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Stress along with other irritants causes inflammation.

The excellent post by Mark Hyman, MD describes how all forms of irritation create the natural response of inflammation. As he points out, the problem is not the acute inflammation, such as a sprained ankle. The problem is the subliminal, constant irritation that causes in some way most of all our chronic illness. Cardiovascular disease with its C-reactive protein is proving to  be one of the best examples.

You take the irritant away – the inflammation leaves – then the disease leaves. It can be that simple.

What are your irriations that you will remove?

Further Reading:

1. We Are Now in “Extreme Stress”
2. Is Stress Real, Is Fibromyalgia Real?
3. Stress and Colds

Here is an excellent video by Gina Trapani the founder of a great blog – Lifehacker. The video is a short course on why not to multitask. The magazine Fastcompany produced this video and blog post on the downsides of multitasking. Bottom-line, it produces stress trying to keep your focus on two or more items simultaneously. Don’t do it.

Further Reading:

1. Mindfulness does Google

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What are we doing to our kids? A recent NPR story does a thorough job of laying out how drugs are now given to kids that are not behaving as we wish.

Since the mid-1990s, the number of children diagnosed with bipolar disorder has increased a staggering 4,000 percent.

Yes, I do have a charge about the proliferation of drugs to treat children. May be it is because if I was a child today I would be given these drugs. When I was growing up in the 60’s I had many of the symptoms these kids have. Yet I was fortunate – there was no diagnosis or drugs for my problems.

My parents being good parents did what they could; they took me to speech, reading any other specialist that could help. I don’t recall any helping. I do recall feeling the love and support from my parents. There is a good chance today they would be taking me to a psychologist for elaborate tests to evaluate what would be the best drug. As the above story points out, we have gone beyond Ritalin – now the drugs of choice are anti-depressants hyper kids.

Healing ADHD

I cured my severe Asperger’s Syndrome, dyslexia and ADHD through natural means when I was a young adult. If I could do it as an adult and I have seen many children do it when their parents focused on removing the stress from their kids, others can do it.

I had an 11-year-old boy this week for a client. The day after his first session his mother reported the child was markedly better. It is that simple for most of these kids – just release the tension and their body does rest.

For a better sense of how something this simple is possible, I encourage you to read some of the other posts on this blog.

Please, let’s take our kids off these drugs. I know you want to do the right thing. I know his or her behavior is disruptive. However, there are less toxic, safer and more effective solutions. Drugs at best suppress, they don’t heal.

Further Reading:

1. The Truth about ADHD and Its Drugs
2. Finding a New Solution to Depression and ADHD
3. The Power of Breath – Media’s New Find

A recent article in the New York Times explains how exercise allows you, or at least the rats dunked into cold water to deal with stress better.

There is a catch. My clinical experience is that this does not hold true and in fact has the opposite effect if the person is exercising from a place of exhaustion. At my clinic and our Mindfulness Stress Reduction company we saw many athletes who where in what I called the Jim Fixx phenomenon. Jim Fixx with his book The Complete Book of Running help put running on the map. He had us believing it was a panacea for the problems of the day.

Fixx’s autopsy revealed that atherosclerosis had blocked his coronary arteries between 50% and 95%. The man was fit, but he died of a common stress illness – how is that possible? I assuming he was like many of the runners I saw, he was tense and exhausted.

Exercise for a body that is not only tense, but exhausted from too much exercise and stress is a stressful for the body. The body doesn’t have the resources to take the exercise and apply it to building the body. This body is not resilient; it is as if it is in a state of posttraumatic stress, much like the soldier that never can come down from constant stress of war.

I had runners who would take their pulse as they lay in bed every morning. If it was fast, it told them they were tired, so they would run less or slower or not at all that day. These runners understood exercising tired stresses the body.

No related posts.

I just wrote a post on my site Whole Revolution about how changing is much like competing in an extreme sporting event. In particular, I speake about Rosie Stancer’s attempt to reach the North Pole.

How we maintain our presence can determine our success.

Further Reading:

1. Want to Be Less Stressed? Change Your Life
2. We Are Now in “Extreme Stress”

A recent story on NPR talks about how breathing in a slow, easy manner will reduce stress. Many of you who read this blog or practice mindfulness know how focusing on your breath can be the secret to stress reduction. I am glad the media is noticing the power of breath.

“Improving control of the breath while simultaneously learning to relax is critical” to not only reducing stress, but also from everything from singing as the story speaks about to enjoying life. This is a great intro to reducing stress through breathing – pass it on to your stressed out friends.

Further Reading:

1. Power Naps
2. 8 Ways to Lose Weight – by Just Reducing Stress

A few nights ago, I saw a new film, The Living Matrix. Just released at a London premiere, it is making its way to the US. James L. Oschman, PhD, an old friend of mine, is one of the dozen scientists in the film, speaking about how healing occurs. These interviews are interwoven between impressive personal stories of healing.

The film addresses how stress influences the body and healing. You can’t heal if you are under stress. A physician highlighted in the film talked about how the key to her healing was traveling into her brain tumor to discover what it was doing for her. Then once she knew in a felt sense, she began to accept the feelings and knowledge. Six months later the tumor was gone, and she’s never had a recurrence.

I highly recommend the film to assist in creating a larger paradigm for your healing. The film covers placebo effects, demonstrating how what we believe creates our reality. For instance. the film cites a study of knee-surgery patients. Half of the subjects in the study never actually received the knee surgery, yet they had the same success rate as the ones who been operated on. Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “it’s all in your head.”

No related posts.

I wrote an article on back pain and stress. It is at Sandpoint Wellness Council’s blog.

Further Reading:

1. StressedOut.org Is Number One
2. 8 Ways to Lose Weight – by Just Reducing Stress
3. Mindfulness does Google

ADHD has become a veritable plague on our children. Some attribute the rise in the incidence of this condition to us simply being more aware of what always existed. Mike Adams contends that the cause of ADHD is diet. Others argue that this syndrome is only a creation of professionals and drug companies. Many are pushing for more testing and pharmaceutical treatment.

On top of all this, the media is telling us children with ADHD have smaller brains. But Mike Adams points out that the study the media is quoting about the “small brain phenomenon” was done on children taking ADHD medication. Further, he references a longitudinal study proving that children on these meds experience stunted growth. All these study results raise more questions than they answer.

I had ADHD as a child, I had it as an adult, and I’ve had dozens of children and adult clients with it, so I speak from personal experience. To address this issue, to get at the root cause, I believe the first thing we need to do is step back from all the hype. Let’s take a hard look at the culture our children are growing up in. The expectations, constant stimulation and projections from their parents continue to increase. Our children are simply stressed out.

What cured me of my ADHD was dealing with my stress – my old, stored stress – and learning not to reproduce it. I have found that, for most children and adults suffering from ADHD, their way of dealing with stress produces the ADHD responses.

A growing number of studies demonstrate that Mindfulness practices reduce ADHD symptoms. In one study, 78% of participants reported a reduction in total ADHD symptoms when using Mindfulness techniques.

We need to teach our children—and ourselves—to experience stress in a healthy manner. We all need to learn to accept its present effect on us, then release the stress or tension in the present moment. With this conscious response to it, stress does not build. The released stress does not find another means of expression, such as ADHD behavior.

ADHD is only one manifestation of the effects of constant stress; we are seeing more incidences of everything from childhood obesity to violence. Repressing the symptoms of ADHD with a time-release amphetamine is not dealing with the cause. When we finally deal with that root cause—the stressful environment our children live in—our children will be calmer, healthier and blissfully unmedicated.

Further Reading:

1. Say No to Anti-depressants drugs for Children
2. Finding a New Solution to Depression and ADHD
3. Mental Catch-and-Release of Emotions

Jon Kabat-Zinn Ph. D., the man you essentially created mindfulness stress reduction teaches Google about how to be mindful. This video is an excellent, simple instruction on how to use the power of mindfulness. If you are not familiar with mindfulness, use this video to be your introduction. Enjoy.

Further Reading:

1. 8 Ways to Lose Weight – by Just Reducing Stress
2. Mindfulness Is Making It
3. Guess Who Is Using Mindfulness Now