15 Ways To Beat Stress This Holiday Season

The holidays are officially upon us and that means stress levels are rising to an all time high! Here are some helpful and essential tips to lower your stress levels and allow you to have a relaxing and more importantly, fun, holiday season!

1. Emphasize an organic, whole foods diet with plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, complex carbohydrates, and adequate amounts of essential fatty acid.

2. Drink plenty of pure, filtered water throughout the day, to avoid dehydration, a common but overlooked cause of stress.

3. Be sure to eat a healthy breakfast. Skipping breakfast can add to stress levels by making you more tired and irritable.

4. Avoid all sugars, refined carbohydrates, food additives and preservatives, and processed foods, and minimize your intake of alcohol and caffeine throughout the day.

5. Regularly practice relaxation exercises and/or meditation.

6. Exercise at least three times each week, for 30 minutes each session. Gentle aerobic exercises combined with moderate weight training can significantly relieve stress and improve your overall mood. Be sure not to overexert yourself, however, as doing so will only increase your stress levels.

7. Useful nutritional supplements include vitamin A, B-complex vitamins, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, vitamin C, vitamin E, as well as a complete multivitamin/multimineral formula.

8. Useful herbs for dealing with stress including American ginseng, chamomile, passionflower, and valerian root, all of which can be taken as teas.

9. Bach flowers and other flower essences can help to heal unresolved or inappropriately expressed negative emotions that can cause stress, as well as many other physical health problems.

10. Get adequate amounts of sleep each night and be sure to go to bed at the same time.

11. Set up your daily schedule so that you have plenty of time to deal with your daily tasks and focus on accomplishing those that are the most important first.

12. Become more conscious of your fears and worries and examine them objectively. Doing so can significantly reduce their hold on you.

13. Avoid long periods of isolation. Spend regular quality time with your loved ones. If you live alone, seek out your friends.

14. Find and devote yourself to one or more hobbies that you truly enjoy.

15. And finally, cultivate your sense of humor and laugh more often!

 

How Far Is Too Far In Sugar Prohibition?

February 6, 2012

The Independent

By Rob Lyons

On Thursday, high-profile science journal Nature published a commentary by three academics, which argued that sugar is a toxin and that it should be subject to similar kinds of public-health interventions as alcohol. In other words, sugar should be taxed and restricted just like booze.

One of the authors, Robert Lustig, runs an obesity clinic at a children’s hospital, part of the University of California, San Francisco. His colleagues and fellow authors, Laura Schmidt and Claire Brindis, are researchers in healthy policy. Lustig has gained an online following since 2009 for a lecture entitled ‘Sugar: the Bitter Truth’. While Lustig’s tone is rather melodramatic, there does appear to be a growing body of evidence linking refined carbohydrates and a group of related symptoms – obesity, fatty liver disease, type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease – that come together under the broad umbrella of ‘metabolic syndrome’.

It’s certainly the case that these chronic diseases have increased in importance in recent decades (in part because of the decline of infectious disease). Consumption of refined carbohydrates – particularly sugar – has increased, too. America has a particularly sweet tooth; the average American consumes 131 pounds (about 59 kg) of sugar and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) per year, up from 113 pounds per person in 1966. A teaspoon of sugar weighs about 4g, so this amounts to 40 teaspoons per person per day. (And remember, that’s an average – some people are consuming considerably more.)

The UK has a pretty sweet tooth, too. A survey for the Food Standards Agency in Scotland in 2008 found that 17 per cent of children’s calorie intake was coming from ‘non-milk extrinsic sugars’ – that is, table sugar and sugar added to food. That adds up to about 20 teaspoons per child per day.

So, we have rising rates of diseases related to metabolic syndrome alongside increased sugar consumption. Sucrose (the kind used as table sugar) and HFCS are regarded as particularly problematic by many researchers because they are both mad up of two simpler sugars, glucose and fructose. Glucose induces the production of insulin and would seem, therefore, to be a reasonable suspect in problems of insulin resistance and diabetes, with knock-on effects to do with obesity. Fructose, though it sounds healthy because it is also found in fruit, is practically Public Enemy No.1 for some health researchers due to its effects on the liver and in relation to heart disease. Thus, some see the consumption of sucrose and HFCS as a dietary double-whammy that significantly increases the risk of a number of chronic diseases.

Click here for the full report from The Independent.

15 Steps To A Stress-Free Holiday

The holidays are officially upon us and that means stress levels are rising to an all time high! Here are some helpful and essential tips to lower your stress levels and allow you to have a relaxing and more importantly, fun, holiday season!

1. Emphasize an organic, whole foods diet with plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, complex carbohydrates, and adequate amounts of essential fatty acid.

2. Drink plenty of pure, filtered water throughout the day, to avoid dehydration, a common but overlooked cause of stress.

3. Be sure to eat a healthy breakfast. Skipping breakfast can add to stress levels by making you more tired and irritable.

4. Avoid all sugars, refined carbohydrates, food additives and preservatives, and processed foods, and minimize your intake of alcohol and caffeine throughout the day.

5. Regularly practice relaxation exercises and/or meditation.

6. Exercise at least three times each week, for 30 minutes each session. Gentle aerobic exercises combined with moderate weight training can significantly relieve stress and improve your overall mood. Be sure not to overexert yourself, however, as doing so will only increase your stress levels.

7. Useful nutritional supplements include vitamin A, B-complex vitamins, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, vitamin C, vitamin E, as well as a complete multivitamin/multimineral formula.

8. Useful herbs for dealing with stress including American ginseng, chamomile, passionflower, and valerian root, all of which can be taken as teas.

9. Bach flowers and other flower essences can help to heal unresolved or inappropriately expressed negative emotions that can cause stress, as well as many other physical health problems.

10. Get adequate amounts of sleep each night and be sure to go to bed at the same time.

11. Set up your daily schedule so that you have plenty of time to deal with your daily tasks and focus on accomplishing those that are the most important first.

12. Become more conscious of your fears and worries and examine them objectively. Doing so can significantly reduce their hold on you.

13. Avoid long periods of isolation. Spend regular quality time with your loved ones. If you live alone, seek out your friends.

14. Find and devote yourself to one or more hobbies that you truly enjoy.

15. And finally, cultivate your sense of humor and laugh more often!

- KT