stress

Niacin deficiency and mental illness

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From time to time, I decide to re-balance my dietary nutritional balance and reduce or temporally eliminate some of the foods that I’ve over used. Recently for me, the offender that I have temporally eliminated is coffee. (I do like the taste, so it is only temporary.) If you ever want a demonstration of the direct impact food has on the brain, stop drinking coffee cold turkey after drinking an average of 6-10 cups a day. My symptoms included: headache, muscle ache, drowsiness, and even a bit of depression.

In my natural curiosity to explore this food-brain connection that I was directly experiencing from my caffeine withdraw, I stumbled on some fascinating research about niacin deficiency and schizophrenia. No my symptoms didn’t include hallucinations, but the mental fogginess I was feeling was close enough.

It turns out that as far back as 1952, research by Abram Hoffner, PhD, MD, had shown that the use of high doses of vitamin B-3 or niacin can eliminate the symptoms of schizophrenia. Additionally, research since then has not only confirmed the positive effects of niacin on mental illness, it has also demonstrated effectiveness in treating certain types of cancers, diabetes, high cholesterol, cardiovascular disease and even some tantalizing results with HIV/AIDS.

Niacin is a water soluble B-complex vitamin which can be found in a variety of food, including yeast, meat, poultry, tuna, salmon, peanuts, and avocados but it can also be synthesized by the body from the amino acid tryptophan. The recommended dietary allowance (RDA) for niacin is about 20 mg per day. But most people don’t get enough niacin in their diet and supplementation is suggested for many people.

In general, niacin is important to the body in its role of metabolizing glucose, fats and alcohol. So when our diet consists of lots of processed foods that are high in sugar and fat, not only are you not receiving niacin from your diet, your body actually requires more niacin to metabolize the junk food that you’ve eaten. It’s a catch-22 that produces a downward spiral to niacin deficiency very quickly.

So it’s not surprising to me that with the rise in junk food consumption, we have also seen an increase in depression and ADHD diagnoses. According to Dr. Hoffner, niacin reduces the body’s production of a chemical called adrenochrome which is a form of adrenaline. Adrenocrhome is found in high quantity in patients suffering from schizophrenia, and this is an explanation for how niacin helps those suffering from this illness. However, when niacin is used as a therapeutic treatment, high doses in excess of 3000 mg per day are used in conjunction with an equivalent amount of vitamin-C.

But even in lower doses of around 500 – 1000 mg per day, the beneficial effects for people suffering from depression, anxiety and insomnia are well documented by Dr. Hoffner. However, he recommends that niacin (B-3) still needs to be taken in coordination with the other B-vitamins along with vitamin-C which helps absorption.

As for me, I discovered that while the coffee bean does contain some niacin, the caffeine in the coffee eliminates the body’s ability to use it and also flushes the body of existing niacin, among other nutrients. So, perhaps in the process of quitting coffee, I began to feel the depressive effects of a lack of niacin as one source of my withdraw symptoms, without the effect of the caffeine to mask this deficiency.

Either way, for me it’s all about achieving and maintaining balance. Strive to get as much of your nutrition from dietary sources and reduce or eliminate foods that deplete that nutrition, while supplementing in the anti-oxidant vitamins of C, E, folic acid (B-9), niacin (B-3), and the rest of the B-complex. Your brain will thank you.

References:

DoctorYourself.com: Review of Dr. Abram Hoffer’s “Vitamin B-3 and Schizophrenia”

DoctorYourself.com: Vitamin B-3: Niacin and Its Amide

DoctorYourself.com: How to Determine a Saturation Level of Niacin

DoctorYourself.com: B Informed About B Vitamins

Linus Pauling Institute of the Oregon State University: Niacin

Wikipedia: Niacin

Wikipedia: B Vitamins

Nutrition-Info.com: Nutrient Destroyers

About Paul Kulpinski, LMT

Paul Kulpinski is a licensed massage therapist, holistic wellness educator and co-founder of Mountain Waves Healing Arts in Flagstaff, Arizona. Information contained in this blog should not be taken as medical advice. Readers are advised to validate the information presented here with other sources including your personal physician for information specific to you.

January 15th MBSR Orientation Location

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Nicolette Sachs will be holding her next Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction class orientation on Tuesday January 15, 2013 from 9:30am – 11:00am. The location for the orientation and the 8 week class will be in the neighboring building to Mountain Waves Healing Arts in the Knoles Village Shopping Center. The address is:

Academy of the Martial Way
Knoles Village Square
2708 N. 4th St., Suite E-1

Click here for more information or call Nicolette at (928) 526-1961.

About Paul Kulpinski, LMT

It is Healthier to Give than Receive

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“If I could work my will,” said Scrooge indignantly, “every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!” Charles Dickens 1843, A Christmas Carol

Ebenezer Scrooge just doesn’t get it, does he? And as foretold by the ghost of Christmas future, if Scrooge continues on his merciless ways, he dies at a relatively young age, alone with his fortune stolen and plundered by the very people he maligned in his life. Recent scientific research into the health benefits of giving and altruism validates the early demise of misers like Scrooge.

During the winter holidays starting with Thanksgiving and ending with Christmas, the idea of gift giving is central to the spirit of the season. Yet when many people think of gift giving this time of year, it fills them with dread, guilt and anxiety over the deadlines and pressures of picking the “right gift”. To me, this type of gift giving is the anti-thesis of the spirit of the season and is just as unhealthy as the cruel ways of Ebenezer Scrooge.

The kind of gift giving that I’m thinking about is the kind that doesn’t expect anything in return and carries no fear of judgment, because it is given from the heart. This is the giving that produces the greatest benefits to health and wellness not for the recipient, but for the giver and it doesn’t require a fortune to give it either.

Altruism is defined as the principle or practice of unselfish concern for or devotion to the welfare of others. This is the root of healthy giving and more and more research indicates that people who behave toward others in an altruistic manner have a higher quality of life and live longer to boot.

Giving unselfishly generates emotions in the giver that produces an effect dubbed the “helpers high”, a physiological response characterized by reduced stress hormones and and increase in antibodies beneficial for immunity. Other physical benefits to giving include:

A decrease in perceived intensity of awareness of pain
Reduced expression of feelings of hostility
Increased feelings of euphoria and calm
Long lasting period of the sense of emotional well-being
Reduced feelings of depression and despair

Volunteering is the simplest expression of altruistic giving and is the most studied. There are many large scale studies over long periods demonstrating the positive effect of volunteering and healthy longevity. One interesting study cited in the WebMD article The Science of Good Deeds found a 44% reduction in early death in those who volunteered a lot. The article adds that a 44% reduction in early death is a better result than can be achieved by exercising four times a week! That altruistic giving is power stuff!

So take a moment right now and reflect on your intentions for giving the gifts you have or are planning to give this year. Are your intentions aligned with healthy giving? If not, find a way to give something to someone in that healthy altruistic frame of mind, not only for their benefit, but to set you on a path of future giving that can save your life, just like it did for old Ebenezer Scrooge who promised to keep the spirit of giving alive.

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him. Charles Dickens 1843, A Christmas Carol

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Sources:

Johns Hopkins University

Belief Net

AmeriCorps

Earthpages.org – Compassion RX: The Many Health Benefits of Altruism

Stephen G. Post

LitQuotes

About Paul Kulpinski, LMT

Pay Attention and Improve Your Life

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Woman on Beach at Sunrise Have you ever found yourself doing some routine task and not remembering doing it for the past several seconds or minutes? Perhaps it happened to you when you were listening to music, or eating your lunch or maybe even driving your car to work. It can sometimes be a little startling to snap into awareness of the moment and find that you’ve been doing some task with no recent memory of actually doing it. If you think about it, during these moments you are either in the “past” or in the “future”. You most certainly are not “in the moment”.

For this moment, lets forget about the past and resist projecting into the future. Let’s pay attention to this moment. After all, this moment is the only thing you have. All of your consciousness is placed only in this present point of time and space. Now, you could use your power of consciousness in this moment to reflect on a memory of the past, or even fantasize about a future possibility, but you are actually doing it in this moment. Your point of power, your ability to choose and act only exists in this moment right now.

The current trend is to call this intention of living in the moment “conscious living” or “mindfulness”. While it might be tempting to dismiss these terms as the latest iteration of the new age woo woo culture, there really is some validity to it and we are getting some hard data to support it.

First, lets review my definition of stress, since as I see it, one of the primary goals of being mindful would be to reduce the stress in your life. As I’ve written many times before, stress is the reaction of your body to a perceived threat or expected outcome. Notice that the operative words in that definition (the ones I’ve italicized) are all based in the moment. In other words change your perception or your expectations and your relationship to the stressor changes. Your choice to change this only exists in the present moment.

This is not new. Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn developed the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program at the University of Massachusetts back in 1979 and since then has created the Center for Mindfulness which has conducted research into the efficacy of MBSR in its impact on pain reduction, feelings of self-esteem and improved healing.

In a new study, researchers at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Canada found that mindfulness techniques can be a successful substitute for anti-depression medications. In the study, published in this month’s issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, researchers took 84 people between the ages of 18 and 65 who had been treating their depression with medication over the previous 8 months and were in remission. The group was divided into three sub-groups: one that continued on their medication; one that received mindfulness based cognitive therapy; and a third group that had their medication slowly replaced by a placebo.

After 18 months, only 38% of the patients in the mindfulness group relapsed into depression, while 46% of the patients who continued on their medication relapsed. This is in contrast to a full 60% relapse rate for patients who received just a placebo.

Researchers admit that the difference between the mindfulness group and the medicated group may be statistically insignificant, but the results conclude that mindfulness based therapy is certainly as effective as medication in treating depression. Additionally, the cost of mindfulness therapy is much less than medication. While the initial mindfulness training sessions have a cost, the on-going practice is totally free, making it an excellent long-term solution for treating depression.

Nicolette Sachs, MSW, LCSW

At Mountain Waves Healing Arts, we are pleased to offer solutions in awareness and mindfulness through several of our counseling and energy bodywork services. We even offer the actual Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction course through Nicolette Sachs, MSW, LCSW, one of our resident counselors.

So take a deep breath, bring your full awareness of your being into this moment and make a conscious choice about how you want to step into the next moment. By paying attention to this moment, you can improve the moment you are about to experience, and so on and so on.

Be well,

Resources:

Mindfulness Therapy Works for Depression

Meditate on This

Mindful Living Programs

Center for Mindfulness at University of Massachusetts

About Paul Kulpinski, LMT

Researchers Measure Massage Benefits

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To the recipient, the benefits of massage therapy are indisputable. To the scientist, the benefits are hard to quantify, which has always placed massage therapy on the fringe of efficacy when it comes to western medicine. New research however, has put a different light on the subject.

Massage therapy is still a growing industry with an estimated 18 million American adults receiving massage therapy during 2007. Yet little is known about the physiological effects that a massage session has on the body. Researchers at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles set out to do just that: measure the effect of a single session massage on the body.

Researchers took 53 healthy adults between the ages of 18-45 years and divided them up into two groups, one which received 45 minutes of Swedish Massage Therapy and the other group a session of light touch both using highly specified protocols that were consistent from person to person. Blood samples were taken from each participant both before and after their session to measure the levels of the hormones oxytocin, arginine-vasopressin, adrenal corticotropin hormone, cortisol, white blood cells or lymphocytes and certain proteins.

The hypothesis was that Swedish Massage would increase the levels of oxytocin, the hormone related to feelings of contentment and calmness which would then trigger enhanced immune function. To the researchers surprise this wasn’t exactly the case.

Participants who received the Swedish Massage actually experienced a larger drop in cortisol (the stress hormone) and arginine vasopressin as compared to the control group of light touch recipients. This condition creates a decrease in feelings of stress, lowered blood pressure and promotes the release of water through the kidneys and bladder.

Those who received only the light touch control session when compared to the Swedish Massage group actually experienced a greater increase in oxytocin as well as a bigger decrease in adrenal corticotripin hormone, which stimulates the adrenal glands to produce cortisol (the stress hormone).

The study, published in this months Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, concludes that a single session of Swedish Massage Therapy produces measurable biologic effects. Additionally, I interpret the findings that the type of touch, whether it Swedish Massage or a nurturing light touch, will produce different biologic effects that need additional study to measure how the type of touch can have the specific effects desired by the recipient.

I wrote about the significance in the type of touch in this blog: The Language of Touch back in February. A similar report on NPR this week highlights the importance of touch to the overall health of humans. This understanding combined with the research out of Cedars-Sinai compels us to continue to take a more serious look at touch as an integral part of our wellness. As individuals, we intuitively understand this and seek it out regularly through massage therapy. Yet the science still lags far behind proving what we already seem to know.

But do you really need scientific proof to validate what you already know? If so, you might as well enjoy a good massage while you’re waiting for the evidence!

Additional Resources:

The New York Times

About Paul Kulpinski, LMT

Naps: The Secret Ingredient to Health

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I promise to do more afternoon napping. What a wonderful thing. The health benefits of napping are irrefutable. We require them of our children and yet in our society, an adult taking an afternoon nap is frowned upon. Think of all of the phrases we have to denote laziness like “sleeping on the job”. You get “caught” napping. And when you get “caught” you’ll rarely receive praise for doing so. Adults tend to avoid naps because they are associated with someone being sick, depressed or just downright lazy.

The truth is that short afternoon naps are the best way to remedy daytime fatigue according the the Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough University. Most mammals sleep in short spans spread through out the day and night. The human species has adopted a habit of consolidating all of that sleep into one long span of about 7-8 hours per night. Research has demonstrated that the circadian rhythm of our bodies is programmed to allow for two periods of intense sleep: one from about 2am – 4am and the other from about 1pm – 3pm. This cycle is not influenced by the lunch-time meal. So to claim that the feeling of drowsiness is the result of what you ate for lunch is a fallacy.

So let’s take advantage of our natural desire to rest in the afternoon. While I despise the term “power nap”, I do believe that it’s best to do a little planning around how to take your afternoon siesta in order to achieve the maximum benefit.

First you need to choose the length of your nap to avoid waking feeling groggy. This is because of the natural cycles that you experience during sleep. A full sleep cycle lasts for about 90 minutes. The second half of the cycle (after about 45 minutes in), produces the deepest stages of sleep. That’s why you’ll want to take a nap that is less than 45 minutes, or longer than 90 minutes to avoid waking in the middle of the deep states of 3 and 4 stage sleep.

Sleep researchers have found that the shorter nap (even those as short as 20 minutes) will increase alertness and concentration upon waking. The longer naps beyond 90 minutes with the slow wave REM sleep will enhance creativity. So you might also consider the desired effect you wish to achieve from your nap to help determine the length of the nap.

The most ideal place for a nap is a safe, quiet and comfortable place where you can lie down. It takes about 50% longer to fall asleep when you are sitting. Have a light blanket on hand to avoid becoming chilled. Don’t make yourself too warm or you might oversleep. If oversleeping worries you, use an alarm clock.

If you find it difficult to relax enough to get to sleep during the afternoon, consider playing a soundtrack of nature sounds, gentle music or white noise. You might also use an eye cover to block out any excess light during your nap.

Still think that naps are for wimps? Then consider this: research on airline pilots demonstrated that a simple 20 minute nap improved performance by 34% and alertness by 54%. Napping also reduces stress, lowers the risk of many common diseases like heart attack, stroke, diabetes and weight gain. Healthy adults on average can achieve full rest with a total of 7-8 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period. However, your age and general health condition does affect the amount of sleep needed to be fully rested. Click here to see how much sleep you need.

If you think your getting enough sleep, then take the Sheep Dash test which is a fun way to measure your reaction time related to how rested your are. You might be surprised.

Once you see your results with the Sheep Dash, consider planning in a 30 minute nap 2-3 times per week into your afternoons. If your still struggling with the idea of loafing during the day, then instead of napping consider doing a 30 minute meditation. You might find that a little laziness goes a long way to being more productive! Sweet dreams!

References:

The Sleep Research Centre

HelpGuide.org

The Boston Globe

7 Simple Rules for How to Take a Nap

About Paul Kulpinski, LMT

Caring for Yourself While Caring for Your Parents

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By the nature of my profession, I’m a caregiver. While I have professional experience in care giving, I do have personal experience as well. I have children and know what it means to care for their safety, health and well being, but I have, thankfully, yet to experience what it feels like to provide 24/7 care for the safety, health and well being of my parents. My experience with caring for an adult relative is limited to some short term care for my grandfather while he was bed-ridden for a couple of months in the home of my parents shortly before he died. Sure I assisted him with eating, staying comfortable and even changing diapers from time to time, but his regular care was really on the shoulders of my parents – I guess my role was more of the way grandparents relate toward grandchildren: love them and then give them back to the parents when they’re tired of participating. So it’s safe to say that I’m no expert in understanding the complex emotions of caring for one’s aging parents full time, yet I believe that I have understanding in how to be a care giver and maintain your own well being. That’s what I hope to help you with in this blog posting.

Many care givers report feeling overwhelmed by burnout after a while. While it might be tempting to say that this is only natural, I would contend that burnout doesn’t have to be the norm. Burnout comes from the feeling of being depleted of your personal energy which prevents you from to continuing on. Burnout implies that you’ve taken your accumulated personal energy and expended it on the person you are caring for. I have found that this is a mistake to care for someone in this way. Your energy is for you. In order to care for another for any length of time, you need to become aware of and enhance your ability to channel and direct the life energy that exists freely in nature toward the person you are caring for, without tapping into your own store of life energy.

Let me explain it this way. Someone’s house is burning, so the fire department is called and the fire truck arrives (that’s you, the caregiver). On the fire truck, there’s a tank of water (your personal energy). But the tank on the truck can only hold 500 gallons of water, not nearly enough to put the house fire out. It might be enough to get the first hose line filled with water and make a start on the attack, but the house will keep burning and the water on the truck will run out unless a bigger source of water is tapped. That’s what happens when someone feels burnout – they’ve used up their 500 gallons. The fire department knows this so they’ve conveniently placed fire hydrants through out the town to provide them with that limitless supply of water (the life energy in nature). So the firefighters connect the truck to the fire hydrant and then water flows and flows, never even drawing on the 500 gallons of water that came with the truck! After some time and effort, the fire is put out.

At this point you might be thinking, I didn’t even know that I could do this let alone know where to find a fire hydrant to plug into. Where do I start? The first step is in developing a daily practice of centering, grounding, being in the moment or what ever you want to call it. It is in this daily practice that you become familiar with your energy and sensing the energy that exists all around you. Some people experience this energy as a shiver, or an electrical tingle, or a buzz – it’s unique to you and with regular practice you’ll discover how it feels for you. But more importantly, you’ll begin to recognize what is your energy and what is the energy of another. This also applies to knowing what you are feeling emotionally and recognizing when you are being influenced by the emotion of another. This is important in care giving because while you are caring for another, your emotional and energetic fields can easily become entangled with the person you are caring for. When you are finished providing care, you need to be able to untangle your energy from the other so that you finish with the energy you started (a full tank of water). Many care givers unknowingly leave some or all of their energy with the person they are caring for and even worse, may at times take some of the energy of the other person with them! It’s important to start and finish your day with a clean emotional and energetic field in order to preserve your own health.

You’ll have to find your own way to discovering how your energy feels to you. This process is what can be described as spirituality, which is your relationship to the divine (in what ever form that means to you). You might find that spiritual connection through your religious practice, yoga, exercise, meditation, or something like mindfulness based stress reduction. It’ll be unique to you and you are the only one who can say what is the correct avenue to explore it. But I encourage you to begin exploring today, because if you are in the middle of caring for an elderly parent you need it now more than ever. If you are fortunate enough not to need to provide care to your parents, begin your practice now and practice, practice, practice. You’ll likely need it at sometime in the future.

Discovering your spiritual connection requires time-off from providing care. If you are presently caring for someone, that may seem like a “Catch-22″. That’s why it’s important that as a care giver you have a support network that can step in to relieve you so you can restore yourself. Back to the fire truck example, even if your tank stays full, you still need to change out the hoses and clean the dirt off the truck from time to time so it can function flawlessly. Look at it this way. When you are at the beach, there is a lifeguard on the stand watching over you while you swim, ready to dive into the crashing surf and pull you out at a moment’s notice if you get into trouble. Well, at some point that life guard had to train to learn the skills of saving people from the water. That lifeguard had to exercise and physically condition him/herself to be capable in the physical challenges of the job. They had to get plenty of rest the night before so they are ready at a moments notice. All of this had to happen when they are not on the lifeguard stand, which means while they were training and conditioning and sleeping, someone else had to be on the lifeguard stand! The lifeguard has a support network so that while they are restoring themselves, someone else is on duty and when they are on duty the other guard is training, conditioning and sleeping. The same goes for you as a care giver. You can’t be on the guard stand 24/7. That’s the fact that you’ll have to accept for yourself. The quality of your care giving will suffer if you try to stay on duty all of the time.

Finally (and I believe that this is the most difficult part for most), is that you can’t be vested in the outcome. The firefighter knows that he/she didn’t start the fire, they are there to help put it out and whether they help or not the fire will go out at some point. As for caring for an aging parent, care giving involves recognizing that it’s not about me as a caregiver. As a caregiver, I can only provide the best care within the limits of my ability and have to recognize that my ability is not a reflection on my level of love or respect for the person I am caring for. The caregiver needs to remember that they didn’t create the condition that the person they are caring for is experiencing, but they are there to help and whether they help or not the situation will end at some point. There is also no shame in calling for reinforcements maybe with more skilled care on site or even in a facility that can provide better care than you are able to. Sometimes making that decision is the best care you can provide someone.

Below are some other resources that you might find useful in helping you maintain a balance for yourself and your own life while providing care for another. My best wishes in your efforts.

Additional Resources:

5 Ways to Ease the Stress of Caring for an Aging Parent

Caring for Elderly Parents: 5 Tips for Avoiding Caregiver Burnout

Keeping Love Alive While Caring for Aging Parents

Staying Sane When Caring for The Disabled

About Paul Kulpinski, LMT

Current Event Stress

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In each of the e-mail newsletters that we send out from Mountain Waves Healing Arts, I always include a poll to get a sense of what is on people’s minds. This month, I asked the question about whether the current political climate is increasing people’s level of stress.

While the results aren’t in yet, think about all of the rhetoric being bantered about from both ends of the political spectrum with regards to health care, the economy, taxes, state budgets, school funding cuts, immigration, the wars in Iraq and the one in Afghanistan that seems to be spilling over into Pakistan, terrorism, the list goes on and on. In fact in the ever-present 24/7 news cast (or news show as it’s now called), there’s always something stressful to report on.

It’s easy to see how people can feel unsafe and threatened in this world, regardless of whether they actually know anyone who might be involved in the latest disaster. Any more, if it’s not a tsunami, it’s an earthquake. If it’s not a wildfire, it’s an avalanche that’s trapped a party of mountain climbers on a mountain that you’ve never heard of – and likely never hear about again. That’s because most news is trivial. The only really relevant part of the news report is the weather, which can help you decide how to dress for the day. Other than that, it’s pretty much over-hyped trivia.

Now the internet and the proliferation of social networking has added to the frenzy as bits of semi-facts circulate in a whirlwind. How many times have you re-received that e-mail warning you of the latest scam that you first found out was a hoax three years ago? This is all on top of simply trying to hold down your job, put food on the table and keep the check book balanced. Are we stressed? You bet we are, but the problem is that we’ve become so used to it that we barely recognize it. We just think that this state of muscle tension and ache in our bodies is the normal level of relaxed.

Well, I’ve got news for you. Relaxed for many people today is being wound up tighter than the rubber band on a toy airplane propeller. I can’t tell you how many times on the massage table that I’ve lifted a client’s arm and asked them to relax. When they thought they had relaxed their arm, I let go only to have their arm stick straight up in the air without any support by me! This is what it means to be relaxed?

My suggestion to get back in balance is to begin to eliminate all of the non-essential stimulus that is contributing to your state of stress.

First, go on a “news fast”. This means, resist the temptation to watch the TV news, radio, newspaper or internet. Nothing in the “news” is so important to you personally. If it was, you would have known about it before the news reporter! If not, you’ll find out about it in due time. Do this for a week (just as if you are on vacation). After that week, you’ll find yourself being a little more discerning about what news information you are willing to let into your consciousness. That’s important. Preserve that awareness, because you are less likely to feel caught up in that whirlwind if you are consciously choosing the news you let in.

Second, focus on what you can control. You probably can’t control national health care reform and it’s impacts on individuals you’ve never met, but you can focus on your personal health. So spend that time exercising or doing something that improves your health, so what ever happens with national health care no longer becomes a concern because you are a healthy person. This is empowering and will help you feel in control of your life rather than at the mercy of the talking heads on the tube.

Finally, make time for something fun in your life, something that makes you laugh. Socialize with people who are fun to be with and who can bring a smile to your face. Even more simply, bring home a comedy movie rather than the action thriller or suspense drama – after all, isn’t that what the news cast is for?

“Rule number one is: don’t sweat the small stuff. Rule number two is: it’s all small stuff.“ – Robert Eliot

Additional Resources:

Overcoming News Addiction

Media Menace?

Stress Management

About Paul Kulpinski, LMT

The Language of Touch

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Earlier this month, I wrote about giving a loving massage to your Valentine. In that I wrote that your intentions will be revealed through your touch. An article this week in the New York Times illustrates some recent research into how deep this language of touch goes.

The article cites research that correlates higher student performance to the frequency of reassuring touches to the arm or back by the teacher. Patients perceived the length of time spent in a doctor’s office was longer when they were touched sympathetically by the physician. There is other research mentioned in the article that blindfolded subjects were able to identify up to eight different emotions expressed only through touch. This is powerful stuff.

According to the Times article, research is currently being done to correlate touch to team athletic performance. The research being conducted at the University of California, Berkley has cataloged each expression of touch in every game played in the National Basketball Association 2009 season. Early evidence points to the higher performing teams demonstrated more touches like high fives, hugs, fist pounds and chest bumps. Studies have shown that supportive touch can reduce the production of cortisol, a hormone produced when under stress, and increase the hormone oxytocin which is related to the perception of trust.

Try this for your self. Here’s an experiment that I do on a regular basis ever since becoming a massage therapist. The next time you are in the check out line at the grocery store, when you had the cashier your cash or debit card, try to make contact with your fingers to their fingers, in an ever so slight brush or touch so that it’s barely noticeable. I’ve found that every time I’ve done this, the clerk relaxes ever so slightly, smiles more, looks me in the eye, or somehow gives me an extra moment of consideration in a genuine personal connection. I’m sure they aren’t even aware of it, but I’m happy to know that the next person in line behind me is going to receive the benefit of my touch.

Source Links:

The New York Times

The Touch Research Institute

About Paul Kulpinski, LMT

The Gift of Frankincense

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As if the social and economic stress of 2009 isn’t enough, here we are in the 11 hour of the most stressful time of the year: Christmas. Got to get the gifts in the mail on time so they make it there by the 25th. Got to send the cards out and make sure that we include everyone who sent us a card this year too. Got to make the cookies for the office. Got to attend all those holiday parties. Don’t forget the decorations and the lights! It’s enough to drive you insane – or at the very least put unnecessary stress on your body.

Stress is the reaction of the body to a perceived threat or expected outcome. I’ve placed emphasis on the words perceived and expected, because these are the operational words in stress. To the degree that we perceive something to be a threat or expect something to turn out poorly, our stress will rise proportionally. If Aunt Mathilda doesn’t receive her Christmas card on time, we will perceive ourselves as not living up to her expectations which may create tension in the family relationship which will make us feel inadequate…. and so forth.

The key is to monitor what we perceive and what we expect. We need to be careful here because perceiving something to be a threat requires us to anticipate a future possibility, just as expecting a certain outcome is a projection into what is only a possible outcome. When we find ourselves in this future, anticipatory consciousness by definition we are not present in the moment. If you are fearing the future, you can’t be in the present. The paradox is that our ability to monitor our perceptions and expectations exists only in the present moment. It’s staying in the moment, that’s the trick.

Enter the three wise men. Legend has it that one of the gifts of the magi was frankincense. Frankincense is an aromatic resin produced from the sap of the Boswellia tree and was a prized herbal remedy during the time of Jesus, so it’s no surprise it was brought as a gift, but why. Frankincense (as is Myrrh, another of the gifts) is an anti-inflammatory. It is particularly useful in reducing inflammation of the lungs and bronchial tubes thereby allowing a deeper breath and helping a person under stress to relax. The Mayo Clinic even today lists frankincense as an effective herbal remedy in treating asthma. So it might have been helpful in aiding a new-born or even the mother in breathing after delivery.

New research has also verified the psychoactive properties of frankincense, which may have been helpful in calming and anxious mother and reduce the effects of postpartum depression or calming a baby suffering from colic. In a 2008 study published in the on-line Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem found that a constituent of frankincense called incensole acetate activated channels in the brain that lowers anxiety and creates anti-depressive behavior.

So how can all of this help you with your holiday stress? Frankincense is available in modern times as resin nuggets and as essential oil which is distilled from steaming the resin. Inhaling the smoke from the burning resin or the aroma from the essential oil will deepen the breath, open the lungs and calm the nervous system. Inhaling the sweet, balsamic aroma of frankincense can produce a meditative state from which you can focus yourself in the present moment and objectively monitor your perceptions of possible threats and expectations about the outcomes of your choices. When you can do that, stress is much more manageable.