When you are with positive, supportive, and loving people, you feel happier and more content, and you live longer. This is not only intuitively true but research has demonstrated it again and again. For example, in a study at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio, 10,000 men were asked, “Does your wife show you her love?” The detailed health histories of the men followed over ten years who answered yes showed fewer ulcers, less chest pain, and longer lives than those who answered no.
When you spend time with negative or hostile people, you tend to feel tense, anxious, upset, sick, and less intellectually on the ball. Being around people who make you feel stress causes your body to secrete an excessive amount of adrenaline, which makes you feel anxious and tense and puts you on your guard. Increases in the stress hormone cortisol can disrupt neurons in the hippocampus, one of the main memory centers in the brain.
Through the years people have told us that living with a person who suffered from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, panic disorder, Attention Deficit Disorder, or borderline personality disorder has had a negative impact on their physical and emotional health. The chronic stress for family members associated with these illnesses when they are untreated or under-treated can be devastating. Mothers of untreated ADD children, for example, have a higher incidence of depression themselves and often complain that they are physically sick more often and cognitively less sharp than before they had the child.
In our experience, a hallmark of unhappy people is that they have a tendency to surround themselves with negative people – with people who do not believe in them or their abilities, people who put them down, discourage them from their goals, and treat them as though they will never amount to anything. Surrounded by these types of people, you eventually get a clear message that you are no good.
Are you surrounded by people who believe in you and give you positive messages?
Do you spend time with people who encourage you to feel good about yourself? Or do you spend time with people who are constantly putting you down and down playing your ideas? Who are the five people you spend the most time with? Are they positive or negative? The reasons people surround themselves with negativity are easy to understand. People who grow up in negative environments often grow up to be negative. It is what they are used to and, in a strange sort of way, it is what they are comfortable with, what their brain knows. A Choctaw medicine man once told us, “People do not seek happiness, they seek familiarity.”
If an insecure parent continually belittles his child to make himself feel better, the child grows up believing that he is no good and that he is not worthy of being around people who make him feel good. When the trauma of divorce of death happens in a family, a young child often erroneously believes he is at fault and carries around tremendous guilt for a long time. Some children who witnessed parents struggle through a difficult marriage get the message programmed in their brains that relationships are inherently problematic, and they, too, get caught in incompatible relationships.
Adults, as well as children, can be beaten down after years of living through a difficult marriage or being in an abusive job situation. Many people will stay in a job they hate, for example, because their boss leads them to believe that no one else would hire them and that they are lucky to have the job. Just as in an abusive marriage, in an abusive job situation, employees have their self-esteem beaten down to the point that they no longer believe they can go beyond their abusive environment.
Past relationships have a real impact on present ones.
If your past relationships were filled with negativity, chances are your present and future relationships will be the same unless you make a conscious effort to overcome the past.
If you are experiencing depression caused by your past or present relationships, you are not alone. Depression CAN be treated and Amen Clinics CAN help. Call us today at 888-288-9834 or visit our website to schedule an appointment.
So many times you hear people blame their weight on a slow metabolism. While it’s true that metabolism is linked to weight, it’s more about your food and calorie intake, as well as your physical activity that determines how much you weigh. Your metabolism is the rate at which your body burns calories to sustain life.
What is a RMR?
Your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) is the rate at which you burn energy or calories when resting. Calories are constantly required to perform essential body functions such as heartbeat, respiration, elimination of wastes, etc. On average around 50-75% of one’s daily energy expenditure is attributed towards this resting metabolic rate. Simply put, it converts the food we eat into energy.
What Makes Metabolism Slow Down?
Like so many think, it’s actually due to lack of muscle. You lose muscle due to the lack of physical activity. One common mistake of many is that they starve themselves instead of eating sensibly. Most people think that eating less often or skipping meals will do the trick when dieting. This actually is the worst thing you can do.
Going long periods of time without eating stimulates fat storage and can make fat cells even larger. By not eating frequently, three sensible meals and two snacks a day, you’re actually slowing down your metabolism. The longer you go between meals the more your metabolism slows down again to conserve energy.
People with a low or slow metabolism do not convert their food calories into energy efficiently, therefore making them gain weight due to lack of energy. A person with high or fast metabolism can burn the food calories before they are stored in your fat cells, helping them to maintain a healthy weight.
What’s the Solution?
It’s actually quite simple. Invest in yourself and have a willingness to make some changes.
Below is a list of 10 easy and effective ways to boost your metabolism:
1. Don’t starve yourself.
It actually causes you to lose much more water weight and muscle than fat. Dropping below 1,000 calories a day can cause your body to go into starvation mode.
2. Eat smaller meals more frequently.
Depending on your brain type– eat a balanced meal with enough calories to sustain energy to fuel metabolism.
3. Eat breakfast.
If you don’t eat breakfast, you slow your metabolism and send the body into “hoard mode”, thinking it’s starving because you’re going too long in between meals without food.
4. Drink water!
Drink a minimum of ½ your body weight in ounces. The energy burning process of metabolism needs water to work effectively.
5. Schedule sleep.
Try to get in at least 7 hours of sleep a night and stick to a consistent sleep schedule.
6. Eat wholesome organic foods.
Eat foods that will stabilize blood sugar levels and assist in fat loss.
7. Incorporate strength training.
Two to three times a week incorporate some form of resistance training into your schedule. Muscle burns more calories than fat. The more muscle you have the more calories you burn.
8. Avoid alcohol.
It prevents fat burning and can add hundreds of calories. Can also reduce testosterone levels, which is a not good for men who want to lose fat and get lean.
9. Take your B vitamins.
If you’re feeling fatigued and lack energy, be sure to take a B complex.
10. Healthy fats.
Sources include nuts, extra virgin olive oil and Omega 3’s. Omega 3 supplements reduce your insulin levels throughout the day. When insulin levels are high you can’t burn fat. Fish oil directly increases the oxidation of fat within fat cells.
We Can Help
At Amen Clinics, we understand the pain and frustration trying to lose weight can cause. We approach each individual with a sense of compassion and respect. Our experienced clinical staff will take a full history of each patient using The Amen Clinics Method before beginning treatment with SPECT imaging or making other recommendations. Connect with us today by calling 888-288-9834 to learn more – we are waiting to help you, or schedule a visit today. Did you know that at any point in time, about 6 percent of the population will have a significant depression? And only 20 to 25 percent of these people ever seek help.
Given those statistics it’s no surprise that the World Health Organization (WHO) named depression the number one cause of disability in the world, in terms of years lived with disability (YLDs).
Depression Statistics
Facts from the World Health Organization (WHO)
• Depression is common, affecting about 121 million people worldwide.
• Depression is among the leading causes of disability worldwide.
• Depression can be reliably diagnosed and treated in primary care.
• Fewer than 25 percent of those affected have access to effective treatments.
What Research Says
Muñoz and co-authors William Beardslee, MD, professor of child psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Yan Leykin, PhD, assistant adjunct professor in the department of psychiatry at UCSF, are calling their article a “call to action for the health care system.” The article builds on a 2009 Institute of Medicine report on prevention of mental, emotional and behavioral disorders, which provided evidence that mental disorders can be prevented.
“Very few people are aware that depression can be prevented, including professionals in the field, and there are very few preventive services,” said Muñoz in a press release from UCSF.
“The healthcare system is set up to pay providers for treatment. It has not been set up to pay providers for prevention of mental disorders,” said Muñoz. “Without financial incentives for prevention, few professionals will engage in preventive interventions. It’s a major structural obstacle.”
The Results
In addition to cognitive-behavioral or interpersonal psychotherapy methods, one of the “nontraditional” mood management interventions mentioned in the article is an internet-based program using cognitive-behavioral tools. At six months the intervention was found to reduce relapse in the experimental group to 10.5 percent of the participants, versus 37.8 percent in the control group.
Guidelines for Depression
The article offers a set of guidelines to help decrease the number of people affected by depression, which includes identifying high-risk individuals and ultimately striving to reduce new cases of depression by half.
Those at high risk for depression include:
(1) people who have already had a major depressive episode – the likelihood of having a repeat episode is increased and can lead to chronic or recurrent depression
(2) recognizing that depression may be a family illness – parents who have had depressive episodes should consider the needs of their children
(3) stressful life events often trigger depression -therefore, managing stress in an effective way through mood management techniques can be beneficial.
How Brain Imaging Can Help Depression
Our SPECT studies provide a useful window into the brain of these patients and help bring together the diversity of biological findings. We have studied hundreds of children, teenagers, and adults who exhibited depressive behavior.
It is very important to determine the nature and origin of these behaviors because that will predict appropriate treatment. If you or someone you know is suffering from depression we would love to speak with you today. Please reach out at 888-288-9834 or schedule a visit.
