To do list

Are you overburdened at work? Do you always feel one step behind trying to catch up on all the chores on your “to-do” list each day? Do you toss and turn in bed at night thinking about all the things you should have accomplished that day, but didn’t? All of us have experienced a hectic set of circumstances in our lives at one point or another. Perhaps you deal with stress on a daily basis. This stress can lead to sickness, depression, and make you feel overwhelmed. So, how can you deal with this constant stress? One answer is exercise. There are physical and mental manifestations of stress. The severity of stress placed upon your body depends on your job, family, and life obligations. Exercise will benefit nearly everyone from a mother of five to a single on-the-go professional. You can find a form of exercise to suit your needs whether you have just ten minutes of free time a day or can hit the gym regularly. Exercise has the potential to be a highly effective stress reducer. The following are typical inquiries, justifications, and solutions about how we can incorporate exercise into our daily lives. How does exercise affect the body? Won’t it make me feel tired? On the contrary, exercise has been shown to increase “endorphins”. Endorphins are the “feel good” chemicals that are linked to an elevation in mood. This endorphin kick can be akin to eating a chocolate bar. Chocolate has caffeine and hits the pleasure center in our brain. Similar to exercise, which accelerates blood pumping, exercise boosts brain oxygen supply. This endorphin rush is why many exercisers become addicted to exercise. Exercise has long been an antidote to stress. Exercise takes your mind away from the stresses of daily life while you run, lift weights, or engage in any activity that raises your heart rate. An added benefit to exercise is that it will help you sleep better at night. For many people stress wreaks havoc on their lives by causing insomnia. However, you should avoid exercising too close to bedtime. The rise in activity and heart rate that exercise brings should be completed at least three hours before bed time. Each person reacts differently to exercise so test out different exercise times and see which time works best for you. How am I supposed to find time to exercise when my day is already filled to the brim with chores, kids, work, etc.? Before you brush off exercise time, take a closer examination of your day. Do you have down time? Do you spend time watching television? Many people watch television during the course of the day. This television time could be exercise time instead. Record your favorite TV shows and watch them later after you have exercised. Time exists for exercise; it is just a matter of making time and placing value on your exercise program and overall health. What kind of physical activity should I do to get rid of stress? I don’t want to be a gym rat and purchase an expensive health club membership. Good news. You don’t need to sign an expensive gym contract to get your exercise in for the day. You can exercise from the comfort of your own living room or head outside and enjoy the fresh air. For example, break a sweat with exercise videos/DVDs. There are a bevy of exercise videos/DVDs available for home use that range for calming Yoga to boot camp kick boxing. Free weights, aerobic steps, exercise balls, and strengthening bands are among the extras included in some videos and DVDs. It is like you have a personal mini-gym all to yourself. You can create your own exercise video library and rotate the different workouts to keep your exercise program varied and interesting. Put on some walking shoes and go outside to see what your neighborhood has to offer. Walking is a low-impact exercise option. It is fun to walk with your spouse, children, and friends. Many neighborhoods have jumped on the walking bandwagon by starting walking clubs. They meet twice a week in the morning for an hour long walk. Exercise with a partner will help you stay on track, and it's a great way to meet new neighbors. This accountability is a great defense against skipping your workout. Many people want to get away from the stress of others. They want to exercise and walk by themselves. If this applies to you then you can listen to a tape or CD on your walk. It is a great way to catch up on books you have been meaning to read by listen to the audio version. Or you can listen to soothing music. Either way you can reduce stress from your daily life by placing your focus on other things besides all the errands you need to get done that day. Exercise can help you deal with stress. It is a natural way to energize your body and calm your mind. Make exercise an integral part of your daily living. You will be glad you did as you enjoy each day, stress free.

We rarely experience the initial blues associated with purchasing a new vehicle until we begin to consider actually going through the unpleasant process of dealing with a dealership. Given that experiencing the blues is not something we really want, one of our first thoughts frequently is "why do we have to go through this?" We want this to be a pleasant experience that we will cherish for many years to come. As we sit in our new car in the garage or driveway, or even better, as we drive down the road, we want to feel how this new baby handles turns. However, there seems to be such a terrible taste in our mouths after we have been through the traditional process in America which results in the buying new car blues. It’s awful. It truly is. How can you take such a huge occasion in someone’s life and turn it into such a miserable experience well my opinion is you just add the dealership to the equationthat’s how. Awful! Buying New Car Blues is a phenomenon as far as I am concerned. The morning after you make your purchase, you roll over in bed. You kiss your spouse or significant loved one knowing that today is the day that you will add a new vehicle to the family. Indeed, very exciting. You pack up the car with the two kids (big mistake as you didn’t remember that this process take about 20 hours) and you head on down to the dealership. You pull up to the lot and are greeted by a big cheesy grin from a guy named Gus who claims that today is his first day. He asks you a series of questions right away, as if you were being cross-examined for a robbery that took place across the street at the nearby convenience store (keep in mind that this is his first day). You find the vehicle that you are interested in, drive it then the real hell starts. As you return on your test drive her throws the corny line out Hey why don’t you park the car over there in the sold line? Ok, really I am not 6 years old and I do realize that there is NO sold line. You go inside to make your offer. Your two kids and spouse are being as patient as they can be, and they keep looking at you to make sure you haven't lost your patience yet. You sit down in the booth without a calculator, a computer, a television to soothe the kids, a newspaper, or anything else, and Gus starts asking you about your life. Name, Rank and Serial Number please. 87 references. He responded, "Now  we will never call them it's just for the bank." He then whips out his 4 Square you know the one the one by the end of the battle that has 18 different colors of Sharpie on it telling you that you don’t know a thing about automobiles what they co stand what you should pay. Talk about demoralizing and the onslaught of buying new car blues. You finally agree to a price a payment and are patted on the back from Fred the CLOSER (he has been at the dealership for more than 1 day we are sure) and assisted down the hall to meet JAKE, the Business Manager that is just going to tie up the paper work you know dot the ‘I’s’ and cross the ‘T’s’. Jake starts by talking about how stupid you would be if you didn't buy this or that, how your new car will break in half tomorrow, and that you better have insurance. Sheesh. ENOUGH! blues about buying a new car! It is a occurrence. What else could you have such great thoughts of that ultimately turn into such a terrible experience? Really I challenge you to find a distant rival. I advise everyone to pass on this experience all together as there is a better way and a way to eliminate the buying new car blues.

The body's non-specific response to any demands placed on it is known as stress. We encounter stress every day and in every aspect of our lives. It would be impossible to live a stress-free life, no matter how much people wish for it. Our lives are fraught with stress. Sadly, stress not only causes discomfort but can also lead to serious, long-term illnesses if left unchecked. So, what actually happens when someone is under constant stress? When we try to deal with stress, our bodies change in a variety of ways. Let's look at how the body works. Through nerves, a message is sent to the brain when we experience stress in one area of the body. After that, it either reaches the thalamus or the limbic system through the reticular activating system. The thalamus serves as a trigger or switch for the limbic system, which stores our emotions and decides what to do with the body's incoming signals. As a result, when the hypothalamus is stimulated, the autonomic nervous system and the endocrine system are also stimulated. Another way in which the brains will response to a stressor is by activating a part of the brain known as hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal system (HPA system). The HPA will activate the production and release of glucocorticolds i.e. steroid hormones, including the primary stress hormone crotisol. This hormone is very important in coordinating the body's systems to quickly deal with stress. There are byproducts produced by the body when it works to deal with stress. All of these physiological reactions or diseases can occur if these stress-related byproducts are not addressed effectively. Lets us consider some illnesses and diseases. The mind makes the body more susceptible to many diseases. Psychosomatic diseases are the name given to these conditions (psyche denotes the mind, soma denotes the body). Let us use Jenny, a 45-year-old woman, as an illustration to illustrate this idea. Her husband passed away, leaving her depressed. Although Jenny's husband was kind, she thought it unfair and found it difficult to cope with his sudden death. She felt helpless and powerless. People weren't surprised that Jenny passed away just one year after her husband's death; loneliness was her only companion now. Officially, they said that Jenny had died of a heart attack, but Jenny's friends knew that she had died of heart failure. You might be familiar with a few people like Jenny, who died or became chronically ill as a result of severe stress despite having almost no physical problems. How many times we tell people its all in your head. In Jenny's case, not everything was in her head. Psychogenic diseases are conditions that manifest themselves in our bodies when we experience excessive emotional stress. In psychogenic diseases there is no invasion of disease producing virus or micro organism, the mind changes the physiology in such a way that it breaks down. On the other hand, a somatogenic disease—such as cancer or asthma—occurs when the mind makes the body more susceptible to diseases caused by microbes or natural degenerative processes. There can be various diseases cause by stress. Let's examine a few specific circumstances. One of the common diseases caused by stress is Hypertension. The excessive and harmful pressure of the blood against the arterial walls of the blood vessels is known as hypertension, or high blood pressure. The walls of the arteries will rupture if the blood exerts an excessive amount of pressure on them. Additionally, the intended destination of the blood will not be reached. If the rupture is in the brain it can cause cerebral hemorrhage. Since stress raises blood pressure and serum cholesterol, a link between stress and hypertension has long been suspected. Typically, emotional stress is a major factor in hypertension. Medication can be used to control hypertension, but it sometimes has side effects. Negative behaviors like alcoholism and smoking can cause these side effects. In addition to medication and lifestyle changes, various stress management interventions, such as relaxation training and perception training, are necessary to treat hypertension. Apoplexy, also known as a stroke, is when one of the brain's arteries ruptures or becomes blocked, preventing oxygen from reaching the brain. It could cause paralysis, speech impairments, or even death, depending on the location of the rupture. Hypertension, stress, and diet all have an impact on stroke risk. Another disease caused by stress is ulcers. Ulcers are cuts or fissures in the walls of the stomach, during chronic stress norepinphrine secretion causes capillaries in the stomach lining to constrict. This, in turn results in shutting down of the mucosal production which is the protective barrier for the lining in the stomach. When the barrier in the wall of the stomach is lost, the hydrochloric acid breaks down the tissue and sometimes even reaches the blood vessel causing a bleeding ulcer. However, it has been found that there are many other causes of ulcer. Still, stress can exacerbate the conditions in the degenerative track to make ulcers more likely to occur. It can also act as a catalyst in the production of hydrochloric acid in the stomach. Rheumatoid arthritis is another painful disease caused by stress. It is the swelling and inflammation in various joints in the body which if continued in its development can be very painful. A synovial membrane covers a normal joint. This membrane produces fluids which lubricate the joints, in Rheumatoid arthritis, this membrane secretes excessive fluids. The joint is swollen as a result of these fluids. These fluids penetrate the bone if the development continues because excessive fluids have nowhere else to expand, so they penetrate the bone. When the bone is immobilized in the final stage, it may harm the scar tissue and cause deformity. Sometimes rheumatoid arthritis is due to hereditary factors known as rheumatoid factors. When under chronic stress, it aggravates the development of this arthritis, especially for people who are prone to it. As seen above, if not paid attention to, stress can have lot of negative consequences. Cancer, backache, TMJ syndrome, asthma, hey fever, tension headaches, migraine headaches and coronary heart diseases to name a few. Every person's life needs healthy stress to have direction. Therefore, rather than following where life takes you, follow where it leads you.