Prescriptions for a New Healthy You
Upon entering 2019, we are blessed with new beginnings. An entire calendar year—a clean slate of days—stretches before us, but how we fill those days is entirely up to us. We can cling to faded concepts of last year, or we can embrace this fresh start by welcoming new perspectives. Yes, we can learn from the mistakes of the past, but now’s the time to explore the opportunities in our future. Honestly, the number one goal of our hearts is to better ourselves, right? To enhance every area of our life—spirit, mind, and body.
So just like in January we take in the whole account of the entire year—our hopes, our vision, etc.—we should be just as adamant to focus on our entire self being whole. Therefore, integrative healthcare is one of our best options.
Science News: Nature’s Xanax is Making a Comeback
While the popular song suggests “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” for some, this statement doesn’t ring true. The holidays are times of peace and joy, but for many, the season is filled with anxiety. According to a poll by the American Psychological Association, nearly a quarter of Americans reported symptoms of extreme stress during the holidays. A survey, conducted by Healthline in 2015, revealed that 62% of respondents describe their stress level as “very or somewhat” elevated during the holiday season.
What is the treatment for anxiety?
While there are prescription drugs available that are designed to treat anxiety, such as Xanax, most of the conventional medications can not only be costly but also harmful for you. Besides the risk of addiction, these pharmaceuticals contain severe side effects including paranoia, suicidal thoughts, impaired memory, judgment, and coordination. The good news is that there are natural solutions for anxiety.
Science News: How Gratitude Physically Rewires Your Brain
Don’t forget to say thank you. Throughout our childhood years, most of us had been prompted with this statement—or variation of it. Many have assumed saying Thank you was simply a polite, socially-customary interaction. But research is revealing much more. Showing thankfulness has been proven to affect your entire being. Actually, this basic virtue holds the power to physically rewire the brain.
Gratitude helps the individual focus on the positive, training their mind to concentrate on the good areas of their life. Living in a state of constant thanksgiving impacts the brain and consequently, the emotions. A study, published in 2016, required some participants to write notes of gratitude and the rest to write expressive thoughts. After twelve weeks, those in the gratitude condition reported significantly better mental health than those in the expressive condition.
Science News: Poor Posture is Killing Your Confidence!
Posture is the structural framework of your body. It is not a position, but a dynamic pattern of reflexes, habits, and adaptive responses to anything that resists you being more or less upright and functional, such as:
Gravity
Awkward working conditions
Abnormal anatomy
Athletic challenges
Posture is also more than the sum of those parts. It is the way you live, the shape of your flexible “container,” the physical manifestation of your comfort zone.
Science News: Sleep Disturbances are Linked to Metabolic and Endocrine Dysfunction
Sleep plays a vital role in good health and wellbeing. Getting enough quality sleep at the right times can help protect your mental health, physical health, quality of life, and safety.
During sleep, your body is working to support healthy brain function and maintain your physical health. In children and teens, sleep also helps support growth and development.
The damage from sleep deficiency can occur in an instant (such as a car crash), or it can harm you over time. It also can affect how well you think, react, work, learn, and get along with others.
Science News: Is Chronic Fatigue Syndrome an Inflammatory Disease?
Chronic fatigue syndrome has baffled those in the medical profession for decades, but now research is surfacing linking this mysterious condition to inflammation.
What is chronic fatigue?
Fatigue is usually defined as a state of exhaustion and decreased strength accompanied by a feeling of weariness, sleepiness, and irritability, with a cognitive component. With chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), also known as systemic exertion intolerance disease (SEID) or myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), the extreme exhaustion is prolonged, comprising of a myriad of symptoms ranging from moderate to severe. When someone suffers from CFS, physical or mental activity can make it worse, but rest doesn’t make it better.
Science News: Intermittent Fasting Can Help Reverse Diabetes
Living in this technology-driven age, it’s easy to acknowledge that when an electronic device, such as a cell phone, is powered off and then rebooted, the object functions better. From updates to fixing glitches, it’s an effective process for optimal usage. The same truth can be applied to the human body. No, one can’t simply power-off the workings of the human systems, but it could be possible to “reboot” through intermittent fasting.
What is intermittent fasting?
Intermittent fasting is the adjustment of your eating pattern, cycling between fasting and feasting for a determined period. Yes, it’s crucial to consume nutrient-rich foods, but with intermittent fasting, the emphasis isn’t placed so much on what you eat but when you eat. This regulated method is about purposefully skipping meals and eating only within a designated window.
Science News: How Your Gut Influences Your Brain, Mood, Behavior, and More
Did you ever consider there is more in your gut than your latest meal?
Gut flora, or microbiota, is the microbe population which is found in the digestive tract. The complex ecosystem that harbors these microbes is called the microbiome.
The microbiome is composed of numerous species of bacteria, fostering both good and bad. Good bacteria are vital for daily health by assisting in digestion, creating vitamins, and protecting the body’s system against infection.
Science News: Stress and Depression Shown to Alter Organ Function
Neuroscientists at the University of Pittsburgh have identified the neural networks that connect the cerebral cortex to the adrenal medulla, which is responsible for the body’s rapid response in stressful situations. These findings, reported in the online Early Edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), provide evidence for the neural basis of a mind-body connection.
We all accept that stress is terrible for us, and that when our mental health suffers, the rest of our health follows suit. And yet the branch of medicine that’s devoted to this integral relationship—psychosomatic medicine—is often written off as pseudoscience.
Science News: Antioxidant Reverses Aging by 15 to 20 Years
According to a new study performed in the University of Colorado, Boulder, older adults who took a novel antioxidant that specifically targets cellular powerhouses, or mitochondria, saw aging of their blood vessels reverse by the equivalent of 15 to 20 years within six weeks!
This study adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that nutraceuticals (pharmaceutical-grade nutritional supplements), could play an important role in preventing heart disease – currently the number one leading cause of death in the U.S.. The study was published in the American Heart Association journal Hypertension.