7 Ways to Manage Your Stress Naturally

Our life is full of stressful events, almost everyone of us experiences stress every once and a while, and non of us escapes. This post is actually focusing more on how to cope with your stress naturally, but its very important to know that stress is very harmful to your body and brain. A recent study showed that stress may take a toll on the unborn. Women who reported high levels of stress on a life events scale were more likely to experience a spontaneous abortion at 11 weeks or later. So, its necessarily for everyone of us to be familiar with  few techniques to reduce stress. Not matter what your source of stress,  job related, family, friends, or daily hassles, these tips might be helpful for you to cope with your stress effectively.

Motion Creates Emotion: According to many doctors and psychologists, when people are depressed they become less active. This dramatically slows your heart rate and less oxygen travels to your brain. So, if you felt one day that your are stressed out, then walk around your house, or cook a meal you like, this activity would create motion and therefore, would enhance your mood.

Help Others Deal With Their Problems: You are not alone, you are not the only one who is depressed, sad or stressed out. Most people around have similar issues, sometimes they are good at hiding their emotions, but believe me its there. So, how about trying to help these people cope with their problems? This method actually would help you a lot because you will be shocked to learn that many people have worse problems than you have. You will be saying, Oh, my problems is not that bad and I don’t have to worry about it that much.

Laughter is the Best Medicine: I can’t tell you how many times I read articles about the benefits of laughing on your body, mind and life. Every now and then, researchers find a new reason of why laughing is great medicine.

• Laughter relaxes the whole body. A good, hearty laugh relieves physical tension and stress, leaving your muscles relaxed for up to 45 minutes after.Laughter boosts the immune system.
• Laughter decreases stress hormones and increases immune cells and infection-fighting antibodies, thus improving your resistance to disease.
• Laughter triggers the release of endorphins, the body’s natural feel-good chemicals. Endorphins promote an overall sense of well-being and can even temporarily relieve pain.
• Laughter protects the heart. Laughter improves the function of blood vessels and increases blood flow, which can help protect you against a heart attack and other cardiovascular problems.
• Laughter dissolves distressing emotions. You can’t feel anxious, angry, or sad when you’re laughing.
  Laughter helps you relax and recharge. It reduces stress and increases energy, enabling you to stay focused and accomplish more.
• Humor shifts perspective, allowing you to see situations in a more realistic, less threatening light. A humorous perspective creates psychological distance, which can help you avoid feeling overwhelmed.

Enjoy Mother Nature: You might forget about your stress if you walk in the park, or go for a picnic. Fresh air, green environment, smell of water, sound of waves might reduce your stress and enhance your entire
outlook towards life. Things that seem troubling, soon will become trivial matters.

Meditation and Relaxation: Try Yoga,  or tai-chi. These techniques could seriously reduce your stress and help you cope with it. Its highly recommended that you sign up for a Yoga class if you are depressed, why? Many reasons, in Yoga classes they teach you how to breath and teach you special postures for depression such as bridge pose and camel pose. I personally took a Yoga class last semester, in the beginning I found really hard, but after learning variety of relaxing techniques I bought a Yoga music CD and started practicing Yoga at home. Here is four requirements for achieving the relaxation repose:

1. A quiet place in which distractions and external stimulation are minimized.
2. A passive attitude.
3. A mental device such as focusing your attention on a single thought or world and repeating it over and over.
4. A comfortable position such as sitting in an easy chair.

Another relaxation technique that you may use is called autogenic training. Its a relaxation-promoting form of self-hypnosis involving a series of exercises that induce feelings of heaviness and warmth in the body’s limbs.

Social Support: Research showed that people who perceive a high level of social support may experience less stress and my cope more effectively. Also, people who seek social support reported significantly fewer stress-related physical symptoms such as headaches, nausea, and shortness of breath. Seeking social support is a wise way to reduce your stress, however, people with HIV cancer  are at lower risk from dying if they get social support. Throughout our lives, friends are an important stress-busing resource. The important point is our perception of social support. If we perceive a high level, we are better able to cope with stress. Research has also found that social support is associated with faster recovery and few medical complications after surgery, lower mortality rates, and less distress in the face of a terminal illness. Your friends at school or work can prevent of eliminate stress significantly, what you have to do is to find a close friend or a relative and open your heart to the problems you have. Be careful, sometimes social support does not reduce stress and benefit health. in fact, it may produce opposite results,  this may occur when the type of support offered may not be what is needed at the moment.

Exercise: Many studies demonstrate that regularly taking part in sustained moderate-level exercise can have significant health-protective benefits. The most commonly advocated type of exercise is aerobic exercise, such as walking, cycling, or running, which elevates the heart rate through sustained activity. But how exactly does exercise help us cope with stress? Norepinephrine and serotonin, two neurotransmitters that increase arousal and boost mood, are low n depressed people. Aerobic exercise such as running my counteract depression in part by increasing the serotonin activity in the brain and thus replacing depressions’ state of low arousal. So, running does naturally what antidepressant drugs such as Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxildo.

Sources and References:

WebMD.com

http://helpguide.org/life/humor_laughter_health.htm

Health Psychology – By Richard Straub

Seriously Is Earth Cooling Down Or Warming Up?

Global warming has been a hot issue for the past few decades. Most of the reports I read in the past few years, showed and blamed human for global warming. I have never read anything about the other sides of the story, earth cooling down, and global warming is not caused by human.

A recent report published on the BBC website, questioned the scientific community about global warming. The BBC Climate correspondent Paul Hudson asked what happened to global warming? He said, in the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures. In fact, 1998 was even warmer than 2008 or 2009, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

Climate change skeptics argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. Further more, they said that the warming we observed was down to the energy from the sun increasing, and the solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted. After all 98% of the Earth’s warmth comes from the Sun.

But Piers Corbyn, a solar scientist completely disagrees with this argument.

Global warming skeptics admitted that the planet temperature has increased in 1980s and 1990s, but that increase was due to a positive cycle in the oceans. However, In the last few years the Pacific Ocean has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down. This indicates that our planet temperature is not going to increase, but its going to decrease.

Is this theory correct? We don’t know, but we know that it wasn’t given much attention for many years.

Lets say it was correct, then what about all the money that countries spent to fight the effects of global warming? Was it a waste?

A new way to speed up biofuel production

Researchers around the world are racing to find new ways to replace the gasoline in automobiles. Gasoline is getting more expensive and its not environment friendly. So, researchers at Ohio State University have found a new method to double the production of biofuel butanol, and they are hoping that it soon will replace gasoline in automobiles.

bacteria could only produce a certain amount of butanol — perhaps 15 grams of the chemical for every liter of water in the tank — before the tank would become too toxic for the bacteria to survive, explained Shang-Tian Yang, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Ohio State.

Yang and his colleagues developed a mutant strain of the bacterium Clostridium beijerinckii in a bioreactor containing bundles of polyester fibers. In that environment, the mutant bacteria produced up to 30 grams of butanol per liter.

Right now, butanol is mainly used as a solvent, or in industrial processes that make other chemicals. But experts believe that this form of alcohol holds potential as a biofuel.

Once developed as a fuel, butanol could potentially be used in conventional automobiles in place of gasoline, while producing more energy than another alternative fuel, ethanol.

Yang said that this use of his patented fibrous-bed bioreactor would ultimately save money.

“Today, the recovery and purification of butanol account for about 40 percent of the total production cost,” explained Yang, “Because we are able to create butanol at higher concentrations, we believe we can lower those recovery and purification costs and make biofuel production more economical.”

Currently, a gallon of butanol costs approximately $3.00 — a little more than the current price for a gallon of gasoline.

The engineers are applying for a patent on the mutant bacterium and the butanol production methodology, and will work with industry to develop the technology.

Full post credit – Newswise.com

Converting blends of biodiesel and polystyrene to energy

Scientists at Iowa State University have invented a new way to boost the power output of fuel by blending or dissolving polystyrene packing peanuts in biodiesel.

Polystyrene also known as Styrofoam is a light-weight material, about 95% air, with very good insulation properties and is used in all types of products from cups, packing peanuts, and plates. As polystyrene accounts for approximately 22% by weight of all high volume plastics, it is attractive to develop methods to convert these waste plastics into energy.

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