1. Inform kids about the importance of fear and how it keeps them safe. Inform them that fear is a normal reaction to perceived danger and that it can aid them in making wise decisions.

2. You can convey the concept of dread using age-appropriate novels, films, or articles, for instance. For instance, Todd Parr’s “The Emotions Book” offers a vivid and interesting introduction to several emotions, including dread.

3. Promote free communication by creating a secure setting where kids can voice their anxieties without fear of repercussion. Pay close attention to their worries, and then reassure and support them.

4. Take the fear of the dark as an illustration. When your child shares this worry, listen to their worries and talk about ways to deal with it. Parenting for Brain and other websites provide guidance on how to foster open communication with kids.

5. Healthy examples of how to handle fear are best illustrated by handling your own fears and worries in a calm manner. In this way, you can show others how to respond to fear appropriately. This encourages kids to follow your lead and learn positive coping skills. Unfortunately, many adults fail to see the effect they have on kids. I know someone who learned to fear even ladybugs because her mother became so upset at seeing one.

6. Take one thing that many people fear, such as spiders or other bugs. If you’re frightened of spiders, you should gently remove the spider or call for help rather than freaking out. This demonstrates to kids that worries can be addressed without having to take drastic measures.

7. Exposing children to their concerns in a controlled way while utilizing age-appropriate techniques is known as “gradual exposure.” This method of systematic desensitization aids in children’s resilience development and helps them get over unreasonable anxieties. A parent I know took his young son to a pet park, where the boy learned that even large snakes (such as a yellow python) can be harmless. They took photos with the snake to have at home as a reminder that some snakes are harmless, and others need to be avoided.

If a youngster is afraid of dogs, start by showing them photographs of dogs, then go on to movies of dogs, and lastly, expose them to a nice, calm dog in a safe environment. This is a well-known behavioral technique used in therapy for dog phobia. A young boy, who received a pet mouse, grew to love the little creature so much that he became a veterinarian when he reached adulthood.

8. Teach relaxation skills to assist children in learning how to handle their anxiety and terror. Exercises that involve deep breathing, visualization, and progressive muscle relaxation can all help reduce anxiety.

Another website that is useful and contains helpful exercises for kids is “Calm Kids”, which provides children with guided breathing exercises and mindfulness exercises that are age-appropriate.

9. Encourage a positive outlook by helping kids avoid concentrating on their worries by encouraging them to focus on the positive aspects of their experiences. Encourage them to adopt a growth attitude by stressing that failures and errors are opportunities to improve.

For instance, if a youngster is fearful of failing, acknowledge their effort and perseverance in overcoming difficulties, reinforcing the notion that failures are a normal part of learning.

10. Create a welcoming social atmosphere to provide children with friends and classmates who react to fear in a healthy way as positive role models. Promote relationships that foster empathy, teamwork, and emotional health.

A sports team or a volunteer organization are two examples of groups or activities that expose kids to positive social settings and promote collaboration and teamwork. And, remember, that teamwork later in their adulthood will be useful in whatever work or creative activities in which they engage. Teams are valuable in this way.

Last, of all, keep in mind that every child is different, so it’s crucial to adapt these strategies to each one’s specific demands and phases of development. You may support children’s resilience and mental well-being by encouraging appropriate fear reactions and avoiding modeling phobias.

The post Raising Children With Appropriate Fear Responses, Not Modeling Phobias appeared first on Medika Life.

Think tanks such as the Pew Research Center have shown that social media now provides political and cultural news to one-half of Americans. The topics, whether seemingly benign or graphically serious in nature, stick with us, and that’s where the damage may begin. This is especially true when it comes to highly serious issues related to the Covid pandemic.

Political media news also affects children, and teen icons are rising up to address these issues. For example, Greta Thunberg, a teen environmental activist, and David Hogg, a gun ownership activist and survivor of a school attack, and Malala Yousafzai, another school shooting survivor.

The presence of upsetting politics in our lives can damage our mental and physical health. Anxiety, sadness, sleep disturbances, and even heart disease have all been linked to political stress.

Unpredictability and resulting chronic stress are the most difficult aspects of political life. Our emotional well-being can take a hit when we have no control over these circumstances. Will there be another shutdown of the federal government? Do you think there will be another major shooting? How likely is a nuclear assault from a foreign country? Will a recession cost me my job, and we’ll lose our home?

The emotional toll of being subjected to constant bad news is significant. When we hear about violence, lies, and corruption all the time, it’s easy to feel powerless and even suspicious.

There’s also the persistent prodding to pick a side. It appears impossible to be impartial in today’s political climate. You are for or against someone, for or against gun control, and for or against issues like abortion, healthcare, taxes, school lunches, or other social programs, and even Medicare and Social Security. We know that stress affects our decision-making, so we must help ourselves.

What can we do to help ourselves remain on an even keel and protect our mental and physical health? Researchers are looking for answers and some are now coming forth. This isn’t rocket science, but it makes good sense.

One solution is to limit our exposure to upsetting or completely biased news. Stop yourself from “doomscrolling,” the constant seeking out of media detailing the pandemic or other disturbing news. One expert named this “headline stress disorder” and even “election stress disorder.” He believes this erodes our resilience to maintain stress under our control.

The intent here is not to leave yourself devoid of information and to become a pawn in any way. You need to keep abreast of government affairs and how they affect you and your community. But excessively zeroing in solely on political discussions and news does not provide only pertinent material; it provides material.

Dead air on TV is verboten, just as newspapers, magazines, and internet blogs or publications need to fill their designated spaces with copy. Is it always something that provides you with needed information? How could it possibly do that?

A second means of handling this stress is to take action and not give in to feelings of helplessness. We’ve seen many ads encouraging people to vote, write letters to the editor, or make phone calls about issues that affect them socially, financially, or emotionally. Action is a good way to stay healthy.

Third, focus on what you can do and devote yourself to a pleasurable activity, such as a hobby or a group (social service, church, environmentalists, etc.). Volunteer in your area. In fact, research on charitable works for others has shown that it benefits the volunteer just as much as the person or group receiving the help.

What other ways can you help yourself in stressful, politically uncertain times? Take a journal and start writing things down and how you might counter the stress they cause. Track how successfully you’ve met your daily goals. And remember, accentuate the positive.

The post Paying a High Cost in Personal Health for Politics appeared first on Medika Life.

STRESS CAN PLAY HAVOC WITH YOUR BRAIN HEALTH. Today we explore how you can walk away from stress and other means to calm your brain.

One of the best stress-busters is one of the easiest for many of us: Put one foot in front of the other and walk.

Other negative contributants to cognitive well-being include too much sitting, lack of socializing, and inadequate sleep. Fortunately, we can often change our lifestyles to optimize our brain’s well-being.

Chronic stress and health

Do you ever get forgetful or feel disorganized in times of stress? I know that I have had this experience. There are these acute negative consequences of stress, but the chronic ones are in our sights today.

Chronic stress may change your brain to affect cognitive functions such as memory. Listen to Dr. Jull Goldstein, Professor of Psychiatry and Medicine at Harvard Medical School:

“Stress affects not only memory and many other brain functions, like mood and anxiety, but also promotes inflammation, which adversely affects heart health.”

Acute stress, memory, and cognition

Why does stress affect our memory and thinking? Let’s get back to brain basics. Rather than thinking of the brain as one unit, conceive of it as a bunch of disparate parts that perform different tasks.

Dr. Kerry Ressler, chief scientific officer at McLean Hospital and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, explains that when one part of the brain is engaged, the other parts may not have as much energy to do their assigned tasks.

This explanation makes sense to me. For instance, let’s say you are in an alleyway and fear being the victim of a robbery. Your amygdala, designed to activate our survival instincts, takes charge in a “fight or flight” fashion.

The other brain structures, including ones designed to store memories or perform high-order tasks, have less energy to do their jobs. In survival mode, energy shunts to brain structures that help us to survive the moment. In this context, you would not be surprised that the stress associated with traumatic events can make us forgetful.

Chronic stress and the brain

Did you know that chronic stress can rewire your brain? Dr. Ressler explains that animals that experience stress over long periods have lower activity levels in brain parts designated for performing high-order tasks (for example, the prefrontal cortex).

On the other hand, chronic stress leads to more activity in primitive parts of the brain focused on survival (for example, the amygdala). The brain builds up the parts of the brain that handle threats, while the brain regions dealing with more complex thought become a lower priority.

Stress management

Many of us could do a better job of coping with stress. Here are some tips that may help you better manage your stress (and hopefully dodge some of its brain-damaging effects):

• Try to establish some control over your situation. While stress is not always predictable, it may help to focus on what you do have control over. Having a routine helps me quite a bit.
• Get some sleep. Stress can cause challenges with sleep, and inadequate sleep affects our brain’s higher-function regions.

5 Things You Need to Do to Get Better Sleep, Backed by ScienceA STRONG BIOLOGIC DRIVE regulates sleep, but the ability to fall asleep at your preferred time and to maintain…medium.com

“You must learn to let go. Release the stress. You were never in control anyway.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

• Be flexible with your reactions. When I sense that I am about to get upset, I know that I have no more than a second or two before my brain’s primitive centers kick in. Stop and breathe. That driver that cut you off? Not worth reacting to. Breathe and thank yourself later. This brain hack works wonders for me. Alternatively, repeat some mantra to yourself, such as “I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay.” Done quickly, you may keep your mind in the thinking brain rather than the primitive amygdala.
• Change your mindset. We all experience some degree of stress. We need some stress to grow.
• Use lists. The day can seem overwhelming, but I love having my task list. Even better, I love crossing things off.
• Get help if you need it. Early intervention may help you avoid long-term health consequences from chronic stress.

The post How Stress Affects Your Brain appeared first on Medika Life.

It’s also not a new idea that stress causes heart disease. Cardiac patients have been told to lower their stress levels for decades by avoiding strenuous activity — but unfortunately, they haven’t been told much more than that. Healthcare providers tend to focus more on things that are easily measurable like medication adherence, blood pressure, smoking, and cholesterol. Stress seems like a slippery, messy, wishy-washy concept that we are not well equipped to address. But some recent science suggests the role of mental stress in cardiovascular disease might be more significant than previously understood. In light of this evidence, a deeper dive into the concept of stress is warranted.

Stress: what it does to the body

Stress is the body’s physical and mental response to changes and challenges (stressors). The stressors themselves can be physical, like hard exercise or injury, or mental, like emotional upset or trauma. Some of the body’s responses are helpful, especially in the short term.

Increased alertness, heightened perception, increased blood flow to muscles, and increased energy availability can help you respond to a stressor. Appropriate levels of stress can also lead to adaptation over time. However, when stress is chronically high, these mechanisms can become maladaptive, and without time to rest and recuperate, adaptation doesn’t occur.

In mental stress, the brain responds to fear (processed in the amygdala) by activating the sympathetic nervous system (that’s the fight-or-flight response). This sets off a cascade of hormones that can serve to protect the body from danger acutely, but chronic activation can result in increased body fat, insulin resistance, hypertension, vascular inflammation, and atherosclerosis.

Chronic systemic inflammation created through these mechanisms is also a potential consequence of ongoing stress. A chronic inflammatory state is associated with a host of chronic illnesses. This is one likely mechanism for how poverty, racism, abuse, and other so-called social determinants of health are major contributors to observed health disparities.

So what does the evidence say?

A large (n=24,767) case-control study published in the journal Lancet in 2004 reported that psychological stress was an independent predictor of later heart attacks. A more recent study published in JAMA late last year (including 918 patients over nine years) reiterates this finding with more specificity. Not only can mental stress lead to cardiac ischemia (reduced blood flow to the heart), but patients who develop mental stress-induced ischemia are more likely to experience heart attacks and to die over the next four to eight years. These findings tell us clearly that in people with any degree of underlying heart disease, mental stress is strongly associated with heart attacks and death. This isn’t a negligible effect or a questionable outcome. These are meaningful, relevant endpoints, and we should care about them.

Is there a prescription for stress?

Perhaps you work in, or get care in, a patient-centered medical home with an integrated behavioral health team that has the training and resources to coach people through long-term, evidence-based stress management programs. But probably not. Absent a perfect solution, what tools do healthcare providers and patients have at their disposal? Physical exercise is one tool that can reliably modulate the body’s stress responses, including inflammation. Others include consistent, high-quality sleep, mindfulness practices, and an anti-inflammatory diet pattern. For some, medication to treat anxiety or depression can lessen activation of the stress response.

Exercise, get good sleep, eat well, meditate, and take your medication? This list reads like a who’s who of behaviors that are hard to change. For people who are used to getting simple prescriptions from their healthcare providers, advice to make changes to their lives and habits is often ineffective. Most people don’t have experience with positive goal setting and behavior change, and most clinicians think they lack the expertise and/or time to counsel them. There are promising models to address these challenges, including group visits, behavior change specialists embedded into primary care, integrative medicine practices, and health coaching. For many, though, these services are not available, too expensive, or otherwise out of reach.

Practical tips for providers & patients to try

So what CAN you do, as a clinician or a patient seeking to encourage stress reduction as a means to reduce cardiac risk? First, acknowledge that this is a different kind of prescription — not everyone will be game for it. Ask your patient (or yourself) if they’re willing to try this approach. If they are, here are some tips to guide you.

• Make it meaningful. Scare tactics don’t work. Tying change to individual values does. Try asking an open-ended question like “what do you want to be in good health for?”.
• Make it personal. Consider offering some possible directions and seeing which one sounds most interesting, doable, or important. For some, increasing physical activity will be appealing; for others, it may seem impossible. Explore what will work best for each individual.
• Make it specific. Trying to make huge, sweeping changes is overwhelming. Advice to “eat better” or “exercise more” doesn’t create a path forward. Offer targeted information and encourage identifying small, manageable actions steps, one at a time.
• Offer affirmation & accountability. Believe in each person’s strengths, acknowledge their skills and successes, and help them stay connected to their intention to change. For some people, a reminder letter or a quick question at a follow-up visit will do the trick. Others might find keeping a log or looping in a loved one helps.

This process, believe it or not, can be accomplished in just a few minutes if that’s all you have. If you don’t believe me, give it a try! With a little practice, I’ve been able to implement this style of counseling into routine primary care visits without getting behind. As an added bonus, most people really value being listened to in this way.

Clearly, brief counseling in medical visits is not a panacea and won’t undo stress, especially chronic stress from poverty or racism. But it is an inexpensive, empowering, and science-based risk reduction strategy that anyone can implement in any setting — and that’s a great place to start. Are you ready to add stress reduction to your cardiac risk management toolkit?

Elizabeth Knight is a scientist, nurse practitioner, educator, and coach. You can find her at www.flowerpower.health.

The post The Latest Science on Stress appeared first on Medika Life.

• Has an inappropriate response to a situation
• Cannot control the response
• Has an altered way of life due to the anxiety

Anxiety disorders include:

• Panic Disorder
• Phobias

What is Panic Disorder?

Panic disorder is an anxiety disorder. It causes panic attacks, which are sudden feelings of terror for no reason. You may also feel physical symptoms, such as:

• Fast heartbeat
• Chest pain
• Breathing difficulty
• Dizziness

Panic attacks can happen anytime, anywhere and without warning. You may live in fear of another attack and may avoid places where you have had an attack. For some people, fear takes over their lives and they cannot leave their homes.

Panic disorder is more common in women than men. It usually starts when people are young adults. Sometimes it starts when a person is under a lot of stress. Most people get better with treatment. Therapy can show you how to recognize and change your thinking patterns before they lead to panic. Medicines can also help.

Phobias

A phobia is a type of anxiety disorder. It is a strong, irrational fear of something that poses little or no actual danger. There are many specific phobias. Acrophobia is a fear of heights. You may be able to ski the world’s tallest mountains but be unable to go above the 5th floor of an office building.

Agoraphobia is a fear of public places, and claustrophobia is a fear of closed-in places. If you become anxious and extremely self-conscious in everyday social situations, you could have a social phobia. Other common phobias involve tunnels, highway driving, water, flying, animals and blood.

People with phobias try to avoid what they are afraid of. If they cannot, they may experience:

• Panic and fear
• Rapid heartbeat
• Shortness of breath
• Trembling
• A strong desire to get away

Treatment helps most people with phobias. Options include medicines, therapy or both. For more detailed information and advice on Anxiety Disorders, visit the ADAA, the Anxiety and Depression Association of America

The post Anxiety Disorders, Recognizing the Symptoms appeared first on Medika Life.