Leslie Glass's Blog, page 298

13 Really Good Reasons To Start Meditating Every Day

From MindBodyGreen:

Different forms of meditation have been used for thousands of years as a spiritual practice to create inner peace. But today, meditation is just as much scientific and secular as it is spiritual, with loads of exciting studies revealing exactly what meditation can do for our health and well-being.

The truth is this: We can eat the healthiest foods, exercise regularly, and avoid chemicals in our household cleaning products and cosmetics, but if we’re not caring for our mind—we won’t be optimally healthy. Stress is the sugar of the soul; it will wreck your health from the inside out.

It’s for this reason that I regularly use different meditation techniques for my patients at my functional medicine center. Just like with your fitness goals, you have to be consistent with your meditation practice to grow that mindfulness muscle! Start with just a few minutes twice a day. Here are the compelling reasons to give meditation a try:

1. More social connection.

Meditation is usually a solitary practice, but interesting research out of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology demonstrates meditation’s ability to increase our sense of connection to others. This—combined with the group meditation studios and classes popping up left and right—will help increase your social connection and heighten your emotional intelligence.

2. Increased longevity.

Telomeres are located at the ends of your chromosomes and kind of look like the plastic parts found at the end of your shoelaces. Longer telomeres are correlated with a longer life span, and shorter telomeres are associated with a shorter life span. Studies have shownthat meditation can preserve telomere length and reduce cellular stress.

3. Lowered inflammation.

Inflammation plays a part in so many of the health problems we see today. NFk-B is a protein complex that plays a major role in the body’s inflammatory response. A randomized controlled trial showed that NFk-B inflammation can be lowered with meditation.

4. Pain relief.

Because of meditation’s ability to balance inflammation levels and its overall calming qualities, it makes sense that it can also be a natural way to lower pain levels. A study in the Journal of Neuroscience explored the different pathways that meditation improved when it came to lowering pain.

5. An immune system boost.

Does it seem like you are always fighting off a cold? Well, a study published in the Asian Journal of Psychiatry showed that meditation improves genetic pathways that control our immune system.

6. Reduced anxiety.

There have been many studies showing that meditation helps to reduce anxiety. But how exactly does it work? Well, the part of our brain activated with feelings of anxiousness is known as the posterior cingulate cortex. When anxiety is calmed, the anterior cingulate cortex is activated. MRIs show us that meditation actually activates and strengthens this part of the brain.

7. Improved mood.

Research has shown that in many cases meditation is just as effective—if not more effective—than mood-altering medications for improving depression and anxiety. Plus, meditation has no potential side effects! Meditation can increase brain gray matter volume in parts of our brain that control our mood.

8. Increased attention and focus.

Do you have trouble paying attention or have ADD-like symptoms? Good news, regular meditation is associated with more activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the angular cingulate cortex, the areas of the brain responsible for memory and focus.

9. Slower cognitive decline.

Neuroplasticity is your brain’s ability to regenerate itself by making new neural connections. This slowly decreases over time, but meditation can increase the thickness of the brain’s prefrontal cortex, which helps slow down cognitive decline and preserve neuroplasticity.

10. Increased compassion.

The world needs more compassion today than ever before. A randomized controlled trial, published in the Journal of Happiness Studies, saw that over nine weeks, meditation decreased the fear of showing compassion and increased self-compassion.

11. Healthier blood pressure.

A randomized controlled trial published in the journal Hypertensionfound that a type of meditation, known as Transcendental meditation, can lower blood pressure.

12. Improved self-control.

Literature out of the scientific journal Emotion shows that meditation is effective at improving self-control and introspection—and decreasing participants’ impulsivity.

13. Less stress.

If you’re stressed, raise your hand! Well, meditation is a natural stress reliever, and there’s no “woo-woo” or esoteric reason behind it. Scientific studies have shown that meditation can positively regulate the area of the brain that controls stress, known as the subiculum area of the hippocampus. No crystals necessary.

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Disconnecting Calories From Exercise

From The New York Times:

Running as punishment for indulging, especially on vacation or at holidays, takes the fun out of both eating and running.

As I dipped a Mickey Mouse-shaped waffle in syrup for breakfast on my first full day in Walt Disney World, I heard a woman say to her friend, “That looks so good, but I’m trying to eat healthy on vacation.”

I didn’t say anything to her (I mean, I don’t know her), but I bit back my own deep sigh.

You might think that as a person who writes about running, I would endorse healthy eating while on vacation. But I hate this thinking — ditto any story about how many calories an exercise will burn in order to “earn” a holiday food. It’s making exercise a punishment for indulging in something special. I don’t get to eat Mickey Mouse waffles every day, so I’m going to eat them when I can, and not feel guilty about it. The same for pumpkin pie I have once a year, and Valentine’s Day chocolate.

If you’re already tallying how much you’ll have to run to combat a special food, that takes both the fun out of the rare treat you’re enjoying, and out of the exercise done to so-called make up for it. (When Runner’s World put one such post on Instagram this holiday season, which was itself an ad for NordicTrack — which has a vested interest in making you feel bad enough about eating to buy a workout machine — they got ripped for it, and rightfully so.)

By now, most New Year’s resolutions have crumbled, and one reason that can happen is people make them without the right motivation. If running is something you’re doing as punishment for eating, why would you want to keep doing that to yourself?

In 2015, Claire Zulkey wrote an eye-opening piece for Elle about how she was ordered by a therapist to take a break from exercising as part of treatment for a binge eating disorder. The goal was to break the connection between food and working out, and to treat both things like parts of her life, without the amount of one being related to the amount of the other. It worked.

“I realized at some point that I am an exercise person now. I pack workout clothes for vacations and use them,” she wrote. “But I could only get here by divorcing exercise from food. I will work out whether the previous night’s dinner consisted of a salad or three slices of pizza and some Oreos.”

We run for a lot of reasons, and yes, losing weight and staying in shape is a big one for most people — myself included. But there has to be something more to it than that, or running as penance can become part of a cycle of disordered eating. That’s not good for you, your running or your happiness. And life is just too short to not eat Mickey Mouse waffles for the rare times you’re in Disney World, no matter if you ran seven miles that morning (as I did when I overhead that conversation) or zero miles, as I did on the last day of my trip when I still got the same breakfast — and a Mickey Mouse ice cream bar before I caught my flight home.

I am back now, running in the same cold I’d left behind for a few days to hang out with Donald Duck. I don’t regret the waffles.

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Parenting In The Age Of Legal Pot: Household Rules, Conversations Help Guide Teen Use

From Science Daily:

The legalization of marijuana in Washington state in 2012 gave parents the opportunity for a new teachable moment. Many say that as society has become more permissive, they want information and advice.

Though illegal for anyone under 21, the drug presented a dilemma similar to alcohol: Retailers sold it, people openly consumed it — sometimes to excess — and parents themselves struggled with how to talk to their kids about their own use, past or present.

Unlike with alcohol, research on the health and developmental effects of marijuana is still emerging. And the law’s complexity, along with the accessibility of marijuana products and stores, has left parents thinking more deliberately about how and why to set some ground rules.

Most parents agree that marijuana should be off-limits to children and teenagers, but they want information and advice from trustworthy sources, said Nicole Eisenberg, a research scientist with the University of Washington’s Social Development Research Group. Those findings come from a study published online Jan. 16 in the Journal of Child and Family Studies, by Eisenberg and a team of researchers.

“What I heard a lot of parents saying is, essentially, ‘I can tell my kids not to use it, but I just don’t know how to enforce and reinforce that message,'” Eisenberg said. “Parents are having a hard time reconciling societal norms with personal norms. Society has become more permissive, but at home, most parents don’t want their children to use marijuana. It’s a challenge that leaves them feeling like they don’t know what to do.”

To that end, parents said they want guidance, she added.

“Parents are eager to learn, and open to materials and programs that can help them. They’re open to factual, unbiased, scientific information, and they want to know how to talk to their kids,” Eisenberg said.

Based on focus group interviews with 54 adults, the study examined parents’ attitudes and challenges around marijuana use. Researchers grouped parents according to the ages of their children and by their own usage of marijuana during the past year (as measured by a prior confidential survey); those who had used during the past year, to any degree, were in one group, and those who had not were in another. That separation was designed to better identify differences in how these groups parent; participants were not told anything about other group members’ marijuana use.

Yet, in both groups, there were common themes that emerged which can be useful in delivering educational and prevention-oriented messages, Eisenberg said.

For parents, talking to kids about marijuana can mean many things: explaining its risks and effects, deciding on rules and consequences, and choosing whether to share their own history. Researchers didn’t offer answers — that wasn’t their role, or the purpose of the study — but parents appeared to appreciate hearing from each other, Eisenberg said.

Among the challenges parents discussed were adequate and appropriate consequences for breaking house rules, while a few parents of older kids, especially in the user-groups, described a harm-reduction approach, such as discussing with their teens how to use marijuana safely. Parents who chose this strategy said that while they didn’t want their children to use marijuana, they figured that if the children were going to try it anyway, they might as well educate them.

What makes the issue so thorny is the relatively rapid legal and cultural change around marijuana, said Rick Kosterman, a co-author of the study from the Social Development Research Group. While marijuana has become even more available since these interviews were conducted in 2014, parents’ questions are unlikely to have changed.

“In many ways, parenting around marijuana use is similar to that of alcohol use, since they’re both legal for adults,” Kosterman said. “A key difference is where I think parents and society in general have accepted that some people can become dependent on alcohol and it can ruin people’s lives if used in excess. Parents and kids aren’t so clear about risks of marijuana use — like the potential for misuse or effects on adolescent brains.

“We are still learning about the risks of teen marijuana use, as well as potential medical uses.”

The study’s conclusion points to how parents might seek answers, whether through community-oriented drug prevention programs or through information from health care providers, public health agencies or school programs.

“The fact that parents in this study openly asked for guidance highlights an opportunity for the prevention science community to work with medical professionals, schools and policymakers to fulfill this vital need at a critical time of policy transition in the United States,” the authors wrote.

Alongside this study of parenting practices is a companion study by the same research team, forthcoming in the Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research, about parent perceptions of teens’ exposure to marijuana use following legalization in Washington state.

The parents who agreed to participate in both studies came from a longitudinal study the research group launched in the 1980s called the Seattle Social Development Project. The focus group sample was 39 percent white, 37 percent African American, 17 percent Asian American and 7 percent Native American. Of these groups, approximately 5 percent were Latino.

The study on parenting practices was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Additional authors were Tiffany Jones, a postdoctoral researcher at the UW School of Social Work and an affiliate at Colorado State University; Jennifer Bailey and Kevin Haggerty, of the Social Development Research Group; and Jungeun Olivia Lee of USC.

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Your Higher Power Is A Bridge, Not A Barrier To Recovery

Trusting in God is a barrier for a lot of people who are new to recovery. At the same time, trusting in a “Higher Power” is a roadblock for many people of faith. Struggling with problems is part of the human condition, but addiction is a super-human problem. And super-human problems require a super-human solution.  Here’s how trusting in a Higher Power is a bridge to your recovery, not a barrier.

Julie’s Childhood God Was A Barrier To Recovery

Julie was raised in a strict, religious home. As a kid, she wasn’t allowed to play cards, eat in restaurants that served beer, attend school dances, wear pants, or certainly never entertain the ideas of drinking, smoking, or having sex before marriage. In her family, God was the muscle behind her parents’ strict rules. God was a larger than life, powerful, judge, poised to cast her in a pit of fire for one tiny slip.

Not surprisingly, Julie rebelled against such a strict upbringing. By the time she was 23, Julie was living on the street, addicted to cocaine, and trading sex for drugs. She also played cards.

When Julie entered rehab, she embraced the center’s 12-step teachings with one exception. How could she ever come clean to God or her parents?

The truth is, everything Julie knew about that God wasn’t the truth. Julie’s God was nothing more than an extension of her parents iron-fist control. Ironically, it was the same control that pushed Julie into rebellion.

Earl’s Lack Of God Restricted Recovery

Earl doesn’t believe anything about the Bible, or God, or any other religious notion. According to Earl, nothing in the Bible is scientifically sound and religion is nothing more than a lie used to control people. Julie would probably agree.

As a teen, Earl’s parents enforced zero rules. They thought the best way for him to learn was to try everything. They stood back and let him make his own choices. During much of his early twenties, Earl went to find himself by back-packing from western China into the mountains of Russia. One cold, dreary morning, Earl fell while hiking and broke his back. Four months and six surgeries later, Earl found himself addicted to pain pills.

Like Julie, Earl found a 12 Step recovery program, but he refused to believe in any type of God. He quickly found himself hopeless and isolated without any help to get past his triggers and racing thoughts.

The Need For A Bigger Solution

Addiction kills, steals, and destroys. It ruthlessly affects everyone in the entire family for generations. Parents are forever wounded by a child’s addiction. Likewise, children who’s parents are addicted often grow up to be adult children who lack the communication and relational skills necessary to peacefully navigate the world they live in.

When we first either become aware of the addiction or are finally willing to admit it, we’re utterly broken. Many of us have tried literally everything to get out of the mess we’re in. In fact, we’ve

Step One says:

“We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, substances, or other compulsive behaviors. Our lives had become unmanageable.”

Step Two says:

“We came to believe a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”

We’ve tried every possible solution known to man. We need the help of a Higher Power, a power greater than ourselves.

Each Person Makes Their Own Choice

Our Higher Power can be God, or Jesus, or Buddha. Al-anon literature often refers to “the God of our understanding.” For some, their recovery group is their Higher Power. Others look to forces like nature. The important point here is to recognize the freedom. A Higher Power is extremely personal and no one can choose one for you.

Many who struggle with addiction have been deeply hurt. They need love and acceptance to rebuild self-esteem and character. Turning to a forced Supreme Being doesn’t usually aid in recovery. In early recovery, the idea of trusting a Higher Power isn’t intended to define one’s position in the afterlife. It simply opens us up to receive help.

Many others are also deeply enmeshed with their family or spouses. Choosing to trust their own individual Higher Power may be the first independent choice they make.

The Miracle Of Recovery

Recovery gives us a chance to save, rebuild, and restore our lives. Many times, our recovered lives are more peaceful and enjoyable than even our pre-addiction lives. It’s nothing short of a miracle.

If you are a person of faith, recovery is a miracle. It’s chance to begin an authentic relationship with a loving God as YOU understand Him or Her. You don’t have to be alone and struggle on your own. You’re no longer expected to be perfect, judged by your failings, shame, guilt, and fear. You can find grace, acceptance, guidance and forgiveness.

If you aren’t a person of faith, recovery is a miracle. Watching others enjoy sobriety and rebuild their lives is incredibly powerful. Creating a network of people who are wiser than one individual and have more sobriety can be life-saving and changing. You don’t have to be alone and struggle on your own. You too can find guidance, acceptance, forgiveness, grace, and serenity.

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Charlie Sheen On Sobriety & Working Again

From Jodi Guglielmi & Liz McNeil @ People: Charlie Sheen isn’t afraid to make a joke at his own expense.

The actor, 53, makes a surprise appearance in this year’s Planters Peanut Super Bowl ad, where he delivers a line he wrote himself.

In the commercial, which aired during the second quarter of the Super Bowl on Sunday, Feb. 3, Mr. Peanut goes on a wild ride in the Planters NUTmobile before passing Sheen, who is sitting on a bench.

That’s when the former Two and a Half Men actor looks up from his newspaper and asks, “And people say I’m nuts?”

“The original line was, ‘That guy’s driving like a nut,’ ” Sheen tells PEOPLE of the ad. “And then as soon as I said [the new line], I could hear the reaction of the crowd around the monitor. It was pretty obvious that was the one they would go with.”

“It turned into more of a moment,” he adds.

But while the line is a reference to his more than colorful and headline-making past, Sheen says he’s happy to be sober and living a calmer lifestyle these days.

“I’ve been sober almost 14 months. That was the biggest change for me,” he says. “I really focus on my health, my family and work will come next. I’m excited to be excited again.”

Sheen says his sobriety hasn’t been a struggle and he was ready for his life to change. “I came to it on my own,” he says. “It was just one of those epiphany moments.”

“All I have to do is flash on four or five scenarios that live on the forefront of my memory and just remind myself this is what happened,” he says. “I don’t put myself in positions where dangerous things could happen. I just have a confidence and a focus, and a game plan and I stick to it.”

Sheen, who is the father to daughters Sam, 14, and Lola, 13 with ex Denise Richards; sons Max and Bob, 9 with ex Brooke Mueller and 33-year-old daughter, Cassandra Jade Estevez, from a previous relationship with his high school girlfriend Paula Speert, fills his days by exercising, working on future projects and spending dad-time with his kids.

When asked if his kids ever inquire about his wild past, Sheen says, “I always tell them look, anything you’re curious about or stuff that you think might be dangerous or unhealthy, I’m the guy to talk to. I have all the knowledge,” he says. “I don’t come at them with judgment or anything but love. My experiences can prevent them from going down a similar road and so the whole journey wasn’t a complete waste of time. I have all the data.”

Come this Sunday, Sheen plans to invite his friends over to watch the football game — and yes there will be Planters peanuts.

“It has been a main staple of my snacking choices over the years.”

As for his drink of choice: “I’m a ginger ale guy,” he says, before adding, “It still has got ‘ale’ in the title.”

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Cucumbers Hide $3.5M Of Fentanyl

From Amy Held @ NPR: U.S. Customs and Border Protection says its agents seized a record amount of fentanyl Saturday from a produce truck attempting to enter the country from Mexico at Arizona’s Port of Nogales crossing.

Buried under piles of cucumbers, lay some 254 pounds of fentanyl, worth around $3.5 million, officials announced Thursday. Agents also discovered nearly 395 pounds of methamphetamine, valued at $1.1 million.

The drugs were stashed in a special floor compartment in the trailer, according to CBP, which said the fentanyl seizure is the biggest in the agency’s history.

When the truck driver arrived at the U.S. through the Mariposa Port of Entry Cargo Facility in Nogales, CBP officers conducted a scan “and observed anomalies under the floor of the tractor,” according to court documents. Then a drug sniffing dog picked up an odor coming from the rear of the trailer.

The driver was identified in the court documents as Juan Antonio Torres-Barraza, a 26-year-old Mexican national. He was arrested and charged with two counts of possession with intent to distribute.

Torres told authorities that he “did not know there were narcotics in the trailer,” and that he thought he was simply hauling cucumbers in a truck that he does not own, according to the criminal complaint.

Juan Mariscal, assistant special agent in charge of Homeland Security’s Nogales office indicated that the drug smuggling attempt was part of an organized operation. “They know what they’re doing,” Mariscal said without providing further details, citing the ongoing investigation.

“We’ve seen this type of compartment before,” Nogales Area Port Director Michael Humphries said of the false floor that hid the drugs.

Standing alongside some of the 426 seized packages of drugs stacked in neat piles, federal officials touted the seizure during a news conference Thursday.

“Fentanyl is 80 to 100 times more powerful than morphine,” Humphries said, adding that a few grains could prove lethal. “This past weekend our CBP officers were able to stop an enormous amount of these deadly narcotics from hitting our streets.”

Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, has been a leading cause of overdose deaths in recent years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Opioids pose a real danger to every community in America and are having fatal consequences across our nation,” Humphries said.

President Trump has repeatedly invoked the flow of illegal drugs from Mexico as part of his pitch for an additional $5.7 billion for a border wall. “Most of our drugs come in through the southern border,” he told reporters last month ahead of a trip to Texas. “And they don’t come in through the portals, they come in between the portals where you have no barrier.”

But Humphries said that like Thursday’s record seizure, “most hard narcotics seized [by] CBP are at the ports of entry.”

Humphries said the recent partial government shutdown over funding for a border wall had taken a toll on agents, but that “even during difficult times, such as our funding hiatus,” they continue to demonstrate professionalism and commitment to the job.

But starting Feb. 15, agents may experience another salary hiatus if negotiations on a border deal once again prove fruitless.

As NPR has reported, lawmakers in Washington have “a Feb. 15 deadline to get a bill to the president or agree to another stopgap funding bill to keep the government open. Otherwise, another partial government shutdown looms.”

Mariscal said drug smugglers will carry on whether the U.S. government is open or not.

“They continue with their operations just like we do.”

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Evan Rachel Wood’s Raw Look At Depression

From Michael Rothmanvia @ ABC News: In a very raw and personal essay, “Westworld” star Evan Rachel Wood opened up about her struggles with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, calling mental illness one of the “biggest lies in society today.”

“Because we can’t see depression, it’s easier to write off. It’s easier for people to put a negative stereotype on you,” she wrote in a column for Nylon magazine.

Instead, Wood stressed that a broken arm and a bout of depression are both very real, very traumatizing events in a person’s life, though one can be seen and the other cannot. Then the acclaimed actress got candid like never before.

“When I was 22, I willingly checked myself into a psychiatric hospital, and I have absolutely no shame about it,” she wrote. “Looking back, it was the worst, best thing that ever happened to me.”

Wood explained that after not sleeping or eating in three days and hitting an absolute low point, she called her mother and said, “Mom?… It’s me… I just tried to kill myself… I need to go to a hospital.”

This was the first time she had asked for help.

“The beautiful thing about being at the bottom is there is nowhere to go but up,” she said. “I had to be vulnerable and give up some control. I had to put my shame and my pride aside.”

Wood said she was struggling from mental illness and PTSD after “multiple rapes and a severely abusive relationship that went on for years.”

“I was afraid to be alone, but I also couldn’t be around people. I could barely leave my own house. I was too afraid to go outside. I couldn’t sleep because every little noise was deafening. I was defensive, I was impulsive, and I had no healthy coping mechanisms yet. I lost friends. I lost job opportunities,” she shared.

The now 31-year-old actress explained that some of the choices she made almost a decade ago were really a cry for help.

“I wasn’t crazy, and I didn’t need to be kicked while I was down — I needed help. I needed understanding. I needed to feel unconditional love. I needed to not be judged,” she said.

After she started getting help, Wood said she “was so relieved to feel safe. To feel taken care of, and to feel like no one could find me and hurt me.”

She eloquently described the experience of letting go, meeting new people while in the hospital and finally accepting help and love.

“We were incredibly loving and empathetic to each other,” she wrote, adding that sharing her story made her feel validated and that “it was a great burden lifted.”

The actress slowly started to grow stronger both physically and mentally, and eventually started “to feel like me again.”

Now, years later, Wood continues with therapy but still struggles with PTSD.

“But I know that I will get through it. I have better tools now to get through what seem like the impossible times, and most importantly, I know my worth,” she said. “Depression isn’t weakness, it’s a sickness. Sometimes a deadly one. And sometimes all people need is to know that they are loved and that others are there for them. They may not take your hand right away, but knowing it’s there could save their life one day. Or who knows, you might help save your own.”

Anyone in crisis, or who knows someone in crisis, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741-741.

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3 Places To Find A Healthy Date

I have been widowed for the past 7+ years and often friends will ask me where to find a healthy date. They tell me they can’t find any healthy men. I am surprised since I feel I know a lot of great guys.

I ask them where they are looking for dates and they replied:

Online dating sites
Church
Meet Ups
Night Clubs
Recovery meetings

When I ask the men I know why they don’t date more, they say they too are wanting to find a healthy, fun loving, and independent person. According to The Law of Attraction ‘like attracts like’. Becoming an independent, balanced, and positive individual will allow you to attract the same type of person into your life.

I know for myself I want to date only healthy men. My husband passed away from the disease of alcoholism after 30 years of marriage. The toll it took on me was beyond measure. While I am sure there are many ideas for where to find a date, I have found these three work well for me.

1. Join A Running Or Walking Club

There are places you can sign up to walk or run in the evening each week. Typically, it is at a local running shoe store. There is time to talk before and after the run/walk. If you go each week you get to know everyone’s name. The men I have found here are health conscious and friendly. Men who are investing in their health by running or walking regularly tend to not be addicted to substances. It also has the added benefit of helping me to stay active and healthy.

2. Take Dance Lessons

This is one of my favorite places to meet safe men. Learning to dance is difficult and nearly impossible if someone is high. This tends to filter out men who are abusing alcohol and substances. It also costs money so everyone is typically financially sober as well. It is also a great way to get to know a lot of different men in one evening. Everyone is nervous and there is a lot laughter. There are all kinds of dance so you can pick the one you enjoy the most.

3. Attend A Weekly Yoga Class

Men who are interested in doing yoga are often into other healthy habits; hence they’re likely to be a healthy date. I find it easy to talk before and after class and get a feel for them without investing much emotional energy or time. If I go to the class for several months I not only get to know them, but they become yoga friends. Which means, I get introduced to their male friends who start coming.

The most important factor when looking for a romantic companionship for me is to realize I have been affected by the disease of alcoholism. If I don’t want to be co-dependent in my relationships and addicted to rescuing men who seem to “need me” I know I have to work my stuff. The real first step is to begin looking at my own recovery and be sure I am in a good place emotionally and mentally before bringing another relationship into my life.

In recovery, they suggest if you can keep a plant alive and healthy for 6 months you can get a pet. If you can keep the pet happy and well taken care of for 6 months, you can start a relationship.

For me I gave myself the to-do list of seeing a therapist and attending recovery meetings regularly for a year and then clearing all prospective boyfriends with my friends. Even if my radar was off they could often see any glaring red flags. Romance is wonderful and going out on dates is a fun way to meet new people. In recovery it is important to balance finding the right person with being the right person.

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More Doctors Are Prescribing More Benzos

From Rhitu Chatterjee @ NPR: The percentage of outpatient medical visits that led to a benzodiazepine prescription doubled from 2003 to 2015, according to a study published Friday. And about half those prescriptions came from primary care physicians.

This class of drugs includes the commonly used medications Valium, Ativan and Xanax. While benzodiazepines are mostly prescribed for anxiety, insomnia and seizures, the study found that the biggest rise in prescriptions during this time period was for back pain and other types of chronic pain. The findings appear online in JAMA Network Open.

Benzodiazepine Prescribing Is On The Rise

And while benzodiazepines are best for short-term use, according to physicians, the new study found that long-term use of these drugs has also risen. From 2005 to 2015, continuing prescriptions increased by 50 percent.

Long-term use of the drugs can cause physical dependence, addiction and death from overdose.

“I don’t think people realize that benzodiazepines share many of the same characteristics of opioids,” says Dr. Sumit Agarwal, an internist, primary care physician and researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and one of the authors of the new study.

“They are addictive,” he says. “They cause you to have slower breathing; they cause you to be altered in terms of mental status. And then, eventually, [they] can cause overdose and deaths.”

Benzodiazepines: America’s ‘Other Prescription Drug Problem’

Shots – Health News

Benzodiazepines: America’s ‘Other Prescription Drug Problem’

Previous studies have shown a nearly eightfold rise in mortality rates from overdoses involving benzodiazepines — from 0.6 in 100,000 people in 1999 to 4.4 in 2016.

“That’s somewhere around 10,000 to 12,000 deaths at the hands of benzodiazepines,” says Agarwal. “This rise is happening quietly, outside of the public eye.”

And according to a recent report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the overdose mortality rate involving benzodiazepines for women between the ages of 30 and 64 has increased by 830 percent between 1996 and 2017.

“Women are more likely to be prescribed these medications,” Agarwal says. “Women are more likely to come in to the clinic to be treated for anxiety and depression, and benzodiazepines tend to be one of the medications we reach to.”

“The study highlights that we have a very serious problem with benzodiazepines,” says Anna Lembke, an associate professor of psychiatry and medical director of addiction medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine. She wasn’t involved in the new study.

“I am concerned that our national focus on opioids has hidden the problem related to benzodiazepines — that’s our next frontier,” says Dr. Joanna Starrels, as associate professor at the department of medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She wasn’t involved in the new study, but co-authored a 2016 study that found a rise in prescription rates and overdose deaths from this class of drugs between 1996 and 2013.

Lembke notes that the biggest rise in outpatient visits that led to benzodiazepine prescriptions were from primary care physicians and not psychiatrists.

“I think the big message here is that primary care doctors are really left with burden of dealing, not only with chronic pain and opioid prescription, but also benzodiazepine prescriptions,” she says.

The trends, she adds, reflect “the incredible burden of care on primary care physicians, who are given little time, or resources” to handle a high volume of pain patients with complex conditions.

“That’s partly what got us into the opioid epidemic in the first place,” Lembke notes.

“Generally speaking, primary care physicians have not received the training that they need to prescribe medications that have such high risk for addiction or overdose,” says Starrels.

“Primary care doctors,” she says, “are the frontline providers. “And in many settings, particularly in rural areas, we may be the only providers. So we end up needing to treat conditions where specialists may be better trained — like chronic pain, addiction and anxiety.”

Given the rise in benzodiazepine prescriptions for back pain and chronic pain, “it may be that benzodiazepines are taking the place of opioids,” says Lembke.

However, Starrels cautions that the new study couldn’t determine whether the patients who were treated for back or chronic pain were prescribed a benzodiazepine for their pain. It’s also possible they were prescribed these medications for anxiety or insomnia in addition to being treated for pain.

The new study also found that the co-prescribing of benzodiazepines with opioids has risen during this time period. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, says Lembke.

“What we don’t want doctors to do is cut patients off of opioids,” she says. “That’s neither humane nor medically the right path. Some of these co-prescribing may be because doctors are tapering patients off of opioids.”

But co-prescribing these two kinds of medications can be dangerous. “They both slow down the central nervous system in complementary ways [that] increase the risk of overdose deaths,” says Starrels. “It is dangerous — and generally advised not to prescribe together.”

In 2016, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned doctors about the dangers of prescribing opioids and anxiety medications together.

Agarwal says that warning may have had a positive effect on prescription rates of these anxiety meds. “Next couple of years of data will be very telling,” he says.

Starrels notes that benzodiazepines have not been shown to be effective for chronic pain. And there’s more effective treatment for insomnia, she says.

For example, a form of talk therapy has been shown to be one of the most effective treatments for insomnia. And simply practicing better sleep hygiene can make a big difference, she says.

Physicians who want to move patients off their long-term use of benzodiazepines should do it slowly over time, Starrels cautions. “It has to be slow and medically monitored over time,” she says, because “sudden withdrawal can be fatal.”

She says primary care doctors should get better guidelines for prescribing these drugs, just as there are CDC guidelines for opioid prescription.

“People have started calling this ‘our other prescription drug problem’ — the first one being opioids, but this one’s flying under the radar,” Agarwal says. “It would be great if we address it before it becomes an epidemic — if there isn’t already one.”

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Emma Stone On Anxiety & Breaking The Stigma

From Claudia Harmata @ People: Sitting in a classroom at just 15 years old, Emma Stone didn’t let her anxiety stop her from making a decision that would change her life — convincing her parents to let her move to Los Angeles to pursue her passion for acting.

Acting, along with therapy, became the primary way that Stone was able to cope and conquer her anxiety. And since garnering fame for her roles in Easy A, La La Land and now The Favourite, Stone has used her own experience to raise awareness for mental health disorders.

Now, the Academy Award-winning actress, 30, plans to continue helping other kids struggling with mental health and learning disorders by joining the Board of Directors at the Child Mind Institute — a nonprofit organization dedicated to doing just that.

“I’m honored to join the board of the Child Mind Institute,” Stone said in a statement to PEOPLE. “This is a stigma-shattering organization I am deeply passionate about, and I’m looking forward to helping the Child Mind Institute continue to advance its critically important work.”

Stone was previously involved with the organization when she contributed to their #MyYoungerSelf awareness campaign in 2017, when she shared a personal video opening up about her battle with anxiety.

“It’s so normal, everyone experiences a version of anxiety or worry in their lives and maybe we go through it in a different or more intense way, or for longer periods of time, but there’s nothing wrong with you,” Stone shared in the video. “To be a sensitive person that cares a lot that takes kids in in a deeper way is actually part of what makes you amazing.”

She continued, “Don’t ever feel like you’re a weirdo for it because we’re all weirdos.”

The Child Mind Institute is excited to have Stone join their Board of Directors, according to the Institute’s president, Dr. Harold S Koplewicz.

“Emma’s courage in openly discussing her story with anxiety is inspirational,” Dr. Koplewicz said. “It offers hope to millions of kids that it is possible to overcome their own challenges and thrive.”

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