If you’ve ever owned a pet, you already know how much fun and affection they can bring. But pets also come with some pretty powerful mental and physical health benefits. They can help us reduce stress, anxiety, and depression, ease loneliness, encourage exercise and playfulness, and even improve your cardiovascular health. The unconditional friendship and love we share with our pets can provide a refuge during the most difficult times of life.
Chronic pain can limit your everyday activities and make it hard to work. It can also affect how involved you are with friends and family members. Co-workers, family, and friends may have to do more than their usual share when you cannot do the things you normally do. Unwanted feelings – such as frustration, resentment, and stress – are often a result. In this podcast, Dr. Gaston Cornu-Labat discusses the interplay of pain and stress.
People have been aware of the health related dangers of air pollution for decades and governments around the world have worked to reduce smog and similar air quality problems. But there has been little progress to reduce the sound pollution that surrounds us daily. Perhaps it is because unlike smog, sound waves aren’t visible. If we could “see” sound, we might be alarmed by how much harmful noise we are exposed to every day.
SuperBetter, written by game designer Jane McGonigal, is an innovative guide to living gamefully, based on the program that has already helped nearly half a million people achieve remarkable personal growth. For those in search of a new self-help regimen, “SuperBetter” might just be the answer. The medical research and firsthand accounts she provides demonstrate that playing games can make you a healthier, happier, more confident person.
The meditation-and-the-brain research has been rolling in steadily for a number of years now, with new studies coming out just about every week to illustrate some new benefit of meditation. Or, rather, some ancient benefit that is just now being confirmed with fMRI or EEG. The practice appears to have an amazing variety of neurological benefits. New research offers tantalizing clues about how the practice of meditation may extend our lives.
In his book, Back in Control, Dr. David Hanscom focuses on an aspect of chronic pain that the medical world has largely overlooked: you must calm your nervous system in order to get better. Beyond any other book about back pain, Back in Control reveals how to quiet a turbocharged central nervous system and make a full recovery. Listen to our interview with him to find out how you can eliminate chronic pain from your life without surgery or drugs.