Dump Your Stress – Dump Your Pounds

Why? Because stress increases cortisol levels, and cortisol likes to store weight in your stomach, says Michael Jensen, MD, an endocrinologist and obesity expert at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. (Researchers aren't sure why.) It could also slow down your metabolism. When stressed and non-stressed women ate the same high-fat meal, the harried ones burned fewer calories at rest afterward, found a study in Biological Psychiatry.

Here are some ideas for easing your stress in a short time:

10 Minutes: Chew a Stick of Gum

Researchers from Australia and England found that in moments of stress, gum chewers felt less anxious and had 18 percent less cortisol (the stress hormone) in their saliva. "Chewing increases blood flow to the brain—which may make us feel more alert—and it may also distract us from stressors," says study coauthor Andrew Scholey, PhD, director of the Centre for Human Psychopharmacology at Swinburne University.

12 Minutes: Brew Some Black Tea

People who drank four servings of black tea a day for six weeks were able to de-stress faster and had lower levels of cortisol after a stressful event, according to a study from University College London. Chemical compounds in the antioxidant-packed beverage may relax us through their effect on neurotransmitters in the brain. Actually, I prefer green tea.

15 Minutes: Try a DIY Massage

The International Journal of Neuroscience reported that a 15-minute chair massage twice weekly can lower stress, likely by calming the sympathetic nervous system. The at-home approach is an effective alternative. "Simply rolling a tennis ball over muscles with the palm of your hand can trigger a similar response," says Tiffany Field, PhD, director of the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami School of Medicine.

20 Minutes: Put Pen to Paper

A 2010 study in Anxiety, Stress & Coping found that writing about a stressful event for just 20 minutes on two different days lowered levels of perceived stress. Putting feelings on paper appears to organize thoughts, helping us process unpleasant experiences and release negative emotions.

30 Minutes: Put on Music You Love

Music can elicit positive emotions and reduce your levels of stress hormones. A study in the Journal of Advanced Nursing found that patients who listened to songs of their choice were less anxious before surgery. Boost your mood even more by dancing along to trigger the release of feel-good endorphins.

45 Minutes: Take a Tech Break

In a study by University of California, Irvine, and U.S. Army researchers, heart rate monitors showed that checking e-mail put subjects on constant high alert with heart rates that indicated stress. "We found that shutting off e-mail eases anxiety," says study coauthor Gloria Mark, PhD. Commit to no e-mail for 45 minutes a day to begin weaning yourself off.

60 Minutes: Clean House

Housework's repetitive nature can help release tension. "We get lost in the rhythm of folding clothes or vacuuming, which can disrupt stressful thought patterns and trigger the body's relaxation response," says Herbert Benson, MD, director emeritus of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Source: From the December 2012 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine

Scare Yourself Thin

Scare Yourself Thin

Sometimes knowledge can motivate (scare!!) us into better behavior. It is a kind of „away from“ method but it works for many people.  Personally, I use both the „away from“ and the „toward“ types of motivation.

Read on and observe your feelings and motivation to lose weight and get fit:

Before Dr. Frederick Banting and his colleagues at the University of Toronto isolated insulin in the 1920s, doctors tried to treat diabetes with high doses of salicylates, a group of aspirin-like compounds. (They were desperate and also tried morphine and heroin.) Sure enough, the salicylate approach reduced sugar levels, but at a high price: side effects included a constant ringing in the ears, headaches and dizziness. Today’s treatments for diabetes are much safer and generally work by replacing insulin, boosting its production or helping the body make more efficient use of the hormone. But researchers over the past few years have been re-examining the salicylate approach for new clues about how diabetes develops.

What they have discovered is a complex interplay between inflammation, insulin and fat — either in the diet or in large folds under the skin. (Indeed, fat cells behave a lot like immune cells, spewing out inflammatory cytokines, particularly as you gain weight.) Where inflammation fits into this scenario — as either a cause or an effect — remains unclear. But the case for a central role is getting stronger. Dr. Steve Shoelson, a senior investigator at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, has bred a strain of mice whose fat cells are supercharged inflammation factories. The mice become less efficient at using insulin and go on to develop diabetes. “We can reproduce the whole syndrome just by inciting inflammation,” Shoelson says.

When doctors treating Alzheimer’s patients took a closer look at who seemed to be succumbing to the disease, they uncovered a tantalizing clue: those who were already taking anti-inflammatory drugs for arthritis or heart disease tended to develop the disorder later than those who weren’t. Perhaps the immune system mistakenly saw the characteristic plaques and tangles that build up in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients as damaged tissue that needed to be cleared out. If so, the ensuing inflammatory reaction was doing more harm than good. Blocking it with anti-inflammatories might limit, or at least delay, any damage to cognitive functions.

Losing weight induces those fat cells — remember them? — to produce fewer cytokines. So does regular exercise, 30 minutes a day most days of the week. Flossing your teeth combats gum disease, another source of chronic inflammation. Fruits, vegetables and fish are full of substances that disable free radicals.

How about the connection between overweight and hair loss:

Overweight people tend to lead sedentary lifestyles, which for various reasons helps to create the conditions that trigger hair loss.

Very little exercise also means lower peripheral circulation of blood, and this can be a problem for the health of the hair follicles, but it is also true that it is a statistical fact that the obese people eat too much fatty food and especially saturated fatty acids, which are the most damaging to your hair and overall health.

So the cholesterol levels rise, the sebaceous glands get irritated because the sebum contains one of the two forms of DHT, and the hair falls out.

In addition, obesity is a condition that can cause hormonal imbalances, and this can trigger the thinning of your hair.

Or, if you are pregnant or trying to get pregnant:

Being overweight during pregnancy can cause complications for you and your baby. The more overweight you are, the more likely you are to have pregnancy complications and the more risk the child has for defects after birth.

(CNN) „Risks of major birth defects increased in step with the severity of a mother's obesity or overweight, a study published in the BMJ medical journal found.

Based on these results, women should be encouraged to adopt a healthy lifestyle and be at a normal body weight before conception, said researchers led by Martina Persson, a researcher in the clinical epidemiology unit at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden.“

Overweight and Alzheimer’s

Weight, which includes obesity, is linked with Alzheimer’s disease. This is an area of very active investigation as researchers discover associations between brain health and the body chemistry that controls weight.

Too much body weight often means too much fat tissue, and fat tissue can have dangerous effects on health. Overweight or obesity, too, increases the risk for many medical diseases. In the United States, more than a third of adults are obese. The medical cost each year for an obese adult is estimated to be $1,429 higher than for someone of normal weight.¹ Some scientists point with alarm to the increase in obesity. They warn that this is going to raise the rate of Alzheimer’s disease development in our population, which is already increasing due to higher numbers of people who are older or overweight.²

1. http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html 2. Nepal B, Brown LJ, and Anstey KJ. Rising midlife obesity will worsen future prevalence of dementia. PLOS ONE September 2014;9:1-5.

Proper exercise and a healthy diet are easily accessible tools that can help us reduce the risk not only for Alzheimer’s disease but for many other medical problems as well. Stated in a more positive way, a healthy lifestyle, which includes weight management, can increase the likelihood of optimal aging, prolonged independence, and a greater quality of life.

What kinds of health problems are linked to overweight and obesity?

Excess weight may increase the risk for many health problems, including

• type 2 diabetes
• high blood pressure
• heart disease and strokes
• certain types of cancer
• sleep apnea
• osteoarthritis
• fatty liver disease
• kidney disease
• pregnancy problems, such as high blood sugar during pregnancy, high blood pressure, and increased risk for cesarean delivery (C-section)

I don’t know about you but I’m inspired to go for a brisk walk and then eat a healthy meal consisting of veggies and a salad.

You in?

Is Your Mind Your Haven? Or Hell.

Is your mind your haven? Your safe place? The element of yourself that motivates you to lose weight, declutter our lives, go for new goal, enjoy rewarding relationships?

I was doing my yoga and listening to some wonderful guided meditations by the Honest Guys. They have some soothing yet powerful thoughts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e33dETmxAr0#t=563.269666

Or, my favorite guided meditation for letting go:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RG71OxOoqEM

Our minds should be a safe place, our haven.

But is this so? Are we perhaps our own worst enemies?

Does your thinking empower or weaken you?