March 9th 2015

I have decided that it is worth my time, and others' time, to explore stress management more seriously. I will spend a year to take on trials and studies in hopes of gathering more tools in combatting stress. Today is March 9th of 2015.

What sparked this idea was a friend and old housemate's facebook status. It was very simple but somehow struck a chord. It was about how sunlight makes him happy. He traced his temper from before sun exposure to after, and described the rapid transition from moody to euphoric as a rush at the back of his head. I replied immediately in agreement, suggesting that I too have a similar experience, and also when running hot water on my forearms.

Since graduating university last summer, I have been confronting health and productivity head on. The small things, really -- sleeping well, eating well, drinking water, cutting down on alcohol and cigarettes, getting sun, exercising, staying connected with friends family and loved ones, getting fresh air -- how important are these to you? For 3.5 months I cooped myself up in my room and in libraries to self-study for the MCAT -- but also made a point to stick to the aforementioned simple health measures. It was a bit of an experiment, to see how I would do prioritizing both study and health. I did well on my MCAT. I'll go into this on a later post.

Perhaps what we should be focusing our attention on isn't so much the things we should do, but rather uncovering the common blocks that prevent us from doing our daily health routines. Of course we all know it's good to eat dark leafy greens, of course it's important to drink plenty of water. Time, is probably a big one for most people. Urgency, or lack of, is probably another. I'd like to explore this further.

My hope is to create something of a database -- articles, blog posts, videos, handouts, recipes, instructional documents -- something easy to access and within everyone's reach. But for now, I will ponder and blog, ponder and blog, click around in our massive Internet and share with you what I find. Do as you will with the information.

Get some sun today if the sun is out! Daylight savings is giving us one more hour of sun to bathe in!

Note to self:

- Music

- Biofeedback

- Managing stress while (VERY) busy -- specifically as a student

- Easy breakfasts

- Physiology and neurological mechanisms of pleasure (reward systems)

- Hormones