Top 5 Scariest Movies - EVER
Friday, October 31st, 2008What do you think are the top 5 scariest movies? If you really want to see the top 5 of all time - plus two of my picks check it out here.
My little corner
Archive for October, 2008
7 Ways to Slash Stress
Friday, October 31st, 2008Great 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!
Break the chain
Wednesday, October 29th, 2008Do you get e-mails like I do that make you want to cry, pray and donate every dollar you have to a poor child or family? I receieved an e-mail last month that broke my heart so I decided to do a search. Come to find out, it was one of the many hoaxes put on by chain e-mails.
No one is really hurt by the chain e-mails other than our hearts that break. Still, they are hoaxes. So, before you pass along another sad story - check it out first - and be the one that breaks the chain.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CHRISTOPHER!!!
Sunday, October 26th, 2008
NEEDLE CAN SAVE LIFE OF STROKE PATIENT
Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008
“From a Chinese Professor:
Keep a syringe or needle in your home to do this… It’s amazing and an unconventional way of recovering from stroke, read it through, it can help somebody one day. This is amazing. Please keep this very handy. Excellent tips. Do take a minute to read this. You’ll never know, one?s life may depend on you.
My father was paralyzed and later died from the result of a stroke. I wish I knew about this first aid before.
When a stroke strikes, the capillaries in the brain will gradually burst. When a stroke occurs, stay calm. No matter where the victim is, do not move him/her, because, if moved, the capillaries will burst. Help the victim to sit up where he/she is to prevent him/her from falling over again and then the blood letting can begin. If you have in your home an injection syringe, that would be the best. Otherwise, a sewing needle or a straight pin will do….”
This is the beginning of an e-mail from a friend of mine. But…I didn’t copy all of it. I started thinking about bloodletting and it’s history. As I was reading I realized the info in this e-mail might not be totally accurate. So I did some homework.
The email conveys multiple unfounded ideas about stroke, but by far the most dangerous one of all is the suggestion that people should not be taken to a hospital until all their symptoms are rsolved, on the grounds that “all the capillaries in the brain will burst on the way to the hospital”. This statement is untrue and totally irresponsible.
When it comes to stroke every minute that you stay away from the hospital counts against you. After all, tPA, the most effective treatment available for stroke, must be given within 3 hours of the onset of stroke symptoms. Thus, even if you are into bloodletting, should you ever suspect that you or someone you know might be having a stroke, do yourself a favor and call the ambulance immediately.
Thank you, Steve for sending this to me. It forced me to really check into what to do in case someone close to me has as stroke…and that’s a very good thing.
Insurance….that nasty-nasty word
Tuesday, October 21st, 2008I hope that all of you reading this blog take the time to read this website - in full. It talks about the 10 worst insurance companies…which includes State Farm, Allstate, Farmers and AIG.
As most of you know I worked in the insurance industry from health to life to property and casualty for almost 25 years. As I’ve told my friends and family, there are companies that purposely - yes, purposely - delay paying your claim, ‘lose’ important documents and look for reasons not to pay. Many companies pay their claim adjusters bonuses for ‘not’ paying claims.
I know, you’re saying this is illegal. And, you’re right. It’s against your policy contract as well. Read the article today. If you have a claim tomorrow, you’ll thank me. There are more insurance companies than the top 10 listed that are horrible to deal with but at least the big names are in there.
And, if you do have a claim that you’re having a problem with…call me (or e-mail ;-) I’ll help in any way I can.
Make educated decisions about your meds
Sunday, October 19th, 2008Like fat burners, there are so many acne treatments on the market it’s hard to tell which acne treatment is effective and which is a waste of money. I don’t know what we did before we knew we could actually ask our pharmacist or doctor questions about the medication they were prescribing to us or before we had the internet to check out the medications ourselves. There’s reviews on just about every product on the market now so we, as the public, can make knowledgeable decisions. And this, is very cool.
Do fat people repulse you?
Sunday, October 19th, 2008
A few months ago while I was at a friends house, a commercial came on her television for an upcoming episode of a show called, “Moment of Truth” where a very large woman asked a young man sitting in a chair on a stage, “Do fat people repulse you?” Cue the dramatic music and fade to commercial.
I didn’t comment on it at the time with my friend, though I admit, both our eyes were glued to the television hoping we’d get to see what this man had to say about it. Of course the point of a television teaser for a show is to get you to tune in, so I just assumed by the look on his face and the way he squirmed a bit that his answer was yes.
For some reason this morning I was compelled to do a search on the internet and sure enough, fat people DO repulse him. It made my head spin at the number of results that Yahoo! brought up on the subject. It seems more than 170,000 websites have something to say on the subject.
As we all get sucked in to the internet sometimes when doing searches, I started clicking and reading a few of the thoughts from around the world on just how repulsive fat people are. Everything from pity to the suggestion that we be rounded up and put in to camps until we are thin was suggested.
All this reading was making my head spin and I had to just stop looking and ask myself the very personal question, being a fat person myself, “Do fat people repulse me?” My mind scrolled over the really big people I have encountered personally on my journey to get fit. Repulsion never entered in to my thoughts but feeling sorry for someone who tells me that they don’t know where to start hits home.
Unless you have avoided a movie because your butt won’t fit into a seat or said no to going to a cafe to have lunch when you were hungry due to the small size of the chairs, you won’t know where I’m coming from. The toughest part of being fat for someone like me who had weighed 440 pounds at my heaviest, is the way that the world looks at you.
People didn’t look through me or treat me like I was invisible. They looked like I was the fat lady who had escaped from the circus and they were getting a teaser for free. This does horrible things to your self esteem and when you think that we do this to ourselves, there is a lot of self loathing going on.
The bottom line is, fat people do NOT repulse me. Of course, I’m not comfortable enough in my own skin to say that is true for how I feel about myself. Perhaps someday.
Priscilla Houliston
Author of Little Changes
Visit Priscilla at http://www.LittleChanges.com/
Cookie Recipes
Sunday, October 19th, 2008
From Halloween to Thanksgiving to Christmas and New Years I love to cook and bake. I remember one Christmas a few years ago when I’d had elbow surgery, my arm was in a cast and I still made some great cookies. It helps me a lot to know that I can use my old cookbook recipes and also go online and find awesome cookie recipes.
I always try to make cookies later at night so that my husband and the kids don’t eat them all before the next morning. I have a hard enough time keeping them until the actual holiday they’re made for. Still, even if every cookie I make disappears overnight I love cooking and baking for my family.
New light fixtures
Sunday, October 19th, 2008Back to my sister’s claim with Farmers. Farmer’s is such a joke. The water damage to her home from the weight of ice and snow came into her kitchen, living room and dining room…as well as other rooms. But, for the sake of this conversation let’s leave it with these rooms. An adjuster remarked that her refrigerator and stove were rusting and that’s not covered by her insurance, as well as her light fixtures and wall sconces. Ok, let me ask you this, if your refrigerator and stove sit in 3 inches of water and are not repaired or replaced – what about them won’t rust? And, with the wall sconces and light fixtures, water sat in them as well. Of course they’re going to rust. Normally these items never rust but Farmers is saying its not their fault they rusted even though it took them OVER A YEAR to even look at them.
In any event, my sister already has new light fixtures and wall sconces and is praying that Farmers pays up since it is covered by her insurance.
