“trauma produces actual physiological changes, including a recalibration of the brain’s alarm system, an increase in stress hormone activity, and alterations in the system that filters relevant information from irrelevant”

“Under normal conditions people react to a threat with a temporary increase in their stress hormones. As soon as the threat is over, the hormones dissipate and the body returns to normal. The stress hormones of traumatized people, in contrast, take much longer to return to baseline and spike quickly and disproportionately in response to mildly stressful stimuli. The insidious effects of constantly elevated stress hormones include memory and attention problems, irritability, and sleep disorders. They also contribute to many long-term health issues, depending on which body system is most vulnerable in a particular individual.”

“After trauma the world is experienced with a different nervous system. The survivor’s energy now becomes focused on suppressing inner chaos, at the expense of spontaneous involvement in their lives. These attempts to maintain control over unbearable physiological reactions can result in a whole range of physical symptoms, including fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, and other autoimmune diseases. This explains why it is critical for trauma treatment to engage the entire organism, body, mind, and brain.”

Thalamus: Our Thalamus is like a cook.  It takes in info from all the senses and then blends it with our autobiographical memory. Breakdown of the thalamus explains why trauma is primarily remembered not as a story with a beginning, middle, or end, but as isolated sensory imprints: images, sounds, physical sensations that are accompanied by intense emotions usually terror and helplessness. In normal circumstances, the thalamus also acts as a filter or gatekeeper. This makes it a central component of attention, concentration, and new learning—all of which are compromised by trauma. People with PTSD have their floodgates wide open. Lacking a filter, they are on constant sensory overload. In order to cope, they try to shut themselves down and develop tunnel vision and hyperfocus. If they can’t shut down naturally, they may enlist drugs or alcohol to block out the world. The tragedy is that the price of closing down includes filtering out sources of pleasure and joy as well.

Klotho-deficient mice have accelerated aging phenotypes, whereas overexpression of Klotho in mice extends lifespan. Klotho is an anti-aging single-pass membrane protein predominantly produced in the kidney, with shedding of the amino-terminal extracellular domain into the systemic circulation. Circulating levels of soluble Klotho decrease with age, and the klotho gene is associated with increased risk of age-related diseases. The three forms of Klotho protein have distinct functions. Membrane Klotho forms a complex with fibroblast growth factor (FGF) receptors, functions as an obligatory co-receptor for FGF23, which is involved in aging and the development of chronic diseases via regulation of Pi and vitamin D metabolism. Secreted Klotho functions as a humoral factor with pleiotropic activities including regulation of oxidative stress, growth factor signaling, and ion homeostasis. Secreted Klotho is also involved in organ protection. The intracellular form of Klotho suppresses inflammation-mediated cellular senescence and mineral metabolism. Herein we provide a brief overview of the structure and function and recent research about Klotho.

looming work deadline

To that point, I've also basically not refollowed any news accounts or "official" corporate accounts. Anything I need to know about major headlines gets surfaced through other channels, or even just other parts of Twitter, so I don't need to see social media updates from media companies whose entire economic model is predicated on causing me enough stress to click through to their sites.

So she began to regard her practice in a whole new way. She started evaluating children not just for their medical histories, but also their social histories. And instead of treating only symptoms, she sought to help with the root causes of the stress that were making them sick.

She found an answer in a decade-old study that showed a strong link between chronic disease and traumatic experiences during childhood — things such as physical abuse or neglect, or living with a family member addicted to drugs or alcohol. She knew the children she saw lived with high “doses” of adversity, she said, and it made sense: Trauma was affecting their developing brains and also their developing bodies.

“They would have chronic abdominal pain, headaches, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, opposition defiant disorder,” she said. “It could be that all these different kids have all these diagnoses, or it could be that there is one thing at the root of this.”

Traumatic experiences led people to engage in more risky behaviors, such as intravenous drug use and early sexual activity. But even people without a history of high-risk behaviors had poor health outcomes.

Modulating these many pathways requires alteration of expression of a diverse array of genes, which takes place via the coordinated action of various stress-responsive transcription factors as well as chromatin-associated factors. While there is some understanding regarding the role of transcription factors, enzymes catalyzing covalent histone modifications and chromatin remodeling complexes in responses to various abiotic stresses in plants (Sahoo et al., 2013; Kim et al., 2015), the role of histone chaperones in stress response remains enigmatic

Brain cells bombarded by stress signals have little recovery time and eventually start to shrink and cut connections to other brain cells.  The network that coordinates our thoughts, emotions and reactions thus starts to rearrange.  Over time, entire regions of the brain can grow or shrink.  That may explain why studies have linked higher levels of stress hormones with lower memory, focus and problem-solving skills.

Studies have also illustrated the strong link between insomnia and chronic stress.8 According to APA's Stress in America survey, more than 40 percent of all adults say they lie awake at night because of stress. Experts recommend going to bed at a regular time each night, striving for at least seven to eight hours of sleep and eliminating distractions such as television and computers from the bedroom.

Over the years, researchers have learned not only how and why these reactions occur, but have also gained insight into the long-term effects chronic stress has on physical and psychological health. Over time, repeated activation of the stress response takes a toll on the body. Research suggests that chronic stress contributes to high blood pressure, promotes the formation of artery-clogging deposits, and causes brain changes that may contribute to anxiety, depression, and addiction. More preliminary research suggests that chronic stress may also contribute to obesity, both through direct mechanisms (causing people to eat more) or indirectly (decreasing sleep and exercise).

The teacher in front of me was also clearly in a hurry "Do you have many more copies to make? I have a class in five minutes?"

So now it’s time to act.

Smoking weed calms teens down so they can focus better.

WASHINGTON — While aspects of the U.S. economy have improved, money continues to be a top cause of stress for Americans, according to the new Stress in America™: Paying With Our Health survey released today by the American Psychological Association. According to the survey, parents, younger generations and those living in lower-income households report higher levels of stress than Americans overall, especially when it comes to stress about money.

Grades are important. There is a ton of pressure for students to get those good grades, whether it’s from your parents, siblings, friends, or even yourself.

This could be reading a book, free writing, or exercise.

narratingdifficulties, frustration, stresses in the simple writing expressive paradigm leads toincreased happiness, reduced stress, reduced visits to health centers, reduced depression,even sort of better profiles of your immune system as you're handling disease.

the more grateful you are, the tendency is foryou to feel less anxious, less depressed. Bob Emmons really put it nicely, which isthe more you move to this grateful mindset, it'salmost physically impossible to be anxious or depressed.

"self-compassion (unlike self-esteem) helps buffer against anxiety" when confronted with threats to one's self-image; it also found that increases in self-compassion are associated with increased feelings of social connectedness and decreased depression, among other indicators of psychological well-being.

Participants’ self-compassion levels, but not their self-esteem levels, predicted how much anxiety they felt.

I slowly came to realize that self-criticism—despite being socially sanctioned—was not at all helpful, and in fact only made things worse. I wasn’t making myself a better person by beating myself up all the time. Instead, I was causing myself to feel inadequate and insecure, then taking out my frustration on the people closest to me. More than that, I wasn’t owning up to many things because I was so afraid of the self-hate that would follow if I admitted the truth.

And what they found was that the individuals who participated in the meditation programhad longer telomeres than the individuals who were in the control group after a three-monthexperience. This was first finding in that vein. Elissa Epel and her colleague did anotherresearch project where they looked at a mindfulness-based program for people with eating disorders andshowed that people who did the mindfulness had a 39% increase in telomerase activitywhich corresponds to lengthened telomeres and that this telomerase activity actuallypredicted benefits in other aspects of their treatment program having to do with the people’seating habits. So there’s this interesting effect that is being reiterated that mindfulnessactually seems to make people age more gracefully.

Mindfulness. It’s a pretty straightforward word. It suggests that the mind is fully attending to what’s happening, to what you’re doing, to the space you’re moving through. That might seem trivial, except for the annoying fact that we so often veer from the matter at hand. Our mind takes flight, we lose touch with our body, and pretty soon we’re engrossed in obsessive thoughts about something that just happened or fretting about the future. And that makes us anxious.

Hostility also has been found to be the part of type A behavior that seems to have the most pernicious health effects, such as a heightened risk of cardiovascular disease. Forsaking a grudge may also free a person from hostility and all its unhealthy consequences. It probably isn’t just hostility and stress that link unforgiveness and poor health. According to a review of the literature on forgiveness and health that my colleague Michael Scherer and I published, unforgiveness might compromise the immune system at many levels. For instance, our review suggests that unforgiveness might throw off the production of important hormones and even disrupt the way our cells fight off infections, bacteria, and other physical insults, such as mild periodontal disease.

To ruminate on an old transgression is to practice unforgiveness. Sure enough, in Witvliet’s research, when people recalled a grudge, their physical arousal soared. Their blood pressure and heart rate increased, and they sweated more. Ruminating about their grudges was stressful, and subjects found the rumination unpleasant. It made them feel angry, sad, anxious, and less in control. Witvliet also asked her subjects to try to empathize with their offenders or imagine forgiving them. When they practiced forgiveness, their physical arousal coasted downward. They showed no more of a stress reaction than normal wakefulness produces.

People expect that helping eight victims costs more than helping one, so imposing a donation request created an incentive to turn off compassion. The rest of the participants were not told they would have to help; by removing the financial incentive to turn off compassion, I hoped to reverse compassion collapse. And that’s exactly what I found. When people expected to help, they showed more compassion for one victim than for eight victims. But this reversed when people did not expect to have to help. By showing that the amount of compassion is dependent upon expected costs, the experiment revealed that we don’t face some natural limit to our compassion.

if we feel like helping is not possibleor we don’t have the capacity to do so, so in this research when we encounter a lot ofpeople whoneed assistance, we’re actually much less likely to help. And that tells us that sortof cultivatingfeelings of efficacy and in a way to feel empowered to help at the right level is reallyimportantin meeting these challenges to kindness.

if theywere on time and feeling like they weren't rushed, over 60% of the time they attendedto thatperson in need; if they were just a minute or two late, that likelihood of helping droppedto10 percent - a six fold decrease in kindness just by feeling a little bit busy.

In the case of compassion, when you’re able to manage your own distressor not relate to your empathic experience as personal distress but rather a caregivingurge, this isa benefit to your health and wellbeing, and your sense of happiness.

being distressed by suffering is not the most happy-inducing way to respondtoother people’s suffering. Rather, the better approach is to feel, to allow your caregivingurge tocome online and drive your behaviors.

The amazing thing here is that noticing your Stress Reaction is all you have to consciously do. The rest mostly takes care of itself. Once you notice it, you’ll automatically start to mitigate it. And you don’t necessarily have to stop the behavior completely. Some of your Stress Reaction may be helpful even if too much is hurtful. It’s useful in turbulent times to manage more closely, withdraw to reflect, and compete a little harder than usual. It helps keep you on track and focused. Just remember to pause. And notice.

Another destructive Stress Reaction is withdrawal. We become uninvolved, aloof, occupied with other things. We hide in our offices. We avoid communicating.

I knew if I took that pill I’d be much too stressed about the possible side effects to ever fall asleep. I realized this was no joke — it was a real ad. And I realized this is exactly how corporate trainings talk about stress at work.

One of the greatest buffers against picking up others’ stress is stable and strong self-esteem. The higher your self-esteem, the more likely you will feel that you can deal with whatever situation you face. If you are finding yourself being impacted by others’ moods, stop and remind yourself how things are going well and that you can handle anything that comes your way. Exercise is one of the best ways to build self-esteem, because your brain records a victory every time you exercise, via endorphins.

Instead of returning a harried coworkers’ stressed nonverbals with an equally stressed grimace of your own, return it with a smile or a nod of understanding. Suddenly you have the power. As suggested in the new book Broadcasting Happiness, you can create a “power lead” to short-circuit a negative encounter.

if you create a positive mindset about stress and stop fighting it, you experience a 23% drop in the negative effects of stress. When we see stress as a threat, our bodies and minds miss out on the enhancing effects of stress. (Even at high levels, stress can create greater mental toughness, deeper relationships, heightened awareness, new perspectives, a sense of mastery, a greater appreciation for life, a heightened sense of meaning, and strengthened priorities.)  Instead of fighting and being frustrated at negative people around you, take it as an opportunity to feel compassion or a challenge to help that person become more positive. Our HBR article “Making Stress Work for You” includes more ideas on how to change your stress mindset to a more positive one.

In our highly connected working world, we are hyper-exposed to other people. This means negative emotions and stress become even more contagious as we have high exposure to negative comments on news articles and social media; stressed body language of financial news shows; stressed out people on our subways and planes; and open office plans where you can see everyone’s nonverbals.

New research shows that stress causes people to sweat special stress hormones, which are picked up by the olfactory senses of others. Your brain can even detect whether the “alarm pheromones” were released due to low stress or high stress. Negativity and stress can literally waft into your cubicle.

secondhand stress is a result of our hardwired ability to perceive potential threats in our environment.

Observing someone who is stressed — especially a coworker or family member — can have an immediate effect upon our own nervous systems. A separate group of researchers found that 26% of people showed elevated levels of cortisol just by observing someone who was stressed. Secondhand stress is much more contagious from a romantic partner (40%) than a stranger, but when observers watched a stressful event on video with strangers, 24% still showed a stress response. (This makes us question whether we, as happiness researchers, should watch Breaking Bad before going to sleep.)

The travel stress alone can be debilitating.