Lowering Stress

I just finished watching a National Geographic video about stress that I picked up at Costco last night. It was only an hour and I don't recommend you go out and buy it - just borrow mine - but it was interesting.

This guy studied baboons and discovered that their social rank made a difference in their health and another researcher backed it up with her studies showing how the arteries of the monkeys at the top of the order were open and healthy and the subordinates had clogged arteries. They found that it was true in British workers as well. People who felt they didn't have control in their lives lived shorter lives with more illness, etc., you can imagine the rest.

They measured hormones and brain cell production (or decrease as in the cause of too much stress) and all sorts of things and came to some common sense (to us now) conclusions. They found that chronic stress is bad for your health. Some stress is good. But bad stress is bad for you and can make you sick and cranky. Some of the ways they found that people could undo the effects of stress was not to do yoga and meditation (they just didn't mention any of that), was to do good things for other people. That was the main thing they concluded in this short video. I thought that was neat. Giving is less stressful than receiving!