Hey kids!  Want to live longer, have a healthier body and mind, have a better outlook on life, and enjoy an enormous surge in endorphins, serotonins, and even, boost your immune system?  Get yourself a girlfriend! Yes, that is right!  Sisterhood can increase all of the above! That’s not just wishful thinking, that is research from Dr. David  Spiegel (co-chair, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University Medical Center).

A helping hand, or two

Dr. Spiegel studied the effect of emotional, mental, social, spiritual and behavior factors on health. The study was targeting women with breast cancer, one of life’s ultimate stressors.  When diagnosed with breast cancer most women feel like they have just been hit in the face by a fire hydrant.  Emotions, rational, consequences, prognosis, I mean…really, your life races before your eyes in a slow motion cloud of unrelenting scenes of possible outcomes – most of them not good ones. There is no computer generated movie that can duplicate the stuff that fills up the mind when it comes to facing a life threatening disease like cancer. But one of the best things you can do is have a friend to help you face the fire hydrant!

No matter what kind of cancer you have…You have Stress!

Dealing with stress can wear down the body’s ability to fight disease.  That means your immune system, endocrine, and nervous systems are compromised by stress!  How do you relieve stress?  Dr. Spiegel says, “Psychosocial support and stress management to augment medical treatment has been shown to improve cancer outcome and quality of life.”   Translation:  Getting together with friends and family while you are undergoing treatment and after can make your outlook better, increase your immune system to fight the cancer and create a more positive outcome.

Talking, Sharing and Being Realistic Is Healthy

Facing life’s realities with the support of friends, social communities, or a loving spouse, will help you cope and help diminish the feelings of depression and detoxify the fear.  So expressing emotions with friends and family, and clarifying problems brought on by having cancer can help you to cultivate better relationships and share the feelings of crisis with everyone in your inner circle. It spreads the weight of the diagnosis and everyone does a little lifting.  Much better than denial!

You Don’t Have To Have Cancer To Get The Benefits!

But guess what?  You don’t have to have cancer to reap the benefits of this study!  You just have to have friends, someone to talk to when you feel down.  Spiegel reveals in this landmark study that found women with advance metastatic breast cancer who are involved in support groups, not only had less anxiety, depression and pain, but survived an average of 18 months longer.  His conclusion was psychosocial interventions improve not just the quality of life but the quantity of life too.

So diminish your stress, be happier, and prolong your life!  Get some friends!

How many times have you thought “Oh my giddy aunt, what was I thinking?” after you have made a decision that was – in retrospect – clearly a big, fat blunder. We’ve all done it. Bought a shirt, dress, pair of trousers that at the time seemed like a good idea but after you have taken them home and looked at them a second time, thought “dear god, purple velvet flairs! Why, why dear lord!”

Well the reason may not be that you suddenly lost your mind, it may be that your mind simply gave up and took the easy way out.

Mind what you do

A fascinating article in the Sunday New York Times magazine – To Choose is to Lose – explores the science behind why we make decisions, particularly why we make bad ones. It shows how we have a limited ability to keep making good, thoughtful, well-balanced decisions. That the more decisions we make in a single day the more we deplete our brain’s ability to make good ones so that by the end of the day, or at the end of a long stretch of forced decision making, we simply go for one of a few options, either decide not to decide, or go for the easiest option – which is not always the best one.

It explains an awful lot about why decisions we make turn out to be bad ones even if our intentions are good. Our brains are just tired and running low on energy so they switch to an energy-saving mode by making quick, poorly, thought out choices.

Fueling your brain

Decision overload

One of the keys to keeping your brain sharp, or at least sharper, is to keep it fueled (it’s like a muscle and needs energy to be able to function well) and that means eating well. Which may be one of the reasons why so many people on a diet fail to stick with it. It’s fairly straight forward. If you think about it, when you are on a diet you spend the entire day making decisions about what to eat or not eat, and you spend a lot of time telling yourself not to make bad choices – not to eat that cake, that chocolate, that extra cheesy pizza. To lose weight on a diet you have to constantly make better choices about what you eat. But to keep making those choices you need to eat to fuel your brain so that it functions well. Lack of food = poor choices = falling off the diet wagon.

Food for thought

That doesn’t mean you can’t manage to stick with a diet,  and it may be the reason why people who graze – eating healthy food, in small amounts, throughout the day – do better at losing weight than people who stick to the more traditional three-square meals a day.

It also may help explain why at the end of the day it’s probably not a good idea to make monumental decisions about anything more complicated than whether to have one or two olives in your martini. You may wake up to regret the results.

Say you need to see a doctor, maybe just for a check-up or for an stiff neck.  What happens? You make an appointment and on the day of the appointment you go to the doctor’s office and you’re asked to take a seat in the waiting room which is  always crowded.  Some of those folks look really sick, so you are careful to sit somewhere away from the coughers and sneezers.  Then you wait.  Sometimes you wait for quite a while.  When you are finally called into the examination room you are asked to change.  The nurse takes your vitals and then you wait.  Sometimes you wait for quite a while.  Then the doctor comes in and checks the chart, asks some questions, listens to your lungs and fills out some lab forms, suggests some ideas for relief, then, you’re done.

There is an alternative

Now imagine this,  you drive to Cavallo Point Lodge’s Healing Arts Center in Sausalito – across the Bay from San Francisco – where you have made an appointment with Dr. Bradly Jacobs an integrative health doctor.  You are escorted into  the beautiful spa lounge where there are flowers, comfortable chairs, fireplaces, and beautiful music.  You fill out some forms and Dr. Brad comes over to you to escort you to his office, which is just across from the outdoor fire-pit where people in robes are having tea.  As you walk up the path you notice steam coming off the large outdoor pool where more people are chatting and enjoying the water.  You enter the Dr.’s office, he looks at your paper work and asks a few questions about your concerns and then asks you if you would like to take a walk.  Cavallo Point Lodge is located the southern most tip of Sausalito and has commanding views of the San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge.  There are easy paths and trails that surround the compound.  You and the doctor take a short hike through the hills as he asks you about your lifestyle, your exercise regime, your good and bad habits.

Health and healing

About 40 minutes into the 90 minute appointment, Dr. Brad might might ask you to go and take a hot tub then return to the appointment to see if your neck feels better or he might suggest a massage from one of the clinical masseuses.  He may refer you to an acupuncturist, or another alternative form of health care.  Of course, Dr. Brad also does the regular things like check your lungs and perhaps fill out forms for more lab tests and suggest conventional treatments and prescribe medications.  But overall, don’t you feel better already?

Fresh approach

This method of health care seems to be such a fresh approach, because it targets preventative care, keeping people healthier, before they have acute health problems.  The idea is that you don’t have to undergo an ordeal before you get to see the doctor, that he or she is not a distant person at the end of a long line. Instead the doctor is someone who is going to be a partner with you to get you in shape, help you be healthier, and coach you in overcoming habits that threaten your health.

Wouldn’t it be great if going to the Dr.’s offices was about staying well, and staying healthy?  That would be Mind Body Medicine, taking care of your whole body.  Stay healthy.

Our brains are funny things. They often take us down dark passages even when we are trying to stay bright and positive. It’s almost as if we don’t have any control over them; as if they have control over us. Maybe they do.

A good friend of mine had a pretty nasty scare recently. First he had a blinding headache that made him nauseous, that was followed by days of painful pressure in his head. I only found out about this later and my first thought was “aneurysm” – a blood vessel bleeding into the brain, not a good thing – and my second thought was “stroke” – not a particularly good thing either.

So, he went to see a doctor. The doc did a scan and they found what they called “some suspicious looking spots” inside his skull, close to his brain.

This is your brain on my blog

Playing mind games

Now, I try to be positive and think the best but try as I might my brain kept leaping to the worst conclusion. It could be cancer, it could be something invasive. Instead of waiting for the follow-up tests to show what it really was my brain kept running ahead to anticipate what it might be. Not in a good way, but in the worst way.

Why do we do that? Is it a form of protection, preparing ourselves so that if the worst does come we are somehow ready for it – and yet if you think about it telling yourself it could be cancer never really prepares you for the news that “it is cancer”.  Are we hoping that by thinking the worst then we’re more likely to get a better outcome – which seems a rather perverse way of going through life, imagining that “oh well my children will all turn out to be criminals or idiots or both” while secretly hoping by saying that they’ll all be Rhodes Scholars.

Whatever the reason, while I kept telling everyone around me to be patient and positive, my own brain was saying “oh, this can’t be good.”

Why do we fear the worst?

But guess what? My brain was wrong. The follow-up tests showed some lesions, foreign lesions in the brain, but they weren’t cancerous. Unusual, yes, but not life threatening.

Wonderful news. Terrific. Incredible relief.

It answers one question but it leaves a lot of others unanswered, such as why do we put ourselves through such torture when we don’t know what’s coming. Why don’t we just wait – worry obviously, that’s natural – but wait until we find out what is going on before going to DEFCOM 4.

I don’t know the answers to that. For now, I’m just terribly happy that all those dark thoughts and dark spots  were nothing. That what I feared didn’t happen.

Now what?

But what happens next time, and the next time, because there’s always a next time.

How often do we need to put ourselves through this before we find a better, healthier – but no less realistic – way of coping with moments like this. I wish I knew the answer.

Perhaps it’s the lessons we learn from such an experience.  The sweetness of life!  How very lucky we are to even have friends, family, to be alive.  Perhaps it’s about realizing the gratitude we feel that our friends are safe, for now, and our lives and the people we love  have become more precious – just because, my friend has a problem, but it’s not life threatening.

I guess if it was, we would deal with it, support him and feel the sweetness of life, too!  This outcome is more joyful!

A close friend of mine was recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. It wasn’t a huge surprise. She hadn’t been taking care of herself; she ate a diet heavy in fats and sweets, and got very little exercise. She also has a family history of diabetes so with that kind of background and that kind of lifestyle everything was heading in one direction.

Even so, she was a little taken aback when she got the diagnosis.

Fortunately the disease was caught early, before any real damage had been done, and she was given some reading materials on how to take better care of herself. She was also given a session with a nutritionist who gave her advice on her diet, the kinds of food she could eat and the kind she should try and avoid.

There were no absolutes – no “you can never eat chocolate again” rules – just general guidelines.

Six months later she admits she is doing a poor job of making those lifestyle changes, of doing the things she needs to do to avoid having to take medications like insulin or, more seriously, of having complications such as damage to her kidneys or eyes.

When I asked her why she hadn’t made the changes she simply said “I just don’t have any will power.”

Now, most of us struggle from time to time, or maybe even all the time, with will power. For some the source of their temptation is chocolate or candy, for others it’s alcohol or drugs. None of us is immune to the problem and sooner or later we all give in to the temptation, albeit usually temporarily. But in my friends case it wasn’t that she was struggling with the temptation, she had given up even trying to fight it.

By telling herself she had no will power she was saying to herself she couldn’t control her urges or desires. In essence she was giving herself permission to fail.

There’s an old saying that comes to mind; “We are not what we think we are, but what we think, we are”

In other words the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves become our reality. If we tell ourselves we can’t do something we don’t do it. If we tell ourselves we have no will power we will have no will power.

The only problem is when  you try telling yourself you don’t have diabetes. Your brain may hear but your body has a mind of its own.

What if I told you I knew a way that you could have a longer life, a healthier heart, lower your blood pressure, lower your risk of breast cancer, lower your risk of prostate cancer, lower the risk of back pains and migraine headaches, have a better physique, raise your testosterone level,  have fewer menopausal symptoms, and have healthier semen!  Would you do it? What if I said you don’t have to go to a gym to do this, you don’t even have to get out of bed! In fact staying in bed is perfect for this. Because it is all about S…..E……X!  Yes, sex and a lot of it will do all of these lovely things for you!

Okay, researchers have known for a long time that people who have sex frequently, are healthier, have fewer heart problems and lower blood pressure.  But is it due to the sex….or are healthier people more frisky than others?

Recently CNN Health reported about a Yoga instructor and her husband who made a pact to have sex every day for a month and guess what?  They felt better!  They slept better, dodged colds and flu and had more energy!  Hey, that’s all good right?  Well, it turns out that there are a whole bunch of studies over the years that have proved that frequent sex is good for you.  Unfortunately, the research didn’t indicate what “good” sex was, but just that it was good if done, well, frequently…no suggestions of how many times or how long…and no technical advice was dispensed.

A study of almost 1,000 men in the Welsh town of Caerphilly (where the cheese comes from) found that the men with the highest orgasmic frequency had a 50 percent reduced mortality risk compared to the men with the lowest orgasmic frequency. Of course that doesn’t tell you anything about the frequency of women’s orgasms.. typical bloody men! But putting that aside, the study showed that sexual activity seems to have a very beneficial effect on men’s health.

That’s not all. In a study in New Scientist found that people who have sex once or twice a week get a boost to their immune system which means they are less likely to get a cold or even the flu. Once or twice a week folks. Come on, that’s easy!

Dr. Irwin Goldstein,  Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Sexual Medicine,  is a proponent of the importance of sexual activity in humans! Not surprising really, that’s his audience. He said, “Holy God! Sexual activity is a very important thing to do!”  (Actually, I thought, God must know these things but Dr. Goldstein seems to think he didn’t).

So what are you waiting for! The benefits are enormous and this is one exercise you don’t need to go to the gym to do. In fact, I’m sure the folks at the gym would much rather you didn’t, do “it” there I mean

Last week we took care of Emma Danger, she’s 10 months old now and just beginning to stand, but she has the yoga “happy baby”  pose down. In fact, Emma can suck her toes and sit for long periods of time in a sling on her mother’s chest. She is one flexible little gal.

Emma was who I was thinking about when we were at our yoga class on Tuesday night.  I was wishing that my joints were as flexible and loose as Emma’s. They are NOT.  But I get a lot out of yoga – breathing, concentration, calming and general well being.  Yoga is not only a good form of exercise, it can be an essential element in relieving stress.

It got me to thinking about the benefits yoga can bring to children.  After all, if Emma does yoga and she’s only 10 months (granted she doesn’t even know she’s doing it) then children may be completely comfortable learning yoga techniques and gain the same benefits that we adults do from this practice.

So I did a little research and guess what.  Yoga not only helps children concentrate, breathe, calm themselves, but there are studies that find  it can do a heck of a lot more as the child grows.  In fact, just by introducing yoga, kids can gain a life long benefits.

Molly Kenny, MS-CCC of the Samarya Center, studies and uses yoga as therapy for everything from toddlers to hospice patients.  She has found that just the physical act of balancing seems improve self-esteem, concentration, a connection to the body.  Children who practice simple yoga techniques may not only be more able to calm themselves  but may be better able to regulate their emotions and manage stress.

Studies done by SYTAR, the first Symposium on Yoga Therapy and Research, suggest that children who do yoga,  may also choose better foods to eat and they might even begin a life long habit that includes more physical activity than children who do not practice yoga.

And you can find all kinds of yoga classes on YouTube if you search yoga for kids, it’s free and you don’t need equipment for the most part!

So here are a few things you can do with your little ones right now.

My first meditation: Have your children join you in a comfortable spot,  everyone close your eyes and take 3 slow, deep breaths – inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth.  Repeat this two or three times before the children slowly open their eyes. – This breaks the cycle of constant activity and creates a quiet time where they are still and present in the moment.

Get your baby to giggle – This is a fun activity, make faces, tell a joke, do a silly dance.  Emma Danger loves it when we do head banging…tossing our hair around.  For some reason she thinks that’s hysterical… So what?  Well, laughter creates endorphins, decrease stress hormones, lowers blood pressure, elevates moods and becomes a natural pain killer in the body.

Get out the clay!  When children have a creative outlet they concentrate and the creativity of working with clay has a soothing effect.  It’s a good way to unwind and relieve stress.

So put your child on a path to less stress and better health.  You can be your own kid’s Yogi!

Non-Fat! Huh! – What is it good for….Absolutely Nothin’ Say it again!

The food industry has lots of ways to make us believe we can eat what we want and still stick to our diet! Have you been lured into the evil ways of the “Non-Fat” food industry? You know the one that says, “Ice Cream…sure, have some “Non-Fat” ice cream, go ahead, have as much as you want! It’s Non-Fat! Ever looked at the label? Check out those calories, but here’s the good news!

A recent study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition shows that women who have at least one serving of full-fat dairy products, (like that ice cream) a day gain less weight than women who don’t. They aren’t sure why this is the case. It could be that a compound in milk fat may aid in weight loss, but my take has always been, “I’d rather have the “real” thing! “

Dieticians believe that the protein found in full-fat foods might satisfy your taste buds and curb your hunger at the same time  They say full-fat foods taste different and trigger the brain to feel satiated sooner than with non-fat foods. It makes sense, if your craving is met and the protein makes you less hungry, you won’t need to eat as much.

Lot’s of people fill their refrigerators with non-fat products ranging from creamers for coffee to cheese that tastes exactly like, well, non-fat cheese. Amazingly this doesn’t satisfy the craving for the taste of the real food.

Folks who regularly choose non-fat products are more likely to take in more calories because they tend to eat larger portions more often. Think about it, real ice cream or non-fat ice cream. I know what your thinking. “Well, it’s non-fat so I guess I can have a larger serving.” Right, but does it really satisfy your craving for the real thing?

There’s a commercial that shows a woman coming home from a hard day at work. It must have been a hard day because she sheds her shoes as she enters the house, she drops her jacket on the floor and somehow someone left a piece of frosted chocolate cake on the coffee table which she eats, licking the frosting off the top as she lies on the couch. Believe me, she looks pretty satisfied. Then they tell you it’s “non-fat. I can tell you this, non-fat just doesn’t taste as good as the real thing, but then this skinny woman is getting paid to enjoy the non-fat luscious chocolate cake. I’d rather have a smaller piece but have real chocolate.

That means you have to make a decision, and choose wisely. If you crave a steak, choose the lower fat cuts like sirloin, or T-bone. Want a hamburger? Choose lean meat and hold the mayo. Enjoy your dairy products, like Ice cream, or cheese and be judicious with the servings. You don’t have to have a lot and it will make you appreciate every bite.

It’s all about making the best choice, be careful of the calories and enjoy the taste of the real thing.

Are you the boss of your body, or is your body the boss of you? No, really, I mean it.

Think about your day and all the things you do, carrying bundles from the grocery store into the house, getting in and out of your car, fitting through turnstiles, walking from the parking lot to your work, bending, lifting, reaching. Think of all the physical movements you make during the day. Now, think about the effort expended doing all these tiny and not so tiny movements. Do you complete each movement with ease without a thought about using your body or do you make compensations for you body. Do you compensate because you have to make up for your girth? Do you change the path you take because your feet hurt or your breathing is too shallow? Be honest, how much are you the boss of your body, and how much is your body the boss of you?

If it’s any comfort to you, you’re not alone. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 61% of all adults in the U.S feel that they are overweight. It’s the moment when you “accept” the idea that you are overweight that changes your attitude about yourself. It’s at this moment that you consciously make a choice – “Yes, I’m overweight and that’s that”…or “I feel like I’m overweight, and I’m going to change”.

You may not think those exact words or you may not even notice the pounds and inches slowly padding out your body. Then, one day you do notice and ask “When did this happen?” Imagine how different things would be if you went to bed one night and the next morning woke up to discover you had put on 30 pounds overnight. I’ll bet you would take immediate action to change things!
But we don’t just gain weight overnight, do we, we pack it on little by little, an ounce at a time, over months and years; and as it slowly adds up we accept these tiny changes until we can’t even imagine how this change of body, change of activities, and change of attitude has taken over our lives. And just as if you woke up 30 pounds heavier and determined to do something about because it happened overnight, you can choose to do something about it right now.

Let’s take our own little survey and find out what you really think about your body. Just accept the first thoughts that come to mind as you complete these sentences.

When I think about my body I …
2) Every time I put on my clothes I feel…

The last time I remember feeling in great shape was…

I can lose weight starting today, if I…

Complete these sentences and write down the answers. Now write down #4 four different ways. Really think about it. What can you do today?

The Surgeon General has declared obesity to be epidemic in the United States, so much so that it is responsible for 300,000 deaths every year, that’s more than 3 fully loaded 747 airplanes crashing every single day with NO Survivors! 300,000 people gone every single year. And the numbers are growing each year. Does it include you? These people are dying from all kinds of health problems brought on by being overweight or obese, and most of them could have done something to stop their untimely deaths.

The good news is that, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, we are all going to live longer lives. Today the average life expectancy for a man is 74.5 years and a woman can live to the age of 79.5! So given that, how will you fare physically when you are in your 70’s? Keeping fit, being able to walk, dance, ride a roller coaster, or just take part in all the activities of daily life is a major step to growing old without depression and isolation. Will you enjoy the life you will be living in the body you have now? Go back to #4. Make a list. Start today.

Who’s the Boss?

Let me know what worked for you. Share your solutions with us and let us know how you got your body back.

Most people think of them as the left brain and the right brain. The left brain is the logical one, the one that deals with linear thinking, like solving math problems or planning a road trip. The left brain thinks analytically, it’s responsible for understanding languages, numbers, words and writing. The right brain thinks in pictures, emotions, sounds and symbols. Due to the right brain’s emotional sense, it can effect not only our psychological but also our physical states of mind. By imagining positive images the right side can make us feel comforted and safe which in turn can create a more relaxed frame of mind and actually lower blood pressure and loosen tense muscles. This is not just a belief, it’s a scientific fact, backed up by many studies; what you imagine can change the chemistry in your body.

Guided Imagery and hypnosis are used to promote a healthier outlook and a sense of well being just by imagining positive outcomes. We spend most of our time in our left brain, the logical thought processes in the conscious state of mind, because in our society that’s how we are educated and rewarded. You get an A if you know all the facts and information. You get into college if you get good grades, etc.

The right brain is where the subconscious mind lives. So focusing your attention on positive results will give your subconscious mind the authority and the go ahead to create a positive reality, just like worry and negative thoughts create an negative reality.

The subconscious mind doesn’t analyze, it doesn’t figure if the outcome is possible or not, it doesn’t judge or compare your thoughts with reality or try to identify exactly how something can or cannot happen, it simply takes your word for it and goes to work to create the goal or outcome you have been focusing on.

So, your thoughts are very powerful, that’s why you must be very careful how you think, what you talk about, and what you say to yourself. You attract whatever you put your attention to. If you focus your thoughts on how unlucky you are, you will be unlucky. If you focus on thoughts that you can’t lose weight, you won’t!

We do it all the time; you know, the thoughts in your head that tell you what might go wrong, or what to judge, or just those thoughts that give you something to worry about. Worry is how most of us experience our imagination, we anticipate problems, we rehearse arguments over things that haven’t even happened yet, we prepare ourselves for failure.

But we can change the pattern of worry by using the imagination to our advantage. We can train our mind to put our subconscious to work FOR us not against us, to create a better outlook. All you have to do is imagine the best. Don’t let the left brain tell you no! Just pretend, imagine, see it, taste it, feel it. As if it has already become reality, and it will.

Okay, all you left brainers out there, just do it for 2 weeks. Notice what you say to yourself and make it a positive statement instead. Meet back here in 2 weeks and tell me what you found out!