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Brain Fog, Anxiety, and Food

When I was 19 years old, I began experiencing very strange feelings. I was dizzy constantly and my heart raced; I couldn’t sleep; I felt fatigue and left-sided numbness. Often it seemed like I was under the influence of a drug without anything like this in my system. I was constantly in a haze or brain fog.

I was busy earning my BA from the UW. I worked more than 40 hours a week and it took me six years to finish my degree. The brain fog created a small world for me. Anxiety began to take over, leading to panic attacks and agoraphobia.  I went to several medical doctors, convinced there was something utterly wrong with me; I had a brain tumor, a heart defect, MS, something. I was offered many different anti-anxiety medications, muscle relaxers, anti-depressants, and tranquilizers.  Sometimes I took them; others times I cried and refused them and left the office defeated. I underwent allergy testing, ear testing, an MRI, and countless blood panels. Nothing out of the ordinary showed up on any test.

Q. My neighbor just built a sauna. I’ve heard that sitting in a sauna is good for my high blood pressure. Should I take my neighbor up on his offer to use his sauna whenever I feel like it?

A. There have been a few studies that look at saunas as therapy for high blood pressure. First, though, ask your neighbor if his sauna uses radiant heat or infrared heat. Radiant heat saunas are usually wood-paneled rooms using radiant heaters that put out dry or heat or wet steam. However, the two best studies I know of regarding saunas for lowering high blood pressure use infrared saunas; these rooms are warmed by infrared heat lamps.

Letting Go Clears Space for Something New

 Recently I had a dream about my son John. In it, I sensed he had been having troubles the night before. When I called him and expressed this, he confirmed this – girlfriend trouble, more specifically. He was feeling crushed and emotionally overwhelmed. When emotionally intense situations have arisen in the past, my son has often turned to drug and alcohol to alleviate his feelings.

   Want to lower your cholesterol, have fewer heart attacks, or have better blood sugar control?  Try laughing! Amazingly, it may be better for you than even taking a medication.

 Let’s take a look at a few studies. During a Loma Linda University study, Lee Burk, DrPH, MPH, divided 20 diabetic patients at high risk for getting heart disease into a laughter and a non-laughter group. The participants of the laughter group watched a funny video for thirty minutes every day for a year. At the end of the year, the people in the laughter group saw their good cholesterol (HDL) rise by 26 percent, and had a 66 percent decrease in the inflammation markers in their blood compared to the control group. This is important because both HDL and inflammation have been shown to be important risk factors for developing heart attacks.

Meditation is in the news again, thanks to a study published this week which compared experienced and  beginning meditators.

Study:  Researchers at Yale did functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans on 24 participants: half of whom were experienced meditators and half who were novices.  Functional MRI is a form of imaging which allows you to map blood flow changes in the brain as it works. The 12 experienced meditators had reduced activity in a part of the brain called “the default mode network” but had more activity in the posterior cingulate, dorsal anterior cingulate and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex  - all parts of the brain that manage “self-monitoring or thought control”.

Attitude of Gratitude May Benefit Your Health and Well-Being

Study: Researcher R.A. Emmons divided 201 undergraduate college students into three groups, and gave them one of three assignments. The first group wrote down things they were grateful for, small or large, one time a week for nine weeks. The second group wrote down hassles – events which irritated them - once a week for nine weeks. The third group simply listed events that had happened, with no good or bad qualifiers.