Great stress reliever tips from Dr. Mao Li

Chronic stress seems to be our national disease, especially these days. Millions suffer from symptoms of stress: nervous tension, restless sleep, difficulty focusing and remembering, irritability, and health complications. Generally speaking, stress speeds up aging. Learn the ways to manage stress, and you will look and feel younger.

1. Start your day with meditation
Spend time every day in meditative relaxation, with calming music if you desire. Start with five minutes and work your way to 15 or 20 minutes each day. Meditation is your number one way to reduce the output of stress hormones and avoid adrenal exhaustion, serious threats to your health.

Try this Stress Release Meditation: Breathe consciously, relax, and with each exhale focus on relaxing each area of your body in sequence, starting from the top of your head and moving all the way down to your toes.

2. Manage your mood with diet and herbs
Chinese Medicine considers the liver to be the center of your emotions. To allay stress and balance your emotions, keep your liver healthy and happy:

• Every day, eat lots of green leafy vegetables, barley grass, seaweed - anything high in chlorophyll - to keep the liver in good health.

• Take 500 mg dandelion daily for a month or longer to cleanse the liver and help release built-up anger.

• Take 400 mg white peony root daily for 1 to 3 months to soothe the liver and balance your mood.

• Schisandra berry protects the liver from chemicals and calms the spirit. For emotional anxiety, take 200 mg daily for a month.

Take these herbs anytime during the day and before bed in tea or capsule form. All the herbs are available from health food stores and Eastern medicine practitioners. Many of my patients have had remarkable results with Calm-Fort Elixir, an all-natural formulation of herbs to calm your spirit. For more information, click here.

3. Suppress stress with positive thinking
Instead of letting your thoughts run wild with anxiety, say affirmations to yourself, such as “I can handle the tasks I have ahead of me. I enjoy my responsibilities and fulfill them well.” In fact, repeating positive affirmations can actually suppress the cortisol that the adrenal gland releases in times of stress - leaving you peaceful and calm.

4. Get stress out of your head and on paper
Writing in a journal every day can help you release thoughts and emotions that are causing you stress. Write from the position of an observer, recording your thoughts without any judgments. Just write it down so that you can see clearly what is going on inside. The next step is to identify the source of any anger or stress so you can begin to make changes. Looking into your thoughts give you the opportunity to gain insight into your feelings and reflect the underlying issues.

5. Unblock tension with exercise
The constant pressures of your job and family can lead to chronically elevated levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which is a direct cause of muscle and joint pain. Clenched jaw? Lump in your throat? Chronic back and neck pain? These can all be manifestations of stress in your body. Release physical tension and clear these emotional blockages by using massage therapy, exercise, yoga, tai chi, or qi gong to get the circuits moving.

6. A Retreat to Avoid Burnout
Overloading your brain is a recipe for stress and health problems. Information overload is particularly harmful at midlife because we have less tolerance for stress, which can contribute to high blood pressure and heart disease. Press the “reset” button on yourself. Give yourself a retreat from the stresses of modern life. Take one day out of the seven-day week to minimize “screen” time. Don’t watch TV, don’t check email, and don’t look at the news - it will be there tomorrow, and after a day of rest, you will be refreshed and ready to look at them.

7. Perspective from the Natural World
Use nature to reduce stress. Go outside, hike in the woods, walk on the beach, anything that puts you in contact with the natural world. It is difficult to feel stressed when you are surrounded by nature’s abundance of vitality and wonder.

May you live long, live strong, and live happy!

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Tests on leading brands of bottled water turned up a variety of contaminants often found in tap water, according to a study released Wednesday by an environmental advocacy group.

The findings challenge the popular impression — and marketing pitch — that bottled water is purer than tap water, the researchers say.

However, all the brands met federal health standards for drinking water. Two violated a California state standard, the study said.

An industry group branded the findings “alarmist.” Joe Doss, president of the International Bottled Water Association, said the study is based on the faulty premise that a contaminant is a health concern “even if it does not exceed the established regulatory limit or no standard has been set.”

The study’s lab tests on 10 brands of bottled water detected 38 chemicals including bacteria, caffeine, the pain reliever acetaminophen, fertilizer, solvents, plastic-making chemicals and the radioactive element strontium. Though some probably came from tap water that some companies use for their bottled water, other contaminants probably leached from plastic bottles, the researchers said.

“In some cases, it appears bottled water is no less polluted than tap water and, at 1,900 times the cost, consumers should expect better,” said Jane Houlihan, an environmental engineer who co-authored the study.

The two-year study was done by the Washington-based Environmental Working Group, an organization founded by scientists that advocates stricter regulation. It found the contaminants in bottled water purchased in nine states and Washington, D.C.

Researchers tested one batch for each of 10 brands. Eight did not have contaminants high enough to warrant further testing. But two brands did, so more tests were done and those revealed chlorine byproducts above California’s standard, the group reported. The researchers identified those two brands as Sam’s Choice sold by Wal-Mart and Acadia of Giant Food supermarkets.

In the Wal-Mart and Giant Food bottled water, the highest concentration of chlorine byproducts, known as trihalomethanes, was over 35 parts per billion. California’s limit is 10 parts per billion or less, and the industry’s International Bottled Water Association makes 10 its voluntary guideline. The federal limit is 80.

Wal-Mart said its own studies did not turn up illegal levels of contaminants. Giant Food officials released a statement asserting that Acadia meets all regulatory standards. Acadia is sold in the mid-Atlantic states, so it isn’t held to California’s standard. In most places, bottled water must meet roughly the same federal standards as tap water.

The researchers also said the Wal-Mart brand was five times California’s limit for one particular chlorine byproduct, bromodichloromethane. The environmental group wants Wal-Mart to label its bottles in California with a warning because the chlorine-based contaminants have been linked with cancer. It has filed a notice of intent to sue.

Wal-Mart spokeswoman Shannon Frederick said the company was “puzzled” by the findings because testing by suppliers and another lab had detected no “reportable amounts” of such contaminants. She said Wal-Mart would investigate further but defended the quality of its bottled water.

The researchers recommend that people worried about water contaminants drink tap water with a carbon filter.

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“To get something you never had…

you have to do something you never did”.

When God takes something from your grasp, He’s not punishing you, but merely opening your hands to receive something better. Concentrate on this sentence….. “The will of God will never take you where the Grace of God will not protect you”.

After you think on this a while, post a comment below and tell me what it means to you.

~ Diana

My friend, Sandy, is having her first grand baby and I want to get the new baby a unique gift. It’s amazing to see some really funky baby and cool children’s clothes and unique baby gifts online. I’ve really enjoyed browsing.

When my son was a baby I couldn’t shop online but I remember how much fun it was to shop for his little outfits. I think my mother bought every baby outfit she saw. He grew out of his clothes so fast I enjoyed changing his little outfits a couple times a day. He was always dressed to the 9’s. Even though he’s six-feet tall now and can shop for himself, he’s still dresses to the 9’s. I’m a very proud mom.

Babies grow so fast and even though they may never remember the gift you give them, their parents will.

This morning, my friend, Sara, sent me a message that, for me, hit real close to home. As you’ve read, she’s going through a divorce that is turning out to be more than a challenge than she’d hoped since her husband wants the divorce as much as she does.

She’s heard me say a million times that we are never given a challenge without also being given the opportunity to overcome that challenge and become stronger. At this point, she’s wondering just how strong she needs to be.

For the past four or five years, as Sara and her husband have moved closer to parting ways, she’s found her own approaches to becoming stronger. She sent me one of them this morning that I wanted to share with you.

“Concentrate on what you want.”

“When you think about what you don’t want to happen, it happens! Concentrating on what you fear and obsessing about negative outcomes has a way of manifesting disastrous images in your head. These images are very powerful and often turn into reality.

Instead, create pictures in your mind of what you want. Imagine the best possible outcome. Take a minute or two to do this everyday.

When you focus your energy toward things you really want, rather than toward what you don’t want, the universe will respond and deliver. Try it. It’s an amazing phenomenon that nurtures your desires.”

This piece is from Meditations for Women but even men can practice it. Until this morning I’d never read this piece but I truly believe it’s true. If you find yourself being negative, always cursing your problems and where you are in life…copy this affirmation and read it daily. Better yet, subscribe to my RSS feed at the top right of this website and you’ll see it all the time ;-).

~ Diana

Serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely.

Have you ever had a Serendipity Effect? I’d love to hear more….

~ Diana

STROKE IDENTIFICATION:
If a neurologist can get to a stroke victim within 3 hours he can reverse the effects of a stroke ~ totally. The trick is getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed, and then getting the patient medically cared for within 3 hours, which can, in itself, be the hurdle to overcome.

RECOGNIZING A STROKE

Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. Unfortunately, the lack of awareness spells disaster. The stroke victim may suffer severe brain damage when people nearby fail to recognize the symptoms of a stroke. Now doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions:

S ~ Ask the individual to SMILE

T ~ Ask the person to TALK and SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE (Coherently)
(i.e. It is sunny out today)

R ~ Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS

If he or she has trouble with ANY ONE of these tasks, call 999/911 immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.

New Sign of a Stroke ~ Stick out Your Tongue

Another sign of a stroke is this: Ask the person to stick out their tongue. If the tongue is crooked, if it goes to one side or the other, this is also an indication of a stroke.

Please, remember the STR and Tongue symptoms and pass this on to your friends, family and loved ones. I’ll keep it here as well…just in case you need to refer back. Thanks, Steve, for passing this on to me.

~ Diana

“Be who you are and say what you feel

because those who mind don’t matter

and those who matter don’t mind.” Dr. Suess

“One day at a time is enough.

Don’t look back and grieve over the past for it is gone;

and don’t be troubled about the future, for it has not yet come.

Live in the present, and make it so beautiful

it will be worth remembering.”

“Because that’s what people do. They leap, and hope to God they can fly, because otherwise you just drop like a rock, wondering the whole way down, why in the hell did I jump?” –Hitch, Will Smith