Monthly Archives: January 2018

Holistic Health, Mental Health

Overcome Smartphone Addiction

Leave a comment

The Problem

Have you gone through an extended period without using your smartphone or having Internet? To most people, being completely disconnected from the rest of the world sounds like a nightmare. In our digital age, online addiction and smartphone addiction is a real issue as people are checking it constantly throughout the day, relying on notifications to stay entertained, and going into shock when they don’t feel it in their pockets. While hard to break, smartphone addiction can be helped with enough self-discipline and online addiction support groups who can help bring a community to detoxifying from the dependence. With practice and time, the physical and mental strains that come from a heavy dependency can wane so a healthier lifestyle can come to the forefront.

How Does Addiction Start?

Most people fail to realize the smartphone addiction is a real problem that is affecting millions of people around the world. It’s getting into the way of our daily activities, conversations, and intimate moments with the never ending buzzing. With the rising demand for mobile phones and the necessary use of it to keep up with the news, social media, and communicating with others, battling addiction with smartphones will be faced by many. Include the rapid advances that today’s smartphones have to access information at all time high speeds, and addiction is sure to develop. Approximately 72% of people in a recent study stated that they are rarely more than five feet away from their smartphones at any given time during the day! Experts call this issue by the name nomophobia, which describes the incredible fear that being away from your phone will cut you off from your friends, family, and the rest of the world. 

Smartphone and online addiction is also a problem that often stems from other underlying emotional and psychological issues. It can be a side effect of major mental disorders like depression or OCD, also known as obsessive-compulsive disorder! Using a smartphone too much – whether you are an adult or adolescent – can create a dependency. This addiction typically leads to high levels of stress, loss of focus, and even anxiety disorders.

Online Addiction Consequences

There’s no issue with using your phone at a healthy level. However, if you are spending more time talking to your Instagram followers than your actual friends, it might be the right time to take a step back and reflect on managing what could be an addiction. Smartphone addiction, especially among children, is completely changing the dynamic that we communicate with each other throughout the day. Face to face human interaction helps a young child and even teenagers to develop emotionally in a way that phones can’t match up to. Speaking, listening, and displaying gestures with a real human helps a child to see the other person’s emotional reaction and decide the appropriate response. Yet, texting, talking or browsing Facebook threads on a smartphone does none of this. Meanwhile, grown adults are no less likely to become addicted and end up feeling excessively tired on a daily basis from staring at a screen.

How To Fight Addiction

Battling a smartphone or online addiction is not easy in any sense. To be successful, you have to acknowledge you have an issue as the first step. This type of addiction, unlike being drawn to physical drugs or alcohol, is difficult to pinpoint as we all use our smartphones so often each day. However, watch out for a few key symptoms that characterize an addiction. One that many people may have experienced is phantom cellphone vibration, describing the feeling our body has become conditioned to anticipate when we carrying our smartphone around. Even if no new texts, emails, or calls are actually coming through, our minds begin to imagine the same sensation as a heavy dependence becomes established. The most basic step that some experts suggest for weaning time spent on your phone is literally setting alarms specifying how often you can check it. Start with 15 minutes and move up to eventually an hour. When your alarm sounds, spend one minute going through all your notifications and then reset the timer. This will build restrictions in your lifestyle and help reduce your habit of checking them so often. Another trick is to seek online addiction forums, who speak about keeping addiction apps like Facebook or Instagram in hideable folders on your phone. This way, you’ll be able to prevent getting distraction from endless videos, pictures, and focus on more important tasks.

Final Takeaway

Going through any kind of addiction is tough without implementing a supportive community base, enough discipline, and temptation preventions. When it comes to battling online addiction and smartphone dependency, the process takes the willingness to plug in more into the real world and interact with the humans who are actually physically around you. While it will feel painful at first to detach from the addicting buzzes and “like” notifications, your body, mind, and relationships will thank you as you begin to function more normally as a human being. You’ll also appear much more engaged, friendly, and open when you’re around others who are talking to you or desire to strike up a conversation!

 

Women's Health

What is A Cystoscopy?

Leave a comment

The Foundation

Cystoscopy sounds like a complicated process, but understanding the main principles of why it is used helps wrapping your mind around it. People who experience frequent pain or urination issues throughout the day are often recommended to getting a cystoscopy done to check their internal bladder health. This way, the doctor can check for any types of abnormalities less intrusively within the hospital. Thinking about getting a cystoscopy can be confusing at first, as many technical definitions are needed to describe how it interacts and measures health within our bodies. Luckily, simplifying all the complicated terms into content that is easier to process for people who are unfamiliar with how it works can hopefully help them decide on going through with it or not.

Cystoscopy Basics

Getting a cystoscopy done involves a doctor utilizing a cystoscope, or a thin plastic tube that has a camera and small illuminating light attached to its tail end. To initiate the process, a doctor will slowly draw the tube through the patient’s urethra (the part of our body that helps move urine out while we go to the bathroom) to reach the bladder. Then, the inside of the bladder is projected from the camera to a bright computer screen and magnified for fine details to be displayed so the interior can be projected onto a bright computer screen. The image is enlarged by hundreds of times so doctors can exactly pinpoint the problem. While a cystoscopy is relatively safe to get done, there is still some minor risk for physical infection, minor complications with any anesthesia needed to be given to the patient, and prolonged bleeding in the bladder that could occur. Before going through the process, be sure to do a significant amount research on how a cystoscopy should be prepared for and different risks that come with it depending on your demographic. A patient could also see some scar tissue that can develop afterwards that leads to a form of stricture in the urethra (which prevents any easy urination), some swelling within the bladder interior, and frequent inability to properly urinate like before.

Receiving Recovery

After getting a cystoscopy, the bladder and surrounding areas can recover relatively well. After doctors instruct you to clean up and empty your bladder at the hospital after the procedure, you can go home without having to worry that the anesthesia will stay in your body for a long time. In most cases, it wears off in a short amount of time and doesn’t cause any major health issues. After taking things easy for a day, people are safe to return to their normal daily activities like going to work, exercising outside or at the gym, or running daily errands. Some people might experience a stinging feeling after a cystoscopy when peeing, more frequent urination, and urine being tinted a more pink color for a short time. While these effects are uncomfortable at first, they all eventually disappear within a few days. A patient who reminds himself to drink more water after getting the procedure will also help pick up the pace of the recovery process as well. Additionally, taking over the counter painkillers such as paracetamol also helps to reduce any type of stinging tor inflammation that may come up.

Although there aren’t that many direct surgical alternatives to getting a cystoscopy, you could be guided by your doctor to get a less intensive X-ray or ultrasound screening instead. These can be done before going through with a cystoscopy, and are strong in showing any potential stones or tumors that could be growing in the area. However, they aren’t as accurate and can’t show active infections deep inside the body as well as a cystoscopy. So, seeing the inside situation as efficiently as possible can help your doctor accurately diagnose your case and recommend the best treatment.

Stress Less

While doctors don’t have many horror stories about cystoscopies, there are patients on the web who aim to share negative stories from fluke accidents that have occurred throughout their own personal history. Even if it sounds terrible to experience, don’t feel anxious because every person’s experience will be different. The factors that contributed to their issues could have stemmed from anything like weak preparation, an ill-advised doctor, a technical malfunction, or other personal health issues that came up. Many health forums are out there to help patients feel more mentally relaxed before beginning a cystoscopy.  The Internet can help you learn more about the process, from what to anticipate in the room, taking care after the procedure, and the best painkillers and food to ingest. Hospitals want you to feel completely ready before starting and ending the process. Remember, before signing up to go through any major medical procedure, set aside enough time in your busy schedule to do thorough searching about it, why you need it, and how to best prepare for it beforehand.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Drug Addiction, Holistic Health, Mental Health, Women's Health

High Functioning Addicts In Stress

Leave a comment

Thousands of students graduate from college and begin full time careers each year in the professional workforce. Most are excited and unaware about the levels of extremely high stress workers can go through to manage performance expectations and pressing deadlines in their industry. After months to years of difficult work and anxiety from life wearing on their mental health, many people become vulnerable to alcohol dependency as a method of stress management.  One recent health study found that almost 8.7 percent of professional workers from the ages of 16 to 64 consumed alcohol in extreme amounts during a one month period. It also found that at least 8.6 percent used illegal drugs as well to cope with their mountains of stressful work. A high percentage of the wealthy and student population also turn to drugs to fit in a desired social group or to seek a thrill from an otherwise mundane lifestyle they feel stuck in. Over time, harsh consequences come with self-medicating for stress using alcohol and illicit drugs.

Wine glass and Bottle on a wooden background

Wealth, College, and Addiction

Not all substance addicts are obvious, as they can come from all walks from life. Often, living in constant stress to finish heavy workloads, having disposable income, and consistently making impulsive choices leads to alcohol dependence and drug abuse over time. On a college campus, I’ve witnessed many students start their taste of alcohol with a few mild drinks here and there for stress management. Drinking alcohol is considered socially acceptable and doesn’t have the same stigma attached to it as addiction to harsher drugs like marijuana or cocaine. Since many wealthy individuals also have a lot of spending money and unwarranted financial freedom, they easily fall into a vicious cycle of purchasing drugs out of spontaneity and seeking social support. When money is a given freely from a family name, it becomes difficult to find one’s personal passions and discover genuine friends who don’t just value their wealth. Combined with stressful assignments and social pressure, these factors lead to low self-esteem and boredom which spark the fire of alcohol dependence and harmful self-medicating with drugs. Substance abuse is a long term problem and no one is completely safe to preventing it seeking trained help.

Stressful Careers and Addiction

No matter their age, many workers unexpectedly turn to alcohol dependency to manage their stress and anxiety. People in professions like advertising, music, general labor, cooking, and especially bartenders are all up to two times more likely to die to substance abuse. An estimated 10 percent of all healthcare professionals are also prone to abuse drugs with sectors ranging from pediatricians to anesthesiologists. That’s a scary statistic to think about, as these are the professionals the mainstream population turns to for aid with their own health related issues. With the rising acceptance and romanticizing of alcohol dependency in the media, there is no room for wondering why the number of alcohol and drug related fatalities are climbing on an annual basis.

High Cost of Healthcare

High Functioning Addicts

If you or someone you know is experiencing difficulty with a drug or alcohol addiction, first make sure to recognize that it is a significant problem. Almost a fifth of all young adults who frequently consume alcohol as a form of self-medicating are considered a highly functional addict. High functioning alcoholics are hard to identify since they can mask it easily. Some tell-tale signs of one, especially if they’re a student, is if that they imbibe alcoholic drinks on a daily basis, become more confident at larger social gatherings, drink alone for no reason, desire to black out, run into legal consequences for their behavior, or often joke about having an addiction to others. Chronic drinking can lead to a negative change in how they look physically, think mentally, or interact with people who may not agree with their destructive lifestyle. Although some lucky high-functioning alcoholics might never experience severe problems with their repeatedly harmful choices, they need to be exposed to some form of an addiction recovery program to know how they could be sabotaging their future.

The Next Steps

If you feel that you have an alcohol dependency problem to deal with stressful work, explore the resources that are out there to learn more about how to implement positive habits. While making changes are hard, healthy choices and a better lifestyle can reinforced after enough consistency, dedication, and faith is applied over time. Just as the saying goes, “We miss 100% of the shots we don’t take”, one will never improve and see results if they don’t put in the effort to reevaluate their life themselves. Start being proactive and pursue holistic, group, or exercise based recovery through a program that fits your lifestyle. The best part is that by joining a rehab program that fits your needs, you won’t have to sacrifice any of the activities that you love. Make the leap and you’ll never want to turn back!

Drug Addiction, Holistic Health, Mental Health

Benefits of Yoga For Men and Sobriety

Leave a comment

Drug addiction may be difficult to get through, as the decision to stop using drugs once addiction has developed is unnerving to make. Successfully overcoming any dependency on an addictive substance takes time, energy, and enough patience. The risk of relapse can be high if a person doesn’t gain enough education about staying sober after detox, relapse prevention coping skills, and helpful sober mentoring programs. While many individuals report having less intense cravings as sobriety continues, there will be times when the body remembers the drugs it once received and will carve more.  These cravings can cause a disturbing relapse if there is not a proper plan set in place to handle them at any notice. While this doesn’t mean that the person is a failure or that their long time participating in rehab was a waste.  It simply means that the symptoms of their disease have reappeared at the time and tweaks need to be made to their treatment model.

The best way to stop relapses from happening is practicing holistic medicine by diving into activities that positively strengthen the relationship between the body and mind. Instead of just conforming to what traditional rehab programs offer, holistic medicine considers what you specifically need to get better. One method of ensuring that you can learn how to control the gray area in sobriety and regain your control is by training in programs like yoga and meditation.

Learning about the many benefits of yoga for men may help those experiencing symptoms of relapse and need help to stay sober. Many professional sports teams, pro athletes, and other prominent male figures are incorporating yoga into their daily routines and have found success!

The Physical Improvement

When you learn about yoga, you are learning a lot about connecting mentally to your body, your mood, and your overall spirit at the same time. This treatment is an incredibly positive and calming technique to alleviate or discourage the risk of relapsing, and provide addiction and depression help. Some of the most important benefits of doing yoga include an improved ability to breathe, lowered blood pressure throughout the day, deeper feelings of relaxation, and boosted athleticism in muscles. For men, they can especially benefit from the improved flexibility that yoga provides along with more consistent sleep patterns each night. Yoga movements stretch the muscles and other soft tissues in the body, releasing any types of lactic acids that can build up in the joints and normally cause stiffness and fatigue.

The Mental Benefit

Strong relapse prevention coping skills are best practiced with a strong mind to match. Along with helping the body improve, yoga relaxes your racing mind and levels of stress throughout the day that can come from staying sober. Any headaches or migraines that you may have once experienced can be eased as you learn to master different yoga movements over time. Doing yoga helps to keep anxiety hormones down to a minimum and boost mood improving chemicals instead. Since yoga primarily focuses on clearing the mind, men who often have struggled with attention problems can easily see an improvement on caging their monkey thoughts throughout the day as well. Most importantly, yoga helps a person rebuild their intrinsic sense of self confidence as they attain a new level of fitness. This builds an unshakable foundation for a person to stay sober after detox and shy away from people in their lives who may not approve of their new and improved lifestyle.

An Aid to Healing

Men practicing yoga often report feeling strong and empowered after each yoga session. No matter what someone’s religious or spiritual beliefs are, they can easily intertwine the yoga philosophy into their lives for a better mindset on life. The philosophy is focused on emptying the mind of intrusive thoughts and finding a true balance within the nervous system. Even if you’re not the most experienced, don’t be afraid to try out a couple of yoga poses yourself to see how you feel. Remember to start the process slowly and safely, accept your limits, and think positive thoughts as you begin to strengthen your body. When combined with a sober mentoring program, healing is done effectively and in an organic manner so results are developed in the long term.

The Bottom Line

Often men who have become addicted to drugs or alcohol are escaping their own kind of pain, whether it is physical or emotional. However, having healthy alternatives like yoga and meditationhelp to ease the discomfort of the initial pain or trauma that led them to abuse substances in the first place, and create a real and lasting impact for a successful rehabilitation.

Men who actively participate in the exercise as an alternative medicine find that it helps reconnects them with their body, reintroduces them to a more healthy and natural mindset, lowers their anxiety levels, and provides them a strong sensation of inner peace and satisfaction. Although addictions can have a way of stealing everything you have in life, you can take action by not allowing yourself to go to ruin. Take the time to learn how to regain control of your present and move towards a stronger, positive, and motivated future!

 

 

 

Drug Addiction, Holistic Health, Mental Health

How To Deal With An Alcoholic

Leave a comment

When you watch a person you love go through addiction, it’s natural to want to help them in any way you can. Parents especially will want to offer their support, no matter the circumstance. However, whether their child is a teenager or older, that desire to help may have a negative impact on their recovery. They will want to empower the addict to succeed in life, but doing this by enabling their behavior is only contributing to their vicious cycle of dependency. The more enablement the addict has to help them continue their unhealthy behavior, the longer they will wait to change their life. They will also become used to always relying on their parent to pick up the fallen pieces. It’s important to watch out for the signs of enabling behavior and make changes to prevent worse consequences, ultimately resulting in prolonging someone’s addiction.

Signs of an Enabler

When it comes to helping an addict, there’s a fine line between providing them enough support and encouraging their behavior. Supporting them means helping them do things they can’t do alone. On the hand, if you’re enabling, you are regularly doing things that the other person could and should be doing by themselves to be self-sufficient.

Other signs of being an enabler include putting the person’s needs ahead of your own time, sanity, and schedule. This could range from going out of your way to miss important responsibilities or taking the blame when the addict gets into trouble. Other red flags are feeling resentful towards the addict since you’re taking on more responsibilities than you can handle, lying to yourself about how acceptable the addict’s behavior is, spending excessive energy focusing on solely their personal needs, and bailing them out when legal consequences eventually happen. Doing any of these behaviors only is contributing to the harmful environment that addict is living in every day. Over time, they will only start to believe that no matter how bad things get, you will always be there to mend the stitches and bring them back on their feet.

Breaking the Cycle

Since addiction affects everyone in the addict’s network, breaking your habit of enabling can make a huge impact on how well they can break their cycle of substance abuse. Any untreated or undiagnosed addict can wreak long term havoc on their families or spouse who is suffering as well. When a person is suffering from an addiction disorder, oftentimes they are in denial of their alcohlism and are unaware that the disorder exists. Rehab centers focusing on dual diagnosis have found that the link between dependency and alcohol addiction can be less weakened when the root cause is identified. In these types of situations, a person must be continually evaluated with a professional specialist to find which factors are contributing the most to their addiction specific symptoms. For example, when a person initially begins treatment, they may be experiencing a strong sense of paranoia which can recur even after staying sober for a few weeks. However, if the paranoid feeling do seem to lessen after a period of sobriety, then alcoholism can be determined as the cause. This process can make it easier to identify the true underlying disorder when any physical or psychological symptoms resulting from alcohol abuse are eliminated.

The Final Straw

Many people battling addiction find that turning to the aid of therapy and support groups provided by rehab centers can make a huge difference. Interventions especially provide unique benefits and challenges to addicts if the person is very resistant to getting help. During this process, friends, family members, and spouses need to unite as a unified force to confront the person and urge them into getting enough treatment. Interventions are often successful with the help of a professional counselor who can provide them enough advice to find the right treatment for their lifestyle, explain different alternative medicines, and other specialized rehab therapists in their area. Choose the right time and place to have this important conversation with your loved one where you can have enough alone time to process your thoughts and conversation. Make sure the person you’re having an intervention with is also sober, not busy, and focused enough to fully absorb the words that you are trying to communicate with them.

The bottom line is that helping your loved one doesn’t have to be as hard as it seems. As a family member, it’s much easier to turn a cheek towards your family, friends, or spouse who is using alcohol and other addictive substances to counteract the pressures from their life. However, make the choice to bravely stand up for their health. Don’t be afraid to call for help and be proactive when it comes to saving their lifestyle!