**  Post-Holiday Depression by Dr. Frank Barnhill, M.D.

** Smiles – Dining Problem

** Sugar or Sugar Substitutes by Dr. James Groves

** Sleep Drugs Earn Stronger Warning Labels by Dr. Earl Mindell

** Trivia

** Stress Tips by Dr. Rae Baum
 

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 WARNING!! Always seek the advice of a Medical Doctor beforestarting, or making changes in your diet or exercise program. All previous newsletter are archived at our web site at:http://www.adv-marketing.com/business/bbnewslt.htmIf you haven't already, be sure to stop by our web site at:http://www.bestbodyever.com/

All opinions presented in this publication are those of the authors. Articles in this newsletter are for information only. If you have a medical problem, see your Medical Doctor.

Most of us are really emotionally charged for any holiday. After all, a holiday and time off or time spent with family and friends, is something to look forward to. We spend weeks and sometimes months getting ready for the event, only to have it last a short time and disappear abruptly. As a result, about 25% of s will suffer such a letdown, that depression will set in within a few days or even a week later. Here are a few suggestions to help you deal with post-holiday blues:

When you first feel the blues coming on, sit quietly for 20 to 30 minutes and think of all the good things that happened during the season. Write down a next years resolution list to help make sure those good things happen again. Remember all the things you did receive and don’t dwell on what you didn’t receive. Start next year’s gift list now. That will allow you to buy a few after Christmas bargains.

Make a call list and personally phone each person who gave you a gift. Thank them for the present and offer to help in some special way. Bake an “after New Year’s” cake or buy a special “It’s winter” food and give it to friends or family as a treat, sort of like the Kings cake at Mardi Gras.

Try to set up a “help the needy” winter fund and give assistance in January and February to those you helped during Christmas. Being needy is not limited to Christmas, yet that’s when we tend to think about helping others the most.

“Re-gift a present” you received to a needy person. It’s ok to give away presents you do not need. I don’t think it’s ok to sell them, but giving them to someone who can use them in January seems an ok thing to do.

Send out Happy New Year or “Have a great winter” cards to the very same persons you sent Christmas cards. Design your own “hope it snows” card. Start a birthday card list of friends and relatives and go ahead and prepare your cards for the next three months. Have them ready to mail and put them on the fridge.

Call an old friend. Pick one you haven’t spoken to in a long time and get acquainted again. Once you start talking, you’ll find you still have a lot more in common than you think.

Start having family meetings twice a month to discuss the good and the bad. Having everyone’s input will help take some of the stress of life off of you. Organize a contest at work for the best or worst piece of clothing received at Christmas and if worn to work, offer a prize.

Have a “hat party”. Everyone has to wear a hat to attend. Have a best hat and craziest hat award. Everyone will have more fun than you can imagine. Start planning your next vacation and send for all the information available. It pays to plan even for a weekend get away, as that gives you control over time will spent and helps make the trop much more enjoyable.

Rededicate you life or your family at church. Nothing makes us feel better than to have all those burdens lifted off of our shoulders. Set goals for what church work you and your family can do for the year.

Teach yourself a new way to pray. It doesn’t matter how old you are, most persons were never taught how to pray. Children were usually just taught “program prayers” and not how to pray form the heart. Most of us forget that prayer can be done at any time and for any reason. So, offer a prayer in thanks for all the good things you received and those who gave them. Have a Sunday school class party for “backsliders”. Invite all of your class, including those who have been missing more than a few Sundays. Schedule this at a convenient time during the week, so everyone can come or at least drop-in. You may also wish to invite prospective new members.

These are just a few ways to keep the blues away. The methods can be expanded and modified as you wish. And yes, I’m sure you can think of many others, now that I’ve gotten you started.

Have a great year!

Dr. Frank

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Drhuggiebear.com offers common sense solutions for life's little problems, as well as sources to help you and your family achieve important goals. Dr. Frank Barnhill and Uncle Frank Jones offer a free newsletter providing monthly up to date information on depression, ADHD, stress burnout, success training, and may other medical and personal life skills topics. http://www.drhuggiebear.com
 
 

Dining Problem
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Everyone had weighed in, and our diet-workshop leader began her lecture on the week's topic - the problems of dining out. She talked about alternatives, such as requesting diet sodas and dressings, and having meat broiled instead of fried. Finally she turned the question over to the group for discussion. "What is the greatest problem you encounter when going out to eat?"

Replied one woman quickly, "Running into you!"

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On vacation in Hawaii, my mother called a cafe to make reservations for 7:00 pm.

Checking her book, the cheery hostess said, "I'm sorry, but all we have is 6:45 pm. Would you like that?"

"That's fine," Mom replied.

"Okay," the hostess confirmed. Then she added, "Just be advised that you may have to wait 15 minutes for your table."

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One year at Christmas, Mom went to my sister's house for the traditional feast. Knowing how gullible my sister is, Mom decided to play a trick. She told my sister that she needed something from the store.

When my sister left, Mom took the turkey out of the oven, removed the stuffing, stuffed a Cornish hen, and inserted it into the turkey, then re-stuffed the turkey. She placed the bird(s) back in the oven.

When it was time for dinner, my sister pulled the turkey out of the oven and proceeded to remove the stuffing. When her serving spoon hit something, she reached in and pulled out the little bird. With a look of total shock on her face, Mother exclaimed, "Patricia, you've cooked a pregnant bird!"

It took the family two hours to convince her that turkeys lay eggs.

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Are you unhappy with the way you look? Would you like to loose weight? Are you interested in toning-up or increasing your muscularity? Would you like to improve your health and quality of life? Are you thin and like to gain weight? If you have answer ed "yes" to any of these questions, We are confident our diet and exercise program will quickly get you to your goals. Your diet and exercise program is tailored to your individual needs and situation. We are here to help you every step of the way. P lease visit our web site at http://www.bestbodyever.com/. There are some great "before and after" pictures on the site that will motivate you to make the decision to improve your health and build your best body ever.

It is important to understand what happens when you skip a meal or go on a crash diet. When you skip a meal your metabolism slows to conserve your energy. And when you lose weight too quickly for a few days, your body thinks it is threatened with starvation and goes into survival mode. It fights to conserve your fat stores, and any weight loss comes mostly from water and muscle.

This is the sixth health tip in a series about simple, easy to follow steps to improving health. Take each small step I give you and turn it into a habit, just like combing your hair or brushing your teeth.

Are you confused when you go to the store to purchase an oil for cooking?  I can certainly understand the confusion.  Let's see, there's vegetable oil, corn oil, olive oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil, peanut oil, cornola (whatever that is) and for you southerners, there's always lard.  This last one I just named is not a misprint.  Lard is a white, thick, cooking substance that's been around for a long time.  I can remember my Grandmother used this toothpaste, looking glob of white to fry chicken.

So how do you begin to select an oil.  First DO NOT ever use vegetable oil.  Remember last week's health tip was about butter versus margarine (which is pure vegetable oil).  If you missed that article be sure to write Bob and ask for the issue.

Second, DO NOT use the lard I just mentioned above.  If it becomes solid and stays solid at room temperature, then imagine what it does in your arteries.  Clog-city!!

Your best choice is always olive oil because it tastes good and it's beneficial for your health.  Extra-virgin olive oil is great on salads or pasta, but it's also great for cooking.  The extra-virgin is usually a little more expensive, but that's because it's the first gentle pressing of the olive and it is less tampered with than other kinds.

So now is the time to go to the pantry and throw out all those saturated fats and even those polyunsaturated ones like corn oil, safflower oil, and soybean oil.  Purchase a good quality olive oil. Your arteries and your heart will be glad you did!

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Live in Passion and Good Health,
James Groves

In 2005, newer sleep drugs such as Ambien, Lunesta, and Rozerem were prescribed some 45 million times in the United States. It’s amazing to me that so many Americans are having so much trouble falling asleep and staying asleep, but let’s put that aside for now and look at rare side effects that are causing concern and conversation: sleepwalking, binge eating while asleep, and even sleep driving.

In an ABCNews.com medical article, reporter Dan Childs shares the story of Rosalind Cartwright, a 60-something college professor who had taken Ambien a few hours following some over-the-counter cold medicine. She headed to bed. At 3:30 a.m., she found herself on the floor; hurting but too sleepy to do much about it, she crawled back into her bed and fell asleep again. She was lucky to wake up: when she awoke in serious pain and bleeding, a trip to the emergency room revealed a bump on the head serious enough to cause bleeding on the brain, four pelvic fractures, three broken ribs, and a fractured left wrist. What had she done in her sleep to be injured so severely? She’ll never know. Cartwright had no history of sleepwalking, but from the sound of it, the drug combination had caused her to do a lot more than walk while sound asleep.

This side effect of sleep drugs plus other medicines first gained some notoriety in 2006, when Rhode Island representative Patrick Kennedy crashed into a barrier near Capitol Hill and blamed it on Ambien and other medication he’d used with it. Others have reported similar examples of strange activities while under the drug’s influence; over a dozen reports of sleep driving have been made to the FDA (Food and Drug Administration). Laura J. Liddicoat, a forensic scientist who works at a lab in Wisconsin, reported in the New York Times that Ambien had been detected in the blood work of 53 drivers who exhibited extremely erratic driving behavior. In Washington in 2005, Ambien played a role in 78 impaired-driver arrests. In some of these cases, drivers are doing more than weaving or running red lights: they’re driving the wrong way or slamming into other cars and objects head-on. In many instances, they don’t recognize or communicate with the officers who arrest them.

One air traveler was arrested for tearing off his shirt and threatening other passengers—and remembered nothing between having taken Ambien and downing two of those airplane-sized bottles of wine… and waking up in a jail cell.

Many of the instances where Ambien and related sleep drugs cause problems have to do with its combination with alcohol or other medications. If you do decide you absolutely need to take sleep medications, don’t go anywhere near alchohol, cold medicines, tranquilizers, or any other drugs that have potential hypnotic or sedative effects. And if you have to take a sleep medicine, don’t make the mistake described in several reports of Ambien-related driving mishaps: the user took the drug on the way home so that it would “kick in” by the time the driver arrived. If it kicks in before you arrive, you may find yourself in big trouble.

Unbelievably, in some cases, the person who ended up driving while asleep under the influence of Ambien did not take the other medicines or drink until after they’d been knocked under by the sleep medicine: in other words, they imbibed the other agents while they were asleep—or, more specifically, in that twilight realm between sleep and wakefulness. This is what was reported by one woman who took a single Ambien at bedtime and woke up after having had a car accident and urinating in the middle of the street. She found a half-drunk bottle of wine on her kitchen counter after returning home, and did not remember having consumed it. She had done so and then gotten behind the wheel, all while mostly asleep. Scary stuff.

Although these side effects are rare, it just doesn’t seem worth it to turn to sleep drugs when insomnia strikes. There are too many effective, natural, safe ways to encourage healthy and rejuvenating sleep to take even the small risk that this sort of reaction could come up for you. Sleep hygiene is first and foremost: go to sleep close to the time at which darkness falls; avoid caffeinated drinks after 3:00 p.m., or even earlier in the day if you know you’re sensitive to them; reserve your bedroom only for sleep and sex (that means read or watch TV in another room!); maintain a regular sleep-wake schedule; and if you want to have a snack before bed, have something high in comforting carbohydrates: some whole-grain toast with cholesterol-lowering buttery spread and a drizzle of honey, perhaps.

Daily workouts will help you get better rest when night comes. Inverted yoga poses like shoulderstand and headstand, or just lying on your back with both legs extended up a wall or resting on the seat of a chair, are believed to help thwart insomnia. I’m told that you can do these poses right before climbing between the sheets. Some people find success with guided imagery, deep breathing, or meditation right before night-night.

Popping sleeping pills can be a tactic we use to avoid dealing with the issues that are causing us to lie awake tossing and turning at night. If worries or anger are keeping you up, do the needed spiritual, practical, or interpersonal work to help you to release your worries when it’s time to rest. Know that you’ll never be free of worry—but you can learn to set it aside when you choose to do so.

For more insomnia help, you can turn to melatonin, the hormone manufactured by the pineal gland in the brain when darkness falls. Try 3 mg under the tongue a half-hour before bed. Don’t use melatonin more than two or three times a week. Valerian, hops, chamomile, and passionflower are effective, safe relaxant herbs; you can try teas, tinctures, or tablets a half-hour before turning in for the night.

You create extraordinary possibilities when you believe and trust your inner voice, your authentic self.

---- Dr. Rae ----

~ Need help with this? Contact The Baum Group at:
mailto:TheBaumGroup@YourStressMatters.com

If you need to lose weight, you must be in caloric deficit. This can be accomplished by cutting down your caloric intake, or increasing the amount of calories you burn by exercising. I recommend both. Even though a calorie is a calorie when it comes to weight loss, a calorie is not a calorie when it comes to your health. Make sure your daily diet includes several servings of fruit and vegetables and whenever possible, avoid foods that contain trans fat.

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Bob Osgoodby