Stress Relief.
Hi,
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What an awesome day we have here today.
I awoke to a bedroom suffused with light, blazing through the curtains.
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The sky is unbelievably blue with some light fluffy clouds, the trees softly trembling in a soft warm breeze.
After all the grey, warm and damp days, this is a total corker.
The sort of day where you feel that you really should use it to do something memorable.
I hope that you are as lucky.
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How strange it must be to live in a place where this is the weather you simply expect to experience for most days.
No doubt even paradise can eventually become quite everyday to those lucky enough to live there, and those people find life just as stressful as less fortunate people do!
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Do you get stressed by life, it’s pace, responsibilities and deadlines?
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I have always thought that it is nature’s way of telling us to slow down and take it all a bit easier.
Perhaps taking time to change things and make adjustments, to reduce the pressure mentally and physically, before it leads to bodily malfunctions like heart attacks or diabetes.
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Well, not in Dr Robert Sapolsky’s opinion.
He seems to have developed a much quicker way to stay ‘laid-back.’
This scientist is professor of neuroscience at Stanford University in California.
He has been researching hormones which are part of the immune system of all mammals.
They are called glucocorticoids.
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The doctor, has spent many years researching in Africa.
He now thinks that man, unlike other animals, produces excess glucocorticoids in response to to threat, but is unable to turn off the stress chemicals once the situation is over.
This then leads to them becoming toxic for some time afterwards, causing the immune system to weaken and brain cell damage.
Everyone knows how people can be quite aggressive and bad tempered with others for some time after being in a tense situation, like mothers who think something has happened to their child and then scream at them when they are safely returned.
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It was reported in ‘Wired’ magazine that Dr Sapolsky and his team have so far managed to adapt a herpes virus to carry ‘neuroprotective’ genes into the brain and overcome the overproducing stress hormones before they can do any damage.
So far, the research has been proved successful in tests on rats.
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Although it is probably many years before these ‘neuroprotective’ genes can be tested on humans, to short-circuit the tension and brain cell damage caused by neural feedback, it probably will be available at some time in the future.
Busy people could then face crisis after crisis by stopping the aftermath of each situation immediately, then be calm and focused to tackle whatever the next challenge might bring.
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What do you think of that then?
I think I will just stick to avoiding stress where possible and applying a bit of yoga to the rest.
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Have a stress-free one.
J,x.
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