How to take care of your mind and body

Basically almost all skin conditions are due to two problems: a disruption of the natural commensal bacterial populations (human microbiome) and auto-immune conditions resulting from exposure to agents in our environment that are not native to our evolutionary development, such as household chemicals.

Even most allergies are due to either a disruption/depletion of the human microbiome or due to actual exposure to household chemicals.

Also any addictive behavior is a maladaptive response to stress. In essence, an addictive activity is a form of dissociation, of “checking out” of experiencing the “here and now”.

One frontal cortex can inhibit maladaptive behaviors, but only for a little while. It is only a band aid, when deeper healing is needed. This is why we fall of the wagon so easily. Change in maladaptive behavior needs to come form an existential come-to-Jesus type of moment. You really have to hit rock bottom emotionally, physically, socially, or even financially for the deeper, non-verbal and more automatic habit-forming parts of your brain to rewire.

Over taxing one’s working memory with excessive multitasking results in a very profound, if not highly destructive stress response. Over time, high cortisol shuts down functions of the frontal lobe, which could leads to further deficits in problem solving, emotional regulation, and impulse control. Multitasking is actually really bad for one’s mental health

One of the biggest determinate of how well we age is how effectively we can manage stress. Since the experience of stress is strongly related to the development of diabetes, mental illness, heart disease, and auto immune condition, aggressively controlling stress is critical to successful aging.

The biggest thing to keep in mind while managing stress is that individual stressful experiences are additive…that is, the more individual stressors we experience in a given period of time, the greater the vulnerability one has to stress related disease, disability, and injury.