Category: stress management

Don’t Underestimate How Your Brain Impacts Your Gut

Have you ever felt a little nauseous before giving a presentation or experienced some stomach pain during stressful events? If you have, it should be a clear indication of how closely your gut and brain interact. But it can go much further than those examples. After years of research, there’s little doubt that emotional and…


A Simple Protocol Is Stopping the Progression of MS

John Otwell was driven by desperation five years ago to search online for a non-pharmaceutical treatment for multiple sclerosis (MS). That’s when he stumbled onto a social media page about the Coimbra protocol. He read testimonies including one by a young man who was playing piano after being unable to even lift his head, and…


Join Up Your Circles

I’ve had a receipt sitting on my desk for more than a month. It’s a receipt that I need to submit for work to get reimbursed for a purchase I made. It isn’t a huge amount, but I’m a little annoyed that I haven’t gotten to it yet. Every time I think about submitting it,…


What’s Happened to Emotional Resilience?  

My friend Jane was lamenting the fact that her 10-year-old daughter would be coming home from camp early. Jane had finally given in; she couldn’t take any more sobbing phone calls from her daughter about how awful camp was and how the girls in the cabin were bothering and mistreating her. My friend was confused…


Procrastination Is a Mood Problem You Can Solve

Do you ever beat yourself up for procrastinating? Maybe you need to write a big report for school or work but are doing your best to avoid it, all the while knowing deep down that you should just get on with it. Unfortunately, telling yourself off won’t stop you from procrastinating again. In fact, it’s…


Why You Need to Tend to Your Vagus Nerve

Known as the wanderer, the vagus nerve, or cranial nerve X (10), is a long nerve that runs from the cranium to the colon, connecting and controlling all the organs in between. The vagus nerve is the main component of the parasympathetic nervous system, which oversees a vast array of crucial bodily functions, including control…


Music to Treat Alzheimer’s and Support Caregivers

John Bufalini remembers clearly the first time he witnessed what music can do, as a first-year medical student at Penn State College of Medicine. He watched as the room of an assisted living facility was transformed as an older woman danced to the music from her youth. When her husband later took her hands and…


To Break Unhealthy Habits, Stop Obsessing Over Willpower

If you’re like many Americans, you probably start your day with a cup of coffee—a morning latte, a shot of espresso, or maybe a good ol’ drip-brew. A common explanation among avid coffee drinkers is that we drink coffee to wake ourselves up and alleviate fatigue. But that story doesn’t completely hold up. After all,…


How Toxic Relationships Can Trigger Cancer

We focus a lot on diet, therapies, and a wide range of alternative natural treatments for cancer, but one area that doesn’t often get the attention it deserves is the state of our relationships with those closest to us. But the data are in. Research proves that our social relationships directly influence our physical health—for…


Research Finds Benefits of Guilt and Confession

Guilt plays a role in whether admitting to a lapse in self-control helps us resist temptation in the future or makes us more likely to give in again, according to new research. We’ve all slipped up when we’re trying to improve ourselves, perhaps by eating better or spending more wisely, and sometimes when we do,…