Stress Management

User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6509
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Stress Management

Post by caltrek »

With all of the bad news, it can be very difficult to avoid feeling highly stressed. I read a lot from participants in this forum suggesting this may be a fairly common problem for a lot of us. So, this thread is for coping with that problem by citing news articles that may be of help. I personally don't like to give advice, but if others feel more comfortable about that, this may be a good thread in which to participate.

Stressed? Four Ways to Stop Your Brain From Telling You the Worst Will Happen
by Patricia Riddell
June 30, 2022

Introduction:
(Science Alert) Imagine you have an interview for a new job tomorrow. Some people might think about what kind of questions they will be asked so that they can prepare, or imagine the interview going well.

For others, the thought of an interview will cause them to toss and turn all night thinking of every worst case scenario possible – no matter how outlandish these may be. If you're someone who has a tendency to do the latter, you are prone to catastrophizing.

Catastrophizing is a tendency to assume the worst will happen when imagining a future situation – even if you have evidence that this is not the most likely outcome. People who like to feel in control (and are therefore intolerant of uncertainty) are more likely to catastrophize. This has been linked to anxiety – suggesting that frequent catastrophizing may be a factor in developing certain mental health problems.

Catastrophizing comes from the belief that by imagining what might go wrong, we're better able to protect ourselves from harm – both physical and mental. However, this tendency is only helpful if you're able to correctly predict what will happen in a certain situation and how it will make you feel.

As we imagine future events, we experience an emotional reaction to the story we are creating – and we use this response to determine how we will feel in the future. But this way of predicting the future is often wrong since we're not able to imagine everything that might happen.
Read more here: https://www.sciencealert.com/stressed- ... ll-happen

Edit: Correction of typographical error.
Last edited by caltrek on Wed Jul 06, 2022 8:43 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6509
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: Stress Management

Post by caltrek »

Axios Finish Line: Making friends
by Erica Pandey
July, 2022

Introduction:
(Axios) In America, we value family and work — but friendship often falls behind. Many of us have few or no close confidants, the data shows.
Why it matters: Friends help us get through the tough times and sweeten the good times. And a thriving society is filled with strong friendships.

• Studies have shown friendship lengthens our lives, improves our performance at work, makes us better parents and broadens our minds.
But 27% of millennials say they have no close friends, and 22% say they have no friends at all, according to a recent YouGov survey.

• Americans also lost touch with many of their friends when COVID hit, an American Enterprise Institute study found.
Read more here: https://www.axios.com/2022/06/30/how-to-make-friends
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6509
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: Stress Management

Post by caltrek »

Gardening Can Cultivate Better Mental Health
July 6, 2022

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) Many longtime gardeners will tell you that the garden is their happy place. New research suggests that many people may indeed reap mental health benefits from working with plants — even if they’ve never gardened before.

In a study published in the journal “PLOS ONE,” University of Florida scientists found that gardening activities lowered stress, anxiety and depression in healthy women who attended twice-weekly gardening classes. None of study participants had gardened before.

“Past studies have shown that gardening can help improve the mental health of people who have existing medical conditions or challenges. Our study shows that healthy people can also experience a boost in mental wellbeing through gardening,” said Charles Guy, principal investigator on the study and a professor emeritus in the UF/IFAS environmental horticulture department.

The study was co-authored by an interdisciplinary team of researchers with the environmental horticulture department, the UF College of Medicine, the UF Center for Arts in Medicine and the UF Wilmot Botanical Gardens, which also hosted all the study treatment sessions.

Thirty-two women between the ages of 26 and 49 completed the study. All were in good health, which for this experiment meant screening for factors such as chronic health conditions, tobacco use and drug abuse, and having been prescribed medications for anxiety or depression. Half of the participants were assigned to gardening sessions, while the other half were assigned to art-making sessions. Both groups met twice a week for a total eight times. The art group served as a point of comparison with the gardening group.
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/958102
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6509
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: Stress Management

Post by caltrek »

Often related to the ability to deal with stress is the ability to deal with depression. (At least IMHO).

Genetic Testing May Benefit Patients with Depression
July 12 , 2022

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) A new U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs study found that pharmacogenomic testing can help providers avoid prescribing antidepressant medications that may have undesirable outcomes. Pharmacogenomics is the study of how genes affect the body’s response to drugs.

The researchers also found that the patients who underwent genetic testing had more positive outcomes, compared with patients in usual care. Over 24 weeks of treatment, the group with genetic testing had in a drop in depression symptoms—with a peak effect at 12 weeks. Each patient in the study had major depressive disorder. Symptoms of that health condition include insomnia, loss of appetite, feelings of sadness and depression, and thoughts of dying by suicide.

The results appeared in July 2022 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Dr. David Oslin, director of VA’s VISN 4 Mental Illness, Research, Education, and Clinical Center (MIRECC), led the study. He thinks the results will encourage providers to consider using pharmacogenomic testing, with patient consent, to help drive treatment decisions.

“From a VA policy perspective, I don’t think that we would say the study is robust enough that we recommend testing everybody,” says Oslin, who is also a psychiatrist at the Corporal Michael J. Crescenz VA Medical Center in Philadelphia. “The results were not a slam dunk, and in fact, an important outcome of the study is that only about 15% to 20% of the patients had genes that would significantly interfere with the prescribed medication. But I think the results favoring a positive effect on treatment, although small, will encourage providers to test patients and get this genetic information. Future research should explore if there are subgroups of patients who would benefit more from testing.”
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/958092
Last edited by caltrek on Mon Jul 18, 2022 2:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6509
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: Stress Management

Post by caltrek »

Breaking Up is Hard to Do – But Many Men Find Healthy Ways to Cope
July 14 , 2022

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) The popular stereotype that men don’t want support during a breakup, separation or divorce is simply not true, according to a new paper by researchers at the UBC school of nursing.

In reality, many men do seek out help by accessing online resources, coaches and self-help books, or they reach out to friends, family and community-based groups, and some engage professional counsellors.

Senior author Dr. John Oliffe (he/him), a professor of nursing who leads the men's health research program at UBC, and research co-author Mary T. Kelly (she/her) say men can be resourceful and resilient as they work their way through painful relationship change.

"A failed relationship can lead to significant mental stress—men already have higher risks for suicide than women, and marital separation increases that risk four times. By exploring the ways through which men seek help after a breakup, we can potentially design better supports for their mental health," says Kelly.

"It’s also important to shift the narrative," adds Oliffe, the Canada Research Chair in men‘s health promotion. "The story that is most often told is that when a relationship breaks down, the man goes into crisis and/or perpetrates violence on his partner, but this is not the trajectory for most men. It’s helpful for guys to see that most breakups end with the men working through their challenges by leaning into help."
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/958708
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6509
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: Stress Management

Post by caltrek »

Stress Transmitter Wakes Your Brain More Than 100 Times a Night – and It is Perfectly Normal
July 14 , 2022

Introduction:
((EurekAlert) You wake up. The alarm clock says 02:56.

“Oh no, it is not time to wake up yet,” you think, fearing that you will need lots of coffee to stay awake the following day.

Most people believe that a good night’s sleep should be uninterrupted. That is why it can be extremely annoying to wake up in the middle of the night when all you want to do is sleep.

New research from the University of Copenhagen shows that the stress transmitter noradrenaline causes you to wake up many times a night. But do not worry. It is all part of a normal, good night’s sleep and can even mean that you have slept well.
  • (Noradrenaline
    Noradrenaline is a stress hormone and transmitter substance, which i.a. is associated with the body’s fight or flight response. It is related to adrenaline, and levels may increase during stress, but it also helps you stay focussed.)

“You may think that sleep is a constant state that you are in, and then you wake up. But there is a lot more to sleep than meets the eye. We have learned that noradrenaline causes you to wake up more than 100 times a night. And that is during perfectly normal sleep,” says Assistant Professor Celia Kjærby from the Center for Translational Neuromedicine, who is one of the first authors of the study.
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/958800
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6509
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: Stress Management

Post by caltrek »

Please don’t take my posting of this article as a product endorsement. I have never used the product under discussion and have no idea whether it is effective. Just something that may be looming ion our future, for better or worse. It does remind me of scenes from Orwell’s 1984.

Wysa Raises $20 Million to Expand Its Therapist Chatbot Into a Wider Set of Mental Health Services
by Jagmeet Singh
July 14 , 2022

Introduction:
(Techcrunch) Wysa, a popular mental health app originally founded in India around an AI chatbot that helps users talk through their feelings, has raised $20 million in a Series B funding round to expand its business on the heels of hitting 4.5 million users in 65 countries.

The all-equity round is led by India’s digital health-focused venture capital fund HealthQuad, with participation also from British International Investment (BII), the U.K.’s development finance institution. The plan will be to use the money to double down on its home market as well as the U.S. and U.K, where it already has respectively had approvals from the FDA and the National Health Service (NHS) and is used by the latter as part of its online mental health services. Originally built to work in English, Wysa will use some of the investment also to widen multilingual support. The team currently has 100–150 people.

Previous backers have included both Amazon and Google (who invest by way of their digital assistant funds), and Wysa prior to this round had raised $9.4 million. It’s not disclosing valuation.

To date, Wysa has served over 400 million conversations to 4.5 million users in 65 countries, and its rise speaks not just to the stresses of life in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic but to the lack of resources for many to deal with that.

“The demand for mental health, as you can imagine, is exploding,” said Ramakant Vempati, co-founder, Wysa, in an interview with TechCrunch. “The number of mental health professionals is just not enough to meet that demand.”
Read more here: https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/14/wys ... ervices/
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
Nanotechandmorefuture
Posts: 478
Joined: Fri Sep 17, 2021 6:15 pm
Location: At the moment Miami, FL

Re: Stress Management

Post by Nanotechandmorefuture »

caltrek wrote: Thu Jul 14, 2022 2:52 pm Stress Transmitter Wakes Your Brain More Than 100 Times a Night – and It is Perfectly Normal
July 14 , 2022

Introduction:
((EurekAlert) You wake up. The alarm clock says 02:56.

“Oh no, it is not time to wake up yet,” you think, fearing that you will need lots of coffee to stay awake the following day.

Most people believe that a good night’s sleep should be uninterrupted. That is why it can be extremely annoying to wake up in the middle of the night when all you want to do is sleep.

New research from the University of Copenhagen shows that the stress transmitter noradrenaline causes you to wake up many times a night. But do not worry. It is all part of a normal, good night’s sleep and can even mean that you have slept well.
  • (Noradrenaline
    Noradrenaline is a stress hormone and transmitter substance, which i.a. is associated with the body’s fight or flight response. It is related to adrenaline, and levels may increase during stress, but it also helps you stay focussed.)

“You may think that sleep is a constant state that you are in, and then you wake up. But there is a lot more to sleep than meets the eye. We have learned that noradrenaline causes you to wake up more than 100 times a night. And that is during perfectly normal sleep,” says Assistant Professor Celia Kjærby from the Center for Translational Neuromedicine, who is one of the first authors of the study.
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/958800
Guess daily life is too stressful even if its easy. Soon that won't be a concern.
User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6509
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: Stress Management

Post by caltrek »

A Brain Mechanism Underlying the Evolution of Anxiety
August 5, 2022

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) Monoamine neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine play important roles in our cognitive and emotional functions. Their evolutionary origins date back to metazoans, and while the function of related genes is strongly evolutionarily conserved, genetic variation within and between species has been reported to have a significant impact on animal mental characteristics such as sociality, aggression, anxiety, and depression.

A research group led by Dr Daiki Sato and Professor Masakado Kawata has previously reported that the vesicular monoamine transporter 1 (VMAT1) gene, which transports neurotransmitters to secretory vesicles in neurons and secretory cells, has evolved through natural selection during human evolution. In particular, the 136th amino acid locus of this gene has evolved in the human lineage from asparagine (Asn) to threonine (Thr), and moreover, a new allele (isoleucine, Ile) has emerged and increased in its frequencies around the world. Previous reports suggested that people with the Ile genotype are less prone to depression and anxiety than those with the Thr genotype, but it was unclear how these human-specific mutations function in the brain and lead to changes in neuropsychiatric behavior.

In this study, Sato, Kawata (Tohoku University),Yukiko U. Inoue (National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry), and their colleagues prepared Vmat1 gene-edited mice in which the 136th amino acid locus was replaced with the human genotype (Thr or Ile) via genome editing technology, and compared gene expression, neural activity, and behavior among genotypes. The Ile-type mice showed decreased levels of anxiety-like behaviors, consistent with human studies. In addition, the genotype affected post-synaptic gene expression and neural activity in the amygdala, a brain region involved in emotional regulation. The functional role of the VMAT1 gene in the central nervous system remains unclear, and this study may provide a steppingstone toward elucidating its molecular mechanisms. Moreover, there are few studies in which the effects of single amino acid substitutions under natural selection during human evolution have been verified using genome editing technology. This study demonstrates the functional importance of human-specific variants in the regulatory circuits of neurotransmitters involved in cognitive and emotional functions and is expected to shed light on the pathogenic mechanisms of neuropsychiatric disorders such as anxiety and depression.
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/961046
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
User avatar
andmar74
Posts: 389
Joined: Mon May 24, 2021 9:10 am
Location: Denmark

Re: Stress Management

Post by andmar74 »

https://www.gilmorehealth.com/vitamin-b ... d-anxiety/

Vitamin B6 Proven to Help with Depression and Anxiety

It was a small effect though, and you need close to 100 mg of B6 every day. It's not expensive.
Post Reply