Many of us know of people who under pressure resort to “stress eating.” Chocolate, French fries, and potato chips have all been implicated in stress overeating and while I’m sure that most junk foods have also been used for such purposes, I doubt the same could be said for foods like broccoli or blueberries. The result – chronic stress can lead to habitual stress eating of unhealthy foods, which in turn leads to weight gain and possibly to obesity, diabetes, and a host of other health problems. Many of us have witnessed this unfortunate progression of events, but up until…

Do you know the symptoms of adrenal fatigue? Do your patients report any of the following: Tired for no reason? Trouble getting up in the morning? Need coffee or colas to keep going? Feel run down and stressed? Crave salty or sweet snacks? Struggling to keep up with life’s daily demands? Can’t bounce back from stress or illness? Not having fun anymore? Decreased sex drive? If they answer “yes” to at least one of these questions, then they may be suffering from adrenal fatigue (reprinted with permission from http://www.adrenalfatigue.org/). And what is adrenal fatigue? It is a syndrome that occurs…

Have you ever had an ache that’s barely noticeable, until you start to think about it? Then the ache intensified and suddenly, the pain seems unbearable. New studies have found that while pain isn’t “just all in your head,” the brain does have ways of influencing our perception of pain. In a new paper out of Biology Psychiatry, Chantal Berna, MD led a group of researchers from the University of Oxford, UK who looked at the effects that depression had on the perception of pain. 20 healthy volunteers listened to depressing music and were bombarded with negative thoughts. Researchers then…