Category Archives: Stress

Post #59 – What are our lifestyle choices for maximizing health and lifespan?

11 Sunday Feb 2018

Posted by in Life-Span, Living to 120, meditation, Mental Health, Nutrition, Optimal Exercise, Optimal Health, Optimal Nutrition, Puposely Living, Quality of Life, Stress, Supplements, TM, Uncategorized, Vitality, wellness, Yoga

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Lifestyle Choices for Maximizing Health and Lifespan

Unless you have been living under a rock on an isolated island, I am sure you have heard that lifestyle choices have big impact on the both your health and how long you live.

Living longer means not dying sooner.  And, to not die sooner, you must take actions that eliminate the various ways one dies.

Living healthy, means taking actions to prevent all the ways one loses their abilities to enjoy day-to-day activities of life. Or, at least postpone the time as far into the future as possible before developing disabilities.

In both case, i.e., living longer and living healthy, lifestyle choices play crucial roles. But what are these life choices, besides the ones you hear all the time:  Eat Better and Exercise.

When I started to systematically pursue this topic of living optimal lifespan possible (my goal being 120 years), with optimal health span (my goal being no disabilities), I started enumerating all areas of life in which one can take some action to make this impact.

Of course, not everything is in our control. We did not come to this earth with guarantees. Unforeseen, random event, or events that are not in our control can ruin all our goals and plans. But the objective is to not let the possibility of events not in our control prevent us from taking actions that are indeed in our control.

So, here are all 12 dimensions of lifestyle that I have discovered so far that impact health span and life span. Each subject is a very extensive topic by itself.  I just very briefly summarize my personal take on these and may be an example of how I am attempting to address them in my lifestyle and where you can read about further in these blog posts.

1. Benchmarking Health: Knowing where you are is where I believe it has to all start. You go to doctor’s office and they take your physical measurements (height, weight), you vitals (pulse, blood pressure), order some measurements from the lab and then compare those with what should be “normal” for you. In Post #7 – Can biomarkers help in the quest for vitality and longevity?, I discuss the various measurements you can use as biomarkers for health. These days I measure:

Daily: Weight, waist, fat near navel and thigh, BP, SPO2, pulse, my over-all subjective state of my physical, emotional and mental health

Weekly: pH, Nitric Oxide, fasting glucose

Quarterly: Bloodwork through my primary physician – CBC (complete blood count), typical chemistry panel, Lipids (Cholesterol total, HDL, LDL, VLDL, Triglysrides), TSH, T3, T4 (Thyroid hormones), Male Hormones (Total and Free Testosterone, Estrogen, LH, FSH), Hydroxy-D, fasting glucose, A1c, PSA (for prostrate tumor screening), CRP, (for inflammation), Homocysteine (for heart condition)

Annually or Biennially: Telomere Measurements (DNA strands that dictate how long cells live), X-Rays of joints if I suspect arthritis etc., Ultrasound Study of Carotid and Aorta arteries, MRI’s to detect any tumors, eye-exam, hearing test, EKG.

Every 5 years: Colonoscopy, Stress-test.    

2.  Nutrition – That is everything that crosses our lips, what we eat or drink. I discussed the topic of nutrition in a series of eight blog posts on this subject of Optimal Nutrition, Posts #22 through #29.  additionally, Post #15, #31 and #32 discuss the topic of how and when to complement the nutrition with supplements.

 3. Exercise – Exercise is indispensable for building and maintaining muscle strength, flexibility, balance, endurance. There is also abundant proof that it helps with the metabolism, overall health and health of specific organs. I discussed this topic of exercise in blog post #30 – How much and what type of exercise do you need for optimal health?

 4. Maintaining Musco-skelatal Integrity: Pains in the back, knees, hips, shoulder, wrists and other various joints creep up. We may think that these pains just come out of nowhere. After all, we often notice that “yesterday it did not hurt and today it hurts”. So, it got be a random event. Right?

Reality is that unless there was a trauma caused by an accident, most of these are the result of repetitive movement in un-aligned joints. The underlying cause could be neglect of the muscles, ligaments and tendons surrounding joints or prolonged asymmetrical movements, e.g., always carrying a bag on the same shoulder, or playing games such tennis or golf that inherently require asymmetrical movement.

Yoga, myofascial massages, Rolfing, rolling with foam rollers, visiting a chiropractor for body alignment, weight bearing exercises for join strengths, e-cise routines designed by Pete Egoscue are methods I have learned for maintaining musco-skeletal integrity.  I discuss some of these in Post #30 – How much and what type of exercise do you need for optimal health? And Post #49 – What is the role of massage therapy in Optimal Health? Also, I discuss how you can use foam rolling for body alignment in Post #39 – Ever heard of foam rolling.

 5. Maintaining Mind-body Connection: Our mind and body are inherently connected. Maintaining the connection between the two is essential for optimal health. Yoga, Tai Chi, Qigong, are some ways to develop and maintain mind-body connection.  I have very limited experience with Tai Chi and Qigong. I do, however, perform Yoga as part of my lifestyle.  In Post #11 – My first year of experience with Bikram Yoga, Post #12 – My second year of experience with Bikram Yoga, I describe how I incorporated Bikram Yoga into my lifestyle.

 6. Enhancing and Maintaining Brain: If we lose vitality of the brain, the quality of life suffers dramatically. Alzheimer and other forms of Dementia can often be very painful way of living. Evidence is mounting that for optimal brain health, we must keep the brain stimulated with right activities. All my life, I have been very focused on left brain type of activities. As I was turning 60, I decided to do something about it and started taking piano lessons to stimulate my right brain and prevent any premature aging of the brain. I discuss the activities for maintaining optimal health in Post #57 – Optimal Mental Health – what is it and how to achieve it?

 7. Stress Management: Stress is a root cause of many diseases. We have all experienced how stress can bring about disturbances in the digestive systems, back pain, high blood pressures, even heart attacks and strokes. Yoga and Meditation are two of the ways to manage stress. Perspective management is another powerful method. I got initiated in Transcendental Meditation over 30 years ago and I have been doing TM ever since with good benefits. I tackle the subject in Post #16 – What is stress really and why is it bad for longevity and health and Post #17 – Is meditation an effective antidote to stress.

8. Adequate Sleep: There is more and more evidence every day that inadequate sleep can cause all sorts of ailments. 7 to 9 hours of restful sleep is considered optimal. All my life, I thought the object of the game was to get away with as little a sleep as possible. Sleeping more than 6 hours every night is still a challenge for me. Although I am working on it to extend sleeping hours during the week and may be do some catch up sleeping during the weekends. Maybe I will tackle this topic in a future post.

 9. Social Engagement: World-wide Study of Blue Zones, i.e., geographical areas where longest living people are clustered, showed a very surprising factor that contributed to long healthy life of people living there. Researchers found that people in Blue Zones are socially very engaged. Centenarians in these areas are engaged with tight knit groups of friends and family. So, the conclusion is that social engagement is an important factor in living longer and healthier.

 10. Purposeful Living: It is well known that death rates spike after the holidays and after major life events. Researchers deduce from studies of such phenomena that people live only as long as they find life meaningful.

Of course, it is needs an ongoing effort to figure out what one can derive meaning from. One may find meaning in raising kids or grand kids, contributions to society, being the best spouse one can be or from “slaying some dragon”. Some people find meaning in their faith and service to God. Others find meaning in being of service to mankind. Yet others can find meaning in their job or career.

Viktor Frankel explores this topic beautifully in his book: Man’s Search for Meaning.

11. Make Full-use of All Modalities of Medical Care: Modern medicine has developed amazing and miraculous treatments. By making use of the modern medicine one can live much healthier and much longer..  In general, the earlier you are able to catch a disease and the sooner you start treatment, better your chances of a cure or at least minimum damage. Mantra for modern medicine is “early detection, early cure”

 Alternative schools of medicine, such as Ayurvedic, Homeopathy, Aquapuncture, Naturopathy, offer valid means for preventative care and whole-person healing.  Leveraging these modalities of medical care as appropriate can offer means for optimal healing and living. Here the rule is the age old wisdom: An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.

I was even able to eliminate my severe seasonal allergies by working with doctors for Naturopathy and totally change the vector of my health as I discuss in Post #8 – So, did I you tell you the story of my allergies. Also strengthening your immune system can have major consequences on how your body deals with diseases as I discuss in a series of Posts #51 – 54 – How to Optimize Your Immune System – Part I through Part IV

12. Make use of Genetics Science: There is of course the truth of genetics. Genes do play a role in how long we will live and what diseases we may have the tendencies to develop. Over the last few years, however, scientists are finding that inherited genes don’t determine your destiny, it is the lifestyle that can either turn those genes on or off. This is the exciting field of epigenetics.

 Studies from the filed of epigenetics do  give us opportunites to leverage genes.  Through genome mapping, we can find out what might be our tendencies and to what aspects of our life, therefore, we should pay particular attention. Over the last few years, I have gotten my telomeres measured – these are tips at the ends of genes that are considered to act like our lifespan clocks.  I discussed this in Post #50 – How to optimize your health by maximizing your telomeres. More recently, I have sent for genetic testing to be able to receive personalized genetics bases lifestyle coaching. I will share results of that experiences in a future post.

The percent of role of genes that we cannot do anything about is constantly shrinking all the time. Now it is believed that only between 5% to 15% of lifespan and health span is determined by genes that we have no control over.

Bottomline:

In summary, researchers have shown again and again that health span and life span depend upon one’s lifestyle choices. A holistic look at lifestyle choices means many different and distinct areas of life.

I shared my take on these dimension of lifestyle and some of my experience. Also, gave references to where you can find more information, whenever, I have already discussed that topic in more detail in my blog posts.

  1. Benchmarking Health
  2. Nutrition
  3. Exercise
  4. Maintaining Musco-skelatal Integrity
  5. Maintaining Mind-body Connection
  6. Enhancing and Maintaining Brain
  7. Stress Management
  8. Adequate Sleep
  9. Social Engagement
  10. Purposeful Living
  11. Making full-use of all modalities of medical care
  12. Make use of Genetics Science

What do you think?

Do you think there is another dimension of lifestyle that I did not care is also important?

I would love to hear from you and learn from you.

Please click on Comment to leave your comments or question so others can benefit from your input. 

 

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Post #57 – Optimal Mental Health – what is it and how to achieve it?

26 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by in Mental Health, Optimal Health, Stress, Vitality, wellness

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Throughout life, mental health influences how we make decisions, manage stress and interact with others. Similar to physical health, mental health is important for optimal development at every stage of life.

However, before we get deeper into the subject of Optimal Mental Health, it is probably useful to first figure out what is Mental Health. Sometimes, such common terms can be slippery to nail down.  And, that exactly seems to be the case with this term Mental Health.

Mental Health

According to U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC), Mental Health is a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community.

Mental Illness

A related term Mental Illness, on the other hand, is defined as collectively all diagnosable mental disorders or health conditions that are characterized by alterations in thinking, mood, or behavior (or some combination thereof) associated with distress and/or impaired functioning.

Depression is the most common type of mental illness, affecting more than 26% of the U.S. adult population. It has been estimated that by the year 2020, depression will be the second leading cause of disability throughout the world, trailing only ischemic heart disease, i.e., heart attack. The seriousness of mental health issues was clearly raised in a very comprehensive report, almost 500-page report: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General. Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Mental Health Services, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health, 1999.

Mental Health Indicators

In the health care and public health arena, more emphasis and resources have been devoted to screening, diagnosis, and treatment of mental illness than mental health. Little has been done to protect the mental health of those free of mental illness. Researchers suggest that there are indicators of mental health, representing three domains:

  • Emotional well-being – such as perceived life satisfaction, happiness, cheerfulness, peacefulness.
  • Psychological well-being – such as self-acceptance, personal growth including openness to new experiences, optimism, hopefulness, purpose in life, control of one’s environment, spirituality, self-direction, and positive relationships, and
  • Social well-being – social acceptance, beliefs in the potential of people and society as a whole, personal self-worth and usefulness to society, sense of community.

One way to look at mental health and mental illness is that these are points along a continuum and neither state exists in pure isolation from the other.

Mind and Body are Inseparable

In another but related context, everyday language tends to encourage a misperception that “mental health” or “mental illness” is unrelated to “physical health” or “physical illness.” In fact, mental health and physical health are inseparable.

Although “mind” is a broad term that has had many different meanings over the centuries, these days it refers to the totality of mental functions related to thinking, mood, and purposive behavior. The mind is generally seen as deriving from activities within the brain but displaying emergent properties, such as consciousness.

One reason the people continue to this day to emphasize the difference between mental and physical health is embedded in language. Common parlance continues to use the term “physical” to distinguish some forms of health and illness from “mental” health and illness. People continue to see mental and physical as separate functions when, in fact, mental functions (e.g., memory) are physical as well.

Mental functions are carried out by the brain. Likewise, mental disorders are reflected in physical changes in the brain. Physical changes in the brain often trigger physical changes in other parts of the body too. The racing heart, dry mouth, and sweaty palms that accompany a terrifying nightmare are orchestrated by the brain. A nightmare is a mental state associated with alterations of brain chemistry that, in turn, provoke unmistakable changes elsewhere in the body.

A more appropriate and neutral distinction is between “mental” and “somatic” health. Somatic is a medical term that derives from the Greek word soma for the body. Mental health refers to the successful performance of mental functions in terms of thought, mood, and behavior. Mental disorders are those health conditions in which alterations in mental functions are paramount.

Somatic conditions are those in which alterations in non-mental functions predominate. While the brain carries out all mental functions, it also carries out some somatic functions, such as movement, touch, and balance. That is why not all brain diseases are mental disorders. For example, a stroke causes a lesion in the brain that may produce disturbances of movement, such as paralysis of limbs. When such symptoms predominate in a patient, the stroke is considered a somatic condition. But when a stroke mainly produces alterations of thought, mood, or behavior, it is considered a mental condition (e.g., dementia).

The point is that a brain disease can be seen as a mental disorder or a somatic disorder depending on the functions it perturbs.

Fixing the body can fix the mind and fixing mind can fix the body

There is plenty of evidence showing that mental disorders, especially depressive disorders could be caused by many chronic “physical” diseases including diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, asthma, and obesity.  At the same time, many risk behaviors that give rise to chronic diseases are physical inactivity, smoking, excessive drinking, and insufficient sleep whose underlying cause is mental health.

Then Why the Stigma to Mental Health Issues

Stigmatization of people with mental disorders has persisted throughout history. It is manifested by bias, distrust, stereotyping, fear, embarrassment, anger, and/or avoidance. Stigma leads others to avoid living, socializing or working with, renting to, or employing people with mental disorders. It deprives people of their dignity and interferes with their full participation in society.

Explanations for stigma stem, in part, from the misguided split between mind and body first proposed by Descartes. Another source of stigma lies in the 19th century separation of the mental health treatment system in the United States from the mainstream of health. These historical influences exert an often immediate influence on perceptions and behaviors in the modem world.

So, what is Optimal Mental Health?

Just as in the case of Optimal Physical Health, absence of disease, or in the case mental health, absent of mental illness does not seem to be quite adequate to define Optimal Mental Health.  Given that mental illness and mental health is a continuum, it begs some sort of scale to measure one’s mental health.

Here is one scale to calibrate your mental health during a specific time frame:emotional-scale-2

With this scale, if I  yesterday  I was feeling bored that would be a score of -1 for yesterday. Today I am feeling confident, that would be a  score of +2. Etc. For a while, using this scale, I used to keep a journal of my daily emotional state. 

This scale can be a good way to measure impact of any lifestyle changes on your mental or emotional health. For example, if you just added daily walk or daily meditation to your lifestyle, or started taking certain supplements, you could track impact this way.

 

Well-Being as Measure of Mental Health

Another way to measure and monitor is in terms of a more holistic term called Well-Being. Researchers from different disciplines have examined different aspects of well-being:

  • Physical well-being.
  • Economic well-being.
  • Social well-being.
  • Development and activity.
  • Emotional well-being.
  • Psychological well-being.
  • Life satisfaction.
  • Domain specific satisfaction.
  • Engaging activities and work.

A website, you can use to quantify your personal Well-Being and benchmark it against others is: http://www.nationalaccountsofwellbeing.org/engage/. After answering, 50 questions (it only takes 10-15 mintues) you can receive a plot like the following and an overall Well-Being score. You can then compare you score with others. or how it progresses. More importantly, you can explore area of opportunities where you would like to grow and focus your attention for improving your well-being.

about-your-profile-results-_-your-results-_-explore-_-national-accounts-of-well-being

Jack Kornfield on Optimal Health

Jack Kornfield, a bestselling American author, yoga-mediation teacher and Buddhist monk has an interesting definition of Optimal Mental Health.  On his website he has the following description:

We have within us an extraordinary capacity for love, for joy, and unshakable freedom.  Buddhist psychology describes this as optimal mental health. I have seen this optimal wellbeing in many of my teachers. Ajahn Jumnian describes his mind as completely steady, silent and free throughout both his waking and sleeping hours.  He says, “I haven’t experienced a single moment of frustration or anger for over twenty years.” I’ve also observed that he sleeps only one or two hours a night. Ajahn Jumnian describes his inner life quite simply, “When I am alone, my mind rests in pure awareness. I am simply at peace.  Then whenever I encounter people and experiences, the awareness automatically fills with loving-kindness or compassion. This is the natural expression of pure awareness.”  Those around Ajahn Jumnian feel his free spirit and unshakable joy.

Now that is taking Optimal Health to whole different level!

Bottom Line:

We laid the foundation of some fundamentals on how to define and measure optimal mental health. In the next blog post, we will get down to methods for achieving Optimal Mental Health.

A quick summary of what we covered here:

Throughout life, mental health influences how we make decisions, manage stress and interact with others.

Mental health is a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community. Mental health includes:

  • Emotional well-being
  • Psychological well-being, and
  • Social well-being

Mind and body are NOT separate.  Each influences and controls the health of the other.  It is a historical quirk in the evolution of medicine that we treat the two separately.  This separation has also led to much stigma to the mental health issues and separation of medicine applied to mind vs. the body.

We could calibrate mental health by using some scale like the one presented in this post to measure mental health as emotional health and track impact of introducing changes in lifestyle.

Ideally, to understand Optimal Health, we need to track total Well-being. You may want to use the nef website to calibrate your total Well-being and explore opportunities for improvement.

Long term meditators and Buddhist Monks define and are able to demonstrate Optimal Mental Health as a state of pure awareness that is full of compassion and love, and is above the daily swings of emotions.

What are your thoughts on this subject?

Would love to hear from you and learn from you.

Please click on Comment to leave your comments or question so others can benefit from your input.

 

 

Post #54 – How to Optimize Your Immune System? – Part IV – by Destressing

25 Saturday Jun 2016

Posted by in Biomarkers for Stress, Living to 120, Optimal Health, Reversing Chronic Diseases, Stress, TM, Uncategorized

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Post #54 – How to Optimize Your Immune System? –  Part IV – by Destressing

In Post #51, I discussed some basic terminology of the immune systems, how immune system works, and what kinds of issues happen when it does not work.

Things that are in our control to enhance our immunity and also so the immune system does not go haywire are the ones that you have heard about gazillions of time by now and are probably tired of hearing about: Nutrition, Exercise and Lifestyle.

In Posts #52 and #53, we discussed how to boost your immune system with nutrition and exercise.   In this final post of this series, let’s focus on the last item Lifestyle. Specifically, we will explore what role stress plays in diminishing our immune system and what we can do about it.

Pathways between Stress and the Immune System

We have all heard or intuitively know that when you are stressed you are more susceptible to illness because your immune system is not fully functioning.  But how does that really happen?

A meta-analysis report by Suzanne Segerstrom and Gregory Miller pulls together results from 300 different studies and does a beautiful job of explaining our understanding of this biological connection between mental stress and components of our immune system. The following explanation is based on their paper.

There are three different ways stress in the mind “get inside the body” to affect the immune response:

First, sympathetic fibers descend from the brain into both primary (bone marrow and thymus) and secondary (spleen and lymph nodes) lymphoid tissues. These fibers can release a wide variety of substances that influence immune responses by binding to receptors on white blood cells.

Second, the hypothalamus, pituitary, adrenal, sympathetic, medullary, ovarian glands respond to stress and secrete the adrenal hormones epinephrine, norepinephrine, and cortisol; the pituitary hormones prolactin and growth hormone; and the brain peptides melatonin, β-endorphin, and enkephalin. These substances bind to specific receptors on white blood cells and have diverse regulatory effects on their distribution and function.

Third, people’s efforts to manage the demands of stressful experience sometimes lead them to engage in behaviors—such as alcohol use or changes in sleeping patterns—that also could modify immune system processes. Thus, behavior represents a potentially important pathway linking stress with the immune system.

Is Stress always bad?

The results of various studies have demonstrated that stressors with the fight-or-flight situations faced by humans’ evolutionary ancestors elicited potentially beneficial changes in the immune system. The more a stressor deviated from those parameters by becoming more chronic, however, the more components of the immune system were affected in a potentially detrimental way.

So, in other words, the way our ancestors’ bodies reacted to an encounter with a saber-tooth tiger was good for our immune system.  Stress-related disease emerges, predominantly, out of the fact that we so often activate a physiological system that has evolved for responding to acute physical emergencies.  So, the effect on our immune systems is very negative when we turn it on for months on end, worrying about mortgages, relationships, and promotions.

Deep Rest for reversing impact of stress on our immune systems

Deepak Chopra, MD and David Simon, MD in their book Grow YoungDeepak Chopra Grow Youngerer, Live Longer: Ten Steps to Reverse Aging, beautifully describe the two antidotes to stress: Restful Awareness and Restful Sleep.

Restful Awareness is a natural mind/body response, as natural as the stress response. The most direct way to experience restful awareness is through meditation. During meditation, breathing slows, blood pressure decreases and stress hormones level off.

In this state while all the metabolic processes slow down, brain stays fully alert and awake. In his book Transcendence: Healing and Transformation Through Transcendental Meditation, Transcendence BookNorman Rosenthal, MD describes in great details this fourth state of consciousness many others call Restful Awareness.  He also lays out in great deal the research that backs up beneficial effects of Transcendental Meditation.

There are of course other types of meditations and techniques through which you can manage stress. A lot of work has been done and ongoing in the Mindful-based Stress Reduction techniques.  These studies describe how performing mindful meditation and living in mindful way reduce conditioned fight-flight response and allows one to make more conscious choices. Such conscious or mindful living thus overrides the biological processes that damage our immune system.

Restful Sleep is equally important in managing stress for optimal immune function. Restful Sleep of minimum six to eight hours is necessary. More recent studies have called out 7.5 hours of daily restful sleep as the optimal.

Restful sleep means that your drift off easily once you turn off the light and sleep soundly through the night. If you have to get up to go to the bathroom during the night, you are able to easily get back to sleep. You will know you have restful sleep if upon awakening you feel energetic, alert and vibrant.  If you feel tired and unenthusiastic when you wake up in the morning, you have not had a night of restful sleep.

To get the best sleep usually requires that you develop a regular routine transitioning from activity to sleep. Chopra and Simon describe very good routines that allow you to transition from the daily activity to deep sleep.

Bottom Line

To optimize immune systems, stress management can play a critical role. In the 30 years since work in the field of psychoneuroimmunology began, studies have convincingly established that stressful experiences alter features of the immune response as well as make one vulnerable to adverse medical outcomes.

Practicing Restful Awareness through Transcendental Meditation, Mindful Meditation, Mindful living or other technique are critical to minimizing stress. The benefits of these techniques are now well established.

Daily Restful Sleep is also required to manage stress.  Practicing daily routines to help transition from daily activity to restful sleep is the best method to achieving daily restful sleep.

What are your thoughts on this subject?

Would love to hear from you and learn from you.

Please click on Comment to leave your comments or question so others can benefit from your input.

 

Post #49 – What is the role of massage therapy in Optimal Health?

14 Sunday Feb 2016

Posted by in Aging, Optimal Health, Puposely Living, Quality of Life, Reversing Chronic Diseases, Stress, Uncategorized, wellness

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After so many years, my wife and I finally surrendered to the suggestions of our trainer and started getting massages at least once a month. He had been telling us how massage can be great for recovering from the stresses left over from hard workouts.  And, about six months ago, we decided to give it a shot and get massages on a regular basis.

So, I thought I will take some time to do some research into the role of massage therapy and share the research and our own experience in this blog post.

man_massage_table

What Is Massage Therapy?

Massage therapy dates back thousands of years. References to massage appear in ancient writings from China, Japan, India, and Egypt.

According to National Center of Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) of the National Institute of Health (NIH) the term “massage therapy” includes many techniques and the type of massage given usually depends on specific need, physical condition and the expertise of the massage therapist.

In general, massage therapists work on muscle and other soft tissue to help you feel better.  The following massages you hear most about in the US:

In Swedish massage, the therapist uses long strokes, kneading, deep circular movements, vibration, and tapping.

Deep (tissue)massage technique uses slower, more-forceful strokes to target the deeper layers of muscle and connective tissue, commonly to help with muscle damage from injuries.

Sports massage combines techniques of Swedish massage and deep tissue massage to release chronic muscle tension. It is adapted to the needs of athletes.

Myofascial trigger point therapy focuses on trigger points—areas that are painful when pressed and are associated with pain elsewhere in the body. Examples of these are:

  • Accupressure – where therapist applies strong physical pressure on specific point on the body.
  • Reflexology – Similar to acupressure where pressure is applied to certain points on hands and feet.

But there are other massages that are not quite as common and are based on Indian medicine, Ayuerveda:

Marma-point Massage – where a therapist applies very gentle touch to some or all of the 107 different marma-points in the body to correct any imbalances in the body

Shirodhara – where warm oil is poured to the forehead

Abhyanga – oil massage is done by two people with synchronized movements

Massage therapy is sometimes done using essential oils as a form of aromatherapy.

Benefits of Massage

A lot of the scientific research on massage therapy is preliminary or conflicting, but much of the evidence points toward beneficial effects on pain and other symptoms associated with a number of different conditions. Much of the evidence suggests that these effects are short term and that people need to keep getting massages for the benefits to continue.

While more research is needed to confirm the benefits of massage, some studies have found massage may also be helpful for:

  • Anxiety
  • Digestive disorders
  • Fibromyalgia
  • Headaches
  • Insomnia related to stress
  • Myofascial pain syndrome
  • Soft tissue strains or injuries
  • Sports injuries
  • Temporomandibular joint pain

According to Arthritis Foundation  regular massage of muscles and joints, whether by a licensed therapist at a spa or by self-massage at home, can lead to a significant reduction in pain for people with arthritis, according to Tiffany Field, PhD, director of the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami School of Medicine, who’s conducted a number of studies on the benefits of massage, including on people with arthritis. In Field’s research and other recent studies on the effects of massage for arthritis symptoms, regular use of the simple therapy led to improvements in pain, stiffness, range of motion, hand grip strength and overall function of the joints.

In a study published in Science Translational Medicine by Dr. Mark A. Tarnoplsky et al found that a short, 10-minute Swedish-style massage session can reduce inflammation, which can help your muscles recover after a hard workout.

And, then of course, there are studies that attribute the benefits of massage just to receiving a dose of human touch that offers all sorts of healthy responses from lowering blood pressures, depression, improving immunity to oxytocin release for increased bonding response.

 What are the risks of Massage Therapy?

Massage therapy appears to have few risks when performed by a trained practitioner. However, massage therapists should take some precautions in people with certain health conditions. NCCIH recommend that:

  • In some cases, pregnant women should avoid massage therapy. Talk with your health care provider before getting a massage if you are pregnant.
  • People with some conditions such as bleeding disorders or low blood platelet counts should avoid having forceful and deep tissue massage. People who take anticoagulants (also known as blood thinners) also should avoid them. Massage should not be done in any potentially weak area of the skin, such as wounds.
  • Deep or intense pressure should not be used over an area where the patient has a tumor or cancer, unless approved by the patient’s health care provider.

Our Experience

Over the years, my wife and I have received massages during vacations etc.  We received several different Ayurvedic massages at the Ayurrvedic Institute in Albuquerque NM every day for a week of an intense detox and cleanse program called Panchakarma.  I have also received locally in Maryland Marma-Point massages.  And, now for the last six month, we are receiving massages once a month.

I described my experience of relieving migraine using acupressure in another blog post.

Massages that we receive from the same person every month are very therapeutic in that the therapist is getting to know our body. She is able to adjust her technique based on what our body needs. I am able to tell her any specific issue I may have. Usually these tend to be some stiff muscles that she could pay attention to.  During and after the massage, she is the one who tells me where the stiff muscles are.

Areas around my shoulders and neck are where I seem to burry my stresses and are getting more and more limber as a result of the massages.  I can definitely feel the result of my relaxed muscles in my yoga practice.

I have found Ayuervedic massages to be totally blissful. It blows me away how such gentle touches at the Marma-points or pouring of oil on third-eye can totally transport my body into a meditative state.

Bottom Line

Regular massage therapy definitely is valuable in creating and maintaining Optimal Health.  Repeating from the NCCIH website:

  • A lot of research on the effects of massage therapy has been carried out.
  • While often preliminary or conflicting, there is scientific evidence that massage may help with back pain and may improve quality of life for people with depression, cancer, and HIV/AIDS.
  • Massage therapy appears to have few risks if it is used appropriately and provided by a trained massage professional.

What do you think?

What are your experiences and knowledge of massages therapy?  

Please share your thought by clicking on “Leave A Comment” link.

I would love to learn and share with others what I learn from you?

 

 

Post #36 – What is most important for Optimal Health – Body, Mind or Spirit?

15 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by in Functional Medicine, Life-Span, Living to 120, meditation, Mental Health, Optimal Health, Reversing Chronic Diseases, Stress

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Let me first define each of these three terms. Starting point could be our handy-dandy Merriam Webster dictionary.

Body, it says, is “A person’s or animal’s whole physical self.” So, that is straightforward – Arms, legs, heart, head, arteries, liver, hands, toes, and so on, make up the Body.

Mind, again according to the dictionary, is “the part of a person that thinks, reasons, feels, and remembers.”

Spirit per the dictionary is the force within a person that is believed to give the body life, energy, and power.

So, which one is most important for optimal health?

Or, in other words, if I were to focus on living the longest possible and the healthiest possible which one should I focus on first?

Writing this blog post, at this point I got stuck. I did not know where to go with this topic.   I took a long break and when I returned to my writing I found website for The Bravewell Collaborative, which has been doing pioneering work in Integrative Medicine as a catalyst of change in healthcare.

When I read the article The Connection Between Mind and Body on their site, I felt it perfectly captured my sentiments and thoughts on this topic, albeit from a much more authoritative source. So, here I share this article verbatim. Bold highlights are mine. There is, of course, a lot of additional good stuff on the The Bravewell Collaborative website.

Modern scientific research supports this age-old tenet of medical wisdom [of mind-body connection]. It began in the 1920s, when Harvard scientist Walter Cannon, MD, identified the fight-or-flight response through which the body secretes hormones called catecholamines, such as epinephrine and nonepinephrine. When they enter the blood stream, these hormones produce changes in the body—i.e. a quickened heart or increased breathing rate—that put the person in a better physical state to escape or confront danger.

In the following decade, Hungarian-born scientist Hans Selye, MD, pioneered the field of stress research by describing how the wear-and-tear of constant stress could affect us biologically. Since then, scores of scientific breakthroughs have illuminated the mind-body connection in health.

Experimental psychologist Neal Miller, PhD, discovered that we can be trained to control certain physical responses, such as blood pressure, that were previously considered to be involuntary. This discovery gave birth to biofeedback, which has now been found to be effective in the treatment of anxiety, attention deficit disorder, headache, hypertension, and urinary incontinence.

Harvard cardiologist Herbert Benson, MD, identified the flip side of the stress response, which he called the “relaxation response.” Benson demonstrated that meditation, yoga, and other relaxation techniques can bring about physiological changes including a lower heart rate, lower breathing rate, and decreased muscle tension along with positive changes in brain waves. Mind-body techniques that elicit this relaxation response have been successful in treating many stress-related disorders.

Research by psychologist Robert Ader, PhD, at the University of Rochester provided a link between the brain, behavior and immune function, and founded the new field of psychoneuroimmunology, which researches ways to increase immune function through the use of the mind.

Based on a Buddhist meditation practice, Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, at the University of Massachusetts, developed Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), a mediation technique that has successfully reduced physical and psychological symptoms in many medical conditions, including pain syndromes.

“When we are on automatic pilot, trying to get someplace else all the time without being attentive to where we already are, we can leave a wake of disaster behind us in terms of our own health and wellbeing, because we’re not listening to the body. We’re not paying attention to its messages; we’re not even in our bodies much of the time,” explains Kabat-Zinn. “Mindfulness—paying attention on purpose in the present moment nonjudgmentally—immediately restores us to our wholeness, to that right inward measure that’s at the root of both meditation and medicine.”

Guided imagery, which utilizes the power of imagination to heal, has been shown to reduce anxiety and pain in people with a wide range of medical conditions, including asthma, back pain, and headache, and to help patients better tolerate medical procedures and treatments. “Imagery utilizes the natural language of the unconscious mind to help a person connect with the deeper resources available to them at cognitive, affective and somatic levels,” explains Martin L. Rossman, MD.

Innovative research by Dean Ornish, MD, and his colleagues found that a program integrating mind-body techniques such as yoga, meditation, stress management, and group support with diet and exercise reversed coronary artery disease. “What we are finding is that comprehensive lifestyle changes may ‘turn on’ the beneficial parts of the genome and ‘turn off’ the more harmful parts,” says Dr. Ornish.

Today, these breakthroughs in our understanding of the mind-body connection have translated into effective therapies that support a patient’s journey through illnesses and trauma. Virtually every major medical center now has a stress management or mind-body clinic, and practices such as meditation, yoga, and group support are woven into the medical treatment of heart disease, cancer, and other serious illnesses.

James Gordon, Director and Founder, Center for Mind-Body Medicine, has conducted mind-body skills trainings for patients and health care practitioners around the world. Gordon has said, “Mind-body medicine requires that we ground information about the science of mind-body approaches in practical, personal experience; that we appreciate the centrality of meditation to these practices; and that we understand—experientially as well as scientifically—that the health of our minds and the health of our bodies are inextricably connected to the transformation of the spirit.”

So, looks like to me that Body, Mind and Spirit are all EQUALLY important to Optimal Health. These three are inter-connected. And, we need to focus on all three of these in an integrative fashion for Optimal Health.

What do you think?

What is your experience on this topic?

I would love to hear about your thoughts.

Post #19 – So, where do our ideas about food, medicine, and health come from?

27 Sunday Jul 2014

Posted by in Aging, Nutrition, Stress, wellness

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I recently heard a July 7 ,2014 story on the National Public Radio (NPR), and it blew me away. Here is an excerpt from it:

“For the past decade or so, [Mark] Petticrew and a group of colleagues in London have been searching through millions of documents from the tobacco industry that were archived online in the late ’90s as part of a legal settlement with tobacco companies.

What they’ve discovered is that both Selye’s work and much of the work around Type A personality [by two American cardiologists — Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman] were profoundly influenced by cigarette manufacturers. They were interested in promoting the concept of stress because it allowed them to argue that it was stress — not cigarettes — that was to blame for heart disease and cancer.”

You remember, in one of the previous post, I talked about endocrinologist Hans Selye being the pioneer of stress research and was even the first to use the term stress in the context of health?

Here is another one that made me shake my head, an essay in the Wall Street Journal May 6, 2014, about the link between saturated fat and heart disease that included the following:

“Butter and lard had long been staples of the American pantry until Crisco, introduced in 1911, became the first vegetable-based fat to win wide acceptance in U.S. kitchens. Then came margarines made from vegetable oil and then just plain vegetable oil in bottles.

All of these got a boost from the American Heart Association—which Procter & Gamble, the maker of Crisco oil, coincidentally helped launch as a national organization. In 1948, P&G made the AHA the beneficiary of the popular “Walking Man” radio contest, which the company sponsored. The show raised $1.7 million for the group and transformed it (according to the AHA’s official history) from a small, underfunded professional society into the powerhouse that it remains today.

After the AHA advised the public to eat less saturated fat and switch to vegetable oils for a “healthy heart” in 1961, Americans changed their diets. Now these oils represent 7% to 8% of all calories in our diet, up from nearly zero in 1900, the biggest increase in consumption of any type of food over the past century.”

And, I am sure by now you well know about Crisco and partially hydrogenated oils definitely not being good for a “healthy heart.”

I can’t but wonder, if this story that “saturated fats are not bad after all” in WSJ is factual or planted (or suggested, advised, recommended, advocated, proposed – you pick the right word) by the animal food industry.

Or, did you know that what you might have learned in the elementary school in the US, may be in 2nd, 3rd or 4th grade, about food groups, e.g.,

Milk Group (Build strong bones)

Meat Group (Build strong muscles)

Vegetable Group (Help you see in the dark)

Fruit Group (Help heal cuts and bruises)

Grain Group (Give us energy)

All these associations are the gift of marketing through school education by the National Dairy Council. [Chapter 15, the “science” of industry, The China Study, by T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D.]

What about the following:

“Eggs, bacon and toast is a perfect American breakfast”

“Orange juice is not for breakfast anymore”

“Pork – the other white meat”

“Chicken in every pot”

“Cholesterol causes heart attack”

“To lower cholesterol eat turkey”

The old saying, “follow the money” to get the real story, is definitely true in these cases.

In our house, when we used to watch commercial TV with our boys, I would insist that we turn the volume off during commercials. That was a one very small attempt to minimize the impact of commercials and programmed associations.

So, how do we figure out what is best for our health and longevity?

It is certainly not easy to filter this information out from the deep seeded subconscious associations we have, the financially motivated deluge of marketing information and finally the good old biases people have, whether scientists, politicians, professionals or friends and family?

Any thoughts? How do you  figure out what is best for you?

I would love to hear and learn.

[By the way, to leave your comment, click on the link “leave a comment” at the top right hand corner of the post just below the title, simply enter your comment in the box  that will appear where it says, “Enter your comment here..”. As soon as you put your cursor there, you will see a button “Post Comment” to click and submit after you have typed your comment]

Post #17 – Is meditation an effective antidote to stress?

13 Sunday Jul 2014

Posted by in Biomarkers for Stress, Living to 120, meditation, Optimal Health, Reversing Chronic Diseases, Stress, TM

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30 years ago when I co-founded A&T Systems, Inc., I would passionately talk to others in general conversations about the company and its future possibilities. Which, of course, I still do today. No surprise there. But one thing I found surprising were the comments I would get pretty frequently in response, such as: So how would you handle stress of running a business?, or you want to have a heart attack at young age?

So, when one day in 1986, I saw a commercial on a local TV station, about Transcendental Meditation (TM) and how that was an indispensable tool for managing stress, I quickly signed up for an introductory meeting. At the meeting, the organizers served up lots of evidence on how TM helps manage and reduce stress.

My wife, Kimberly, and I were both sold. We signed up right there. That weekend, we learned the TM technique and were told to do the meditation for 20 minutes twice a day. There were three follow up sessions on the following three days in which the teacher explained the theory behind the practice and answered the questions as they arose through the experience of actually doing the meditation. In these sessions, the teacher also did ‘checking’, a process whereby the teacher makes sure that we are practicing the meditation correctly.

After these initial sessions, we went for checking after a couple of weeks, then couple of months and then once a year and then every few years.

We immediately started to notice some changes in our lifestyle. Before learning TM, after work, I used to come home and grab a beer, turn on the TV and unwind. Now, I would come home, do TM and find that I no longer felt the need or desire for a beer. For Kimberly it was not as much beer in the evening, but a cup of coffee first thing in the morning to get going. After starting TM, she would wake up, do TM and then not feel the need or desire for a cup of coffee. She also noticed that the number of cups of coffee she used to drink in a day went down dramatically.

Along the way, we learned that TM is one of the most researched meditation techniques. There are over 350 peer-reviewed research studies. Through this research, there is plenty evidence of the efficacy of the TM for managing stress and a host of other biomarkers for stress, many of those I discussed in the last post. The following are just a couple of examples from the TM website page, Proven effective for stress and anxiety.

Effective for Stress and Anxiety v2

Decresed Cortisol

Recently, many celebrities have started to talk about and promote TM, e.g., Oprah, Seinfeld, Ellen Degeneres, some of them from their personal experience of having practiced TM for many years.

But I am an experiential kind of guy, always asking the question, “But will it work for me?” From my personal experience, I can unequivocally say that it is an indispensable tool to be able to handle stress.

There are days that I get home from work in the evening, when just looking at me Kimberly would says, “You look tired and hungry. Why don’t you eat something right away?” And, I would tell her that I need TM worse than I need food. I just do a 20 minute of TM and then I am refreshed and good to go until bed time.

If anyone talks of being under stress all the time, they usually hear from me about the TM. I recommend TM without any reservations. Because of my proselytizing, In my immediate and extended family, everyone has learned TM – our sons, my brothers, my sister, and their children. I am not sure everyone does TM as regularly as I do, but they all have this tool that they can fall back upon. Our sons and nieces have mentioned of TM being very helpful in dealng with their  college stress.

I have been so impressed with the TM that I have actually gone and learned advanced methods, beyond the basic TM technique that I learned in 1985. I learned what is called Advanced Technique. I have also learned a process of TM that is called TM Sidhi, which requires much more commitment of time and money. TM Sidhi learning culminates into techniques for Yogic Flying, where you offer intention and your body lifts off from the ground.

Of course, there are many other types of mediation. However, I have only incidental or superficial knowledge and experience of these, especially their role in stress management. I am not really able to talk about those with any authority or offer any guidance.

Recently, I have been exposed to a type of meditation called Mindful Meditation. This type of meditation is being taken up in medical schools and universities such as UCLA, and is subject of research for stress reduction and management.

What is your experience with meditation?

Have you found meditation useful method for managing stress?

 

Post #16 – What is stress really and why is it bad for longevity and health?

22 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by in Aging, Biomarkers for Stress, Life-Span, Optimal Health, Stress

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Stress has become such a common buzz word. We all talk about it. We generally know it is bad for us. It is constantly in the news.

There are exceptions though. Some believe that stress is good, arguing that if you take away the stress you take away the motivation and drive.

But whenever I get into conversation with someone and start to dig a little deeper with questions like, “So, what do you think is stress?” “Why do you think that stress is bad?” Why do you think it is good?” Or, “How do you deal with stress?” The subject becomes very squishy, very quickly.

Even Hans Selye, the person who originally coined the term stress in 1936 in the context of health and spent life-time studying it, at one time threw up his hands and declared, “Everyone knows what stress is, but no one really knows.”

So, let us take the first question first, what is stress, any ways.

Webster’s Dictionary defines Stress as “a state of mental or worry caused by problems in your life, work, etc.”; or, “something that causes strong feelings of worry or anxiety”

According to the American Institute of Stress, another popular definition of stress is, “a condition or feeling experienced when a person perceives that demands exceed the personal and social resources the individual is able to mobilize.”

Few useful concepts, while talking about stress are:

Acute Stress: Fight or flight. The body prepares to defend itself. It takes about 90 minutes for the metabolism to return to normal when the response is over.

Chronic Stress: The cost of daily living: bills, kids, jobs…This is the stress we tend to ignore or push down. Left uncontrolled this stress affects our health- our body and our immune system. This is the type of stress that causes wear and tear on our bodies and can impact health and longevity.

Eustress: “Good stress” in daily life that has positive connotations, e.g., marriage, promotion, child birth, winning money, new friends, graduation

Distress: “Bad stress” in daily life that has negative connotations, e.g., divorce, punishment, injury, negative feelings, financial problems, work difficulties.

So, from  the point of view of theses definitions, the stress is really a subjective concept, based on how we perceive a thing or an event. The same event or activity, say a roller coaster ride, could be a eustress (good stress) for one person and distress for another. This is why psychologists or mental health practitioners often get involved in diagnosing and helping cope with chronic stress.

Although stress is a subjective concept, the impact on our bodies is often very objective and real. We have all experienced the rising of hairs on the back of the neck, the sweats, tension in our gut, racing of heart, dilating of pupils, and pumping of blood in our face, arms and legs.

As the following figure shows, stress starting in mind, causes, a chain reaction of neurological, chemical and biological processes. (Figure is taken from a presentation,Why Stress Is A Far More Important Cause Of Coronary Disease Than Cholesterol, by Paul J. Rosch, M.D., F.A.C.P. President, The American Institute of Stress)

Effects of Stress

Physiological effects of most acute stress events subside about 90 minutes after the conclusion of the stress event. Body returns to normal homeostasis or biological equilibrium.

However, it is the repeated acute stress events or chronic stress that are real cause for concern and take toll on our bodies. The results of such chronic stress can be objectively measured from a host of biomarkers that include (from Biomarkers of Chronic Stress, by Laalithya Konduru):

  • Metabolic Biomarkers: Cholesterol, Albumin, Waist-to-Hip Ratio, Glycosylated Hemoglobin
  • Immunological Biomarkers: IL-6, TNF-α, CRP, IGF-1
  • Neuroendocrine Biomarkers: Cortisol, DHEA, Adrenaline, Noradrenaline, Dopamine, Aldosterone
  • Certain Metabolites, chemical figure prints of cellular processes
  • Modifications in Mitochondria
  • Induction in the Brain of DRR1, a tumor suppressor gene

Most of us recognize some of these biomarkers. Others are quite esoteric. In any case, from this list, it does not take a neuroscientist to figure out that chronic stress can mess with a number of things that are key to our health: insulin, cholesterol, hormones, our immune system, can cause inflammation, reduce energy level in the body and impact working of our brain.

Looks like a real important subject to me, if we want to live healthy life free of chronic diseases for an optimal life span.

What do you think? How do you fee about stress?

In a future post, I would like to explore some anti-dotes to chronic stress