly surfing the net and playing on their xboxes? How much human interaction is forfeited? Technology, like anything else, can be used for our great benefit or our great harm. It's that powerful.

When all is said and done a major amount of our illnesses, both mental and physical, are rooted in not being able to handle stress. Some stress is beneficial but apparently many of us have more than we can handle today and that is very damaging on all body systems.

From Harvard University here is a portable guide to stress relief. It's 5 suggestions and only 4 pages! So if you don't have time to read a book with this you can take as little as 30 seconds to help yourself out with some helpful tips.

http://hms.harvard.edu/public/news/Stress_Guide_final.pdf

Worried Sick:Stressed By Downturn, Patients Flocking To Health Professionals

As an integrative practitioner I see many people who have either stress as a component of their health problems or as the true root of their physical ailments. Everyone has stress and to some degree it's good for us. Unfortunately most of us have more than we can handle. The key is to improve the body's ability to handle the stress that comes our way. This can be done in various ways. More and better sleep is powerful. So is simply drinking your 64-80 oz of water daily. And then there are great foods and nutrients which give the body the raw materials it needs to build hormones, neurotrasmitters, and immune factors. So if you're experiencing stress that is overwhelming you should see someone who knows about these methods. The stressors may still be there but you'll be able to handle it better! That's how you can break the vicious circle that occurs with the effects of stress on the body.

HARRISONBURG - As the economic news worsens by the day, physicians and therapists who treat the physical and mental effects of stress and anxiety are seeing more new patients - and an increase in symptoms among longtime patients.

According to a survey by the American Psychological Association, stress due to the economic downturn is making Americans angry, sleepless and anxious - and that survey was completed in August 2008, before the worst of the news about the economy had surfaced.

Seventy-two percent of Americans cited money as a significant source of stress, and 69 percent cited the economy, according to the APA.

"Some clients have expressed distress over losing large portions of their retirement that was tied to the failing stock market as well as the mortgage crisis," said Dr. Audie Gaddis, owner of Commonwealth Psychological Services. "Many are reporting fears that they may lose their jobs."

Work is causing stress in 68 percent of Americans, with housing coming in at 47 percent and job insecurity at 34 percent, according to the survey. Forty-six percent of Americans are now worried about providing for their families' basic needs, the APA said.

Physical, Mental Effects

Gaddis is seeing more clients who need basic anxiety management techniques and strategies to live within their means or prepare for personal financial crises.

"Clients heavily in debt and living paycheck to paycheck are quite anxious that should they lose their job their problems could readily mushroom out of control, forcing them to sell their already devalued homes or worse, face the prospects of bankruptcy," Gaddis said. "The problem [is that] these mood disorders could adversely impact job performance and money management strategies."

That in turn, he said, could lead to "self-fulfilling prophecies" among patients who lose their jobs or savings due to poor performance or bad financial decisions.

Gaddis' office also provides employment consulting and coaching, and has seen more clients coming in for help on resumés and interview skills.

Increased Fatigue, Depression

At Atwell Family Chiropractic, Dr. Daniel Atwell, who has been a chiropractor in Harrisonburg for eight years, has seen clients mention both directly and indirectly the health effects of the economy.

The APA said stressors tend to manifest themselves in distinct physical ways. In the survey, 53 percent of Americans have reported fatigue, lack of interest and motivation, feeling depressed, headaches and muscular tension, and lost sleep.

Chiropractors don't just treat physical pain, but also work to relieve stress in the nervous system, which can appear as stress tension in the spine, nervous system, back or neck, Atwell said.

Holiday Stress

Clients seem to be more stressed at this time of year, and more than last year especially, Atwell said.

Emotional stress is one of the most overlooked common factors in pain, he said.

"When it comes to any condition, we always ask our patients, if you think back to when your back or neck went out, or when you had pain, you were probably under physical, nutritional or emotional stress," he said. "It's almost always true."

It's a fair assumption that economic stress coupled with the typical stress of the holiday season can make people sick with symptoms that are often painful, Atwell said.

"What do we do during the holidays? We don't eat the best, we're also physically doing more shopping, more walking, and getting less sleep," he said. "So all parts of us are being attacked."

In his cold and flu prevention seminars, Atwell urges clients to watch those three areas - physical, nutritional and emotional.

"You can also find an avenue for stress, like journaling or meditation before you go to bed," he said. "Exercise is also a great avenue."

Contact Kate Prahlad at 574-6277 or kprahlad@dnronline.com

http://www.rocktownweekly.com/news_details.php?AID=34098&CHID=1&sub=Top

What Happened to Russert

The main points here to take home are: he had no symptoms, he was on meds, and he was excercising. People think that there's a problem only if there's pain. This is the biggest mistake you can make!!!! Yes, I'm yelling at you!!! Underline this and put it where you'll see it everyday. This is the single most important and most difficult point I find in getting through to patients. Pain is a lousy indicator of your health. It is often late in onset and leaves early but the underlying problem is there and ready to strike. Do you know the first signs of many heart attacks? The heart attack itself. By that time it's too late. How about certain cancers like pancreatic? Asymptomatic until the end stage. Too late again.
The 5th paragrpah is the most important paragraph, beginning, "A sudden cardiac arrest is, of course, unexpected, but the process that causes it may begin many years before..." Take note of "inflammation" and the latent nature of the disease.

The science of sudden cardiac arrest

Mary Carmichael and Caitlin McDevitt
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Updated: 11:15 AM ET Jun 14, 2008

Journalists and politicians across the country were in shock Friday afternoon at news that Tim Russert, the prominent and beloved NBC correspondent, had collapsed and died suddenly of a heart attack in the network's Washington office. Russert had previously been been diagnosed with several risk factors for a sudden heart attack, including coronary artery disease and diabetes. But his death is still a sad reminder that cardiac arrest can strike anyone without warning—and that when it does, it is often fatal.

Sudden cardiac arrest accounts for 310,000 deaths in America every year, or 850 a day—more than those caused by breast cancer, lung cancer, stroke, and AIDS combined. But despite how common the condition is, doctors know little about what predisposes one person to it and not another. The National Institutes of Health is currently mounting a major study at 60 trial sites across the country to try and identify risk factors related to both genes and lifestyle, and will begin enrolling patients this week. For now, says Jeffrey Olgin, a cardiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, assessing risk is "a very, very difficult thing. I can't look at you and say you have a 10 percent chance of dying from this."

Doctors do know that a previous history of heart attacks is the most important risk factor. Vice President Dick Cheney, who has suffered four heart attacks, wears a pacemaker to ward off sudden arrest. Age and gender also play roles, and as a 58-year-old male, Russert was in high-risk groups; the average age for suffering sudden cardiac death is between 58 and 62. Other factors involved in all forms of cardiovascular disease—family history, smoking, diabetes, and obesity—can come into play. Russert had some of these too; he had been previously diagnosed with diabetes and and coronary artery disease, and his autopsy on Friday showed an enlarged heart. But doctors do not know which of these factors is most important in causing a sudden heart attack, or why. They also do not know if stress plays a role at all; the data is unclear. "Most of us do not think it is terribly relevant," says Steven Nissen, chair of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic and a past president of the American College of Cardiology. After all, he notes, "many people in this world have stressful jobs," and they don't all die of of heart attacks.

What is clear is that there are ways to lower one's risk of sudden cardiac death: eat healthy, exercise, don't smoke, and take aspirin or statins. The trouble, though, is that patients often don't think they're at serious risk until they are actually experiencing an attack. In about a third of all sudden deaths due to coronary disease, death is the first sign that anything major is wrong. Russert himself was exercising and taking medication for his coronary artery disease, which was asymptomatic. He performed well in a stress test two months ago.

A sudden cardiac arrest is, of course, unexpected, but the process that causes it may begin many years before. "In middle-aged men, it's virtually always caused by degeneration in the wall of a coronary artery," says Dr. Thomas Risser, a cardiologist at Cambridge Health Alliance. "It starts with fat deposits and inflammation, and these plaques just lie there silently." They can do so for decades until one of them fractures, at which point the body tries to plug the hole with a blood clot—and ends up blocking off the whole blood vessel. This condition is known as a coronary thrombosis, and it is extremely dangerous. The heart muscle, now starved for oxygen-rich blood, falls out of rhythm; it quivers but doesn't pump. "In the final stage, the ventricle looks like a bag of worms. It's chaotically beating very fast and therefore is completely inefficient at pumping blood," says Olgin. "Soon, there's no blood flow anywhere, including the brain, and people just suddenly collapse."

Once a patient's heart has gotten out of a normal rhythm, it can't get back on beat on its own. But a defibrillator—either an internally implanted one such as Cheney's, or an external one with electrical paddles—can get the heart beating steadily again, provided it is used in time. "If people get there with an external defibrillator within three minutes of a collapse, the survival rate for the kind of thing Russert may have had can be as high as 50 percent," says Robert J. Myerburg, a cardiologist at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. "But time is the whole issue. If you rely on fire/rescue teams to bring one, the chance of survival drops seven to ten percent" with every minute that passes after a collapse. It's unclear whether Russert had access to a defibrillator. His internist said on Friday that "resuscitation" had begun immediately after the collapse and continued at the hospital, to no avail.


URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/141450

Do You Know Your Cortisol Levels?

Everyone experiences stress. Stress is a normal part of everyday life and to a degree it’s even beneficial to our physiology and well-being, but chronic long term stress that goes untreated can be very unhealthy. The quantity and quality of stress we encounter, our ability to cope with it, and our genetic makeup all contribute to our overall health.

In a stressful event the anterior lobe of the pituitary gland secretes a hormone called ACTH. ACTH tells the adrenal glands, which sit on top of the kidneys, to secrete a powerful glucocorticoid called cortisol. Cortisol has wide ranging effects on the body. It regulates carbohydrate, fat, and protein metabolism, stimulates gluconeogenesis (the formation of carbohydrates from proteins in the liver), and modulates the inflammatory response, and thereby immune function, due to fever, injury, and allergies. Cortisol stimulates the release of insulin from the pancreas and simultaneously decreases the cells’ ability to utilize glucose throughout the body. Excess insulin promotes fat deposition, especially in the belly, and can lead to diabetes melllitus. Cortisol helps the human body adapt to stress by rapidly mobilizing stored amino acids and fats to be used for energy and building other compounds.

In normal transitory stressful events these effects are very beneficial but in long term chronic stress the very same functions of cortisol can be damaging, laying a groundwork for many conditions and diseases, such as depression, Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis, diabetes, asthma, anxiety, allergies, obesity, impaired adrenal and hypothalamic function, hypothyroidism, loss of mental function, hypertension, increased levels of cholesterol and triglycerides, gastrointestinal disorders, poor wound healing, muscle loss and wasting, thin skin, sleep fragmentation and severe muscle weakness. Cortisol has significant interactions with certain neurotransmitters in the brain and these circuits are associated with depressive symptoms. For reasons that remain unknown the body’s cortisol regulation system can spin out of control as we age. Cortisol levels increase 5 fold even in healthy individuals when they are confronted with stressful events. Chronic stress can lead to adrenal burnout.

There are twenty signs and symptoms of adrenal fatigue. If you experience five or more you may have adrenal fatigue.

1. Difficulty getting up in the morning.
2. Continuing fatigue not relieved by sleep.
3. Craving for salt or salty foods and sugar.
4. Lethargy
5. Increased effort to do ordinary tasks.
6. Decreased libido.
7. Decreased ability to handle stress.
8. Increased time to recover from illness, injury or trauma.
9. Light-headed when standing up quickly.
10. Mild depression.
11. Less enjoyment or happiness with life.
12. Increased PMS.
13. Symptoms increase if meals skipped or inadequate.
14. Thoughts less focused.
15. Memory less accurate.
16. Decreased tolerance.
17. Decreased productivity.
18. Muscle weakness.
19. Irregular heartbeat.
20. Increased thirst.

Typical Pattern

1. A.M .Fatigue - Can't wake until 10!
2. Afternoon low between 3 and 4 PM.
3. Feel better after evening meal.
Cortisol is normally secreted in a circadian pattern, rising to a high of 20 ug/dl in the early morning and hitting its low range of 5 ug/dl in the late evening. When we take salivary samples at 6AM, Noon, 4PM, and Midnight we look to see if cortisol is in a normal range. You must know your cortisol all four times and treat it at the time it’s abnormal. As cortisol levels distort high or low this can have a negative effect on insulin and DHEA. Testing is recommended at least once a year. Find out if your cortisol is too high and how to normalize it safely and effectively.

If you are suffering from chronic stress and your cortisol levels are too high you must find ways to start either coping with your stressful situation or changing that situation. If you are not sleeping properly for 7-8 hours per night, you must establish a regular sleeping pattern. This will help to normalize cortisol secretions at the proper times. Effective treatments for high stress and cortisol can include biofeedback, deep breathing, Pilates, meditation and prayer, and exercise. Nutritionally we can use B vitamins, ashwaganda, licorice root, vitamin C, phosphatidylserine, adrenal concentrates, and pantothenic acid. These nutrients do a very fine job of normalizing the stress response in a safe and effective manner. Amino acids may also be utilized to help with the secretion of natural growth hormone, which increases muscle mass, regulates blood sugar, and promotes the metabolism of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. Dietary recommendations are specific to each person but in general we want to increase lean proteins and fresh vegetables and eliminate processed foods such as white flour, rice, and sugar. It’s important to eat specific foods according the results of your test. 64-80 oz of water per day is necessary.
info@DrRosenberg.net

© Reuven M. Rosenberg, D.C.
Disclaimer: Statements made pertaining to the properties and/or functions of nutritional products have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration and these materials and products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Never discontinue medical prescriptions without the consent of your physician.