3 simple (free) ways to reduce anxiety

I see many clients who have anxiety, it is a very common condition in our society today.

If you see your GP about this it's likely that they will prescribe some form of anti-depressant or beta blocker. If you are fortunate perhaps you will be offered some form of counselling.

Some what simple steps can you take to reduce anxiety?

1) It is far more useful to consider that you are 'doing anxiety' rather than feeling anxious. It's a simple but important distinction as it opens up the possibility of change. If you are 'doing anxiety' right now perhaps you can do calmness later.

2) Cut out sources of caffeine; tea coffee, coke, Red Bull etc. If you are feeling anxious the last thing you need is extra stimulation.

3) Make sure you have as well a balanced diet as you can. Fresh fruit and vegetables provide you with B vitamins and magnesium that tend to reduce anxiety.

One extra; drink plenty of water. Being even a little dehydrated will raise your anxiety.

Work anxiety leads to stress & not taking holidays

It's something that is probably obvious to those who have a job but work pressures are mounting as the recession goes on longer. (Those who argue the recession is over might want to talk to the staff at Comet stores this week.)

Today yet another stress story (YASS?) hits the newspapers, in this case the Daily Mail.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/news/article-2235280/Recession-means-half-work-unmanageable-stress-levels.html

Elsewhere in the news we can find that those who lose their job are more likely to die of a heart attack in their first year out of work and that the secret of raising children who will become wealthy is to raise them to be happy.

There's no doubt that in spite of the material wealth in the country, it's difficult for many people to cope at the moment.

It turns out that stress does cause cancer

An article on the Daily Telegraph web site reports on a paper published in Nature that seems to show that common, everyday stress can cause genetic mutations in different cell types. These different cell mutations then form a kind of pathway allowing the faster growth of tumours.

The work was conducted on fruit flies whose genetic sequence is well known.

It seems it is more important than ever to find ways to let go of the daily stresses of live to stay healthy.

One way to do that is try one of my MP3 downloads on http://www.gift4life.com.

Of course you already know how to reduce stress, the tricky thing in this social and economic environment is how to achieve it.

Stress makes you fat

As if being in a stressful job was not enough of a problem, it is also now being recognised as a contributor to weight issues.

In today's Daily Mail newspaper they carry a short article about how the combination of emotional eating and stress can make you put on weight.

The stress tends to increase the amount of Cortisol they body produces and this in turn leads to more fat being laid down in the body. It's likely to an evolutionary defence mechanism that allowed humans to survive stressful situations. By laying down a good fat reserve we could survive even if food supplies were short.

What's the answer?

Learn techniques to de-stress, remember to eat only when hungry (not because you feel lonley/sad/depressed etc.) drink enough fluid so that you do not confuse the sensation of being thirsty with being hungry.

Exercise is a good way to relieve stress, as is yoga, walking, self hynosis or relaxation tapes/cds/mp3s. I should add I have a nice range of my own MP3s available at www.gift4life.com.

Watch out for increasing stress levels

An old work colleague called the other day. It was a while since we had last spoken. He started a new job about six months ago and then the company got bought out; there were redundancies and he had to re-apply for his own job. All very stressful.

As we chatted he mentioned his problem; on his way into work he realised the side of his face felt funny. His eye lid was drooping and his lips felt loose as if he had been injected with pain killers at the dentist.

Clearly something was wrong...but he still went into work!

His work colleagues were aghast when they saw him, one side of his face had drooped alarmingly and they were afraid that he may have had a stroke. They offered to call an ambulance and he said NO to that. They sent him off to hospital though, after much examination the Doctor said "Bells palsy".

If you have not heard of it before, here is the description from Wikipedia.

Bell's palsy is a paralysis of cranial nerve VII (the facial nerve) resulting in inability to control facial muscles on the affected side. Several conditions can cause a facial paralysis, e.g., brain tumor, stroke, and Lyme disease. However, if no specific cause can be identified, the condition is known as Bell's palsy. Named after Scottish anatomist Charles Bell, who first described it, Bell's palsy is the most common acute mononeuropathy (disease involving only one nerve) and is the most common cause of acute facial nerve paralysis.

Now this man is being forced to take a three week holiday. Thankfully the symptoms are subsiding and he is almost back to normal. In his case the Doctor believed that stress possibly coupled with a viral infection probably caused the problem.

Sometimes we really should pay more attention to our own health and the level of stress we are under. This time it was a warning to take things a little easier, next time? Who knows.

You can help to de-stress yourself with the aid of my free MP3 relaxation recording. Go to www.gift4life.com and put your email and name in the on-screen form. You could be relaxing in just a few minutes time.

Is emotional need driving diabetes surge?

Once again we are hearing news reports about how type 2 diabetes is surging in the UK becoming more like the USA and Canada.

According to the BBC

From 1997 to 2003 there was a 74% rise in new cases of diabetes.

And by 2005, more than 4% of the population was classed as having diabetes - nearly double the rate of 10 years earlier.

This growing problem is driven by the increasing number of people who are overweight or obese. Our love of fast foods that are often fatty and fried together with a much less active lifestyle have led to us piling on the pounds and so driving the increase in type 2 diabetes. (Type 1 diabetes is a heredity condition that affects insulin production in the body.)

But is there another story here? I think so.

In my one to one work with clients who wanted to lose weight the most common theme was that of emotions driving eating patterns. Often I have found that low self esteem and low level depression lead to changes in eating patterns. It seems that in a strange way we are trying to feed our positive emotions by snacking and eating sweet or fatty foods.

These types of foods are exactly the ones we find most satisfying to eat. The satisfaction is partly down to our hunter gatherer history, in our cave man/woman past, fatty and sweet foods were hard to come by but very necessary for our survival through the cold winter months. So we developed a strong appreciation for foods like these that survives until the modern day. The difference now is that fatty and sweet foods are very easy and cheap to find, meaning that we are more likely to eat them more often.

So in a way we get an emotional boost from eating these foods and given the stress and anxiety that many people suffer with today it's no surprise that this feels good to do. Until we get on the scales that is and discover that it is easier to gain weight than it is to let it go.

So are we destined to be type 2 diabetes victims? No, not if we recognize that there are better ways to deal with negative emotions than eating.

So if you have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes it is not just your diet that will need to change but also the way in which you deal with your emotions. By finding more effective ways to deal with our emotions it will be much easier to deal with our increasing waistlines.

This really shouldn't be a surprise

The recession is causing anxiety and stress.
The ongoing recession is causing a rise in the number of people going to their family doctor to deal with stress and anxiety.

Reports from many different parts of the media essentially all confirm the same story, that a recession is bad for our mental well being. The worry about whether we will be the next victim of redundancy and the concern about how one might pay the bills lead to a feeling of being permanently stressed. All this on top of actually trying to perform a job in the worst market conditions for many for decades.
A medical response?
For many people this will prompt a visit to the family doctor to help deal with the issue. Those visits to the GP (family doctor) are likely to lead to a chemical approach to deal with the symptoms of the problem. Beta Blockers and anti-depressants are often the first response to this stress and yet this will not solve the underlying problem, to a greater or lessor degree it will only relieve the symptoms.

Is there an alternative?
When faced with overwhelming pressure or anxiety there a few ways to deal with it effectively:
Ask yourself
1) Can you change the situation?
if not, can you...
2) Move away from the problem?
if not can you...
3) Change the way you think about the situation?

In the current financial climate it is often only option 3 that is open to us but without some tools to help, this approach can feel daunting.

A useful start can be made by learning a useful way to relax in spite of the difficulties. A self hypnosis recording is one way to achieve this and I have put one of my recordings online for you to download. Visit my www.gift4life.com website and enter your email address to get the MP3 relaxation download.

A useful start
Listening to the recording once or even twice a day can allow you to find a more resourceful state to begin the next phase of dealing with pressure . More on this approach tomorrow when I'll talk about a practical approach to the use of affirmations.

No doom and gloom here!

There has been so much doom and gloom in the news recently that I thought I would do one small thing to turn back the tide.

Even though many people have only been back at work for a few days, news reports are saying that we feel as stressed out now as we did before Christmas.

Ok, let's change that. Watch the video below for 8 minutes of de-stress relaxation and let me know how you enjoyed it. Let's call this a credit crunch busting relaxation video. By the way, the pictures are from Yosemite in the USA.