The Amazing Power of Music

Listening to music is a great way to make exercising more enjoyable. MP3 players are an excellent way to do this. But as science is now beginning to document, music may have a much greater impact on your health than previously imagined.

Exercising to Music Can Boost Your Verbal Skills

For example, while studies have shown that exercising alone has the capability to improve your mood and increase the speed of your decision-making process, listening to music while exercising has been shown to improve verbal fluency as well.

A 2003 study published in the journal Heart Lung found that listening to music while exercising boosted cognitive levels and verbal fluency skills in people diagnosed with coronary artery disease.

Coronary artery disease has been linked to a decline in cognitive abilities. In this study, signs of improvement in the verbal fluency areas more than doubled after listening to music compared to that of the non-music session.

Music Reduces Stress and Improves Healing

Music is a great mood regulator, whether it’s used in conjunction with exercise or not. Loud, upbeat music generally has a stimulating effect, whereas slow music can act as a sedative.

It’s very encouraging that more and more health professionals are beginning to realize the value of simple techniques such as music, using it as an adjunct to promote healing even in more conventional medical settings. As pediatrician Linda Fisher stated in the article above, it’s the music’s rhythm, melody and tonal quality that puts the patient in that “special place of peace” where healing can be achieved faster.

For example, harp music might be particularly helpful for people who have heart trouble. Harvard researchers have shown that the rhythms of healthy hearts may be similar to those found in classical music, and that certain rhythms, such as that of harp music can cause your heart to beat more normally.

Other studies from the early 1990s concluded that music significantly lowered the heart rates and calmed and regulated the blood pressures and respiration rates of patients who had undergone surgery.

Music therapy has also been shown to:

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      Improve motor skills in patients recovering from strokes
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      Boost your immune system
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      Improve mental focus
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      Help control pain
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      Create a feeling of well-being
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      Reduce anxiety

One study published in the October issue of The Journal of Clinical Nursing found that pregnant women listening to soothing music showed significant reductions in stress, anxiety and depression.

The researchers concluded that,

    “The findings can be used to encourage pregnant women to use this cost-effective method of music in their daily life to reduce their stress, anxiety and depression.”

Just more evidence that some of the simplest things in the world can benefit your health in profound ways.

Since depression, general stress and anxiety are very common issues facing many pregnant women, this is excellent advice, especially in light of the ever increasing use of antidepressant drugs during pregnancy. Although some studies claim that using antidepressants during pregnancy does not raise your risk of having a baby with birth defects, others have shown that they can cause severe rebound effects in your baby. 

Clearly drugs are rarely the best choice for pregnant women who are depressed. There are so many better options – music being one of them.

In addition to various types of music, like classical, nature sounds such as birds, rainstorms, frogs or ocean waves are also often used as a stress-relief tool. The sounds have a calming effect and can help patients relax while undergoing medical procedures.

Another exceptional, and more scientific, tool to help you dramatically reduce the stress that is a prime contributor to all forms of disease, while maximizing your awareness and potential for growth, is the Insight audio CD.  Many of the patients at my clinic have received enormous benefits from it. Layered beneath the soothing sounds of natural rain is a “binaural beat,” which can help you achieve dramatically powerful states of altered consciousness.

How Can Your Workout Benefit From Music?

As stated earlier, exercising to music has more benefits than just making your workout more fun. As sport psychologist Costas Karageorghis explained, listening to music while working out can:

   1.
      Reduce your perception of how hard you are working by about 10 percent during low-to-moderate intensity activity.
   2.
      Profoundly influence your mood; elevating the positive aspects, such as vigor, excitement and happiness, and reducing depression, tension, fatigue, anger and confusion.
   3.
      Be used to set an appropriate warm-up, workout, and cool-down pace.
   4.
      Be used to overcome fatigue, and control your emotions if you’re in a competition.

According to Karageorghis' research, music is most effective when you are losing steam and need some motivation to keep going -- not as a constant stimulus. He recommends doing two workouts with music to every one without, so the effect of the music is not dulled.

Committing yourself to a regular exercise routine is just as important as following a nutritious eating program. Taking into consideration these positive benefits from music and exercising, I would encourage those working out at their local gyms to add a little music to their workout routine.

How I Listen to Music

There are many ways you can listen to music. In my mind, the 21st century way is not to purchase music at all but merely to rent it. There are many services available but the one I use is Rhapsody.  For well under $200 a year you can download as many as you want of the over 4 million songs available.

This is typically far less than you would pay to purchase them, and you can transfer them to your MP3 player to listen to them offline.  You can also use the most incredible, inexpensive system to stream the music to your home stereo system with Sonos.

Dr. Mercola-- Article courtesy of mercola.com

Twelve Secrets to Living Stress Free

1.Real Success is not measured by what you are driven to achieve, but by what you can quietly understand.

2.Letting Go is the natural release which always follows the realization that holding on hurts.

3.Why seek answers to tormenting questions when it is possible to realize there is no intelligence in torment? So simply drop those painful questions.

4.See the upset not as an exterior circumstance to be remedied, but as an interior condition to be understood.

5.Your secret strength knows that your secret weakness isn't really yours at all.

6.Letting Go is all about finding out what you are not, and then having the courage to leave it at that.

7.Instead of always asking how to get others to approve of you ... learn to ask: What do I really want, the applause of the crowds or to quietly have my own life?

8.Chasing after a pleasure to ease a pain is like running after a breeze to cool you down.

9.Real freedom is the absence of the self that feels trapped, not the trappings that the self requires to make it feel free.

10.Letting Go of yourself is Letting Go of your problems, for they are one and the same.

11.The only thing you lose when you Let Go of something you are afraid to live without is the fear itself.

12.Go along with your longing to be Limitless.

- Guy Finley

Smile into your organs and dissolve negative emotions:

In case you don’t know Chinese medicine believes there is a connection between your organs and emotions.    By simply giving your organs mindful attention and filling them with more healthy energy such as smiling and breathing (more oxygen and blood flow), you are in effect shifting emotional garbage trapped in your organs.  I can honestly say it does work.
Following is a simple explanation as to the emotions linked to your main organs.

1: Smile into your liver and dissolve anger:
Smiling into your liver can not only help dissolve anger and resentment but greatly assist with the decision making process.  Allow yourself to forgive, accept and feel kindness.

2: Smile into your kidneys and dissolve fear:
Allow yourself to feel safe and secure.  Breathe into your kidneys, feel them soften as they release fear and stress.

3:  Smile into your lungs and dissolve sadness or depression:
Fill your lungs on the inhale and totally empty them on the exhale.   Allow fresh new air to fill your lungs as you inhale the smiling energy.  Feel them relax and release any feelings of sadness and depression.

4:  Smile into your stomach and dissolve anxiety:
The stomach can often be a place where we hold lots of worry.  Smiling into your stomach can greatly help bring you into the present moment releasing worry and anxiety about the past and future.  Continue breathing the smiling energy into your stomach until it feels totally relaxed.  A relaxed stomach means improved digestion and a calmer you.

5: Smile into your heart and dissolve hate and impatience:
Smiling into your heart can help shift cruelty, hurt, hate and impatience.  Feel your heart fill with joy, kindness and compassion with each breath cycle.

6:  Smile into any body part:
Of course you can enjoy a quick 5 minute smiling break by breathing into any part of your body that is overworked, fatigued or stressed.   Smile into your eyes if they are tired.  Smile into your jaw if you are clenching your teeth.  Smile into your shoulders if they are hunched and tight.  Smile into your feet if they are tired.  A smile encourages you to soften, release and improve energy flow.

How to smile on the inside:

I was first introduced to the Taoist exercise called the “inner smile” about 15 years ago.   I was studying with an awesome qi gong and Taoist instructor who had spent many years living in China.

Each week we were guided to smile on our face, really feel the smiling energy and then imagine ( in our minds eye )  sending the smiling energy into each of our organs.   Slowly and deliberately breathing the smiling energy fully into each organ.  We spent at least 5 minutes allowing each organ to receive the smiling energy before moving onto the next.  It was calming and an easy way to feel relaxed on the inside.  You’d be surprised how tense and tight organs can get.

Now, this might sound super easy, however  some weeks – to my surprise – some organs simply refused to receive a smiling breath.  The stubborn organ ( with attitude ) generally was tight, hard and tense.  It obviously needed relaxing along with a little bit of attention and love.  To achieve success, I would place my hands on the organ (for a stronger connection) continue to breathe and smile into the stubborn body part; until it finally softened and received the well-being benefits of the smiling energy.

I must say this simple little exercise taught me alot about my organs as I became more and more intimate with them as each week passed.  If the organ being stubborn was the kidney then I made sure I drank more water and used the smiling energy to dissolve any trapped fear in my kidneys.  If the organ being stubborn was the liver  I ate clean simple food – giving the liver a rest and focused on using the smiling energy to dissolve any trapped anger in my liver.

Herbal flu protection

by Owen Waters

The news media loves to spread fear because it makes the
public pay them more attention. Even better, from their
perspective, is a full-blown panic, which the current swine flu
outbreak may become.

The problem with colds and flu is that modern medicine has no
cure for them. While there are many antibiotics to choose from,
antibiotics only stop bacteria, not viruses.

For virus protection, I have three recommendations. These are
based upon my own experience.

Disclaimers: I am not a medical doctor. All statements in this
article are my own opinion and are not medical advice. Nothing
in this article is FDA approved. I have no financial ties with
any of the following sources. This is a non-commercial,
independent review.

1) Colloidal silver solution kills both bacteria and viruses
within 7 minutes of contact. You can take a tablespoonful twice
a day for a general immunity boost, or, best of all, get a
nasal spray bottle and use it to inhale some colloidal silver
spray into your nostrils and throat for instant protection. It
will also very effectively disinfect your hands. You can buy
colloidal silver from most health food or nutrition stores, or
search the web for suppliers. From past experience, I rather
like www.UtopiaSilver.com.

2) ImmunoPhase from www.PureTango.com was released right after
the SARS scare in 2003. It was created by traditional Chinese
herbal doctors to not only protect against viral infection, but
also to cure it, provided it is taken as soon as symptoms
appear. In our experience, it contains powerful-acting herbs
which should be taken with food to avoid a feeling of upset
stomach.

3) Alternative health proponent Mike Adams, the Health Ranger,
also recommends another herbal combination. PowerImmune from
www.Fitura.com is a blend of just about every virus-fighting
herb known to traditional herbal medicine.

Finally, watch out for those unsolicited hunches that appear
from time to time. Your intuition will always work to help you
avoid showing up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

If, out of the blue, a thought appears 2 or 3 times in a row
that you should avoid a certain place or planned activity,
that's your intuition keeping you away from danger. Find a way
to follow unsolicited, repetitive hunches. Then you'll never
need to say, "I knew I shouldn't have. . ."

When you develop and follow your intuition, you never need
fear anything in your future.

Eliminating Stress

by Michael Masterson

You can’t lead a happy, healthy, and productive life when you are feeling crummy. You can’t work very well. You can’t be creative. And you can’t enjoy the company of others.

So why is it that so many people, so much of the time, are downright miserable?

Is it the existential situation - the psychological default program that kicks in when we realize we are alone? Is it the result of thinking we are alone when we are not? Is it what happens when we live without purpose, as Victor Frankl suggests? Or is it merely too much sugar?

Answer: All of the above.

But what do you care? You can’t avoid getting into a funk now and then. However, you can learn to recognize the onset of a bad mood and get yourself out of it before it ruins your day (or your life).

I should know. I’m a moody bastard. If I could gather up all the time I’ve spent fretting, frowning, grousing, and/or complaining, I’d have enough to become a medical doctor and start my own emergency clinic. (That would cheer me up!)

Grumping around is not only wasteful; it’s limiting and potentially destructive. When you feel bad, you lack the emotional strength to try new things or overcome obstacles. As a consequence, you tend to spend your time on very ordinary chores, the kinds of tasks that will ensure the same old ho-hum life.

I once read a book on optimism and pessimism that made the case that the difference between feeling sad and clinical depression is not one of kind but of degree. If this is true, two conjectures come immediately to mind:

1. That moodiness should be actively combated, because moodiness can lead to despair.
2. That despair is an extreme form of moodiness, and so some of the techniques that eliminate moodiness can cure clinical depression.

Versions of despair - cynicism, anger, and fear - have no place in your business or personal life. If you let them in, you will give up too easily - and that can cost you.

Bad feelings are usually triggered by stress - some external event that creates a feeling of emotional discomfort. To lead a psychologically comfortable life (free of unnecessary stress and open to happiness and other good things), you must learn to recognize stress in its early stages and do something to reduce it.

Avoiding a bad mood is much like avoiding a common headache: If you can feel it coming on early enough and get some aspirin into your system, you’ll never be in pain. But if you wait till the pain is planted in your head, you’ll have a very difficult time getting rid of it.

One way to deal with stress is to get rid of the external cause of it. If, for example, a new client is a royal pain, figure out how to deal with him or pass him off to a competitor. If a new set of regulations is making your routine work difficult, master them and they’ll cease to give you stress.

Another, sometimes more practical, way to defeat stress is to change the way you react to it. As Victor Frankl pointed out in his classic book "Man’s Search for Meaning", it is impossible to control the external circumstances of our lives. We must accept what comes to us with equanimity. But we do not have to accept the way we respond.

Frankl argues that if you see a purpose in your role in life, you’ll have a much easier time avoiding the stress of not knowing what to do. Two thousand years ago, Marcus Aurelius said, "If you are distressed by anything internal, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to the view you have of that thing. How you view anything is a power you can revoke at any moment."

Here are 12 ways to deal with problems without getting stressed over them:

1. Forgive yourself for feeling bad. Depending on your biology, your upbringing, and your circumstances, you may feel blue rarely, sometimes, or often. Accept it as normal.

2. Count your blessings.

3. Take a nap. You’d be surprised by how often you can make yourself feel better simply by taking a 10-minute catnap.

4. Take a stress break. If you work as hard as I do, you will be forever on the verge of a nervous breakdown unless you do something about it. One of the best things you can do is schedule at least two (and preferably three or four) stress breaks every working day.

• A stress break is not a stress break unless:
• You get at least 10 feet away from your desk.
• You are completely distracted by it.
• It lasts at least five minutes.
• It relaxes you.
• It energizes you.

If you have good control over your daily schedule, you can plan stress breaks between tasks. Ideally, you’ll want a five-minute break every 90 to 120 minutes. If your schedule is too frenetic or unpredictable to do it that way, use an egg timer and simply break away from whatever you are doing when it rings.

5.Cut out the crap food. Remember, sugar and starch are poisons. Be aware of how they affect your moods.

6. Spend as much time as you can with upbeat people. Moody people are often helpful, productive, inspiring, and useful. But they are always an emotional drag. If your life involves moody energy-sappers, refresh with positive friends.

7. Follow Dale Carnegie’s Three C’s: Don’t criticize. Don’t condemn. Don’t complain.

8. Make sure you are getting enough sleep. If you are not sleeping well, chances are you are irritable and somewhat unproductive. This is a vicious circle. Get out of it. Get some sleep.

This will not only keep your stress level in check but will also improve your overall health. And remember this: The sleep you get before midnight is twice as good as the sleep you get afterward. So go to bed early. In fact, your entire health-and-fitness program should be based on the "early to rise" concept. Get to bed early enough so that you can wake up refreshed and stress free, eat properly, get your cardio workout done, and get to work at least an hour before you have to. (Two hours earlier is better.)

9. Exercise. Intense exercise will tire you out, but it won’t reduce stress. Walking, biking at a medium pace, swimming slowly - these are the sorts of exercise that can reduce stress.

10. Play. Again, be cognizant of what forms of play reduce stress and which add to it. Golfing is mostly, from what I’ve seen, a stress producer. So are most competitive sports. Yes, they’re fun if you have a competitive nature. But they don’t reduce stress.

11. Work to improve things. If you are bummed out about problems at work, do this: Compose a list of your five most pressing incomplete jobs. Then break down each job into specific tasks that can be accomplished in an hour or less. Arrange those tasks in order of priority. Finally, choose one. Just one. Put everything else out of your mind and get to work on it. Immediately. No excuses.

12. Listen to classical music. Researchers have discovered many interesting things about the effects of classical music - especially Mozart’s - on the brain. For example:

• In 1996, the College Entrance Exam Board Service conducted a study of all students taking their SATs. Students who sang or played a musical instrument scored an average of 51 points higher on the verbal portion and 39 points higher on the math portion of the test.
• In a controlled University of California study, students who listened to 10 minutes of Mozart before taking SATs had higher scores than students who didn’t.
• Major corporations like Shell, IBM, and Dupont, along with hundreds of schools and universities, have started using classical music to cut learning time in half and increase the retention of newly learned material.
• And in a University of Washington study, people who listened to light classical music for 90 minutes while copyediting a manuscript caught 21% more mistakes.

Even if you rarely listen to classical music, give it a try. "The Mozart Effect" will help you on some level by having a positive, lifelong effect on your health, learning, and behavior.

This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.

Avoid Cholesterol Lowering Drugs

One Damn Good Reason to Avoid Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs
by Shane Ellison (03/14/2008)

I’ve been called a lot of things. Science Nerd… Professor… and Cholesterol-Lowering Drug Nazi are among those that can be mentioned here. The only one I’ll admit to is being a Cholesterol-Lowering Drug Nazi.

Cholesterol-lowering drugs (statins) amass billions of dollars each year pretending to be a safe and effective way to protect against heart disease. Yet science shows that these drugs represent a clear and present danger to your health. In addition to lowering cholesterol, they elicit some really nasty side effects. Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS) is just one of them.

ALS occurs when cells of the nervous system (brain and spinal chord) become inactive. This can be caused by many cellular dysfunctions. But it’s usually from a protein entanglement within the nerve cell. Once tangled, these cells can no longer pass electrical messages through the body, resulting in a loss of voluntary muscle control. As time passes, muscle wasting (a Science Nerd would call it "atrophy") develops. Victims of ALS usually die from the inability to breathe when muscle loss has reached an extreme.

The national average of those who suffer from ALS is a mere .0005 percent. But - sit down for this one - among those who reported suffering from "drug-induced ALS," nearly a third were using cholesterol-lowering drugs! Apparently, this class of drugs can "tangle" something known as "tau proteins."

But protecting yourself from premature heart disease does not mean you have to put yourself at risk of wiping out your nervous system. You can do it with four simple tactics: Minimize your sugar intake, take part in interval training, maintain healthy vitamin D levels by spending time in the sun, and supplement with fish oil to boost your omega-3 levels.

[Ed. Note: Shane Ellison (www.thepeopleschemist.com) is an author, organic chemist, and contributor to ETR’s free natural health newsletter. He is a two-time recipient of the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Grant for his research in biochemistry and physiology. An internationally recognized authority on therapeutic nutrition, he is the founder of The AM-PM Fat Loss Discovery package. Click here to learn more.]

This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.