Helping Children to De-stress

I find it quite ‘dis-stressing’ that so many children are suffering in this way but, according to a recent survey by the NSPCC, 1 in 3 school children are stressed.

They are suffering from two main issues: school itself and loneliness with not enough close contact with friends and family. Kids lives today are full of noise, activity and, sadly, pressure from their parents, their school and their peers. Bullying is one factor, but simply being overwhelmed by the demands put on them is also to blame.

You can see the results physically with problems like poor sleep patterns, irritability and over sensitivity, bed wetting, headaches, stomach aches and more and more we are seeing mental and emotional problems such as depression, anxiety, nervousness, anger and temper tantrums.

That’s all very well, as one of my great teachers used to say – understanding is the booby prize, it‘s what you do to solve it that matters. These have to revolve around helping to develop greater confidence, self belief and a more positive attitude towards themselves. There are many ways to do it, and finding a hobby that engages them is one way forward and certainly physical activity like sports and games are very helpful. What parents may not have considered is trying something like a special CD aimed at helping children relax

Marneta Viegas is founder of Relax Kids and has written 2 books of children’s visualisations and produced a range of children’s relaxation CDs for concentration, anger management, anxiety and worry, self-esteem and bedtime and are set to relaxing music.

Relaxation is vital for children’s health and well being with just a few minutes a day helping young children feel calm and focused and ready to face their day. It can also help with sleep problems as it decreases muscle tension, slows the rate of breathing and reduces blood pressure. If your child is having problems concentrating then some relaxation techniques will help with that as it can improve their listening skills. This means they are able to listen and assimilate information, so giving them better problem-solving abilities.

Adults and children alike have their creativity and imagination blocked when they are stressed and by encouraging children to relax and take their minds away from their current situation and go on an imaginary journey they get a stronger sense of self-esteem and a feeling of self worth as they start to see their strengths and qualities in the quiet space of relaxation.

If you would like to try some of the relaxation tips out with children, or stressed adults, here are some simple ones to start with:

1 Lying on the back with hand on the stomach. Breathe in and feel the stomach rise, and breathe out and feel it fall back. Just concentrate on breathing in and out slowly to help let go and feel calm and quiet.

2 Again, lying on your back, or sitting in a chair, tense and relax the muscles of the body in groups, starting at the feet and moving up to the head to help feel calm and relaxed.

3 Visualisation can also help by closing the eyes and imagining floating on a cloud or lying on a boat and floating down the river or lying in warm sunshine and feeling the warmth in their body or imagine that they are sinking gently into soft sand.

If you would like to know more about this work, please visit www.relaxkids.com

Health Bite for Adults:

Just to remind you, that adults too can benefit from relaxation and meditation techniques. A $3.8 million study funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in the US has reported that ) patients with coronary heart disease who practiced meditation had a nearly 50 percent lower rate of heart attack, stroke, and death compared to a matched group that didn’t meditate.

We already knew that meditation has been proved to reduce blood pressure, psychological stress, and other risk factors for heart disease, but this is the first controlled clinical trial to show that long-term practice reduces the incidence of heart attacks, strokes and improves longevity.

Top 4 Foods To Eat To Suppress Your Appetite

If you love food, as I certainly do, then to stay healthy it can help to balance your appetite naturally. I am not in favour of stringent diets or some of the wilder claims for fat-busting supplements, but there are some natural foods that will help you maintain a good, healthy, weight by helping suppress your appetite.

They can be very useful if you are trying to lose some weight and the basic principle is to choose foods are filling, but low in calories. Also, be adventurous in your food choices as one of the problems people have in sticking to a diet – sensible or otherwise – is that they get bored. Add in these healthy foods to your menus and you will help keep the weight off:

Celery
This crunchy vegetable was a major feature of my childhood with the stalks washed and placed in a glass jug on the dining table whenever we had salad. My mother had no idea how healthy it was but she knew it helped fill us up as it has a low energy density and, according to research conducted by the Mayo Clinic, that can help control hunger. Celery contains few calories, only 16 for a cup, and its bulk and slight saltiness can be very satisfying when you are hungry. Add it to the snack list.

Psyllium
To be honest, I am not that keen on psyllium as my experience of it is rather akin to swallowing wallpaper paste or even worse, frog spawn. No, I haven’t actually eaten either of those but this gives you some idea of the texture! Psyllium is a soluble plant fibre which adds bulk to the diet and gives you a feeling of fullness and is also a great colon cleanser and so helps eliminate waste and this can lose you a few extra pounds in no time. Psyllium, in my view is best taken as capsules with plenty of cold water but if you are made of sterner stuff and want to try the powder then I would suggest mixing it with lemon juice and a tiny amount of apple cordial in a large glass of cold water. Mix thoroughly and the trick is to drink it immediately before it starts to solidify..

Lentils
My absolute staple for soup making, lentils again are a great source of soluble fibre that helps your blood sugar to stabilize. This means you don’t get those peaks and troughs that can send you hurtling towards the biscuit barrel – oh no, that’s me again – and they also are a good source of protein, folic acid, iron, and magnesium. If you are a fan of the Atkins Diet you will already know that protein can suppress hunger by its slower rate of travel through the digestive system.

Courgettes
Like celery, this is another low density, high fibre, food that can help suppress hunger and a cup of it has only 20 calories. If you are already a fan, then try a new way of using it by making it a replacement for pasta in one of your meals. Using a food processor, or mandolin, cut the courgettes into very thin noodle-like strands and serve with a tomato sauce hot, or with a low calorie salad dressing for a light lunch.

I suppose for maximum appetite suppression you should make a tomato, celery and lentil sauce with courgette noodles to get the maximum flavour, fewest calories and virtually no cholesterol. If you do, let me know what it tastes like!
Health Bite on Xmas Drinks

Usually when trying to lose weight alcohol is the first thing to be cut down on, but how do you celebrate Xmas without the odd sherry or glass of wine? Well, if you are toasting the festive season you might like to remember that the moderate drinking actually can reduce your risk of heart disease. And, as heart disease will kill more women over the age of 65 than all cancers combined, this might seem like good news except that moderate drinking also increases the risk of breast cancer in some women. What to do? Well you could try adding in some vitamin B complex to your regime as that can lower the added risk of getting breast cancer if you drink and always try to have at least one glass of water for every glass of alcohol you have as that will lessen the hangover!

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Lost Your Keys? Sleep On it

It’s sad but true that as we get older our memory is not what it was, though personally I prefer the theory of my colleague Dame Dr Shirley Bond. At our hormone health seminars when asked if failing memory was a symptom of menopause she said it was more due to the fact that the older we get the more we have crammed in our memories and I agree with that. It’s like trying to pull a favourite sweater out of an overcrowded wardrobe, sometimes you can’t even see it – especially if your wardrobe is filled with black clothes like mine!

I was taught a trick by a French gypsy to help find things; you think of the object, blow into your left palm and then close your hand into a fist. Whatever first comes to your mind is where you will probably find the lost object, however unlikely it seems – no guarantees but it works for me more often than not.

Now science has got in on the act and offers a useful little tip if you are frequently losing your keys. What you have to do is record the sound of your keys jangling and then play it to yourself on an ipod, or mobile phone when you are sleeping. This discovery was reported by neuroscientists at Northwestern University, in the US who carried out a small study, with 12 volunteers.

They wanted to know if specific sounds played during sleep would boost the memory of learned information so they started by asking their volunteers to information learned while awake. (See the year in health 2009.)

Memorize the correct location of 50 images on a computer monitor. The images were shown one at a time, arranged in a random place on the screen — a cat appeared on the bottom left, a gong on the top right and so forth. Each object was shown with a related sound — so subjects heard a meow with the picture of a cat, and a crashing noise coupled with the image of a gong. After studying the 50 images and locations, the participants were asked to take a short nap.

While they were doing this their brain waves were mapped to see what kind of sleep they were having and when they were in the deepest sleep the researchers began playing (very softly) a series of 25 of the sounds that the individual had heard earlier in the memory game. When the participants woke up about an hour later, they said they hadn’t heard a thing, but on average, each person did slightly better at remembering the correct locations of the 25 objects whose related sounds had been cued during sleep than those of the other objects. The sounds appeared to have entered the sleeping brain and helped consolidate associated memories.

Over the last ten years neuroscientists have discovered the most convincing evidence that memory is indeed dependent on sleep and they believe it is because during deep sleep, the brain replays certain experiences from the day, which, in turn, strengthens the memory of what happened. It is thought that when it comes to factual memories, like names, faces, numbers or locations, memory consolidation happens only during deep sleep — a phase of non–rapid eye movement sleep. The other broad type of sleep, called rapid eye movement or REM sleep, which is when dreaming occurs, is believed to play a role in consolidating memories involving emotions and motor skills, such as dancing or playing an instrument.

So this might mean that subliminal CD’s for helping you lose weight or quit smoking might be on the right track, though no research has been done on this so far.

Also if you are studying for exams, despite what your mother told you, deep sleep can strengthen factual memories but only you sleep within 12 hours of learning. In other words, you are better off learning at night rather than getting up early to cram the following morning.

Whatever new skill you want to learn, it’s a very efficient idea to reinforce your learning while you sleep. The only thing that worries me is that those of us who live alone haven’t got anyone to switch the ipod on during the night – and your partner might not be too thrilled to have to stay awake and do it either! Wonder if I can train the cats?

How To Have A Healthy Heart

Apart from the usual suspects of diet and exercise, there is now new scientific evidence for a very old, natural, practice. Heart rate variability, which is a sign of a healthy heart, has been shown to be higher in those who regularly practice yoga.

The autonomic nervous system regulates the heart rate through two routes, the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. The former causes the heart rate to rise, while, the parasympathetic slows it so that when working well together, the two ensure that the heart rate is steady but ready to respond to demands such as when we eat, our fight or flight response, or arousal.

The research was carried out at the Indian Institute of Technology in Roorkee, in Uttrakhand, and although there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that yoga practice may improve health through breathing exercises, stretching, postures, relaxation, and meditation this is the first time its effect on the heart has put through a scientific trial.

The volunteers were all healthy men aged between 18 and 48, half of whom practiced yoga regularly and the others not at all. They were given electrocardiograms (ECG) and found that the regular practitioners had stronger and better control of their parasympathetic system which gave them more autonomic control over their heart rate and so a healthier heart.

Go find a local yoga class, or use one of the excellent DVD’s on the subject. For beginners I would suggest Barbara Curries Seven Secrets of Yoga for a quick and simple workout as I have been using it for years, and it is available on Amazon second hand for an amazing 1p at the moment! www.amazon.co.uk

Health Bite:

Another great ingredient you need for a healthy heart is vitamin D, and low levels may also increase the risk of atherosclerosis.

It seems that most people suffering from heart disease are chronically deficient in vitamin D and you can easily rectify that by getting some sunshine every day – not always easy in our climate – or by taking a vitamin D3 supplement.

Nutritionists recommend a supplement for those deficient of around 1,000 – 4000 IUs per day, but not when you are getting plenty of sunshine.

Vitamin D is also known to be a preventive agent for around 77% of all cancers so you get a double health bonus. Now, about booking that sunshine cruise

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