10 Fun Ways To Reduce Your Cortisol Levels

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by Dr. Lissa Rankin May 21, 2013 3:00 PM
The body knows how to heal itself.  As I describe in Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof That You Can Heal Yourself, our bodies are beautifully equipped with natural self-repair mechanisms that fight cancer, prevent infection, repair wounds, protect us from infectious agents and foreign bodies, and even affect how our genes express themselves! But here’s what most people don’t know. These natural self-repair mechanisms get deactivated when your body is full of stress hormones like cortisol and epinephrine.
The good news is that it’s easy to shift the body from the stress response to the relaxation response, and when this happens, your cortisol levels drop and your body’s self-repair mechanisms get back to work healing you. All of the following techniques have been scientifically proven to activate relaxation responses and return your self-repair mechanisms back to optimal operation.

Meditate.

Harvard physician Herbert Benson extensively studied a form of Transcendental Meditation proven to activate the relaxation response and improve dozens of health conditions ranging from heart disease to diabetes to obesity to cancer. All forms of meditation activate the relaxation response, but if you find it hard to sit in silence, try downloading the free Self-Healing Kit I created at MindOverMedicineBook.com, which comes equipped with a self-healing guided meditation known to activate the relaxation response.

In his bestselling book, The Anatomy Of An Illness, Norman Cousins tells the story of how he cured himself from the debilitating condition ankylosing spondylitis by laughing along with Marx Brothers movies. He wrote, “I made the joyous discovery that ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep. When the pain-killing effect of the laughter wore off, we would switch on the motion picture projector again and not infrequently, it would lead to another pain-free interval.”

Play with animals.

Snuggling with our pets fills us with oxytocin, endorphins, and other healing hormones that support the body’s self-healing mechanisms. This is why pet therapy can be so effective, both mentally and physically. So go cuddle Fido, rub Fifi’s belly, and let them cut your cortisol levels while ramping up your body’s capacity to self-repair.

Give generously.

When Cami Walker was diagnosed with debilitating multiple sclerosis, conventional medicine had to offer. Then a South African medicine woman suggested that, instead of focusing on herself, she needed to shift towards thinking more about others. The medicine woman wrote Cami a prescription- Give 29 gifts in 29 days. So she did. And as if by magic, her MS symptoms started to diminish. How? Because giving activates relaxation responses, which bolster the body’s natural self-repair mechanisms.

Express yourself creatively.

Creative expression releases endorphins and other feel-good neurotransmitters, reduces depression and anxiety, improves your immune function, relieves physical pain, and activates the parasympathetic nervous system. This lowers your heart rate, decreases your blood pressure, slows down your breathing, and lowers cortisol.

Practice yoga, tai chi, qigong, or dance forms.

All of these modalities, which combine the benefits of exercise and meditation, steep you in healing hormones and have been proven to effectively drop cortisol levels and improve your body’s ability to heal itself.

You can also get a massage, the ultimate relaxation response activator. A nurturing massage not only relaxes your muscles, it relaxes your nervous system and kicks those self-healing mechanisms into high gear.

Get it on.

Those with healthy sex lives live longer, have a lower risk of heart disease and stroke, get less breast cancer, enjoy the benefits of stronger immune systems, sleep better, appear more youthful, enjoy improved fitness, have enhanced fertility, get relief from chronic pain, experience fewer migraines, suffer from less depression, and enjoy an improved quality of life. Oh, and their cortisol levels are lower!

Pray or join a spiritual community.

Those who attend religious services live up to 14 years longer than those who don’t, but don’t go to church if it’s not in alignment with your authentic beliefs. Find or create your own spiritual tribe to enjoy the hormonal benefits of gathering together with the intention of loving, healing, and lifting the vibration of each other and the planet. Your nervous system – and your body – will thank you.

Alleviate loneliness.

Lonely people have twice the rate of heart disease as people who aren’t lonely. In fact, loneliness researchers suggest that alleviating your loneliness is more important to a healthy lifestyle than quitting smoking or starting to exercise (read more here). As Robert Putnam put it in Bowling Alone, “As a rough rule of thumb, if you belong to no groups but decide to join one, you cut your risk of dying over the next year in half. If you smoke and belong to no groups, it’s a toss-up statistically whether you should stop smoking or start joining. These findings are in some way heartening. It’s easier to join a group than to lose weight, exercise regularly, or quit smoking.”

Take radical action in order to reduce your stress responses.

Ask yourself, “What does my body need in order to heal?” If your intuition says, “You have to quit that soul-sucking job” or “You’ve got to get out of that abusive relationship,” listen up. You’ve just written The Prescription for yourself. (To learn more about how to write The Prescription for yourself, read Mind Over Medicine.

Too scared to take a leap of faith? As my friend and co-conspirator at the Whole Health Medicine Institute says, “If you want big miracles, you have to take big risks. If you’re wanting to take smaller risks, you’ll have to accept smaller miracles.”

How Walking In Nature Changes The Brain

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How Walking In Nature Changes The Brain

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Via: http://www.collective-evolution.com

The majority of people in the Western world live in busy, congested cities. Many of us have been completely cut off from nature in our day-to-day lives, especially compared to the generations before us. There have been many studies showing that city dwellers are much more likely to suffer from depression and other forms of anxiety than people who live in more natural, rural areas.

This may seem obvious to some, since the feeling we get from going for a walk through a park or forest, going camping, or just getting out of the city in general is so refreshing and generally very relaxing. But new research is proving just how important getting out of the city and into nature can be for our mental and physical well-being.

Can Being In Nature Actually Change Our Brains In A Way That Positively Impacts Our Health?

Gregory Bratman, a graduate student at the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources at Stanford University, wanted to find out. Researchers conducted a study which asked randomly selected participants to spend 50 minutes walking in either a natural or urban setting, and to submit to a series of psychological assessments before and after the walk. They found that volunteers who walked through a lush, green portion of Stanford campus showed improve cognitive function and mood compared to those who walked near heavy traffic for the same period of time. However, while this study showed that nature could have a positive effect on mental well-being, it did not examine the neurological mechanisms underlying this change.

Does Walking In Nature Affect A Person’s Tendency To Brood?

Brooding is a state of constant worry and stress about everyday things in our lives. This type of thinking is not healthy or helpful and is actually detrimental to our overall mental health. In many cases, these thinking tendencies act as a precursor to depression. Not surprisingly, brooding is much more common to people who live in cities than to rural dwellers.

This sort of rumination is strongly associated with increased activity in an area in the brain known as the subgenual prefrontal cortex. This sparked the interest of Bratman and his colleagues because it was something they could measure, particularly before and after exposure to nature. Thus began a second study.

38 healthy adult city dwellers were gathered and asked to complete a questionnaire to determine how frequently they were brooding. Then researchers took brain scans that measure the blood flow that was passing through each person’s subgenual prefrontal cortex. The volunteers were split into two groups: one was assigned to go for a walk through a lush, leafy, quiet park on the campus while the other was assigned to a loud, multi lane highway with busy traffic. Neither of the groups were allowed to walk in pairs or listen to music during the exercise.

As soon as they completed the exercise they returned to the lab and answered the same questionnaire, then had their brains scanned again.

The results were as to be expected – the group who walked along the highway still had increased levels of blood flow to their subgenual prefrontal cortex and their broodiness scores were unchanged. The group who walked amongst nature, on the other hand, showed very meaningful improvements in their mental well-being. They were not dwelling on as many aspects of their lives and less blood was flowing to their subgenual prefrontal cortex. Indeed, this area of the brain appeared quieter.

The Results

The results of this study “strongly suggest that getting out into natural environments” could be a simple, effective, and almost immediate way to improve moods for those who dwell in cities, Mr. Bratman said.

Try It Out For Yourself

Really, you have nothing to lose here, if you find yourself feeling stressed out and are worrying regularly, or even if you are not, get out there. Spend at least a little time outside each day – go for a nice walk in a park or find a quiet area near you to relax. Try to get out of the city for a short amount of time every week. Give it a shot and keep track of your mood and your thoughts, this could be the answer to your problems! Nature really is a good thing.

Much Love

Sources are embedded within this article.

Don’t feed Candida – replace your sodas and juices with this lemonade recipe

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(NaturalNews) Did you ever see the movie Little Shop of Horrors? If you did, you’ll remember that cute, little, alien plant pleading, “Feed me, Seymour!” If you live with an overgrowth of Candida, you have a billion little monsters crying, “Feed me, Seymour!” all day, every day. Their addiction and food of choice? Sugar!

The list of health issues associated with refined sugars is long and scary. For the purpose of understanding its association with Candida, we’ll focus on gut health. But never forget, in addition to feeding fungi, sugar feeds viruses, bad bacteria, parasites, and cancer, sugar also changes the pH in your blood, forcing your body to pull minerals from your bones and teeth to rebalance the pH. And, of course, it wreaks havoc with your blood sugar, too. But back to the gut…

Our gut is a universe unto itself. Trillions of bacteria live in our gut, both good bacteria and what we call bad bacteria. To keep it simple, the good bacteria earn their symbiotic relationship with us by keeping bad bacteria, parasites, and fungi in check. (Along with other important duties, like creating neurotransmitters!)

When We Eat Sugar, We Feed and Increase Both Bad Bacteria and Candida

Candida multiplies in the gut causing inflammation and irritation to the tissues, breaking down the biofilm that lines the intestinal walls. The end result is leaky gut syndrome, the precursor to a number of autoimmune diseases and allergies.

While Candida and leaky gut’s association to other diseases is a real and ever-present threat, Candida itself can cause untold damage. Once the gut wall is compromised, Candida easily travels throughout the body, infiltrating tissues and organs. Although Candida begins its lifecycle as a single cell, it can later morph into another form called hyphae – tentacles that cut through tissues and can even slice through a single cell. You do not want this fungi running amok anywhere in your body!

Hidden Sugar

Sugar may be hiding in plain sight. When we think of sugar, too often we think of adding sugar to coffee, tea, cereal, etc. But the truth is sugar is added to nearly every packaged or processed food. When you read the labels, you’ll find it right there on the list as some form of sugar or some form of high fructose corn syrup.

It’s also added to nearly every beverage we drink. This is soda country. The Coke/Pepsi industry is so ingrained in our culture I recently saw a mother giving her 8-month-old baby Dr. Pepper by using a straw to drizzle a little at a time into baby’s mouth. The child was too young to drink from a cup, but not too young for soda?

If you want to break away from all this hidden and added sugar, stop eating processed foods and stop drinking them, too! You don’t have to give up taste. Here’s a healthy, delicious drink without sugar or artificial sweeteners. It’s good for your you, too. This recipe makes a great soda/juice/kool-aid replacement, and it detoxifies the body.

Cranberry Lemonade Recipe

  • Glass gallon jar
  • Safe, clean, spring water or distilled water
  • 1 cup of pure, organic, sugar-free cranberry juice, not from concentrate
  • 3 fresh,organic lemons
  • A citrus juicer
  • Liquid stevia
  • Liquid cayenne (optional)

Fill the jar to about 85% capacity with spring water (or distilled water). Squeeze the lemons and pour the juice into the water. Add cranberry juice. Add stevia to taste and then add cayenne to taste. The amount of cayenne used is up to you, but the more the better.

How to Rid the Body of Candida

So how do we get rid of Candida and restore the gut to its proper state of health with the correct balance of good bacteria? It all begins with the best possible diet.

A truly healthy diet consists of 80% fresh, raw, organic produce, more vegetables than fruit. This is real food, whole food, fiber filled food that helps clean the gut while providing the best environment for good bacteria to flourish. Eat a wide variety of raw vegetables. This can easily be accomplished by eating one large salad a day filled with 10-15 veggies. Be sure to include healthy fats and plenty of clean, pure water (or cranberry lemonade). For more on the cranberry lemonade detox, and the salad recipe, check out the first two sources below.

By choosing not to eat processed foods, you will automatically eliminate sugar. You will also eliminate artificial flavors, colors, preservatives, MSG, GMOs, trans fats, and artificial sweeteners. These dietary changes will be the foundation to restoring your health and ridding your body of Candida. You can certainly hurry the process along with the right supplements. To learn more read, How to Kill Fungal Infections. For a better understanding of Candida, sugar, and how it affects your health, check out Gluten, Candida, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and Autoimmune Diseases.

Sources:

organiclifestylemagazine.com

organiclifestylemagazine.com

http://www.naturalnews.com

About the author:
Kali Sinclair is a copywriter for Green Lifestyle Market, and a lead editor for Organic Lifestyle Magazine. Kali was very sick with autoimmune disease and realized that conventional medicine was not working for her. She has been restoring her health by natural means and is interested in topics including natural health, environmental issues, and human rights.

Learn more:  http://www.naturalnews.com/051340_Candida_sugar_cranberry_lemonade.html#ixzz3n8WYfCuc