Healthy hudson valley magazine 2015 e sub

Ulster Publishing’s

Healthy Hudson Valley Magazine M i

How are you feeling?

What we do to maintain our health, such as self diagnosis and its dangers, pets, and treating depression

2015-16

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• April 30, 2015

Healthy Hudson Valley

How do you feel? y original bright idea was to organize the contents for this magazine around symptoms. I kept thinking about old-style pediatric and homemedical books, the sorts of things where one looks up what’s wrong alphabetically. Or, as the current go-to, Wikipedia, defines them, “complaints which indicate disease ... noticed by the patient and causing people to go and see a health practitioner.”

They say that too much knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Too little knowledge is even worse.

Instead of jumping onto the Internet and coming up with theories about what might be wrong with us and going to our doctors with

M

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters by Francisco Goya.

half-baked concepts, we should learn to discuss with them the specifics of our symptoms. Reflecting on the minutiae of how we feel, we should identify the normal things that aren’t working right. We should learn to use the healthcare system to talk about things that can be prevented, the better to protect our overall health.

We learned that our system just isn’t yet geared to a place where most of us would feel comfortable, let alone financially supported, in regularly checking in with our medical professionals about all our symptoms ... and worries. So we’ve ended up in this issue with a hodgepodge of glimpses into the various ways in which we healthcare consumers work to feel better.

Paul Smart, editor

Our contributors...

Dan Barton grew up in Hyde Park, graduated from SUNY New Paltz, and has been working locally as a journalist for going on 25 years. He is currently editor of Ulster Publishing’s Kingston Times.

Jennifer Brizzi writes on food and health for newspapers, magazines and books, and does recipe development, cooking demonstrations and teaching. Her website is www.jenniferbrizzi.com.

Anitra Brown, a freelance writer who specializes in spas and wellness as About.com’s s pas expert, has worked in spas as a licensed esthetician and on the nominating panel for SpaFinder’s Wellness Travel Awards. She wrote for The New York Times bestsellers “1,000 Places To See Before You Die” and “1,000 Places To See in the USA and Canada Before You Die,” and is a contributing editor for Hudson Valley Magazine .

Lisa Childers has been writing about education and sitting through school board meetings for Woodstock Times since 2005. She is a certified art therapist from School of Visual Arts, and has a BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago. Originally from Youngstown, Ohio, Childers now permanently resides in Woodstock and is the parent of one child (in college), a dog and three cats.

Lee Harrington is a contributing writer and editor at Bark magazine who has been writing about dogs for the past 15 years. Her critically acclaimed memoir about raising an abused hunting dog in New York City, entitled Rex and the City, was published by Random House in 2006; a new expanded edition was released

by Diversion Books in 2014. She is a part-time Ulster

County resident and volunteers at the Ulster County SPCA. Corinne Mol edited the University of Victoria student newspaper, “The Martlet,” named after a mythical footless bird that never lands. After living in Montreal, Thailand and off-the-grid on Lasqueti Island and Read Island in British Columbia, she finally landed in Woodstock when she met her husband.

Chris Rowley is a reporter for the Shawangunk Journal and the author of many science fiction and fantasy novels, most recently, the Netherworld trilogy, published 2010-11.

Paul Smart has been a writer and editor for Ulster Publishing for two decades, has edited a number of regional weekly and biweekly newspapers, and has served as a radio host on WGXC-FM in Hudson, Catskill and Acra. He lives in Greene County.

Violet Snow is a journalist, author and frequent Ulster Publishing presence. She specializes in history, genealogy, suspense fiction and nature, as well as also expressing herself in photography, video and music.

Robert Burke Warren is a lifelong musician who has been delighting children over the past decade as “Uncle Rock” while he maintains his own solo recording career and playing in The Catskill 45s. He is also an accomplished writer and Weekling.

This issue’s cover by Melanie Schneider of Greene County shows her five-year-old daughter Sadye at her doctor’s office. It turned out that she had a case of strep throat and Coxsackie A virus.

Healthy Hudson Valley

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School nursing “I can’t talk right now, I have a student with me”

WIKICOMMONS.

The first American school nurse was hired to cut down on New York City student absenteeism in 1902.

By Lisa Childers

I

n the century-plus time that school nurses have taken care of children in school settings, their roles and responsibilities have evolved. There was a time when a school nurse was in charge of reducing communicable diseases, such as the cold or flu, through education of hygiene and intervention, or offering support along with a Band-Aid to children with scraped knees. In today’s world, both these childhood common problems are still on the radar of a school nurse. However whether in a public or private school, a nurse plays a much more complex role today, tackling new complexities in health, both physical and mental.

According to the National Association of School Nurses (NASN), the first nurse entered a school in New York City in 1902 in order to reduce absenteeism from com-

municable diseases. Students learn better when healthy.

The NASN goal states that, “The school nurse supports student success by providing healthcare through assessment, intervention, and follow-up for all children within the school setting. The school nurse addresses the physical, mental, emotional, and social health needs of students and supports their achievement in the learning process.”

Naomi Stevens, nurse for Kingston’s public high school, echoes the same goal in slightly more specific terms. “The primary goal of a school nurse is to make sure students are healthy enough to be in class and be learning to the greatest potential,” she writes in an email.

A school nurse is often kept busy by a flow of students coming through the door. At various times, a writer seeking information is frequently put on hold, asked to phone after school hours, or asked whether questions Continued on page 10

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disorder, asthma, daily medicould be submitted via email cation etc.” and completed after hours.

One hears the same answer According to the state from various nurses, the education depar tment gist of which is “I can’t talk (NYSED), nurses are reright now, I have a student quired to know how to use with me.” and keep on hand medical Nurses are required to exequipment such as, emertinguish metaphorical large gency epinephrine injector and small fires hindering stu(epi-pen) for allergic reacdent well-being. State mantions, cardiac defibrilladates require that students tor and nebulizer. NYSED be checked for a myriad of mandates have become both health-related issues, includa blessing and burden to ing but not limited to Body school nurses. The paperMass Index (BMI), scoliosis, work never ends. Parents hearing, vision, and mental must fill out pages and pages health. of it. Every nurse must then review and check off data for “All of the health offices at hundreds or more students.

Onteora deal with comprehensive health and wellness These records are not unwhich includes physical, important in keeping stumental, emotional, spiritual, dents safe and healthy. Says and social health,” explains Woodstock Day School nurse WIKICOMMONS Onteora nurse Colleen MacColleen Short, “We have Daniel in an email. “Stu- The first nursing school in the U.S. was systems in place now and founded at Bellevue Hospital in 1873. dents bring a wide range of the assessment piece is very problems to the health office, ranging from head lice to important.” Covers students from nursery school through suicide threat to broken [eye]glasses. Many students grade twelve, Short must follow the same mandates as require care for chronic illness such as diabetes, seizure a public school. Nursing being “a litigious profession

April 30, 2015 • 11

Healthy Hudson Valley

in general,” she notes, the mandates help establish a protocol. If there is a head injury on the sports field, she explains, a system is in place that helps a nurse make snap assessments in what could in extreme circumstances be a life-or-death situation.

The paperwork begins in nursery school, where health forms and immunization records must be up to date, reviewed and signed off by the nurse. Nurses are responsible for assuring that all vaccines are current as required by law. Parents sometimes need to be notified. If immunization arrangements are not up to date, children cannot attend school. Immunization mandates have increased due to the larger number of diseases prevented through vaccines.

“The newest immunization schedule has created problems for school nurses, doctors and parents due to the every changing state mandates,” writes MacDaniel.

By secondary school, more forms must be submitted with the latest information. If a student wishes to join a sports team, additional forms, including data on a physical from a doctor giving permission to play sports must be filled out, signed and submitted to the school nurse. If the student is unable to get to a doctor, the school will provide one for him or her.

“We have a large sports program at the high school which require yearly physicals and much paperwork for each sport season,” explains MacDaniel. The nurse and athletic coach must review all of the information and take necessary precautions.

Stevens summarizes, “Paperwork is an necessary evil

in the scope of medicine.”

State education law no longer allows a student to carry prescription medications on their person unless it’s needed in emergency situations, such as epinephrine injector or inhalers for asthma. A backup for these types of medications is normally supplied by the nurse’s office, kept under lock and key and with physician instructions.

It doesn’t appear there’s much turnover of employment for school nurses. The nurses interviewed have been in the profession a minimum of 19 years. Why such longevity? “The bottom line is,” replies Short, “the love and care of the students and advocacy is a big part of it.”

Oh, yes, there are other responsibilities. The health offices in the Onteora district coordinate arranging for coats, helping hands, and holiday food baskets for needy families.

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• April 30, 2015

Healthy Hudson Valley

On-line hypochondriac Clicking your way into medical insanity

By Dan Barton rote H.L. Mencken many years ago, “A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.” I think this goes double for the Internet. When it comes to trying to diagnose one’s own self via the Internet, it goes triple or maybe even quadruple.

You know how it goes, Maybe you’ve done this yourself (I sure have). You’re not feeling well, and you can’t quite put your finger on exactly why. Rather than first consult your own doctor, who may be unavailable because it’s one in the morning or maybe you just don’t want to drop a $30 or $40 co-pay this week, off you go to Dr. Google. The next thing you know, that soreness in your hip or irritation of the sinus leads you to believe, with all your might, that you do not have plain-old bursitis or allergies. Nope, it absolutely has to be a case of Tasmanian crotch palsy or chronic obstructive sinusitis, neither of which or curable.

Neither of which you actually have. But before that finally dawns on you, or is pointed out by a medical professional in real time, you’ve driven yourself half nuts with anxiety and may well have signed up for an account at designmyowncoffin.com. Really, besides getting loaded and trolling your ex’s Facebook, there are few more self-destructive things you can do on the web.

W

There’s been a term for it, minted in Britain circa 2000 — not long after the web became commonplace.

It’s called “cyberchondria”; the phenomenon of selfguided surfing on the Internet for health information leading people to believe, usually in error, that they have an illness.

In 2008, two Microsoft researchers, Ryen White and Eric Horvitz, conducted the first study which tried to figure out how much of a problem Internet self-diagnosis was. Their study included a survey of 515 Microsoft employees — people familiar with the Internet who may be presumed to approach it with slightly more critical thinking than regular folk. Or maybe not: according to the survey, about 90 percent of them started out searching for information on regular medical symptoms ended up visiting sites about more serious maladies.

“People tend to look at just the first couple of results,” Horvitz was quoted in The New York Times as saying back in 2008. “If they find ‘brain tumor’ or ‘A.L.S.,’ that’s their launching point.”

It was that way for me a few times. After a nodule was found on my thyroid gland, I went straight to my laptop and found some information stating that less than ten percent of such nodules are cancerous. I immediately began planning my funeral and got started on the first stage of the Kubler-Ross process. (A biopsy performed by a surgeon creepily reminiscent of William S. Burroughs’ Dr. Benway found the nodule was just bonus thyroid.)

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April 30, 2015 • 13

WIKCICOMMONS

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â&#x20AC;˘ April 30, 2015

Healthy Hudson Valley

WIKCICOMMONS

Another time was when, shortly after a long plane ride stuffed into a more-cramped-than-usual airplane seat and after some start/stop urination in a turbulencetumbled airplane bathroom, I came down with an apparent case of hematospermia. (Look it up, I dare you.)

Somehow I looked right past the â&#x20AC;&#x153;is in the overwhelming

majority harmless and disappears within a few weeksâ&#x20AC;? and got right to the â&#x20AC;&#x153;carcinoma of the seminal vesicles.â&#x20AC;?

(It disappeared within half a week, much to my relief at not having to have cringeworthy pre-intimacy â&#x20AC;&#x153;talksâ&#x20AC;? with future partners.)

How does this happen? A large part of it, I figure, is

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Healthy Hudson Valley

basic curiosity â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the essentially human trait which has led to all sorts of good things and some bad things too for eons before the Internet came about. Another part of it, I think, is money. The commerce side of the web is all about clicks â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the more clicks one gets, the more money one gets from website ads. We also know bad news gets more attention than good news, so the incentive is to put the bad news ahead of the good.

Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s also the â&#x20AC;&#x153;cult of the amateurâ&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the sense among many today that so-called experts have been co-opted by dark, conformist forces and cannot be trusted over oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own unsullied intuition. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m all for skepticism, but Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m also all for knowing oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own knowledge is limited, and the good grades I got in high-school bio are no substitute for medical school and years of clinical experience.

So, my advice is as follows: discriminate in your webbased self-diagnosis and stick to sites from places with a track record, like the Mayo Clinic, National Institute of Health, et al. (One interesting development is CrowdMed, a web-based â&#x20AC;&#x153;crowdsourcingâ&#x20AC;? platform detailed in a recent Ulster Publishing health column; check out our healthyhv.com for that piece, in case you missed it.)

Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t panic. Yes, some people do get the worst of diagnoses. But keep the laws of probability in your mind as you try to match your symptoms to your ailment. And, above all, find a doctor you trust and see them, in real life. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s really no substitute for that.

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• April 30, 2015

Healthy Hudson Valley

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â&#x20AC;˘ April 30, 2015

Healthy Hudson Valley

Spring allergies Those trees must be having sex again!

By Chris Rowley

I

tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s that time again. Yep, spring, which while welcome after a brutal winter still has a fearsome downside for allergy sufferers. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s because the trees are having sex, which they do once a year, which is kind of sweet and almost chaste of them.

Unfortunately, most trees depend on the wind, unlike most flowering plants which get pollinating insects to do the job of moving grains of male pollen onto female stigmas. Trees being, well, trees, and usually the biggest living things around, they churn out a huge volume of pollen. So much of it, in fact, that cars, windows, house siding, lawn furniture and decks can all turn green and yellow under the onslaught in an hour or two.

That means we all breathe in some of that pollen. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

inescapable, especially on dry windy days when it gets blown from one county to the next. For allergy sufferers, those days are hellish.

Of course, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nothing personal. They were here first.

Trees have been doing it their way for a long, long time, since long before there were mammals, let alone humans with sensitive noses, throats and eyes. Among the earliest known trees is one called Wattieza, a fossil found in New York State in 2005. It dated back to 385 million years ago, the middle of the Devonian period. In that era, the earliest trees truly changed the world, spreading roots through the soil, and removing so much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere that oxygen levels rose to almost 35% of the atmosphere (today itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 21%). That allowed for scarily huge insects, dragonflies the size of seagulls, millipedes as big as cats. Billions of tons of carbon turned

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April 30, 2015 • 19

Healthy Hudson Valley

PHOTO COURTESY OF WIKICOMMONS

Pollen spores in extreme close up.

To get a little more technical, these proteins are “allergens.” In our bodies they’re recognized by Immunoglobin E -- an immune system antibody, present in tiny amounts in our bodies, which binds on to the allergen with one end of itself and then hooks up with its other end to a mast cell. That activates the mast cell, which goes into action and releases a flood of histamines -- proteins designed to destroy invasive microbes. IgE’s primary function has nothing to do with pollen proteins. IgE is there to protect against invading parasites like those that cause schistomiasis and malaria.

For those of us with sufficiently sensitive immune systems, this activation sets off what Sharma calls, “the itch, the sneeze and the wheeze.”

“The proteins responsible are like a lock-and-key system that enable the pollen grain to grow a root to

into tree trunks that were sequestered into the ground as coal. And yes, this was followed by an ice age.

Today’s trees have long histories, too. Conifers got going around 250 million years ago. The hardwoods started up about 150 million years ago. Much as we like to think this planet is ours, it is really the planet of the trees. This is really too bad for people with allergic reactions to pollen.

Actually, as noted allergist Dr. Pradeep Sharma of Poughkeepsie explains, it’s not the pollen per se. “The problem lies with the proteins on the outer layer of the pollen granules,” he says. “When we inhale these granules of pollen, these proteins become dislodged and are absorbed through our mucus membranes [nose, throat, eyes] and enter our bodies. There they initiate an immune reaction, because they’re foreign proteins.”

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• April 30, 2015

Healthy Hudson Valley

IMAGE BY BRUCE BLAUS

Illustration depicting inflammation associated with allergic rhinitis. reach the ovary in the stigma of the female flower and open it to allow pollination” he explains. “It’s a beautiful thing if you aren’t allergic to those proteins.”

This year the allergy season is likely to be intense.

The Hudson Valley -- a temperate rain forest-- receives 44 inches of rain a year on average, enough to ensure forestation and plenty of pollen. The past winter was marked by a very cold February with lots of snow. That was followed by a cold March, ensuring a slow meltoff.

The upside has been less flooding in the region. The water table has been refreshed, and the trees will benefit.

Spring is likely to be short and front-loaded.

Alas, we know what that means. A prodigious outpouring of pollen is on the cards.

Dr. Sharma notes that there are many over the counter

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anti-histamine products for most of us who have mild to moderate allergies to tree pollen to use. “They even have steroid nasal sprays now, available over the counter.”

(See, Flonase, Rhinocort, Nasacort, etc.)

“Most patients can manage the problem with those,” says Sharma. “But for somebody with more significant allergies, well, they come to us.”

Sharma and other allergists do have some useful weapons in the fight. “There are some prescription medications that can be added,” he says. “And then there’s also the use of allergy immunization therapy.

Recently the FDA approved some treatments that are non-shot, that is, they don’t require weekly injections.

So for grass and ragweed pollen problems, there are now tablets you take. You begin that course under physician

Healthy Hudson Valley

supervision, and then you continue at home.â&#x20AC;?

This gets around the problem of having to have weekly injections to overcome the allergic response to particular allergens. The process begins with a skin test, and analysis of the patientâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s needs, and then proceeds to the course of injections. The need for multiple doctor visits, over months and even years, is the primary reason only about five per cent of people with serious allergies have ever gotten the shots, despite the fact that they can provide real relief.

The advent of a tablet form that can carry the same kind of protein extracts used in the allergy shots may bring a major change for the third or more of people who suffer badly from allergies.

Of course, you still need to know what it is youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re allergic to, and that means going to an allergist. Sharma provides another bit of useful advice for all those who suffer from the annual outpouring of tree pollen. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Once symptoms begin,â&#x20AC;? he says, â&#x20AC;&#x153;we become sensitized to all kinds of allergens. So, dust or heavy fragrances can set it off.â&#x20AC;? In our bodies, that combination of IgE and mast cells, locked and loaded, is ready to spill histamines at the slightest provocation. Clearly, pre-spring cleaning and less fragrance are important options. Another is to try and avoid the great outdoors on particularly bad days, which are usually dry, sunny and windy. It may not help with the runny nose and itchy eyes, but at least we have the comfort of knowing that this annoyance is just a byproduct of the effort by big trees to make little trees.

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22

• April 30, 2015

Healthy Hudson Valley

My personal journey A wholistic path through depression

By Corinne Mol found myself staying in bed all day, not wanting to see anyone, not wanting to go anywhere. I had little energy and low self-confidence. I felt shame and embarrassment that I wasn’t functioning like I thought I should be.

A fourth-year undergraduate in university, I thought I might be suffering from some kind of memory impairment. I went into an exam which I had studied for, and couldn’t understand a word on the test paper. I couldn’t remember anything I had crammed into my brain for the past three days.

My professors kindly let me postpone that exam and gave me indefinite extensions on two papers after I confessed I was feeling suicidal. “No exam or undone paper is worth killing yourself over!” one understand-

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Despite overwhelming anxiety at my ability to perform or even talk to anyone at a conference I had committed to go to, I forced myself to get on the plane. I was shaking in terror of failure. I traveled 3000 miles to be at the conference near where my mother and little brother had moved to, across Canada, after the divorce from my father. Visiting friends in their 22nd floor Toronto apartment, I wanted to throw myself off their balcony.

When I got back, I collapsed into a new home, with new roommates. I stayed in bed for several months. I went on welfare. It was winter, and we were too poor to heat the house. I crawled out from under the covers only to go to the cold kitchen to slap together peanutbutter-and-jelly sandwiches. Any other kind of food left me feeling completely overwhelmed. I’d go back to Continued on page 26

Healthy Hudson Valley

April 30, 2015 • 23

IMAGE BY WIKICOMMONS

24

• April 30, 2015

Healthy Hudson Valley

Advancements in breast cancer research help over 2.8 million survivors maintain a healthy lifestyle in the U.S. – so does the changing face of healthcare. With more options, treatment and affordability than ever, HealthAlliance of the Hudson Valley wants its patient community in the driver’s seat. Take hold of the wheel and make your healthy decision today.

Your loved ones will thank you for it.

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Healthy Hudson Valley

April 30, 2015 • 25

Track Your Meds

Some 40% of hospital medication errors occur because clinical staff don’t know what medicines you take. Around 20% of these errors may cause harm.

This doesn’t just happen at hospitals. Patients may have several doctors prescribing drugs.

Medication reconciliation can greatly reduce errors.

It involves listing your meds and sharing this info with your medical provider. The provider will compare this list to any medication orders to resolve any discrepancies.

Learn from HealthAlliance how to create your own list to help ensure your safety and prevent adverse drug reactions.

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26

• April 30, 2015

Healthy Hudson Valley

IMAGE CARE OF WIKICOMMONS

bed, read anarchist zines all day, remembering nothing that I had read.

I was shocked when a doctor I finally saw suggested that I had depression. I thought depression was overwhelming sadness. I felt numb and lethargic as though I

had a heavy weight on my chest. When I thought about completing my remaining papers and exams so that I could graduate, there was anxiety in my solar plexus. I definitely did not feel sad.

The doctor asked me if I had any skeletons in my closet. I couldn’t think of any. She asked me whether I’d like some medication. I said no. I couldn’t go to student counseling because I was no longer enrolled. When I told the doctor I was fantasizing about suicide, she suggested I go to group therapy at a nearby hospital.

I eventually made a terrifying decision to go – it seemed a smidgen better than suicide. We met on a floor of the psych ward, and I felt even more ashamed. I had taken on the stigma of being mentally ill.

After five weeks of sitting mostly silently in group therapy, and an IQ test that reassured me that I was still intelligent, even if I couldn’t remember much, I quit the program and decided to take healing into my own hands.

I had noticed that after eating my sandwiches I felt

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Student depression Some studies show that as many as one in three college students suffer at some point with depression serious enough to impair their ability to function. Symptoms of depression include feeling sad, anxious, empty, hopeless, guilty, worthless, helpless, irritable or restless most of the time. There can be a loss of pleasure or interests and significant changes in appetite and/or weight. Persons can suffer from insomnia or excessive sleepiness, agitation, loss of energy, overwhelming feeling of fatigue, an inability to concentrate, and recurrent thoughts of suicide.

For college students, contributing factors to depression include living away from family for the first time, missing family and friends, feeling alone and isolated, experiencing conflict in relationships, facing new and sometimes difficult school work, and worrying about finances.

Students can have a shaky identity when familiar people no longer reinforce their identity. Lack of confidence can lead to poor choices about drinking and drugs. Some 45% of students admit to binge drinking and 21% to abusing prescription or illegal drugs.

more sluggish and dull and fuzzy-headed, almost like being drunk and feeling stupid. I decided to change how I had been eating.

I went on a brown-rice fast – eating only brown rice.

After a week I felt somewhat better. After a few more weeks of steamed vegetables and rice, I felt well enough to apply for a job. I got it. Spring arrived, the depression gradually lifted. I rode my bike daily across town to my new job.

That fall I completed my deferred schoolwork and graduated.

I want to share my journey through depression without the use of medications. For some reason, I distrusted pills. Perhaps it was because I distrusted drug companies. Perhaps it was because I suspected that the antibiotics and birth-control pills supplied by my doctors had contributed to my depressions.

There is evidence, now, that both going on and coming off “the pill” can trigger depression. When I was in college, in the 1980s, antibiotics were given to me every time I went to health services with a cold. Antibiotics are one category of a large list of medications that can lead to depression.

It’s not that I am opposed to medication or would ever tell anyone to not take medication for depression. Medication and therapy are the standard medical treatments for depression. Recent studies have indicated that therapy is as effective as medication. The two are often used in conjunction with each other. Studies

indicate this regimen is up to 80% effective in reducing or eliminating depressive symptoms. They have helped many people and saved many lives.

Still, I chose other methods of healing.

Although I can’t say for sure what caused my depression, or what ultimately healed it, a number of therapeutic and self-healing techniques rekindled my sense of wholeness and connection with life, alleviating the acute alienation I had felt.

My personal journey took many forms. The main things that helped me were meditation, chi kung, yoga, t’ai chi, yogic breathing techniques, a healthy diet, sunshine, traveling, acupuncture, acupressure, co-counseling, non-violent communication, singing and nature.

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• April 30, 2015

Healthy Hudson Valley

Sacred space “Putting something on paper makes it more real, more tangible.

It speeds up the healing process”

By Violet Snow

W

hen her daughter had cancer, author Abigail Thomas began teaching memoir writing to cancer patients at Benedictine Hospital in Kingston. Inspired by a visit to the oncology support program, Thomas offered to give a five-week writing workshop. Four years later, the workshop is still going strong.

Craig Mawhirt, one of the original students, felt isolated while recovering from cancer on his vocal cords.

Joining the group helped him rejoin the world. “What saved me was writing and everything that goes with that,” he said. “You feel like you’re creating, you’re doing something, you’re important.” Now cancer-free, he continues to attend the workshop every week.

Mawhirt, an artist and an art historian, had had what he termed “a beautiful, deep Gregory Peck voice.” Family and friends abandoned him after his diagnosis, he felt.

When his vocal cords were removed, he had to relearn how to speak and how to swallow. The workshop members have become his family. “We became a solid bloc, helping each other,” he explained. “You’re listening to people read what they wrote. You read something, and people say, How amazing! It makes you feel close.”

Illness is not always the subject of the writing. When new students come into the class, Thomas asks them to pick any ten years of their life and reduce that period to two pages of three-word sentences. “It’s like an initiation,” she explained. “There’s nowhere to hide behind a three-word sentence. The sentences can be funny, horrifying, interesting. There’ll be a sentence that has

IMAGE BY WIKICOMMONS

Healthy Hudson Valley

a little hum. I want to know about that. I have them take this sentence and turn it into a memoir.”

Mawhirt wrote a piece, called Hush-a-Bye Island, about his mother singing to him when he was three years old. “I can remember climbing down from my high chair, my mom bathing me, putting me to bed, singing to me,” he muses in his scratchy, hollow, posttracheotomy voice. “My mother’s gone, her voice is stilled, and my voice was lost to cancer. But I still think about that song and hear it. And I’m just as scared as when I was three — but I’m scared of different things.”

In 2013, Thomas’ students published an anthology of short writings, Holding On, Letting Go, edited by several of the writers, including Mawhirt. He found the experience to be part of his healing process. “I worked on it 16 hours a day,” he said. “The book demanded that I get involved. I had a job, discussing what should go in, arranging the stories.”

After years of struggling to find employment, Mawhirt now works as an archivist at the Ulster County Veterans Service Agency.

A

nique Taylor teaches a weekly poetry class for the oncology support program, as well as prose classes for the Bard College Lifetime Learning Institute and the Roxbury-based collective Writers in the Mountains. At Benedictine, said Taylor, “We don’t talk about healing, but in all my classes that’s an underlying influence. Poetry can save your life.”

Poet Annie LaBarge, who has been in both Taylor’s and Thomas’ workshops, is a head-injury survivor, a volunteer at the oncology support program, and a former teacher. “I don’t know many other groups of people who’ve experienced as much loss as in my life,” she said.

“I’ve had two suicides in my family, lost my career and my functioning. Coming back from a head injury was hard to do as a solitary person.” Group members have taken her into their families, and she feels Thomas knows her better than anyone in her own family does.

Jerrice Baptiste, who has published a book of poetry, Wintry Mix, and two children’s books, joined Taylor’s workshop because it helped her cope with having close relatives affected by cancer. “In the group, you don’’t have to pretend that everything is well,” she said. “You can talk about the devastation. And then putting something on paper makes it more real, more tangible. It speeds

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up the healing process.”

When Taylor started her class last fall, she was planning to read well-known poets, analyze their work, and give assignments. “I soon realized that people were coming in with different needs,” she said. “Recently we’ve been carefully workshopping poems that students bring in from their work between classes. Through that we discuss character, voice, diction, flow — the most important always being ‘heart’ and what is most deeply affecting. With very few changes, we can turn a poem that isn’t quite working into something wonderful.”

Poetry takes on a particular power because it’s nonlinear, said Taylor. “When we give ourselves over to writing poetry, we open up a flow that is partly ours and partly something uncharted, that flows through us, unlocking the unknown,” she explained. “In connecting with this and expressing it, we welcome in a kind of healing that we hadn’t known existed.”

S

ome of the students have writing experience. Others are beginners. “People who haven’t written before have really found ways to express all kinds of things,” noted Thomas. “It’s not always cathartic, but it makes something else out of what’s otherwise impossible to live with.”

Taylor has watched newcomers blossom. “People start, and after a few weeks, they seem completely different -- more accepting, glad to be here, glad to do some writing.”

Thomas offers writing prompts in her classes. For example, said Mawhirt, “She’ll say, write two pages on

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• April 30, 2015

Healthy Hudson Valley

Craig Mawhirt and Anique Taylor, writer/therapists. the day you knew you were an adult. Actually, not everyone does every prompt. We’re writers now; we have our own agendas.”

The hardest part of being in the groups is that people die. Five members of the memoir class have been lost to cancer, and one was in hospice as of this writing. “It’s heartbreaking,” said LaBarge, “but it makes the bonds deeper.”

“It’s very hard,” agreed Thomas. “But they’re always there. We know where everyone sat, and we have writing from them. We’ve all been part of what has been an important part of their lives.

So it’s both a loss and a gift to have been part of.”

Thomas feels that teaching the workshop has almost been more healing for her than for her students. “It gives you a wider lens to view life,” she said. “For two hours a week, people bear witness to one another’s lives. It’s so clear that all we have is right here. Who knows what will happen tomorrow? Even if it’s awful, try and let it in.”

Thomas’ recently published memoir is entitled, appropriately enough, What Happens Next and How to Like It. Baptiste, musing on the healing power of writing, said of the poetry group, “The work is out there to be seen and be heard — and to be held. Anique’s class does that. It’s sacred space.”

For more information about workshops and events at Benedictine Hospital’s oncology support program, call 339-2071, email doris.blaha@hahv.org, or see http:// www.hahv.org/service/osp-programs-groups-events.

April 30, 2015 â&#x20AC;˘ 31

Healthy Hudson Valley

Spas have many health benefits

by Anitra Brown pas have been known as places of healing for thousands of years and continue to promise relaxation, rejuvenation and a renewed sense of purpose. At the basic level, local day spas offer therapeutic treatments like massage, body treatments and facials, which can help you take care of your body and improve your sense of well-being. At the highest level, overnight spas can even help you cope with medical issues or with a major life setback like divorce and death. Here are a number of ways to access the full health benefits of spas: 1) Get a massage. Calm the central nervous system, relieve muscle pain from spasms and injuries, improve blood circulation, deliver oxygen and nutrients to cells, and help the body get rid of waste products. Need I mention it also feels good?

2) Take care of your skin. Skin is your largest organ, an insulating shield that protects your internal organs while providing information about the outside world through touch. It well deserves your care.

Facials leave your skin glowing, healthy and nourished, and body scrubs get rid of the flaky skin cells that sit on the skinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s surface; body wraps detox or hydrate the skin. When combined, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a facial for the whole body.

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Healthy Hudson Valley

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Meet just a few of Woodland Pond’s freshman class One thing you’ll notice right away at Woodland Pond is how young at heart the residents are.

You’ll also notice the welcoming atmosphere with a diverse group of residents who “push the envelope” of intellectual and cultural achievement.

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With a new Women’s Imaging Center around the corner, we’re feeling better already.

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• April 30, 2015

Healthy Hudson Valley

Doggie wisdom What Wallace, Chloe and other creatures taught this writer

By Lee Harrington believe that people with dogs are for the most part physically and emotionally healthier than people without dogs. A quick Internet search will tell you as much. One can find dozens of studies proving that interacting with dogs can lower blood pressure, reduce stress hormones, strengthen the heart and release oxytocin.

The number of scientifically proven health benefits of pet ownership is rising faster than the number of chew toys strewn around your house. Here are a few of my personal favorites.

Health pluses aren’t confined to the result of the extra exercise you get walking your dog or playing hide-and-seek with your cat. The bond that you and your pet develop is also part of the equation. “Owning a pet gives you a sense of purpose and belonging that can increase feelings of positivity and lower stress levels, all of which translates to health benefits,” says Allen McConnell, PhD, a psychology professor at Miami University.

One Japanese study found pet owners made 30 percent fewer visits to doctors. An Australian study of 6000 people showed that owners of dogs and other pets had lower cholesterol, blood pressure and heart-attack risk compared with people who didn’t have pets. In a study at the State University of New York at Buffalo, women asked to solve a math equation with their dogs nearby experienced less stress than women who worked near a human pal.

“When you interact with a friendly animal, your blood pressure lowers and your muscles relax,” explains Stanley Coren, PhD, a psychology professor and neuropsychological researcher at the University of British Columbia who has published nine books on the connection between people and animals.

It’s not just the feel of soft fur that calms us: Stroking a pet snake can bring down its owner’s blood pressure and heart rate, according to a study in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. “People forget how important touch is — it can establish love and comfort,” says Dr. Coren.

I

Every dog person you meet can list dozens of personal benefits as well. Here are four of mine:

Dogs connect us with nature.

To say that dogs connect us with the natural world is to state the obvious. They are grounded, four-legged descendants of wolves who need exercise and therefore ideally to be taken on walks. What seems no longer obvious to many humans is how healing, vibrant and wondrous this natural world is. Dogs make sure constantly to remind us of that world.

In Eastern systems of medicine, all phenomena of the universe are comprised of various ratios of elements, such as earth, water, fire, wind, air, ether, wood or metal. What better way to keep yourself healthy and in tune than to commune with the elements with your wolf-descendant companion?

When I walk the trails of the Hudson Valley with my dog friends, I always made a point to acknowledge the water element — present in the form of the mountain streams, or the dew on the morning grasses, or the mists rising off the mighty Hudson on foggy days; or the fire element, present in the mighty sun; and of course earth, which my white dog liked to roll in and then shake off onto me. I make it a point to fully breathe in the air — there is nothing like Catskill mountain air — and feel the wind metaphorically blow away some of my more cumbersome thoughts. Mother Nature can be the most potent of healers. Communicating with another species teaches us how to listen to the unspoken.

Is it necessary to have a dog in order to connect with nature? Obviously it’s not an absolute requirement.

Walking with a dog is more fun than walking without one. And for those of us who aren’t naturally outdoorsoriented, having a dog is the perfect impetus to become so. I was a bona-fide city girl when I adopted my first dog.

The idea of willingly stepping out into the rain or snow was as foreign to me as swan-diving off a cliff. But now, because of my dogs, I’ve experienced the vibrant healing properties of rain — a veritable cleansing from the heavens — and the stark, acute beauty of snow. To witness the stars on a sub-zero Catskill mountain winter

Healthy Hudson Valley

April 30, 2015 • 35

PHOTO BY WIKICOMMONS

night, and to experience that absolute time-has-stopped silence is to feel you are taking part in the stillness that precedes great bursts of creation. Anyone who found themselves out in one of the snowstorms with their dogs this past winter will know what I mean. And breathing in all that winter air? No wonder we have such strong lungs.

Dogs offer love, sweet love.

This is another statement which needs no justification.

With a dog, you have at your side a being who loves you unconditionally; who forgives, again and again, without hesitation, all your human flaws and foibles; who thinks everything you do and say is a cause for leaps, bounds, twirls, and celebration; and who virtually beams at you with love.

Dog love is a balm, an elixir, a constant stream of positive energy. Is it any wonder, then, that dog people are healthier? When you are in the presence of love and acceptance, you are in a vibration of healing. You are in a state of mind that cultivates wellness. Stillness, harmony, inner peace: these are the internal places from which spontaneous healing can occur. And if you don’t believe in such things as spontaneous healing, then suffice to say that these are places from which wise decisions can be made about your own healthcare.

Because dogs know us better than we know ourselves, dogs can tall us who we are.

Most of us have heard stories about dogs that have the ability to sniff out cancerous tumors and/or warn their human companions about impending strokes, seizures and heart attacks. There are psychiatric-service dogs

specifically trained to detect chemical and cyclical shifts in bipolar humans. There are dogs trained to arouse traumatized humans from “fear paralysis” (generally with a generous, enthusiastic and slobbering facial lick).

There are dogs trained to encourage (again, with their irresistible doggy enthusiasm) their clinically depressed humans to complete the seemingly gargantuan task of simply getting out of bed. And there dogs that provide emotional assistance and comfort, dogs whose mere solid presence helps humans with PTSD and anxiety disorders cope with the stresses of life. The list of tasks a service dog can perform (as well as the shifting legal definitions of service dogs versus emotional-support dogs versus emotional-assistance dogs) goes on and on.

Even a quote-unquote untrained dog can detect simple day-to-day imbalances. I’ve heard stories of dogs placing their paws on key acupressure points to calm their humans down. I’ve heard of dogs poking with their snouts areas of the body in need of healing.

Whenever my former husband and I used to argue, our dog Wallace would step between us and bark in a very insistent and authoritative manner. We used to call him our “referee.” Wallace always seemed to know precisely when our arguments had crossed that fine line from constructive disagreement into petty, vindictive nonsense. To use a service-dog term, Wallace’s barks provided a reality affirmation which pulled us out of the dynamics of the argument and back into the moment. (For the record, Wallace always seemed immensely pleased with himself when to his calls of “foul” were heeded.)

My second dog Chloe could always tell when I had spent too much time at my computer. She could tell

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â&#x20AC;˘ April 30, 2015

Healthy Hudson Valley

FAWN POTASH

Milo and Berry. when my mental state was about to shift into one of despair or frustration. (Dogs who cohabitate with fulltime writers seem to have that special skill.) She was my mood-o-meter.

Chloe and I communicated through hand signals, eye

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being without words taught me to trust my instincts more. Taught me to listen.

On those bad writing days when I couldn’t seem to construct even a single coherent or cohesive sentence and would be on the verge of abandoning my novel altogether, Chloe would come over and nudge me with her snout, look at me with her sweet amber eyes, and smile with her pink dog-smile. She would be telling me without words that it was time to go for a walk, time to pull away from the world of fiction and step into the world of matter, the real world, with its earth and air and sky. Where the healing and rejuvenation could take place.

Think of the daemon concept in the Philip Pullman novels (Wikipedia defines dæmons as “the external physical manifestation of a person’s inner self that takes the form of an animal”). I feel that dogs often serve the same function if we are wise enough to pay attention to them. They have ways of letting you know if you are out of balance. Our job, as with all things, is to be still and listen.

April 30, 2015 • 37

Walk a path with the wind, earth, water and space, and allow the natural world to heal you. Walk the path to healing with someone who shows you who you are, how you are feeling.

The main — actually, the very — reason I moved to Ulster County more than ten years ago was to accommodate the needs of my first dog, Wallace. As an

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Back then, my friends used to tease us about our herculean efforts to meet the dogâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s needs. In hindsight, I suspect that the dog thought he was accommodating our needs. As in: my job as the only grounded and sane creature in this equation is to get these uptight city people out of New York City and into the woods; otherwise they will die young of stress-induced illnesses or heart attacks.

Wallace was right, of course. Dogs always are.

Dogs provide laughter, the best medicine.

Feeling blue and imbalanced? Take a trip to the dog park. Experience the exhilaration of watching a group of happy four-leggeds romp and play. Or tickle your new puppy on the belly and giggle as you watch her try to shimmy out of reach. Or simply pause and admire the august effort of your dear, aging, arthritic dog as he gracelessly settles himself onto his bed with a grunt, no longer as limber as he once was. We smile.

As Norman Cousins illustrated in his groundbreaking book Anatomy of an Illness, we have the capacity literally to laugh our way through any illness, even cancer. And dogs are always happy to help in that regard.

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Healthy Hudson Valley

Continuing healthiness at a Hudson Valley monastery hile our pets can help us stay healthy, and all eyes were on Tibetan Buddhists of late, what with the Karmapa’s recent visit, things have continued to be tranquil at Blue Cliff Monastery in the Shawangunk Ridge near Pine Bush. The site’s soaring Togetherness Hall overlooks the Wallkill Valley to the east. Blue Cliff is Thich Nhat Hanh’s major center in this country, expressing a Vietnamese style of Zen.

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www.bluecliffmonastery.org.

The Hudson Valley is home to monasteries that include Karma Triyana Dharmachakra (www. kagyu.org), Zen Mountain Monastery (zmm.mro. org), the Brahma Kumari’s Peace Village (www. peacevillageretreat.org) and many more. See www. retreatfinder.com for many listings.

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Healthy Hudson Valley

Great word of mouth Leap forward in dental technology in Kingston

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ingston dentist Dennis Oppenheimer has been practicing for 13 years in the Hudson Valley, and he’s always loved his work. (Full disclosure: he’s my dentist, and he rocks.)

Since learning and adopting Fastbraces technology in 2013, however, Oppenheimer has become a kind of evangelist for this rising method of straightening teeth. For former braces-wearers who suffered excess discomfort and lengthy treatment and want better for their friends and loved ones, or any adult who desires straight teeth but worries the process might be too painful and/or time consuming, his pitch for Fastbraces, for which his office is the only local provider, is worth listening to.

“It’s completely changing braces,” he says. “It’s one of

Healthy Hudson Valley

April 30, 2015 â&#x20AC;˘ 41

PHOTO C/O FASTBRACES.COM

Fastbraces are a truly contemporary phenomenon. the few things Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve looked at in continuing education that really excited me. Compared to traditional braces, it takes half the time, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s half the cost, and thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no removal of teeth. At first, I thought, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the catch?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; There isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t one.â&#x20AC;?

Fastbraces is the brainchild of orthodontist Dr. Anthony Viazis. In the late 1980s, Dr. Viazis was just entering his orthodontics residency. â&#x20AC;&#x153;He was researching why braces fail,â&#x20AC;? Says Oppenheimer. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Why teeth move back when braces are taken off.â&#x20AC;?

Viazis decided to try to improve on the longstanding, existing braces designs â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the wires, the bands, etc. In the â&#x20AC;&#x153;traditionalâ&#x20AC;? method, the crowns of the teeth are moved first, then the roots, a lengthy processâ&#x20AC;&#x201C; usually two years â&#x20AC;&#x201C; during which tooth removal is sometimes

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necessary. Vexingly, after much time, pain, and cost, teeth often move back to former crooked positions.

Viazi worked on a different kind of brace, structured to move the root at the beginning, cutting down treatment duration, and making removal of teeth unnecessary. He prototyped it in 1991. Within a few years, his new brace was reviewed favorably in clinical journals in both the U.S. and Europe. More research and positive reviews followed from Finland, Brazil and elsewhere.

I

n 1996, Fastbraces was born. Viazis initially practiced solely in Texas, honing his methods and garnering great word of mouth (so to speak). Over the ensuing decade, he opened more locations, and trained dentists in his method at his Fastbraces Uni-

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• April 30, 2015

Healthy Hudson Valley

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Traditional braces can be fun as well as helpful. versity outside Dallas. With the advent of widespread Internet, and increasingly ubiquitous broadband, word of his invention spread to dentists all over the world, and the idea for a procedure that could use the Internet for updates, education, and referrals began to take hold.

Viazis and Fastbraces eventually went international, with a significant uptick in practitioners in the last couple of years. Oppenheimer sees this as a tipping point.

“Two years ago, two to three per cent of people having orthodontics done were getting Fastbraces,” says Oppenheimer. “Now it’s ten per cent.” Oppenheimer

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notes that Fastbraces isn’t for everyone. About 15 per cent of cases need traditional braces and/or more aggressive orthodontics.

This brings up a point. Dentists use Fastbraces. Orthodontists do not. Orthodontists have been critical, claiming Fastbraces is just a quick, inferior fix; while less expensive than the usual two-year process of traditional braces, Fastbraces, they claim, is merely a cosmetic approach, and doesn’t resolve comprehensive dental issues, like bite alignment.

In the two years he has been practicing Fastbraces, Oppenheimer has applied the method to numerous

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Healthy Hudson Valley

patients, and he maintains that he hasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t seen any of the aforementioned difficulties. On the contrary, he says bite problems, not to mention the awful temporomandibular joint disorder â&#x20AC;&#x201C; aka TMJ, an excruciating, chronic pain in the jaw â&#x20AC;&#x201C; are risks with traditional braces, but not so with Fastbraces. Fastbraces expands bone so teeth have more room, all with significantly less discomfort than traditional braces. And yes, they cost less. It seems too good to be true, Oppenheimer says, but it is true. will completely change orthodontics â&#x20AC;&#x153;Fastbraces in the next ten years,â&#x20AC;? Oppenheimer predicts.

April 30, 2015 â&#x20AC;˘ 43

At present, the number of U.S. practitioners is two thousand and counting.

When he first heard of Fastbraces, Oppenheimer traveled to Texas to learn the process from Dr. Viazis himself. (â&#x20AC;&#x153;I was one of the last dentists he taught,â&#x20AC;? says Oppenheimer. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Now heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s too busy.â&#x20AC;?) Subsequently, another dentist at his office, Dr. Joanna Mlynarczyk, became a practitioner, and it was incumbent on Oppenheimer to bring his staff of hygienists up to speed.

Adopting Fastbraces was labor-intensive on the front end, he says, and time-consuming, but all well worth it.

He returns to Dallas every few months for more training

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Just six months ago, the Harvard School of Dental Medicine published their paper confirming the scientific technology behind Fastbraces.â&#x20AC;? Meanwhile, Fastbraces has extended to Greece, the UK, and Australia, where it is the most popular orthodontic procedure.

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Healthy Hudson Valley

and updates in the technology, and he keeps in touch with other practitioners via the Internet. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a group effort,â&#x20AC;? he says, speaking of the corps of Fastbraces-using dentists worldwide, all connected via broadband, all of whom can and do check in and compare notes. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I upload X-rays and photos to the central office in Texas and they weigh in.â&#x20AC;?

He likes to share the story of his first two Fastbraces patients. â&#x20AC;&#x153;They were sisters,â&#x20AC;? he says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d used traditional orthodontics for years, but their teeth kept moving back after treatment. I asked if they wanted to be my first Fastbraces patients and they said sure.

It was amazing. We were all saying, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Wow! It works!â&#x20AC;&#x2122; That was the beginning for us.â&#x20AC;?

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• April 30, 2015

Healthy Hudson Valley

Sleep more, stress less Stress causes nighttime wakefulness for 43 percent

By Jennifer Brizzi oo much stress and not enough sleep? How connected are the two? It’s another chicken-and-egg conundrum. Does a high-stress life cause sleep deprivation, and does inadequate sleep lead to anxiety? Yes and yes. And no, not always.

The connection may not be as obvious as you’d think.

When it’s smooth sailing in your life you sleep the sleep of the just. But when you’re really worried about something, you toss and turn but can’t sleep.

Luckily I usually sleep pretty well, not enough, but well.

I think of myself as a neurotic, anxious person who is worrying about a lot of things these days. Meanwhile, some people near and dear to me who say they don’t worry that much and are pretty zen about life also wake up every night and can’t fall back to sleep for hours.

What stage of life they’re at or what’s going on in their lives doesn’t see to matter.

Although tough times can make for troubled sleep, sometimes when things look rosier the sleep issues persist. So it’s kinda complicated.

About three-quarters of us say we’re stressed out or anxious every day. They say stress interferes with their sleep, per the Anxiety Disorders Association of America (ADAA). An 2007 ADAA survey also found that threequarters of those who claim that stress affects their

T

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sleep say that their sleep issues make the stress worse.

A little over half that the stress makes them stress more about falling asleep, and about half of them claim that problem affects their focus the following day.

Although seven to nine hours of sleep a night is the general recommendation, the average Joe among us sleeps only 6.7 hours. Stress causes nighttime wakefulness for 43 percent. Of those who report high stress levels in general (eight to ten on a ten-point scale), 45 percent report that those levels rise even higher when sleep quantity is inadequate, versus five percent of those with lower stress levels (one, two or three on the scale).

Generally the people who get less than eight hours of sleep per night are more stressed than the ones who get eight or more (5.5 versus 4.4). Not everyone with lots of stress has insomnia, however.

When we don’t sleep enough, we — obviously — are tired the next day and less alert. We can feel sluggish, irritable, and have trouble concentrating. Cortisol levels on awaking are high, which can make us crave food, especially comfort foods.

“Sleep is so crucial that even slight sleep deprivation or poor sleep can affect memory, judgment and mood,” says the American Psychological Association. “In addition to feelings of listlessness, chronic sleep deprivation can contribute to health problems, from obesity and high blood pressure to safety risks while driving. Research has shown that most Americans would be happier, healthier and safer if they were to sleep an extra 60 to 90 minutes per night.”

Also hampered by sleep deprivation are our productivity, reaction time, energy level, emotional health, communications skills, creativity, mental sharpness, memory, judgment, stress tolerance, resistance to disease, heart health and physical strength and coordination.

Anyone who’s struggled with sleep issues has probably heard all the advice already, but I’ll remind you. Going to bed at the same time every night helps, as does staying away from screens, whether computer, TV or phone. Books and magazines — remember them? — are okay. Deep breathing or other relaxation techniques like

Healthy Hudson Valley

April 30, 2015 • 47

Flaming June by Frederic Lord Leighton. meditation or yoga help some, as does (duh!) staying away from caffeine. Over-the-counter or prescription sleep aids can cause a hung-over feeling the next day.

Their use should be only occasional.

You can encourage your growth hormone (HGH), which helps overnight tissue repair and keeping cortisol levels low, keeping your appetite under control and your blood pressure normal. Keeping yourself cool and in the dark at night helps, according to studies. Make your bedroom a calming, peaceful, dark, cool sanctuary.

During the day, regular exercise — well in advance of bedtime — is good. So are getting as much natural

sunlight as possible and reducing daytime stress by having an active social life and delegating those stressinducing responsibilities (I have problems with this).

If you can’t sleep, looking at the clock and worrying only makes things worse. And if your insomnia is affecting your work, social life or family life, see a sleep specialist or a therapist for stress.

While stress and sleep problems are two separate issues, there can be a close relationship between the two. Stress can affect your sleep, and sleep or lack of it can affect your stress level. , De-stressing can help put the brakes on this vicious cycle.

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• April 30, 2015

Healthy Hudson Valley

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