A recent study shows that stress increases interleukin-6, a powerful agent of inflammation in the body. Interleukin-6 is, of course, not the only chemical in the body that is affected by stress: Stress creates free radicals that make you age faster. Stress puts the body in high alarm mode via adrenalin and cortisol. Stress decreases growth hormones and stunts the development of children. Stress increases abdominal fat, which leads to diabetes and other diseases.
Stress makes us sick; with this new study, we know a bit better how that happens: Years and years of inflammation in your body can lead to diabetes, heart disease, depression and cancer.
But did you know that there is bad stress and good stress? Bad stress is what life and other people do to you; good stress comes from setting yourself goals and working hard for it. Balance is the keyword here.
Balance fights stress, as European Natural Medicine knows:
• Movement: Moving around most of the day breaks down stress hormones in your muscles, and makes you feel relaxed. Again, too much exercise and competition can wreak havoc in your body. But daily walking is the minimum. Find a healthy balance between slouching and overdrive.
• Eating fresh food: Vegetables (cooked or raw), fruit, beans, nuts have powerful compounds that reduce inflammation in the body. Foods that increase inflammation are: sugar, white starches, dairy, grain fed animals, bad fats (especially fried and hardened). Grains (even whole grains) are sort of in the middle between good and bad: better than white flour, for some people they still trigger the body’s inflammation response. Observe yourself to find out where you stand. - Anything you are allergic to works in your body like a flame-thrower, increasing inflammation.
• Herbs and spices are packed with anti-oxidants, vitamins, and so on. They gobble up the free radicals and they add taste, zest and decreased inflammation to your life. Today I will just mention two: ginger and cardamom. Put some ginger and/or cardamom in your tea or herbal tea – they both are perfect winter spices.
• Touch: The more you touch and hug and kiss, the better you feel. I am not talking about sexuality though – even if the sex cravings of some people might be explained thus. I am talking about loving your family, your friends. Getting into complicated affairs might only increase your life stresses.
• Keep a pet: Companionship and again, touching, lowers blood pressure, and makes people happier and live longer. Loneliness kills by breaking your heart. A cat shows you the wisdom of taking it easy; a dog is always happy to see you.
• Music, painting, knitting, cross-stitching, puttering in the garden – whatever hobby makes you happy also makes you healthier.
• Water: A dried cell is a stressed cell. Make sure every cell of your body is watered well (but not water-logged) to decrease stress on the cellular level, so that the healthy biochemical reactions can take place and sustain your life.
• Sleep is the most important and most definitely underused stress reducer. If you stay up late for TV, a computer game or just plain old partying, you create the set-up for a stressful next day. Be in bed before ten at least once a week – just to be reminded how good it feels not to have to rush through sleep.
• Joy – put as much of this stress reliever into your life. One of the easiest – and most needed – ways to arrive at joy is working for the joy of other people. Read More
Blog: On Health. On Writing. On Life. On Everything.
In the Midst of Life We Are in Death
June 29, 2010
The unimaginable for all of us is that we will die.
Other people, of course, die. But not us. This is how we deceive ourselves.
Let’s undeceive: It is time that we lift the taboo around death. Death should be with us all the time, in our consciousness - because it is with us, in reality. It can happen any time: An accident, a bad diagnosis. Not to mention the daily little dying in tiniest pieces that we call aging. In the midst of life we are in death – as the old Church hymn sings. Death surely is the reason why we invented religion – because it is so damn hard to think the unthinkable.
Most of all, we want to protect our children from death. So we are building a world free of the dark side. Death is never mentioned. When somebody dies, we keep children away.
Of course, children are not stupid – they know about death, usually by age four: the hamster that lied stiff under the radiator one morning. The news and pictures of war on TV. Even the wilting bunch of flowers in a vase. Nothing will last forever. All beauty will end up on the compost pile.
But not talking about death makes it even harder for children: They have to hide their deepest fears from their parents, not to hurt their feelings (that is how childhood works: children protect their parents. All the time).
When I was five, my father took me to a patient who had freshly died overnight. I remember the day like few others. It was a sunny Sunday morning, but the room with the dead man was kept dark. The widow cried, but she had enough compassion for the little girl to hand me an apple. I stared at the form in the bed. The jaws were tied up with a white napkin as if the man had suffered from toothache. I smelled my apple. Was it bad manners to bite into the apple in the presence of a dead man? I decided it was, and just held my apple. The widow said her husband had been suffering for so long; now his suffering was over. My father took out his stethoscope, examined the body and confirmed he had died.
On the way home, I asked many questions – I was that why? Why? Why? kid.
Did it hurt me? I don’t think so.
Denial hurts children – it deprives them of the means to grow up. Nothing is sadder than an elderly person who panics about the subject. To acknowledge that death awaits each one of us at the end, makes us live our lives more mindful, more compassionate.
Proposal: Everybody should read Sogyal Rinpoche's "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying") once a year, as a way to face what is so hard to face. As a way to grow up. Alternatively, for an easier read, try: Irvin Yalom's "Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death. " Read More
Aging Is Inevitable - Or Is It?
May 21, 2010
Yes, aging is inevitable, but how you age, makes all the difference. You can get a bit stiffer and a bit fatter and a bit more stooped and a bit more depressed every day, or you can embark on an exciting journey starting today that will make you glow with health, sparkle with interest and explode with love.
Will it be difficult? Not more difficult than doing two minutes of exercise every day, eating a bit more reasonably and finding something you love to do. If you start with two minutes exercise a day, you will soon find that your body wants more. What hinders you to get up from your chair right now and do ten belly crunches? Or, if you can't get down on the floor, lifting your knees ten times, then your arms?
Studies done on centenarians – people who made it to 100 – show that it took only surprisingly simple things to keep them alive that long. Good genes help of course, but more important might be staying busy and keeping involved with friends, family, community. Centenarians did not spend long hours at the gym or money for expensive spa vacations or face lifts.
All what is needed are simple, everyday gestures and measures: cleaning out the attic, puttering around in the yard, cooking a meal for a sick friend, knitting a shawl for a grandchild. What centenarians did not do: Sit in front of TV or at the computer. Really, they did nothing spectacular. But the unspectacular made a long, spectacularly fulfilled life. Read More