It seems that the word “stress” is becoming more common in the venue of everyday discussions. We hear about stress on the radio, tension induced by the economy, the anxiety of losing a job and the stress that comes with very challenging work. It is easy to conclude that all stress is bad if the news and magazines were your only resources for information. But is all stress bad for you? Does stress have any positive qualities?
You may be surprised to learn that some stress is actually “good” for you in many ways. The trick to benefiting from stress is to moderate the level of stress in your life. Just as a healthy body requires water, a healthy body requires an amount of stress to maintain its health. Likewise, if a healthy body is exposed to too much water (or stress) there can be negative consequences like drowning (or heart attacks).
So you are probably curious about how stress could possibly be good for you. Let me begin by pointing out that there are different forms of stress. Physical and emotional stresses are among the many forms to which we are exposed on a daily basis. Emotional stress can include being worried about paying the bills or about that lump you recently found on your back. The good part of such anxiety is that it will often drive you to action to avoid the discomfort of the worry. In this case it would motivate you to sit down and figure out a budget or to finally pick up the phone to make an appointment with your physician. (Since we are already very familiar with the negative aspects of too much stress I am refraining from addressing them here.)
Physical stress can be similarly beneficial. Think about it a moment… If you lift weights or engage in a cardiovascular exercise you are stressing your body. You are exposing your body to the physical stress of a greater number of muscle contractions which leads to greater use of oxygen and production of waste products that require removal. This places pressure on your circulatory system by increasing the requirements for oxygenated blood. This causes the heart to pump faster and the lungs to process a greater volume of air. Simply put, you breathe hard when you run.
This physical exertion forces the body to adapt to the stressor by improving its cardiovascular health. This leads to a lower pulse rate and blood pressure which eases the burden on the continuously contracting muscle called the “heart.” This exercise induced stress also improves the functional capacity of your lungs which makes them more efficient. Just as with the heart, this improved efficiency lowers the lungs’ stress load as well. It seems to be counter-intuitive to realize that more stress leads to less stress!
These examples of exercise induced physical stress are also restricted by the “too much” boundary. If you run too far or for too long then your body can respond with an injury (e.g. shin splints) or with an excessive level pain. Both of these examples are quite effective methods for your body to tell you “don’t do that again.” The physical stress of weight lifting leads to a stronger musculoskeletal system by forcing the body to adapt as well. As with running, this level of exertion must be balanced with a period of rest and recuperation or else the athlete will suffer from overtraining. This is another very effective way for your body to tell you to “slow down” or “stop that”- depending on how far you have gone beyond the boundaries.
Soon you will hear another story on the radio or read another article in a magazine addressing the harmful effects of stress and how it is such a terrible threat to your well being. I hope that you will remember that these stories are addressing the presence of “too much” stress and not “all” stress. Coincidentally, adopting a “some is good” attitude towards stress may actually reduce the amount of emotional anxiety you may experience because you are able to understand the positive sides of it. Remember, if kept in balance, some stress can actually provide a healthy and positive impact on your life.www.fatlossfactor.com
How The Light Bulb Is Making Us Fat…
When you hear the name Thomas Edison you most likely think of the inventor of the light bulb and phonograph. Some may think of the “Genius of Menlo Park” who has over 1,000 patents in his name.
Others imagine a brilliant mind that laid the ground work for the telegraph services that eventually led to the convenience and speed of communicating by the telephone. Few people, however, would associate Edison with inventing something that could increase your physical stress levels and, as a result, have a negative effect on your health.
The human body has an internal clock which regulates its activities throughout a roughly 24 hour cycle. These 24 hours cycles are called “circadian rhythms.” These rhythms are found in all animals but can differ greatly from one species to another. For example, some animals are nocturnal, meaning they are active at night whereas others are active in the daylight hours. Wild animals are able to awaken without the benefit (or curse) of an alarm clock because their circadian rhythms arouse them from their sleep. These internal clocks control everything within your body to include your body temperature, your appetite and your energy level.
Before the artificial lights became common, our human circadian rhythms were closely synchronized with the 24 hour cycle we find in nature. We were active when the Sun was up and slept when the Sun went down. We shared a common cycle with beasts and plants alike.
The human body developed a close relationship with the 24 hour days over its extensive evolutionary history. When we were in caves, we had only sunlight to illuminate our world. We eventually developed torches and candles which enabled us to move at night but with a relatively dim light source.
Edison’s light bulb introduced a light source that was controlled by man instead of nature. We were suddenly able to make a room almost as bright at the day whenever we wanted to. Instead of squinting behind torches and candles we were now able to see greater distances and read with a brighter light. The problem here is that our bodies depend on light levels to determine when to release some of the many chemicals that drive our behavior and our health. These release times are driven by our circadian rhythms which developed with the sunlight cycles.
Consider the number of times you stayed up late to watch a movie on TV or to surf the Internet. These seem to be harmless pursuits but they are not. The exposure to the light sources at hours when your body thinks it should be sleeping can disrupt your circadian rhythms.
These disruptions can reduce the efficiency of your immune system and disrupt your metabolism as well as the regulation of your body temperature. If this happened on a rare occasion then your body could recover from the stress. However, if these late night activities are consistently repeated then your body is not able to recover from the stress and your health can suffer accordingly.
Modern living finds us surrounded by light at most hours of the night. We have street lights throwing up light pollution, glowing alarm clocks, late night computer use and all night access to entertainment on cable TV. The impact on our circadian rhythms by all of this light is still being researched by numerous organizations but the results so far have not been positive.
To be fair, Edison cannot be blamed for the stressor which may be linked to his creating the light bulb. He could not have foreseen the extent to which his invention would spread across the globe and surely had no idea of the possible negative impacts it would have on our lives.
It would be irresponsible and absurd to try to remove the light bulb from our modern lives. The light bulb was a life changing invention for the world that came from the mind of a single man. It is up to today’s minds to develop a way in which we can continue to benefit from Edison’s brilliance while minimizing the stress it has introduced to our lives.www.fatlossfactor.com
Easy Pack Pain Solutions
Have you ever had trouble bending over, playing with children, or dancing? Maybe you’ve been wanting to play golf and you can’t because of the stiffness and the pain. Are you uncomfortable driving in the car and even while you’re doing light house work? You might even mind that you sit at your desk feeling the pain rather than getting anything productive, putting your business or your job in jeopardy. This sort of back pain problem is common and I think you should do something about it. The cost to you of putting up with this pain is way to high.
Before we get into my personal recommendations for you, I want to make clear that you should be evaluated by a health professional first. I don’t know everyone out there and I don’t want anyone to get hurt, so you need to get checked out as a priority. You need to know what the source of your pain is.
Once you’ve got that done, you should work towards eliminating anything that is contributing to your pain. This could be your bed, poor posture, a bad office chair, or even poor form with the exercises you routinely perform. You need to be careful as you address the pain problem because you can easily aggravate the problem, but you can also easily make it better.
When you work out, you should always keep the back’s alignment straight without trying to round-it-out. Rows are another move that you should avoid.
The way you hold your back when picking up weights or other objects is also important. You need to hold yourself to good posture at all time before you make things even worse. You should also be mindful of the way you are doing a row, dead lift, and other movements. For any drills that you’ve never been shown how to do, you might want to skip them until you research more on the proper form to perform the routines you have chosen.
Picking things up is the source of more injuries than you might be aware of. It’s surprising how reaching for something on the floor has devastated so many lives.
Many folks don’t pay attention to simple lifting because they don’t consider it as part of their routine.
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