Your overall health can get stressed by stress

By Lana Barth, RN-BC, BSN, at Cole Memorial

Life can cause many forms of stress.  Stress can be either good stress or bad stress.  Good stress motivates and energizes a person.  This is what spurs us on to improve ourselves and to be happy in our lives.  It helps us to set goals for ourselves and our families.   Holidays, vacations, weddings, promotions, and romance produce good stress.  Sickness, pain, grief, financial struggles and conflict produce bad stress. 

Stress is actually a physical reaction in our body.  Some physical signs of stress are a faster heartbeat, tightening of muscles, heightened sensation, sweating, and faster breathing.  The normal stress reaction starts slow and rises to a peak.  This is when your heart rate, breathing, and nerves are at their high alert state. It then has a slowing down phase where those physical symptoms begin to go back to a normal state.  When there are many different stressors at the same time, or if they occur too soon to allow for the cooling off period, the body will begin to wear down.  An overload of stress can result in chronic pain, migraines, diarrhea, constipation, tremors, depression, anxiety, heart attack, stroke, or even death. 
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By Kate Lorig

Next to the fear of physical dependence, many people fear not having enough money to pay for their own and their care partner’s needs. Being sick often requires expensive care and treatment. If you’re not able to work because of illness or you’re caregiving full time, the loss of income, and especially the loss of your health insurance coverage, might present an overwhelming financial problem. You can, however, avoid some of the risks by planning and knowing your resources.

Health insurance and Medicare may meet only a part of the ultimate cost of care. Medicare doesn’t cover everything, and most private “Medigap” insurance policies cover only the 20 percent not covered by Medicare. Usually, they don’t cover procedures or treatment that aren’t also covered by Medicare.

Supplemental insurance policies, however, offer the kind of coverage that provides for care needs that Medicare and Medigap insurance don’t pay for. If you plan to buy such insurance for yourself and/or your care partner, carefully read the sections on limitations and exclusions. Be sure the policy covers nursing home care at a daily rate that’s realistic for your community. Make sure you know how long they’ll pay for care. There’s usually a cap of three months or so in a skilled nursing or rehabilitation facility — less if you or your care partner are judged to not be getting better and only need “custodial” care.  [Read more…]

Electronic cigarettes have been in the market for more than 10 years, but there are still people who do not know what an organic e juice contains. Moreover, some people, especially those who conceive laws and who should be best informed, believe that the e-juice falls into the category of tobacco products. Moreover, the media puts into circulation unfounded rumors that they contain carcinogenic substances or even antifreeze. If you are accustomed to believing everything the media says, you probably have come to believe that.

If you want to find out what the liquids for the electronic cigarette contains, read this article further and forget what you read in the press, because almost everywhere there are lies that completely ignore the scientific truth.

PG and VG

Electronic cigarette fluids are composed of substances that have strange names. But only the names are weird, because the substances themselves are completely harmless to the body. [Read more…]

Vitamins and dietary supplements have grown in popularity in recent years. There are lots of claims for various types of supplements, so it is important to be able to get through all of the fake information to know the facts of what you are putting in your body. One of the best ways to learn about the different available vitamins is to look at different available reviews. Read about Consumer Health Review to see real reviews on the top supplements. In addition to reading reviews, you can follow these tips to learn more about multivitamins and figure out how to make sure you get the nutrients you need!

What Are Multivitamins?

The way our diet is today, we are no longer naturally getting the full range of vitamins and minerals that our bodies need to live long, healthy lives. Instead of taking a lot of different pills to try and make up this deficiency, multivitamins combine many of the most commonly needed vitamins into one or two easy to take pills. These pills can ensure that you get all of the nutrients you need for your health. Some of the most common vitamins included in these supplements are vitamins B, C, D, biotin, potassium, and magnesium.

When starting a new multivitamin, it is important to remember a few things that may cause it to be less effective. Calcium can stop the absorption of some vitamins and minerals, so eating a lot of dairy or taking a calcium supplement in addition to a multivitamin may not actually get you the nutrients you are hoping for. Also, taking too much of vitamins A, D, E, or K can cause you to overdose. This overdose could cause life-threatening symptoms, so it is important to make sure you follow the dosing instructions as strictly as possible. If you are pregnant, it is also important to make sure you are following the dosing instructions, as high doses of these vitamins can cause harm to your unborn baby. [Read more…]

By Marie Miguel

Chronic depression is hard for many to understand. Even if everything is going well for you, depression can strike at any time and bring you down. You can lose all motivation and be distant from the ones you love. To an outsider, you should just be happy, since it seems like all is well, but it obviously is easier said than done.

There are ways to treat depression and reduce the amount of episodes you have, or recover from them faster. Some may look to an antidepressant to fix a chemical imbalance; some may seek therapy to learn ways to cope. Others tackle depression through a combination of both types of treatment. In this post, we’ll look at some types of therapy that can help with managing depression.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Has someone ever told you that you just need to think more positively? They might have a point. Many who have depression tend to be swarmed by negative thoughts that bring them down. However, one can’t simply change the way they think overnight. Cognitive behavioral therapy can help. A cognitive therapist will teach you ways to change your thinking from negative to positive, and identify things like thought distortions. This can reduce or lower the severity of the depressive episodes you have. [Read more…]

By Robert Oley, PE, MSPH

It’s that time of the year once again, when you and your family are enjoying the warmer weather and all the outdoor activities that come with it.  Unfortunately for you, deer ticks are also taking advantage of the nice weather, and are waiting for you as you step outside.

The spring and summer months are when you are most likely to be bitten by a deer tick, and become infected with Lyme disease.  The highest risk age group for contracting Lyme disease is children.  Not only do they tend to spend more time outside than others, but they are less likely to be careful about where they play.

Although Lyme disease is a grave health risk to these and other family members, there are other equally debilitating tick-borne diseases one can also become infected with such as babesiosis, anaplasmosis, bartonella, tularemia, mycoplasma, tick paralysis, and viruses. [Read more…]