Healing Hormones: How to Turn on Natural Chemicals to Reduce Stress - Paperback

by Mark James Estren (Author), Beverly A. Potter (Author)

Worried about the nexus between stress and disease? Your know you've got to relax - but how? Stopping at the gym for an hour workout after work is not realistic. Prescription drugs and risk getting "hooked"? You should mediation - but how when you can't calm down!

Authors Mark Estren, a Pulitzer-winning journalist who writes about medical and health, and self-help author, Docpotter show how emotional self-talk - like "shoulding" - sets off the "stress response" and how chronic stress can harm your health. More importantly, Estren and Potter offer a fresh, fun-filled approach to toning down stress, while having more fun.*

Healing Hormones explains how to turn on natural chemicals - such as by dancing, running, snuggling, laughing, eating chocolate - to reduce stress and improve quality of your life. Anxious about a coming encounter? Snuggle your dog, while focusing on the "experience," right before meeting tells your brain to produce oxytocin, which soothes anxiety and facilitates socializing. No pet to snuggle? Watch a funny movie instead. Make sure to laugh hard to stimulates your body to produce natural morphine-like calming chemicals, called endorphins, and you may "ace" the encounter!

*Anticipating laughing and fun stimulates endorphin production! Go ahead: Laugh!

Front Jacket

Feeling stressed? Overwhelmed? About to jump out of your skin from pressures of everyday life? We all feel that way at times: ready to explode from everything going on - unrelenting demands, all the time. So we take medicines, see doctors, overeat, even use alcohol or drugs. Still the pressures mount. It's unbearable! There must be a better way!

There is. Your body knows what to do. Your body makes healing hormones that fight stress, promoting calm and balance. Nitric oxide, dopamine, endorphins, serotonin and oxytocin will help you cope with the demands of living in our hectic modern world - if you let your body do its job!

Healing Hormonesshows what you can do to help yourself without pills or supplements. It shows that stress is not what most people think - not something "out there." Stress is a response to external events - positive or negative. Since stress is your reaction, you can learn to control runaway stress by encouraging your body to produce anti-stress chemicals that will keep you calmer and better balanced.

Healing Hormones shows how we create stress by reacting to what we think is happening around us - not what is really happening. We make our own reality - one much more stress-filled than it has to be. Since we make it, we can change it. Healing Hormones tells how.

A wonderful counterbalance to the pressures urging us to take more medicines and look outside ourselves for health, Healing Hormones explains how you can be healthier and happier - today and every day.

Author Biography

Mark J. Estren, Ph.D., is a nationally known journalist and Pulitzer winner and was named one of the "People to Watch" by Fortune magazine. Dr. Estren is a regular contributor to The Washington Post, and Bottom Line. He lives in Ft. Myers, FL.

Beverly A. Potter, Ph.D, , received her doctorate from Stanford University. Preferring "Docpotter", her work blends philosophies of humanistic psychology, social learning theory and Eastern philosophies to create inspiring and original ways of handling difficulties encountered in today's stressful world. She is the author of several self-help books, including Overcoming Job Burnout: How to Renew Enthusiasm for Work and The Worrywart's Companion: 21 Ways to Soothe Yourself and Worry Smart. Her offices are in Oakland, CA.