Stress
How Walnuts Ease Stress in College Students
A new study in Nutrients offers an antidote to stress, especially among university students — a daily serving of walnuts. Researchers found that undergraduate college students who consumed two ounces of walnuts every day for 16 weeks had improved mental health indicators. They also experienced protective effects against some ofRead
The Neurobiology of Stress
At the 2016 Neurobiology of Stress Workshop in Newport Beach, CA, a group of experts presented the symposium The Microbiome: Development, Stress, and Disease, published in Mammalian Genome. This report, coauthored by leading experts Jane Foster, PhD, John Crynan PhD and colleagues, summarizes and builds upon some of the key conceptsRead
Postnatal supplementation and early life infant stress
Postnatal supplementation with micronutrients could play a role in countering the negative effects of early life stress (ES) for infants. The significance of this recent study shows that when lactating mothers receive adequate essential miconutrients their children are less likely to suffer from cognitive problems later in life as aRead
Drop Diastolic & Systolic Blood Pressure with Yoga
Lifestyle modification is a cornerstone of hypertension (HPT) treatment, yet most recommendations currently focus on diet and exercise and do not consider stress reduction strategies. Yoga is a spiritual path that may reduce blood pressure (BP) through reducing stress, increasing parasympathetic activation, and altering baroreceptor sensitivity; however, despite reviews on yoga and cardiovascular disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and anxiety that suggest yoga may reduce BP, no comprehensive review has yet focused on yoga and HPT. By Anupama Tyagi, MA, PhD(c) and Marc Cohen MBBS(Hons), PhD, BMedSc(Hons), FAMAC, FICAE, published Alternative Therapies in Health Medicine, Vol. 20, No. 10.
Massage Increases Oxytocin, Reduces Adrenocorticotropin
Human beings are highly social creatures who often touch each other during social interactions. Although the physiologic effects of touch are not understood fully, it appears to sustain social bonds and to increase cooperative behaviors. Oxytocin (OT) is a hormone known to facilitate social bonding, and touch may affect OT release. Previous studies seeking to relate massage and oxytocin in humans have been inconsistent in their findings.