When Stress Is Out of Control

Stress levels are off the charts these days. Unfortunately, medicine has no answers for all the stress that's killing us. Well, they say they do, but they don't.

Their biggest answer is psych drugs--antidepressants, antipsychotics and the rest of the gang. And these drugs may make you feel a bit better, but the odds are stacked against even that. Worse, these treatments don't actually heal anything.

So you're risking your brain, your nervous system and your endocrine system just to feel a little bit better--maybe. Or maybe not. That doesn't sound like a sensible trade-off to me. If I'm going to risk a lot, I want to get a lot in return, too.

Let's talk about this.

Stress rampages through our bodies and causes woe upon woe. And stress is cumulative. Making it through a rough patch doesn't mean your stress understands it's time to back off and start making nice. Oh, no; stress stays and stays and stays until we do something about it.

And since symptoms vary widely, we may not even realize that stress is the problem.

But since nobody mentions the need to deal with stress, let alone say anything about how we can do that, each stress event starts at the level where the last one left off.

This is not good news.

Let me give you an example. I was eleven-months-old when the drunk driver smashed into my parents' car and mashed my endocrine system; I was 25-years-old when a doctor finally took my health problems seriously. So, stress, in the form of a misfiring endocrine system, had a quarter-century to set up house and go about its business.

If you had an abusive childhood, you're in the same boat. And it's the same if you suffered a violent assault at some point in your life. Or lived through a war. Or worked on the front-lines of a police or fire department. Lived in a soul-sapping marriage. Ate an inadequate diet. And I could go on.

You end up with a bunch of symptoms that don't really add up, so doctors tend to write you off as a complainer, not somebody with real problems.

Medical schools teach doctors-to-be that when they hear hoof beats, they should think "horse," not "zebra." In other words, they should think of garden-variety solutions, not off-the-wall stuff. Then you show up looking and sounding like a zebra with polka dots! What are they supposed to do with that?

Now the truth is, none of your symptoms is exotic all by itself, but you present so many of them, all arrayed in new-and-different combinations that boggle the mind.

Fixing long-term stress is a step-it-through kind of deal; no magic bullets, no one-size-fits-all solutions, just taking one step at a time to get to where you want to go. It's not all that hard, but it has a whole lot of moving parts.

While a single article can't begin to cover all the moving parts, let me get you started down a good path.

Your nervous and endocrine systems, the major players in any stress situation, are controlled by the hypothalamus, a tiny gland that's part of the brain. Unfortunately, this little wonder-gland gets no protection from the blood/brain barrier that's supposed to keep the brain safe.

The last fifty years or so have been really, really hard on the hypothalamus. These days, our now-raggedy little king gets whacked pretty much every day, usually multiple times.

Whacking the hypothalamus causes stress, which the body stores because it has no other choice. So day after day, week after week, year after year, we're doing ourselves in. Not by choice, but because we don't realize the cause or the consequences.

What happened fifty-or-so years ago? That's when hypothalamus enemies started showing up in our food. These enemies, called excitotoxins, rev our brains up to toxic levels, which damages the hypothalamus. Some autopsies have even found hypothalami with holes going clear through them!

Three excitotoxins cause most of the trouble: Aspartame, glutamate and soy. Aspartame shows up in diet foods, mostly soda and chewing gum. Glutamate shows up as monosodium glutamate, which is in virtually all fast foods, restaurant foods, meals from a box or the freezer--everywhere you look, in other words.

Soy's everywhere, too. In addition to being an excitotoxin, soy stomps on the thyroid, throws your estrogen out of balance (breast cancer for gals; prostate cancer for guys), eats the minerals in your body, etc. And most soy gets sprayed with cancer-causing glyphosate. Soy is a disaster.

Eliminating excitotoxins lowers your body's internal stress levels, which gives your body a fighting chance. Giving excitotoxins the old heave-ho takes patience and is probably the hardest part of fixing the problem, but health is worth every ounce of effort you put into it.

And so are you.

https://ezinearticles.com/?When-Stress-Is-Out-of-Control&id=9569293

Understanding Sleep Better

An activity that is not favoured on an average by toddlers but is very dear to adults- sleeping.

Did you cry too when you were a child being put to bed but you wanted to play some more? Did you too later realise how important those hours of sleep were when you pulled all-nighters during exams or lost sleep over piling up work in office? Today let's understand some technical aspects of sleep, what it does for the body and brain, how it is important for your memory and the effects of sleeplessness.

So what is sleep? A commonly accepted definition explains sleep as- a condition of body and mind which typically recurs for several hours every night, in which the nervous system is inactive, the eyes closed, the postural muscles relaxed, and consciousness practically suspended.

Sleeping is a phenomenon, or activity that occurs in a repetitive manner for hours every night. During this time all our voluntary movements such as walking and talking are usually inactive, so are certain involuntary actions such as blinking of the eyes. Our heart however continues to beat, lungs keep breathing and stomach digests the food consumed previously. Another important activity for which sleep is important is memory, which we will come to in detail a little later. All the muscles in our bodies are very relaxed during our sleeping hours unless we experience a nightmare where they tighten up in response to our mental activity.

Scientists still do not know what sleep really does to our bodies. Results show that it doesn't exactly provide any extra energy as people say. What it does is, that it gives the body some time to replenish its energy. During our sleep, our brain channels energy towards repairing damaged parts in the body since it has a larger reserve when most of our bodily functions are inactive. It not only repairs the muscles but the brain also has a chance to repair itself and strengthen its own skills such as communication, speech, language, innovation etc.

If you are someone who has missed a lot of hours of sleep to meet deadlines you truly understand the importance of sleep. It keeps your head from hurting, makes you less groggy and irritable, and it keeps you from being forgetful. Scientists who have studied people sleeping have seen their brain have conversations with itself though the waves and it creates. This isn't the brain actually talking or even dreaming, but it is sorting through our memory. Whatever we see and learn every day is stored in our brain for future use. It is in our sleep that the brain decides whether what information it received should go to the long term compartment or the short term compartment. Therefore, a very good way to remember everything you study during exams is to get enough sleep so that your brain has time to process all the information.

Lack of sleep can cause you to hallucinate and feel odd emotions. You will function normally to begin with, but if you keep that up it will only get worse. This is a way for your body to tell you that it needs rest so it can perform other activities for which some of your functions have to be shut down temporarily.

Sleep is very important for your growth and development, and you must give yourself a normal sleep pattern for best results.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Understanding-Sleep-Better&id=9433807