Tag Archives: health advocacy program

Holding In Our Emotions Can Lead To Illness

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The way we feel — especially when we feel hurt or angry — can cause negative effects in the body due to the neurological and neurochemical connections between body and mind. If we internalize anger, our nervous and hormone systems react, creating neurotransmitter chemicals that can lead to harmful side effects. This can compromise our health as well as our personal and professional relationships. In short, holding in our emotions can lead to illness as well as unhappiness.

Angry Consequences 

Anger that is felt over a period of time is unhealthy. When we become angry and do not express ourselves in a productive manner, the body reacts through the stress adaptation response. This includes biochemical physical responses that can lead to illness or death. If we are habitually angry, the conditions that can occur as a result of this physical response to the chronic or ongoing anger include:

–Asthma
-Elevated blood pressure
-Glaucoma
-Heart attack
-Hiatus hernia
-Hives
-Increased heart rate
-Low back pain
-Migraines
-Psoriasis
-Shortened life expectancy
-Stroke
-Tense muscles
-Ulcers

In addition to thousands of anger and stress studies, many other health studies have connected anger to loneliness, chronic anxiety, depression, eating disorders, sleep disorders, obsessive-compulsive behavior and phobias. It can also have a detrimental effect on our relationships and threaten the development and maintenance of intimate relationships. Communication is the key to learning how to handle our anger and creating healthy and fulfilling relationships.

Better Communication Skills For Better Health

Learning how to communicate does not have to be complicated. While most of us have developed communication skills from our families and environment, there are easy-to-learn, proven skills that can provide you with the tools and knowledge you need to be able to channel and express your anger or hurt feelings appropriately.

When we are able to express our feelings (be they sadness, frustration or anger), we feel more in control of our lives. We are able to create the type of relationships we want to experience with others.

Current whole health research has clearly shown that it is healthier to express and resolve our relationship issues than it is to hold them in and allow them either to make us ill or to cause conflicts at work, home or with friends and colleagues.

Join the conversation.

For more whole health discussions like this, listen to my weekly radio show Living Above The Drama available on iHeartRadio.

Avoid Boredom To Live Longer And Healthier

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Do you know anyone who is often bored on a regular basis? Do you find yourself feeling bored? A study, conducted in the United Kingdom identified a connection between individuals who experience chronic boredom and a shorter life expectancy. The expression being “bored to death” has some literal truth in it, according to the 1980’s UK study that followed 7,500 civil servants in the UK for a period of 25 years. NIWH explores the study to see what applications can be derived from the results.

Bored To Death

The study conducted interviews on the civil servants, recording attitudes and their outlook on life. The updates continued until 25 years after the initial interviews. The data found that subjects who stated they were bored in the original interview screening were almost 40% more likely to have died during the 25 year period than those who found life to be interesting.

This same study revealed that people living with “high levels of tedium” were 2.5 times more likely to die of heart disease than those who lived a more varied lifestyle. This particular study is a wonderful example of the connection between our mind and body and how our thoughts and feelings have a huge impact on our health and even longevity.

Examining Discontent

According to Daily Health News journalist Lauren Zander, most of us live with experiences of boredom, but when our lives take on a chronic sense of boredom, the effects can be destructive to our work, relationships and, ultimately, our health and longevity. When we are willing to examine what aspects of our lives feel “boring,” we can identify in which areas of our life we feel stuck, frustrated or unfulfilled. This allows us to make a plan and take action toward change.

Boredom is a loss of interest or enthusiasm for aspects of your life. You “go through the motions” rather than being engaged and enjoying life. For instance, in personal relationships it is easy to get in a rut and not look for new ways of enjoying the company of the people we care about most. By taking a step back and looking at our relationships as if we were meeting the person for the first time, this brings a renewed perspective and interest in what we may take for granted on a daily basis.

Renovate Your Life

This information lends to several suggestions. To start, your work, family life, or love life is leaving you disinterested or bored, try “renovating” your relationship by adding new and imaginative ways to refresh your communication or shared experience. Kiss your special someone in the car instead of waiting to get home to physically connect. Bring home some special “treats” your kids or partner will love and serve it with breakfast, lunch or brunch instead of going out to eat. Plan a lunch time activity at your office with co-workers or a mystery party at home with your friends to liven up rapport.

Find new ways to refresh your relationships and your life. Encourage those around you to do the same. It’s not only fun, but this can help you live a longer and healthier life!

For more whole health discussions, listen to my weekly radio show Living Above The Drama. Also available on iHeartRadio.

A Healthy Love Affair With Pets

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While it may be difficult to get large numbers of Americans to collectively agree on any issue, it seems that when it comes to pets and the value we place on them, there is little disagreement. The 2015-2016 American Pet Products Association survey reported that an astounding 65% of all American households have a pet living with them.

An identified 79.7% of all households have dogs – over 100 million of them. Cat owner households total 42.9 million, while dogs make up 54.4. Fresh water fish, birds, reptiles and horses, along with small animals such as rabbits, hamsters, and others make up another 25 – 27 million pets. Americans, it seems, have also come to view and treat their pets in human terms. No longer satisfied with relegating the family pet to its own domain, today’s pet lovers are demanding the highest quality products and services for those they love.

The idea of buying a simple dog chew or catnip toy now takes a backseat to designer sweaters and jewelry for our beloved companions. The current trend of dog hotels instead of kennels, indoor animal toilets, perfume and even pet trench coats have flooded the marketplace. A hugely popular service “doggie dates” and exotic animal sitting services have also found their way into today’s pet economy.

For the most passionate pet lovers, faux mink coats, lumberjack vests, designer jackets, matching jeweled leather collars and leash sets, Halloween costumes, and holiday outfits are becoming part of the new “pet fashion.” Safety seats for transporting pets in vehicles are also becoming popular. Still, one of the larger pet expenditures is for pet food.

These days the pet food aisle looks strikingly similar to the rest of the “human food” aisles in chain grocery stores. Specialized, balanced gourmet meals are readily available in the refrigerator section as well as all variations of animal treats, vitamins and supplements. Special diet foods for the senior pet population offer life extension and prolonged health.

Pet dental care, tooth brushes, mouth wash, braces to correct crooked bites, and even cosmetic dental surgery are all available to the concerned pet lover. There are also pet lovers who are having their animals’ vasectomies reversed and paying for cosmetic surgery to enhance their pet’s beauty.

Expenditures on pets by their household for 2015-16 was in excess of 62.75 billion dollars. It is easy to imagine that this number must be a mistake as this is more money being spent on pets in the United State than the gross national product numbers for all but 64 countries around the world. This 62.75 billion dollar figure also represents almost double the approximately $35 billion dollars Americans spend on going to movies, video games, or for listening to recorded music.

healthy love affair with petsThe approximate 20% of non-pet households are for the most part made up of individuals with allergies, who live in apartments or living environments that do not welcome pets and those who have no time left in their over-scheduled lives to care for a pet. It seems people of all ages, ranging from infants to very elderly enjoy and welcome the company of pets. The presence of pets is so population today, that nursing facilities have therapy pets at the facility on a regular basis. The one downside to this practice is that sometimes the residents start arguing and competing over who gets to keep the cat, dog or bird with them for the day.

Our pets love us unconditionally. They listen to us when we speak, provide companionship without politics or the agenda of most relationships. They accept our love and affection the way we chose to give it without complaint and they provide us in return with affection and loyalty.

hey are the ultimate loving family member and we are now treating them as such; can anyone blame us? Social networking has become the way we communicate and “do” relationships. These days it is often over e-mails and text messages that we are starting relationships or ending them, sharing major life events –  even proposing marriage. The intimate contact of human connections we had even 15 years ago before the dominance of the internet and cell phones is being replaced by our pets.

Pets are not only beloved companions, but are also taking on the role of healers. Dogs have been long known for their service as seeing eye dogs, but the use of dogs and other pets in many areas of healing and health monitoring are becoming more widely spread. Dogs who alert their companions for seizures or “sniff out” cancer or horses that assist with helping autistic children to interact with others are easily found on the news or the internet.

A recent study by researcher Dr. Karen Allen, at the State University of New York at Buffalo. She identified that individuals suffering from hypertension after adopting a dog or cat had lower blood pressure reading in stressful situations than their counterparts who did not have a pet companion. The National Institute of Technology Assessment Workshop: Health Benefits of Pets identified that pets provide greater psychological stability which protects not only from heart disease and other stress related conditions but also reduces depression. In the same study pets have been shown to lower the cost of health care as individuals with pets make fewer doctor visits, especially “for non-serious medical conditions.”

A Perdue University study demonstrated that when seniors face traumas of adversity, the affection received by their pets and the bond between them helps prevent depression and loneliness. As a means of enhancing our psychological and physical well-being, pets have the power to love us, heal us and help us to live longer. If only we could get other humans to do so with the same honesty and loyalty that our pet companions provide.

 

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References

http://www.vet.purdue.edu/cpb/faculty_profiles/beck_alan.html  (Between Pets and People: The Importance of Animal Companionship)

http://center4research.org/healthy-living-prevention/pets-and-health-the-impact-of-companion-animals/

http://www.americanpetproducts.org/press_industrytrends.asp