Eliminate Stress for Productivity and Longevity

You want to have more energy and better health? What is the one single thing that can guarantee success? A mirror.

When you have stress:

When you have stress, you get a release of adrenalin and other chemicals. These chemicals have a major effect:
• Rapid Heart
• Elevated Blood Pressure
• Restricts blood flow and hardens the arteries
• Less Glycogen to the Brain
• Blood shifts to your muscles
• Lowered immunity

Fight or Flight

You are born with a single stress response: fight or flight. This is what helped your ancestors survive the jungle tigers. Unfortunately this single response is what you get when you are late for an appointment, you have a tough job interview or even when you are just kept waiting.

There will always be stress. But, you can eliminate those stress chemicals.

For Hypertension

Albert P., had high blood pressure. He had an excellent internist. He was told to relax. Finally, his doctor was ready to send him to a psychiatrist. Instead he learned about using the mirror for stress chemical reduction.
Albert’s method:
a. He was instructed to breathe in count of four and out count of six. (Measured breathing) When you exhale, the largest muscle in your body, the diaphragm, gets a signal to relax. If you make the exhalation longer, then the entire muscle system is signaled to relax too.
b. He was instructed to look in the mirror, relax his face, jaw and shoulder muscles. If these muscles are properly relaxed, that sends a no-tiger signal to your stress center, and no harmful chemicals are released. The mirror tells you if you are doing this correctly.

Measured Breathing

Rapid breathing sends a stress signal to the Limbic system, then the Limbic system releases adrenalin. But if you are breathing in at the count of four and out at the count of six, the signal is that there is no tiger, therefore no adrenalin.

Tight muscles send a signal to your stress center- a tiger! Out comes the adrenalin to your muscles so you can run. But you are sitting at your desk all stressed out because your wife is accusing you of all kinds of “mischief.” But, if your muscles are relaxed, the signal is No Tiger. You can still be unhappy and annoyed, but without the stress chemicals, you body doesn’t suffer damage.

Scientific Proof

How do we know this works? For 60 years, scientists like Elmer Green, Edmund Jacobson, J. Wolpe, Hans Selye and others have measured electrical output of muscles. When the electricity went down, the stressor chemicals stopped. They got patients well by using biofeedback. Here, they presented a large dial to show the electric output. By looking at the dial, the patient could lower the muscle tightness because he was being fed back when the muscles were relaxed.

Anxiety can make any illness worse. I use these methods daily for my patients with tinnitus, jaw disorders, and to improve their immunity to disease.

You could buy one of those electromyography biofeedback machines. Or, you can use a mirror to SEE your face, jaw and shoulders actually relax, and give the no tiger signal.

Lay New Tracks in Your Brain

What works is to practice the counting of the breathing- count four in and six out daily. Repeat the mirror feedback daily. When this is done daily, instead of the stress reaction when the phone rings, your body uses that ring to signal you to do the breathing and relax your face, jaw and shoulders. This is because you are laying new tracks of response. This is called Neuroplasticity. You are actually changing the wiring of your brain.

It takes months to develop a perfect tennis serve or golf swing. It takes practice to lay down the new wiring. Similarly, with practice you will get new wiring so that instead of stress chemicals, you get muscle relaxation and measured breathing.

This can be fully automatic, just as stepping on the brake is fully automatic.

In my book, Stressed? Anxiety? Your Cure is in the Mirror there are various exercises to enhance these reactions; to enable you to use the fact that the brain can be rewired to your advantage for increased productivity, longevity and much better health.
Source:
Stressed? Anxiety? Your Cure is in the Mirror by
Murray Grossan, M.D.
Practices medicine in Los Angeles.
Author of The Sinus Cure, Free Yourself from Sinus and Allergy Problems-Permanently.
Curriculum includes some 30 + peer reviewed medical journal articles. He is author of Sinusitis and Asthma in E Medicine.
Web: www.grossan.com