Category: Health First

managing stress

Effects of Stress on Your Body & Health: What to Know

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Do you often feel stressed out? Do you have things in your life that frequently cause you stress? Has the COVID-19 pandemic caused you to just feel burned out? If you do, you are truly not alone. In this article, I will discuss the effects of stress on your body and your health—both the immediate effects and the long term damage—and then introduce the most fundamental aspect of stress management: identifying causes of stress and unhealthy coping mechanisms.

In separate articles, I discuss stress management techniques that have been proven to work in both lowering stress and decreasing the harmful effects of it on your health.

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high blood pressure health effects on body risks

High Blood Pressure: What Everyone Needs To Know

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There is no question that the past year has, for the most part, been a stressful time for many. Stress, among its many harmful effects on health, also tends to elevate blood pressure—regardless of your age. While there are many practical things you can do to relax and de-stress, the purpose of this article is to help inform you on a topic that is often dangerously overlooked: high blood pressure.

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The Ketogenic Diet: Fact or Fad?

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Over the past year, there has been a lot of buzz surrounding the ketogenic diet. Not surprisingly, I have encountered many questions regarding them. What is it? Is it safe? Would I recommend it? 

Despite the recent trend, a “ketogenic diet” is actually not new at all. In the 1970’s, Dr. Atkins popularized his low-carbohydrate diet for weight loss that began with a very strict two-week ketogenic phase. Over the years, other popular diets also incorporated similar approaches for weight loss. But in medicine, we have been using this method for almost a century to treat some forms of epilepsy, especially drug-resistant types in children.

As you know, whenever something is popularized, much information goes around—some accurate, some not so accurate. The purpose of this post is to summarize for you what the medical community actually knows so far through its research on the health effects of ketogenic diets. This post is not to make a stance either for or against, because as you will see, there are both pros and potential cons (as well as some unknowns); rather, I simply want to equip you with the right information in order to empower you to make the best decision for your personal situation.

So let’s get started!

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