Even though the holiday season is traditionally a relaxing time spent with family and friends, with it comes a busy time of planning, shopping, and entertaining. This can cause stress for a lot of people.
Here are a few easy ways to help reduce your stress level over the holidays.
- Take a deep breath. Breath in through your nose until your lungs are full and exhale through your mouth. This may sound like a simple solution, but studies have shown that taking a single deep breath can reduce anxiety, improve your mood and even lower your blood pressure.
- Go for a walk. You’d be surprised at the difference a 20 minute stroll can make to how you feel. In this short time, the 20 minutes of exercise can release enough endorphins to calm the nervous system and reduce stress levels.
- Avoid comfort food. Don’t give in to the temptation of comfort foods. Those sugar cookies may give you a temporary boost of energy, but the effect doesn’t last and will leave you feeling worse later in the day.
- Write your worries down. When you’re stressed, your imagination can take the smallest thing and turn it into a crisis. By writing your thoughts down, you can put things back into perspective.
- Drink a glass of water. Over the holidays it’s easy to forget to drink enough water, and if you’re dehydrated, your body is more prone to the effects of stress. So don’t forget your 6 to 8 glasses of water a day.
I’d like to wish everyone a safe and happy holiday season!
Over the past few months the H1N1 has been on the minds of people all over the world.
Here in British Columbia there has been daily news coverage about outbreaks of the H1N1 swine flu. I’ve read about how the Government, BC Medical and researchers recommended only getting the H1N1 vaccine and not the regular flu shot. Then they changed their mind and said everyone should get both shots, but at different times…one in November and the other in January. Then they said that it would be better to get both vaccines at the same time as soon as they are available in November. They also said that if you had a regular flu shot last year you would be at higher risk of contracting the H1N1 virus. Some straight answers about this virus and vaccine would be nice.
There have been several outbreaks in the Aboriginal Communities on Vancouver Island. One Aboriginal community in Manitoba received H1N1 flu preparedness kits from the government that included dozens of body bags… I couldn’t believe it when I saw that on the news…. can you imagine! What kind of message are they trying to send? Read the CTV News Article H1N1 Body Bags
I realize that this virus can become very serious if you have a pre-existing health condition, but for the average person, you may have the H1N1 virus and not even know it. The best things you can do to protect yourself are:
- stay home if you have flu/cold symptoms
- wash your hands frequently (use hand sanitizer when soap and water is not available)
- avoid close contact with people that are sick
- cover your mouth and nose when you sneeze or cough (cough or sneeze into your arm instead of your hand, that way you won’t spread your germs when you touch things)
- avoid touching your face, eyes, nose or mouth
- avoid crowded places whenever possible
Remember that the most important thing you can do for yourself is to take care of your health… get plenty of rest, eat healthy, drink lots of water, get regular exercise and take vitamin supplements if you feel run down.
If you feel you need to protect yourself with the H1n1 vaccine, contact your health care practitioner for more information.
Canadian scientists researching breast cancer made an important breakthrough this month.
Scientists were able to decode the cancer tumor DNA and identify the mutations which cause the disease to spread.
Carly Weeks from the Globe and Mail reports:
The possibility of using a patient’s genetic information to create personalized therapies to battle cancer is one step closer to reality after Canadian scientists decoded, for the first time, the entire genome of a patient’s metastatic breast cancer.
It’s a landmark achievement that is helping to rewrite old notions about the way cancer develops and provides new insights into which drugs could benefit patients the most.
“I’m excited by the possibilities,” said Samuel Aparicio, the head of the department of breast and molecular oncology at the B.C. Cancer Agency and one of the lead scientists involved with the discovery. “In fact, I never thought I would see in my professional lifetime that it would become possible to routinely sequence genomes in the way that we’re now doing.”
Genomes contain all of the biological information of a living organism, and that information is housed in DNA. There are about three billion “letters” or building blocks in the human genome. When cells divide, all three billion building blocks must be copied. But mistakes in the copying process can sometimes occur, and those mutations can, in some cases, cause cells to grow in an uncontrolled way – which is how cancer develops.
In decoding the metastatic breast-cancer genome, which contains all of the genetic information of a patient’s cancer, scientists were able to identify all of the mutations in the tumour, a feat that has never before been accomplished.
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