Put on your thinking cap when you visit CITB - here you'll find Concepts, Ideas, Thoughts and "Outside The Box" thinking, plus we call Bullsh!t for what it is. Enjoy the ride, and if we stimulate your brain, please tell others about us!
We all have stress sometimes. For some people, it happens before having to speak in public. For other people, it might be before a first date. What causes stress for you may not be stressful for someone else.
Sometimes stress is helpful - it can encourage you to meet a deadline or get things done. But long-term stress can increase the risk of diseases like depression, heart disease and a variety of other problems.
Yoga, Meditation, and Other Relaxation Techniques
Yoga can be an effective tool for dealing with work related stress. This video offers short exercises that can be done at your desk for stress relief and relaxation.
This is a video featuring Dr. Jon Kabal-Zinn. He describes the revolution in medicine that has occurred over the past 30 years that has integrated the mind back into the body and developed a remarkable range of practices for integrating one's experience, reducing stress, healing the body, coping more effectively with emotions such as anxiety, anger, and depression, and cultivating greater well-being and happiness.
Chronic Stress is stress that lasts a long time or occurs frequently. Chronic stress is potentially damaging. Family problems, a difficult class at school, a schedule that is too busy, or a long illness can cause chronic stress.
Symptoms of chronic stress can be:
eating disorder
upset stomach
headache
backache
insomnia
anxiety
depression
anger
In the most severe cases it can lead to panic attacks or a panic disorder.
If you have chronic stress, the best way to deal with it is to take care of the underlying problem. Counseling can help you find ways to relax and calm down. Medicines may also help. There are a variety of methods to control chronic stress, including exercise, healthy diet, stress management, relaxation techniques, adequate rest, and relaxing hobbies.
Ensuring a healthy diet containing magnesium may help control or eliminate stress, in those individuals with lower levels of magnesium or those who have a magnesium deficiency. Chronic stress can also lead to a magnesium deficiency, which can be a factor in continued chronic stress.
Having personally experienced the effects of stress. How stress effects your life varies from person to person. Here is a collection of links to help you and your loved ones with this issue.
Major Life Changes: This list is a handy tool to keep available at all times. Anytime you’re faced with major changes, you experience physical and emotional stress. This list will help you make choices about how many stressful situations you’re willing to juggle at one time. For instance, if you’re expecting a child, it might not be the best time to consider relocation, a new job, or to decide to head back for that college degree.
Major Life Change: Chaos Could Be a Good Sign: Although this article is brief and to-the-point, life coach Laura Young looks at the positive side of stress. When you deal with crises, you can develop inner strength and confidence in your abilities. Read on to learn more positives!
Stress at Work: NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) provides a comprehensive yet concise list of tools and information where you can learn all angles about work-related stress and relief from that stress.
Stress Management: This is an About.com site that focuses on stress management in all areas of life. This is one of the most comprehensive sites we’ve encountered on this topic, as it provides a blog, articles, and tools to help recognize and deal with stress issues.
Stress Relief: Relaxation techniques such as deep breathing, visualization, progressive muscle relaxation, meditation, and yoga can help you activate this relaxation response to stress. This site shows you how to plan for and achieve a level of relaxation that may help you to cope with everyday stress triggers.
Stress Relief Exercises: Unlike exercises for physical strength, these tools will help you learn how to relax so you don’t hurt your body or shorten your lifespan.
Top 10 Steps to Making Life Changes: This PDF file was created by life coach Steve Davis, and he provides some sound advice on how to alleviate many stressful situations. For instance, if the bank forecloses on your apartment building, the stress won’t be half as bad on you if you have money set aside to handle a blow like this.
Work-Related Stress: Health & Safety Executive (HSE) provides a four-pronged approach to work-related stress. Learn how to tackle stress, about management’s role in this issue, about good practices, and advice for individuals.
CITB Quote of the day: "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover" - Mark Twain
39 Facts About Sleep You Probably Didn’t Know… (Or Were Too Tired To Think About)
Experts say one of the most alluring sleep distractions is the 24-hour accessibility of the internet.
It’s impossible to tell if someone is really awake without close medical supervision. People can take cat naps with their eyes open without even being aware of it.
Anything less than five minutes to fall asleep at night means you’re sleep deprived. The ideal is between 10 and 15 minutes, meaning you’re still tired enough to sleep deeply, but not so exhausted you feel sleepy by day.
A new baby typically results in 400-750 hours lost sleep for parents in the first year
One of the best predictors of insomnia later in life is the development of bad habits from having sleep disturbed by young children.
The continuous brain recordings that led to the discovery of REM (rapid eye-movement) sleep were not done until 1953, partly because the scientists involved were concerned about wasting paper.
REM sleep occurs in bursts totaling about 2 hours a night, usually beginning about 90 minutes after falling asleep.
Dreams, once thought to occur only during REM sleep, also occur (but to a lesser extent) in non-REM sleep phases. It’s possible there may not be a single moment of our sleep when we are actually dreamless.
REM dreams are characterized by bizarre plots, but non-REM dreams are repetitive and thought-like, with little imagery - obsessively returning to a suspicion you left your mobile phone somewhere, for example.
Certain types of eye movements during REM sleep correspond to specific movements in dreams, suggesting at least part of the dreaming process is analogous to watching a film
No-one knows for sure if other species dream but some do have sleep cycles similar to humans.
Elephants sleep standing up during non-REM sleep, but lie down for REM sleep.
Some scientists believe we dream to fix experiences in long-term memory, that is, we dream about things worth remembering. Others reckon we dream about things worth forgetting - to eliminate overlapping memories that would otherwise clog up our brains.
Dreams may not serve any purpose at all but be merely a meaningless byproduct of two evolutionary adaptations - sleep and consciousness.
REM sleep may help developing brains mature. Premature babies have 75 per cent REM sleep, 10 per cent more than full-term babys. Similarly, a newborn kitten puppy rat or hamster experiences only REM sleep, while a newborn guinea pig (which is much more developed at birth) has almost no REM sleep at all.
Scientists have not been able to explain a 1998 study showing a bright light shone on the backs of human knees can reset the brain’s sleep-wake clock.
British Ministry of Defense researchers have been able to reset soldiers’ body clocks so they can go without sleep for up to 36 hrs. Tiny optical fibres embedded in special spectacles project a ring of bright white light (with a spectrum identical to a sunrise) around the edge of soldiers’ retinas, fooling them into thinking they have just woken up. The system was first used on US pilots during the bombing of Kosovo.
Seventeen hours of sustained wakefulness leads to a decrease in performance equivalent to a blood alcohol-level of 0.05%.
The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska, the Challenger space shuttle disaster and the Chernobyl nuclear accident have all been attributed to human errors in which sleep-deprivation played a role.
The NRMA estimates fatigue is involved in one in 6 fatal road accidents.
Exposure to noise at night can suppress immune function even if the sleeper doesn’t wake. Unfamiliar noise, and noise during the first and last two hours of sleep, has the greatest disruptive effect on the sleep cycle.
The “natural alarm clock” which enables some people to wake up more or less when they want to is caused by a burst of the stress hormone adrenocorticotropin. Researchers say this reflects an unconscious anticipation of the stress of waking up.
Some sleeping tablets, such as barbiturates suppress REM sleep, which can be harmful over a long period.
In insomnia following bereavement, sleeping pills can disrupt grieving.
Tiny luminous rays from a digital alarm clock can be enough to disrupt the sleep cycle even if you do not fully wake. The light turns off a “neural switch” in the brain, causing levels of a key sleep chemical to decline within minutes.
To drop off we must cool off; body temperature and the brain’s sleep-wake cycle are closely linked. That’s why hot summer nights can cause a restless sleep. The blood flow mechanism that transfers core body heat to the skin works best between 18 and 30 degrees. But later in life, the comfort zone shrinks to between 23 and 25 degrees - one reason why older people have more sleep disorders.
A night on the grog will help you get to sleep but it will be a light slumber and you won’t dream much.
After five nights of partial sleep deprivation, three drinks will have the same effect on your body as six would when you’ve slept enough.
Humans sleep on average around three hours less than other primates like chimps, rhesus monkeys, squirrel monkeys and baboons, all of whom sleep for 10 hours.
Ducks at risk of attack by predators are able to balance the need for sleep and survival, keeping one half of the brain awake while the other slips into sleep mode.
Ten per cent of snorers have sleep apnoea, a disorder which causes sufferers to stop breathing up to 300 times a night and significantly increases the risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke.
Snoring occurs only in non-REM sleep
Teenagers need as much sleep as small children (about 10 hrs) while those over 65 need the least of all (about six hours). For the average adult aged 25-55, eight hours is considered optimal
Some studies suggest women need up to an hour’s extra sleep a night compared to men, and not getting it may be one reason women are much more susceptible to depression than men.
Feeling tired can feel normal after a short time. Those deliberately deprived of sleep for research initially noticed greatly the effects on their alertness, mood and physical performance, but the awareness dropped off after the first few days.
Diaries from the pre-electric-light-globe Victorian era show adults slept nine to 10 hours a night with periods of rest changing with the seasons in line with sunrise and sunsets.
Most of what we know about sleep we’ve learned in the past 25 years.
As a group, 18 to 24 year-olds deprived of sleep suffer more from impaired performance than older adults.
The extra-hour of sleep received when clocks are put back at the start of daylight in Canada has been found to coincide with a fall in the number of road accidents.
CITB Quote of the day: "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover" - Mark Twain
Posted by Thom Byxbe | Under Thought
Wednesday Feb 27, 2008
The Mayans created the most sophisticated calendar system of all the known civilizations. Their knowledge of the celestial cycles thousands of years ago rivals our collective knowledge today. The Calendar has never erred. On December 21, 2012, our solar system will enter into its Galactic Day for the first time in Humanity's history. The Calendar has prophesied that as we move out of the darkness, great calamities will come with it. They warned us...
Never before in history has one date, one moment in time, been so significant to so many cultures, so many religions, so many scientists, so many governments and to so many people all around the world.
The ancient Maya believed the Earth's final day will be December 21, 2012. Native Americans, Egyptians, Chinese and others arrived at a similar conclusion, each without a knowledge of the other. The Maya claimed that this future end-time would include a solar shift, a Venus transit and mounting earthquakes.
2012 is sometimes claimed to be a great year of spiritual transformation (or apocalypse). Many sources interpret the completion of the thirteenth B'ak'tun cycle in the Long Count of the Maya calendar (which occurs on December 21 by the most widely held correlation) to mean there will be a major change in world order.
Polar Shift
Polar Shift is a theory that on December 21st 2012 Earth will experience earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or other natural disasters. In 2012 the next polar reversal will take place on earth. This means that the North Pole will be changed into the South Pole. Scientifically this can only be explained by the fact that the earth will start rotating in the opposite direction, together with a huge disaster of unknown proportions.
Magnetic Somersaults
In the first quarter of 2001, the Sun switched magnetic poles. This occurs every eleven years. Prior to this the Sun's north magnetic pole was at the north rotational pole. Now the Sun's north magnetic pole is at its south pole. Since opposite poles attract, the magnetic poles of the Earth and Sun are now at their most stable.
Just about the time of 2012 Winter Solstice, the Sun's poles will switch back. During this switch there will be a tendency for the Sun's magnetic field to pull the Earth's field with it.
If the Earth's magnetic poles switch, this would put stress on the planet aggravating earthquakes and volcanos, not to mention destruction of the electrical power distribution grid. And, if the switch happens fast enough don't ever expect your computer to work again. But if you have old tube type equipment, keep it. It should survive just fine. It will work if you can find electricity.
December 21 2012 THE END
A recent Google search of the date "December 21 2012" produced 147,000 results. There are entire websites dedicated to this moment in time. There are blogs, discussion boards, chat rooms and scientific studies.
I have read stories the last few months about underground cities and government actions that make sense if we are preparing for an ELE (Extinction Level Event). Take a look at the underground complex at Yamantau that the Russians are building. Could this be a haven for surviving a solar blast? And the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is investing along with the Rockefeller Foundation, Monsanto Corporation, Syngenta Foundation and the Government of Norway, in what is called the "doomsday seed bank". Officially the project is named the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen.
We offer this story as food for thought. There will be much more excitement and controversy as December 21, 2012 draws closer. We plan to explore anything that offers credibility to the many theory's surrounding this topic. Please give us your feedback and opinions.
TWB
CITB Quote of the day: "The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible." - Albert Einstein
We use Backpack here at CITB everyday. After trying a LOT of software solutions to manage the multitude of tasks necessary to plan, schedule, and coordinate the day to day operations of our 3 blogs we chose Backpack.
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Thomas Byxbe is the Publisher and Editor of Concepts, Ideas, Thoughts & Bullsh!t.
Thom has been a respected Internet author for over 12 years. He has written extensively on the Internet, Technology and Lifestyle topics. Concepts, Ideas, Thoughts & Bullsh!t is one of 3 current blog projects he writes and manages.
Mr. Byxbe is President and Chief Internet Visionary of Metamorphosis Idea Lab located in Madison Heights, Michigan.
In addition, Thom is an Ordained Minister focused on pastoral counseling. He has been a certified Neuro-Linguistic Practitioner for over 20 years. In his current counseling practice he utilizes a blend of talk based counseling with NLP programming techniques.
If you have suggestions, comments or would like to submit recommendations for articles to appear in Concepts, Ideas, Thoughts Bullsh!t, please feel free to contact him at:
"Change... We don’t like it. We fear it, but we can’t stop it from coming. We either adapt to change or we get left behind. It hurts to grow, anybody who tells you it doesn’t is lying, but here’s the truth… Sometimes the more things change the more they stay the same. And sometimes, oh, sometimes change is good. Sometimes change is everything." - Dr. Meredith Grey "Grey’s Anatomy"
photo credit: jepoirrier
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