Cases of Alzheimer patients are starting to show up in the U.S. with people in their forties and fifties! How can that be? Isn’t that for people in their 70’s or older? Recent studies done by Dr. Nima Kivipelto and his colleagues from the University of Kuopio in Finland suggest that the long-term effects of stress may be the biggest cause of Alzheimer’s. It is believed that the stress hormone, cortisol, kills off brain cells when it enters the brain. Kivipelto’s research found that patients with both high blood pressure and high cortisol levels were more than three times as likely to develop Alzheimer’s as patients without these symptoms. If you have either high cortisol levels or high blood pressure, your risk is twice as high. Researchers at the University of California- Irvine say that stress hormones can rapidly accelerate the formation of the brain lesions that cause Alzheimer’s.
What are these everyday stressors which hurt our health?
- Finances
- Relationships in the workplace, family, or friends
- Divorce; death of a spouse, family member, or friend
- Parenting issues, caring for an adult, general family issues
- Chronic health concerns
- Job with high workloads, ineffective or weak management, poor working conditions, lack of control
In the book, The HeartMath Solution, Doc Childre writes, “We accommodate stress because we don’t realize how serious the consequences are and because it’s become such a part of the routine that it feels normal to us. The body’s stress response starts a cascade of events which encompasses more than 1400 known physical and chemical reactions.”
Unbelievable! If our car engine had that many events occurring which shouldn’t be on an everyday basis, our cars would have died much sooner than they normally do. Although we can feel our stomach in knots, our hearts racing, and we’re suddenly taking a deep breath after a stressful meeting (wondering were we even breathing?), we think our bodies are not being affected by our emotions. Wrong!
Most people know about ways to cope with stress. Elizabeth Svoboda of Prevention magazine, encourages meditating, listening to soothing music, getting enough sleep, hanging out with a funny friend, sipping black tea, getting a massage, doing something spiritual, and chewing gum. Chewing gum? Really! Reducing stress starts with being mindful of what is causing your stress.
I teach and practice HeartMath®. This is a scientifically validated training program utilizing coaching and innovative technologies for reducing stress. I normally practice this 5-7 minutes morning and evening. I also like to listen to music or line dance which is fantastic for reducing stress! We have some senior friends, Jorge and Yvette, who line dance at least 5 days a week! We saw them dancing a couple of weeks ago at the Kemah Boardwalk and they left from there to go ballroom dancing in the Heights! They told us they’d have to miss us the following weekend because they were going Cajun dancing in Louisiana. I think they have this stress thing under control!