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How to Keep Calm This Holiday Season
The holidays. That time of year that we both cherish and dread. Parties, travel, gifting, family, these can be both magical, and the reason many people experience increased stress and worry during the holidays. So how do you keep calm when the kids start fighting in the backseat or you get a flat tire on the way to your parent’s house? How do you keep from getting totally overwhelmed at the thought of driving great distances to be stuck in a room with those family members that know just how to drive you mad? Though we tend to look for help everywhere else, the solution to many of our problems can be found between our ears. The ability to manage stress and adapt to new situations starts in the brain. Proper neurotransmitter balance is essential to brain health. The better our transmitters operate in harmony with each other, the closer we are to having optimal mental function. Having a balanced brain is especially important during the holidays when things seldom go according to plan and stress levels can threaten to reach critical mass making it hard to keep calm. 3 Tips for How to Keep Calm & Achieve Emotional Balance During the Holidays 1. Home Field Advantage To avoid the stress of holiday travel, offer to host the family gathering at your house this year. This strategy is particularly helpful if you’re constantly torn between visiting different sets of relatives. Even though hosting adds additional responsibilities, the celebration will be held on home turf, with your rules. Plus, when everybody else heads for home, you’ll already be home. 2. Manage Expectations If you know from past encounters that Aunt Karen starts telling crass jokes after her second drink or that Uncle Greg likes to engage in heated political debates at the dinner table, be prepared to handle those situations before arriving at a holiday get-together. Resist the urge to participate in discussions that can offend or create family strife. Always look for a way to redirect negative tirades or inappropriate conversations. If that doesn’t work, isolate the individual from the rest of the group by suggesting an activity that will allow others to leave the situation. A walk, a board game, a movie, or even asking for help clearing some of the mess can give you and others an outlet to “escape” the situation. 3. Mood Balancing Nutrition The traditional holiday meal, though offering some healthy selections, is frequently accompanied with many nutritional pitfalls (i.e., stuffing, pumpkin pie and eggnog). To fill in the nutritional gap during the holidays, it’s essential to take mood-boosting supplements. NeuroLink BrainMD’s NeuroLink supports a diverse array of such key transmitters as adrenaline, dopamine, serotonin, GABA, and glutamate.* NeuroLink provides an exclusive blend of nutrients that can help you maintain a positive mood, keep your focus, and deal with stressful challenges by helping your neurotransmitters stay in balance.* NeuroLink is available in capsule and powder form and has a 100% money-back guarantee. You have nothing to lose except for stress. At BrainMD, we’re dedicated to providing the highest quality supplements to improve your physical health and overall well-being. For more information about our full list of brain healthy supplements, please visit us at BrainMD. *These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This content is for informational purposes only. It is not meant to substitute for medical or healthcare advice from a physician, nor is it intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Consult your healthcare provider before beginning a new health regimen.
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7 Ways To Keep Calm While Preparing For Vacation
Now that summer is officially here, it’s that time of year again…VACATION! You’ve worked hard all year so it’s time for a break and time to relax. Time off is essential to personal wellbeing, professional success, business performance, and more, but nearly half of American employees don't use all of their vacation days each year! Research has even demonstrated that taking a vacation can have similar biological benefits to your health as meditating. In short, vacations are good for your health. So why don’t more people take vacations? Often the reason is that planning and preparing for a vacation is too stressful an experience. It sounds like extra work, having to prepare for vacation. It can be easy to get caught up in the stress of everyday life, even in the summer. How do you transition from a stress-inducing life to relaxation mode? It’s difficult to get into the right mindset, but you can more calmly prepare yourself for vacation if you follow a few simple steps: 7 of the Best Ways to Keep Your Vacation Prep Stress-free 1. Have Realistic Expectations Resist the urge to plan every minute of your vacation and maintain realistic expectations about your trip. Your flight could be delayed. It might rain the afternoon you plan to go jet skiing. Mishaps and meltdowns happen, but they don’t have to ruin a trip. If you expect that things will go less than perfectly, you will be better prepared to handle whatever does happen. 2. Focus On The Positive This can feel "easier said than done," but it's very effective. As mentioned above, a lot can go wrong when you travel. However, as with life in general, negative things won't feel like they have as much power when you notice the silver lining of the situation. For example, if your flight is delayed, focus on how you have extra time to catch up on reading a novel you enjoy. 3. Plan Ahead There is nothing more stressful than realizing the day before you leave that you still haven’t checked the oil level of your car, gone to the bank, bought the extra socks you needed, set up the timer for your house lights, or had your mail held. There are countless vacation preparation checklists available online – download one ahead of time and check items off to reduce your preparation stress. 4. Pack In Advance This might sound overwhelming, since you’re already stressed and still trying to get into the vacation mindset. However, it’s important to remember to work toward your goal of relaxation in advance or you might never get there! Make or download a packing list and begin to assemble necessary items with plenty of time to spare. That way you won’t find yourself running around like crazy the night before trying to get everything together. 5. Get Plenty Of Rest Speaking of the night before your vacation, make sure to get plenty of sleep so that you do NOT travel tired. Certainly, rushing to get everything done before your vacation can leave you worn out. However, navigating unfamiliar roads or airports will be much more difficult and stressful when you are sleep deprived. 6. Know What Works For You You may have heard the tip to clean your house while you’re packing for a vacation so that you aren’t stressed about a mess when you return. While some people might benefit from a little prep work beforehand, it won’t necessarily make re-entry easier for everyone. For others, the prep only adds more stress. The same goes for work. Many folks stress about doing extra work before leaving in hopes of cutting down on the amount they have when they come back. But it seems like there’s always a lot of work when you get back, no matter how you prep. Prioritize and focus on those tasks that have a deadline while you’re gone and put non-pressing items on the back burner. 7. Supplement To Manage Stress Natural relaxation substances can be incredibly effective in helping you manage your stress and feel more calm. Drink some spearmint or chamomile teas. Put dried lavender in a vase near your bed. Use calming essential oil aromas such as clary sage, bergamot, or ylang ylang. Try BrainMD’s Everyday Stress Relief – a nutritional supplement that can help promote a tranquil mind and body while supporting healthy adrenal and cortisol levels. It includes well-studied herbs and nutrients to support your body’s response to stress on multiple levels.
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How To Protect Your Body From Stress
Do you ever feel stressed out? Kids, jobs, traffic, bills, relationship issues, parents aging, siblings fighting, not to mention the overwhelming amount of everyday responsibilities you need to keep track of…stress is more like a daily experience than an occasional event. Usually, people think of stress as bad…but really, stress is both good AND bad. Stress can motivate us (to study for an exam or pay our bills on time), it can protect us (we buy alarm systems for our homes, businesses or cars), and it can feed us (we go to work to put food on the table). However, too much stress is very bad for your brain and body, and unfortunately, too much of it can also kill you. By some estimates, as much as 80% of all disease and illness is initiated and aggravated by stress. In fact, left unchecked, chronic stress can have serious personal and social consequences, including: Health problems Low self-esteem Disability Family conflict Withdrawal from social activities Alcohol and substance abuse Legal and criminal problems Suicide So, what do you do if you are dealing with too much stress? Countless articles seem to offer the same advice: count to twenty, take deep breaths, envision yourself on a beach, and take some yoga. While these strategies can indeed help, for many, adding a supplement that supports a healthy response to the inevitable stress we all face can mean the difference between feeling overwhelmed and having peace of mind. That’s where basil comes in. That’s right – basil. But not the kind that makes food taste so wonderful…we’re talking holy basil. Never heard of it? You’re not alone, at least in the Western world. Holy basil (Ocimum sanctum), also known as Tulsi, is an Eastern herb, revered in Ayurvedic medicine as "The Queen of Herbs" for over 3,000 years. Known as an adaptogenic herb, holy basil enhances the body's natural protective response to physical and emotional stress. Adaptogenic herbs do not alter mood, but they help the body function at its optimal level during times of stress. Research demonstrates that they do this by modulating the production of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. Long revered as a powerful antioxidant with demonstrated antibacterial, analgesic, antifungal, and anti-inflammatory properties, the most compelling research data suggests that holy basil possesses its greatest potential in the areas of stress relief and relaxation. Considering the fast-paced world in which we live, these findings prove to be extremely significant. In a recent randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study, holy basil improved adaptation to problems associated with stress, including: Occasional anxiety Forgetfulness Decreased attention Feelings of exhaustion Sleep problems Holy basil is just one of the powerful and effective ingredients in BrainMD’s Everyday Stress Relief. This safe, non-sedating, and non-habit-forming formula combines holy basil with other well-studied herbs and nutrients that help support your body’s response to stress on multiple levels. While it's perfectly natural to feel stress if you need a little-added support to find some relief and peace of mind, give holy basil a try.
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2 Products That Will Help Your Mood Under Stress
In our modern-day world, it seems too easy to get caught up in the daily worries, to allow them to consume us. It seems like we don’t have enough time to stop and slow down either, just wearing ourselves out. Ultimately, this leads to an abundance of stress. Many times, stress doesn’t just negatively affect your mood, though that becomes the most visible side effect. Stress also negatively affects the way your brain and body work. So, it is important to try to control your stress. We know that stepping away from solving all the world’s problems is easier said than done. Instead of handling stress with alcohol, drugs, or emotional instability, we have a better recommendation. These two supplements have been shown in studies to help support your mood under stress. Try them along with practicing a healthy diet and regular exercise. Tyrosine Tyrosine is a supplement that is known to support the brain, adrenals, and thyroid, especially when coping with stress or intense mental strain. When stressed, your brain is depleted of DA and NE. So emotional intensity or stress stimulates the adrenals to release NE (norepinephrine), and E (epinephrine, adrenaline) that they make from NE. This NE helps the brain cope with the challenge. The adrenals also rely on DA (neurotransmitters dopamine) for their normal stress response. The healthy adrenal function requires ample l-tyrosine to sustain their production of DA, NE and E in order to support the brain under stress. To see if supplementing with Tyrosine could help with the body’s responses to stress a study was performed. In a double-blind clinical trial, a 2-gram dose of tyrosine helped undergrad students perform better at multitasking, to "make the right choices" under mental challenge. ProBrainBiotics Our intestines hold trillions of bacterial cells that contribute to our overall health and wellbeing. We may not always realize it, but our gut and our brain are connected. When your digestion is not working properly, it affects the way you think, feel, and vis-versa. In a clinical trial, the same 2 strains of probiotics found in ProBrainBiotics, when taken for 30 days, was found to promote a healthy mood and provide a beneficial effect on the gastrointestinal symptoms experienced by individuals affected by chronic stress. They also assisted in coping with occasional anxiety, likely related to occasional stress. Probiotics will also help your brain and body by: Promoting positive mood and emotional balance Promoting healthy digestion Supporting mental focus while doing intense work Supporting a healthy response to everyday stress You can learn to manage your stress, but you can’t control everything and stress will happen. Arm your brain with the nutrients that are shown to help support your body and your mood when under stress, try Tyrosine and ProBrainBiotics.
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Are You Ignoring the Most Common Signs of Stress?
Common Signs of Symptoms of Stress: [wc_row][wc_column size="one-half" position="first"] Frequent headaches or migraines Gritting or grinding of teeth Tremors or trembling lips or hands Neck ache, back pain or muscle spasms Light-headedness, faintness, dizziness Hearing ringing, buzzing or popping sounds Frequent blushing or sweating Cold or sweaty hands or feet Dry mouth or problems swallowing Frequent colds, infections or herpes sores Rashes, itching, hives or goose bumps Unexplained or frequent allergy attacks Stomach pain or nausea Constipation or diarrhea Difficulty breathing or signing Sudden panic attacks Chest pain or heart palpitations Frequent urination Poor sexual desire or performance Excessive anxiety, worry, guilt or nervousness Increased anger, frustration or hostility Depression, frequent or wild mood swings Increased or decreased appetite Insomnia, nightmares or disturbing dreams [/wc_column][wc_column size="one-half" position="last"] Difficulty concentrating, racing thoughts Trouble learning new information Forgetfulness, disorganization or confusion Difficulty in making decisions Feeling overwhelmed Frequent crying spells or suicidal thoughts Feelings of loneliness and worthlessness Little interest in appearance or punctuality Nervous habits, fidgeting or feet tapping Increased irritability or edginess Overreaction to petty annoyances Increased number of minor accidents Reduce work efficiency or productivity Lies or excuse to cover up poor work Excessive defensiveness or suspiciousness Problems in communication or sharing Social withdrawal& or isolation Constant fatigue or weakness Frequent or weakness Frequent use of over the counter drugs Weight gain or loss without diet Increased smoking Increased alcohol or drug use [/wc_column][/wc_row] *Source: The American Institute of Stress
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