A Company

  • Subscribe to our RSS feed.
  • Twitter
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Facebook
  • Digg

Saturday, 17 December 2005

Stress: the holiday Grinch

Posted on 17:48 by Unknown
From time to time, the resident physician at Google headquarters weighs in with her thoughts on healthy living. This is not medical advice, and you should check with your own doctor before pursuing any particular course of action.

Posted by Dr. Taraneh Razavi, M.D., Staff Doctor

Watching scenes of fists flying over an LCD monitor during a holiday sale made me wonder about stress, and how one can maintain a holiday spirit at a stressful time of year. According to Stedman's Medical Dictionary, it's stress, not the holidays, that make the body react to "forces of a deleterious nature that disturb its normal physiologic equilibrium." That sounds bad.

There is extensive research that confirms the harmful effects of stress when it occurs continuously with out the relaxation phase. In the international INTERHEART study, patients with a first heart attack reported significantly more stress in financial, home and work-related situations than the control studies. In another study of 1055 medical students who were followed for 36 years, it was found that those who had a higher anger response to stress had higher risk of developing premature heart disease (before age 55). Even exposure to traffic has been implicated. (Uptodate.com has more references if you are interested.)

Stress can also adversely impact high blood pressure, cholesterol, immune response, skin disorders, rheumatoid arthritis, intestinal motility, diabetes, cancer survival, and other conditions. It is now considered to be as much a risk factor as obesity, smoking, and sedentary life style so learning to counteract this response is important.

Although the external stress factors (irritating co-workers, hurricanes) are hard to control, there are several ways to reduce the internal stress response. Here's a short list - check it twice:
  • Make a list and prioritize. It's OK if the holiday cards don't go out until 1/2...07.
  • Exercise. No, it's not the answer to everything, but it has been shown to decrease the stress hormones.
  • Take a vacation (break with tradition! A year-end getaway might help limit stress). If not a vacation, at least take a stroll, or take deep breaths while counting to 10.
  • Hugging for 20 seconds has been shown to reduce blood pressure.
Beyond these immediate steps, you can find many resources via the University of Massachusetts' Stress Reduction Program and Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, including local referrals. Or check the nonprofit Omega Institute for a vacation centered around stress reduction.

If you still feel you're under severe stress, or you're not improving with any of the above measures, then please do consult your doctor. And here's my advice: if the turkey is rubbery, use it as an exercise ball. Happy holidays, everyone.
Email ThisBlogThis!Share to XShare to Facebook
Posted in googlers and culture | No comments
Newer Post Older Post Home

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Popular Posts

  • About that fake post
    Posted by Karen Wickre, Google Blog team A bug in Blogger enabled an unauthorized user to make a fake post on the Google Blog last night, cl...
  • A year of Google blogging
    Posted by Karen Wickre, Google Blog team This is the 201st post to be published on the Google Blog in 2005. In closing out the first full ye...
  • Domains of choice
    In the realm of the Internet, there's no shortage of acronyms for all the parts of a web address. Top-level domains like .com, .org and ...
  • Buzz about Google Print and the lawsuit
    Posted by Adam M. Smith, Product Manager "Making all the Google Print facts clear really does make a difference." That's the h...
  • The rebirth of cool
    Posted by Silas Reyes, Webmaster, Mobile team Have you ever been involved in a project that you've seen evolve from an idea to a work in...
  • More ways to connect and share with Google Talk
    Posted by Mike Jazayeri, Google Talk Product Manager Millions of you use Google Talk every day to connect with friends, family, and colleagu...
  • Stress: the holiday Grinch
    From time to time, the resident physician at Google headquarters weighs in with her thoughts on healthy living. This is not medical advice, ...
  • Defending the future of books
    Posted by Laura DeBonis, Library Partnerships Director, Google Book Search team On Monday, University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman...
  • O, Canada (among others)
    Posted by Dylan Parker, Software Engineer I've been working on the personalized homepage from Victoria, B.C., and I've never been ps...
  • Searching for music
    Posted by David Alpert, Search Quality Product Manager It may come as no surprise, but I like to search for things on Google. Yep, when I...

Categories

  • accessibility
  • ads
  • Africa
  • apps
  • April 1
  • Asia
  • books + book search
  • crisis response
  • developers
  • doodles
  • education and research
  • enterprise
  • Europe
  • free expression
  • google.org
  • googlers and culture
  • green
  • health
  • Latin America
  • mobile
  • online safety
  • personalization
  • photos
  • policy and issues
  • privacy
  • recipe
  • recruiting and hiring
  • scholarships
  • search
  • search trends
  • small business
  • user experience and usability
  • youtube and video

Blog Archive

  • ►  2006 (231)
    • ►  October (27)
    • ►  September (26)
    • ►  August (32)
    • ►  July (18)
    • ►  June (25)
    • ►  May (19)
    • ►  April (20)
    • ►  March (20)
    • ►  February (26)
    • ►  January (18)
  • ▼  2005 (199)
    • ▼  December (18)
      • A year of Google blogging
      • I'm feeling silly
      • This just in...
      • About the AOL announcement
      • Decking the halls
      • Setting trends
      • Looking at 2005
      • Stress: the holiday Grinch
      • 'Tis the season
      • In the material world
      • Searching for music
      • New Firefox extensions
      • Google Holiday Helper
      • Build your own Google homepage
      • Same-Language Subtitling
      • A cure for the common inbox
      • Public transit via Google
      • Acumen visits Google
    • ►  November (20)
    • ►  October (20)
    • ►  September (27)
    • ►  August (20)
    • ►  July (14)
    • ►  June (11)
    • ►  May (18)
    • ►  April (16)
    • ►  March (21)
    • ►  February (7)
    • ►  January (7)
  • ►  2004 (58)
    • ►  December (11)
    • ►  November (6)
    • ►  October (15)
    • ►  September (7)
    • ►  August (2)
    • ►  July (4)
    • ►  June (5)
    • ►  May (7)
    • ►  April (1)
Powered by Blogger.

About Me

Unknown
View my complete profile