Toxic Stress – The Deadly Epidemic

 We live in strange, difficult and confusing times.

In some ways, largely material, we are richer than any of our ancestors.

In other ways, largely spiritual, we are infinitely poorer.

Most of us live in well-equipped homes that our great-grandparents would marvel at. We have access to (relatively) clean drinking water at the turn of a tap. We can obtain light to work by and heat to cook by at the flick of a switch. Our homes are stuffed with possessions. We have automatic ovens, washing machines, tumble driers, dishwashers, food blenders, vacuum cleaners, television sets, DVD players, computers, mobile telephones and a whole host of other devices designed either to make our working hours easier or our leisure hours more enjoyable. If we want to travel anywhere, we can climb into our own motor cars or we can (sometimes) use public buses, trains or aeroplanes.

We have become so dependent upon these “things” that when they break down, we become aggressive and irritable. We can’t cope without them.

We are surrounded by the gaudy signs of our wealth and the physical consequences of human ambition and endeavour, but loneliness, unhappiness, anxiety and depression are now commoner than ever before in our history. There has never before been so much sadness, dissatisfaction and frustration as there is today. The demand for tranquillisers and sleeping tablets has risen steadily throughout the last few decades as our national and individual wealth has multiplied.

We have access to sophisticated communication systems and yet never before have we been so aware of our ignorance. We have more power over our environment than our ancestors ever dreamt of having and yet we are regularly reminded of our helplessness and our vulnerability. We are materially wealthy and yet spiritually deprived. We have conquered our planet and begun to conquer space and yet we are continually reminded of our woeful inability to live at peace with one another....<<<Read More>>>...

Transformation Through Turmoil: When Post-Traumatic Growth is Sudden and Dramatic

 [Wake Up World]: One of the most well-established concepts in modern-day psychology is post-traumatic growth (PTG). This refers to the long-term positive effects of traumatic experiences.

Research has found that almost half of people experience some positive after-effects of trauma, such as an enhanced sense of appreciation and meaning, more authentic relationships, and a broader understanding of perspective. PTG occurs typically very gradually. It sometimes takes years to manifest itself. Although it can co-exist with post-traumatic stress, it usually arises once a person’s traumatic symptoms have diminished.

However, over the last 15 years, I have been researching a form of PTG that occurs in a much more dramatic way. This is what I call transformation through turmoil. I also sometimes refer to it as post-traumatic transformation, not just because it usually occurs suddenly but also because it causes a more drastic and deep-rooted change in people...<<<Read More>>>>...

Brain Fog: How to Naturally Get Rid of Brain Fatigue

[Wake Up World]:  Brain fog is a general term for mild to moderate difficulty with focus, concentration, memory, and other cognitive functions. Brain fog can present in different ways, many of which are subjective and self-reported.^[1] You may experience mental fatigue, have difficulty finding the right words to express yourself, or feel slow, spaced-out, or forgetful. You might get easily distracted from daily tasks, have difficulty following conversations, or have poor concentration, mental clarity, and memory. 

Because brain fog is not a medical disorder, you may recognize it when you realize that you have a “cluster” of these symptoms....<<<Read more...>>>>....

Meditate to Shrink Your Fear Response

[Natural News]: There are several decades worth of recent research conducted by scientific bodies which hail the profound benefits of meditation. Let’s cut right to the chase, with of the most poignant findings from over 7,000 peer-reviewed studies, assembled alongside 5,000-plus year old teachings on the same topic.

All over the world, we’re more fearful than ever. We’ve been through some challenging times in human history – war, famine, anthropogenic disasters, natural disasters, and more. What’s especially insidious about the fear surrounding current events is that it attacks from multiple fronts. We are being psychologically, physiologically, sociologically, and financially devastated all at once. With “outside” fear-makers in an all-time frenzy of activity, meditation is vital to restructuring our worldview and helping to elevate us outside of the fear-paradigm.

Instead of fighting “the system,” we can address the inner demons that make us susceptible to manipulation in the first place. As George Orwell said, “Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution to safeguard the dictatorship.” And Alan Watts has said, ‘We seldom realize that most of our private thoughts and emotions are not our own. we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but that are given to us by our society.”

When we sit in meditation, we can start to unravel the mess of thoughts running rampant. Those thoughts that were “gifted,” often coerced into our minds with incredible vehemence can be seen for what they are. We can then begin to discard thoughts that cause unrest, fear, and disharmony.

Physiologically, the fear response starts in the amygdala, one of the most primitive parts of our brains. It is activated the moment we see an emotion on someone’s face, and certainly when we feel threatened or stressed. Bodily changes begin to start as a cascade of hormones are released on our bloodstream. Our brain overall becomes hyperalert, our pupils dilate, the bronchi in the lungs dilate, and breathing accelerates.

When you meditate, the amygdala is calmed considerably. Not only that it shrinks! MRI scans of individuals who participated in an eight week mindfulness course called the Rotterdam study, had smaller amygdalas and the pre-frontal cortex, associated with awareness, concentration, decision making, and reason, became thicker.

Meditation offers a laundry list of benefits aside from lessening fear, including lengthening our telomeres (an indicator of life span), promoting creativity, increasing memory, reducing stress-induced diseases like cardiovascular disease, minimizing the cytokine storms that come with cortisol-induced inflammation, and causing a greater sense of empathy, it reduces one of the most rampant problems in today’s stress-driven world – fear....<<<Read The Full Article Here>>>...

How Stress Impacts Your Body – and How to Fight Back

[Wake Up World]: When you feel overwhelmed, your thoughts start racing through every conceivable scenario. You grow irritable, and little things that previously didn’t bother you begin to drive you crazy.

You know how too much tension affects your mind and mood, but what about your body? As it turns out, stress can have multiple adverse effects and even shorten your lifespan.

Here’s what you need to know, as well as techniques to help you calm yourself....<<<Read The Full Article Here>>>...

How Stress Affects Your Adrenal Health and What to do About it

[Waking Times]: Nothing hurts the adrenals like stress and underlying unhappiness, not even food. And when the adrenals are fatigued, we’re talking serious trouble—starting with inflammation, insomnia, fungus, constipation or pain, ending in bedridden with chronic fatigue and other very serious conditions.

In short, you will feel like crap. Period.

Nothing hurts your health like weak and low functioning adrenal glands. Literally, it is hard to find anything else that will leave you in a lack-of-health ditch like not nurturing those amazing little glands. Any type of stress, trauma, and fear—BAM!—adrenal shut-down. And although it most often takes years and years of constant adrenal stress to get to the low point of chronic illness, a simple sudden traumatic event in your life can also pull the rug from under you, and your health.

The tricky part is even knowing you are under constant stress; the lingering low-grade kind of stress that kills very slowly. We tend to adjust, to accept, to allow. But when it comes to stress, it’s not a healthy idea....read more>>>...

Coffee makes your brain younger: Research shows that by normalizing stress hormones, coffee reverses memory deficits

Natural News: Do you start your morning off with a cup of coffee or tea? Many people do – and research continues to show that caffeine can have many great health benefits. 

Beyond coffee’s reputation for offering an instant pick-me-up, scientists have found that caffeine and its analogs may actually help stave off age-related cognitive deficits. While coffee may give your brain a boost in the short term, it seems that the cerebral benefits of coffee are actually quite long-lasting....read more>>>...

Reduce anxiety FAST by knowing how to breathe properly

Natural News: Did you know that a breathing technique can help reduce anxiety? According to Dr. Danny Penman’s article on PsychologyToday.com, mindfulness “has been clinically proven to beat depression and enhance happiness, clarity of thought, and even decision-making and creativity.” Penman added that breathing, which is the cornerstone of mindfulness, can help ease your anxiety and stress.

Breathing techniques are effective since your breath reflects and amplifies your emotions. When you breathe incorrectly, you can worsen your anxiety, depression, and stress....read more>>>...

This is How the Matrix Invades Your Body, Mind and Soul

Waking Times: Stress is a genuine pandemic, a full spectrum attack on the nervous and immune systems that greatly contributes to the unhealthiness and unease in our world. Few would disagree that modern life is far more stressful than it should be, and when you consider its main sources, it appears to be a built in feature of contemporary society that targets us, the masses, in order to create disharmony, debilitation, agitation, apathy and dependency. It comes at us from every angle in the matrix, and at its root is our enslavement to an economic system that guarantees eternal collective debt to a cartel of private bankers and money masters. To support this phony economy we are groomed to be good consumers and diligent workers, bred to value economic growth and material prosperity above and beyond human interests and common sense. For this we take on work we dislike and commit ourselves to being busy all the time in order to ‘make ends meet,’ all the while the fiat currencies we toil for are further debased and true prosperity stretches further out of reach...read more>>>...