Health Vim

Question from a reader who has bipolar disorder. He asks if it affects sexual desire:

I have had bipolar disorder for five years and now I’m seeing that I don’t have the push to have sex with women. I did for the past few years but over the past year, my drive is down. I am currently 24 years old.

Question from a reader who has taken marijuana and wants to remove all traces of it from his body:

My parents are making me take a drug test before I get my car back. Until then I am unable to leave the house. I want to buy a detox kit, but it has to be somewhat cheap and I have to be able to buy it at a store. Do they even really work?
Whats the best kind and where do I get it?

Anxiety can become progressively disabling at work and in personal relationships. Anxious people have frequent feelings of guilt and worthlessness about not being able to cope successfully with situations that other people have no difficulty with and about being dependent on family and friends, thereby restricting their lives.

The longer anxiety persists without effective treatment, the more likely it is that those who suffer will become depressed. As anxiety becomes progressively more disabling, it can significantly hamper the ability to live a full and enjoyable life.

Recent scientific research suggests that anxiety is the result of a biochemical imbalance in the brain’s alarm center—the amygdala—and a psychological imbalance in thinking. The combination of a biochemically overreactive amygdala and fearful, worrisome thinking causes an exaggerated and persistent stress response. As to which comes first, this is a little like the chicken-or-the-egg question. The answer is both, in a circular pattern of causation. This is the mind-body principle: every change in the mind (anxiety) produces a corresponding change in the body (alarm) and vice versa.

Anxiety can leave you breathless. The symptoms of hyperventilation, which literally means overbreathing, are commonly experienced by people with anxiety and yet frequently go unrecognized by either the doctor or the sufferer.

Yet hyperventilation accounts for over 10 percent of visits to hospital emergency rooms.Although breathing is the most fundamental function of being alive, many people breathe improperly. Rapid, shallow breathing leads to exhaling too much carbon dioxide, which can produce many frightening sensations including light-headedness, dizziness, shortness of breath, perspiration,
numbness and tingling, and chest pain.

Some people need to eat constantly and others can go long stretches between meals effortlessly. To the latter group, I say, don’t start a habit of snacking if you don’t have one already. Snacking makes the digestive system work around the clock, which will make you feel fatigued and slow the whole cleansing/healing process.

For those of you who want, or need, food between meals, reach for the quickest-exit foods — namely, fresh fruits and vegetables. The goal is to select mini-meals that require
minimal digestive effort.

Mood responses in children and adults are profoundly affected by diet and environment. Chemicals in food and environmental pollution have been shown to have a deleterious impact on the brain and neurological functions, leading to everything from attention deficit disorder to obsessive-compulsive disorder. It makes sense that foods that contribute to physical illness would contribute to mental and emotional imbalances as well.

To whatever extent you are ready, I also highly recommend removing the non-food environmental obstacles to your joy, such as the audio and visual stimulation in the form of magazines, television, and movies that degrade your thoughts with vulgarity, graphic imagery, gossip, and violence. Don’t be afraid to try a media fast for a day, a week, or even a month—whatever would be a stretch for your media lifestyle.

Are you not digesting food well? Let’s take a look at how long some commonly eaten foods take to pass through the stomach: fresh fruit, when consumed alone on an empty stomach, leaves the stomach in about fifteen to twenty minutes. Vegetables take a little over one hour. A serving of pasta, a serving of whole-grain cereal, a filllet of fish, or a breast of chicken spends about three to four hours in the stomach.

Question sent in from a reader:

I’m writing a book. Anyone have any experience with living with a parent/loved one with bipolar disorder? I’m particularly interested in the mania stage of the disease. The mother in my book has it and rarely, if ever (I’m in planning stages) goes through the depressive stage. Mainly just mania. Any comments/anything I need to know?

I may describe the depressive side, but it isn’t actually required to have the disorder. I do know a little bit of what’s required for diagnosis, but I don’t know what it’s like to be around someone who has the disorder.

There are numerous deep breathing benefits and this post will teach a simple deep breathing exercise you can use. Remember oxygen? It’s always there for the taking, but few of us actually take more than a fraction of our capacity of oxygen into the body. Yes, we are breathing all the time, but the average breath is shockingly shallow. It’s as if we’ve all become too lazy to breathe.