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Does it ever seem like your feelings and fears control you instead of feeling like YOU are in control of your FEELINGS? If you have out of control feelings, are constantly worrying and have excessive fears that control your life, it could mean you are suffering from anxiety attacks and you could have an anxiety disorder.

If your anxiety is affecting your quality of life you should seek professional assistance from a qualified therapist or psychiatrist. However here are some things you can do yourself anytime to try to take control of your moods and help cope with anxiety.

Top 10 Simple Tools to Reduce Anxiety

“Everyone has moments, which create anxiety. This particular feeling can be detrimental to your work, life and relationships because it may stop you from living normally. Here are my top ten tips to deal effectively with this uncomfortable emotion.

1. If you are prone to anxiety you have two choices. Give in to it or learn to live with it. Giving into it also means that your partner will suffer the burden of your fears so, to make your lives a better place to be, find ways to eliminate or at least limit this feeling by taking responsibility for your emotions and knowing you have a choice.”

In the weeks prior to his death, Michael Jackson’s family tried to do an intervention and get him into rehab. But Michael’s resistance might have been circumvented, if he had been offered a “Harm Reduction Approach” according to Dr. Marc F. Kern, a Beverly Hills addictions specialist.

When many people think of the term “intervention” they think of the type of intervention done on the A&E show “Intervention”. This type of intervention requires that the person stop using all drugs immediately and enter rehab. What if Michael Jackson had been approached with the idea that he could continue to use his medications privately, at a lower level and safely?

The following press release snippet has information about a radical new approach to addiction.

Michael Jackson’s Life Could Have Been Saved, According to Beverly Hills Psychologist

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) July 12, 2009 — Beverly Hills clinical psychologist and addiction expert Marc F. Kern, Ph.D. states, “A powerful, successful and extremely private man like Jackson would appear to most people that he was in denial, but rather might have been exercising his right as an adult to just say ‘NO’ to Total Abstinence.”

“Harm Reduction” is a new science-based paradigm in the field of addiction treatment, and is the approach of choice in many countries such as Canada, England and the Netherlands. Harm Reduction therapists consider substance abuse as a very complex behavior, not only a medical disease, and assist people to find safer ways of using drugs. Total abstinence is not the main emphasis but rather a secondary goal among several alternatives including moderation.

“This is not just a situation unique to celebrities like Jackson, Anna Nicole Smith, Kurt Cobain, or other high profile people. Most average individuals who use drugs or alcohol won’t accept ‘Abstinence as the Only Solution’ for themselves so there is a great deal of shame and secrecy around their habit. In our contemporary society, it is time to offer harm reduction to help the millions of affected adults and teenagers who would benefit from the harm reduction approach.” More…

I’ve always known sugar does terrible things to my mind as well as body. I feel a sickly high after eating too much sugar, lose energy and get a depressed sort of brain fog. I thought it was just me!

I have wondered about the long term affects on mood and suspected sugar consumption could have an affect on depression. Recently a noted psychiatric researcher Malcolm Peet, conducted an analysis of the relationship between diet and mental illness. His primary findings agree with my suspicion. He found a strong link between high sugar consumption and the risk of both depression and schizophrenia.

Dietary Sugar and Mental Illness: A Surprising Link

First, sugar actually suppresses activity of a key growth hormone in the brain called BDNF. This hormone promotes the health and maintenance of neurons in the brain, and it plays a vital role in memory function by triggering the growth of new connections between neurons. BDNF levels are critically low in both depression and schizophrenia, which explains why both syndromes often lead to shrinkage of key brain regions over time (yes, chronic depression actually leads to brain damage). There’s also evidence from animal models that low BDNF can trigger depression…

As I’ve become increasingly convinced by these research data, I’ve begun gently encouraging my depressed patients to simply try cutting out sugars for a couple of weeks to see if they notice any effect… A few have had the courage and determination to given it a go: they’re reported remarkable improvements in mood, energy, and mental clarity.

Physical pain and depression go hand in hand for many people - typically women more than men. Sometimes the mystery pain, called somatoform pain disorder, is just written off as the person being a hypochondriac - but to the person experiencing the pain, it is very real.

A new research study investigated the fairly common problem of unexplained pain in people with depression.

Unexplained Pain Among Depressed Patients

“According to Frieser then, it is possible that patients who report to their doctors with multiple pain symptoms that cannot be explained in clinical terms are very probably suffering from a depressive disorder requiring treatment. In cases of major depression, the affected patients often exhibit dejection, despair, swings in appetite and body weight, insomnia or an increased need for sleep, tiredness, lack of energy, and psychomotor disturbances. These patients not infrequently also consider committing suicide.

The results of the GP survey in Mainz underline the importance of the correct classification and evaluation of pain symptoms for health care services; the general practitioners concluded that pain was somatoform in 73 percent of cases, and could be fully explained in medical terms in only 27 percent of cases.”

Cymbalta is one anti-depressant that is advertised to treat the “pain” of depression. I have not read enough reviews to know how well it works on the physical pain but it may be worth asking your Dr. about if you are suffering.

Recently Therese Borchard over at the PsychCentral blog asked readers for their sanity tricks - techniques that help them fight the forces of the dark side. I’ll share mine and then quote and link to the best ones readers submitted.

My Sanity Tip #7 - In with the good/out with the bad breathing. When severe anxiety hits, something that helps me is good/bad breathing. As I inhale deeply I say inside my rattled mind “In with the good: calm, peace, prosperity.” On the long, slow, cleansing exhale I say “Out with the bad: fear, worry, stress and sadness.” Change the words to fit your situation, be sure to do deep breathing and do as long as necessary until you find yourself calming down.

6 Quick Sanity Tricks

1. Learn the alphabet.

Do you know why the vowel “I” comes well before the vowel “U”? Because a person must take care of herself before trying to help someone else or the world. It’s the same logic that flight attendants use when they swear to you that your plane isn’t going to crash, but in the event that it does, you’d be smart to fasten your own oxygen mask before helping the kiddies. Do it in reverse, and you’ll all run out of air.

Read the rest of the 6 Tricks here.

Do you have a sleepy couch potato brain? Want to whip it into shape but don’t know how. How can anyone work on increasing their brain power when there are so many articles and studies that have conflicting advice about cognitive training and brain health? Which brain training approach, if any, is worth your time and money?

Here is a good article that refutes some of the common myths about brain training and there is also information in the article about a good book on the subject.

Debunking 10 Brain Training/ Cognitive Health Myths

Myth 1. Genes determine the fate of our brains.
Facts: Lifelong neuroplasticity allows our lifestyles and actions to play a meaningful role in how our brains physically evolve, especially given longer life expectancy.

Myth 2. Aging means automatic decline.
Facts: There is nothing inherently fixed in the precise trajectory of how brain functions evolve as we age.

Myth 3. Medication is the main hope for cognitive enhancement.
Facts: Non-invasive interventions can have comparable and more durable effects, side effect-free.

Read the rest here.

If you are plagued with an anxiety disorder such as Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), phobias or panic attacks - or if you know someone that is - you may want to watch a brand new reality show called “Obsessed“. Similar to their hit TV show “Intervention,” Obsessed portrays a very realistic, documentary-style show, but instead of addiction and intervention - this show shares a glimpse into the lives of people who suffer from various anxiety disorders and documents how it affects their quality of life and relationships. Then the show offers some insight into the cognitive behavioral therapy that helps sufferers regain control.

Obsessed premiered last night and airs Mondays at 10 Pacific, 9 Central on A&E.

Here is snippet about the show and a link to the show web site where you can watch segments from the premier show.

About Obsessed

Intense and highly personal, A&E’s true-life docuseries “Obsessed” examines the lives of everyday people imprisoned by unmanageable, repetitive behaviors and sometimes debilitating fear. Whether it is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Panic Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder, General Anxiety Disorder, Hoarding or a variety of phobias, the unscripted series gives viewers a chance to see first-hand how an obsession can radically affect a person’s life.

By using cognitive behavioral therapy, each subject is taught how to understand the thought process which contributes to his or her symptoms and is coached on how to change these thought patterns, manage their anxiety and avoid the resulting debilitating compulsions. The show explores the stories of sufferers as well as the adverse effects their disorders have on their friends and family.

Maintaining healthy blood sugar (glucose) levels may be important and not just for people with diabetes. New research links good glucose levels with good brain health as we get older. Lapses in memory, brain fog and senior moments sometimes increase in people as they age. The study below suggests that as blood sugar levels rise when we age, it could lead to more memory lapses, compared to people who maintain healthy blood glucose levels.

The study also suggests that “exercising to improve blood sugar levels could be a way for some people to stave off the normal cognitive decline that comes with age.”

Blood Sugar Linked to Good Brain Health

“By improving glucose metabolism, physical exercise also reduces blood glucose. It is therefore possible that the cognitive enhancing effects of physical exercise are mediated, at least in part, by the beneficial effect of lower glucose on the dentate gyrus.”

Drug giant Pfizer said people who are unemployed and have been taking its products could in some cases receive them free for up to a year in a new program called MAINTAIN. The patient assistance program will provide free access to more than 70 Pfizer drugs including Lipitor, Lyrica, Celebrex and Viagra.

It’s a smart marketing move that keeps people taking the branded versions instead of stopping or going generic.

To be eligible, a person must have lost their job sometime this year and started taking the branded Pfizer medication at least three months before losing their job. They must also be without prescription drug benefits and must be able to attest to financial hardship.

News coverage and more information:

Drug Makers Try to Ease Recession’s Pain
Recession Giveaway! Pfizer Offers Free Drugs to the Jobless
FT.com / UK - Pfizer offers free drugs to jobless

Researchers at Rush University Medical Center have shown that depression is somehow linked to the accumulation of visceral fat, the belly fat that is packed around your internal organs at the waistline.

The study concluded that “Increased visceral fat may be one pathway by which depression contributes to excess risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Further research is needed to examine whether depressive symptoms influence accumulation of VAT over time.”

Douglas Robb over at the HealtHabits blog has some great additional insights.

The Link between Belly Fat, Depression, Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease

In a previous article, I wrote about the link between belly fat (visceral fat) and depression…

Today’s post is based on the findings of this study, which suggest that belly fat (visceral fat) “is an important pathway by which depression adds to the risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes.”