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    User's Guide to Stress-Busting Nutrients
    User's Guide to Stress-Busting Nutrients
    User's Guide to Stress-Busting Nutrients
    Ebook90 pages54 minutes

    User's Guide to Stress-Busting Nutrients

    By Rosemarie Gionta Alfieri and Jack Challem

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    About this ebook

    In this Users Guide, fitness professional and nutrition author RoseMarie Gionta Alfieri describes the most important supplements for improving mood, reducing irritability, and preventing depression. Among these supplements are the B-complex vitamins, GABA, and St. Johns wort. These and other nutrients have been shown scientifically to help people deal effectively with stress.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTurner Publishing Company
    Release dateJan 1, 2004
    ISBN9781591206750
    User's Guide to Stress-Busting Nutrients
    Author

    Rosemarie Gionta Alfieri

    Alfieri is a certified fitness professional and a New York-based freelance writer specializing in health and fitness. She is the author of several fitness books and a frequent contributor to Let's Live magazine.

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      Book preview

      User's Guide to Stress-Busting Nutrients - Rosemarie Gionta Alfieri

      INTRODUCTION

      Stress has become an everyday word. Think about how often you or your friends say, I feel so stressed, or I’ve been so stressed out lately. Indeed, stress seems to permeate our lives. How often do you gobble down a sandwich while working at your computer? How much environmental stress do you face on a regular basis, whether from pollution, chemicals, or noise? How stressed out are you because you return from vacation to find 150 e-mails awaiting you? Our overly mechanized, technological society causes a bit of a paradox: The very technologies that purport to save us time and keep us connected can also rob us of peace and downtime.

      Do you just have to accept living under constant stress as the price to pay for living in the twenty-first century? Yes, and no. While there is not much you can do to return to a simpler time, there is plenty you can do to help offset the effects of stress and manage it in a healthful way. And how you manage stress may be more important than how much stress you are under. Left unmanaged or mismanaged through bad habits such as smoking or drinking, stress can kill you. Its association with increased risk for disease and death is well known.

      The User’s Guide to Stress-Busting Nutrients focuses on several nutrients that have stress-busting properties and can help you to manage stress in a positive way. They work by providing key biochemical building blocks for the brain, beneficially affecting your mood and nervous system. Some of them, such as selenium, are antioxidants, which, as free-radical scavengers, help prevent stress that occurs at the cellular level. Left unchecked, free-radical damage leads to aging and is associated with increased risk for several diseases including heart disease and cancer.

      Other nutrients, such as vitamin C, also work directly on your adrenal system, which goes into high gear during stressful situations, releasing the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline. These nutrients support the adrenals, helping your body work efficiently to deal with stress.

      Still other nutrients, such as zinc, support the functioning of your immune system, which is taxed by stress. Or they treat the various symptoms of stress, including insomnia, depression, and anxiety. Melatonin, for example, is a well-documented natural sleep aid that helps restore your body’s natural sleeping cycles, which can become disrupted when you are under stress. There also are several herbs that show promise in offering relief from stress.

      Finally, all of us are complicated people with many facets to our lives and personalities. These facets include our relationships with others, our jobs, our spiritual beliefs, and our emotions, among others. If even one of these is off-kilter, it can add to the stress in our lives and increase the amount of suffering we experience. To most effectively deal with stress, we have to look at all of these facets and determine where positive changes can be made. Making small lifestyle changes, such as changes in exercise, in addition to receiving proper nutritional support, can have profound effects on our ability to cope well when under stress.

      The User’s Guide to Stress-Busting Nutrients presents several options for you to consider as you determine which stress-busting approaches are best for you. Remember that we are all unique individuals, with biological, health, emotional, and mental differences that must be taken into consideration when determining the optimal stress treatment program. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to health. As with any health-related program, it is advisable to consult with your healthcare practitioner before taking the supplements or treatments discussed in this guide.

      That said, sit back, relax, turn the page, and begin to bust your stress.

      CHAPTER 1

      ALL ABOUT STRESS

      The term stress describes any disruption or change in your life (physical, emotional, or psychological) and was first used by Hans Selye, who aptly noted, Without stress, there would be no life. This is an important point. Many of us identify stress with negative feelings such as worry about our jobs (for example, an author trying to meet a book’s deadline, or fear of getting fired) or the negative emotional states that result from relationship issues. Worry, anxiety, fear, anger, depression—these are the feelings we most often associate with stress.

      While these all are appropriate examples of stressful situations and states, stress also includes typically happy events such as getting married, purchasing a home, or moving. Your body also experiences physical stress when you catch a cold or suffer from another illness, or even when you suffer from allergies. Toxins in the environment cause stress. Even the hormonal changes you experience throughout your life—from the myriad changes of puberty through menopause—stress your system. In short, any type of change—good or bad—stresses your body.

      Essential to Life

      So stress is essential to life, which, after all, is all about change. The American Institute of Stress (AIS) notes that good stress, far from being harmful, may actually be beneficial. After all, the positive type of stress results in productivity and can cause us to take action, or to come to new and greater awareness. Think about the nerves of actors before they go on stage. Many actors note that this kind of nervous energy is essential for them to give a good performance.

      Much in life is like that. The tricky thing is that everyone is different. One person’s negative stress may be someone else’s invigorating stress. It turns out that the way we perceive stress in our lives is very unique and individualized.

      However, there needs to be a proper balance of stress in our lives. As the AIS describes it, stress is like the tension on a violin string. If the string doesn’t have enough tension, the sound is dull, while too much tension creates a shrill sound and can even cause the string to break. Even if all the stress you are experiencing falls into the positive category, too much of it may overstress your body and lead to

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