Free Republic

Hawaii residents remained the least likely in the U.S. to say they felt stressed on any given day in 2012, at 32.1%. West Virginia residents, on average, were the most likely to report feeling stress, at 47.1%. These state-level data are based on daily surveys conducted from January through December 2012 and encompass more than 350,000 interviews as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. Nationwide, 40.6% of Americans reported feeling stressed "yesterday" in 2012, similar to past years. Gallup has measured daily stress in its tracking survey since 2008. Hawaii has ranked as the state with the lowest percentage of...

Terrorism. Chaos. Fear of the future. In the age of Obama, America is undergoing a “fundamental transformation” – that much everyone knows. But what few seem to realize about this transformation is that the sheer stress of living in today’s America is driving tens of millions to the point of illness, depression and self-destruction. Consider the following trends: (snip) Commenting on Obama’s sudden obsession with employing every means possible to deny law-abiding Americans their constitutionally guaranteed right to keep and bear arms, Limbaugh exclaimed: “All of this is so in our face. Everything that people hold dear is under assault....

Terrorism. Chaos. Fear of the future. In the age of Obama, America is undergoing a “fundamental transformation” – that much everyone knows. But what few seem to realize about this transformation is that the sheer stress of living in today’s America is driving tens of millions to the point of illness, depression and self-destruction. Consider the following trends: Suicide has surpassed car crashes as the leading cause of injury death for Americans. Even more disturbing, in the world’s greatest military, more U.S. soldiers died last year by suicide than in combat; Fully one-third of the nation’s employees suffer chronic debilitating...

Earlier this month, British newspapers reported the story of Paul Marshallsea, a Welshman who, while on a two-month Australian holiday with his wife, wrestled a six-foot shark to prevent it from attacking children in the water. Marshallsea happened to be filmed while doing so, and the pictures went around the world. He was proclaimed a hero. Unfortunately for him, the pictures also reached Wales. He and his wife were supposed to be on sick leave at the time with “work-related stress,” and his heroics didn’t impress his employers: they sacked him, on the not-unreasonable grounds that if he could travel...

On a chilly, January night in 1986, Elizabeth Ebaugh carried a bag of groceries across the quiet car park of a shopping plaza in the suburbs of Washington DC. She got into her car and tossed the bag onto the empty passenger seat. But as she tried to close the door, she found it blocked... --snip-- The most talked-about biological marker of resilience is neuropeptide Y (NPY), a hormone released in the brain during stress. Unlike the stress hormones that put the body on high alert in response to trauma, NPY acts at receptors in several parts of the brain...

Now celebrating 52 years of helping people on the radio! For over half a century Roy Masters has been helping people overcome their most difficult problems. As the nation’s first and longest running radio counselor, Roy Masters has advised callers with a unique ability to hear inner problems, heal fears and sexual stresses, and help people take charge of their own lives. Great show and exactly what the world needs! Here is a radio show stations page... http://www.fhu.com/radiostations.html

Pregnancy loss is a common and painful condition for gestational women, accounting for 25-40% of total pregnancy, having become a serious social-medical issue worldwide. Animal studies and clinical investigations have indicated that the cause of many mid-term miscarriage/abnormal pregnancy has been seeded very early during the onset of embryo implantation. Epidemiological study also showed that maternal stress at early pregnancy is strongly associated with various complications during ongoing gestation. However, whether and how the process of embryo implantation is affected by environmental factors such as stress induced sympathetic activation remained elusive. Considering the mammalian uterus is an organ with extensive...

Government worker: “Do you have a disability?” Man: “No.” Man’s wife: “What does he get if he’s disabled?” Government worker: “His monthly payments will [double].” Man’s wife: “Well, then he’s disabled.” Government worker (to man): “What’s your disability?” Man: “I’m stressed.” An attorney friend of mine recently overheard the above conversation in a Florida government building. The man, who had just turned 65, was signing up for retirement benefits while his wife stood over his shoulder. I relay the story to illustrate how our government is expanding the definition of the term “disability.” Howard Rich explains in his recent Wall...

Listen and learn this very simple and higly effective technique to be able to fight and win without guilt! The church has lost it's way, but you can find it easily.

Gentlemen may prefer blondes, but stressed men prefer heavier women -- at least according to a new study. In this study, published Wednesday in the journal PLoS ONE, researchers at the University of Westminster in London subjected 41 men to a stress-inducing task. After this task, the researchers asked the men to rate the attractiveness of female bodies ranging from emaciated to obese. Compared to a control group of 40 men who did not undergo the stress task, the stressed men rated a significantly heavier female body size as the most attractive, and they rated heavier female bodies as more...

So far this year, nine people have jumped to their deaths from the 212-foot high span into the Hudson River, nearly twice as many as the five people who killed themselves last year..... ...it’s difficult to assign a blanket cause to apparent suicide clusters such as this one, people who jump off towering structures tend to be more psychiatrically disturbed and more intent on killing themselves.

This posting is under news because this is news for so many people! And life saving news at that. If you do not wish to watch the short video, let me tell you that those teeny tiny irritations that fuel most of our lives, are the actual source of food for a darkness that creates disease, suffering, and misery. Please, listen to the Be Still exercise that is being used widely now in our military at www.copingstrategiescd.com for the simple and highly effective answer!

Enlarge Image Early damage. Telomeres (red) are shorter in children who have been abused. Credit: Pasleka/Photo Researchers Inc. Traumatic experiences in early life can leave emotional scars. But a new study suggests that violence in childhood may leave a genetic mark as well. Researchers have found that children who are physically abused and bullied tend to have shorter telomeres—structures at the tips of chromosomes whose shrinkage has been linked to aging and disease. Telomeres prevent DNA strands from unravelling, much like the plastic aglets on a shoelace. When cells divide, these structures grow shorter, limiting the number of times...

He is the man who began self help talk radio over 50 years ago and is still on all over the nation trying to wake Americans out of their hypntotic states. I call him the repo man because he has the roadmap to reposessing our own bodies and minds, as our only problems in life and in our nation are that we have all become possessed by entities very similar to the ones in the movie " Invasion of the Body Snatchers". However, these creatures are very crafty and hate goodness, indeed they are the mischievious flipside of our good...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve says four major banks failed to show they have enough capital to survive another serious downturn. The list includes Citigroup, the nation's third-largest bank. The Fed says 15 of 19 major banks passed the stress test. The Fed noted that all of the banks have built up their capital reserves since the 2008 financial crisis. SunTrust and Ally Financial also failed the test.

As winter gives way to spring, a number of holiday and other family events—be it Passover, graduation, first communion, you name it—stand before us. And, with them, comes a certain degree of anxiety for most of us, knowing that it means spending some “quality time” with our extended family. No matter how much we may love them, bringing all those personalities together is an inevitable recipe for tension. That’s why we can all use a coach like etiquette expert, Marie Dubuque—an unparalleled guru in interpersonal relationships and a wellspring of common-sensibility advice for all of us humans who can’t help...

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) suffers from incapacitating, stressed-induced migraines, The Daily Caller reports, questioning her fitness to be President. The report cites multiple sources close to the GOP presidential candidate confirming the condition, and lists multiple hospital stays and trips to urgent care centers for treatment. "She has terrible migraine headaches. And they put her out of commission for a day or more at a time. They come out of nowhere, and they’re unpredictable,” a Bachmann adviser involved in her 2010 congressional campaign told The Daily Caller. A spokeswoman for Bachmann, Alice Stewart, confirmed ”she suffers from migraines and they’re...

Epidemiologists showed decades ago that people raised in cities are more prone to mental disorders than those raised in the countryside. But neuroscientists have avoided studying the connection, preferring to leave the disorderly realm of the social environment to social scientists. A paper in this issue of Nature represents a pioneering foray across that divide. Using functional brain imaging, a group led by Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg of the University of Heidelberg's Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany, showed that specific brain structures in people from the city and the countryside respond differently to social stress (see pages 452 and...

Stress hormones lead to Alzheimer-like protein modificationsProtein deposits in nerve cells are a typical feature of Alzheimer's disease: the excessive alteration of the tau protein through the addition of phosphate groups – a process known as hyperphosphorylation – causes the protein in the cells to aggregate into clumps. As a result, nerve cells die, particularly in the hippocampus, a part of the brain that plays an important role in learning and memory, as well as in the prefrontal cortex which regulates higher cognitive functions. Fewer than ten percent of Alzheimer cases have a genetic basis. The factors that contribute to...

Depression, stress, poor sanitation, diet: doctor Nuke workers at risk of overwork death Kyodo Tokyo Electric Power Co. workers engaged in efforts to stabilize the crisis-hit Fukushima No.1 nuclear plant are at risk of depression or death from overwork, a doctor who recently examined them said Wednesday. The workers are not only undertaking dangerous work in severe conditions but also feel a sense of moral responsibility as employees of the operator of the crippled plant, Takeshi Tanigawa said in an interview. Many of the workers have been exposed to multiple stresses, he said, as some of them barely survived the...

CINCINNATI—All those salty snacks available at the local tavern might be doing more than increasing your thirst: They could also play a role in suppressing social anxiety. New research from the University of Cincinnati (UC) shows that elevated levels of sodium blunt the body's natural responses to stress by inhibiting stress hormones that would otherwise be activated in stressful situations. These hormones are located along the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which controls reactions to stress. The research is reported in the April 6, 2011, issue of The Journal of Neuroscience, the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience. "We're calling this...

New York, 21 March 2011 – Stress can change the balance of bacteria that naturally live in the gut, according to research published this month in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity. "These bacteria affect immune function, and may help explain why stress dysregulates the immune response," said lead researcher Michael Bailey. Exposure to stress led to changes in composition, diversity and number of gut microorganisms, according to scientists from The Ohio State University. The bacterial communities in the intestine became less diverse, and had greater numbers of potentially harmful bacteria, such as Clostridium. "These changes can have profound implications...

Greeting people outside the public assistance office on W. 125th Street, a man dressed in panda outfit and boxing gloves invites passerby to punch him. Nate Hill calls his artistic experiment “community service and social outreach” meant to give people an outlet for their frustrations. Hill, who lives in East Harlem, started his “Punch Me Panda” experiment about a month ago and has so far taken punches in Harlem, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Park Slope, Williamsburg and Bushwick. Hill announces his weekly trips on Twitter, where he also invites people to request house calls. “When I came to the off-track betting location, all...

Studies on genetically engineered mice show that social stress activates the immune system and accelerates the development of atherosclerosis. Commonly used drugs to reduce blood pressure, however, may stop this process. This is the conclusion of a thesis presented at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Several large studies have clearly shown that there is a correlation between psychosocial stress and the risk of developing cardiovascular disease. However, little is known about why this is the case. "The aim of my thesis was to study the underlying mechanisms by which stress leads to atherosclerosis and subsequent cardiovascular disease", explains Evelina Bernberg,...

Today, I want to discuss stress. We live in a time and age where stress is common, rampant, and so intense that it has become a tremendous challenge sometimes to simply maintain composure. Stress is a draining mechanism that can easily take our focus off of the Lord and dwell on our own troubles. Now, to us Christians, there are three major types of stress we should examine....... Work-Related Stress: Back in June, a friend of mine and I went to a restaurant we both like. When the waitress came to our table, she had a “brain freeze” for a...

For the losing side: How to handle the post-election hangoverBy Stephanie Chen, CNN November 3, 2010 4:57 p.m. EDT (CNN) -- For weeks -- even months -- you may have been caught up in the election frenzy. You've been jazzed about a candidate or a cause. Perhaps you've volunteered for a campaign or proudly planted a sign in your yard. The results are announced and the winners start celebrating their campaign victory, but for the losers, an election loss can easily turn personal. CNN spoke to Dr. Ivan Walks, a public health physician and psychiatrist who has studied stress for...

New Way to Help Chickens Cross to Other SideBy WILLIAM NEUMAN Published: October 21, 2010 Shoppers in the supermarket today can buy chicken free of nearly everything but adjectives. It comes free-range, cage-free, antibiotic-free, raised on vegetarian feed, organic, even air-chilled. The chicken producers are planning to use systems like this one to render the birds unconscious before they are hung by their feet to have their throats slit. Coming soon: stress-free? Two premium chicken producers, Bell & Evans in Pennsylvania and Mary’s Chickens in California, are preparing to switch to a system of killing their birds that they consider...

Overcoming post-election stress traumaWednesday, 02 June 2010 12:00 AM Ma. Andrea S. Tirazona When the early results of the recently concluded elections started trickling in, I felt a rush of excitement as I saw the numbers tipping in Noynoy’s direction. On the other hand, I was shocked at Binay’s early lead. Before anything else, let me point out that this is not an article as to whether or not Noynoy was the right choice for president, nor is this a debate as to whether or not the election was a clean and honest one. This is about seeing things from...

I believe there is a new anxiety disorder that many of us are experiencing now. It's Obama-Traumatic Stress Disorder - OTSD. OverviewObama-traumatic stress disorder is a type of anxiety disorder. It can occur after you've seen or experienced a traumatic event that involved the loss of a job, lowed standard of living, or just constant nonstop threat of government intrusion into your life as a direct result of the Obama regime's policies and actions. Symptoms Symptoms of OTSD fall into three main categories: 1. Repeated "reliving" of the event, which disturbs day-to-day activity * Flashback episodes, where the election seems...

Forget the age-old remedies of yoga, meditation or popping pills. Relieving chronic stress could soon be as simple as having an injection, according to scientists. Academics say they are close to developing the first vaccine for stress - a single jab that would help us relax without slowing down. After 30 years of research into cures for stress, Dr Robert Sapolsky, professor of neuroscience at Stanford University in California, believes it is possible to alter brain chemistry to create a state of 'focused calm'. [snip] 'To be honest, I'm still amazed that it works,' Professor Sapolsky told Wired magazine recently.

LOS ANGELES (July 6) -- ... While government statistics on suicides often lag by two or three years, experts say the easier-to-track calls to hot lines have grown significantly. ... There are indicators the U.S. suicide rate has climbed. An informal tally of 19 states by the Wall Street Journal in November found an increase of 2.3 percent in the 2008 suicide rate over the 2007 rate. Other news outlets around the nation have recently reported a troubling flow of suicides and murder-suicides by people facing crippling financial troubles, including: An armed man facing foreclosure in Chattanooga, Tenn., who called...

If you think your boss is the biggest cause of stress at work, you may be wrong, for a new study has claimed that spouses cause more anxiety at home than superiors in office. According to the study, based on a survey of 3,000 people in Britain, there may be no place like home, but if one wants to relax then one might be better off at work.

Charlotte Church today showed signs of her strain at being a single mother bringing up two little ones. Charlotte, 24, struggled with a host of bags, toys and bottles as she took her two children out for the day. Meanwhile her estranged fiancé, peramatanned Gavin Henson, has been out living it up, looking relaxed and care-free.

Spain Now Showing Very Serious Signs Of Systemic Stress Gregory White Jun. 9, 2010, 10:52 AM The situation in Spain is getting worse by the minute as international banks are now unwilling to lend to many Spanish regional banks, or cajas, in the interbank markets. What is of more serious concern is why banks have halted lending. It is not just because they are worried about issues of banking solvency, now lenders are concerned about the viability of Spanish sovereign debt, according to Cinco Dias via FT Alphaville. If banks are no longer willing to take Spanish sovereign debt as...

PROVO, Utah -- The over-scheduled, over-involved and over-whelmed Mormon woman needs to do two things to de-stress, said two speakers at the recent Women's Conference at BYU: simply life and ask for God's help. "God placed us here to succeed," Sarah Westerberg said. "But mortality will cause stress. It's a natural byproduct." SNIP Her advice included...letting go of what cannot be controlled and ridding life of perfectionism. She suggested adding two words to a working vocabulary: "Who cares?" SNIP

Swede stress lowest in the world: study Published: 3 May 10 08:30 CET Swedish business leaders suffer the lowest levels of stress in the world, far behind their Chinese and Mexican counterparts, according to a new survey published by US consultancy firm Grant Thornton. Only 23 percent of Swedish business leaders experienced themselves to be more stressed in November 2009 in comparison to a year before, in contrast to 76 percent in mainland China, according to the Grant Thornton International Business Report (IBR). The report surveyed 7,400 privately-owned businesses in 36 countries in November 2009 and found that Chinese (76),...

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to work. I haven't seen these before, evidently they are a hit in the UK. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGBwiQeh71c

PAKTIA PROVINCE, Afghanistan, April 7, 2010 – Air Force Maj. Kim Floyd and Air Force Senior Airman Jessica E. Delgado just want to talk. Air Force Maj. Kim Floyd speaks with Army Spc. Autumn L. Gregg at Forward Operating Base Lightning in Afghanistan’s Paktia province, April 1, 2010. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Andrew A. Reagan  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Floyd, a psychologist deployed from the 92nd Medical Group at Fairchild Air Force Base, Wash., and Delgado, a mental health technician deployed from the 5th Medical Group at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., make up the Combat Stress...

Snacking under stress can contribute to weight gain, and new research shows the snacking doesn't stop for women when the pressure slacks off. Jennifer Waugh, a clinical nutrition manager at Baltimore's Mercy Medical Center, said stress is a common trigger for snacking, especially eating comfort foods, including sweets, pastries, soft drinks or chips. "It seems like people either want sweet, bland, salty, chocolate, high-fat things that are not healthy and are very much considered junk food," Waugh said. "You can have a bottled water, that's always good, or yogurt or milk because it has protein that can make you feel...

Former President Bill Clinton said Wednesday that he will manage his stress better after undergoing a procedure to unclog a blocked artery, but emphasized that he has no intention of slowing down. It would be a mistake to stop working, Clinton said at an event focusing on childhood obesity. "I've been given this gift of life by my surgery five years ago, the medicine I take, the lifestyle changes I've made," he said. "I don't want to throw it away by being a vegetable. I want to do things with it every day." Clinton said he would make changes...

Risk: Stressed people are twice as likely to have furred arteries Getting stressed really is bad for your heart, according to new research. For years, stress has been linked to heart attacks and other heart complaints but with very little medical evidence to back it up. Now a major trial by doctors at University College London has proved for the first time that people who get stressed are also likely to have heart disease. The study involved 514 men and women, with an average age of 62. None had signs of heart disease...

Worries about the economy and healthcare are pushing people into middle age earlier, making 35 the new 40, according to a new report. While 40 was once widely considered the milestone that defined middle age, this has been lowered to 35, according to research by the Philips Center for Health and Well-Being. "Thirty five is the new 40 as Americans feel the pressures of middle age earlier than ever," the Amsterdam-based centre said in a statement. Katy Hartley, the director of the centre, which aims to improve quality of life, said stress about the economy and healthcare that you would...

Feeling a little stressed over the Christmas holiday season? While it may be the official season to be merry, for many, the holidays are a time of stress, loneliness, anxiety and dysfunction according to ThirdAge.com. Family tensions, financial stress and physical demands are three areas that can trigger holiday stress or depression. So what does one do when it's the season to be jolly, but you're feeling anything but jolly?

Japan's Crown Princess Masako has said she will keep working to fight her stress problems. The 46-year-old royal - who is married to Crown Prince Naruhito - said she has been working with medical professionals to solve her illness.

Enlarge ImageHigh anxiety. Rats "addicted" to sugary food spent less time on the open parts of this maze. Credit: Pietro Cottone If you're constantly starting new diets, then breaking them, you may have more in common with a drug addict than you know. A new study suggests that yo-yo dieters experience the same stressful pangs of withdrawal when they go on a diet that addicts experience when they go cold turkey. The idea that bad food can be addictive is not new. But previous studies have tended to focus on the positive reinforcement side of the equation--for example, the...

No, I'm not referring to marriages between blacks and whites, or Christians and Jews. I'm talking about marriages where one person is liberal and the other is conservative. To be more specific, I'm writing about my own marriage and I invite my esteemed AT readers to offer their advice. My husband and I were liberal Democrats for most of our lives. On occasion we used to talk about couples who were not politically aligned and wondered how they dealt with that in their relationship. Did they argue? Did they just not talk politics? Were they able to have interesting discussions...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9, 2009 – Readers of Mark Bowden’s “Black Hawk Down” can put the book aside when they’ve had enough of their mind’s reaction of the brutal 1993 battle of Mogadishu, Somalia. But Chaplain (Maj.) Jeff Struecker isn’t that lucky. The decorated Army Ranger was charged with leading the ground assault force on all the targets that the task force hit in Somalia. “I had been shot at and seen many dead warriors [before Mogadishu],” Struecker said. “I never experienced anything like the violence and the overwhelming sense of desperation like I experienced in Somalia. After losing one of...

A study in mice has hinted at the impact that early life trauma and stress can have on genes, and how they can result in behavioural problems. Scientists described the long-term effects of stress on baby mice in the journal Nature Neuroscience. Stressed mice produced hormones that "changed" their genes, affecting their behaviour throughout their lives. This work could provide clues to how stress and trauma in early life can lead to later problems...... The team found that mice that had been "abandoned" during their early lives were then less able to cope with stressful situations throughout their lives. The...

Northwestern research finds drugs aim at wrong target CHICAGO --- More than half the people who take antidepressants for depression never get relief. Why? Because the cause of depression has been oversimplified and drugs designed to treat it aim at the wrong target, according to new research from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. The medications are like arrows shot at the outer rings of a bull's eye instead of the center. A study from the laboratory of long-time depression researcher Eva Redei, presented at the Neuroscience 2009 conference in Chicago this week, appears to topple two strongly held...

Chicago leads list for second year; housing woes weigh on nation.