Houseplants Reduce Stress Symptoms?

Do you know how to recognize the symptoms of dangerous stress levels?

Typical symptoms of dangerous stress levels include headaches, poor mental focus, slipping memory, confusion, feeling spaced out, disturbed sleep patterns, feeling tired or run down, weight loss or gain… the list goes on and on.

But there’s hope – and even some remarkable evidence that just caring for a houseplant can help reduce your stress symptoms. Read on.

Most people are NOT aware of the degree to which they are suffering from stress.  Our society admires those who show grace under pressure, and we all want to believe we can handle whatever life throws at us.  But the stakes are high. People who can’t reduce chronic stress live shorter lives, suffer more illness and disability, have less satisfying relationships, and often are plagued by anxiety and/or depression.

We all know that stress contributes to weight gain, diabetes and many other ailments – but few realize just how harmful stress is for the physical brain itself. And fewer still know how to recognize their own stress symptoms.

Although chronic stress has long been known to trigger the release of excessive amounts of stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline, new studies show that both hormones actually KILL brain cells, and interfere with the production of new ones.

Is stress really an issue? Consider this: Research shows that chronic stress seriously disrupts our immune, endocrine and digestive systems. This has important implications for our physical health And killing our gray matter (the brain’s information processing center) from long periods of even minor stress is also not a pretty picture..

The Best Proven Stress Reducers
Changing our thought patterns can help us better control stress. This can allow us to prevent and even reverse some of the adverse changes such as loss of brain cells in our hippocampus — where our memory resides.

Research shows that people who spend just 20 minutes a day focusing on their breath, or on calming thoughts, experience lower blood pressure, less anxiety and reduced chronic pain from stress.

Moderate exercise is also an excellent stress fighter. Other good stress reducers are feeling we have a purpose in life, or having a pet to care for.  There is also quite a bit of evidence that engineered brainwave training, which has actually been around for almost 40 years is a very effective stress fighter, and has lasting stress management effects.

How a Plant Can Help
But here’s a research study that may really surprise you: In one study the residents of a nursing home were split into two groups. Half of the residents were told that they were responsible for taking care of a house plant.

After one year, the people who were caring for a house plant were healthier and had fewer illnesses. They also lived longer than the group who did not have a plant to care for. So yes, DO go buy a plant – or give one to your Mom, Dad,  Grandma, or even your boss

Does Relaxation Really Change Your Genes?

Scientific studies now show that deep relaxation actually changes our bodies on a genetic level.

Researchers at Harvard Medical School discovered that long-term practitioners of relaxation methods such as yoga and meditation have far more “disease-fighting” active genes compared to those who do not practice relaxation.

This includes genes that protect from: pain, infertility, high blood pressure and even rheumatoid arthritis. The changes were induced by what they call “the relaxation effect” — a phenomenon  just as powerful as medical drugs,  but without the side-effects.

The experiment, which showed just how responsive genes are to behaviour, mood and environment, revealed that genes can switch on, just as easily as they switch off.

“Harvard researchers asked the control group to start practising relaxation methods every day,” explains Jake Toby, hypnotherapist at London’s BodyMind Medicine Centre, who teaches clients how to induce the relaxation effect. “After two months, their bodies began to change – the genes that help fight inflammation, kill diseased cells and protect the body from cancer, all began to switch on.”

More encouraging still, the benefits of the relaxation effect were found to increase with regular practice – the more people practised relaxation methods, the greater their chances of remaining free of arthritis and joint pain with stronger immunity, healthier hormone levels and lower blood pressure.

The research is pivotal because it shows how a person’s state of mind affects the body on a physical and genetic level. But just how can relaxation have such wide-ranging and powerful effects? Research around the world has described the negative effects of stress on the body. Linked to the release of the stress-hormones adrenalin and cortisol, stress raises the heart rate and blood pressure, weakens immunity and lowers fertility.

“What you’re looking for is a state of deep relaxation where tension is released from the body on a physical level and your mind completely switches off,” he says. You can only really achieve it by learning a specific technique such as self-hypnosis,  meditation, or neural brainwave training.”

What Love Does to Your Brain

How Love Lights You Up
When you’re in love your eyes light up, your face lights up and so do four tiny portions of your brain.

Neurobiologists Andreas Bartels and Semir Zeki of University College in London used MRI brain scans to peer into the brains of college students in the throes of that crazed, can’t-think-of-anything-else stage of early romantic love.

When the subjects were shown photographs of their sweet hearts, the MRI images showed that four parts of their brains lit up.

The researchers compared the MRI images to brain scans taken from people in different emotional states, including se.xual arousal, feelings of happiness and coc.aine-induced euphoria.

But the pattern for romantic love was unique. Interestingly, looking at a picture of their loved one also reduced activity in three portions of the brain active when one is upset or depressed.

Is Love Addictive?
When you fall in love your skin flushes, you breathe heavy, and your palms tend to sweat.

Why? Because your brain is experiencing a biochemical rush of dopamine, norepinephrine and phenylethylamine close chemical cousins to amphetamines.

But it’s easy to build up a tolerance to these stimulating bio-chemicals. Then, as with any other tolerance, it takes more of the substance to get that special feeling of infatuation.

Some neuroscientists theorize that folks who jump from one relationship to another are hooked on the intoxication of falling in love.

But interestingly, in the case of enduring romance, simply the presence of one’s partner stimulates the production of endorphins. Endorphins are the feel good biochemicals also behind the experience of runner’s high, and are natural pain-killers.

The Biology of Romance
Recent research suggests that romantic attraction is actually a primitive, biologically based drive just like hunger or thirst.

The biology of romance helps account for why we might travel cross-country for a single ki.ss, and plunge into hopeless despair if our beloved turns from us. It’s the drive for romance that enables us to focus on one particular person, although we often can’t explain why.

What we’re seeing here is the biological drive to choose a mate, to focus on one person to the exclusion of all others, claims Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University.

Research has proven that romantic attraction activates portions of the brain with high concentrations of receptors for dopamine, Fisher explains. And dopamine is the chemical messenger also tied to states of euphoria, craving and addiction.

Other scientific studies have linked high levels of dopamine and a related agent, norepinephrine to heightened attention and short-term memory, hyperactivity, sleeplessness and goal-oriented behavior.

Sound like love?

When they first fall in love, Fisher explains, couples often show the signs of surging dopamine: Increased energy, less need for sleep or food, and highly focused attention.

The Psychology of Love
Poets and song writers have long claimed that the power of the biochemical state we call romantic love is enough to blind one’s judgment.

We all know how new lovers tend to idealize their partner magnifying their virtues, and explaining away their flaws.

But though love may be blind, take hope.

Pamela Regan, a Cal State LA researcher, believes such idealization may be crucial to a long-term relationship. If you don’t sweep away the person’s flaws to some extent, you’re just as likely to end a relationship, she claims.

This at least gives you a chance, Regan feels. If you think of romantic attraction as a kind of drug that alters how you think, then in this case it’s allowing you to take some risks you wouldn’t otherwise take.

Not a bad thing.

But if passionate romance is like a drug, as the MRI images suggest, then it’s bound to lose its kick. But perhaps viewing romance as a biologically based, drug-like state can at least provide some balm for a broken heart.

Healthy Romanticizing
In a 1996 experiment, psychologists at the State University of New York at Buffalo followed a group of 121 dating couples. Every few months the couples answered questionnaires to find out how much they idealized their partner, and how well their relationship was doing.

The researchers discovered that the couples who idealized each other the most were closest one year later.

The Issue of Self-Love
How does the love of one’s self  also known as a positive self concept or good self-esteem fit into this picture?

Recent research indicates that depressed people who feel ‘unloved’ are 50% more likely to get cancer.

Negativity, fear, anger and depression are not just in your head. They are biochemical states. Remember neuroscience has proven beyond a doubt that we can consciously create the biochemical states known as joy, happiness, motivation, and even ecstasy.

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