Russell Skinner, MDDon’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. Russell Skinner, MDPosture 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:
Ronit Mor, NDCandida. Most people associate this word with annoying, vaginal yeast infections, and while that’s true, there’s so much more to this common fungus. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it's estimated that approximately 46,000 cases of candida-related infections occur each year in America, but did you know candida is present in everyone—both male and female?
What is candida? Candida is a kind of fungus or yeast that we all have living throughout our gastro-intestinal tract and in other areas of the body. Usually, candida coexists with good bacteria in the body’s system and isn’t problematic. Trouble occurs when candida outnumbers the good bacteria and sends the system into chaos. Dysbiosis, also called dysbacteriosis, is the term for a microbial imbalance or maladaptation inside the body, and in this case, having a candida overgrowth. Ronit Mor, NDDid you know Americans are finding it harder and harder to grab a good night’s rest? According to a consumer report, a staggering 68 percent—about 164 million Americans—struggle with sleep at least once a week. Not only that, but 45 percent of Americans say that poor or insufficient sleep affected their daily activities at least once in the past seven days, according to the National Sleep Foundation
What is causing my lack of sleep? Losing valuable shut-eye can be blamed on several varying factors. Anxiety, stress, and depression are some of the most common causes of sleeping problems along with anger, worry, grief, and trauma. Ronit Mor, NDMost people still view massage as a luxury item. They place it on their wish rather than todo list. But massage should be considered as a necessity just like eating healthy and working out.
Massage therapy has been employed to promote physical and emotional health since the earliest human civilizations. The earliest indication of massage was between 3,000 and 2,500 BC in Egypt and China. In recent years, a wave of studies has documented some incredible emotional and physical health benefits of this ancient healing practice. Here are a few reasons to pick up the phone and schedule your next massage: Ronit Mor, NDSummer has begun, and with it comes extended daylight. For many people, these long days are brimming with vacations, parties, and other enjoyable events. While these activities are most certainly fun, there could also be an element of stress involved. How our bodies handle stress, whether big or small, is important to our well-being, and excessive stress can be problematic for our overall health. To get a better glimpse at how the body manages the triggers of stress, you must go to the source of it all—the HPA axis.
What is the HPA axis? The HPA axis is the interaction that exists between the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland, and the adrenal glands. This axis is the interconnecting of the central nervous system with the endocrine system and is responsible for regulating functions such as stress response in the body. Russell Skinner, MDNeuroscientists 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. |
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