12 Holiday Stress Tips

The holidays can be the most stressful time of year for many people. There's the excitement of seeing family and friends who you may not see that often. There's also often pressure in picking out that special gift or creating the perfect atmosphere with food, music and wine for everyone.

Whether you're celebrating Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Year's or Three Kings Day, the added stress of shopping, decorating, cooking, cleaning and traveling can be overwhelming. This can contribute to problems associated with a variety of stress-related illnesses, including headaches, skin outbreaks, digestive tract problems, back pain, insomnia, heart attacks, high blood pressure and stroke.

The American Psychological Association and other experts offer the following tips for keeping stress at bay during the holidays:

1. Don't close yourself off from others. Be sure to make plans to spend time with family or friends.

2. Recognize that you have financial limits; make a budget for holiday spending and follow it. For many people, stress comes after the holidays - when the bills arrive for purchases they couldn't afford to make.

3. Set realistic goals. Don't expect the dinner party or decorating to be perfect. It rarely is and you are setting yourself up for failure and heartache.

4. Plan a small dinner party (rather than the stress-filled mega family gathering) and ask guests to bring covered dishes.

5. When you're feeling stressed, excuse yourself from the festivities and find a quiet place to meditate. Take 10 deep breaths and slowly release them. (Refer to our blog: 2 minute tricks that beat stress)

6. Try not to overeat or drink excessively. Alcohol may actually increase stress or lead to more stressful family encounters.

7. Volunteer at a local charity (such as a soup kitchen or homeless shelter). It's a great way to interact with members of your community and feel good about helping others.

8. If you are taking anti-depressants or other medications for emotional problems, don't change or stop your medication during the holidays. This can add stress as your body readjusts to the changes.

9. Exercise at least 30 minutes a day during the holidays. You'll be amazed at how this improves your mood.

10. Get a good night's sleep - at least 7 to 8 hours for adults.

11. Try yoga, Tai Chi or meditation classes.

12. If you feel depressed for more than a few weeks, consider seeking help from a mental health professional.

Article thanks to: YourTotalHealth

2-Minute Tricks That Beat Stress

The next time you're having a bad day (or week or month) take heart: you can perk up your mood quickly and simply. According to experts, life circumstances account for only 10% of happiness. Half depends on your genetic "set point", which is kind of like the weight your body bounces back to after a crash diet. And about 40% of your happiness is influences by what you do deliberately to make yourself. Here are a few easy tricks to try:

1. Flip through old photos

When you're feeling down, break out your kids' baby albums or pics from your favorite vacation. It may actually make you feel happier than a square of chocolate would! That's what researchers at the United Kingdom's Open University found after they examined how much people's moods rose after eating a chocolate snack, sipping an alcoholic drink, watching TV, listening to music, or looking at personal photos.

The music and chocolate left most people's mood's unchanged; alcohol and TV gave a slight lift (1%), but the winner by a long shot was viewing pictures, which made people feel about 11% better. To keep your spirits high at work, upload your favorite pics to your computer and set them as a rotating screensaver. Or splurge on a frame that flips through digital photos; amazon.com has plenty of options at a wide range of prices.

2. Munch on nuts

Or sneak salmon into your salad for lunch. They're both packed with omega-3fats, which may make people less prone to depression-and easier to get along with, say researchers from the University of Pittsburgh. They measured the blood levels of omega-3fats (a reliable indicator of consumption) of 106 healthy adults and gave them psychological tests. Those with the highest omega-3 blood levels scored 49-58% better on those tests than those with the lowest blood levels.

3. Inhale a calming scent

In an Austrian study, researchers wafted the smell of oranges before some participants and lavender before others. The two groups felt less anxious, more positive and calmer when compared with participants who were exposed to no fragrance at all. Add a few drops of either oil to a room diffuser (we like the Scentball, available at amazon.com) and use in your office on stressful days.

4. Open your shades

To feel happier in seconds, let the sunlight stream in when you first wake up.

One study of more than 450 women found that those who got the most sunlight, particularly in the morning, reported better moods and sleep. Got more time? Eat breakfast near a window that gets plenty of daylight, and put exercise equipment near a bright view. Some researchers speculate that combining exercise with morning light exposure may amplify light's beneficial effects on mood, sleep, and alertness, says Anthony Levitt, MD, a University of Toronto light researcher.

5. Clear away clutter

For some, "clutter is a reminder of things that should be getting done but aren't," says Elaine Aron, PhD, author of The Highly Sensitive Person. "It can make you feel like a failure." For a quick fix, straighten up a few surfaces in your office or in areas of the house where you spend the most time. "It's when every bit of space is messy that it's most disturbing," says Aron. Don't bother to organize unless you have a chunk of time. Instead, arrange papers, books, and other detritus of daily living in neat piles or store them in baskets. "Just the illusion of order is enough to ease the mind," she says.

6. Think fast

Turn your thoughts into a race--it can lift the blues in minutes, says Princeton University psychologist Emily Pronin, PhD. For example, when your mother-in-law is driving you crazy, give yourself 30 seconds to make a list of all the ways she's been helpful to you in the past--you'll feel better fast. (If nothing nice comes to mind, quickly jot down other ways she bugs you; speed thinking negative thoughts can still improve your mood, Pronin found.) Researchers believe that rapid thinking may release feel-good brain chemicals--or it could just be a helpful distraction.

7. Cue up YouTube

Stanford University researchers literally saw this on fMRI scans, where they traced changes in brain activity to a region called the nucleus accumbens (NAcc), which rewards behaviors such as eating and sex (and laughing) by releasing dopamine, a natural opiate. When stress builds up or you feel as though you may snap at any minute, make yourself giggle: Watch a funny video clip online, or stop by the office of a wisecracking pal for a quick chat.

8. Put on a happy face

Studies show that even muscular changes in your face can elevate your happiness, as can good posture, says Lyubomirsky. Call it the blush effect: To apply blush to your cheekbones properly, you need to smile. Smiling works, she says, because "if you act like you're a happier person, you can experience all these positive social consequences. You make more friends. People are nicer to your. And those things can have real consequences."

Article thanks to: Shine from Yahoo!

Chiropractic Health :: Who can be helped?

People seek care for four main reasons:

1. Treatment of a specific symptom.
2. Preventing the symptom from returning.
3. Part of a total approach to optimum physical and mental health.
4. To improve their family's health.

The types of people who seek Chiropractic care can be found below.

1. People involved in auto accidents.
2. People injured on the job.
3. People who slip and fall.
4. People who have sports-related injuries.
5. People who have stress.
6. People who don't exercise as they should.
7. People who are overweight.
8. People who have various aches and pains from normal everyday activities.

The common denominator of the people in the above list is that they have either suffered mishaps that caused injury to their bodies, or they have body types that are more prone to having injuries while performing normal, everyday activities.


These categories can further be broken down into the following:

1. Very young children/infants.
2. Young adolescents.
3. Young adults/teenagers
4. People in their 20's to 30's
5. People in their 40's to 60's
6. People over 70

People in each age category have very specific types of conditions that they are more likely to confront. Chiropractic offers a unique treatment method to combat the various health issues that arise.

For example, the very young children and infants are more likely to have postural difficulties due to the various falls taken while learning to walk, run, ride bicycles, etc. They also tend to have more earaches as well due to the early weakness of the neck and muscles surrounding that area. Many of our patients have found that using chiropractic care for children offers another aspect of care that should be used in addition to the standard medical pediatric care already being received.

Younger adolescents and teenagers should be checked for scoliosis by a chiropractic physician. Chiropractic is the only profession that offers conservative treatment of scoliosis at the time of earliest onset.

To use a botanical analogy: It makes more sense to help a sapling grow straight rather than attempt to change a tree that was allowed to grow crooked over many years.

Chiropractic offers a gentle approach to help your child have the best chance of avoiding more severe treatment methods that may become necessary in later years.

It is very common for adolescent age children to have various symptoms that adults deal with as well. In my experience the difference is that many adults tend to contribute these symptoms to growing pains . And, because the children are younger, with optimal recuperative powers, they tend to respond much quicker than adults with the same symptoms. These same mild spinal conditions can become more serious if left unattended, especially for those children who develop into athletes or very active young adults.

As the age groups get older, the conditions become more obvious ones. Lower back problems, neck pain, and headaches are all very common maladies. They can be caused by poor posture, poor lifting and bending procedures, the stress of our jobs, auto accidents, etc. These conditions must be taken seriously because if not, they create more life-long problems. This is very evident when examining the 40-60 and older categories. After reviewing patient histories taken over many years in practice, it is obvious that the majority of these conditions were caused by not fully correcting spinal problems that occurred many years in the past. Perhaps this may have been due to the fact that prior to the 1990's, Chiropractic did not get the acclaim it has gotten recently in helping these structural conditions.

Information via ChiroWeb

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