“Your Own Secret Happy Nonprescription Internal Body Drugs” That Fight Depression and Anxiety
Posted: Thursday, November 03, 2011
by Christofer French
Rain Dancer Associates, LLC
“A Merry Heart Doth Good Like Medicine, But a Broken Spirit Dries the Bones”
Proverbs 17:22
The way people live their lives on a daily basis, those things people today tend to call “life style” really contain those elements that give you a bouncing and exciting approach to life, or one that sees us dragging our way to the starting line, feeling we don’t really have a chance. This duality describes a minute-by-minute battle for your head, your heart, and your body.
More and more studies on disease and drug treatments for improving our lives seem to have thorough templates of anti-stress paragraphs telling us how adrenalized, over excited and exhausted (adrenal exhaustion) states all create biochemical settings for cancer, heart disease, obesity, diabetes and other well known diseases.
Modern life is so constructed, especially in our urban settings, where most of humanity resides, to be a stress causing, adrenalin-squirting exercise from getting up in the morning to crashing into our beds at night.
The irony in the battle that we face as humans is that adrenalized states create affects in us that can be described variously as: irritable, nervous, edgy, argumentative, disagreeable, combative, sullen, sad, depressed.
Endorphins are “Your Secret Nonprescription Internal Body Drugs”.
There are people who are so morose and sullen that they literally do not know what you are talking about when they hear about “happy internal body drugs”. But all of you who are so depressed, you don’t even identify with these kinds of feelings --- you need to study this, and care about building these chemicals in you. Take it seriously if you don’t have the ability to laugh hard. Develop and exploit a real Sense of Humor. You need it. Maybe more than you could know right now. “Endorphins” are internal biochemicals that impact mood and affective states in addition to other bodily conditions.
You should be approaching laughter and joy as real legitimate goals so that you can manufacture these endorphins for your own selfish use! All kidding aside. Study these endorphins, and see why they are important to us all. Laughter releases endorphins (happy chemicals) from the body. Don’t forget the super importance of your immune system. When your Immune System, which is immensely sensitive to what is going on with you, perceives that you are in danger, it will cause a multitude of responses. When it perceives that you are happy, successful and downright content, you can fool it into permitting your “good health”. The older you get, the more you will see how important your immune system is.
Tumor Necrosis Factor
When I dealt with a decades old immune based disease, the doctor described TUMOR NECROSIS FACTOR. He described it as “the body orchestrating an entire array of factors, which when healthy can kill bugs, destroy tumors and rid the body of enemies.” “But”, he said, "when your immune system off, it turns that array of factors on its own organs.” I said, “You mean stress can cause an immune disorder?” Stress can play a big role. Much of this we are not sure of, but we do know this.”
Frame Your Life with Positivism (Endorphin Positive Responses).
This everyday battle going on inside your body is one in which you can be victorious more often than not!
Count your blessings, particularly when everything seems to go wrong. It is so human to cry out in outrage or disbelief when the “stuff hits the fan”, and we go around complaining to any sorry soul that will listen. The “Endorphin Positive Response” is to turn these events into humorous recounting of a life we can’t control (if it’s not too serious) or a deep philosophical understanding that moaning and complaining do not make suffering better (if it’s very serious). Believe that many other people are living in worse conditions than you are. Don’t exaggerate the complexity of your problems. Every problem has a solution. All you need to do is find that solution. Learn to be happy and to enjoy life’s blessings. Live one day at a time. Lose the Drama.
In order to truly frame your life with continuing “Endorphin Positive Responses”, you should examine your “philosophy of life”, faith, religious underpinnings, natural character traits – whatever you want to call your foundational way of looking at life – and try to construct positive designs that work on a day to day basis.
Habitual and Repetitive Scheduling of Exercise that you can Handle.
Play a sport you’re interested in. Or just love life and walk. Aerobic exercises can considerably reduce the stress factor. Exercise also improves sleep and gives you time to think and focus on other things. It also promotes the release of those natural soothing chemicals in your body. Regular exercise is truly an Endorphin Positive Response that you can count on doing myriads of positive things for your organs, circulation, biochemical balancing, tumor fighting chemicals and toxin removal systems.
A Key to Exercise:
It can be a trap. Exercise is a process of “tearing down” and “building up”. We all know people on the extreme edge of all kinds of physical disciplines that make the rest of us feel so “small”. This is a real trap. Exercise throughout human evolution first meant “walking”. We are walkers. Of course, we can do other exercises, but we need to understand that too much exercise, and certain kinds of exercise can end up being way too inflammatory and stressful. Take exercise like it is a medicinal process, not a body killing painful burden. If your exercise program is working right, you will feel mild discomfort, but then a feeling of elation and release. From day to day, this way of treating yourself will give you those great and wonderful endorphins. You will stretch and enjoy. You will feel the strength of muscles, the ease of tendons. Many overly demanding exercise sessions carry big prices, wear you out, hurt your sleep, make you discouraged. It is very important to do this over and over again. If you feel you are being too easy on yourself, the key is to be able to do it over and over and over again very easily. Many exercise programs end too quickly because people think they should be tough and powerful. Treat yourself with gentleness and your exercise program will probably still be with you months and months from now. And then you can decide how to change your program, if you will.
Relatives, Friends, Support Groups Should be Benign to Loving
You’ll be able to manage stress much better if you have other people helping and supporting you. Did you know that married people and people who are outgoing (always meeting with friends) have considerably lower levels of stress in their lives?
Miserable Worriers who are friends who continually put you down or talk gloomily about life will increase your anxiety. Actually analyze why you are spending time with someone, (It does not matter how close you are to them) who make you unhappy, gloomy, down, depressed, irritable, morose or ominously negative.
Live up to the Standards that you really hold true. Mercy and Judgment take their turns with us. If we hand out too much Judgment, and not enough Mercy, we will find ourselves pushing happiness out of our lives, and letting hard and critical states of mind to take up residence with us. The worst of it is when we magnetize inappropriately with people who are as pissy as we are. This is a “ball of snakes” that many people perpetuate for entire lifetimes through clubs, groups, or just plain socializing with people who hurt your heart and head every time you meet with them.
Meditation is an Unused Secret to Greater Health.
Go get a book or booklet or watch a program that shows you how slow deep breathing can turn around your attitude very quickly. A nurse recently had a patient who was suffering from a high blood pressure reading. “I want to show you something”. She showed the patient how to do a simple deep breathing exercise for over a minute. The high blood pressure reading was astoundingly improved. This experience pushed this person along on a whole new path of reading about the effectiveness of “breathing programs”. For thousands of years this has worked. If the word Yoga makes you wretch, just read conventional western theories about deep breathing. It will be very compelling. There is one person who sometimes gets up in the middle of the night and gets frustrated because they then get an adrenalin response, which kills their ability to rest. A breathing exercise, in the middle of the night works! Sometimes it takes 20 minutes, but after 20 minutes, the person slips into sleep. Happily.
Don’t Let Your Schedule Push You Around
We all have met people like this. Maybe you are one of them. When you meet them, as soon as the conversation begins, you hear about how crazy, overwhelmed, out of control, beaten up and harassed they are by what? The cops? The Secret Service? Muggers on the street? No, it’s just their daily schedule. Daily schedules that everyone has. This one is easy to understand but hard to implement. Get control of your stated daily obligations. Leave some gaps. Don’t schedule so that there is no room for getting around. Getting in control, itself, will make you happy. Declaring that you can’t make that time (even if you have room) will give you a sense of control. Calm, joyful and in control, you will start to feel those vibes that bring a powerful sense of “OKness”. You have to have that as you go through your day, or you will turn into one of those incessant complainers!
Don’t procrastinate. It’s a killer. Take on the tough stuff right away. Both of these things will give you that stronger sense that you are not to be blown away like a leaf on the wind. You are your own boss, and you are getting the painful out of the way first.
“Present Moment is really where life is”. There is one person, I know who goes through the day whispering that to himself. It is helpful for him. I do recommend that you ponder that fact that life is continuously happening now. Nothing happens that is not happening now. This is worthy of a “think through” and it helps alleviate anxiety and allows you to let patience build in you.
Consume Healthy Foods at the Appropriate Time.
Don’t skip meals. That activity creates an adrenalin response. Your body thinks you are going to starve itself, so stress reactions pick up right away. Just the opposite of an endorphin response. When you eat regularly, your body says, “No starvation and possible death today, let’s move on.” One of the things you will discover about this battle that goes on is that your body, when under stress, thinks you are in danger and might be dying. Therefore, the body takes a harder “attitude” toward this perceived situation. Whereas, if you are just happy and full of endorphins, that state is not that easy to maintain if assaults begin. The body is geared to be death preventative. So now you can see why negative states, are in a sense “stronger” than you might perceive they would be.
Especially pay close attention to breakfast. Take time out to eat heartily no matter how busy you are. Take nutritious snacks with you everywhere. A nutritionally balanced diet is essential to your health and lifestyle. For example, researchers have found that even small deficiencies of thiamin, a B-complex vitamin, can cause anxiety symptoms. Pantothenic acid, another B-complex vitamin, is critical during times of stress. Coffee one should decide how it affects them. Alcohol the same. Don’t over indulge in either coffee or alcohol, and of course, large amounts of sweets, affect blood sugar, insulin levels, fat storage, energy creation and more adrenalin responses.
Put all these Endorphin Positive Responses together, and you may just be watching anxiety and depression and sadness and irritability begin to take back seats when they were “riding shotgun” or in the driver’s seat. The more you employ these positive habitual responses, the more you will be your own best friend, and much of these issues have to do with the simple but profound idea that you can truly become your own best friend and have it affect your health.
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Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)truer words of wisdom were never written until now.
This is a fantastic article that many of us should print and refer to every now and then. Great!Thanks much, Steve.
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