Tackling The Stress of The Busy Holiday Season

by Dr. Joan Vernikos

 

 "A good conscience is a continual Christmas." ~ Benjamin Franklin

The Holiday Season at the end of each year is a wonderful time to count one’s blessings and to connect more deeply with family, co-workers and friends. And perhaps to even feel a kinship and concern for the many.

It’s also a time that challenges many of us to truly be able to enjoy the moments of the season. Often there is a sense of obligation, an unmanageable busyness and financial overwhelm. The ‘Ho, Ho, Ho!’ cultural expectation to remain happy and upbeat can be trying. Messaging on TV, radio and the internet constantly tells us we should have a well-decorated and tidy home, acquire and distribute gifts to the multitudes, and cheerfully attend social event after social event (beginning with Thanksgiving and running without break until early January). There never is enough time to get it all done – on top of daily commitments, there is little Emma’s Xmas play, decorating, and engaging the neighbors you rarely speak to. Rain, snow, traffic, and crowded shops conspire against you. Everyone seems to be on edge!

It’s easy to feel exhausted just thinking about it all, even before it’s begun. And while it may be a time of re-connecting to what matters, it is often challenging, and for many of us it is sadly the low point of the year.

I want you to know that while there well may be things you “must” do, and it is surely a time of year when a lot is happening, you have a lot more control over your holiday season than you might believe. Much depends on your preparation and decision-making around the season – you ultimately must take responsibility for how you approach this time of the year both outwardly and inwardly. Will you be a bundle of anxiety, facing impossible challenges, rushing around in a daze in rain or snow to the last minute trying to get it all perfect? Or will you have effectively planned and acted, ready to join in the celebration? Will you see time with your family as a gift, or will it make you cringe before you even get together?

Though factors that contribute to your feeling stressed are somewhat under your control, they come anyway. It is easy to fret and sleep poorly. And especially to eat in a way that makes you feel terrible about yourself and this whole holiday celebrating. Pressure to enjoy the time can make one sink into gloom.

So, what can you do to have a more enjoyable holiday season? Here are a few things I have learned during my blessedly long lifetime that I think are worthy of your consideration.

Manage Your Time
Good time management is one of the best ways to reduce stress. Get a clear idea of what you will or will not commit to as early as possible and you will be much more likely to stay grounded during the holiday season.
Start early. Begin with a list of your key people, shop for the holidays all year, and have a central place you store these gifts.

• Hold a family meeting about gift wish-lists after Halloween if it hasn’t already been discussed.Talk about what you really enjoy about the holidays, and how you might change your approach to better enjoy them.
• Budget sanely. Determine what you can realistically afford to spend. Set an upper limit for gifts for everyone. Many people are in difficult financial situations today. If you find yourself stretched, either send only a card, or consider making something instead of purchasing gifts. Framed photos, fruit/health baskets and more are wonderful ways to connect with friends and family. And when people tell you that they really don’t need anything, listen! Consider making a donation in their name to a cause that matters to them.
• Plan and publish a household social calendar for the holidays and put it on the fridge or bulletin board. Make sure that everyone knows there is a procedure in place to handle changes because there will be a lot of those!
• Delegate. Ask for help from loved ones or friends.
• Keep a list of what you need to accomplish in the coming days, starting with Thanksgiving. Review and update this before bed each evening, acknowledging your ability to get only so much done.
• Well before the end of year work on one or two meaningful resolutions for the New Year. Consider them as you go through the month of December. You will feel more upbeat when January comes around.
• Keep things as simple as possible. Remember: you do not need to “keep up with the Joneses”. The Joneses are probably stressing out about now!

Take Care of Yourself
By planning effectively, things will unfold more manageably and the inevitable curve-balls will be easier to cope with. But you still need to look at yourself and what keeps you going. Here are a few suggestions.

• Seeking the cooperation of friends and family in planning the holiday season, with an emphasis on real enjoyment, will direct everyone towards shared, more positive results.
• Keep plenty of healthy snacks around the house and at work. If it’s green or an easily eaten fruit, stock it.
• Eat some of those healthy snacks before you go to social events. It’s harder to eat 2 cookies, 4 deviled eggs and drink a glass of eggnog before dinner, if you had a banana and some almonds just before the party.
• Factor in time to do the things that matter to you and those close to you. Read, have a quiet movie night at home (or watch holiday classics together) or play games. Or get a massage! These can all take the bite out of a seemingly never-ending schedule of obligatory activities over the holidays. My son’s favorite is going for a quick, hot soak wherever he can find one, including the bath tub.
• Buck tradition. While you may still enjoy the cookies everywhere else, plan a sugar-lite holiday season at home.
• Moderate your alcohol consumption (and value your sleep). Or don’t drink at all. You’ll rest and look better, connect more meaningfully with others, and be able to handle challenges as they arise. Either way, make your rest a priority as best you can. Watching "Leno" after a busy day may or may not be what you most need.
• Commit to making the time to do some regular physical activity daily, even if you do less of it than normal. For instance, make a family walk part of your holiday events. Your dog will appreciate it too.
• Pause regularly to reflect on what is going on at any given time, and how you are reacting to it. Take small regular time-outs, breathing deeply.
• If you are a regular meditator or have a physical, eastern practice (like Tai Chi, Yoga or Qigong) keep it in your schedule as best you can. (Perhaps consider starting one as a resolution for the New Year).

Let It Go
Accept that it is just fine to feel sentimental at this time of year.

This is when we tend to contemplate our lives most deeply. Indeed, it is often the time of year when people may feel most grateful and peaceful, yet conversely may also feel despondent. If you have felt down or depressed in the past during the holidays, I recommend cultivating the intention to be more aware of how you feel during this coming season. It is quite common to dread the holiday season, finding it easier to withdraw. Even if you feel generally positive this time of year, there may be activities or people with whom you still have difficulty engaging. Making a sincere effort to be genuinely open to others’ feelings and situations can have a profound impact on our own state of mind and perhaps more importantly will let those close to us know that we care about them.  This is what the holiday spirit is about – to extend the warmth we feel for those closest to us to include many others.

Each one of us would like to celebrate a joyous holiday season. Finding ways to minimize stress is key to experiencing times we all wish for, ones filled with love, sharing, gratitude and compassion, and ones we will recall fondly for years to come.

Improving your Wellbeing Through Health Coaching

   "I absolutely believe that people, unless coached, never reach their maximum potential."
                                                                  ~ Bob Nardelli, CEO, Home Depot

As a teenager in Egypt I had a swim coach who encouraged me to train when I wanted to play, to exercise when I would rather have played backgammon with the old men at the club, and managed to build my confidence and win races. All sports have coaches so that athletes put on their top performances.

Today coaching is not just for athletes. There are coaches for every imaginable issue; from personal relationships to nutrition, weight management to how to find your mate. Even some surgeons now have coaches. And in the short time since its inception life coaching no longer seems so flaky. There are TV shows featuring coaching ('Starting Over', and 'Get The Guy’), and even spoofs about coaching on the John Stewart show. Coaching is now mainstream.

Why Coaching?
Well, it’s pretty simple. We go to the doctor for a prescription or a priest for confession, a dietitian, a shrink or a counselor or even a self-help book for the answers to our problems. But no matter how good the advice, all of these tools suffer from a common weakness - they rely on the individual to take action on their own and make the commitment to act on the advice. And consider that little of the information received is customized to one’s unique situation. This is where coaching differs. The main reason - it is emerging as the way to get results.  People who are serious about change know that they are responsible to make it happen themselves. They also know that they may not be able to do it on their own.

People who do turn to coaching most often benefit from improved clarity and focus around their goals, discipline, direction, guidance and understanding, and ultimately achieve things they want but couldn't on their own. Some of us might have the skill set and support to eventually get there without assistance but it can be so much more effective to let a coach help us, and often cheaper in the long run and with lasting effects because we (with the guidance of the coach) arrived at the solution. With a coach, results almost always improve – often dramatically.

Why Health Coaching?
Happiness, the enjoying of our lives, is what we all seek. Everything we do, whether wise or not, is in support of this overarching desire. Often happiness is used synonymously with “well-being” and this begins with good health and healthy habits. But there are few among us who truly prioritize our well-being, both physical and mental.

Health coaching has become more popular in the last several years in the US, especially for the treatment of particular conditions and in corporate settings where the efficacy of health coaching has been shown to be cost and productivity-effective. It generally includes a personalized program designed to improve your health and sense of wellness, while developing your ability to manage life’s curveballs as they arise. A health coach can generally help you with:

• Stress management
• Diet, nutrition and eating habits
• Weight management
• Sleep problems
• Physical Fitness
• Family and social relationships
• Work/Life balance
• Maintaining independence with age

Where traditionally education and advice directs information at you, coaching by contrast guides you to discuss what is most troubling about your health, what you most want to change, what support you have to foster change and what obstacles or difficulties must be minimized or removed to advance healthy behaviors. It does this by providing:

• Support
• Structure
• Accountability
• A sense of accomplishment

Over time other benefits will arise that are not anticipated, not least, the cost of your medical care.
Did you know that 70% of our medical costs are due to four factors that we can control:
poor stress management, physical inactivity, tobacco and alcohol use, and food choices.

In the coming weeks I’ll share more about why I have become a proponent for health coaching, and how it’s influencing my activities today.

We each have the power to be well and age well, whatever our genetic make-up or specific problems. In this approach you become the nexus.

Healing yourself, rewiring your brain, adopting new health habits, feeling good about yourself and your relationships – no one else can do it for you. But a qualified health coach can support you through the process.

What Happens During Sleep?

Sleep is just as active as waking. Both form part of the same pendulum of consciousness that works best when synchronized with your biological clock and the cues of day and night.

I think of it as a factory that operates during the day at full pace with hundreds of people crisscrossing the floors, stairs and elevators at incredible pace, going up and down stairs and elevators, meeting and making decisions until the end of the day when the factory shuts down and all the people go home. No sooner are they gone, than a small crew move in to aerate the place, run vacuum cleaners and mop up, dust, empty trash cans, clean out restrooms and stair wells, then begin to restore order, tidy up, water the plants, replace dead light bulbs, replenish water bottles, check out the offices, power-up machines and safety measures, until all is ready to go for the new business day.

For those interested in more detail here is a summary of what happens during sleep.

As night approaches body rhythms are decreasing.

- Lights-out increase the hormone melatonin to put you to sleep.

- You shut your eyelids to rest your eyes and take a pause from external stimuli.

- Body temperature is lowest.

-You lie down. Your body is spared the need to bear its weight.

- Blood pressure and heart rate are reduced; blood gets to your brain effortlessly.

- You breathe more slowly, regularly, getting oxygen and glucose to your brain.

- You relax muscles, joints and bones.

- Your kidney shuts down so you do not need to get up to urinate,

- Inflammation is reduced; your skin looks better in the morning.

- The stress hormone cortisol is low because there is no need to generate energy.

- Testosterone is at its lowest too.

- Appetite hormones are reduced — no need to eat; energy metabolism is at its lowest.

Midway through the night your body begins to replenish, rebuild and power up.

- Growth hormone and other body building anabolic hormones increase dramatically.

- Testosterone and cortisol increase to generate energy.

- Your body is waking up even if you are not moving yet.

On the other hand, your brain becomes hyperactive.

- Your brain’s electrical activity is greater during sleep than when you are awake?

- Skills learned during the day are retained if you sleep right afterwards.

- Memories are consolidated and reorganized

- The day’s events are reviewed, restructured and sent and stored in the right place.

Next day

- Your athletic performance is improved.

- You focus better and avoid accidents.

- You are better able to handle stress.

- You are calmer and happier

We take sleep for granted as the time to rest from a busy day – like parking your body for the night. But it is much more than that.

It is one third of your life. Make the most of it!

Why 'What You Eat' Matters

It’s no secret that what you eat matters greatly because eating or drinking directly introduces something into your body. This can be truly nourishing or conversely has the potential of harming your well-being.  And in a world of unlimited food options, it’s your choice as to what these substances are.
It’s important to note here that every body is different and that as such putting better stuff in, requires your truly personal care. You can consistently consume better, and to do that I encourage you to be more aware of what you buy, choose to eat, and how you flavor and prepare it.  Eating is the next best thing to sex, so enjoy it.

If it makes you feel bad, don’t eat it

Our ancestors, animals and birds chose to eat the fruit of one tree from another by trial and error. Then cultures also developed customs of what to avoid eating handed down through generations. Equally, people living around the Mediterranean who were generally poor, worked hard and enjoyed long, healthy lives through family traditions of eating local fresh fruits, vegetables, fish and olive oil.  And here in the states, sitting down to a well-cooked meal was a core part of our daily activity until only a few decades ago. Then TV and other media bombarded us with messages for which cereal, soda, hot dogs, potato chips or cookies we should eat. Eating more meat became a status symbol. Fast food became a part of everyday life. And in the Mediterranean and other places, they try to imitate the U.S. and life changed there, and with it health has taken a nosedive.

If you feel bad after eating the chips or pork chile, uh, why are you eating it?

What you eat affects your body and your brain

You know that good nutrition makes you feel your physical best. But did you know that as part of your body, feeding your brain with the right foods can help you think more clearly, stay alert, improve your concentration, reactions, decision-making and your attention span?
-Simple carbohydrates provide a source of energy but do not make your body work for it. Trade sugar, soft drinks and candy for whole grains, beans, starchy vegetables and fruit and notice the difference.
 -Amino acids and protein in fish, nuts, beans, eggs are the building blocks of organs and stimulate the brain.
-Fatty acids found in fats in fish, walnuts, corn oil are essential for the brain and nervous system.
-Vitamins and minerals like magnesium, zinc, calcium, iron in beans, fruits and vegetables improve memory, concentration and mood.

But there is much to avoid as well.

How to think about what you eat.

I can give you a whole list of foods to eat or not but that’s not enough. When you reach to buy something or take a bite do you think about what is in it, where it came from or how it was prepared? When we had our chocolate shop in London we classified customers into ‘tasters’ or ‘poppers’, those who savored or those who simply ate.
To help you think about what you eat, being aware helps you make better food choices.

Here are a few suggestions for how to size-up different food choices:
- The less processed, the better. Avoid anything refined, processed or fortified; that goes for pretty much everything, including sugars, flours, cereal, vegetables or dairy products.
-The less salt and sugar the better – they are added to kill bacteria and hook your taste buds.
- Avoid products that have several ingredients that remind you of chemistry class. Get good at reading the labels.
- Grass-fed beef in moderate amounts can be good for some, although a diet higher in plants is better.  Learn about drugs in meat and chicken, and what they are fed.
- Organic is good but home-grown is better.  Support healthier practices of your local farmers.  

Healthy eating begins with preparation

 Beautiful green veggies cooked in a pool of lard becomes green-flavored lard. Consider some of the following when choosing recipes and preparation:
-Choose your meals for variety and satisfaction. Avoid monotony.
-Spice up your plate. We tend to stick with what we know – try some different spices (especially fresh ones) and you will love what it does for your eating experience.
-Put away the fryer.
- Bring out the juicer.
-Go for color.
-Bake your own.
-Count the fiber not the calories.

A little attention goes a long way in getting true nourishment. Make sexy choices. Turn your meal to food for the soul. What you eat matters a lot! Here’s to your good health and happy eating!

Why 'How You Eat' Matters

 “One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.”  ~Luciano Pavarotti

 

In my NASA days, at the start of the manned space program we got lots of scientific advice about feeding the astronauts quick energy foods that came in tidy, compact containers. So we ended up with advancements like Tang, Tootsie Rolls and high sugar fruit pastes, which worked well enough for short missions in tight living quarters, and the need to eat whenever possible. The Russians, in their larger spacecraft and with longer stays in space, had established mealtimes when they ate together as a group. We took the Russians’ lead and soon made sure our astronauts took a break to eat prepared, more nourishing food.  It was important for them to feel they were taken care of. And who wants food that looks (tastes and smells) like it came off a Star Trek set!

If Napoleon was correct about “armies marching on their stomachs,” should not space ex-plorers float on theirs?

In the news media today when it comes to food and eating, what you eat gets all the attention. How you eat is rarely addressed despite its significant impact on what you end up consuming and how well nourished you feel.  While I’ll cover the important subject of 'what you eat' in my next post, let’s attend here to the “how” of eating.

Consider this: after that first gasp for air, finding a source of food is the next reflex action for newborns. Your mother is your first call.  Breast or bottle-fed, you start off by associating food with nurturing – warmth, physical contact, love, comfort, smell, taste, the sense of fulfillment. After weaning, and once a toddler, these psychological elements associated with eating often diminish. The relationship between family, food and nurturing may fall apart.

That being said, I offer a few key suggestions below for how you can get a lot more from your eating experiences. As a nation, our eating habits are doing us few favors. The good news is that adopting or further developing some of these practices will likely moderate the amount of food you eat, as well as increase the enjoyment of every bite on the way to a happier, healthier you.

Rediscover the Joys of Eating

• Set aside the time for eating. Yes, just like the astronauts. By pausing for meals you can again begin to touch into the enjoyment of the eating experience. If we read, text, watch TV, or drive while eating, it is impossible to fully attend to the meal.
• Sit down for meals at the dining table joined by your family, and even your friends whenever possible. “Breaking bread” is a wonderful way to connect with the people that matter to you. Share the duties of setting the table with plates and cutlery, as well as clearing and washing up. Suddenly, it’s an occasion rather than another expedited activity.
• Practice giving thanks for whatever moves you. Gratitude is a feel-good mechanism to bring back awareness to forgotten positives in one’s life.
• Pay attention to what feels right for you when eating. Being active or sedentary prior to meals, or even over a period of time, will influence your real hunger. The time of day, previous consumption, and even seasonality may all affect what and how much you may truly need to eat. And appreciate that you may not know better than someone else what they need, and vice versa.
• Choose reasonably-sized plates.  Dinner plates are 30% larger today than they were 100 years ago. You can do the math. Pay special attention to plate size (and what’s on the plate) when you go out for a meal.
• Eat slowly, with a mindful attention. Take a few breaths between bites or sips. Be aware of the colors, smells, tastes and textures of food. When you slow down, flavors burst forth.  And remember that it takes the brain 20 minutes before it senses that you have eaten enough.
• Notice when you are tired at mealtimes. Sleep deprivation is common in this busy age, and leads to over-eating, especially of fat and sugary foods. When you are particularly fatigued, practice bringing special attention to what you are eating. It may well save you from one of those chow-downs you soon regret.
• Beware of eating to soothe your anxiety. When you grab that bag of potato chips or left-overs from the fridge, consider if it’s because your body really needs the food, or if you’re doing it just to ‘calm down.’ Eating is a common coping mechanism.

Here’s how confident I am that implementing these tips can have a significant impact on your well-being: I guarantee that if you follow most of these suggestions you’ll moderate your caloric consumption, and improve the quality of what you eat too. Let me know how it goes.

Stand Up for Healthy Aging!

Sitting kills. You only have to look around to see the consequences – bigger waist circumference, higher body mass index, obesity, Type II diabetes, high blood triglycerides and cholesterol and low levels of the good cholesterol HDL. High blood pressure, risk of stroke, higher overall death rates increase as we sit longer. Not a pretty picture.

Once thought that hitting the gym was the answer, studies are now finding that sitting for many hours each day whether you exercise or not is not good for your health. Leader of the pack is Dr. James Levine, a researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., who back in 1999 coined the term Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT) when he observed that people who ate more and did not gain weight were moving more than they realized. What seemed important were “the thousands of minor movements each day” that they spontaneously made. Levine’s group found that even with intense exercise once a day health markers such as blood cholesterol, sugar and triglyceride levels remained high. Marc Hamilton, another NEAT disciple, found that standing up is the most effective NEAT activity and stimulates the enzymes that break down fat and triglycerides. The NEAT theory and these findings ran contrary to traditional exercise physiology recommendations of intense exercise once a day 3 to 5 times a week. His meticulous work is a wake-up call to the fact that once a day exercise does not replace being active all day. The importance of NEAT finally is receiving the recognition it deserves.

Levine’s work helped me interpret research I was doing at NASA. In 1992 I wondered why, despite hours of intense aerobic and resistive exercise in space, astronaut health was not fully protected. In ground studies with volunteers lying continuously in bed to induce space-like changes, I asked if the gravity vector, absent in space, was the missing link needed to make exercise effective. I  had subjects  stand by their bed for 15 minutes every hour throughout the day or stand and walk on a treadmill for an equal time. To my surprise, standing was at least and sometimes more effective than walking on the treadmill.  It was also not how long they remained standing but how many times they changed posture.

Merely standing 16 times a day was enough in my studies to prevent the consequences of lying in bed 24 hours a day. The smaller postural change from sitting to standing would be expected to require more than that – at least twice that, 32 times a day or standing up roughly every 30 minutes.

By lying in bed or sitting for long stretches you are removing the important physiological signal that standing up provides. Standing is more than just another small movement. In an earlier blog I talked about the importance to Third Age Health of using gravity http://thirdagehealth.blogspot.com/2011/03/aging-well-with-generous-daily-dose-of.html.

At one of my talks someone complained that he would be fired if he got up so many times at work. Asked if he drank water, he said he always had a bottle on his desk. In the old days you would need a trip to the water-fountain. I suggested he move the bottle away from reach.

Being able to stand up helps you remain independent. Structure your life until standing up becomes a habit again.

Does Getting Older in Years Mean Getting Old?

We all want to be healthy and independent.Whatever our condition, accepting it and doing whatever we can, brings us closer to being and feeling better. No setback is permanent. Anything can be changed.  Hoping for things to be the way they were is unrealistic but resigning oneself to steady decline is just as wasteful. As people live longer it is a time to enjoy life. Feeling good helps but it does not just happen. It takes awareness and a personal commitment to work at staying healthy and aging well especially in these modern times.

Healthy Aging is about keeping up your health in good condition as the years go by. But, on its own, it is not all that goes into making us fit to enjoy daily life. Mental attitude, our interaction with ourselves, others and the world around us can express itself in emotions, our behavior and can impact our health both postively and negatively as we go through the journey of life.

Healthy Aging
Good health at any age is the result of applying healthy habits. These include:

• Keeping your response to stress in check.
• Recovery and resilience. Managing your time to bounce back from stress, activities, commitments or sickness.
• Being active all day every day such as a good walk with friends, swimming, gardening.
• Drinking plenty of water and eating good, nourishing food in proportion to your level of activity.
• A good night's sleep.
• Keeping good personal hygiene habits to curb sources of infection and inflammation 

Aging Well
Unlike Healthy Aging, being well is not about what you do but how you perceive and evaluate the world around you as well as your own feelings towards yourself and others. If you anticipate aging with apprehension or fear, like the loss of independence, memory, loved ones, your reaction will be stressful. It will emotionally drag you down, depress you, age you, and keep you awake nights. It will affect your eating habits, your desire to socialize, your sex life, health and happiness.

Studies show that those that live to 100 have learned to bounce back from stress.To age well and be healthy learn to sway with the punches. Shed bad habits, -- smoking, drinking too much alcohol, taking too many drugs, even if prescribed. Ask your doctor if you really need all of them. Feeling pain? Try alternative methods first before popping pain pills; try meditation to relax or a massage. Adapt your attitude and outlook, let go of old grudges, perceptions and fears over which you have no control. Allow yourself to accept, receive and uncritically enjoy each moment in the world around you.

Life is a game of snakes and ladders.Wherever you are, enjoy your daily awareness; be willing to improve; make a small change in habits; adopt non-medicinal, low-cost solutions. Decide to live better every day. In the process you will reduce stress and live a longer happier life.