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The Best Stress Reducer

Do you feel stress everyday? How will you know if you are experiencing too much stress already?

There are different symptoms of stress. These will help you identify if you are under a lot of stress already. Some of these symptoms are irritability, feeling of isolation or overwhelmed loss of focus, job dissatisfaction, sleeping problems, chest tightness, and many more. What is worse is that stress can cause the development of diseases like depression and heart disease. If you experience a lot of stress, you must know stress reducers techniques and apply these.

Truth is, most of the stress reducers techniques are already being applied by people who are under a lot of stress. What are the best stress reducers techniques?

- People love listening to music. When you feel stress, listen to calming or soothing music. If you find it hard to sleep at night because of stress, listen to relaxing music before going to bed. Listening to these types of music will definitely help in reducing stress.

- Physical activity is also one of the top 3 stress reducers techniques. Some people love hitting the gym after working. This is a great way to reduce stress and at the same time make your body healthy and fit. If you love playing sports, you can also use this as a stress reducer. Or playing outdoor games with your family and friends is also very effective. Exercising will trigger your endorphins to release, these are the chemicals in the brain that help to stimulate relaxation and help relieve pain. The higher your endorphin levels are, the more you will feel a sense of well-being and feel calm.

- Time management is also one of the top stress reducers techniques. you are spreading yourself too thinly by taking in more responsibilities which you can no longer handle. This is where time management will help in reducing your stress. Each day, create a list of the tasks that you have to do and allot enough time for each. Your to-do list will help you identify if you are managing your time properly. If you find your to-do list too cluttered, learn how to delegate tasks or when to say no.

Stress, Cortisol and Weight Gain:

Cortisol

Maybe you've already heard about cortisol. It's a hormone the body produces under stress. The theory is that dieting - which produces stress for most of us - increases cortisol levels. And for women who have dieted on and off again throughout life, they may end up looking more like "apples" than "pears" because of bigger waist lines that may be associated with high cortisol levels. The negative effect isn't all cosmetic, either. Real health risks accompany excess fat in the abdomen - like increased chances of developing diabetes and even heart disease.

Reducing Stress

So how do we achieve personal health goals without adding to our stress?

Feed yourself well.
Focus on feeding yourself balanced meals and snacks when you're hungry and stopping when you're satisfied.

Move your body regularly.
We're talking about physical activity. There's much more to physical activity than burning calories. It's a tremendous stress reducer Make your regular physical activity something you look forward to by coming up with fun ways to move your body. Join Curves and see how much it reduces stress, believe me it does work.

Think positively about yourself and your body.
At Curves, we help women start to think positively about themselves and their bodies. Imagine you've been eating well, you've been moving your body regularly, and you're feeling great. Accepting yourself does not mean that there isn't room for improvement. It just helps you treat yourself well so that you can better find your way to personal health goals.

Smoking and pregnancy

 

When young women who smoke start to think about having children, they also need to think about quitting smoking. The best time to quit is when a woman is planning to get pregnant in the near future, or after she finds out that she is already pregnant. This will be better for her own health and for her baby.

 

A woman needs to gain weight during pregnancy, and that what will happen if she quit smoking in that period. An unborn baby depends on the mother to eat the right foods. So, if she stays away from junk foods and sweets, the mother's weight gain will be fine. And she needs to exercise. Her doctor can help her plan how to keep active; brisk walking is good for most women. Even if a pregnant woman gains a few extra pounds, she can lose it after the baby's born.

 

Effect of smoking on the baby:

 

When the mother smokes, so does the baby. Smokers take in poisons such as nicotine and carbon monoxide, these poisons get into the placenta, (which is the tissue that connects the mother and the baby before it is born). These poisons keep the unborn baby from getting the food and oxygen needed to grow.

 

Babies often weigh less when the mother smokes, and it is not always easier to deliver a low-birth weight baby.

These children may also be slower learners in school. And they may be shorter and smaller than children of nonsmokers. And, of course, they are more likely to smoke when they get older because they see their parents smoking.

Can smoking cause pregnancy complications?

Smoking is associated with a number of pregnancy complications. Smoking cigarettes doubles a woman's risk of developing placental problems. These include:

v   Placenta previa (a low-lying placenta that covers part or all of the opening of the uterus).

v   Placental abruption (in which the placenta peels away, partially or almost completely, from the uterine wall before delivery).

So if you are a smoker mother this is the best time to quit for your health and for your baby.

Smoking affects nutrients intake

Food and nutrient intake differences between smokers and non-smokers:

Smokers have lower intakes of vitamin C, folate, fiber, and vitamin A than non-smokers, and intake tended to decrease as cigarette consumption increased.

 

Smokers were less likely to have consumed vegetables, fruits (fruits and vegetables high in vitamins C and A), high fiber grains, low fat milk, and vitamin and mineral supplements than non-smokers.

These data suggest that the high cancer risk associated with smoking is compounded by somewhat lower intake of nutrients and foods which are thought to be cancer protective.

 

Smokers were more likely to have an imbalance between the dietary intake of antioxidant nutrients and the metabolic demand for antioxidant protection. This imbalance is likely to make smokers more susceptible to oxidative damage.

 

Smokers are at increased risk of chronic diseases because their diets are different and because smoking creates an altered pattern of demand for specific nutrients.

 

The effect of smoking on vitamin intake:

1- The relation between smoking and vitamin C status:

 

People who smoke have very low vitamin C dietary intake, this will increase the risk of severe hypovitaminosis C (serum levels less than or equal to 0.2 mg/dl), particularly when not accompanied by vitamin supplementation.

 

2- The relation between smoking and vitamin E status

 

Vitamin E disappears more quickly in smokers than in non-smokers, so that smokers have low vitamin E intake and inadequate levels of vitamin C can cause further and faster depletion of vitamin E.

3- The relation between smoking and vitamin B status:

 

Smoking seriously harm the B vitamin status, for example, it breaks down vitamin B12; other smoky pollutants can inactivate folic acid, another B vitamin. Smoking might generate localized areas of B-vitamin deficiency in the lungs.

 

What you have to do?

Up your intake of Vitamin. Vitamins is a powerful anti-oxidant, which can assist the body in its fight against various cancers, to which smokers are more susceptible than non-smokers.

Smoking and Exercise

There is little doubt that smoking is bad for your health, but you may not understand exactly how it affects you adversely during your daily routine. Even while exercising, smoking takes its toll on your body through its effects on the cardiovascular system, increasing stress on the body as well as the likelihood of a medical emergency. Smoking can prevent you from achieving optimal gains from your fitness regime.

 

Reduction in Endurance Levels: Exercise can be difficult enough without placing addition burdens on your body. If you smoke, your training endurance can be reduced by up to 10 percent. Smoking affects your perception of the difficulty of any given exercise and can slow your progress and create frustration over the course of an exercise regime.

 

Cardiac Overload: Another adverse effect seen by combining smoking and exercise is the additional strain placed on the heart. As less oxygen is reaching your tissues thanks to voluntary intake of carbon monoxide, your heart has to beat even faster to keep your body adequately supplied with oxygen and nutrients. According to Gabe Mirkin, M.D., increased stress on the heart leads to an increased risk of a heart attack.

 

Oxygen Deprivation: Carbon monoxide's stifling effect on your body's oxygen supply can adversely affect more than your performance in the gym, it can also affect your fat loss efforts. Adequate blood flow to the body's tissues is necessary during exercise to carry out the process of fat oxidation. Thus, smoking can impede your fat loss efforts by interfering with blood flow to stubborn areas.

 

Impairment of Gains: Impeded oxygen transport to your tissues caused by the carbon monoxide in smoke can negatively impact your ability to gain muscle. The speed at which muscle tissue is repaired following exercise affects your maximal expected rate of gain. In other words, your body cannot possibly begin building new muscle until it has first repaired the old. Thus, impeding blood flow can reduce your overall potential muscle gains.

 

Benefits of Quitting: Only a week or two after your last cigarette, you will notice increased endurance and improved recovery.

It is never too late to kick the habit and start down a new path toward improved health.

 

 

 

Smoking!!

Why do people smoke?

Smoking is one of the most difficult addictions to break. Scientists estimate that cigarettes are more addictive than cocaine, heroin, or alcohol. Smoking kills more people than any disease in the world. With all this information available, why do people continue to smoke?

Teenagers think that smoking makes their appearance look nicer; men believe that smoking makes them more attractive and women smoke because they feel that cigarettes release the stress.

  

Most people who smoke do so because they can't stop. Nicotine is a highly addictive substance that makes people feel energized and alert.

How Smoking Affects Your Health?

The body is smart. It goes on the defense when it's being poisoned. For this reason, many people find it takes several tries to get started smoking: First-time smokers often feel pain or burning in the throat and lungs, and some people feel sick or even throw up the first few times they try tobacco.

Clearly, the best way to avoid cancer is not to smoke. While one cigarette is not likely to induce cancer, the accumulated risk of many cigarettes progressively increases the odds of disaster.

Life insurance companies have calculated that smoking a single cigarette lowers one’s life expectancy by 10.7 minutes (that is longer than it takes to smoke the cigarette! "The price of smoking a pack of 20 cigarettes is 3 1/2 hours of your life."

One in two smokers dies prematurely from smoking.  Lung cancer accounts for 22% of cancer deaths and 90% of the people who get cancer of the mouth and throat get it because they used tobacco.

 

There are 1.1 billion tobacco users worldwide. Smoking can also ruin your appearance by staining your teeth, yellowing your fingernails, and causes wrinkles, gum disease, tooth decay, and bad breath.

Now the question is:

If you are a smoker what you want your body to look like??

Asthma and exercise

Asthma is a chronic lung disease that inflames and narrows the airways.

What Causes Asthma?

a combination of factors (family genes and certain environmental exposures) interact to cause asthma to develop, These factors include:

• An inherited tendency to develop allergies.
• Parents who have asthma
• Certain respiratory infections during childhood
• Contact with some airborne allergens or exposure to some viral infections in infancy or in early childhood when the immune system is developing

Common asthma symptoms include:

• Coughing. Coughing from asthma is often worse at night or early in the morning, making it hard to sleep.
• Wheezing. Wheezing is a whistling or squeaky sound that occurs when you breathe.
• Chest tightness. This may feel like something is squeezing or sitting on your chest.
• Shortness of breath. Some people who have asthma say they can't catch their breath or they feel out of breath. You may feel like you can't get air out of your lungs.

Asthma and exercise

Most people with asthma have asthma symptoms if they exercise in dry or cold air. When at rest, you breathe through your nose and the air is warmed, moistened and filtered as it enters your body. When you exercise, you need more oxygen and so you breathe faster through your mouth. Your airways react to this cold, dry air and the muscles around them tighten.

Preparing for exercise

You can reduce the risk or prevent exercise-induced asthma by preparing for physical activity in a few simple ways:

• Make sure your day-to-day asthma is well managed.
• Use your asthma reliever medication around five to ten minutes before you warm up. Speak to your doctor for advice.
• Always warm up with light exercise and stretching for 10 to 15 minutes before you play sport or exercise.
• Always cool down.

Asthma: Prevention

Vaccinations

Due to the increased risk of complications, people with severe asthma are recommended to receive vaccinations for influenza (flu) and pneumococcal (a bacterium that can cause pneumonia, meningitis and infection of the blood).

Smoking     

If you are a smoker and you have asthma, you should stop smoking. This will significantly reduce the severity and the frequency of your symptoms. Smoking can also reduce the effectiveness of asthma medication. Your doctor or pharmacist will also be able to provide you with help and advice. If you do not smoke and you have asthma, you should still avoid exposure to tobacco smoke.

Avoiding triggers

It is important that you identify triggers where possible, by making a note of any worsening symptoms or by using your peak flow meter during exposure to certain situations. Some triggers, such as air pollution, viral illness or certain weather conditions, can be hard to avoid. However, it may be possible to avoid other triggers, such as dust mites, fungal spores or pet fur.

Weight, diet, and exercise

Maintaining a healthy weight will help you to control your asthma more effectively. The key to maintaining a healthy weight is having a healthy diet and taking regular exercise. A low fat, high fiber diet is recommended, including plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables (five portions a day) and whole grains. Thirty minutes of moderate exercise a day, three times a week, is also recommended. The exercise should be vigorous enough that it leaves your heart beating faster and you should feel slightly out of breath. Examples of moderate exercise are going for a brisk walk and Curves program.

If your asthma is well managed, moderate exercise should not normally cause any problems. However, see your doctor if you experience symptoms of asthma during or after exercise.

 

Asthma and Hormones

When it comes to women and asthma, the ability to breathe can be affected by pregnancy, the menstrual cycle, and menopause. Women who also have allergies and other asthma triggers may struggle to get a breath of fresh air. 

Women must manage the effect of female hormones on asthma. Often they must manage asthma during pregnancy. Managing asthma poses greater challenges for women, but it can be done.

Asthma and Female Milestones, Pregnancy, and Menopause

Most women living with asthma are conscious of the seasons and specific allergies that might trigger their symptoms. They should be aware of their menstrual cycles, as well. Shifting hormone levels can impact the state of their airways. So can pregnancy and menopause, when hormones and other factors may affect asthma symptoms. 

Menstrual Cycles: A woman’s hormone levels change dramatically over the course of her menstrual cycle, whether it’s regular, or irregular. The trouble spot, however, may be right before her period starts, when estrogen levels are at a cycle low.

“Most hospitalizations for asthma in women occur around the peri-menstrual stage of the menstrual cycle -- right before a woman’s period begins,” says Maeve O’Connor, MD, an allergist and immunologist in Charlotte, N.C. “This is when estrogen levels drop down to almost zero.”

Women with allergies and asthma should discuss the situation with their physician. A better understanding of hormones could lead to better treatments in the future.