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Improved Immunity, Less Susceptible To Colds
And Other Stress Related Issues. A Session Of Meditation Or Hypnosis
Has Been Shown To Boost Immune Responses Up To 200% In Under An Hour
You Can't Avoid Stress
Even getting out of bed can be tough on the body.
Several hours before you wake each morning, a tiny
region at the base of your cerebrum called the
hypothalamus sends a signal that ultimately alerts your
adrenal glands to start pumping out Cortisol, which acts
as a wake-up signal. Cortisol levels continue to rise
after you become conscious in what is sometimes referred
to as the "Damn! It's another day" response. This may
help explain why so many heart attacks and strokes occur
between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m.
Stress Can Age You Before Your Time
Unremitting stress does damage to the immune system
causing changes to take place in the microscopic
structures of the white blood cells called telomeres.
Telomeres are often compared to the plastic wrappers on
the ends of shoelaces and which keep chromosomes from
shredding. As a general rule, the youngest cells boast
the longest telomeres. But telomeres in more
stressed-out individuals are significantly shorter,
making them from a genetic point of view, anywhere from
nine to 17 years older than their chronological age.
You CAN Relieve Stress
This is probably the toughest lesson to internalize
because when stress overwhelms the system, your choices
often seem more limited than they are. Behavioral
scientists have a name for this psychological reaction.
They call it learned helplessness, and they have studied
the phenomenon closely in laboratory rodents, whose
nervous system bears striking similarities to that of
humans.
Here's how the experiment works: if you provide mice
with an escape route, they typically learn very quickly
how to avoid a mild electrical shock that occurs a few
seconds after they hear a tone. But if the escape route
is blocked whenever the tone is sounded, and new shocks
occur, the mice will eventually stop trying to run away.
Later, even after the escape route is cleared, the
animals simply freeze at the sound of the tone--despite
the fact that they once knew how to avoid the associated
shock
Obviously, humans have more intellectual resources at
their disposal than mice do, but the underlying
principle remains the same. When too many of the rules
change, when what used to work doesn't anymore, your
ability to reason takes a hit and affects your ability
to function properly.
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