Chronic stress about money can affect your health. But you can find ways to overcome your financial stress and improve your well-being. Although your rising credit card debt, missed mortgage payment, or unpaid medical bills may not seem like they’re directly linked to your physical health, financial problems can affect more than just your credit score. According to the Stress in America survey published in November 2017 by the American Psychological Association, 62 percent of Americans report being stressed about money — and that stress could put them at a higher risk for lower-quality health. How Does Your Income Affect Your Health? Researchers have long known that money worries contribute to health worries. Financial stresses have been linked to migraine, cardiovascular disease, absences from work, insomnia, and more. It’s well documented, also, that financial stresses can negatively affect mental health, and contribute to depression and other mood disorders, according to…

By Dr. Wayne Andersen The practice of medicine is slowly evolving to address the role that habit and lifestyle play in patient health, but the status quo for modern medicine is still largely reactionary. A patient comes in the door with symptoms of a condition, and we try to provide relief for those symptoms through prescriptions or through invasive medical procedures and when we do not address the core cause of a patient’s disease—which is often lifestyle related to obesity rates continue to rise—the patient inevitably returns with the same (or worse) symptoms as before. This was the cycle I saw again and again as a critical care physician. Under this limited view of how we help people address their health problems, potentially reversible conditions become chronic, lifelong burdens. For many patients—those who are on prescriptions to treat high cholesterol, or chronic pain or even in some cases type II…

Our bodies are hardwired to install habits. By making repetitive behaviors automatic, we free-up processing power for our brains. Instead of having to consciously decide to take each step on the trail home after a hunt, our ancestors adapted so that they could direct their attention to more urgent matters, like watching for predators in the distance. Today, the power of habits can work for or against us, depending on whether we have Habits of Disease or Habits of Health installed. Something as simple as our posture comes down to habit. With a little bit of mindfulness, correcting your posture can actually ripple into other areas of your health, giving you an extra momentum for your workouts and even your emotional wellbeing. Here are just a few of the benefits of proper posture: Sitting up straight might reduce stress and increase confidence. The idea of “fake it till you…

Researchers in the field of psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) study the ways in which the immune system and the nervous system communicate with each other and impact people’s mental and emotional health. Even though the field is relatively new, many studies have been designed to examine the influence of immune and nervous systems on the psychological consequences of stress. In literal terms, recent studies have related stress to be psychological. Many have apportioned the causes of stress to the happenings or events around them, often neglecting the invisible obvious fact that stress is relatively linked to mental health in two important ways: Stress can cause mental health problems, and make existing problems worse. People are more aware of the visible sources of stress in their life such as money, time, traffic jam, and daily job schedules but never aware of the weird stress triggers. Professor of sociology Scott Schieman, at the University…