Stress: The Common Enemy

From the web:
http://healthylivinghowto.com/1/post/2014/01/new-science-of-stress-reveals-how-you-think-about-stress-matters.html

Blog from Linda:

I highly recommend Dr. Gabor Mate’s book called “When the Body Says No; Exploring the Stress Disease Connection”. This book is truly amazing. At first he goes into the chemistry of stress hormones and how they eat away at the gut. Then he goes much further. This book allowed me to see myself slightly differently. Just a more compassionate view of the child I was and who I am now really opened some doors of perception at just the right time. I recommend anyone suffering from autoimmune disease to read it. And also look him up on youtube.com

Your Brain and Its health

From the Web:
Your brain is the command and control center of your body. If you want a healthy body, the first place to ALWAYS start is by having a healthy brain.

9 Things that Enhance Our Brain

1. Positive Social Connections — the people you spend time with determine your health and longevity.
2. New Learning — when you stop learning your brain disconnects.
3. Diet — we either consume the nutrients that help us or the toxins that harm us, the SAD is associated with heart disease, cancer, diabetes, depression, ADD/ADHD, Alzheimer’s. Food is medicine or poison.
4. Sleep — essential for blood flow to the brain, without sleep there are very serious consequences.
5. Physical Exercise — acts like a natural wonder drug for the brain
6. Healthy Anxiety — for inspiration to change
7. Meditation/Prayer — calms stress, chronic stress restricts blood flow to the brain which lowers brain function and prematurely ages the brain
8. ANT Killing — don’t believe every stupid thought you have
9. Gratitude — write down 3 things you are grateful for every day and within 3 weeks you’ll notice significant difference in your level of happiness, this is the best anti-depressant

Depression: The Great Imposter

When I heard that Robin Williams had died I wanted to write right away, wanted to make a statement. But I decided to wait for the comments of others to see if they could understand what he was going through. On a Fox News web page I ran across  the following information. Doctor Keith Ablow got it right when he wrote the following article click here.

The statements that he makes are, frankly, the best and most accurate description of depression that I have ever read.
I believe that I am going through the last of the most recent bout of the disease. I began to break it's hold on me when I inserted a phrase into the constant streaming negative comments running through my mind: these people around me are not thinking the same negative thoughts that I am thinking. I other words I worked on bringing myself back to reality. Over and over again I applied this to my thinking. Gradually reality would set in and I felt better.
As this was going on so was something else was as well and when I realized it and used it again and again reality again set in. The thing that was going on was that I realized that the time that I was enjoying laughing, feeling content, the depression ebbed. One might say, well of course! But it meant that I could control it. Just that realization set me to thinking. I said it over and over. Finally it started to work. I was fighting an Imposter. The negative thoughts (depression) were(are) the Imposter.
This is not all my own work. God had a lot to do with this pattern. I  see God as all powerful and would lay these negative thoughts on His back and realized that I would feel better. I knew the Bible was Holy and True. If the Bible said to do this, and It does, then He will follow through and take the negatives and turn them positive.
I find that one has to accept something as true and unassailable (unshakeable). To me that is God and His Word. Doubts will rise up, that is why the thought that God would help me had to be unshakeable. I realize that this pattern of thought is working. Yes, there are going to be lapses, but Hang on, strap yourself to the idea and use it time and again. It does work to break the depression. But to get to this place it am on a high level of drugs as well. But just the drugs alone were not enough to bring me to the current level of contentment.

Two Sites for Alternate Health

The other day I ran across two very interesting sites that have very promising treatments for depression.
One is on everyday health.com 

This info, or much of it, is covered in other posts on this blog. But some are not. The information on how Botox can be used and also the party drug Lanicemine is new. 

The second site is at www.watersure2.orghttp://www.watercure2.org/depression.htm

I am trying the water cure and am on my second day of the trial period.(I want to try until my symptoms force me to stop) that I am having muscle aches and pains, and if the headaches don't stop I will have to re-look at the salt factor in the combination. I may have to get the electrolytes through higher levels of my vitamin and mineral supplement.
I offer the information but take no responsibility as to the outcomes. That is up to you.

Other Health Issues

I thought that I had, through a different type of medication( for bipolar, and not just depression) and a new doctor that I had gotten the disease under control. Well, I had always said that if I had to have pain that I would rather have physical pain and not mental.
Well, now the two are combined and that is a blow. But I have also learn in the depressed times in the past that if I get my mind off of the depression through, say, singing along with positive songs on the Christian radio station, the depression will lift. It does work.
I think that singing along with positive music does two things:

• Makes you come out of the current thought pattern(s) that you are struggling with and

• focuses your thoughts on the bigger issues in life. Like peace and the light that is in life inherently. It is there, whether you can feel it in your thoughts or not.....

Medication can make you see this more clearly. But there is a stronger presence in believing in something bigger than you.  Depression when viewed bigger than you will win over you. Ask Some One (God) to take away that pain (depression) by giving it every minute to HIM. Every time the problem (depression) comes, look towards the light and just believe that HE has taken the discontent onto HIS shoulders. HE is bigger than you. HE can handle anything. Some times it takes years to realize this. Faith wavers. Depression will come and go because it is the way you have always reacted to the situations that your life is full of. THINK ON THIS. At least it will be a different way of thinking, and depression is a selfish way of thinking. I know I still have the pattern of depressive thoughts haunting me, and it is hard. When the problems wash over me I have to give my thoughts to HIM, let HIM deal with it.
Whether you are religious or not, you have to know that there is a larger thing out in life that can lift you. You did not make nature, God did, you are selfish to turn away from what is true.

Well I know that was a rant on God, it deserves to be looked into. There is something bigger than your problems.

Bipolar Another Diagnoses

Bipolar is just another face of the same disease which is depression. My psychiatrist that has been treating me for about 18 months has diagnosed me with anxiety, depression, OCD, and now bipolar. I have been through all these in the past 18 months.  My type appears to be bipolar two. That is where the depression is much more in effect than the mania. In fact the psychiatrist said that my mania is just bringing me back to a near normal state not a true mania. Mania is where a person is euphoric and perceives themselves as special somehow. They spend money that they can't afford. Their own behavior is risky in matters of sex, money, personal relationships, and their behavior at work as well is risky and ill advised.
So I am just experiencing another face of the same problem.

Bipolar: What I have?

I have been searching for what is wrong with me for all my life. Maybe now I can at least get some answers. The following blog entry may shed some light on the subject www.Yes and Yes.org

Her story is different than mine, but it would explain many things that I have been going through not only now, but all my life. When I did the completely natural thing with my diet and got off all meds, I ended up in a mental hospital.  When I went off I still cycled between feeling barely good to down in the dumps. At that time it was weekly. Rather steady and I thought it was allergies. That certain foods caused a reaction which was depression. Needless to say this led to a limited diet which ended up in a compulsive obsession that food and the environment was the source of my depression. This led to an outbreak in anxiety attacks. I feared to eat foods, be in certain places. I was spiraling down into a breakdown. I still go and get allergy shots, but I know that anxiety fed my allergies and their intensity.
I asked the allergy doctor if allergies in general triggered anxiety. He agreed with me that they did. He leaned in close to me and told me that he could help me with my allergies. Period. But what ever I had that went past them was in my head. Maybe not in those words, but with that intent. I returned home and went and sat in the room that before was not "cleaned" up enough from the dust and dust mites. And I realized that my fear of that room and  its dirt was gone.
Almost that quickly did my other fears decreased. I did not run out of my outside area at work anymore. Before I did because of my fear of the environment. That realization and yes, medications. I think that the knowledge that I am taking shots for the allergies and the psych medications for anxiety and depression is helping just as much as the actual medications for both.