I've put one or two of these in other threads, but decided to make a diary out of it after seeing more comments from Kossacks who sound like they are getting stressed out. The extended primary season is getting to some of us, and others of us also have finals week coming up. If you feel like you are not able to put on the brakes and slow down yet, just taking a few moments here and there to try some of these "exercises" can recharge your batteries. I want us all to stay healthy through the election and beyond!

One of the simplest that can be done just about anytime, anywhere, is belly breathing. Put a hand, or both on your belly and inhale slowly , letting your belly expand like a balloon. Exhale slowly, watching your hand go down and keeping your belly soft. A lot of us breathe only from our chests, especially if we're tense or were taught to "suck it in" to look slimmer. Breathing from your belly can re-balance your nervous system and improve the functioning of your immune system. A more thorough explanation of this, and some of the other tips can be found in Fred Luskin's  book Stress Free For Good.

Go to WebMD and look up:

- Heart Palpitations - Burning/Heartburn feeling - Shortness of breath

You'll find what I found:  Call a doctor immediately.  

That was me yesterday, and this is that story.

The following is a Video report from CBS as a Lead In to a Report, now online but to be printed in tomorrows {todays} Washington Post from Dana Priest.

A Soldier's Cry For Help - CBS News Video

I know there are a lot of people who are going to be nervous and anxious today while waiting to see how their candidate does in the Primary.  The candidate diaries are also getting kinda tense.  I'm creating this diary so folks can unwind and refresh.  Feel free to post pics, pooties, poetry, humor, or other stress reducing matter.

To our Democratic candidates - good luck to you today!  We have no "losers" among our candidates, just people who are willing to take on the awesome responsibility of President, and work hard and make sacrifices to get there.  Regardless of whether you win today or not, we the people NEED you to help solve the massive problems the Bush Administration created for our country.  Thank you for being willing to take on the challenge.

Everyone keeps talking about how nasty and ugly things are getting and will continue to get as the election gets closer.  We've already seen lies, selective outrage, cherry-picking facts, smears, poor research, guilt by association, and even guilt by association based on lies, selective outrage, cherry-picking facts, smears, and poor research. Many of us have been guilty of some of this at some point; I know I certain have, but over the last several days, I've decided to make a major effort to stop.

More below:

As many of you know, I am nolalily.  NOLA from New Orleans, Louisiana and LILY as in my favorite flower.  It is also the name I would have given my daughter, had I had one.  I have written a few diaries and a lot more comments about my experiences since Katrina.  I have also refrained from writing more as Katrina is one thing I am still coming to terms with.  In many ways, I have made my peace.  In many ways, I am still not there.

My husband rarely posts here but when he does, he posts under the name, bigbenbob.  He wrote, what many of you considered, a very touching diary back in April of 2006.

I feel like I'm a redneck trailer trash hick.  Of all the presidential debates, I've only seen ONE - the Democratic debate at American University in Washington DC on African American issues.  That debate was on PBS, unlike other debates that were on CNN or MSNBC.  I thought Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich did best even though Edwards is my favorite of the currently declared candidates.  (I want Al Gore to jump into the race.)

I can't keep up with what's going on.  There is SO MUCH information out there.  But attempting to keep up with it is too stressful.

I'll tell you more about my predicament in the flip.

A rec'd diary reminded me of my dog today.

I love my dog. She is an akc Golden retreiver. I've loved her since buying her in 2002. She is the bestest ever. She is wonderful with my kids and all children. All goldies want is love and attention. She seems like my only friend at times. She will love me till the end--and today I kicked her. I feel like I'm losing my fucking mind sometimes.

Of all the forms of damaging pollution, the one that gets the least attention is noise. People don't listen, they don't want to hear about it. It just seems like an inconvenience, like complaining. It's not like having your nerves frayed and your hearing fried is worth crying about.
Well, YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE! According to a new study, says the Guardian:

"Thousands of people around the world are dying prematurely from heart disease triggered by long-term exposure to excessive noise, according to research by the World Health Organisation."

Based on WHO figures, the Guardian estimates that of some 100,000 annual deaths from heart disease in the UK, more than 3,000 are from chronic noise exposure, to ordinary urban/suburban and maybe rural noise. "Until now, noise has been the Cinderella form of pollution and people haven't been aware that it has an impact on their health," said Deepak Prasher, professor of audiology at University College London.

In a previous diary, I discussed how normally an acute stressor will stimulate the HPA axis (CRF motorneurons in the central nervous system stimulate ACTH, which enters plasma to stimulate stress steroids (glucocorticoids; GC) at the adrenal, which then float back to the top of the system to turn off hypothalamic CRF in brain and ACTH at the pituitary, thus preventing excess GC from acting on brain and body.

My last diary concerned the effects of stress hormones on the reward system, how that relates to the "rush of war," the difficulties of readjusting to civilian life, and the propensity of trauma victims to seek escape in drugs of abuse.  This diary continues in that vein, looking at how stress steroids not only amplify the reward system while they are on board, but how they participate in long-term plastic changes in that system.

(PTSD: post-traumatic stress disorder)

In a previous diary I briefly discussed how stress can leave physical, sometimes permanent marks on organisms.  Then I started at the beginning to discuss the core components of the HPA axis, the function of the daily rhythms of stress hormones, and how normal functioning of this axis in the absence of a stressor, even while providing stress levels of steroid to brain on a daily basis, does not feel stressful.  In this diary, I want to move on to the stress response as most people think about stress, as resulting from an acute, salient, and negatively perceived threat.  Harry Whittington's shot in the face was a real, life-threatening insult, and the stress response was signaled by damaged tissue in a reactive "bottom up" fashion.  The beauty of brains sitting on top of all that peripheral machinery of the body is that response systems can be signaled proactively in advance of actual damage.  Simply anticipating getting shot in the face by a predator is a sufficient to raise stress levels in plasma and brain to promote the appropriate avoidance or aggressive responses.  That proactive, anticipatory signaling changes depending on how often one is threatened, and how much over-exposure one receives from elevated stress steroids.

 

Before the Bush administration completes its mission, i.e., before we are all crawling through the streets on broken glass and cannibalizing one another, let's explore the meaning of stress.  As the Bush administration has shown, shattering lives is easy, but putting them back together again isn’t.  Due to Bush’s criminal negligence, about one-third to one half of our combat veterans will be coming home with some serious mental disturbances consequent to chronic traumatic experience.  Well, one-third to one-half if they come home NOW.  The longer they are there, the worse it will get.  I highly recommend reading Ilona Meagher’s masterful review of PTSD in our combat veterans in her new book, Moving a Nation to Care.  Although her review focuses on the devastating effects of traumatic stress on our military personnel, this health problem remains relevant to millions of other lives shattered by our reckless and uncaring government.  These diaries will examine the physical bases for psychic trauma.

On November 11, 2005 I boarded a bus and took a four hour ride that ended with an eight hour wait, which ended with a five hour plane ride.  When the Plane touched down, I was over three thousand miles away from Germany and about to enter my own insignificant chapter in the Iraq war.  I would not return to Germany until October 31, 2006.  I hope that you find what I write to be stimulating, but I do not expect you to agree with all that I say, and nor would I want you behave as such an obedient member of the choir.  My Impressions are below.

As I wean myself off of the subject of politics I find that I need to reexamine why I started thinking and writing about the subject at all. This introspective examination of my own thoughts is part of my previous life. I have always wondered why I think the way I do. What events influenced the opinions I have, and how have they done this? So, I find that I still need to write about politics, but I will write in a more abstract way.

Hello there, G. Watson Beagle here again with this important message. I write tonight from Mrs. Pastor's computer for the simple reason that Pastor Dan is beating himself to a bloody pulp on his own.

Yes, brothers and sisters (heh), Pastor Dan has finally lost what precious few marbles he possessed. More on this potentially tasty development below the fold.

I am sitting in a hospital room in San Francisco recovering from a stroke and the experience has caused me to give some thought to the collateral damage being caused by the current administration in terms of of a huge amount of stress that Americans are under given the war in Iraq and the assault on our civil liberties. Without a doubt my stroke was not caused primarily by the stress of the political situation, as I've had a bumpy enough time without all of the external bad news, but it was no doubt a contributing factor. My blood pressure has risen tremendously in the years since the invasion of Iraq, and even in the period leading up to the invasion I was waking up in the morning with both fists clenched and already enraged. As a diabetic I have been at risk for some time, but a combination of a series of difficult situations, some of them tragicomic (such as the fact that my latest book, The Big Book of Chess, came out this year but all of the publicity and online sources have a different author's name on the cover) combined to push me over the edge.

read on ...

Today, as we stop to celebrate our independence, honor those who have helped hold it all these years, and those that paid the ultimate price, I went back and revisited a diary I've been working on for quite a while.  I have revised it, reread it, and put it back on the shelf repeatedly, because it never seemed like the right time to post it.  I think now is the right time to consider just what it is we ask of our young men and women in uniform.  More below.