by Dr. Hyla Cass and Kathleen Barnes
authors of
8 weeks To Vibrant Health: A Take Charge Plan for Women

It’s almost impossible to exist in today’s world without stress. We all feel it. The pressure of job, home, kids, health, finances go on and on. And now we’re “lucky” enough to have cell phones and Blackberries and iPhones, so your office, your kids, your spouse, your best friend in crisis, your child’s teacher . . . you name it: Stress can now find you any time any place.

Every day, our personal time shrinks. We consider it an indulge if we can squeeze in the time to simply sit and enjoy a cup of tea, read a book for the sheer pleasure of it or take a long leisurely walk in the woods.

Never before in history have humans had so much to do and so many ways to do things. Even sitting around the television set with your family can be stress producing with so many channels form which to choose (and deciding who gets to choose them) and then watching shows with so much fast-paced and violent action. We rarely get a chance to catch our breath.

Stress is taking a huge toll on our health.

The American Psychological Association estimates that 75% of all visits to primary care physicians are for stress-related problems and 75% of us have reported we feel “great stress” at least one day a week.

A 2007 study by he American Psychological shows that more than one-third of Americans suffer extreme stress on a daily basis.

Unresolved stress that plaques almost al of us can lead to a downward spiral of depression and anxiety and cause a wide range of physical problems from headaches and heart disease to weight gain, gastrointestinal problems and more.

Stress itself is not the issue. Stress is in our lives whether we like it or not. The real question is this: How do you deal with stress?

You might find some rather surprising causes of stress sin your life if you complete the stress questionnaire on the 8 Weeks to Vibrant Health website.

Until you find a way to resolve and release your stress, you’re creating a vicious cycle than can cause serious damage to your health in the long run. This type of stress is sometimes called chronic or toxic stress. This kind of stress overrides your body’s natural abilities to bounce back from stressful situation. Stress keeps piling on stress, laves stress hormones at high levels and suppresses your immune system, leaving you vulnerable to colds, flu and all kinds of illnesses.

We don’t want to scare you, but this fact has been scientifically validated: People who are diagnosed with various types of cancer have frequently undergone a major life stress, such as the breakup of a marriage, a bankruptcy or the illness or death of a close family member.

The first step in addressing toxic stress is to recognizing the stressors in your life, take action to break the stress cycle and we’ll offer you some long-term methods to keep stress from spiraling out of control.

Here are signs of stress that we may have forgotten how to recognize:
• muscle tension
• irregular breathing
• pounding heart
• butterflies in stomach
• agitation
• irritability
• sudden flush

The simplest and fastest way to address stress is through your breath. Taking deep slow breaths through your nose will break the stress cycle within a few seconds and allow you to recover your mind-body equilibrium.

Dr. Andrew Weil, the famed integrative doctor, offers a simple breathing technique that he promises will heal almost anything that ails you because it breaks the stress cycle which causes so many health problems.

Repeat this four times:
• Inhale slowly through your nose to the count of four.
• Hold your breath to the count of 7.
• Exhale slowly through your pursed lips (like blowing through a straw) to the count of eight.

That’s it. Simple! All you need to do is repeat this at least twice a day, more if you recognize the signs of stress. You’ll be amazed at the results.

There are also a number of natural supplements that can help your through stressful times, including valerian, L-theanine, GABA, kava kava, magnesium, L-glutamine and B-vitamins. For specifics on how to use them and dosages, please see our book, 8 Weeks to Vibrant Health: A Take Charge Plan for Women.

Please join us for the 8 Weeks to Vibrant Health teleseminar on Taming the Stress Monster starting Thursday, April 16. Register here.

Even though the series targets womens’ health problems, stress is everyone’s problem,. Men are always welcome to join us.

If you’ve missed to earlier segments, you can easily catch up.
When the series is complete, we’ll be making available a coaching package containing recordings of all the sessions.

–Kathleen Barnes

For the first time, scientists have found an alarming link between the use of antidepressant medications and sudden cardiac death in women not previously diagnosed with heart disease.

Scientists long-ago documented a link between depression and heart disease, but this study based on a long-term study of 63,000 women shows that women with clinically diagnosed depression who took antidepressants were more than twice as likely to experience sudden cardiac death as those who did not take the drugs.

The results, based on data collected in the long-running Nurses Health Study, show that the more severe a woman’s depression, the greater her risk of sudden heart failure and death in a group of women never diagnosed with heart disease. However, researchers tied the risk of death not to the depression alone, but to the prescription medications used to treat it.

The results do not necessarily apply to men, since only women are involved in the Nurses Health Study.

The antidepressant drugs were not associated with a higher risk of heart attacks or overall fatal heart disease.

Researchers said the study’s findings were “surprising” and “merit scrutiny.”

The use of antidepressant medications is pervasive in American society. One in ten American is using antidepressants, according to recent government figures and that number has nearly tripled in the last decade. Drugs like Xanax, Prozac and Zoloft are in such wide use that 17-year old I know says she is the only teen among her friends who is not using antidepressants.

Doctors are prescribing antidepressants like candy and we’re happily gobbling them up, despite their obvious risks. There are also the not-so- obvious ones, like the fact that lack of attentiveness associated with these drugs has been blamed for anywhere from 300,000 to 2 million car accidents a year.

I can’t imagine any drug being worth the risk of a sudden heart failure, but the widespread use of these dangerous drugs is even more perplexing when we consider that they only work in in about one-third of the people who take them.

Yet medical literature is highly biased toward supporting the use of antidepressants and there have been suggestions that negative studies have been biased or even suppressed. I can pnl;y surmise that is because these drugs rake in big buck for the drug companies.

I can’t for the life of me underdstand why anyone woudl want to take these drugs, especially in light of the likelihood that:
1. They don’t work
2. They might kill you

These are dangerous drugs. They should not be on the market. I am perplexed that the mainstream media has not widely reported this important story.

Depression is a disease, most often caused by brain chemistry imbalances. It requires treatment.

Fortunately, if you are clinically depressed, you have choices.

There are numerous natural ways of approaching the problem without the high risks.

Among the best supplements are GABA, rhodiola, St. John’s wort, 5-HTP, SAM-e, phenylalanine and tyrosine.

WARNING: If you are taking prescription antidepressants, DO NOT stop taking them suddenly. This can also cause severe health problems.

You can learn more natural ways to treat brain chemistry imbalances in the April 30 session of the ongoing 8 Weeks to Vibrant Health no-cost teleseminar series with Dr. Hyla Cass and myself, based on our book, 8 Weeks to Vibrant Health: A Take Charge Plan for Women. You can register for the teleseminars here and you can buy the book here.

Once upon a time when I was working for a newspaper, my editor had a brilliant idea: I should write a long piece about depression and suicide at the holidays. What a cheery subject!

However, as a young and enthusiastic reporter, I toiled over what turned out to be a very good piece on how many people suffer real depression at the holidays and how suicide rates are higher at the holidays than at any other time of the year.

It won’t surprise many of you that my editor decided to kill my painstakingly researched piece on the grounds that it was “too depressing.”

By making this little joke, I’m not in any way making light of holiday depression. It is real and, for many it is debilitating. One close friend tells me she’d rather get in bed and sleep until the holidays are over so she doesn’t have to think about past happy Christmases with friends and family who are now gone.

If you’re prone to the blues during the holidays – or after the glitter of the holidays ends in gray January days, for that matter – there are things you can do to ease your own pain and perhaps that of others as well.

1. This truly Number 1: Give to some one else. Go to your local homeless shelter or soup kitchen and serve up holiday meals, clean toilets, do laundry or play with kids for the day. There are always others who will genuinely welcome your presence, your help and your concern. You may find this can be an ongoing part of your life that will serve as a permanent cure for isolation that leads to depression.

2. Move. No, don’t pack up your wordly goods and move to another state. Move your body. Being stuck ion a particular mental state implies lack of movement in your mind. Move your body and your mind will follow. In scientific terms, endorphins, brain chemicals released during exercise, act as natural anti-depressants. In real-life terms, moving off the place where you are stuck moves you to a new place, and hopefully a better place. Don’t feel like exercising? Do it anyway. A walk down the street, a half an hour on an exercise bike, or better yet, a brisk hike with your local Sierra Club or a rousing game of pick up basketball will work wonders.

3. Supplement. Rhodiola rosea is an absolute favorite of mine for addressing depression quickly, with few or no side effects. Research has shown the rhodiola is at least as effective as prescription anti-depressants with two wonderful additional benefits:
• It acts much more quickly, usually producing results in as little as a week. You need to take most prescription antidepressants for four to six weeks before you’ll even know if it is going to work.
• It doesn’t have the side effects of many prescription anti-depressants, which can include weight gain, depending depression suicidal thoughts and violent behavior. Rhodiola has actually been shown to promote weight loss.
My friend, Dr. Hyla Cass, with whom I wrote 8 Weeks to Vibrant Health (Take Charge Books, 2008), recommends taking 100-300 milligrams of a standardized rhodiola product daily. You can buy it at your health food store or nutrition outlet.

You’re not alone if you suffer from holiday depression. It sometimes help just to know that and that there are simple things you can do relieve the pain so you can find the way to happier holidays.

Virtually everyone I speak with these days is stressing about the economic downturn. It’s hard not to worry about recession, skyrocketing prices, foreclosures, potential job losses and how we are going to keep body and soul together through the difficult times that are already upon us.

Certainly I can’t tell you not to stress about these things. That would be like saying, “Don’t pay attention to the elephant in the living room.”

So stress is with us. How to we deal with it? Of course, you’re going to take whatever action is necessary. You’ll polish up your resume, review your budget, cut out the fluff and perhaps even cancel vacations.

Right now, it’s just as important to take care of yourself. Here‘s how:

1. Do take time for yourself. Whether you take a bath, spend half an hour uninterruptedly reading a favorite book, listening to music or just sipping a cup of tea, your stress levels will ratchet down.

2. Do get lots of exercise. Exercise is my favorite way of burning off that jittery energy that accompanies stress. Science tells us that the endorphins released during exercise have a brain calming effect. Choose your favorite form of exercise: a peaceful walk in the woods or a vigorous game of tennis have equal stress reducing effects.

3. Do breathe. This may sound silly, because if you’re alive, you must be breathing. However, most of breathe shallowly in our upper chests. Deep yogic belly breathing is an almost instantaneous stress reliever. Try is the next time someone cuts you off in traffic. Then translate that quick relief to the long-term chronic stress most of us are experiencing these days, and you’ll see how helpful it can be.

4. Do get lots of sleep. We’ve all experienced it at one time or another: suddenly being wide-awake in the middle of the night, thoughts racing through our brains and the accompanying restlessness that keeps us from returning to sleep. It happens to most of us form time to time, but if this happens to you more than once a month, you need to take action. Beyond the obvious stress-producing effects of not getting enough rest, chronic insomnia can have profound health effects ranging from weight gain to increased risk of diabetes. Ensure a good night’s sleep by winding down slowly I the last hour before bedtime, perhaps taking a warm bath. Keep TV out of the bedroom and read something relaxing before you turn out the light. Sex is a great sleep inducer, since the endorphins you get with an orgasm can help you drift off and stay asleep. Ditto for those white noise machines and, in a pinch, natural sleep aids like Rescue Sleep (a homeopathic) and valerian, passionflower, St. John’s wort or kava.

5. Finally, do spend time with friends and family. While it’s important to take time for yourself, there’s nothing quite like the support of those who love you. Don’t hold in your concerns. Confide in your spouse, best friend, sister or mom. Don’t expect they will solve your problems, but just getting your worries off your chest is an excellent stress reliever.

Here are a few things not to do when stress threatens to overwhelm you:

1. Don’t become a workaholic in hopes this will change the situation. If you’re already a workaholic, limit your work hours.

2. Don’t drown your sorrows in alcohol, drugs or other destructive behaviors. They’ll ultimately cause more stress than they could possibly relieve.

3. Don’t give in to The Blame Game. Spouses, family members and friends will suffer and, ultimately, you’ll suffer, too.

4. Don’t talk about financial issues at the dinner table, late in the day or when you’re feeling under pressure. When you need to discuss money matters with your spouse or significant other, make a date. Have an enjoyable meal together and then sit down at a mutually agreed upon time.

5. Conversely, don’t shove financial issues under the rug or make unilateral financial decisions or attempt to hide the magnitude of financial issues by running up credit card debt.