Contents

1.     Link of the week.

2.     News and Info from the Wilcox Innovation Network.

3.     Feature Article: What is a Stress Cycle, and How Can You Escape It?

Your HRH Program E-book and Bonuses

If you haven’t yet purchased the HRH Program e-book, there’s no time like the present! Go to www.heartratehealth.com to get a copy, plus nearly $100 in bonus material.  And remember, if it doesn’t work for you for any reason, you have a full year to return it for a full refund.

Link of the Week

If you haven’t been back to the web site lately, check out the HRH Resources page at

www.heartratehealth.com/resources. 

Here you’ll find an ever-expanding source of new information and products and services that will help you implement the HRH Program into your life.

News….

Before too long, you’ll be able to buy Heartmath’s Freeze Framer from the Wilcox Innovation Network! 

I’m excited to be able to offer such an excellent stress reduction and personal transformation tool, especially since it’s such a good complement to the HRH Program.     

(Don’t know what the Freeze Framer is? That’s because you haven’t read the book yet! Sorry, I couldn’t resist!) I’ll keep you posted through the newsletter…

Feature Article

What is a Stress Cycle, and How Can You Escape It? 

I don’t want to stress you out here, but if you don’t mind, think for a minute about your average morning.  Do you feel your blood pressure rising just thinking about it?  

For those of us who work outside the home, there’s a mad rush to get out the door for the privilege of fighting traffic while thinking about the meeting we’re not quite prepared for.  For those of us who work in the home—and especially those of us with young kids—the chaos may be even worse.

Without going into too much detail—remember, I didn’t want to stress you out more than you already are—the point is that Morning in Modernity isn’t easy to get through. 

If we’re not careful, the stress we experience during our mornings can have a terrible effect on us throughout the day, sometimes forming a repeating stress cycle that’s with us until we collapse into bed at night.

The instant we feel stress, our bodies start producing cortisol to create excess blood sugar that can be delivered to major muscle groups for fighting or fleeing by insulin.  If we’re lucky, the initial shot of cortisol (usually mixed into a cocktail with another common stressor called coffee) will be all we need.   

For most of us, though, the stress doesn’t let up.  This creates the need not just for replacement sugar, but also a need for chronically elevated cortisol levels to always be on the ready for action.   

When this happens, we get locked into a “stress cycle” that is difficult to break.  This stress cycle will even affect our food choices if we allow it. 

How many times have we rushed through the fast food outlet in order not to be slowed down? And when we do go through the fast food line, how tempting is it to bypass the salad and go for the high calorie, high carb foods like the burgers, fries, and soft drinks?

The reason we pass over the healthy foods is partly because of the cortisol/coffee cocktail, which throws our blood sugar out

of balance.  Once our blood sugar gets out of balance, it wants to get back to normal as quickly as possible.  When we’re looking at the brightly backlit menus at the counter, the stuff that looks good is the food that’s going to get the blood sugar back up. 

And when you eat a burger, munch down some fries, and slurp down that soft drink within 4.5 minutes, up that blood sugar goes. 

Then down, then up, then down again all day long.  Thus, the stress cycle.  If you’re not insulin resistant before this happens, you’ll almost certainly be so not too long after commencing with this schedule.   

What we need to realize is that our cravings for the fast food is not doing us any good throughout our day.  We feel better for a few minutes, then the whole thing starts again.  To break free of the cycle, then, we need a “salad break”.   

As hard as it might be to order (or even harder, to make) a salad for lunch, once it’s done and eaten, we feel better for the rest of the day.  A number of reasons for this exist.  Let’s go through a couple of them.   

1.     Just try to eat a good-sized salad in under five minutes.  Actually, don’t, because you might choke.  It takes a while to eat a salad, especially one with lots of raw vegetables like I recommend in the book.  Just this extra time helps to break your brain out of the stress cycle.

2.     When your brain breaks out of the stress cycle, it can tell the body that it doesn’t really need the extra sugar energy, as the stressor has passed.   

3.     A salad with some fish added has nearly no carbohydrate content, so the meal can’t be broken down into sugar so quickly.  No sugar rush, no sugar crash.

4.     Once you’ve broken the stress cycle with the salad, you won’t be wasting as much energy being frantic.  What you don’t waste, you won’t need to replace. 

All this from a salad? Yes! Plus, you’ll also be sticking with the HRH Program, which will help accumulate the positive effects for lasting change.  Such a deal!

Seriously, breaking free of the stress cycle that consumes us from early morning until late night is critical for regaining control of our health as a society.  Think about adding a daily dose ofvegetables to your midday routine to make a good start a accomplishing this.   

For those of you who are saying, well, I don’t really have time for that…we’ll talk more next time about making time.

Until then…